Two weeks later Grandpa was home again, but he didn’t look as well as he used to. He was a bit pale and frail. He had to do quite a lot of exercise, so I went walking with him in the park after school. It was a bit boring sometimes. If we’d had a dog it would have been much better. I asked Mum again but she said, ‘No way.’
Johnny and I sandpapered dozens of desks but not as many as we should have. Miss Holland chucked a nana a couple of times but gradually she started to forget about it. We kept out of her way as much as possible. It’s strange though, every time we did something wrong you could guarantee that she’d be just around the corner.
Class was still good. We did some cool things. One of my favourites was when we pretended to be little kids again, and we’d sit on the ‘story mat’ while Mr Murlin read us picture books from the Infants’ section of the Library. We got M & Ms for sitting up straightest. Those books were good, too good to be wasted on little kids. Not Now Bernard and Who Sank the Boat? and A Piece of Straw. The pictures were hot. My favourite was Crusher is Coming. But the one everyone liked over and over again was Where the Wild Things Are. Pretty funny for Year Five, when you’re meant to have grown out of that stuff. But everyone remembered Where the Wild Things Are from when they were little, and they all remembered the nightmares it had given them.
We had a lesson in a big trench that was being dug out for new sewerage pipes. We looked at all the layers of dirt and rock. We had a class shop, where we used Monopoly money to trade, and we had to add up the money and work out the change and everything. You could even buy things like early marks or wall space, or if you were really rich, the right to curl up on the bean bags and read a MAD magazine for half an hour. We had a lesson where we drew portraits of each other without being allowed to look at the paper. That was really funny.
We had a lesson up a tree, all twenty-eight of us. It was a big tree, by the main entrance to the school. In the middle of the lesson Miss Holland and Mrs Mudd walked past and saw us. They just raised their eyebrows and walked on. I thought, ‘More trouble for Mr Murlin.’
One day we came into Room 7 and there was a huge sort of dolls’ house on Mr Murlin’s table. The table had been pulled into the centre of the room, and Mr Murlin stood beside it. We all gathered around, full of curiosity. The house was two-storeys high, with lots of rooms, each one furnished in great detail. In the kitchen, for example, there was a breakfast bar with the remains of a meal spread across it. And there were two bedrooms that looked like they belonged to kids, because there were miniature posters on the walls and clothes chucked around the floor.
It took me a few minutes to realise, too, that there were little figures in some of the rooms, like dolls. In one of the kids’ rooms there was a figure in bed; in the other one there was someone sitting at a desk. There was a male figure standing in the kitchen and a female one standing in the front doorway with a newspaper. And an old man coming down the staircase.
All of us were gathered around this house, ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ at how amazing it was, and pointing out different things to each other. Then, just as I showed Rachel that there was a dog curled up on the foot of one of the beds, it happened. I thought I saw the old man take a step down the staircase. I blinked and looked again. No. Yes. No. He didn’t seem to be moving, but he did seem to be one step further away from the landing.
Then something happened that made the whole class gasp. The woman dropped her newspaper. And bent to pick it up. We all froze, except for Johnny, who looked under the table and then behind it. I think he was looking for wires or strings. I looked at Mr Murlin, who just smiled and put his finger to his lips to tell us to stay quiet. He didn’t have to tell us twice. Kate Baker was so pale I thought she was going to faint.
Suddenly, it was happening everywhere at once. The dog got off the bed, shook himself and lolloped downstairs. The kid in bed threw off his doona and followed. The lady came into the kitchen and sat down at the table to read the paper. The kid at the desk turned a page in her book. The old man got to the bottom of the stairs, despite being nearly knocked over by the dog. He limped into the sitting room and turned on the TV. A picture came onto the set: it looked like the Today Show. I realised we were watching the world’s smallest TV. The old man got up again and adjusted the volume. We could faintly hear the sound of voices from the set.
When the kid in pyjamas came into the kitchen, he said, and we could hear this quite distinctly, ‘What’s for breakfast?’
His father answered, ‘We’ve all had ours. I called you twice. Now you’ll have to get your own.’
Their voices sounded tinny and far-off but there was no doubt about what they were saying. The kid went to the fridge and got some milk, then picked up a packet of cereal and took it to the breakfast bar. The dog followed him all the way—I guess it was hoping for a few free Coco Pops. The parents started having a conversation about the car, and the garden, and whether they should buy a microwave or not. It was all so ordinary and in a way, that was one of the most amazing things about it, it was just like anyone’s house. We were watching real life. It could have been my place—well, before my parents split up, anyway. In a way it was like TV, but a million times better.
‘Sir,’ Alice Goodbottom asked Mr Murlin, ‘How do you do it?’
Mr Murlin shrugged and smiled. ‘Modern technology,’ he said. We all laughed and said, ‘Oh yeah.’ But we were too fascinated by the house to talk and we turned back to it. The two parents were arguing, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I think it was about their cheque account or something. The little kid just kept eating his breakfast. Finally the lady took her newspaper and stormed out of the kitchen into the TV room. She sat down next to the grandfather and acted like she was reading the paper, but it looked like she had her mind on other things. The father made some coffee and sat down next to the kid, but the kid wasn’t talking to him. Then the girl upstairs came down and made a phone call. Seemed like it was to her boyfriend.
Well, it just kept going like that. The parents made up when the father brewed some coffee for the mother and took it in to her. Then he started vacuuming downstairs while the mother washed the dishes. The two kids got sent up to make their beds and tidy their rooms, but they both did next to nothing once they got in there. The grandfather dozed in his armchair and the dog dozed at his feet.
When the bell rang for recess, Mr Murlin started pushing us all out the door. But he had to struggle. No-one wanted to go. ‘Will it still be here when we get back?’ Johnny asked, but he couldn’t get an answer. Finally Mr Murlin got us out and he shut the door from the inside. Some of us tried to see in through the windows above the lockers in the corridor, but just as we were getting up there Miss Holland came round the corner, so that was the end of that. And sure enough, when we went in to class again after recess the house was gone and Mr Murlin’s desk was back in its normal position.
We tried to tell some of the Year Six kids about it at lunchtime but they thought we were crazy. Once again the only one who believed us was little Wesley.