In which a peppermint shared is a peppermint halved, but a problem shared is not a problem halved
‘Run along and have some lunch,’ Thistlebloom told Olive and her friends. ‘No! On second thoughts, you had best walk. Quietly. Sensibly. I know you are disappointed at Star leaving, but you will feel a lot better after you have eaten something.’
They did not.
Lunch was a disaster. The scheduled dessert of triple-chocolate cheesecake had been cancelled and replaced with healthy bran muffins.
Bran muffins!
‘Bran muffins?’ wailed Eduardo. ‘What are we going to do with bran muffins?’
‘We could use them as paper weights,’ suggested Valerie the owl.
‘Or cannonballs!’ cried Bullet Barnes.
‘Or bricks,’ said Frank the liar. ‘The Great Wall of China is built entirely of bran muffins, you know.’
‘That explains why it has lasted all these centuries,’ grumbled Alfonzo. He slammed his muffin down in disgust. The tabletop split.
‘I think they taste okay,’ said Fumble.
‘That’s because you are chewing on your hoof.’ Olive pulled Fumble’s front leg away from his mouth and rested it on the table.
Once the bitterness over dessert had settled, a deeper, more serious despair fell upon them. There was a Star-sized gap at the table and everyone was casting gloomy glances its way.
Anastasia slouched in her seat, silent, her eyes washy and watery. Alfonzo squeezed her hand and the tears overflowed, dribbling down her cheeks in two thick streams. ‘Star,’ she whispered.
Eduardo wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve. ‘Stupid hay fever,’ he grumbled. ‘It doesn’t usually get me until spring.’
Beauty coped with the pain by comfort eating. ‘Could someone please pass the mashed potatoes . . . and another piece of frittata . . . and the bread and butter . . . and three bran muffins?’
Bran muffins, however, are never a comfort. Beauty bit into a muffin, gagged, then spat crumbs all over Fumble. ‘Star! Oh, Star!’ she whinnied. ‘How on earth will I live without you?’ Her large black head flopped onto the table with a thud. Her mane dangled in a glass of milk and she didn’t even bother to pull it out.
‘That’s it!’ snapped Olive. ‘We can’t just sit here, moaning and groaning. We have to do something!’ She stared at the ceiling, tapped her forehead and sighed. ‘But what?’
‘Ooh! Ooh! I know!’ squeaked Wordsworth. ‘Tell Mrs Groves.’ He flipped through the pages of his Little Blue Book of Wise and Witty Sayings and read aloud, ‘A problem shared is a problem halved.’
‘That’s true!’ cried Olive. Then, considering that Mrs Groves was, in fact, the silliest headmistress ever to have walked the earth, she added, ‘At least, it’s worth a try . . .’
Leaping up from the bench, she ran out of the dining room, dashed across the entrance hall and collided with a wall.
How astonishing! Ever since Olive’s accident with the piano and a stick of dynamite, there had been a gaping hole in the office wall. It had proven rather convenient as an extra doorway, allowed for good ventilation and added a rustic charm to both entrance hall and office. But now, suddenly, it was gone. It had been bricked up, plastered, painted and hung with an insipid watercolour of flowers in a vase.
‘What a shame,’ sighed Olive, rubbing her forehead.
Staggering along to the door, she knocked three times and entered the office.
She stopped.
She stared.
She walked back out the door to check that she was in the right room, then re-entered.
‘Huh!’ she exclaimed.
Mrs Groves’ office had been totally transformed, and ‘huh’ is as good a thing as any to say when surprised. In fact, it is often the only thing one can say when surprised.
‘Huh!’ said Olive again, this time three tones higher.
The floor, once covered with colourful lumpy rugs, fluff balls and a homely film of dust, was now a vast expanse of polished floorboards. In fact, it was polished to such a shine that Olive could see the reflection of her own shocked face.
‘Where will the poor little beetles and bugs live, now that all the rugs have been removed?’ she wondered.
Gone, too, was the merry mishmash of student art stuck hither and thither upon the walls – finger paintings, self-portraits in crayon, collages made from macaroni, glitter and sardines. In their place hung a perfectly aligned display of posters, bearing titles like Dental Hygiene for Beginners, Tie a Shoelace in Seventeen Easy Steps, Diagnosing and Treating Intestinal Worms and How to Create the Perfect Display of Posters. All terribly dull. Except, perhaps, for the one on intestinal worms. It really was quite funny if one looked at it the right way.
The bookshelves had been cleared of their usual array of apple cores, old newspapers, birds’ nests, chunks of honeycomb and small students taking a nap. Now they were filled with books: The Best Way to Punish a Child, Winners are Grinners and Losers are Exactly What Their Name Suggests, Taking the Fun Out of Sport, 1,001 Recipes for Broccoli.
‘How troubling!’ sighed Olive.
‘Yes, Olive? May I help you?’ Thistlebloom sat behind Mrs Groves’ large mahogany desk, from which all clutter had been removed – even the sweets dish! What use is a headmistress’ desk without a sweets dish full of peppermints? One might just as well advocate birthdays without cakes, Christmas without plum puddings, or beds without snacks tucked beneath the pillow in case of midnight hunger pangs!
‘Tidy desk,’ said Olive, a little wistfully.
All that adorned its surface were three pens, a pencil and a ruler – each item sitting parallel to the next and the edge of the desk. Even Reginald’s latest layer of butter had been wiped clean.
‘Is Star . . .’ Olive could not quite get the words out.
Thistlebloom tightened her lip line. ‘Star is expelled. Obviously! That is all you need to know, Olive. You will do well to forget all about her and concentrate on preparing yourself and your fellow students for the Queen’s visit.’
Olive was about to declare that one could never forget a friend. She wanted to shout that anyone who could forget a friend was a person of shrivelled heart and questionable brain. But she did not. Olive was a kind and respectful child and knew that rudeness did not achieve anything.
Instead, she asked, ‘Where is Mrs Groves?’
Thistlebloom nodded towards the window with its drawn curtains, then turned her full attention back to straightening her pens.
Olive took a deep breath and ducked behind the heavy velvet curtains. ‘Hello, Mrs Groves.’
‘Oh, Olive! How lovely to see you.’
Mrs Groves’ knitting needles clacked back and forth against the folds of the curtains as she worked on an ugly green garment. A family of bugs was setting up home in a little pile of dust and fluff on the windowsill. A cup of tea, a half-eaten crumpet and the silver sweets dish were tucked into the corner of the sill. Olive was ridiculously happy at the sight of the sweets dish.
‘Why aren’t you sitting at your desk, Mrs Groves?’
‘Have you seen my desk? And the rest of my office?’ Mrs Groves sniffled and pulled Lucky the kitten from her apron pocket. Mistaking him for her handkerchief, she dabbed him at the corners of her eyes, blew her nose on his fluffy tummy, then stuffed him back into her pocket amidst a ball of string, a bunch of keys and the spare frogs that she was minding for Hamish.
‘It’s your office,’ said Olive. ‘In fact, it’s your school. Why don’t you ask Thistlebloom to leave?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly,’ gasped Mrs Groves. ‘We need Thistlebloom or we simply won’t be ready for the Queen’s visit and my beautiful boarding school will be closed and what, oh what will become of us all? Where would my students go? And what would I do without my lovely dears to brighten my every waking hour?’
‘What about Star?’ asked Olive. ‘Where will she go?’
Mrs Groves blinked rapidly. Her cheeks turned a rosy red. She knitted faster and faster until the needles started to smoke and the wool threatened to catch on fire. She reached for a peppermint, but it fell to the floor and rolled away.
Dropping down low, Mrs Groves slid out from the bottom of the curtains and commando-crawled across the floorboards in search of the runaway mint. Olive followed.
‘There it is!’ hissed Olive, and they found themselves beneath the desk, nose to toe with Thistlebloom’s sensible shoes. Olive picked up the peppermint and handed it to Mrs Groves, who bit off half and gave the remaining half back. Olive popped it into her mouth and watched the poor, silly headmistress as she closed her eyes, sucked and mumbled, ‘Mmmm . . . minty . . . fresh . . . sweet . . . minty . . .’
Bang!
The door to the office flew open. Olive watched in horror as two fat pink trotters sauntered across the polished floorboards towards the desk.
‘Pig McKenzie!’ she gasped.
‘Minty . . . fresh . . .’ murmured Mrs Groves.
‘Meow!’ said her apron pocket, then, ‘Riddup! Riddup!’
‘Francine!’ snorted the pig. ‘I have now disposed of those nasty triple-chocolate cheesecakes . . . all twelve of them. They will never be seen again.’
Olive rolled her eyes. She could just picture Pig McKenzie sitting in the cupboard beneath the stairs, scoffing one luscious dessert after another. What a greedy pig!
‘What a helpful pig,’ said Thistlebloom. ‘If ever there’s anything I can do in return . . .’
‘Well, now that you mention it . . .’ The pig paused theatrically, then said, ‘No. No-o-o! I couldn’t possibly ask. It would be too, too selfish.’
‘You can ask,’ said Thistlebloom. ‘One good turn deserves another. You have disposed of a lot of cheesecake.’
‘I want some timber,’ grunted the pig, ‘ropes, nails, screws, cement, a hammer, a power tool or two.’
Thistlebloom did not reply.
‘Oh, not for me!’ oinked the pig, sounding alarmed. ‘No, no, no, no, no! They are for building shelters . . . for the homeless. It has been a little hobby of mine for quite some time. Ever since I had the misfortune to be homeless myself, I have felt a burden for those suffering likewise.’
‘Shelters for the homeless?’ gasped Olive. ‘Unbelievable!’
‘Shelters for the homeless?’ whispered Mrs Groves. ‘Oh, how dreadfully kind and caring. He truly is a reformed pig, isn’t he, Olive?’
‘Shelters for the homeless,’ mused Thistlebloom. ‘Fascinating! That is just the sort of thing that would impress the Queen.’
‘It might sound terribly glamorous,’ said the pig, ‘but it’s not all fun and games, you know. It can be downright dangerous. Why, last summer I was sawing timber for bungalows in the highlands of New Guinea when I slipped and chopped the end off my tail.’
Thistlebloom gasped and Olive could only presume that the pig was bending over to show the missing bit.
‘How unfortunate,’ said Thistlebloom, ‘but you can wear your disfiguration as a badge of honour, an injury acquired in the line of duty!’
‘Volunteer duty,’ he corrected. ‘Because I am a charitable pig.’
‘Yes, you are!’ agreed Thistlebloom. ‘Now toddle along and make me a list. I will have your tools and materials by this evening.’
‘Good grief,’ sighed Olive, feeling more helpless than ever as she watched the pig turn on his trotters and skip out the door. What was that Wicked Pig up to now?
‘Shelters for the homeless,’ cooed Mrs Groves. ‘What a clever pig. Perhaps he can build us each a little hut in which we can live if the school is closed down!’
Enormously cheered at the thought, she commando-crawled back to her hiding spot, humming a little tune as she went.
‘What about Star?’ hissed Olive, but Mrs Groves was gone, tucked away behind the crimson velvet curtains, sucking on peppermints, sipping cold tea and playing Twenty Questions with the family of bugs.
‘Good grief,’ sighed Olive once more. Sadly, painfully, she commando-crawled all the way across the office, out the door and into the entrance hall, where strange scraping and bashing sounds were emanating from the cupboard beneath the grand staircase.
Good grief!