’Twas with heavy heart and minty breath that Olive approached her mathematics lesson that afternoon.
Normally, she looked forward to maths. She enjoyed a challenge and was rather clever with numbers, shapes and statistics. Furthermore, Mrs Groves liked to pose fascinating and thought-provoking problems. When studying capacity, they had been asked to figure out how many jelly beans would be needed to fill the basement, then tested their answers by filling the basement with real live jelly beans! Their lessons on area had been concluded by following Reginald around the school and calculating how many square metres of wall and floor he could smear with butter in one hour.
Currently, they were working on an intriguing problem that Mrs Groves had posed last Wednesday: ‘Upon completion, the Great Wall of China was 8,850 kilometres long. If it took one thousand labourers seven months and two thousand tonnes of stone to complete one metre of the wall, how many toasted cheese sandwiches were needed to feed each and every one of the labourers over a one-year period, taking into consideration that they possibly had scones with jam and cream for morning tea and a healthy snack of fruit salad and blueberry yoghurt for afternoon tea?’
No, it was not the pending mathematics lesson that had Olive’s heart sinking. It was the thought of Star, expelled and alone, and Pig McKenzie, plotting and scheming. The fact that Mrs Groves had taken fright and was now hiding in small spaces was not terribly cheering either.
‘Fingernails and shoes!’ Thistlebloom stood at the classroom door, her monocle wedged into her eye socket, rubber gloves on her hands. Students were queuing along the corridor, waiting to be examined. ‘Fingernails and shoes and hooves and paws and claws.’
This did not look like a maths lesson.
Anastasia, Eduardo and Alfonzo were allowed through with a curt nod, as were Steve and George the hermit crabs, Glenda the goose and Beauty the horse. Beauty, however, was immediately cast out after swishing her tail in Thistlebloom’s face. And lest there was any doubt of it being intentional, Beauty tossed her head and neighed, ‘That’s for Star, you bossy boomsticks!’ She concluded by blowing a raspberry. ‘Thp-p-p-p-p-p-p-p!’
‘Expelled!’ snapped Thistlebloom.
Pig McKenzie pasted a look of fake concern onto his face. ‘We love you, Beauty,’ he grunted. ‘We just don’t like your behaviour.’
‘Yes, indeed!’ agreed Thistlebloom. ‘Powerful words, Pig McKenzie.’
Beauty slunk down the corridor, past the row of waiting students. Nobody dared speak, but naughty boys, talking animals and circus performers all acknowledged their affection and sympathy as Beauty passed – a kiss blown through the air, a slight lifting of two fingers in a secret wave, a hand clasped to the heart.
As she neared Olive, Beauty pretended to stumble and brushed her soft lips across the top of our heroine’s head.
A sob slipped from Olive’s mouth. She looked up into Beauty’s eyes, making her best attempt at a deep and meaningful gaze. A gaze that she hoped would say, ‘I love you, dear horse of jet-black beauty and radiant spirit. You are my treasured friend. I shall not forget you. I will come and find both you and Star when this is all over, wherever you may be.’
To be honest, Olive’s gaze conveyed none of this. She simply looked pained, as though the bran muffins from lunch were taking their toll on her tummy. But her heart was in the right place.
‘Fingernails and shoes!’ snapped Thistlebloom. ‘Chop chop!’
Tommy, Reginald, Carlos, Bullet Barnes, Blimp, Chester, Num-Num and Wally the wombat were all sent away to ‘make themselves acceptable’. The rest of the students were ushered into the classroom. There, they sat in silence until the disgraced returned, humbled and clean.
Except for Tommy and Wally.
Tommy did return, fingernail-fresh and shiny of shoe, but he also returned with a small cake of soap lodged up his left nostril. Thistlebloom was not pleased and Tommy was expelled.
Wally the wombat did not return. He had decided to skip class and dig a burrow in the vegetable patch. There he continued to hide for the next three days. This might sound unpleasant, but wombats are burrowing creatures by habit, and there was a rich supply of carrots, turnips and parsnips on site. He had also taken a pack of coloured paper squares and used the time to practise his origami.
When everyone had settled, Thistlebloom took off her rubber gloves, tossed them in the bin and sprayed disinfectant liberally in the air. She placed a little brass bell and a card full of gold stars on her desk, shifting them three times until satisfied with their position.
‘Oh, mercy!’ cried Glenda the goose. ‘Not a little brass bell!’ She clacked her beak, rolled her eyes and fainted.
Thistlebloom sighed, took a broom from the corner, swept Glenda into the corridor and shut the door. She sprayed more disinfectant into the air, then stood at the front of the room.
‘I have a very exciting announcement to make.’ The thin, straight line of her mouth stretched. ‘Every year, during her official school visits, the Queen searches high and low for someone unique. The student who stands out above the rest. The one who will be declared the winner of the prestigious Royal Award for Best Student in the Whole Wide World!’
Mrs Groves poked her head out from the cupboard in which the protractors were stored. ‘Oh, how dreadfully wonderfully terribly exciting!’ she cooed. ‘Although, in my eyes, each and every one of you is the best student in the whole wide world and even in the galaxy. And that really is saying something because I think there might be some stiff competition on Mars, Jupiter and –’
‘Mrs Groves!’ Thistlebloom slapped her bony hand down upon the desk. The poor, silly headmistress yelped, shrank back into the cupboard and slammed the door. Right on Lucky the kitten’s tail.
‘Furthermore,’ continued Thistlebloom, ‘the winner of this prestigious award will receive a blue satin sash with gold embroidered letters spelling out the word “WINNER” and . . .’ She tilted her head a little further forward, raised her eyebrows and announced slowly, several words at a time, ‘An invitation . . . to attend a banquet . . . at the palace . . . with the Queen . . . and her royal corgis!’
‘I love corgis!’ barked Scruffy.
‘I love blue satin sashes!’ cried Anastasia.
‘I love banquets!’ shouted Blimp.
‘I love winning!’ snorted Pig McKenzie.
Thistlebloom rang the little bell for silence, then smoothed down her already crease-free pinafore. ‘The winner must be of remarkable character, of shimmering cleanliness and, most important of all, in possession of impeccable manners. One can’t be visiting the royal palace for a banquet without a thorough understanding of etiquette.’
‘Etiquette!’ squeaked Blimp. ‘That sounds dreadfully painful.’
Wordsworth slapped his forehead and rolled his eyes. ‘Etiquette,’ he said, ‘does not hurt. Etiquette is just a fancy way of describing how to behave in polite society.’
‘Precisely!’ said Thistlebloom. ‘Etiquette is all about manners, courteous conversation and carrying oneself with grace and charm.’
‘Num-Num lub Grace and Charm!’ growled Num-Num. Which was one hundred per cent true. Grace and Charm were students at the local Catholic school. Every weekday at 3.47 pm, these two girls walked, hand in hand, along the footpath in front of Groves on their way home. Num-Num thought they were the plumpest, juiciest pieces of fresh meat she had ever laid eyes on and was waiting for the perfect moment to make a snack of one or the other.
Thistlebloom misunderstood. She smiled approvingly at Num-Num, then embarked on a fifty-minute lecture on the importance of saying, ‘Please, may I?’ and ‘Thank you from the bottom of my heart!’; on deciding whether to cry, ‘Oh, pardon me!’ or chuckle, ‘How jolly amusing!’; and on how to accept an award with poise. Apparently, it was bad form to screech with excitement or bunny-hop for joy. Both Olive and Reuben the rabbit found this rather harsh.
Thistlebloom then launched into a thorough demonstration of how to make an enchanting introduction and a dashing exit, how to sip from a teacup while holding one’s little finger crooked at a delicate angle, how to dab at the corners of one’s mouth with a serviette and how to pull out a chair or hold open a door for a companion.
Anastasia, Valerie the owl and Elizabeth-Jane the giraffe leaned forward, mouths slightly open, hanging off Thistlebloom’s every word. Num-Num rocked back and forth, crooning, ‘Grace and Charm, Grace and Charm,’ quietly to herself. A little stream of dribble trickled from the side of her mouth.
The whole time, Pig McKenzie scribbled furiously in his exercise book. Thistlebloom nodded regularly in his direction, thrilled that he was taking notes on her lecture. He was, in fact, drawing a double-paged picture of Olive tied to a railway track as a steam train barrelled towards her.
What a Despicable Pig!
‘What a Despicable Pig!’ cried Olive as the pig tilted the book her way.
‘And now,’ Thistlebloom declared, ‘we shall do some role plays to practise our grace and charm! Turn to the person beside you and pretend that you are meeting for the first time today. Perhaps you have both been invited to high tea at the royal palace.’
Olive spun around, smiling, expecting to see Eduardo. Instead, she found herself nose to snout with Pig McKenzie.
‘Hey!’ shouted Eduardo. ‘Olive’s my partn–’
The pig elbowed him in the belly, then turned back to Olive. ‘After you, Osteoporosis.’
‘My name is Olive, not Osteoporosis!’
‘Oh, pardon me!’ cried the pig, not sounding at all like he was sorry.
Olive took a deep breath. She would not allow this Nasty Swine to upset her. That would be playing right into his trotters. It was just what he wanted. It was what all bullies wanted. To upset. To scare. To have power over their victims.
Forcing a smile onto her face, Olive curtseyed and said, ‘Good day, Pig McKenzie. How lovely to see you.’
‘Of course it is lovely to see me!’ he snorted with a flourish of his trotter. ‘I am a remarkable pig of phenomenal humility!’
‘You’re supposed to greet me in return,’ said Olive, her cheeks burning.
The pig narrowed his eyes and smirked. ‘Good day, Osteoporosis! How simply delighted you are to see me.’
Suddenly, he bowed. Deeply and violently. It was more of a head-butt, really.
Olive staggered backwards and fell onto the floor. Yellow canaries flitted back and forth before her eyes.
‘How jolly amusing!’ sang the pig. He threw back his head and chuckled. ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha! A right lark, hey what, old chap?’
Olive was too weary to rise. She lay on the floor and watched her fellow students practise their manners. They scraped and bowed, excused and were amused, pulled out chairs, dabbed imaginary crumbs from the corners of their mouths and laughed without smiling.
‘There is nothing sadder,’ thought Olive, ‘than manners without warmth, greetings without a smile, conversation without meaning, and laughter unaccompanied by true joy.’
‘Well done!’ snapped Thistlebloom. She nodded and clapped three fingers against the palm of her other hand. ‘The etiquette is practically oozing from your pores.’
She reached for the card of gold stars and the room fell silent.
Valerie the owl fluffed up her feathers. Anastasia tucked her blonde hair behind her ears. Elizabeth-Jane the giraffe held her breath. Pig McKenzie narrowed his eyes.
Thistlebloom’s hand hovered above the stars, froze, then withdrew. ‘My, oh my!’ she gasped, little red blotches breaking out across her neck and jaws. ‘I almost lost my head in the excitement of the moment! I do so enjoy an etiquette lesson.’
Then, popping her stars away in the desk drawer, she rang her little bell to signify the end of class and walked out the door.
Ridiculous! Not a single gold star awarded! The disappointment was too much to bear.
‘Thank you for the lesson!’ Pewy Hughie cried, sarcasm dripping from the words. ‘Thank you from the heart of my bottom.’
And just like that, he was expelled.