‘Oooh-waah!’ gasped Tiny Tim. ‘You killed her, Olive!’
Diana the lion tamer poked Thistlebloom in the belly with her whip. ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘She’s just unconscious. She’ll come round in an hour or two . . . or three.’
Oh, joy of joys! The students were free to do as they wished for the rest of the morning and they each used their sudden liberty wisely. Well, enthusiastically anyway. ‘Wisely’ may be an exaggeration . . . or an outright lie.
Peter spent the first five minutes drawing a dashing moustache on Thistlebloom’s face with black permanent marker. He spent the rest of the morning running around the school with a can of purple spray paint, brightening up many of the rooms that Thistlebloom had just painted white. He left a trail of smiley faces, sharks, stars, lightning bolts, bottoms and lightning bolts shooting from bottoms. He also left a number of written messages, all of which said: Peter was ’ere. Not the smartest move in retrospect, but artists are not always hindered by common sense. Just look at Vincent van Gogh and the whole sorry episode with the ear.
Elizabeth-Jane the giraffe and Valerie the owl led a number of conscientious students in walking back and forth across the library with books balanced on their heads. ‘This will help prepare us for the Queen’s visit,’ explained Valerie. ‘Apparently, it encourages grace and poise. You can’t keep a book balanced on your head if you are jiggling up and down like a lunatic.’
‘I can!’ said Jabber, and he leapt across the room, juggling three knives while balancing a stack of four books on his head.
‘Me too,’ cried Fumble, and he whirled around with seventeen books stuck in amongst his antlers until he lost his way, danced along the corridor and tumbled down the grand staircase.
Steve and George the hermit crabs had been busting to investigate Thistlebloom’s ears, but had not yet had the chance. Steve now scuttled onto Thistlebloom’s cheek and peered down to the left ear. ‘They stick out ever so far,’ he whispered.
‘Terribly awfully,’ said George, tugging at the right ear with his pincer. ‘But the stick-outiness is what makes them ever so appealing as a dwelling place.’
‘Oh, definitely,’ said Steve. ‘As good as a conch shell, which everyone knows is the penthouse of the hermit crab world.’
‘Shall we?’ asked George, slipping out of his own shell.
‘We shall!’ declared Steve.
And they spent a wondrous morning scuttling in and out of Thistlebloom’s ears, comparing them to gumnuts, egg cups, snuffboxes, walnut shells, miniature trumpets and cream horns. Both agreed that they were the cleanest ears they had ever seen, but smelt a little too strongly of disinfectant to feel truly homely.
Meanwhile, Bullet Barnes packed his suitcase, dragged his cannon into the backyard and begged Carlos to blast him forth with twice as much dynamite as usual in order that he might reach New Zealand. He wished to take a holiday until Thistlebloom was gone. Unfortunately, his suitcase took the full force of the explosion. It was blown over the city, over the harbour, over the ocean and all the way to Antarctica, where it was found by a family of grateful penguins who waddled their way through the chilly winter months wearing woolly jumpers, beanies and scarves. Bullet was simply fired into the maple tree, where his bootlaces got tangled in a branch. He spent the rest of the morning dangling upside down like a bat.
Anastasia, Alfonzo and Eduardo frolicked around the garden, flinging each other into the air, swinging from branch to branch in the trees, tightrope walking along the clothesline and doing triple flips from the greenhouse into the cabbages. They whooped and screamed and leapt until their acrobatic energy was spent and they felt like themselves once more. Olive longed to join them, but had a special project she wished to complete.
Skipping from room to room, she asked her fellow students for donations – tissue boxes, shoe boxes, apple cores, unwanted magazines, holey socks, dead cockroaches. She fossicked through the rubbish bin by the back door, then begged a block of cheese, two packets of savoury biscuits and five empty cans from the cook. Needing just a few more special items, she approached Mrs Groves’ parlour.
Imagine her surprise upon seeing the Inspector of Schools taking tea!
Olive did not think that the Inspector would ever set foot in Groves again. Perhaps he was emboldened by the knowledge that Thistlebloom, the most responsible and orderly woman ever to have walked the earth, was now in residence. That and the fact that he was wearing a bulletproof vest, a crash helmet and steel-capped boots.
Olive stood politely at the door, waiting for a pause in the conversation.
‘So Poppet has not been returned?’ asked Mrs Groves. She sipped her tea, blinked and sipped again.
‘No,’ sniffed the Inspector. He took off his helmet and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.
‘How very odd!’ cried Mrs Groves. ‘Why, I posted her Express. It was quite expensive for such a little Chihuahua, but I knew that you would be wanting her home as soon as possible. She should have arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon.’
‘The only thing I received in the mail was this.’ The Inspector pulled a postcard from inside his bulletproof vest. ‘It is a card from you, Mrs Groves, but oddly enough, it begins, “Dear Jinjing”.’
‘Goodness!’ Mrs Groves gasped. She dropped her cup and saucer on the floor. ‘Oh deary, deary me!’ She flapped her lace handkerchief before her face. ‘It would appear that I have made a little muddle. Jinjing is my Chinese penfriend who lives in Beijing. I have sent her postcard to your home address, Inspector, which means that I have posted Poppet to . . . to . . .’
Mrs Groves’ eyes widened. Her cheeks glowed a rosy red. Oh my, how she needed a peppermint!
She rustled about in her apron pocket and grabbed a little something. Popping it in her mouth, she closed her eyes and rolled it around on her tongue. ‘Mmmm . . . minty . . . fresh . . . sweet . . . minty . . . not so minty . . . bitter . . . slippery . . . slimy . . . hoppity . . .’ She spat the object into her hand.
‘Riddup!’ A small green frog frowned up at her, croaked and plopped down onto the floor.
Mrs Groves blinked, blushed, then fumbled around in her apron pocket once more. This time she pulled out a large gold fob watch. She stared at it and cried, ‘Goodness gracious me! Is that the time? I really must dash!’ Hitching her skirt up around her knees, she leapt out the window and clambered away, down the creeping ivy.
‘Poppet!’ sobbed the Inspector. ‘Oh, Poppet!’ Ramming his helmet back onto his head, he dashed past Olive, out of the parlour, along the corridor and down the grand staircase, where he tripped over Fumble. Tumbling out the front door, he somersaulted down the steps and rolled onto the road in front of a bus.
Long story short, the Inspector used his two-day stay in hospital to write a number of angry letters. One was to Mrs Groves. The rest were to the manufacturer of the bulletproof vest, demanding his money back. The manufacturer wrote a polite letter in reply, stating that while their vests were indeed bulletproof, they were not foolproof.
Olive felt a moment’s distress for Poppet, but it soon passed. ‘China does sound rather jolly with all those noodles and pandas,’ she mused. ‘And living with the Inspector of Schools can’t have been a bucket of laughs. So all in all, Mrs Groves has probably done Poppet an enormous favour in sending her to Beijing for a little holiday.’
Thus satisfied, Olive looked around the parlour until she found three empty chocolate boxes, two empty toffee tins and some odd little scraps of knitting. She wrote a note explaining that she had taken the items for a very special project, and walked back along the corridor.
On passing the library door, she stopped, stared and dropped the chocolate boxes in surprise. For there, singing and dancing in circles around Thistlebloom’s unconscious body, was Pig McKenzie. And as he danced, he removed gold stars from their card and stuck them, one by one, all over his white linen vest.
Olive tilted her head to one side and listened.
‘I am a lovely pig-pig-pig.
‘I dance a lovely jig-jig-jig.
‘These stars go on my vest-vest-vest,
‘For piggy is the best-best-best!’
‘How terribly naughty,’ thought Olive. ‘How despicably conceited!’
And then, she giggled.
She giggled for a delightful thought had popped into her head.
‘Silly pig. Thistlebloom will be furious when she realises that her gold stars have been stolen. She is sure to expel Pig McKenzie on the spot!’
And cheered enormously at the prospect, she picked up the chocolate boxes and bunny-hopped the rest of the way back to her room. There, she stacked, packed, twisted, glued, sticky-taped, snipped, folded, stuffed, layered, carved and crammed until all of her supplies were used up. She stood back, wiped her gluey fingers on her skirt and surveyed her handiwork. ‘Perfect!’
She threw her white quilt over the top to keep it hidden from sight and bunny-hopped all the way down to the dining room for lunch.