In which a stuffed zebra finch becomes a surprising ambassador for peace
Pig McKenzie sat in a rocking chair at the front of the maths classroom, his hind trotters soaking in a tub of warm lavender-scented water. Mrs Groves fussed about, tucking a green mohair blanket around his knees.
The pig pretended to read from his crossword as Olive skipped through the doorway. ‘Eight across. A four-letter word meaning young female.’
‘Oh, I know!’ cried Elizabeth-Jane the giraffe, simpering and curving her long neck. ‘Girl!’
Mrs Groves’ hand flew to her throat. ‘Oh deary, deary me!’ she babbled. ‘I don’t think we want to use that word more than necessary around here!’
Pig McKenzie dropped the crossword into his lap and leered at Olive.
‘Mrs Groves,’ said Olive, willing herself not to blush. ‘I am here to remind you that I will be absent from the afternoon’s lessons, organising the science laboratory. We talked about it this morning.’
‘Yes, yes! Of course!’ cried Mrs Groves. ‘Such an important job you are doing, dear. Take as many students as you wish.’
Olive chose Fumble the moose, Wordsworth, Chester, Blimp, Reuben the rabbit, Tiny Tim, Eduardo, Frank the liar and Glenda the goose. Glenda was already unconscious, having been frightened by a glimpse of her own reflection in the window on her way into the room, but Olive felt that it was important to be loyal to one’s friends, regardless of whether they were alert or comatose.
Olive was just about to leave the room when she noticed Anastasia staring in horror at a problem in her maths textbook. She tugged at strands of her long blonde hair. The colour drained from her face. Little beads of sweat broke out on her forehead and she clutched her stomach.
Now Olive, being a practical girl, loved nothing more than a challenging session of mathematical problem solving. But here, suddenly, in Anastasia, she recognised the exact symptoms that she herself experienced in the face of great heights.
You see, dear reader, Anastasia was a brilliant acrobat, a confident poetry critic, a superb smirker, a marvellous history scholar, but – let’s be brutally honest – a lousy mathematician. Not that there is any shame in that. Everyone has at least one thing with which they struggle – reading, tying shoelaces, keeping sardines out of their nostrils – and Anastasia’s thing was mathematics.
Anastasia flopped her head forward onto her textbook and moaned.
‘Mrs Groves,’ said Olive, turning at the door. ‘I think I might need just one more helper. Someone tidy and clever and organised.’ She made a great show of searching the room. She put her finger to her lips, frowned a little, then said, ‘Anastasia is tidy and clever and organised . . . I don’t suppose . . .?’
The blonde acrobat lifted her head. A little ray of hope glimmered in her maths-harassed eyes.
‘Oh dear!’ cried Mrs Groves. ‘Of course Anastasia will help, even though she will be very disappointed to have missed our lesson on problem solv–’
Anastasia zipped her pencil case, closed her books and fled the classroom before the headmistress could finish. She bolted along the corridor to the laboratory, filled a bucket with soapy water and started scrubbing splattered kidneys and livers off the walls as though it was fabulous fun. She even whistled a jolly little tune as she scraped a dried intestine off the window with her protractor.
Eduardo grabbed a second bucket and mopped the floor until every last grain of salt and sand, every last blob of appendix and bladder, every last puddle of ethanol and acid was gone.
Tiny Tim gathered up all the unbroken glassware – beakers, test tubes, petri dishes and flat-bottomed flasks. He giggled every time someone called out, ‘There’s another flat-bottomed flask over here, Tiny Tim.’
Quite understandable, really.
Bottoms are highly amusing.
Flat bottoms doubly so.
Reuben the rabbit washed and dried Tiny Tim’s glassware, then polished it to a shine with his fluffy pink tail.
Frank reattached the shelving to the walls. Fumble followed along behind, dusting with a soft grey cloth that turned out to be Wordsworth, then rubbing in furniture oil with a soft white cloth that turned out to be Blimp.
Once he had convinced Fumble to put him down, Wordsworth spent the rest of the afternoon tearing strips of exciting words from textbooks, wall charts and order forms for chemicals. Words like borax, plutonium, alimentary canal, obsidian, stratosphere and botulism. He hadn’t a clue what they meant, but found a peculiar comfort in knowing that they would all end up padding his nest. He would sleep soundly, luxuriously, surrounded by words, words, words.
Blimp spent the rest of the afternoon removing splinters from his bottom with a needle and a pair of tweezers. Chester spent the entire time chewing big white buttons off the lab coats.
Olive brought the whole operation together by arranging the equipment, books, charts, models, chemicals, rocks and body parts on the shelving in alphabetical order. It worked splendidly in her wardrobe and in dictionaries, so why not in the science laboratory? It was completely manageable and one did not need a deep knowledge of the various strands of science – geology, biology, astronomy, embroidery, chemistry – to find one’s way around. Metamorphic rocks, for example, could be readily located between the mercury and the microscope. The soap (for washing chemicals off one’s skin) sat between the skunk’s skull and the sulphuric acid. The pickled brain rested betwixt a pile of books and the Bunsen burners.
There had been a moment’s confusion over the cheese sandwich that Wordsworth had found in the rubbish bin. Did it belong in the laboratory or not? After much deliberation, Olive decided to let it stay on the premise that sandwiches were made of atoms and atoms were very big in the scientific world.
‘All done!’ cried Olive, placing a tiny stuffed zebra finch in the last space on the shelving. She was pleased to finish the collection on such a charming note. The delicate little bird looked quite cheerful with its bright red beak, orange cheeks and pretty markings of dots and stripes. Quite cheerful, indeed . . . as long as you ignored the fact that it was as dead as a doornail.
‘Hmmm,’ said Wordsworth, nibbling thoughtfully on a shred of paper bearing the word ‘metamorphic’. ‘Shouldn’t that be under B for bird, Olive? I think the little chap should sit up between the beryl gemstone and the books.’
‘No, no, no, no,’ cried Reuben. ‘S for stuffed. It should sit between the soap and the sulphuric acid.’
‘No way!’ cried Tiny Tim. ‘F for feathers, between the fat test tubes and the flat-bottomed flasks.’
Tiny Tim began to giggle once more. He became quite helpless with laughter, staggering around the laboratory until he knocked a complete model of the solar system off its stand. Jupiter rolled out the door, along the corridor and into the maths classroom, where Scruffy the dog chased it around and around for the rest of the afternoon. Mars rolled across the floor to Fumble’s hooves.
‘Yum!’ cried Fumble, chomping down on the red planet. ‘A delicious juicy apple!’
‘You’re all wrong,’ said Frank, inspecting his fingernails. ‘C for carnivore. Zebra finches are rip-snorting carnivores. They hunt in packs, killing animals as big as buffalo, and feast on raw meat until they are so fat they can’t fly. C for carnivore, between the cactus and the cheese sandwich.’
Olive screwed up her nose. She tapped her forehead. She tilted her head to the left and sighed.
‘Olive’s right,’ said Anastasia, speaking for the first time all afternoon. ‘Z for zebra finch.’
I do hope you caught that, dear reader! It might not sound like much, but it was the closest thing to an apology, to a peace offering, to an avowal of friendship, that Anastasia was going to give.
Olive stepped forward, straightened the zebra finch in its position at the end of the shelf, stepped back and nodded at Anastasia.
Thus was the apology and the offer of friendship accepted.