“Gasty pencil,” said Mrs Pearce.
“Spudvetch!” said Mr Kidd.
“Spudvetch!” Mrs Pearce repeated.
Two chairs scraped back, four shoes clicked across the floor, the door opened, the door closed and then there was silence.
Charlie and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows in unison. We didn’t say anything. We didn’t need to. We were thinking the same thing.
Forget Fenham. There was an adventure on its way, a nuclear-powered, one-hundred-ton adventure with reclining seats and a snack trolley. And it was pulling into the station right now.
4
Doing it the simple way
When I got home I had plenty of time to think about what Charlie and I had heard, on account of being locked in the bathroom for an hour and a half.
I strode into the flat, threw my school bag into my bedroom and headed to the kitchen to grab a hot chocolate. Unfortunately, the kitchen was already occupied by my sister and Craterface.
“Howdy!” I chirruped.
My head was so full of Mr Kidd and Mrs Pearce and ‘Tractor bonting dross’ that I had completely forgotten about the flying sandwich and the death threat until Craterface lunged at me, shouting, “Come here, you little snotrag!” — at which point it all came flooding back.
I squealed and leaped out of grabbing range. I sprinted into the hallway, skidded into the bathroom and turned round. I saw a hideous flash of sideburns and flying fists, then I slammed the door and locked it.
“Come out and be killed!” he shouted, battering the flimsy plywood.
I wasn’t stupid. I picked up the bottle of bleach, took the top off, pointed the nozzle towards the door and waited. The hinges strained but didn’t give way.
Moments later I heard Dad wander out of his bedroom and mutter, “What’s all this then?”
Craterface replied that he was going to kill me. Becky said he didn’t mean it. And Craterface said he did mean it.
I waited for Dad to kick Craterface out of the flat or knock him unconscious with a blow to the head. But he just ummed and erred and said, “I’m going to the shop. If you’re not gone when I’m back, there’ll be trouble.”
I was beginning to see what Dad meant when he said that he wasn’t a real man any more.
When the flat door banged behind him, Craterface laughed, hammered on the bathroom door a bit more, got bored and returned to the kitchen. Keeping the bleach to hand, I sat down on the fluffy blue bathmat and did some thinking.
And what I thought was this…They weren’t talking nonsense. They weren’t the sort of people who talked nonsense. Ever. Mrs Pearce was eighty-five, or thereabouts, and Mr Kidd had no sense of humour. No. What they were saying sounded exactly like a real conversation. It was just that you couldn’t understand a word of it.
So they were talking a foreign language. Perhaps they used to live in Burkina Faso or the Philippines. Perhaps they’d gone on holiday to Greenland or Vietnam. Perhaps they went to Mongolian evening classes together.
In which case, why did we never see them talking at any other time? I couldn’t remember them exchanging a single word in all the years I’d been at the school.
And if they spoke a foreign language, why hadn’t they told us? They were teachers. Teachers loved showing off. Only last week Mr Kidd had been reminding us yet again of how he once played cricket for Somerset under-nineteens. And Mrs Pearce liked nothing better than sitting down at the piano during assembly and adding extra twiddly bits to the hymn music that weren’t meant to be there. If they could speak Mongolian, you could bet your bottom dollar they’d tell us about it.
They’d waited until everyone was out of the room. They had a secret. And it was a big one. A really big one. A secret they didn’t want us to know about. A secret they didn’t want any of the other teachers knowing about.
And we were going to find out what that secret was.
I waited for an hour and a half and Mum finally came home from work. I stood up and pressed my ear to the door.
“Where’s Jimbo?” she asked Becky.
Once again, I heard Craterface explaining that he was going to kill me. A nanosecond after that I heard a loud crunch. I later found out that this was the sound of Craterface being hit on the side of the head by a briefcase with a combination lock.
He yelped in pain. “Wotcha do that for?”
“Out!” barked Mum, so loudly that even I jumped. “Get your greasy backside out of this flat now, or I’m calling the police.”
“Take it easy, missus,” grumbled Craterface.
“Keep your hair on, Mum,” whined Becky.
“And less of your lip,” snapped Mum.
The sound of heavy boots was followed by a loud slam. Then Mum rapped quietly on the bathroom door.
“You can come out now, Jimbo. That oaf is gone.”
I came out and shook Mum’s hand. “That was classy.”
At least there was one real man in the family.
After all the commotion it turned into a surprisingly pleasant evening. Dad spent so long in the shop, for fear of coming back and finding Craterface still in residence, that he’d done enough shopping for three weeks. Toilet rolls, J-cloths, washing-up liquid, scouring powder, the works.
So Mum was happy. And Dad was happy that Mum was happy. And I was happy that Mum and Dad were happy with each other. Plus, Becky was really unhappy, which always cheered me up. And anyway, she just stayed in her room, sulking, so we had a very nice time indeed.
After I’d washed up I decided to go to bed and plan tomorrow’s investigations. I got my hot chocolate and walked up to Dad, who was sitting in front of the TV, watching Police, Camera, Action!
“Spudvetch!” I said, catching his eye.
He looked at me in a puzzled way for a few seconds. Then he grinned and said, “Spudvetch!” and gave me the OK sign.
I grinned back and headed off down the hall.
Charlie and I were in complete agreement. We couldn’t ask them straight out. We had to be subtle. They had a secret, and they weren’t going to give it away to any Tom, Dick or Harry who wanted to share it.
However, there were plenty of other things we could get away with asking. And, since I’d lost the toss, it was me who got to ask first.
My target was Mr Kidd. We trailed him over the lunch hour and followed him into the school library, where we found him browsing the Arsenal supporters’ website on one of the computers.
I grabbed a book on Spain from the shelves, opened it, put my head down and bumped into him. “Sorry, sir,” I said, stepping backwards.
“That’s all right,” he replied, rapidly swivelling the monitor through ninety degrees.
“Sir…?” I asked, trying to force his eyes off the page.
“What, John?”
“It’s Jim, sir.” I took a deep breath. “I was thinking of learning some Spanish.”
“Really?” he said, looking at me rather oddly, as if I had food all over my face or a dangling bogey.
“We’re going on holiday there, sir. Do you speak Spanish?”
“No,” he said warily. “Why are you asking me these questions?”
“I was wondering how quickly I could learn a foreign language. Just the basics, I mean. If I really tried.” I took a second deep breath. “Do you speak any other languages, sir?”
“Languages aren’t really my strong point,” he sighed. “I’m a pictures bloke, really. Now they stick in my head. But languages…Well, it’s in one ear and out the other. I tried learning a bit of French in Brittany last year, but I sounded like an idiot. And if I’m going to sound like an idiot I’d prefer to do it in my own language.”