How to Write Really Badly (2 page)

You’d have thought that I’d balanced the budget, or something.

Modestly, I wiped the chalk dust from my fingertips.

‘And now let’s give Howard a nice big round of applause as he goes back to his desk.’

I didn’t put up any further fight. Chester. Howard. What’s in a name? I was a broken reed, ready to slip my head in a noose, or walk the plank, or do anything I was asked. Don’t get the wrong end of the stick. I am no wimp. I’ve smacked heads in my time. Young Chester Howard here has stuck up for himself in schools where the pudding plates go flying, and schools where, if you don’t watch yourself, someone’s infected teeth are in your leg, and schools where the staff need cattle prods.

But Walbottle Manor (Mixed)! Their sheer bloodcurdling
niceness
had defeated me, and I ran up the white flag.

Howard it was.

You wouldn’t
believe
the playground. Half of these goofballs were wandering round offering their last crisp to anyone who looked in the slightest bit peaky, and the rest were all skipping.

No kidding. They were skipping. Two rosy-cheeked milkmaids in pigtails were swinging this great long rope, and everyone else was jumping up and down, all thrilled to bits, waiting their turn.

Then, each time someone rushed in under the rope, everyone burst into song.

I stood on the steps and listened. First I heard:

And then I heard:

I turned to Joe. ‘Is this some kind of special day?’

He trotted out his puzzled look. ‘What do you mean?’

I didn’t quite know how to put it. ‘What I mean is, are you all pretending to be sweet little orphans, or something? Is this some sort of History Day?’

I wasn’t ringing his doorbell, you could tell.

‘History Day?’

‘You know. Like when all the girls dress up in pinafores, and everyone sits with their arms folded neatly on their desks, and the teacher pretends that it’s a hundred years ago.’

A light came on in his attic at last.

‘Oh! Like when we did our Victorian School Day?’

I shrugged.

‘Whatever. Something all goody-goody
and old-fashioned, anyhow.’

He stared round the playground. In one corner, two of the bigger boys were putting their arms round a sobbing toddler who’d lost his pet marble, or something. By the porch, boys and girls were practising a hornpipe. (I am
serious
.) Next to the gates, a gaggle of merrymakers were doing a complicated clapping game. And all the rest were ambling around, smiling and
waving to one another, or loyally waiting for friends outside the lavatories.

‘What I mean is,’ I said, ‘where
are
we? On the planet
Zog
?’

Joe’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh, yes! That would be fun. Let’s both be visitors to the planet Zog, and you –’

I gave him my hardest killer stare. Who did this blintz-brain think I was? Some bedwetter, keen to play his Betsy-wetsy games?

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I think maybe it’s time that I explained something to you.’

But he’d clapped his hand to his mouth.

‘Oh, Howard,’ he told me. ‘It’ll have to wait till after break. Because I’ve just remembered I promised Miss Tate I’d help her cut the covers for our new How-to books.’

And just at that moment, the lady herself appeared on the steps.

‘Jo-ey!’ she warbled. ‘Jo-ey Gardener!’

‘Coming, Miss Tate!’ he trilled.

And he was off.

I slid my back down against the nearest wall and sank my head in my arms. Oh, just my luck. I’ve made my way in schools where the uniform is so itchy it brings you out in hives, and schools where you have to stand and pray five times a day, and schools where they make you do your work over and over again, until it’s right.

But never had I fetched up somewhere like this. Already I could hear the scuffling of anxious little feet. Nervously I looked up, and found myself encircled by worried faces.

‘Howard?’

‘Are you all right?’

‘It’s difficult for anyone on their first day.’

‘You’ll soon get used to us, honestly.’

‘Do you want to come and skip?’

I opened my mouth. I was about to speak. The first words were just rising to my lips when the bell rang.

Just as well . . .

An hour later, Miss Tate explained the whole soul-rotting business again, for any beef-brains who weren’t listening the first ten times.

‘So here are your lovely covers, which Joe has very kindly helped me cut to size.’

Our Joe took his tenth bow.

‘And paper is on my desk. Lined here, and unlined here.’

She pointed twice, just in case anyone in the room was so deeply brain damaged they were going to get in a tizzy, searching for something in a space one metre by two.

‘And all of you get to choose what you write about. But it does have to be a little How-to book. So it could be –?’

She pointed to Beth.

‘How to keep rabbits,’ Beth said
promptly, and beamed.

(This wasn’t news. We had been through Beth’s plans at least a zillion times since we’d trooped in.)

‘Or how to –?’

She pointed at some of the crawlers in the front row, and they jumped to it again.

‘How to make a kite.’

‘How to start your own candle factory.’

‘How to grow mustard and cress.’

‘Train your dog.’

‘Plan a night’s camping in winter.’

‘Decorate hard-boiled eggs.’

I’ve fallen in some time warp, I know I have. And now Miss Tate is working her way back through the class to me and Joe.

She points at him first.

‘Joe? How to –?’

He looks all worried.

‘I haven’t thought of anything yet, Miss Tate.’

Now she looks all worried as well.

‘Howard?’

I should have answered her, I know I should. But I was too busy stabbing my desk with my pen point and muttering ‘Chester!’ darkly under my breath.

‘Oh, deary me!’ she said. ‘It looks to me as if that’s
two
of you still without any ideas. Maybe I should run through it one more time . . .’

I started to growl. And it was in the
balance for a moment, till she glanced at the clock. But clearly one small corner of her brain had not yet been steeped to mulch by staffroom tea, because she suddenly had a fresh idea.

‘Why don’t I come and talk to you two on your own?’

I turned the growling up a notch. But old Two-Legs-No-Brain at the next desk looked absolutely thrilled.

‘She’s coming over to help us!’

He said it the same way you or I might have said, ‘Free films for life!’ I stuck my finger to the side of my head and swivelled it, to let him know I thought he was some forlorn turkey. But then a shadow fell across my desk, and there stood Miss Tate in a cloud of moths, beaming at both of us.

‘So what’s it going to be, boys?’

‘Mine’s a secret,’ I told her.

That got her off my back, and on to Joe’s.

She made a steeple of her fingertips.

‘Now, Joe. Isn’t there anything that you’d enjoy using the library to learn about?’

Joe picked at his fingernails and shook his head.

‘Well, how about something you’ve always thought there ought to be a little How-to book about?’

Joe was busy recycling his earlier performance as Baffled Man.

‘Surely there’s something you’ve
always wished you were good at?’

‘Counting to three without having to take off your mittens?’ I suggested.

‘Howard!’

Miss Tate was shocked, you could tell. She raised an eyebrow you could hatch bald eagles in. But just at that moment Joe the Thimble-brain thought of something at last.

‘I wish I could write more neatly.’

Miss Tate patted his head as if he were some starved, three-legged puppy she’d found in a lost dog pen.

‘I think we all wish you could do that, Joe.’

He looked up hopefully.

‘So shall I choose it?’

‘What?’

‘“How to Write Neatly.” I could have a try.’

‘Well, yes, Joe. You could have a try . . .’

She didn’t sound overly confident. But,
fired with enthusiasm, he opened his work book. And suddenly I saw why Miss Tate had her doubts. This Joe beside me was The Writer From Hell. I tell you, the day the teachers at Walbottle Manor give gold stars for penmanship away on the roof, this Joseph Gardener will have the stairs to the basement all to himself.

‘Wow-ee!’ I drew my breath in. ‘That is
ugly stuff
!’

‘Howard!’ Miss Tate warned.

But no one can stop you staring. The pages in Joe’s work book were clotted black and nasty. A troupe of drug-crazed centipedes in leaking ink boots had clearly held a barn dance over most of them. The rest looked tidy in comparison. (Not tidy enough to
read
. Just tidy in comparison.)

‘I think we’re talking high hopes here,’ I couldn’t help observing to Miss Tate. ‘Reach for the stars, and all that. “Writing
More Neatly” is well down our Joey’s page of contents, if you ask me. I think he ought to stick with “Learning to Write”.’

For all this was Happy Class, her tone turned pretty frost-topped.

‘I’ll thank you to pipe down, Howard Chester,’ she said. ‘Joe here does have the odd little problem with his schoolwork, but he’s struggling along manfully.’

‘Manfully?’ I snorted. ‘Scruffily and messily, more like!’

Joe flicked back to the pages in the front.

‘I’m definitely improving,’ he insisted. ‘See how much better and neater my work is since I started special lessons twice a week with Mrs Hooper?’

I took a look. I looked in the front of the book, and I looked in the back.

‘That Mrs Hooper is one brave, brave lady,’ I observed.