A Bit of Earth (19 page)

‘Is that your dad?'

‘No, that's Erica. He'll be somewhere, don't worry. Then you can ask him if it's all right for you to come. But it will be. I think anyone's allowed to come here. It's just nobody knows about it.'

‘And who is Erica?'

But there was no time for him to answer. Erica came striding towards them, wiping her muddy hands on her jeans.

‘Hey, Felix! Brought a visitor?'

‘I am Mrs Cowplain. Felix's teacher.'

‘Erica Grey,' said Erica. She went to extend one of her muddy paws, but thought better of it. This was clearly a member of the clean and structured clothes brigade.

‘I was hoping to see Mr Misselthwaite. Felix was going to show me his garden, but I really need to talk to Mr Misselthwaite first.' Erica saw Felix rolling his eyes.

‘Dad'll be back in a minute. He always meets me here.'

She could see that it was actually jolly convenient for the school. One dead-end road to cross. Just five minutes' walk, or less if one were wearing more sensible shoes.

‘Do you want to see the garden then, Miss?'

‘Yes please, Felix.'

The white cat, familiar from so many News Book entries, appeared and began to circle them, rubbing against Felix's legs.

‘This is Snowy. He's the university cat.' Felix knelt down to stroke Snowy properly.

The cat turned his attention to Mrs Cowplain, butting her with his hard and heavy head. She smiled and asked, ‘Do you think he likes me, Felix?'

‘Oh, Snowy's a right flirt,' said Erica. ‘He likes everybody.' Mrs Cowplain decided to try not to take offence. Perhaps Erica was from Yorkshire, or another cultural group.

Mrs Cowplain saw too that her tights were muddy and had been laddered somehow on the perilous journey. The cat had decided that he really liked her. He jumped up on his hind legs and dugs his claws into her right leg, adding injury to the insult.

As if from nowhere, Mr Misselthwaite appeared. He was, she observed, not much taller than Erica, and similarly attired. Perhaps she had stumbled onto the set, if that was the word for radio locations, of
Gardeners' Question Time.
He had the same weather-beaten skin as Monty Don, and was just as messy, although his eyes were very pale, and his hair much lighter. She could pretend to herself that he was a negative of Monty Don. He was equally lean and rangy.

‘Dad, this is my teacher, Miss Cowplain,' said Felix. ‘She's come to see my garden.'

‘Thought you were in trouble for a moment. What about Miss Block, you could have brought her. Would you like a cup of tea, Miss, er … Cowplain?'

‘Yes please, that would be lovely. And I must apologise for the state of my tights. They seem to be quite ruined. Miss Block teaches another class.'

‘Lovely' turned out not to be quite the word for the tea. It was from a Thermos, and many hours old, with the unmistakeable smell and taste of flasks and plastic cups. She sipped it as they walked along more of the cinder paths and then across a bridge of planks and chicken wire. Then they were in a large open meadowy place. She could see ponds and terraces with crumbling paths and lots of plants with Latin names, as well as some she knew – bamboo, roses and azaleas. It really was paradise. She thought of the school's mean little Environmental Area, and here was this, just five minutes' walk away! And here was Felix's garden, all just as he had described, Californian poppies, love-in-the-mist, big poppies, strawberries, raspberries, pumpkin plants, all coming up in neat little rows.

‘These are alliums, Miss,' he told her. ‘I'm trying to grow them really big. And these are the conker trees. They'll have to be moved when they get bigger.'

‘Felix,' she said, ‘it's beautiful. Your dad must be very proud. It's much, much nicer than my garden.'

She couldn't wait to tell them about it in the staff room.

There were six children in Felix's group. They weren't meant to know that they were sorted by ability, but of course they did. The Triangles knew that they got twice as long for everything, and always had an assistant hovering beside them. Some of the Circles and the Hexagons had to be kept apart or else they would ‘muck about'.

Felix was, appropriately enough, a Square. There were six Squares. Being a Square wasn't fair. As soon as you had finished the worksheets, you got given extra. The Squares weren't always very nice to each other. There was Grace who was good at clarinet, ballet, rhythmic gym and practically everything; Chun who was always drawing funny pictures on her legs, and was good at everything else as well; Duncan who didn't have a TV at home and was kind to everybody; Esther who never stopped talking, and Joe who could do any sum in the world in his head and hardly ever said anything to anyone.

Nobody but Mrs Cowplain would have called them the Squares. She seemed to delight in it.

‘Squares!' she would squawk. ‘Have you finished that yet?' They usually had, as long as Esther hadn't distracted them too much. One day Mrs Cowplain got very cross and threw a white-board pen right at her. It made a big green line across Esther's picture, but Mrs Cowplain didn't even say sorry. She said:

‘Esther, you are living proof that coming from a nice Christian family does not make for a well-behaved child. Now give me back my pen!' as though Esther had been the one who took it. The Squares thought that was very unfair; after all, Esther's mum was famous for being a vicar who came to do assemblies.

The trouble was, you never quite knew what Mrs Cowplain was going to do next. Felix would always blame her for everything that started to go wrong with the garden, even though it really wasn't her fault.

A few days after Mrs Cowplain had thrown the pen at Esther she came and sat down at the Squares' table. Uh oh, thought everybody, we're for it now. But Mrs Cowplain was smiling.

‘Squares,' she said, showing her golden tooth, the one that Chun, whose dad was a dentist, said must mean that she was very rich and very old. ‘Squares, we are starting a very exciting project. A science project. The Head has been discussing it with the head of the university, where Felix's daddy works.'

‘And my dad,' said Joe, who hardly ever said anything, and for once Mrs Cowplain didn't say, ‘Stop interrupting', which was what she usually said to everybody.

‘Yes, and lots of mummies too, I expect. Anyway, we are going to have a garden there. Just for a while, near to the
one that Felix has already. We have Felix to thank. It was his garden that gave me the idea.'

‘Can we grow anything we like?' asked Duncan.

‘Within reason. Anyway, Squares, I want you to go QUIETLY into the library and find some books about plants and gardens. Then the whole class will have a go at drawing some plans.'

‘Why is it just for a while?' asked Felix. ‘Gardens take years and years.' Everybody knew that.

‘It's just for a while because the garden will have to make way for some very big, new university buildings.'

‘That's not true, Miss.'

‘Felix, I thought your daddy would have told you by now. I'm afraid your garden won't always be there. The university is going to put a sports centre there instead.'

‘No, Miss, no.' He shook his head wildly. Then he threw up all over the Squares' literacy problems.

Mrs Cowplain looked at the telephone numbers that the school had for Felix's father. There was the home one, another that she recognised as a university office number, and a mobile. She could imagine Mr Misselthwaite's mobile phone. It would just ring endlessly beside some pond, or be propped up with a flat battery in one of those cobwebby flowerpots in his greenhouse. She tried the office number. By some miracle Guy answered after the fifth ring.

‘Guy Misselthwaite,' he said.

‘This is Mrs Cowplain, Felix's teacher.'

Guy's heart slipped to his boots.

‘What's happened? Is he all right?' Inside his head a voice was yelling, ‘No! No! No!'

‘I'm afraid Felix has just been sick in the classroom and he's very upset. We really think you should come and get him. He's having a lie down in the Inclusion Room.'

‘I'll be right there,' said Guy.

The microscope was left on, the specimens were abandoned by the scalpel, the chemicals were left unlocked; he ran. The lift wasn't there, he took the stairs three at a time. He could have been at the school in five minutes, but instead he ran for home. Felix might not be able to walk.

Nine minutes later he was parking outside on a double yellow and sprinting towards the place he imagined the office to be.

‘I'm Felix's dad,' he gasped at the woman behind the glass.

‘Oh yes,' she said, making no move towards getting up. ‘He's a bit poorly.'

‘Has he been sick again?'

‘I really couldn't tell you. Sign here please, Mr Misselthwaite. That's a nice name. Yorkshire, is it? I suppose it's to do with “thrush”, and “thwaite” is lake, I think.'

She pushed an A4 black hardbacked book towards him. ‘Visitors' Book,' it said. Guy found the page with the columns for Date, Name, Organisation (where he thought for a microsecond and then wrote ‘not too bad considering') and Purpose of Visit (where he put ‘retrieving son').

‘So, can I see him now, please?' He slid the book back towards her.

‘This way.'

Guy was reassured to see that the school was what people
described as ‘like Fort Knox'. She pressed an electronic buzzer and the door swung open. Then she led him off down a carpeted corridor. Jolly pieces of artwork and framed certificates and sets of rules and exhortations to good behaviour decorated the walls. If Guy had paused beside the photographic Who's Who he would have been able to deduce that he was in the company of Mrs Cartwright, Office and Special Needs Coordinator. The silence suddenly turned to a many-decibelled babble.

How did Felix stand this every day?

‘Morning Play,' she said. Now he had to wade against a tidal bore of small people. At last they were outside the Inclusion Room.

Inside Felix was sitting up very straight in what had been chosen as a comfy chair. They had given him a nice wooden solitaire set to play with, and placed a bucket beside him. But shouldn't someone have stayed with him?

‘Felix!' Guy said, close to tears himself. He knelt down and hugged him.

‘Hi, Dad. I'm not ill or anything.' Well, he certainly looked ill. ‘I won't be sick again. It was just what Mrs Cowplain said.'

What on earth had that dreadful woman said to make his son throw up? Dear God, was she reading them horror stories, showing them anatomy books? Reproduction? He assumed that Felix knew all that, although he had never told him. There were encyclopaedias in the house after all. Then he thought, oh God. Maybe she was talking about car crashes. Maybe it was Princess Diana or something. Guy had never, never mentioned Princess Diana.

‘Little one, we'll talk about this at home.'

He scooped Felix up in his arms and carried him out of the school.

Mrs Cartwright scurried behind them.

‘But you haven't signed him out!' she yelled as Guy strode away.

The children watching from the playground were very impressed.

‘Felix Misselthwaite threw up all over the classroom.'

‘It was really disgusting, like Weetabix.'

‘Now he can't walk and his dad has to carry him to the hospital.'

It is hard to explain anything when you are crying as much as Felix, but in the end Guy got the story.

‘Felix, this is completely ridiculous. Your teacher has no business to be saying these things. I really don't think that they would concrete over the botanical garden without consulting widely, including the Botany department, well, with us in particular.'

But with every word he spoke the realisation that all this could so easily be true grew within him.

‘There's only one way to settle it,' he said. ‘We will ring up the people in charge and find out.'

‘But Dad, you're in charge of the garden. I tell everyone that you're in charge, and it is sort of our garden.'

‘Well, not really. It's some committee or other.' Come to think of it he didn't even know which committee it was. Did Felix know what a committee was? ‘It's like this, Felix. The Botany department, that's me and Erica and Jeanette, have what they call historical use of the greenhouses, that's all. Now you wait here while I find out what's going on. Do you want a drink? Something to eat? Feel sick?'

‘Not really,' said Felix, in answer to everything. ‘But can I watch TV?'

Felix found that there was real comfort to be had in watching
Programmes for Schools
when you are meant to be at school but aren't. Guy brought him some water in his old Bunnikins mug and some custard creams on a plate with an apple.

Guy thought about who to ring. He had never bothered to keep up with the machinations and changing structures of the university. He thought of how the place had grown over the last fifteen years. Huge buildings were being fitted into tiny plots of spare land between other huge buildings. Any house or shop or scrap of space anywhere near the campus was bought up. The teacher's story was all too plausible. They had been left in peace for too long.

He phoned Erica. She gasped and said she'd get on to it straight away. She said she knew someone in the V-C's office.

Erica didn't phone to tell them what she'd found out, she came round.

‘Don't worry, Fe,' she said, ‘we'll fight them off.' She made her strong tan hand into a firm fist in the air to show how tough she was. ‘Have you ever seen those road protesters on the news? I was one of those once.'

‘Cor,' said Guy.

‘We can dig tunnels and live in them if we have to, climb trees and stay there for ever, lie down in the digger buckets.'