“Lessons will be learned.” Zack said. Gordon did not think he was talking about them.
NOTES
THIS WAS AN IMPORTANT TEST LIFE WAS SETTING HIM
Chapter 8
Rough Justice
The room was divided into different play areas. In one square, there was a plastic track with loops and bridges and a box filled with cars and trucks. In another was a table with play-dough. There was a home corner where a number of dolls were tucked up in bed. Next to it was a section for finger-painting and drawing with chalks on little blackboards.
The areas were divided by screens covered in pictures and posters and photos of the children. The theme that term was all about staying healthy, and the number to think about that day happened to be 5. It was light and cheerful, full of colour and promise. Mrs Watkins had four adults working with her, keeping their eyes on different areas of the room and helping children make the most of their opportunities.
“What do you think?” Gordon asked Zack.
“Good,” Zack said cheerfully. “Let’s get stuck into something.”
The ages of the children varied. Gordon was one of the older ones, which was OK. He watched them all make their beelines to favourite activities. Many of the boys went for the track, while the home corner filled up with girls. Nick stayed with Gordon, his eyes constantly checking where Tom was.
Tom was pretending to be on a pogo stick and going “boing! boing!” from one group to another. He was an accident waiting to happen, and the nursery assistants were clearly used to him. “Come on, Tom” one of them said. “Let’s find something for you to do. You’re going to knock somebody over in a minute!”
As if that wasn’t the general idea.
She tried to take his hand but he evaded her grasp and ran into a different part of the room. It was exasperating, but he was no longer in her space, so he became someone else’s problem. “BOING! BOING!”
“Excuse me a moment,” Zack muttered.
“What do you want to do first?” Gordon asked Nick.
“I don’t mind,” Nick said. “You choose. OOOH!”
There had been an almighty crash, and one of the dividing screens by the house corner was shaking violently. Tom appeared to have pogo-ed himself sideways straight into it. He was sprawled on the floor, looking bruised and bewildered.
Zack was back at Gordon’s side, looking grimly satisfied. “Lesson 1,” he said.
“You see, Tom!” Mrs Watkins told him. She picked him up and checked nothing was broken. “What are we always telling you about banging into things? This time you’ve hurt yourself for a change.”
Tom’s whimpering self-pity turned into a hard-done-by howl. “Somebody pushed me!” he claimed. This seemed to trigger a memory. He swung round to check where Gordon was. Gordon, however, was nowhere near him.
“No, they didn’t,” Mrs Watkins told him. “I was watching you. Mrs Marshall told you to stop, and you ran away from her. What is the rule about running in here? Tell me.”
Tom hung his head and mumbled.
“I didn’t hear you, Tom. What is the rule about running in here?”
“Don’t run.”
“Right. And were you running? Right! Then you started pogo-ing again after you’d been told not to. You didn’t look where you were putting your feet, and this little building-block was on the floor.” She bent down and picked it up. “You trod on it and went over sideways into that screen. That’s what happened. So whose fault was that?”
Tom hung his head and mumbled.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you Tom. Whose fault was that?”
“Mine, Miss.”
“That’s right, Tom. It was your fault. So what will you do differently in future?” Tom squirmed. “What will you do differently in future, Tom?”
“Won’t run,” he muttered.
“Good! And what else?” That was a hard one. “What else?”
“Do as he’s told Miss,” one of the bigger girls called out.
“Let me hear it from you, Tom.”
“Do as I’m told.”
“Good. Now play sensibly, and remember there are other children in here besides you. Many of them are smaller than you, and you have to be careful you don’t hurt anybody.” She scooted him off and was obviously still watching him. Fully aware of her gaze, he walked quietly up to the track square and sat down beside it. Gordon noticed that the other boys cleared a little space round him. One or two wandered off to find a new activity.
He suspected that Tom never forgot there were other children in the room, and that his favourite game was hurting as many of them as possible. “I’ve brought a dinosaur,” he told Nick. “Let’s do a chalk drawing on a blackboard. I’ll draw a diplodocus, and you can colour it in.”
“All right,” Nick agreed. He felt happier than he ever remembered feeling at nursery school before.
“I’ll help you choose the right colours,” Gordon said generously. For the next half hour, Gordon and Nick were completely absorbed. Gordon drew his picture of a diplodocus grazing in a clearing, surrounded by prehistoric bushes and trees. Nick coloured it in, using browns and greys and greens, and being careful to stay within the lines. It was a triumph of collaboration, and for children their age it was a minor masterpiece. Nick even forgot to be afraid.
Mrs Watkins came up and clapped her hands in delight. “That is wonderful,” she said. “What a very good drawing of a diplodocus.” Not only had she correctly identified the species, she had pronounced its name properly. Gordon now knew he liked her. She grasped Nick’s shoulders and squatted down so her head was level with his. “And that’s the best colouring-in I’ve ever seen. Well done you!”
Nick glowed. “I’m going to be a palaeontologist,” Gordon told her.
“Are you now?” she said. “I’ll bet you know a lot about dinosaurs.”
“Quite a lot,” Gordon admitted modestly.
“I see you’ve brought your own,” she said. We’ll be having ‘Show and Tell’ for the older children after break. “You can show your dinosaur and tell us a bit about them.” Gordon smiled. School was turning out to be good.
Breaktime came around, and they all went outside for some fresh air. Tom pretended to be tidying up the track area so he could be the last one out. It gave him the chance to scrawl all over Gordon and Nick’s drawing while no one was looking. Then he ran out to find them.
NOTES
COLLABORATION
Chapter 9
“I Bin Wai[t]in’ Fer You, Weirdo!”
“Get ready for lesson 2,” Zack warned Gordon. Tom was zeroing in, flanked by another couple of toe-rags. Such children never take long to find one another. There were fewer adult eyes around, so it was a chance to get in a bit of bullying without anyone who mattered noticing. A chance to make someone cry.
Nick saw them coming and a little whimper escaped him. Gordon put his arm round his shoulder. “Don’t you worry!” he whispered.
“Oh look, Knickers got a friend,” Tom sneered, and his two cohorts sniggered. Gordon took his arm from around Nick’s shoulder and took one firm step towards Tom, so that Nick was now behind him. Tom stopped dead; smaller boys didn’t normally do that. For a second, he was at a loss.
“When are you going to learn to talk?” Gordon asked him. “Did you mean “Nick has a friend”? You’re right, he has. What’s it to do with you?” Nearby children picked up the signals and began to gather. It wouldn’t be long before the playground supervisor noticed something amiss.
“Oooh,” Tom sneered. “I bin wai[t]in’ fer you, Weirdo!”
“You bin waiting?” Gordon asked innocently. “Which bin was that? – the one you came out of?” Some of the watching children laughed. Tom whirled round to glare at them, and the laughter died.
“Where’s your bes’ friend, Weirdo? Wossisname? ‘Cack’.” He addressed the audience. “Weirdo’s got a invisible friend called ‘Cack’. Di’n’t yer bring ‘im wiv yer? AHHAHAAAH!”
/> He clutched at his left ear and leapt about a foot in the air. His unexpected action startled his two associates and they sprang away from him. It was quite comical and there was more laughter from the watching children. This time, when Tom glared at them they didn’t stop.
“What’s the matter, Tom?” Gordon asked. “Did my invisible friend blow in your ear?”
With a snarl, Tom leapt forward and swung a right-hand punch. Gordon watched the approaching fist with interest. It was as if time had suddenly slowed ... Meanwhile, Zack had grabbed Tom around the waist ... Just before the punch reached the side of his face, Gordon relaxed his knees and ducked. It whistled harmlessly over his head while Gordon concentrated on Zack, lending him strength ...
Aided by Tom’s momentum and Zack’s extra pivoting power, Tom’s flailing fist smacked straight into the face of the boy behind him. The force of the blow cannoned the semi-conscious toe-rag into his mate, and they both went down like a house of cards. Zack let go and the seriously off-balance Tom sprawled heavily on top of them.
The joy of the watching children was unconfined. All three bullies down at once! The playground supervisor panted up at last. “I saw what you did Tom Taylor. I was watching the whole time. What have you been told about bullying, all three of you?”
She hauled them off, scolding as she went. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs Watkins telephones your mothers and tells them to come and take you away right now.” She kept it up right across the playground. “We don’t like bullies in our nursery, and we do NOT allow violence. How many times do we have to tell you?!”
They disappeared into the building. Gordon turned to Nick and smiled. “What a loser,” he said. The gratitude on Nick’s face was quite touching. The spectators clustered round them, and for the first time in both their lives they got an inkling of what it felt like to be popular with other children.
It was a good feeling.
NOTES
APOLOGY TO TOMS; TOE-RAGS; UNCONFINED JOY
Chapter 10
Show And Tell
Gordon and Nick stood in front of the slashed-out chalk drawing. “No prizes for guessing who did that,” Zack said. Mrs Watkins was not yet back from her break. Presumably she was still dealing with the three offenders.
Gordon went to the sink and came back with a damp cloth. He wiped the board clean. By the time Mrs Watkins reappeared with three chastened little boys, Gordon and Nick were fashioning amazing creatures on the clay table. Gordon’s definitely looked like a triceratops. Nick’s looked more like the dragon in the Shrek stories, but that was perfectly all right.
Other boys gravitated towards the clay table and started making animals too. Perhaps Gordon had become a trend-setter. Perhaps some of the less secure children sensed that they were somehow safer near him. He asked each one their name, and soon there was a positive discussion going on about what they were making and which Lego models they had at home.
Tom and his two friends smashed cars around the deserted track for a bit, but the crashes didn’t have the same appeal when they weren’t knocking other children’s vehicles all over the place. Given that their concentration spans rarely exceeded ten seconds, they soon got bored with it.
Tom didn’t have a “boing” left in him. The other two – Kieran and Dean, for future reference – were fair weather friends on whom he could not always rely. He wandered over to the finger paints and began daubing a fairly seriously disturbed painting on a luckless piece of white paper.
It was a long time since the staff had had such an easy morning.
When it was time for ‘Show and Tell’, the older children went to another part of the classroom that was screened off. Mrs Watkins welcomed each one into her circle of chairs. It was a good way of getting them used to speaking to a group, and also to listening to each other.
“As you know, we have a new member of our group today. This is Gordon, everyone, in case some of you haven’t met him yet.” There was an enthusiastic chorus of “Hi Gordon” and “Hello” from round the circle. Tom was too busy swinging his feet sideways to join in the welcome. He liked kicking the chairs on either side of him
“Sit still please, Tom” said Mrs Watkins. Years of dealing with difficult children had taught her patience. Tom reduced the arc of the swing somewhat so that he was just missing the chairs. Gordon noticed that the children either side of him were sitting with their legs pulled as far as possible out of harm’s way.
“Excuse me again,” Zack muttered. He crossed the circle and knelt in front of Tom.
“Gordon has brought a dinosaur to show us. He knows quite a lot about dinosaurs. When he is older he wants to be a pal - ae – on – tol – o - gist. That’s a long word, isn’t it? Does any of you know what it means?”
CRACK! That was the sound of Tom’s knees slamming together. He stared down at them with his mouth open and his eyes as big as saucers. “Well done, Tom, thank you,” Mrs Watkins said. Nick had his hand up. “Yes, Nick?”
“It’s somebody who studies creatures and plants that lived a very long time ago.”
“That’s right, Nick. Well done you, again.” Nick beamed. This was definitely the best morning he had ever had at nursery school. Knowing that particular word was nothing really. You couldn’t be around Gordon for very long without finding out what a palaeontologist was.
“So, what would you like to tell us about dinosaurs today?” Mrs Watkins asked Gordon.
Gordon held up his dinosaur. “The word dinosaur means ‘amazing lizard’. Many dinosaurs were amazing, although they weren’t actually lizards. This one is called ‘Diplodocus’. It was huge, and lived in the late Jurassic Era.”
Several hands shot up. “Just a moment, Gordon. Yes, Rachel?”
“I saw them in ‘Jurassic Park’ Miss. They was massive.”
“That’s right, Rachel, they were massive. That’s what the rest of you were going to say, wasn’t it?” Heads nodded.
CRACK!! Harder this time, and accompanied by a little whimper. Tom’s legs had started swinging again. “Thank you for remembering, Tom,” Mrs Watkins said. “Carry on, Gordon.”
Gordon warmed to his theme. “The Jurassic Era lasted from about 208 to about 146 million years ago. Dinosaurs were the dominant creatures on land for millions and millions of years.” He paused dramatically. “Then something happened that wiped most of them out. We call it ‘The Extinction Event’.”
That “we” brought a smile to Mrs Watkins’ lips. Gordon had the group’s attention, and when George put his hand up he was no longer looking at Mrs Watkins. Gordon pointed to him. “Yes, George?” Mrs Watkins’ smile grew broader. She leaned back and folded her arms.
“What happened?”
“About 65 million years ago, a huge meteorite about 10 kilometres across smashed into Earth. There’s a crater that size on the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America.” Gordon was clearly in control of his facts. “We think that was the one that did it. It would have triggered extreme climate change, and that’s the most likely reason dinosaurs became extinct.”
Another child put her hand up. “Yes, Jill?” said Gordon.
“The boy’s a natural,” thought Mrs Watkins.
“We’ve got climate change now. Will we become extinct?”
Gordon shook his head. “I don’t think so. Our climate change is making the weather more extreme, but not as extreme as it would be if a giant meteorite crashed into earth again.”
“KABOOOOMMM!” Tom yelled. He stuck his arms and legs out wide and leaned back in his chair, imitating a huge explosion. CRACK! His knees slammed together again. The front legs of his chair came back to earth with a sudden thud. His stomach was rammed into the back of it, sitting him up straight. His hands slapped down on top of his knees, and his feet hit the floor with military precision. He sat there, bolt upright and motionless, his face pale.
Gordon had his hand up. Mrs Watkins was staring at Tom in wonder. She noticed Gordon’s hand and nodded. “Tom was doing an inter
esting painting before we came in here,” he told her. “Perhaps he would like to show us, and tell us about it.”
Tom had never shown or told the group anything. All previous efforts to get him to had had to been given up as a bad job. “That would be wonderful,” Mrs Watkins said weakly.
Tom stared across at Gordon, who stared back. Suddenly, Tom seemed to make his mind up about something. He gave his head a little shake and stood up without a word. They watched him disappear round the screens.
“Well,” said Mrs Watkins, finding her voice again. “Thank you, Gordon for that very interesting ‘Show and Tell’. Who would like to go next?” Several hands shot up. “Right,” she said, “I think we’ll ask …”
Tom reappeared, holding his painting. He went over to his chair and sat down. Everyone put their hands down and looked at him. He held the painting up for them to see. It was bleeding. Red swirls occupied the centre of it like a mortal wound. Black slashes tore across it in a frenzy of anger and despair.
Slowly he moved it around the circle, so everyone could see it properly. Then he lowered it so he could look at them. “I miss my Dad!” he said, and the tears came. Mrs Watkins went over and knelt down in front of him. He buried his head against her shoulder and sobbed as though his heart would break.
“Let’s give him some space,” Zack said quietly to Gordon. Gordon nodded and stood up. Nick followed. The rest of the children took their cue from them and quietly went back to the main play area.
Mrs Bennett was waiting anxiously when the door opened and the nursery class began to stream out. Gordon came out with Nick and ran over to her. “How was it?” she asked.
“Good,” he said.
His mum hugged him. “I’m so glad,” she said. Her relief was palpable. Mrs Watkins appeared in the doorway and Edith Bennett went over to her. “Thank you very much” she said.
Mrs Watkins shook her head. “No,” she said, “thank you. You have an exceptional little boy there. I am really looking forward to working with him and getting to know him better.”
Tom had not come out. Mrs Watkins spotted the young woman who normally picked him up. She was stubbing her cigarette out and looking at her watch. She walked over to her. “Could we have a word inside, please?”