Lula Does the Hula (20 page)

There was a loud bang on the door. ‘Tatty! You here? Tatty?’

‘That’s Bludgeon,’ I said to Jack.

He continued looking at me. ‘Are we not going to talk about this, Lu?’

I stared back at him. ‘Please could you let Bludgeon in?’

‘Bludgeon. On my way out. Sure.’ Jack nodded curtly, got up from the bed and ducked out of my room. I heard the door open and Bludgeon come in, a few words, hello,
goodbye, and then Bludgeon was peering round my doorway.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘What you wearing?’

‘Clothes,’ I said, not looking at him, staring at the skylight and trying not to cry. Frik. It felt like I’d spent every day since I’d first kissed Jack trying not to cry.

‘Pity,’ said Bludgeon. He kicked his boots off and lay down on the bed beside me. ‘You gonna have this sarnie?’

I glared at him. ‘I am, Mr Bludgeon. Pass it over. And what are you doing lazing around on my bed?’

Bludgeon passed my sandwich. ‘Do you see any chairs? Any place to sit besides the bed? You’re not bein’ very polite like.’ He paused and looked at the sandwich. ‘I’m starvin’.’ I handed him a triangle. ‘Thanks, babe.’ He bit into it happily. ‘And my feet hurt. Cos of all the legwork I bin doin’ for you. Y’know?’

‘Un?’ I went, my mouth full.

‘That’s why I gotta take the weight off.’ He eyed my triangle. I ate hastily. ‘Starvin’,’ he said again, then, ‘Oh! Yer man said to give you these,’ and he pulled a bag of Maltesers out of a capacious jacket pocket. ‘Shall I open ’em?’

I swallowed the last of my sandwich, and handed the empty box to Bludgeon. ‘You can have some only when you’ve told me what’s going on with Jack. You’ve been keeping an eye on him?’

‘Surely ’ave, babe. ’E’s a nice bloke, but ’e should watch ’is back.’

I took the bag of Maltesers from Bludgeon and prepared to open them. ‘Carry on.’

‘Well, that trick ’e pulled with Parcel Brewster was dumb.’

I stiffened. ‘Pardon?’

‘Don’t tell me ’e didn’t tell you about pulling Parcel out the water and dumping him on the veranda. You saw for yerself.’

‘HOW?’ I yelped. ‘How on earth do you know all this?’

Bludgeon tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger and nodded wisely in a way that made me want to hit him. ‘I’m the best there is. Now ’e’s got ’is mate all tied up in it –’

‘
And
Jazz Delaney,’ I said bitterly.

‘Yeah, she’s a nasty piece o’ work.’

Ha! Exactly. I passed Bludgeon a Malteser because he deserved it. He crunched happily. ‘A
real
nasty piece o’ work.’ I passed him another Malteser and he crunched that too. ‘A
real
,
real
nasty piece o’ work,’ he said, and we both burst out laughing when I handed him another two.

‘Oh, all right,’ I said, holding out the bag. ‘Tuck in, skinny. And tell me what you came to say yesterday.’

‘When I found you with yer arse in the air,’ he said, face dead straight. I closed my eyes. ‘Sorry, babes. Lucky you got a good arse.’

I went red. ‘Enough with the arse,’ I said. ‘What do you know that I don’t?’

‘All the original test results that came up positive for bird flu?’

‘Mm?’ Crunch, crunch.

‘Gone.’

‘No!’

‘Mm-hm. And can’t retest cos all the birds were incinerated.’

‘At Cluny’s.’

‘’S right. I went to go lean on the lab techie, but he said he’d said enough.’

‘To Jack and Jazz?’

Bludgeon laughed. ‘Them two sound like a backing band. Yeah, them.’ He shook his head. ‘By the sounds of it, though, he just told ’em the bird flu had been confirmed. Nuthin else.’

‘What a waste of a Friday night,’ I muttered.

‘The meetin’ in the Felon?’

I nodded.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Bludgeon. ‘That Jazz ain’t friendly like with the right people, know what I mean?’

I offered him the last Malteser. ‘Like
you
, you mean.’

Bludgeon gallantly let me have it. ‘Yeah, like me.’ He shook his head and sighed. ‘Poor Bing.’

‘Bingley Clarendon?’

‘’E’s been droppin’ gluten-free vegan pizzas round there most nights just so’s ’e can see ’er.’

‘Poor Bing,’ I agreed. ‘I’d quite like her to like him too.’

‘Sure you want Mr K and me lookin’ out fer Jack?’ asked Bludgeon. ‘Maybe one of yer jinxy accidents is just what the boy needs. Get ’is priorities straight like.’

I pushed myself up urgently by the elbows, and pointed a finger at Bludgeon. ‘If something happened to Jack, I’d be a goner in this town,’ I said, my voice starting to go an octave higher. ‘I’ve only got to run past Cluny’s and
someone drops a dead body
! I’ve gone from being with the
damaged
people, to being with the
dead
people!’

‘Sure, sure!’ said Bludgeon hastily.

I flopped back down and heaved a sigh. ‘Plus,’ I said quietly, ‘I want you to keep him safe, you know?’

I opened my eyes. Bludgeon was looking at me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Um . . . need a massage ’fore I go?’

I looked at Bludgeon in horror. ‘No thanks, Mr B!’

‘Don’t be so hasty, Tatty Bird. I hear you’re signed up for Hambledon Girls’ rowing squad, and your first go is tomorrow. You’ll need to be all limbered up for that.’

I gaped. ‘You
do
know everything.’

‘I do.’ He grinned. ‘Get ready to blister, babes.’

‘Please Mr VDM! Remember what happened last time you didn’t believe me about my back? Stretchers! Crisis! House call from doctor! I had to have an
injection
!’

‘It’s because of that injection that you are fine now,’ said Mr VDM, one hand on the bus door. ‘Get in.’

‘Stop your fussin’, Bird,’ said Matilda McCabe. She was sitting right up front with her feet on the dashboard, her eyes closed. Her quads were all bulgy and she looked hardcore.

‘Frik,’ I said, and got in. The rest of the girls were up front too, just behind Matilda, and they were talking about stuff like bowside upsetting the balance, and ratings and pulse ratios and stuff I’d never ever understand.

‘Come sit up here with us,’ said Jessica Hartley.

‘Thanks, Jess, but I just need some space,’ I said, feeling stressed, and scooted to the back of the minibus.

‘You’re not going to get any space there,’ she said. ‘Believe me.’

‘Where do you guys row, anyway?’ I asked, though I really didn’t care.

‘Saddler’s Pond, up in the safari park.’

‘FRIK!’ I yelled. The other girls turned and looked at me curiously, except for Matilda, who looked like she was asleep. ‘There are wild animals in that park! It’s not safe for us to be out of a vehicle! I’m going home right now.’

I hefted myself out of my seat just as Mr van der Merwe jumped behind the wheel and slammed his door. He took off at such a speed I fell back where I’d been sitting.

‘The boat
is
a vehicle,’ intoned Matilda. ‘And the lake in the park is the only stretch of water big enough in fifty miles.’

The safari park. They’ve got to be joking
, I thought.
They have just
got
to be joking
.

But they weren’t joking. And Jessica hadn’t been joking about no space in the back either, because instead of heading out to the boathouse Mr VDM swung by Hambledon Boys’ High. I’d been slumped in denial in the back seat with my eyes closed, but when the door shunted open and nine smelly boys climbed in I nearly peed in my pants.

Firstly, because they were mostly strangers, huge ones, who thought nothing of squashing in happily around me, burping and belching and making nasty odours.

Secondly, because guess who was first on the bus? No, not Fat Angus. He was second.

It was Arnold Trenchard.

‘What is going on?’ I yelped.

‘I know,’ sighed Jessica. ‘Thank goodness I’ve got Jason in my life. Since sharing our rowing sessions with these losers I’ve lost the will to flirt.’

The boys erupted into manly assertions of their wondrous masculinity.

‘There’s no space back here!’ I yelled as I got rammed into the corner.

‘Told you,’ said Jessica, rolling her eyes and facing forward. ‘Wait till they start with the farting.’

‘Let me up front!’ I begged.

‘Too late, little lady,’ said a huge creature with an astonishing amount of chest hair, serious five o’clock shadow and a massive mop of dark curls. ‘What’s your name?’

The bus fell silent, and the girls turned round. All of them were smiling, waiting for the moment.

‘Tallulah Bird,’ I said.

He blinked once, then jerked away from me. ‘Don’t touch me!’ he yelped.

‘The feeling is soooo mutual,’ I drawled, and caught Arns’s eye. ‘How long have you rowed?’ I asked the friend
I thought I knew
.

‘Forever,’ said Jessica Hartley. ‘He’s the saddest of them all. Even after the makeover.’

While everyone else had got the boats in the water, with a lot of banter and sparring, Mr VDM had me in the training tank, showing me how to move up and down the runners on my seat, and how to move the oar at the same time. After I’d been in the tank twenty minutes, both boats were in the water, their long narrow bodies resting gently either side of the jetty.

The boys went off in theirs and did their own training, their cox Billy Diggle squeaking orders through a tiny microphone the whole time. Meanwhile, Mr VDM cruised alongside the girls’ boat yelling at me.

‘Sit up straight! Don’t race up the slide! Don’t lean out when you come in for the catch!’

On and on it went. I didn’t understand anything he said.

At last he stopped so we could have a rest. The blisters I’d got in the tank had burst and my hands were raw and bleeding.

‘Frik!’ I said. ‘This really sucks.’

Hilary St John turned round in her seat. ‘You know what the slide is?’

‘No!’

‘That’s the runners under your seat. You got to match my rhythm exactly. You move when I move, got it?’

‘Sure,’ I said, uncertain. ‘What’s the catch?’

‘That’s when your blade goes into the water.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t call it an oar. You sound like a newbie if you call it an oar.’

‘Blade,’ I said. ‘Got it.’

Hilary turned back round as Michelle Wong gave orders for us to get ready for another paddle.

‘You’re not bad, Tatty Bird,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I think we’re all a little impressed.’

‘You are? Seriously?’

‘Stop talking.’ Hilary was already gliding forward, following Michelle’s orders, and I copied her carefully. ‘Here come the boys, so for God’s sake don’t mess up now.’

I didn’t dare look out of the boat to where the
smack-whoosh-thwack
rhythm came ever closer over the water. The sound of VD’s voice came blaring through his loudhailer: ‘Yes! Really good, guys! Good pace, Ivor, and, Boris, you’re gonna be worth the money, my man. You’ve taken thirty seconds off the thousand-metre time!
Unbelievable!
’

I caught a flash of movement in my peripheral vision as nine boys in sodden shirts shunted past in perfect rhythm. Their faces were focused, intense, and they moved as one creature with eight legs, Billy Diggle at the stern bent over, rasping into the cox’s mike, sounding a world older than his twelve years.

Then they were gone.

Michelle’s voice crackled from the speaker next to Hilary. ‘Whoa, Tilda. Did you see Ivor?’ She squeaked something incomprehensible, then Matilda’s voice replied, and Michelle cleared her throat. ‘Sorry, lovers, didn’t realise the mike was on. Okay, last piece of the day, yeah? Holding it steady at twenty-five, this will be a ten-minute piece, then we’re going in.’

I understood the ten-minute bit, and I really didn’t think my hands were gonna make
that
grand plan, but . . . ‘Twenty-five?’
I gasped to Hilary. ‘What the hell is twenty-five?’

‘The rating – how many strokes we take in a minute. Focus, VD’s on his way over.’

As she said that, I heard VD’s boat engine coming towards us and gripped the handle of my blade as hard as I could. Last time he’d roared up like that, the wake of his boat had slapped across us and I’d nearly lost my grip. If you lose control of your blade and it starts flailing around, it’s called ‘catching crabs’ and I sure as hell didn’t want to be doing that.

I flinched as the motorboat drew up alongside me.

‘Tallulah!’ yelled VD.

Was I supposed to answer him? Presumably I just kept going? Isn’t it rude to ignore someone like this? Oh, man, what was he going to say?

The loudhailer crackled and shrieked, then VD’s voice boomed out again. ‘Tallulah! This is magnificent! Fantastic!’

Frik! Had I just heard right? Was he talking to me?

‘Good rhythm, wonderful, wonderful, perfect timing! Just try a little more power at the catch, yes? Remember,
bunch
and
driiiive
,
bunch
and
driiiive
. . .’

He moved on to examine Hilary’s stroke, commenting on the size of her puddle, whatever that meant – weren’t we on a billion-cubic-litre puddle, all of us together? – but I wasn’t really listening. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face, and even though my hands hurt like hell I felt
really, really
good. Wow. Who would have thought.

The boys had got back to the jetty before us, so we pulled up on the other side of it and I paid close attention to how they got the boat out of the water. Before I’d seen it for myself I’d have said probably Boris did it single-handedly, but it was definitely a teamwork thing, involving leaning out dangerously far and putting strain on bits I didn’t know I had.

‘Frik!’ I said to Kelly Sheridan as we marched up the incline with a sixty-two-foot boat on our shoulders. ‘I can’t believe we plucked this beast from the water like that!’

‘Yeah, we’re awesome,’ droned Kelly. She threw me a look over her free shoulder. ‘Something you should know.’

‘Yeah?’

‘If you thought the boys stank before, you’d better brace your nostrils for the trip back. The trip home is the hardest test of all, and you don’t want to be ruining VD’s good impression of you.’

Half an hour later pretty much everyone was confirming that I’d just failed this test.