Lula Does the Hula (6 page)

‘Tatty, Jess tends to start rumours and –’ began Tam.

‘Let’s get her inside,’ said Carrie.

‘I know, I know!’ I muttered back. ‘But Mum dropped us off at the school gates and there was nowhere to run.’

‘Don’t overreact, guys,’ said Carrie. ‘Jessica is actually a good person.’

‘Yeah,’ agreed Alex. ‘Good hair, good boobs, good eye for a story. And not just her own story. Jess has ruined more
than just her own reputation. For the next few weeks we are all charged with micro-managing this here nincompoop’s reputation.’

‘Hey!’ I said.

‘Because she sure as hell can’t manage it herself,’ finished Alex.

‘It’s true, Lula,’ said Tam, and she gave me a comforting squeeze. ‘The jinx rumour caused us all a lot of stress. We don’t need any of that again.’

‘Well,’ said Carrie. ‘At least this is a girls-only school. Here, we can cope. Can you imagine if the Hambledon High boys were in with us?’

My friends heaved a collective sigh of relief at this small mercy, and I have to say I shared their sentiments, but I shook my head at them anyway. ‘You’re a bunch of old women,’ I said, and found us four chairs together in the Year Ten section somewhere near the back. ‘Let’s hear what the head has for us this morning.’

Helen Cluny was sitting right in front of us. Her mum’s Chinese, and Helen is tiny too, with black hair in a short pixie cut. Her dad owns Cluny’s Crematorium, so she’s a good person to know at Halloween, and a good person besides.

Next to her was Matilda McCabe. Matilda I was never quite sure about. She was a little shorter than me, but she made me feel small and fragile next to her solid strength. Everything about her was blocky, even her mouse-brown
hairstyle, and she had a no-nonsense personality to go with it. Her dad is Dr McCabe, who I’m always bumping into because he’s had to patch up a lot of boys that I nearly kissed.

Let’s not go there.

Helen turned round. ‘Mr Lang is looking peppy,’ she observed. We all nodded. She was right. Our headmaster was up on the stage rocking backwards and forwards on his feet as if he’d just downed a vat of Ribena.

When the hall was full and the second bell rung, Mr Lang cleared his throat. Everyone quietened down.

‘Ladies,’ he started, ‘welcome to our first school assembly. I’m sorry it’s taken two weeks to get together. There’s been a lot of recent upheaval, which I’ll get to in a minute. Right now we’ve got a few housekeeping points, and some of the staff will help me out here . . .’

He droned on for a while. Teachers trudged up and down the steps to the stage to tell us about clubs and sports for the term and where to sign up. Alex bumped my arm when Mrs Baldacci got up to urge us to try out Dance Club, but I shook my head.

‘
Please
, Tatty!’ she whispered urgently. ‘Don’t make me go on my own! Besides, aren’t I micro-managing your ass?’

She had a point. And Dance Club was only an hour a week. ‘Fine!’ I hissed. ‘But your micro-management had better work! I want to be normal!’

She nodded sagely in a
leave that with me, darlin’
way, but for some reason I felt a little uneasy. Maybe because Mr Lang was calling Mr van der Merwe up on stage. Mr van der Merwe is our PE teacher. He’s a big, hairy and scary Afrikaans man from South Africa, who had been in the Olympic team way back when. He took no nonsense, and drilled the Hambledon Girls’ High rowing squad till their hands bled.

How people pronounce his name was always a tedious issue with him: ‘Not
van
,’ he’d roar. ‘
Van
like you say
fun
, okay? And not
Merwe
like
merwah
; it’s
maaaairvah
, like
hair
, okay? And
vvv
not
w
!’ We nodded and did our best, but it wasn’t long before he was Mr VDM, and then, predictably, just plain old VD, but not to his face, obviously.

‘Ladies,’ said Mr Lang, ‘I must have your careful attention now. As you all know, state education is always at the mercy of budget cuts and the like. Despite seamless efficiency from the staff here at Hambledon Girls’, and the same from teachers over at Hambledon Boys’, both schools have had further crippling budget cuts. We have been forced to consider dispensing with some of the classes, clubs and sports that we provide. This would be a terrible blow for the future of the school as more and more of our individuality is whittled away.’

I looked at Carrie. She was frowning. I could see Tam wasn’t paying much attention, but Alex had taken a
notebook out of her blazer pocket and she’d already jotted down a headline:

Mr Lang was still rocking back and forth on his heels, but he now held his hands importantly behind his back. ‘In order to prevent this from happening, we have spent the half-term break and the last two weeks in meetings with our brother school –’

Tam jolted to attention.

‘– and have decided that by combining certain classes and activities, we can keep our options open.’

There was a whole lot of excited chatter. Jessica Hartley, at the end of our row, was fanning herself with her hand and going quite pink.

‘We will be trialling this for a term only, starting today, and if there is any’ – Mr Lang paused – ‘
any
silliness from you ladies, we will have to reconsider.’

More excited chatter, though slightly subdued.

‘I would ask you to remember the good name that this school has and to do everything to uphold it. We are not a co-educational school and never will be. Please continue to learn responsibly.’

There was a smattering of applause from the teachers
standing along the rows of chairs in the hall.

Mr Lang smiled quickly and ended with, ‘I need to take a call from Mrs Pantoffel now. I leave you with Mr van der Merwe, who will be explaining rowing-club sessions in light of this announcement.’

‘Girls,’ Mr VD began. ‘This term I had arranged for Boris Weinstührer to row in and coach a number of boats.’ He waited. No reaction. He flicked out his hands in frustration. ‘Boris Weinstührer! German schoolboy gold medallist!’ No reaction. Mr VD sighed and shook his head. ‘Well, we nearly lost out, but thanks to the combined forces with the boys’ school, Boris is on his way with an exchange programme, and we will share coaching sessions with the boys.’

Now there was response! Jessica Hartley had actually
screamed
.

‘Thank goodness you don’t row, Lula,’ muttered Carrie. ‘Water, boats, boys . . .’ She shuddered.

I, too, was thankful. ‘Why’s Jessica so excited?’ I asked.

Carrie shrugged, but Tam leaned over. ‘She’s in the squad!’ she whispered.

‘Jessica does a
sport
?’ I was incredulous. ‘No!’

Matilda McCabe turned to give me a hard stare. ‘Jess is good,’ she said. ‘She’s seven-man – rows right behind me.’

‘Er . . .’ said Alex. ‘Seven-man?’

Matilda sighed and shook her head at our collective
stupidity. ‘Seven follows eight, the leader of the boat, and all the bowside rowers follow seven.’

‘Right,’ I said, and rolled my eyes at Alex.

Mr VD was still talking: ‘. . . Don’t think you can suddenly sign up for rowing now that there are going to be boys,’ he said in his thick, stilted accent. ‘No chance. That is not going to happen. If there is a space in the boat, I will recruit.’

Jessica Hartley looked even more pleased. From what I’d heard of Hambledon Girls’ rowing squad she must be the only one under ninety kilos in the crew, so things were looking very bright on her getting-lucky horizon.

‘Other combined classes will be art’ – my stomach lurched – ‘and Latin.’ Carrie looked stricken. ‘Also the languages: French, Spanish, German, Italian.’

There was more excited chatter and Mr VD looked displeased. ‘Quiet! Quiet down! Time for classes, please.’

The whole school filed out amid much noise and racket. Matilda was moaning heatedly to Helen.

‘What’s wrong, Tilly?’ asked Tam.

‘I don’t want to be bussing around with boys for our training sessions,’ complained Matilda. ‘We’re the best squad on the water this year, thanks to VD, and if there are a load of louts around, Jessica is going to be totally distracted.’

Helen nodded. There was no disputing that Matilda was right.

‘Maybe the rowing boys will be fugly,’ I suggested, over their shoulders.

Matilda turned and frowned at me. ‘The Hambledon boys are fit.’ I gulped and nodded, but she wasn’t finished. ‘Fit and smelly and disgusting. We’re going to be seeing a lot of phlegm and smelling a lot of bad odours.’

Sheesh. Let’s hope the same wasn’t true of their artists.

The sun had finally come out and after a massive school dinner the four of us were sitting in the sun, sleeves rolled up for maximum UV exposure, faces tilted skywards. ‘That chocolate sponge was so good,’ I commented.

‘How you fitted three helpings into that little belly of yours is a mystery,’ said Carrie. She rolled her socks down. ‘But it’s a good sign that you got chocolate in some form at school. Could be your terrible luck has changed forever, Lula.’

‘Could be,’ said Tam, and rolled her socks down too. ‘Now all you need is Jack to be a real boyfriend instead of just a one-night stand.’

‘Be quiet,’ I moaned. ‘All anyone at this school wants to talk about is my boyfriend.’

We all grinned. The girls knew how pleased I was with myself to have a boyfriend. I elbowed Alex. ‘Tell us about Gavin.’

‘Gavin who?’ asked Carrie.

I glanced at Alex, startled. ‘No way! You haven’t told them?’

‘Haven’t told us what?’ asked Tam, starting to look hurt.

Alex looked flustered. ‘I’ve been waiting for the right moment,’ she said.

‘Do you mean Gavin Healey?’ asked Tam. ‘Tasty. How’d you sneak that little relationship under our radar?’

She raised an eyebrow at Alex and Alex blushed.

‘I’ve never seen you so red,’ I said wonderingly.

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Alex. ‘He does crime-scene cleanups. His work is fascinating.’

‘Gavin Healey,’ said Carrie, ‘is not fascinating. All brawn, zero brain. What were you thinking? Dump him.’

Alex yelped in outrage.

‘Carrie!’ I said, astonished. ‘This is not like you!’

Carrie sighed heavily. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Probably it’s just his granddad I don’t like. He came round once to take away our asbestos garage roof, and he gave me the creeps. He’s not a nice man.’

‘Gavin is not the same as his granddad,’ asserted Alex. ‘Trust me. Gavin is . . .’ She trailed off.

‘Huh,’ said Tam, looking at our friend closely. ‘I bet your mum doesn’t like him. I bet that’s it.’

Alex went red again and climbed to her feet. ‘Come on, you passion-killers. Time to get some lessons with the boys,’ and she laughed in an evil throaty way.

‘Oh, frik,’ I said. ‘Mr Lang is going to rue the day . . .’

*

Art was the last lesson of the day, and my favourite, though I don’t know why. I’m useless at it. You’ve got to walk over the road to the art centre, because the school ran out of space a few years ago. It’s actually an old house with lots of the rooms all knocked together to make big, airy studio spaces. There are three storeys with verandas all round, each divided into different departments: painting, graphics, textiles, ceramics, sculpture. Very, very cool. My subject is painting, which I regret because I’m not very good. Mr Tufton says I’ve got hands like bunches of bananas and he can’t help coming over every so often to fix stuff and show me why what I’ve done is so terrible.

Mr Tufton is small, with monk-like hair – all baldy in the middle – and a full-on beard and moustache. For such a little guy, he’s seriously loud, and every so often he does something totally mad, like eating flying ants out of the air when they swarm on rainy afternoons.

There are only three of us in my painting class. The other art girls do fun groovy stuff with dyes and clay and inks.
Why oh why did I choose painting? Hopefully the boys are all doing graphics
.

I got to the studio and Mr Tufton was sitting disconsolately at a painting table.

‘Hi, Mr Tufton!’

‘Oh, God, it’s you.’

I sighed and dumped my bag at an easel. The thing
with Mr Tufton is he means what he says.

A shadow appeared at the door. ‘Hi, Mr Tufton!’

‘Hi, Delilah. How’d you get on with the still-life?’

Delilah Goldsmith smiled happily and pulled out a brilliant watercolour sketch of a pile of marbles.

Mr Tufton kissed the tips of his fingers and flung them wide. ‘This!’ he proclaimed. ‘This is why I teach!’ Delilah glowed and chose the easel next to me. Why does she do that? I’m convinced it’s so her stuff looks even more fabulous than it already is. Next to me, anyone would look like Michel-frikking-angelo.

Then in came Grace Mutsapho. She’s from Kenya, and totally stunning. She glides everywhere and transfixes people with her intense stare. She is so good at art it’s scary.

‘Grace!’ cried Mr Tufton. ‘What have you got?’

Grace slipped her bag to the floor and produced a sketchbook. She ruffled the pages, then found what she was looking for. She pointed with a long, elegant finger.