The Angel of Nitshill Road (2 page)

But she didn't look new in the other way. Most people look a bit nervous when they show up on their first morning at school, especially when it isn't even the first day of term, and they know everyone else will have had weeks and weeks, and maybe years, to find their way about and make good friends and learn the teachers' names. This newcomer didn't look in the slightest bit apprehensive. She was gazing around her as calm as you please. She looked at the stained brick walls, the peeling paint, the grimy windows and all the dustbins lined up along the wall. She read the rain-streaked sign over the door.

NITSHILL ROAD SCHOOL

Had she come all by herself?

By now, almost everyone in the playground (except for Marigold) had turned to look at her.

The new girl spread her hands and
said in a ringing voice, clear as a bell: ‘Why are you all staring at me? Am I
fearfully
late?'

Left to herself, Penny might have giggled. But Lisa poked her sharply in the ribs and, stepping forward, asked the girl with the shining cloud of hair:

‘Have you come all by yourself?'

The newcomer gave a little shrug.

‘My father was here with me, but he had to fly.'

Now it was Penny's turn to poke Lisa, to try to stop her giggling.

‘What's your name?'

‘Celeste.'

‘
Celeste?
'

They didn't mean to be so rude. It just popped out.

The gold hair shimmered as Celeste tossed her head.

‘It could have been worse,' she confided. ‘Daddy was about to name me Angelica, but Granny swooped over just in time, and dashed the pen from his hand.'

Now people were gathering from all over the playground and standing, ears on stalks, in a ring round Celeste.

‘What school do you come from?'

‘I don't come from any at all. I've never been to school before.'

‘What –
never
?'

‘Why
not
?'

Celeste made a little face.

‘I wasn't well enough. I had a million headaches, and I was so thin Granny says I could have got lost in a cucumber sandwich. My wobbly knees refused to carry me, and all the doctors said I'd never make old bones.'

She smiled seraphically.

‘Then I got better. And so here I am.'

And there she was. But what to do with
her? Clearly, she ought to be handed over to one of the teachers. So Penny stood on one side of her and Lisa on the other, and they started to march her, like a prisoner between guards, over the playground and right across Barry Hunter's flight path.

He saw them coming.

Penny's hand tightened round her bag of crisps. Oh, please don't, she thought. Not now. Not with someone new watching.

But already he was screeching round in one of his wide curves.

‘Emergency! Emergency! The moving mountain is looming out of the mist! Swerve to avoid a crash! Boy, is she
huge
!'

Celeste stopped walking. She turned to Penny, and asked pleasantly:

‘Poor boy. Is he touched with the feather of madness?'

Penny couldn't even try to answer. For one thing she was forcing back hot
tears of embarrassment and shame. And for another, she'd never dare say anything about Barry Hunter to someone she didn't know, in case it got back to him and made him worse.

But Lisa wasn't worried.

‘That's Barry Hunter,' she was telling Celeste. ‘He's a big bully. He bullies everyone.'

Again, Celeste stopped to look back. Now Barry Hunter was tormenting Mark, snatching his pencil-box from him as he steered past.

‘Give it back!' Mark said.

‘What?'

‘That box. It's mine. Give it back.'

Mark stamped over the playground after Barry. But Barry was quicker on his feet. Prancing and dancing backwards as Mark advanced, he held the box a few inches from Mark's grasping fingers.

‘Say please!'

‘It's my box. You snatched it. Give it back!'

‘Manners! Say please.'

The bell was ringing now.

‘Give it back.'

Mr Fairway appeared in the doorway.

‘Give it back!'

Mark was almost in tears.

‘Say please,' tormented Barry.

‘Please,' muttered Mark.

‘A bit louder. I can't hear you.'

‘
Please
,' shouted Mark in desperation.

‘That's not polite,' said Barry. ‘Now say it nicely.'

Mark was about to launch himself on his tormentor when suddenly Barry Hunter let out a scream of pain and swirled about, dropping the pencil-box and clutching the back of his leg.

‘Who did
that
?' Barry yelped.

Celeste was standing right behind, eyeing him steadily.

Mr Fairway was very close now. ‘What's going on over here?' he demanded.

Barry knew when to cut his losses. He was about to melt away when Celeste's ringing tones stopped everyone in their tracks.

‘I do believe I bit him,' she was telling the teacher.

Mr Fairway was astonished.

‘
Bit
him? But
why
?'

Celeste spread her hands and said
vaguely, ‘Such herds of new faces. One cannot like them
all
. . .'

The bell rang once again. Mr Fairway brushed his hand through his hair.

‘Now this isn't a very good start, is it, Celeste?'

Celeste turned her angelic face up towards him and said cheerfully:

‘Oh, scold me if you must. But not so hard I cry, because once I start, I weep buckets.'

Mr Fairway let out a soft moan of horror. He was still standing wondering what to do when the head teacher's voice floated over from the doorway.

‘Everyone in line!' Mrs Brown was shouting.

They all obeyed at once, even Barry Hunter. Lisa took Celeste's hand and led her over to stand next to Penny. Mark fetched up at the very end of the line as usual, fiddling with his pencil-box and dropping bits and pieces all over the tarmac. But everyone else, even Marigold, stood quietly staring at Celeste.

And no one stared harder than Mr Fairway.

Afterwards, no one could remember quite who it was who first guessed she was a real angel. There were enough clues, of course. Tracey overheard Mrs Brown complaining that Celeste had dropped ‘out of the blue'. When Ian took the register to the school office he heard the secretary telling Miss Featherstone that the new girl had a ‘heavenly' accent. And Mr Fairway was reported to have muttered that Celeste was having ‘a bit of trouble coming down to earth'.

Then Lisa remembered that Celeste's father hadn't walked off that first morning. Or driven. He'd
flown
!

And that reminded Penny. How had Celeste's granny got there in time to stop
her being given the wrong name?

She'd
swooped
.

The little group who chummed down Nitshill Road had a chat at the corner.

‘So what did Celeste's father want to call her, anyway?'

Penny pushed the sweet she was sucking into the pouch of her cheek, out of the way.

‘Angelica, she told us.'

‘
Angelica!
'

Another clue!

Tracey raced back just as the bell was ringing for afternoon school. As they pushed and shoved their way back into the classroom, she whispered to everyone round her:

‘Guess what Celeste means! I looked it up in our
Name Your Baby
book. Celeste means “from heaven”.'

They all peeped at Celeste. Just at that
moment she was gazing up out of her frizzy halo of bright hair, and telling Mr Fairway:

‘No, truly, I know this chair's old enough to have a beard, and wobbles frightfully. But it's as comfy as a cloud!'

Comfy as a
cloud
? Penny sneaked a crisp out of the bag on her lap and thought about the one and only time she'd ever gone on holiday by plane. She'd flattened her face against the small plastic window, and seen beneath her a whole land of sunlit fleecy clouds, so puffy and thick you'd think you could bounce on them forever.

So had Celeste –? Did Celeste –?

And Penny wasn't the only one wondering. The whispers ran round the room.

‘Comfy as a cloud!'

‘That settles it! How else would anybody
know
?'

‘You only have to look at her, really . . .'

Except for Marigold, they were all
looking at her now. There she sat on her little wobbly chair. Her face glowed as if it were lit from inside with a candle. Her hair shone round her smiling face. She looked like all the angels they had ever seen in books, and films and paintings.

And clearly Mr Fairway thought so too. He didn't treat her just like one of them. Oh, he may have tried his best. But he couldn't do it. It never seemed to work. Somehow it always went wrong, because of her. She wasn't like them. She was different.

Take the day she got up from her desk in the middle of spelling.

Mr Fairway turned round from the board.

‘Celeste?'

She waved an airy hand.

‘Don't let me distract you,' she told him. ‘I'm just off to water this poor plant. It's simply
gasping
.'

‘Please sit down, Celeste,' Mr Fairway said. ‘This is a lesson, and the plant can wait.'

Celeste sat down.

‘It's your decision, of course,' she told him kindly. ‘But really, without water, that poor plant is not long for this world.'

From that moment on, no one could concentrate on a single word Mr Fairway was saying. They all kept glancing at the poor primula wilting on the windowsill. Even Mr Fairway found that time and again his eyes were drawn back to its parched and drooping leaves.

And in the end he cracked.

‘Go on, then,' he told Celeste. ‘Water it if you must. But be quick about it.'

She'd done it in a flash.

The next day, when he came in with the register, she was on her feet, busily buffing away at the top of her desk with a soft cloth.