Mark Swallow - Zero Per Cent

“Don’t come any closer,” said Michael, his voice rich with warning.

“Come on then. Let’s see what you’ve got in there, Michael.”

Michael drew out his mobile and put it slowly on the desk.

“What else have you got? Come on…”

Another mobile. Laughter. And another and another. More and more, louder laughter. Michael stared at him as he put each one down on the desk.

“All right, all right, that’s enough. I won’t ask you how you come to have these in your bag.” But Michael, still staring, pulled out another three to massive approval.

“Stop it, stop it! What about the glue?”

Mr Carew backed away in despair. I raised my eyes to the ceiling where I knew they’d have been fired and his sad eyes came with me. There, that’s what you get for your practical History, seven stalactiting glue sticks.

The buzzer began and everyone had charged out of the door before the final clang.

“Car ooo , Car ooo , you’re through, you’re through!”

Mr Carew’s head was in his hands so he didn’t see Razza toss the missing pair of scissors into the bin and he didn’t see me shrug helplessly at his supervisor who was drawing a line across his clipboard, through Mr Carew.

So, now I had conquered the playground and the photocopier. The corridors held no fears and I could handle most things in a classroom, excepting incompetent student teachers. Furthermore I had an ongoing relationship with a qualified teacher. But I wasn’t finished yet. I wanted to learn more about the staffroom. Razza’s account of trying to get into this sacred space in order to find a teacher during break had made a great impression on us all.

“They just screamed they did, screamed at me to get outside.”

“Who did?” we asked.

“Loads, all going ‘Get out!’. I felt like I was blasted back into the corridor.”

“What d’ya do?” we went.

“Course I wasn’t having that, specially being as my dad’s caretaker, I mean site supervisor, and they never made him feel all right in there neither. So once I’d recovered me senses I goes right back in.”

“And…?”

“That Physics teacher only body-checked me! I swear he did. An’ he’s built, man. He goes, ‘You are never, ever, allowed to come in here. Do you follow?’”

“Didja?” we went.

“I went, ‘I follow. I hear what you say. But it ain’t right. Sir.’”

“What did he go?”

“Slammed the door in me face, didn’t he!”

“Didja tell your dad?”

“Course. But he jus’ went, ‘Wot you want to went in there for? There’s nothing for you in there my son. Nothing for me an’ all,’ he went.”

“But didja get a look in?” we went. “What were they doing in there, the teachers?”

“Sittin’, talkin’ and with Ms Grundle’s buns and cakes bulging down their necks. Mainly they was jus’ feastin’.”

“So what if you have to see one of them in break?”

“Wait outside The Door, innit,” said Razza. “Catch ‘em on the way in or out.”

“Or wait and wait,” we went, “and wait and wait and wait, more likely.”

“Innit,” went Razza. “They ain’t in any hurry to serve ya. They’ve got easy chairs in there an’ all.”

“Bastards.” In this school, chairs upholstered in anything more than plywood, gob and gum have always been exciting.

“The bastards!” we chorused again. Clearly I had to get in there. Yes, Jack Curling had to do something about the staffroom.

I was leaving for home one afternoon as Miss Price drove out of the gates in her ashtray of a car. Perhaps she could help me with this campaign, I thought, preparing myself to wave and smile with my best side. But there in the passenger seat was Mr Carew, pale-faced, with eyes red and, I noticed, staring straight at me.

“That’s him! That’s the kid!”

I didn’t need to lip-read the words which spattered against the grey interior. The car swerved and I hopped into the border as Miss Price stopped and opened her window.

“Jack?” She looked at her passenger – whose hand she was holding. “Is this really the boy?” She turned her clear, fresh complexion on me again. “I can’t believe you’re responsible for this. If only you could understand what it is you have done—”

“But, miss—”

“Why do you find it hard to believe?” Mr Carew was snarling. “He’s just another fucking teenager.”

“Calm down, sweetheart! One day this youngster will be ashamed of himself, one day Jack’ll have to take responsibility for this. And to think I once asked for your help, Jack!”

“Please, miss, listen won’t you?”

But the window scratched shut and they bumped out into the road, leaving me as crushed as the pansies I was standing on.

Next term’s new idea from Bumcheeks, to which he dedicated a lengthy assembly, was Culinary Studies. Equal opportunities for the boys, while the girls go to do ‘Motor Vehicle’. He had appointed Mrs Sally Donald, and us lads were soon offering up sincere thanks that her restaurant career had veered in our humble direction. For me personally she filled the gap created by the news (surprise, surprise) that there was now a Mrs Carew. But more than that, Mrs Donald (who insisted on us calling her Sal) won us over with her brilliant lessons. We sat like so many rows of fresh fairy cakes longing for her smiles, which she sprinkled across us in hundreds and thousands. And all because she had cottoned on to a new educational idea that us boys like to be praised.

The Culinary Studies suite was like a busy restaurant kitchen. We were her apprentices and she would threaten one moment to slice us up with her knives and next kiss her fingers in our face, all but hugging us before popping out for a fag on her window ledge. She was not good at hanging on to her cigarettes which kids tended to nick by the bushel from her bulging bag but it was seen to that she never lost her purse or mobile. Bumcheeks was always dropping in on the ‘new subject’.

“We can’t have you doing nothing in my lessons, honoured Head,” she’d say, and before he knew it his bumcheeks would be framed in a little apron and he’d be beating the guts out of an egg.

Ms Grundle, the school catering manager, was a less amused but no less frequent visitor, huffing in to retrieve pans and ladles which Sal had taken from the canteen. It seemed that “Lady Disgruntle”, as Sal called her to her face, was an even more embittered member of the support staff than Mr Schuman or Razza’s dad.

One morning Sal praised my rock cakes and drew the class’s attention to my tray. “They’re not perfect, Jack, but they’re pretty perfect.” She munched into a second, her crumbed and glossy lips confiding that I’d ruin her with such baking.

“Why don’t you get a bit of praise in other subjects too?” said Ronaldson when I told him. “French, for example. It used to be your best subject. Mrs Carew has complained about you twice this week already…”

But I couldn’t give a monkey’s now about silly little Mrs Carew. Very next day I got a commendation for rapid progress on carrot cake. Undiluted praise was much better than a boring relationship which had not been going anywhere.

And a few weeks later Sal summoned me to a lunchtime meeting in the Culinary Studies suite. None of the peers was called. Was it to be a one-to-one souffle tutorial? But Mr Finch, Head of Business Studies, was perched on a stool in his grey and brown mail-order clothes, prodding a drop scone.