Chapter 15
Sometimes, thought Gemma, looking around the room wondering where to start, it was just as well that the parents weren’t here during Puddleducks working hours to see what was going on. This morning it looked less like a pre-school and more like a cross between a zoo and a jelly factory. The washing-up bowls containing green jelly had been Bella’s idea, and certainly fitted the Early Years Goals by providing children with texture, measurement ideas, colour and – although they weren’t meant to eat it – taste!
Why was it that everything nowadays had to be classified into goals and objectives? What was wrong, as her grandmother used to say, with good old-fashioned play? Still, at least she was managing to include that as well. At the moment they were working on a project called Significant Figures, all about well-known figures in history. Joe Balls had actually liked that idea and agreed to her suggestion that they held a joint assembly where the Puddleducks would dress up (providing the parents got their costume act together) and they’d all troop off to Reception, who would be similarly dressed up.
‘The staff do it too,’ she had warned Joe.
‘What should I go as?’ he blurted out, clearly thrown by her suggestion.
Henry VIII, she felt like saying. Or the Black Death? No, that wasn’t fair, especially as he had found her precious necklace for her. In fact, she owed him one. If it had been anyone else, she would have offered to take him out for a drink to thank him for spotting her chain but then again, she didn’t want him thinking she was making a pass. Even with her limited experience, Gemma couldn’t help feeling that Joe was just the kind of good-looking, single and slightly arrogant man who thought every woman in the office (or school) was after him.
‘I’m going to be Queen Elizabeth I,’ she volunteered. ‘I’m sure you’ll come up with something.’
Now, as she walked around checking everyone was doing roughly what they were meant to be doing, she regretted the Elizabeth I bit. The only possible outfit was the dress at the back of her wardrobe, which she had sworn never to wear again. Yet somehow she had never been able to throw it away, just like the silver chain which she still wore every day for a reason she couldn’t explain, even to herself.
‘Mrs Merryfield, Mrs Merryfield!’
‘Yes, Mikey?’ said Gemma, noting that he didn’t have a pinny (lost again?).
A pair of bright blue eyes stared up at her mournfully. ‘It’s my go on the cornflakes modelling table but Billy won’t let me.’
Meanwhile, Billy had started jumping up and down. Oh no! Now he was shoving Mikey’s head into a model of a cornflake dinosaur. Where was Bella or Jean to help?
‘Billy, don’t do that!’ She pulled the offender away from the victim, who was spluttering madly. ‘Are you all right, sweetheart?’ Now what was Billy doing? Jumping up and down on the cornflakes, crunching them into the ground. Yet at times, this was the boy who screamed violently if anyone moved his possessions because they had to be exactly as he placed them on the table.
At last here was Bella returning from the loo again , muttering something about ‘this time of the month’, which added up to at least three periods every twenty-eight days. Clearly it was her way of having a quick break from the masses. Well, the girl could jolly well take poor Mikey to the green-jelly pit while she had a word with the cornflakes aggressor.
‘Billy, you really can’t behave like this,’ she began. And then stopped. Because somehow Danny and Lily had got there first. Lily, who had hardly said a word since she’d started, was holding Billy’s hand while Danny was quietly speaking to him. Gemma tried to listen without being obvious. ‘Don’t do that to people,’ the boy with those lovely long fair lashes was saying solemnly. ‘It’s not nice.’
How sweet! Maybe this was what his mother said to him when he did something wrong.
‘Danny’s right, you know,’ said Gemma firmly but kindly. ‘You could hurt someone. Now how about saying sorry to Mikey?’
Billy scrunched up his face. She knew from past experience that pushing for an apology could make you look weak if you didn’t get one. ‘Tell you what,’ smiled Gemma. ‘Supposing you make Mikey a cornflake model now with Bella, and give it to him as a sorry present.’
There was a quiet groan from Bella’s direction at the thought of model-making with Billy. ‘Look,’ he was saying now. ‘You’ve dropped something.’
Flushing, Bella tried to pick up the packet that had fallen out of her pocket, but Mikey had got there first. Unfortunately for her, he was one of their best readers. ‘C … a … n …’ he began. He beamed up at her. ‘Are those sweeties?’
Bella was getting redder. ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘It’s something called Canny Sten. It’s a sort of toothpaste.’
She shot a challenging look at Gemma.
‘May I suggest you keep your … er … toothpaste out of reach in the staff lockers, Bella?’ Gemma said.
‘Whatever.’
Oh dear, thought Gemma, heading towards the Adopt a Word corner. Now she’d have a sulky Bella to deal with on top of the terrible three, as Jean called them. ‘Terrible’ was a bit strong, but they were definitely a concern. There was Lily, who hardly spoke and spent most of her time covering anything from tables to toys with her soft pink comfort blanket. During her training, Gemma had come across a theory, which suggested that children who did this were often attempting to make things safe, because they needed to feel safe themselves. Was that how Lily felt? She’d have to keep an eye on that.
Then there was Billy, who was either jumping about, thumping people for touching his things or taking everything very literally: he’d got very excited recently when she’d said it was raining cats and dogs. And of course Danny, who’d really come out of his shell now and had had to be reprimanded gently the other day for jumping up on one of the tables and pretending he could fly, before curling up on the beanbag in the sleepy corner and having a nap.
Yet the three of them seemed to have formed a rather sweet trio. How funny it was, the way children chose each other as friends. Rather like she had teamed up with Kitty at university as well as …
No. She wouldn’t think about that now. ‘Right, everyone,’ she beamed at the group of children who were sitting round the wall display waiting for her to start. ‘Which word are we going to adopt this week?’
It had been an idea she’d got from one of the weekend newspaper supplements. Apparently there was a trend now for the expensive nursery schools in Britain to pay money to a charity in order to adopt a word. They would then use that word as often as they could in order to increase their vocabulary.
Gemma had adapted the idea so that they did the same, but without asking parents to fork out. Although there were some families, like Danny’s and Sienna’s, with plenty of cash, judging from the four-by-fours and Harrods labels, there were also children like Billy, who came from the council estate round the corner and wore the same cherry-red anorak winter in and summer out.
‘Here we are!’ Gemma handed round a bag of words that she’d spent the previous night writing on card, which she’d then laminated before cutting the words out. ‘Whose turn is it to choose one today?’ She pretended to think. ‘I know. It’s Lucy, isn’t it?’
Lucy was one of those children who did nothing wrong. If they were all like her, thought Gemma as she watched the girl with the blonde plaits dipping her hand into the word bag, life would be very easy. On the other hand, that was not why she had entered this profession.
‘Magic!’ beamed Lucy, having pulled out the word. Sienna pouted. ‘Why? Why does magic happen?’ Over to you, said Bella’s rolling eyes.
‘Good question! Actually, some people believe in magic and others don’t, because no one really knows how it works.’
Cop-out, she could hear Bella muttering. Ignoring her, Gemma clapped her hands. ‘Let’s write our new Adopt a Word on the whiteboard, shall we, for everyone to learn. Can you see how it’s spelt? M … a …’
‘Mrs Merryfield, Mrs Merryfield!’
Darren, who was more than ready for Big School now, was jumping up and tugging at her shoulder, almost catching her silver chain.
‘Darren, don’t do that. You might hurt someone.’
‘But Mrs Merryfield, Mrs Merryfield, I want to say something.’ Darren’s face had a serious look on it that wasn’t normally there, and something caught in Gemma’s throat. Suddenly she had a bad feeling about what he did want to say. ‘Can I choose a word too?’
Gemma bit her lip. ‘That depends on what it is, sweetheart.’
He nodded. ‘Can we have Div Orse? Cos that’s what my mum and dad are going to do when I get big.’ His face crumpled. ‘How do you spell that, Mrs Merryfield?’
It always happened, of course. Statistically, it was bound to do so. Every year, if not every term, there was at least one parent who would come up with a worried look on their face, asking if he or she could have a word. And Gemma, whose own parents had somehow rumbled along together, despite her father’s moods, and seemed reasonably happy, possibly because they had produced five children, always floundered for the right thing to say.
It was all very well reading books on the subject, or talking to Brian, who had always been very kind but equally ignorant of the messy lives people could lead since his own marriage had been perfectly content until poor Mavis’s death, but there were no easy answers. And somehow, Gemma got the feeling that it wasn’t worth asking advice from the tough Joe Balls.
In the meantime, she sat Darren down quietly, wondering if this was why he’d been clingy at the start of term, and read a book with him about a boy whose parents lived in separate houses but who each loved their son very much. Then, when Darren’s mother arrived to collect him at the end of the day, asking if she could have a private chat with Gemma, she was able to explain that she did know about the situation on account of the Adopt a Word table.