Lulu and the Duck in the Park (4 page)

“Mellie was trying to help you!” snapped Mrs. Holiday, her eyes blue and icy. Lulu, on her feet at last, gave a great sigh. Not broken. Wonderful.

“Sorry, Mellie,” she said.

Mrs. Holiday was still angry. “You can walk the rest of the way back to school with me!” she told Lulu. “Stand up properly, please, and take your hands out of your pockets... Goodness, Charlie!”

Charlie’s nose was the sort that bleeds at the smallest excuse. Now a mixture of cold and swimming and excitement had started it again.

Blood was streaming down his face and splattering the pavement. Charlie, who always enjoyed the shrieks and fuss that went with nosebleeds, was bouncing with pleasure.

“I’m a vampire!” he called happily, diving for Henry’s throat.

So in the end it was Charlie who had to walk with Mrs. Holiday with his swimming towel clutched to his nose, while Lulu and Mellie tagged along behind.

Every few minutes Mrs. Holiday glared over her shoulder at Lulu to make sure she knew she was still in trouble. Every few minutes Lulu looked unhappily down at the ground to show that she did.

Everyone was very relieved to get back to school.

Mrs. Holiday made a speech on the playground.

“It was a difficult morning for all of us,” she said. “Difficult—Henry and Charlie, come and stand over here! Right beside me! One each side! How very silly!—Difficult and quite upsetting. I know we were all sad to see what happened in the park—Lulu, you look like you are trying to put your head in your pocket. It would be nice if you listened!—Now, Class Three! What have we learned to do at times like this? Do you remember? Yes, Mellie? Good girl!”

“Everyone should take handkerchiefs if they are going swimming,” said Mellie. “Because afterward the water runs out of your nose.”

“Not quite what I was thinking of,” said Mrs. Holiday, “but a sensible idea. I was hoping you would say we learn... what do we learn?”

“Shout ‘Sit!’ at mad dogs?” suggested someone.

“We learn that pets are a great responsibility,” said Mrs. Holiday. “Isn’t that true, Lulu?”

Lulu jumped guiltily.

“And when we have learned,” continued Mrs. Holiday, “we leave it behind because... who wants to explain?”

“Because the ducks are all dead,” said Henry.

“Because worrying does not change anything,” said Mrs. Holiday. “(The ducks are not all dead. They may even lay eggs again.) We learn, leave it behind, and move on to make things better!”

That was what Mrs. Holiday always said after any awful event. The time the Class Three play for parents turned into a battle. The afternoon the Class Three soccer team lost ten–nothing to Class Two. The day the Lunch Lady Trick went wrong.

“How can we make this better?” enquired Mrs. Holiday now.

Class Three thought of lots of ways. Duck food to cheer up the ducks. A poster for the park saying, PLEASE KEEP DOGS ON LEASHES. Zappers for park keepers so that they could zap mad dogs. Zappers for ducks so they could do it themselves.

Lulu thought of her egg, and said nothing.

“Lots of good ideas!” said Mrs. Holiday. “And some not quite so good. Charlie, you will make it start again, doing that! There, now you’ve done it! Come here! And the rest of you, jackets off and reading books out while I look at Charlie’s nose.”

Class Three streamed away to the coat room. Lulu followed last of all. She had forgotten she would have to take her jacket off when she got back to school. Thank goodness for Charlie’s nose, she thought as she waited for the others to leave the coat room. It would keep Mrs. Holiday busy for a few minutes while she, Lulu, took off her jacket and found a safe place to keep a large blue egg in a pocketless sweater.

Up the sleeves? Impossible.

Inside the front? Far too loose.

How on earth do ducks manage? wondered Lulu, and she answered the question herself a moment later: nests.

Lulu did not have a nest, but there were plenty of woolly hats lying around by the coat pegs. Lulu borrowed two and made a hat nest, with one hat inside the other and the egg warm in the middle.

The egg looked much safer in its hat nest.

Now what? wondered Lulu.

What do ducks do with their nests?

They sat on them.

Lulu could not sit on her nest, but she did the next best thing. She stuffed it under her sweater.

Does it show? wondered Lulu, looking at her dim reflection in the mirror of the coat room door.

It did, but not terribly. And Mrs. Holiday, Lulu was very glad to see, was still busy with Charlie.

So, feeling rather like a duck herself, Lulu waddled back to the classroom and sat down at the table she shared with Mellie.

Mellie had noticed.

“What have you got stuffed under your sweater?” she demanded.

“Under my sweater?”

“There’s definitely something! Tell me! I won’t tell.”

“Well. A hat.”

“A hat?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To keep it safe,” replied Lulu, after some thought.

“Safe from what?”

“Getting lost.”

“Oh,” said Mellie in a rather surprised voice, and then “Oh!” again, in a rather impressed voice. That isn’t such a bad idea, she thought. She might try it herself.

Maybe she would not lose so many things, if she kept them stuffed safely under her sweater.

The only problem was:

“I lost my sweater,” said Mellie, out loud. “This one I’m wearing is yours. Too tight for stuffing much under. OW!”

Mellie, experimenting with her pencil case, had stabbed herself with her ruler. That made Mrs. Holiday look over and say, “Mellie, please put your pencil case back on the table. It is time we all did some work. Everyone sit down! Charlie, hold that ice pack on your nose! It will never work there!”

“He doesn’t want it to work,” remarked Henry.

“Of course he does!” said Mrs. Holiday. “And anyway, all good things come to an end. Bloodletting is over. This is now math. Who can remember what we were talking about yesterday?”

Nobody could.

“Perimeters!” said Mrs. Holiday, writing the word on the board. “And where would we find a perimeter? You all knew yesterday!”

Class Three shook their heads. What they knew on one day had nothing to do with what they remembered the next.

“A perimeter,” said Mrs. Holiday,“is a line that goes around the edge. A perimeter of a circle goes all around the edge of the circle. A perimeter of a field would go... where would it go? Tell me, Henry!”

“In the grass,” said Henry.

“All round the edge of the field,” said Mrs. Holiday.

“That would be in the grass,” said Henry. “Like I said.”

“Today,” continued Mrs. Holiday, ignoring Henry, “we are going to measure some perimeters! How could we measure a perimeter?”

“Is it a trick question?” enquired Mellie.

“No, it is a perfectly sensible question,” said Mrs. Holiday patiently. “Lulu, why are you holding your stomach like that? Is everything all right?”

Lulu nodded and said, “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Holiday,” although she was not quite certain that was true. A minute before, the hat nest had suddenly seemed to move. To shake, like a tummy rumble. Just for a moment. Perhaps it had been a tummy rumble.

“Good,” said Mrs. Holiday, gathering up a pile of what looked like junk from the lost-and-found cupboard. “Now, we are going to investigate the perimeters of all these shapes. Working in pairs... There’s a fan for you, Charlie and Henry! You girls can take these leaves. Who deserves the angel wings, I wonder?”

Up and down the classroom walked Mrs. Holiday, giving out strange objects to pairs of people. An enormous painted fan. A circle of curly cabbage leaves. A pair of cardboard angel’s wings, a parasol, a pair of gloves, a T-shirt, and a kite.

“All these things have perimeters,” she said. “This baby suit. This rather lovely peacock feather... You take that, Dan... On my table are pens and tape measures and all sizes of paper. First you must estimate (An estimate is a sensible guess, remember!) the perimeter of the object that I have given you, and then you must measure it... Think hard about how you will do that! Lulu and Mellie . . .”

She paused at their table. They were the last pair left without a shape to investigate, and her hands were empty.