The Home Corner (19 page)

I watched as she hurried past the Portakabin window, across the tarmacked playground, past the wooden boat and the tree and the monkey bars. Past the Golden Rules. She hurried on. I wasn’t sure where she was going, but she was making swift progress towards it. All the children lining up at the door watched her too. After a moment she started to run.

We had to walk, of course.

We all walked through the assembly hall to get to Room C, where Magic Bob was going to be, that morning.

‘Walk in a straight line, children. No stopping,’ Mrs Baxter instructed everyone, but it was impossible not to slow down a little to gawp at all the stalls that had been put up since we were last in the hall. There were a lot of them: dozens of trestle tables to negotiate and bric-a-brac to contend with. Stacked high on the tables were piles of old cast-offs – toys from the 70s and 80s – and home-grown herbs in plastic pots and cardboard boxes full of paperbacks. There were old boxes of Lego and Meccano and Stickle Bricks, and stacking cups, and Barbies with busts, and Tiny Tears dolls that would cry if you squeezed them. The trestle tables were the kind I remembered from my days in the Brownies: the kind that looked flimsy but were virtually indestructible; makeshift tables that would just go on and on across the decades, supporting fairy cakes and old books and tombola gifts in school halls up and down the country. And standing behind those tables there would always be the volunteer mums. The members of the Parent-Teacher Association, selling tray bakes. Kind people, like my mum and Mrs Ellis. Mum-ish people, Mummy Woman people, who knew what to say and how to be. And I would never join them.

Standing behind the table nearest my little group was Mrs Legg. She was wearing a yellow dress and a very white cardigan with a pattern of pretend diamonds scattered across the front, in a fountain-like spray. In her hands she had a Crawford’s biscuit tin marked
Petty Cash
.

‘Hi, Mrs Legg,’ I said.

‘I’m manning the bric-a-brac, for my sins,’ she replied.

‘Are you?’ I said, because I couldn’t think what else to say; about bric-a-brac, or sins. I looked down at Mrs Legg’s table, wondering if there was anything I could say about that, instead. It bore an assortment of silken-haired pink horses and elderly plastic gonks. A battered, boxed bath-gel set had been plonked beside a set of fern-scented Morny soaps, one of which was missing from its container. And it all made me think, suddenly, of the contents of my own bedroom. Of all the stuff I’d hung onto. There was a tin with the initial ‘L’ on it, a tiny rose-patterned teapot, a set of cork coasters and a melamine tray depicting a smiling Labrador. There was also a 1970s edition of
Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
I picked it up and peered at the picture of the seagull on the front.

‘There’s always copies of that at the school fete,’ Mrs Legg observed, the biscuit tin tipping slightly in her hands so that all the coins in it slipped noisily from one side to the other.

‘What’s it about?’ I asked.

‘A seagull, I presume,’ Mrs Legg retorted.

‘Unless it’s a metaphor,’ I said.

‘A what?’

‘A metaphor for something else,’ I said. ‘Something that’s
like
a seagull.’

And I put the book back down again. My sentences had begun to sound quite strange, even to me.

‘What’s
like a seagull
?’ Mrs Legg said crossly, ‘apart from a seagull?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘OK: let’s go,’ I added, addressing my little group of children, and we moved on towards Room C, past the temptations of other people’s old junk. It was in fact quite hard to move particularly fast, because there were an awful lot of people in the hall, now: a couple of hundred, it seemed to me. A multitude of goodness and kindness. At the stall next to Mrs Legg’s there was a big group of people buying and selling tombola tickets and offering each other small, crumbling cakes in zip-up plastic food bags. There were chocolate cherry cakes and millionaire shortbread slices and cream-filled ginger snaps and, yes, there were my
mother
’s gingerbread men!  – I could tell because of the piped buttons and ties – and I felt a strange kind of affection for them, a kind of longing. I felt an odd desire to scoop them all up and rescue them, like little evacuees.

‘Are you OK, Miss McKenzie?’ Mrs Baxter asked as I pushed on with the children, past the cake stall. ‘Anything wrong? You look quite . . . pale.’

‘Do I?’ I asked, alarmed that my anxiety had begun to show on my face. It was just that all around me there seemed to be a converging kind of sea. Half the city was there that morning, it seemed to me, and the sound of voices had completely drowned out everything else. It was the sound of goodness, the noise of niceness: everyone at St Luke’s was so
nice!
And standing above it all on the stage at the back was nice Mrs Crieff,
one of the best heads in town
, smiling and laughing and parrying questions. There she was, raising funds, meeting targets, stepping across the stepping stones. There she was,
veritas et fidelis
personified.

‘Miss McKenzie, will there still be some cakes left after the magic show?’ a small girl asked me.

‘I –’ I began.

‘Ah! The all-important question!’ Mrs Baxter interjected, in the kindly sarcastic voice she reserved for such occasions.
I can’t even do that voice
,
I thought. I could do kind or sarcastic, but I couldn’t do both. Not at the same time. And I watched Mrs Baxter sailing on.

A thin, middle-aged man was standing in the doorway of Room C when the children and I eventually surfaced from the waves. He was holding a holographic clipboard and wearing a top hat and a rotating bow tie with flashing lights. His waistcoat had stars on it. Evidently this was Magic Bob.

‘Good morning, kiddiewinks,’ he said to the children, and my heart sank. Behind the hat and the bow tie and the waistcoat, Magic Bob looked quite truculent and bored. He had a sallow complexion, as if he’d spent far too much of his life in school halls and community centres, the curtains drawn against the sunlight. His mouth was set into a thin, bitter-looking line.

‘Ding, ding,’ he said, suddenly reaching out towards Emily Ellis, who was standing beside me, and pulling one of her plaits. Emily looked up at him with astonishment. We both did.

‘Sorry. Was that rude of me? Was that
de trop
?’ Magic Bob asked, letting go of her hair and turning his attention to me. ‘Hello, what have we got here?’ he added. ‘A flamingo?’ His eyes were a very flat, unsmiling blue. ‘What’s with the pink hair, love? Fell out with someone at the salon? I think I’ll have to call you Miss Flamingo! Is this Miss Flamingo?’ he asked the children clustering around me in the doorway.

They all looked at him, uncomprehending. He was a very peculiar man – that was all there was to it – and now he started whistling the tune of some song I’d heard on the radio occasionally, a quite nice song about pretty flamingos that didn’t suit him.

‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t pull the children’s hair,’ I said.
And the song you’re whistling doesn’t suit you
, I felt like adding,
it’s too nice for you.
Magic Bob stopped whistling and gave a brief, theatrical sigh.

‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Slapped wrist for Magic Bob!’

I did not reply.

‘Come in, then, if you’re coming,’ Magic Bob continued. ‘The show’s in here. On with the show, that’s what I say. Are you with the bride or the groom?’ he asked me.

What?
What was he
talking
about?

‘Sorry?’ I said.

‘Joke, love. Maybe I’ve just done too many weddings recently.’

I looked at Mrs Baxter, who was still on the hall side of the door. She looked utterly blank.

‘Now: important question. Is there going to be some party food later?’ Magic Bob asked Emily, bending down slightly and lowering his voice. ‘Personally I always like the savoury food best at parties, do you, sweetheart?’

Emily frowned slightly. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I like all the savoury food. I like all the cakes and jellies and biscuits.’

And Magic Bob straightened up. ‘Well, clearly I’m speaking in tongues today, aren’t I?’ he snapped. And a few of the children, pushing their way through the doorway, gazed up at him again. They looked as if they were trying to work out the discrepancy between the magic of their dreams and the Magic Bob of reality, and for the first time since I’d worked at St Luke’s I felt like putting my arms around them all, Mother Hen-like, to shield them from harm.

‘We’re certainly not going to get into the room four abreast are we?’ Magic Bob snapped. ‘If you’ll pardon the expression!’

‘
Sorry?
’

He regarded me, a faint, combative smile on his lips. Then he took a pen from his pocket and ticked a piece of paper on his clipboard. For the briefest of moments, I thought it might be one of Mrs Crieff’s staff-appraisal forms.

‘Right,’ he said, walking into the classroom, putting the clipboard down on a desk and clapping his hands together. ‘What’s going to happen now is: you, Miss Flamingo, and you, Mrs Teacher, and all the little folk have to file up the left-hand side of the room.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because all the P2 lot have to go up the right side in a minute, see? So we can fit everyone in. I have to do the show for the P1s and the P2s together, yes?’

It was beginning to feel like a sort of military ordeal. The only time I’d ever been to a magic show was when I was thirteen and had been a Girl Guide. There’d been something called a Circus Skills Weekend, which had taken place in a grey pebble-dashed church hall on the edge of a town I could no longer remember the name of. All I could remember was a lot of green teacups and someone named Geraldine, who had worn mauve lycra leggings and spun a lot of plates.

‘So, keep to the right, kiddiewinks,’ Magic Bob barked to some P2 children who’d begun to ramble, confused, through the doorway. ‘Jesus, it’s like herding cats,’ he muttered. ‘And you’re supposed to be leading them, Miss Flamingo, aren’t you?’ he added, in a louder voice, grabbing hold of my arm and pushing me through the doorway.

‘OK, Mrs Teacher?’ I heard him say to Mrs Baxter behind me.

‘Fine, thank you, Magic Bob,’ Mrs Baxter replied with icy dignity.

And then I heard John Singer piping up. John Singer, as bold as brass.

‘Excuse me,’ he asked, ‘are you supposed to be the wizard?’

There was a moment of total silence. I looked over my shoulder and saw the last vestige of jollity fall from
Magic
Bob’s face. It was a distinct sort of falling away. ‘Am I
supposed
to be the wizard?’ he barked. ‘
Supposed
to be? Well, I don’t see anyone else round here with a box of tricks, do you, young man?’

And resuming his smile, he ruffled John Singer’s hair.

Room C looked quite different that morning. Someone appeared to have gone into it overnight and decorated it. Maybe Mrs Regan or the janitor or the lollipop man, or some people on the PTA board. Maybe even Mrs Crieff. The whole room was draped with bunting now – yards of starry triangles strung up beneath the swinging rectangular lights. Paper stars had also been stuck to the walls beside the Golden Rules.
We are honest!
We are kind!
We are patient!
We are fair!
Three white sheets, stapled together and hung up against the whiteboard, had the words
Welcome to the Magic Show!
written on them in blue paint.

‘Well,’ Mrs Baxter said in a flat voice, ‘someone’s made an effort.’

I walked further into the room and stood beside the teacher’s desk. There was a large black, fabric-covered box sitting on it that had
Property of Magic Bob: This Side Up
inscribed on it in marker pen – and  I wondered what it might contain. Some wands, perhaps, or silk scarves or trick flowers or loaded dice. Beside the box stood a Tupperware tub full of yet more flapjacks, and a plastic cake stand bearing six small meringue nests. They appeared to have escaped from the hall.

‘Wow,’ said a child, looking up at the bunting and the stars and the stapled sheets.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Baxter said, drily, ‘indeed. But I think everyone needs to sit down now, though. Magic Bob has told us he wants us all to sit down.’

Although Magic Bob himself was, I suddenly realised, nowhere to be seen.

‘Sit down, everyone,’ Mrs Baxter commanded in his absence, raising her voice. ‘I want everyone to find a space and sit down on their bottoms.’

And almost instantly, everyone did. The children formed an instinctive little semi-circle on the carpet. I pulled out one of the plastic chairs from a small, leaning stack and went to sit near the door. Mrs Baxter sat a few chairs away from me, closer to the window. She seemed rather quiet suddenly. ‘Where is he?’ I whispered across to her after a moment. ‘Where’s Bob?’ Because he was still nowhere to be seen.

Mrs Baxter sighed and leaned forward in her seat.

‘I’d love to tell you’, she said in a low drawl, ‘that
Magic
Bob has disappeared in a big puff of smoke. But he’s actually in the stationery cupboard, Luisa.’

‘The stationery cupboard?’

‘Yes. I think he’s waiting to leap out or something.’

‘Is that what he normally does?’ I asked.

‘Apparently.’ Mrs Baxter moved back again in her seat. ‘He’s preparing his act in there.’

It was very hot now, even hotter than it had been in the Portakabin. On the other side of the windows the sky had turned a dark blueish grey, and the fluorescent lights above our heads were the kind that hummed, low but constant, until within a short while your head started to hurt. From some loudspeakers set up on the other side of the classroom a song was emerging. It was Barry Manilow singing ‘Could It Be Magic?’
I recognised it from discos and wedding receptions; I remembered it being played at my cousin Kirsty’s wedding. Nobody was listening to it really, though. Mrs Baxter was zoning out by the window, reading some leaflet about ballet classes she’d picked up from somewhere. Sitting in a little group at my feet, Solly and Topaz were discussing the cakes they were going to buy after the magic show, and
Jamie
and Aziz were fighting over a plastic hippo. And I just sat on my chair and felt like the person I’d been trying not to be all year: a girl in the wrong place, a girl who’d been waiting and waiting for the right place and might continue to wait, maybe for the rest of her life.