Zero Per Cent

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.

Sal beamed at me, dusted flour from her chest where it always seemed to gather, and outlined her scheme for me to go commercial with my heavy finger food.

“You want me to sell, miss? In break?” I settled on a stool.

“Certainly do, Jack. Carrot cake, soda bread, cheesy puffs. The rock cakes, of course. And this morning’s drop scones are… mmm, sensational.”

“I’ll second that,” said Finch. “Do you do a sausage roll?”

“But, miss, you may not realise that selling’s been banned.”

And so it had, ever since kids had arrived in school swollen twice normal size because there were crisp-running profits to be had. Michael and Razza had gone further than anyone else and had managed to make a buck recycling gum. (They chipped it off the bottom of desks and melted it down in Michael’s mum’s best saucepan with a couple of bags of caster. Then they rolled it on silver foil and cut it peppermint cream style.)

“But this will be an officially sanctioned project,” said Sal gleefully. “School inspectors love this stuff and so does the Head.”

“Projects with a Business Studies dimension,” chimed Finch.

“I see… Where do you want me to do it?”

“Playground, of course!”

“I’ve retired from the playground, miss.” I got to my feet. “It holds nothing for me these days.”

“OK. So what about the corridors?”

“Corridors are for fighting and bullying, miss.”

“Where else is there, Jack?”

“Library?”

“Crumbs in Mr Schuman’s bindings? Forget it.”

“So that only leaves one place,” I said with a grin, easing back on to the stool. “A place where the project will get a lot of exposure…a place where Lady Disgruntle already sets up every break…”

Sal put a hand on her hip and smiled with dawning awareness.

“Beyond The Dooooor…” I teased.

And they were there.

“The staffroom!” we barked together.

“What about the competition?” asked Finch, suddenly rubbing his beige knee.

“Lady Disgruntle will be swept aside!” cried Sal. “The Head is hot for Culinary Studies right now! It got him a mention in the Times Ed.”

“This really should work. Pure competition. And rampant demand. We’re gannets at break,” said Finch.

Sal handed round the plate.

“To GCSE status for Culinary Studies!” she said, toasting the plan.

“To Business Studies in, er, action,” said Finch.

“To the staffroom,” I cried and we each whoomphed a drop scone.

On the agreed day Sal came to collect me from Maths before break. We were carrying my tray of wares downstairs when the Head met us.

“Feed ‘em up, Jack,” he said, chivvying off.

The buzzer had still not gone by the time Sal squeezed my shoulder and I moved Beyond The Door.

There, straight away, was Ms Grundle, all mouth, opening and closing like an old cod as she prepared her tray at the far end of the room.

Hungry teachers shoved through The Door and formed a slavering queue in front of Ms Grundle whose own mouth now simpered moist greetings as she poured the tea.

I was too fascinated by this secret world to feel ignored. I can report that Beyond The Door there is laughter, joking, cussing even; the grumpy ones remain grumpy even there, the whingers whinge and the good ones are good in there too. It is, fundamentally, a human environment.

I had a view of the notice board: Mrs Carew’s pretty ‘Thank you’ notelet to staff (‘for the really special CD rack’); Nadir Sharma had had a knock on the head and would probably have ‘trouble with even the simplest instructions’; a little poster for a staff stress-busting volleyball game on Friday next to celebrate ‘making it this far through the term’. I saw another teacher staring at what I realised was a large bank of form photos. He suddenly yelped with joy having matched a picture to a class list.

“Gotcha! I’ll teach you to give me a fake name, you pathetic waste of space.”

These photographs, I happened to know, were also for handing to the newspapers when we got murdered.

Meanwhile all the teachers fell on Ms Grundle’s stodge and minced it up in their chattering gobs with great gulps of her stewed tea. I didn’t notice at first but Finch was trying to open my trading. I sold him a drop scone but he was never going to start a consumer trend. Sal’s entrance and noisy enjoyment of my carrot cake, however, did the trick. Those at the back of Ms Grundle’s queue came over immediately and the sudden surge of latecomers meant I was soon sold out with about nine quid in my pocket.

The staff herded out with the buzzer, followed soon after by Ms Grundle who ran her trolley over my foot.

“The door,” she said, without looking up from her crumby plates and greasy doilies.

“Allow me!”

In the canteen at lunch the dinner ladies had clearly been told to spatter me. I stared one of them in the eye to show I knew whose orders she was obeying.

“It shows how frightened she is already,” said Sal when the three of us met later for banking. “How do you think her Ladyship’s going to react to these tomorrow?” She pulled a tray of beautiful sausage rolls from an oven.

“But…”

“We’ll pass them off as yours,” she laughed.

“Excellent,” said Finch. “And this is for raising brand awareness…” He presented me with a word-processed sign to hang around my neck.

CURLING’S CAKES A BUSINESS STUDIES AND CULINARY STUDIES JOINT VENTURE

“I had it laminated,” he added. “Wipeclean – in case the marketplace gets nasty.”

Unfortunately Mrs Carew was not quite secure enough in herself to buy from me but almost everyone else did over the next few breaks. Ms Grundle’s rage was not the only thing to grow: Finch plotted a sales graph which looked like a cheerful erection, my share of the profit clearing £70. Another mention in the Times Ed and the Head was all over his ‘joint venturers’.

Events moved fast. They do in business. Finch made a plan for heavy finger food at the next parents’ evening. Sal was expanding the frontiers of canape science and each day my wares grew more exotic: strips of rarebit, the mini-pizzas, angels on horseback negotiating perfect fairy toast jumps. Since she no longer required my cooking skills, I had more time for informal seminars with insatiable mates on life Beyond The Door.

Then, just as suddenly, came Lady Disgruntle’s response. She dug out her grease-spattered union membership, made a few urgent calls and was able to dangle the threat of action in front of Bumcheeks who promptly buckled and terminated the project. The thought of her leading her dinner ladies from the canteen to his office was too much.

We wound the business up but, two days later, I literally tripped over the means to our revenge. I saw my old mate Nobbi, the greengrocer, raise his hands just as my foot squished a rotten avocado. I skidded and fell sideways into a pile of fruit boxes, part filled with other dying fruits. Nobbi cackled as he pulled me up out of it.

“Scholars! You want to take your head out the clouds, mate!”

His stall had always struck me as magnificent and at Primary I must have painted more greengrocers than aeroplanes. But now I was staring at it with new fascination, particularly at a plump and weighty fruit I’d never seen before.

“What are these, Nobbi?”

“Canadian cherries – and there’s a bastard blackbird sits on the gutter over there and knows just how much they cost. He swoops at ‘em…”

“Not the cherries. These.”

“Mangoes, Jack. Never seen them before? Jet-fresh, these, from Mother India.”

He whipped out a knife, slit it down the middle and rapidly criss-crossed the flesh. The first brilliant cube made me grin. This was up there with caviar. I wanted more, now.

“Go man, go!” Nob removed the flat stone and prepared the other half.

“How much are they?”

“To you, 40p. You wouldn’t get a can and a frigging choccy bar from him next door for that, Jack.”

I subtracted four tens from my dinner money. He grabbed a handful of cherries and stuffed them in with my mango, swinging the paper bag round and round till it had mouse ears.

“Prefer you to have them than that bleeder.” He stuffed the treasures deep into my bag and we stared at the beady bird who got embarrassed and crossed to a distant satellite dish.

My love affair with fresh produce had begun and I quickly established myself as the first and most significant fruit-and-vegetarian in the history of Chevy Oak School.

By the end of the week I had an arrangement with Nobbi. I helped him set up for an hour each morning in exchange for as much produce as I could carry. It beat the paper round and provisioned me for a day of steady consumption at school.

“What’s that you got there, Jack?”

At first they took the piss.

“Apple of course.”

“A apple? What for?” They’d proudly show their tongues cradling sweets and yank their digits to spurt their cans. But long after they’d finished the day’s quota, when their gum too was unbearably tasteless, there was I still eating! With their pretty chocolate bars a sticky memory, the fizzy drinks an ugly fur on their tongues, I simply plucked out another brown bag. Radishes, Antiguan tangerines, Frisbee mushrooms and Congolese bananas. I wasn’t darkening Ms Grundle’s canteen doors – and I felt great.

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