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