The loud Reception girl lifted up the male tortoise.
The quiet Reception boy lifted up the female tortoise.
There was a short pause when no one said anything.
Mr Carter frowned.
Miss Gerard went, “Eh?”
Mr Barrington took off his enormous glasses.
And then all the parents and all the pupils – except the two holding the tortoises, who just looked confused – started to laugh.
Because the male tortoise was wearing a pair of underpants. And the female was wearing knickers. And a bra.
When I say wearing, what I mean is that Benny – the male tortoise – had a pair of underpants, classic Y-fronts, size small, draped across his shell. His little legs were actually poking through the holes where legs are meant to go. And Bjorn – the female tortoise – was wearing a pair of flowery knickers in the same way, but above them, across her upper half, there was a small bra, such as might have been worn by a Barbie.
The whole image of the two tortoises wearing underwear was made worse – or better, depending on how you looked at it – by both children deciding to hold the tortoises up, with their bellies facing the laughing parents. I should stress at this point that neither tortoise looked at all bothered by this. Bjorn, in particular, looked quite pleased about the outfit. It made her look more like a lady, more as if her name should be, perhaps, Bjornita.
Mr Carter, however, did not look pleased about it.
At all.
“Stop laughing!” he shouted at the children.
They did, immediately.
Mr Carter turned round. “I said …” he snarled at the parents, “STOP LAUGHING.” They also stopped immediately. You could have heard a pin drop. It looked as if the new head teacher’s threatening power had got the situation under control. He turned back to the two Reception children, terrified by now, still holding up the pair of tortoises. They were shaking a little.
Which is possibly why, at that point, Benny’s Y-fronts slipped slowly off his little body and fell in a pile beneath him. Bjornita’s little head turned to look.
And everyone – parents, children and teachers alike – fell about laughing again.
Everyone, that is, but Mr Carter, who, after looking around with contempt at all the hysteria, picked up the underpants and looked inside the waistband.
“Ryan Ward,” he said in a terrifying tone. “My office. Now.”
Ryan Ward looked around the head teacher’s office. He had been here many times before, of course. But it had changed. It had only been a week since Mr Carter had taken over, but somehow in that time he’d transformed Mr Fawcett’s room – which had always been dusty and untidy, with piles of books and papers everywhere – into a sharp, clean, modern space. The walls, which used to be brown, were now bright white, and gleaming waxed floorboards were visible where previously there had been an old coffee-stained carpet. The depressing grey filing cabinets that used to line the walls were gone, and a new desk, silver and wide and curved, had replaced Mr Fawcett’s grotty wooden table with drawers that always stuck.
“I wonder why you chose those particular pants, Ryan?” said Mr Carter, who was sitting on the edge of that desk with one leg on the floor, a bit like a model in a desk catalogue. Next to him on the desk was a pair of pants: the ones that had recently been on Benny the tortoise.
“They were the nearest I had to tortoise-size, sir,” said Ryan, who was standing in front of him. “A bit old now, of course. But they did the business perfectly when I was three.”
“Hm,” said Mr Carter. “I’m not sure I believe you there, Ryan.” He reached round and, holding them as far away from himself as he could, picked up the pants. “I think you may have deliberately chosen them because the name tag was sewn in to them. A name tag that says –” and he turned the waistband towards him and looked at it disdainfully – “Ryan Ward.”
“Well, sir. My mum’s a stickler for name tags. Always worrying about me losing stuff.”
“Perhaps, Ryan, perhaps. Or perhaps you wanted to be caught. Perhaps you wanted to be known as the perpetrator of the great tortoises-in-pants prank, the one that ruined the new head teacher’s Open Afternoon. Because you are proud of being that person.”
He held the pants very close to Ryan’s face as he said this.
“You know, I like what you’ve done with this place,” said Ryan, pushing the pants down with one finger so he could see over them.
“Pardon?”
“This office. It used to be stuffy and horrible in here. But you’ve made it all new and flash.”
For a second Mr Carter looked genuinely pleased.
“Well, don’t think you’re going to get round me by praising my sense of interior design, Ryan. But now you mention it, yes, I am happy with what we’ve done. Still got a few things to clear out from the old head teacher’s days – like this …” he said, turning back to the desk. He held up a small, very old-looking wooden box. “The builders discovered it under the floorboards when they were redoing the floor.”
“What is it?” asked Ryan, not actually very interested, but keen to put off the punishment he knew was coming.
“It’s a musical box, though it doesn’t actually seem to play any music.”
Ryan squinted at the box. On the top was a weird little symbol, like a circle made out of two curved arrows. Mr Carter opened the box to reveal the mechanism – a series of tiny interlocking gold cogs and wheels – but they remained still and no sound came out.
“Anyway,” said Mr Carter, putting the box back down on his desk and speaking in a scary let’s-get-on-with-it voice, “I know you’re just stalling. So. Ryan.”
He took a deep breath and leant towards Ryan.
“You think that me running this school is a challenge to your naughtiness. You think: I’ll show him, this new head teacher with his strictness and his new rules and his frightening manner. But you’re going to have to forget all that. Because I’m shutting you down. Now.”
Mr Carter’s face was close to Ryan’s. Really close. Ryan could smell his over-brushed, toothpastey breath. He stayed firm, though, did Ryan. He looked straight back at the new head teacher’s fiery black eyes as if to say: They may be fiery, but the butter is still not melting in my mouth.
“But what punishment? What will convince you to give up this little campaign I know you’re planning? Well, obviously detention. We can do that. That’s done. That’s in the bank. You’re down for five of those this week.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And obviously a letter home to your mum. Already written. On its way.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But none of that will really … really pierce you, will it, Ryan? Really make you wince and think again.”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, sir.” Mr Carter moved away from Ryan, towards the door. “Well, something – or rather someone – you do know is this person, I think.”