The Escape - Robert Muchamore Page 0,3
the pupil roll had fallen from three hundred to less than fifty. Most teachers had also gone south or returned to Britain, and the remaining kids – who ranged from five up to sixteen – were now taught a shambolic curriculum in the school’s wood-panelled main hall, overlooked by King George and a map of the British Empire.
By 3 June the only teacher left was the school’s founder and headmistress, Mrs Divine. Her typist had been drafted in as a classroom assistant.
Paul was a daydreamer and he much preferred this emergency arrangement to the years he’d spent seated rigidly amongst boys his own age, getting rapped on the knuckles with a wooden ruler whenever his mind wandered.
The work set by the elderly headmistress wasn’t up to Paul’s intelligence and this left him with time to doodle. There was hardly an exercise book or scrap of paper in Paul’s desk that wasn’t covered with delicately inked drawings. His preference was for armoured knights and fire-breathing dragons, but he could also make accurate drawings of sports cars and aeroplanes.
Presently, Paul’s ink-blotched fingers were pencilling the outline of a French biplane diving heroically towards a line of German tanks. The drawing had been requested by one of the younger boys, at the price of one Toblerone bar.
‘Hey, skinny,’ a girl said, as she flicked Paul’s ear and made him smudge the tip of a propeller.
‘For god’s sake,’ he said furiously, as he looked around and scowled at his older sister.
Rosie Clarke was thirteen and as different from Paul as siblings can be. There was some likeness in the eyes and they shared dark hair and a freckled complexion, but where Paul’s clothes drooped as if they were ashamed to hang from his thin body, Rosie had a buffalo’s shoulders, a precocious set of breasts and long nails that regularly drew her younger brother’s blood.
‘Rosemarie Clarke,’ Mrs Divine said, in a posh English accent. ‘How many times must I tell you to leave your brother alone?’
Paul appreciated having the teacher onside, but her remark also reminded the entire class that he got bullied by his sister and the mirth that rippled across the room was all at his expense.
‘Madame, our father’s outside,’ Rosie explained.
Paul snapped his head towards the window. He’d been engrossed in drawing and hadn’t seen the dark blue Citroën roll into the school courtyard. A glance at the clock over the blackboard confirmed that it was a good hour before home time.
‘Mrs Divine!’ Mr Clarke swooned, as he entered the hall a moment later. ‘I’m so sorry to disturb your lesson.’
The headmistress showed obvious distaste as Paul and Rosie’s dad kissed her on both cheeks. Clarke was the French sales representative for the Imperial Wireless Company. He dressed flamboyantly, in a dark suit, mirror-finished shoes and a polka-dot cravat that Mrs Divine found vulgar; but her expression warmed when Mr Clarke handed her a cheque.
‘We’ve got to collect some things from our apartment and then we’re heading south,’ he explained. ‘I’ve paid up until the end of term – I want the school to be here when things get back to normal.’
‘That’s most kind,’ Mrs Divine said. She’d spent thirty years building the school from nothing and seemed genuinely touched as she produced a handkerchief from the sleeve of her cardigan and dabbed her eye.
It was Paul and Rosie’s turn to play out the goodbye scene they’d seen many times over the past month. Boys shook hands like gentlemen, while departing girls tended to cry, hug and promise to write letters.
Paul found the stiff upper lip easy, because he’d never been popular and his favourite art teacher and two closest friends had already gone. Feeling rather awkward, he stepped towards the younger boys at the front of the room and returned the exercise book to its eight-year-old owner.
‘Guess I won’t get it done now,’ he said apologetically. ‘It’s outlined in pencil, so you could finish it yourself.’
‘You’re so good,’ the boy said, admiring the explosion around a half drawn tank as he opened his desk. ‘I’ll leave it. I’d only ruin it.’
Paul was going to refuse payment until he saw that the boy’s desk contained more than a dozen triangular bars. Toblerone in hand, Paul stepped back to his desk and gathered his belongings into a leather satchel: pens and ink, a stack of battered comic books and the two artist’s pads with all of his best drawings in them. Meanwhile Rosie had erupted like a volcano.
‘We’ll all be back some