a Western bank. Mattie realized that she was in a school, since she saw students in classrooms. But this school didn’t look like any other she’d experienced. No drawings or banners hung from the walls, nor did rows of lockers span the sides of the corridor.
Akiko led her students, followed by Ian and Mattie, into a classroom. As the students sat down at two-person desks, chatting excitedly, Mattie moved partly behind her father, who stood near a blackboard.
“Your mum used to teach children like these,” Ian whispered into her ear, sensing her disquiet. “And I reckon she’s watching now. Let’s give her a laugh.”
Mattie instinctively looked up, her gaze dropping back to the students as Akiko began to speak in Japanese. Mattie realized that the teacher was older than she’d first thought. Some of Akiko’s hair had started to gray, and deep laugh lines surrounded her mouth. As she spoke, the students nodded attentively, sitting motionless, something Mattie’s classmates wouldn’t be able to easily duplicate.
Akiko turned to their visitors. “Well, Mr. . . .”
“McCray. I’m Ian McCray. But please call me Ian. And my daughter here is Mattie.”
“We are lucky, students,” Akiko said. “First we enjoyed our field trip to The Japan Times, and now Ian-san and Mattie will help us for the remainder of our class. About fifteen minutes. Now please open your English conversation books to page thirty-four.”
Ian leaned closer to Akiko. “Could we play a game instead?” he whispered.
“A game?”
“Something to make them laugh.”
She smiled, brushing hair from her face. “Certainly, Ian-san. That would be fine.”
Ian took Mattie’s hand and looked at the students. “Your lovely teacher, Akiko-san, is going to let us all play a game,” he said, exaggerating his Australian accent, believing that the children found his dialect funny. “Have any of you ankle biters ever heard of Chinese Whispers?”
The students smiled and shook their heads.
“Codswallop,” he said, shaking his head, feigning disbelief.
Akiko laughed, instinctively putting her hand in front of her face. “What does . . . codswallop mean, Ian-san?”
“It means that I can’t believe you’ve never played the telephone game,” he replied, remembering how Kate and he used to play the game with their students. “It’s quite simple,” he said, looking again at the children. “I’m going to whisper a sentence to Mattie. She’ll whisper it to Akiko-san, and then Akiko-san will whisper it to one student, who will whisper it to the next, and so on. We’ll go through everyone. Then the last student will stand up and repeat the sentence. And we’ll see if it’s London to a brick. I mean . . . we’ll see if it’s just right.”
The students nodded and smiled, understanding the game. Ian closed his eyes for a few seconds, formulating a sentence. He then leaned down to Mattie, cupped his hands around her ear and whispered, “I love you, Roo. And I always will. Now here’s the sentence. Twenty-six giggling zebras crossed a street in Tokyo today.”
Grinning, Mattie stood on her tiptoes as Akiko bent down, and quietly repeated the line. Akiko smiled at her, then walked to a student who sat in the first row. The teacher leaned over and whispered. The student laughed, repeated the line to herself, and twisted toward a boy beside her. This process was duplicated until all the students had participated. The last student to receive the sentence smiled and stood up.
Ian shrugged. “So? What was the sentence?”
The girl beamed, glanced at her teacher, and then at Mattie. “Twenty-six wriggling zebras ate a treat in Tokyo today,” she said, doing her best to properly pronounce each word.
Ian laughed and told the students the original words, while Akiko wrote both sentences on the blackboard. The students joked and spoke in Japanese, shaking their heads. “Fancy another round?” Ian asked.
“Please, Ian-san,” Akiko replied, setting the chalk down.
“Mattie, why don’t you start it out this time?”
Nodding, Mattie tried to think of something that the students would find amusing. When she did, she stood on her tiptoes and whispered to her father, “I love you too, Daddy. Now here’s my sentence. My father, Ian-san, once kissed a walrus.”
Ian pulled back from her, grinning. “Good onya, Roo,” he said, and then turned to Akiko and repeated the sentence.
Akiko looked at Mattie, smiled, and walked to her students. After a few minutes the message had traveled from one end of the classroom to the other. A different student was the final recipient, and he stood up and bowed slightly, trying to remember the right words.