Again, Bill registered surprise when Blippy flew into the room late and ordered a desk-search immediately without even greeting the students. He was out of breath and from his agitated state, the students realised that all discussion of the weekend edition of ‘Desert Island Discs’ would be foregone on this occasion. A desk search seemed a draconian measure for a class which contained most of the rugger first fifteen. An even greater surprise greeted Bill upon opening his desk, as he gazed down to find a 48-Inch HD ready LCD Television Set. Bill’s reflection glared up at him from the surface of the flat, square surface of the latest word in TV technology, which was now incredulously located in Desk 6A. As if to offer silent help, the highly polished screen informed Bill that his mouth had formed an incredulous ‘0’.
This facial betrayal did not go unnoticed in the classroom.
“What’s amiss, Bill?” said Alan, who occupied the adjacent desk, and was generally regarded as Bill’s best friend.
“Why, here’s a brand new television set just sitting in my desk” said Bill, slightly louder than he would have wished.
Alan was visibly stunned.
“Bill, you don’t mean to say that you’ve been responsible for the alarming spate of petty thefts of personal property that have blighted the upper fifth for the last two months?” he replied, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.
“Of course not, Alan! Surely you know me better than that!” exclaimed the somewhat shocked Bill.
“Well, yes Bill. Sorry about that old man. But you must admit that the evidence does look pretty conclusive from desk 6B”.
Alan’s own face was now contorted in guilt, at thinking that his best chum and all-round good egg William ‘Bill’ Smythington a thief and liar.
“Never mind that now, Alan!” hissed Bill. “We’ll need both our brains to get me out of this pickle, and no mistake. Time is of the essence!”
“You’re right Bill, as ever!” agreed Alan, somewhat relieved that the momentary lapse of trust between the two chums had been side-stepped. Alan never ceased to be amazed at how quickly Bill re-applied himself to the task in hand so quickly after experiencing a near catastrophe. He had always said that he would trust Bill with his last conker.
Almost telepathically, the two chums set about an ocular sweep of their respective halves of the room, in order to ascertain how far their reaction to the unwanted technological marvel had dissipated about the room.
Fortunately, Alan’s desk-neighbour had yet to arrive. The occupant of 6C was one Christopher Willock, a gifted dancer, who had special permission to arrive ten minutes late due to his ballet lessons.
Within a split second, desk 7A, immediately behind the offender, had also been adjudged to be a no-threat zone. Bill noted that the occupier, Simon Phipps was, as usual, located in a world of his own. Phipps was an avid angler, as the constant smell of fish and continual presence of live maggots in his pockets testified. At least, the upper sixth hoped that these preferences indicated an interest in aquatic sports. When not fishing, Phipps liked to daydream about past catches of note, or to speculate on anticipated catches of the future. Often he would recite the weekend’s haul to himself, as a sort of morning mantra. It was in this state that Phipps liked to spend the first hour or so of every day, until challenged by a tutor or prefect. Indeed, even now, Bill saw that Phipps had a glazed expression on his face, and piscine-esque poetry could be heard, emanating from desk 7A.
“Tench, tench, oh lovely 3 inch tench”
“Sweet perch, why did you leave me?”
Fortunately, the occupants of the other desks to the rear of Bill, desks 7B and 7C had just arrived, and were not in situ when 6A had revealed its contents. This was fortunate, as one of them, Edward ‘Eddie’ Scamp had been on the receiving end of a severe thrashing at tennis doubles only a week ago, and still held a grudge, sharply pointed in Bill’s direction. Perhaps the extra electronic equipment had remained unseen by the rest of the cohort.
However, Alan’s face told a different story. Meeting his chum’s gaze, and direction of his disquiet, Bill’s eyes alighted upon Dupont, the French exchange pupil, whose gaze was decidedly fixed upon him. Dupont was dangerously located in desk 5A, immediately in front of Bill. The remaining two pupils in row 5 were engaged in their own activities; Darryl Paine, a Dupont acolyte, was berating Wormsley, a somewhat sniffly individual, in the hope of amusing the Frenchman.
“Do you think he saw?” whispered Bill, out of the corner of his mouth.
“Hard to tell with that one” replied Alan, though the note of tension in his voice belied what they both suspected: Dupont was an unknown quantity, and would not reveal if he had seen or not unless it suited him. For what seemed an eternity, the impassive gaze of the French pupil maintained remained directed towards Bill, despite Paine’s loud comments on the poor quality of Wormsley’s stamp collection. Eventually, Dupont’s well-groomed head oscillated slowly back to its natural state, and he faced forward.
Bill and Alan now had a clear picture of the damage limitation exercise at hand, but would there enough time? Blippy all the while was looming closer like a grim spectre of death. Indeed, even as the two friends had finished assessing their predicament, the desk search had forged ahead as far as the row in front.
Dupont’s investigation had been efficiently completed: 5A had been opened and the pupil sat cross-legged, not even looking into the desk or at Mr Blipp. This had the effect of enraging Blipp even further, and several throbbing veins in Blipp’s head were now clearly visible. Perhaps Mr Blipp had hoped to pin the heinous crime on the child from the continent, mused Alan.
“Wha… Wha…. Whagugh!!” spluttered Blippy. He was not quite speechless, as half a word has escaped his mouth, along with significant quantity of saliva. Dupont’s arms were outstretched with his palms face upwards, in silent vindication of his innocence.
Darryl Paine was not alone in gazing at Dupont’s glacially calm features. Even Alan found himself admiring the composure of the lad amidst his panic. Already the student from across the channel had achieved Popplesworth respect; it was even rumoured that Dupont had spoken to a girl.
Alan’s reverie was abruptly broken as he realised that his desk was next. Despite his knowledge that it did not contain any errant elecronica, his nerve was barely holding due to the guilty secret contained within his neighbour’s desk. As Blipp honed in on him, he froze, and began to fumble with his tie.
Alan could not have enraged Blippy further if he had misconjugated a Latin verb. “Desk open Smethwick! Jump to it lad! It’s a simple enough manoeuvre,.. ARM DESK,.. LIFTING!!!” Blipp’s gleaming pate caught the early morning sun and reflected glare downwards, like a searchlight, into the recesses of the now open 6B.
Blipp’s breathing had now become irregular, and small whine could be heard, as if he realised that he had nearly reached the back of the classroom without so much as a contraband paperclip. At this moment, Blipp reminded Alan of a very angry squirrel.
Never tidy at the best of times, Blipp’s hands shot downward to search through the contents of Alan’s desk. Without so much as a second glance, his neat pile of copies of the slightly satirical student magazine, ‘The Fop’ was batted aside in Blipp’s quest for evidence of guilt. This surprised Alan, for at any other time, a stockpile of such a controversial magazine which occasionally lampooned staff and students alike would have surely earned a visit to the Head’s study. The identity of eponymous author had long been a source of staff vexation, but with bigger fish to fry, it seemed that Alan’s link to ‘The Fop’ would not be pursued today.
Blipp’s ashen face, his hands grasping at nothing more than conkers, string and a signed photo of Glyes Brandreth, revealed to Bill that Alan’s desk search was concluded. He was next in Blipp’s line of fire. Disappointed that the magazine discovery had not garnered more time, Bill checked his watch. A naked minute remained until the bell that signalled end of registration and a 10-minute recess before the start of first lecture.
The desk-search was rolling unrelentingly forward devouring everything in its path, like a flow of lava from a long dormant volcano.
Just then, Mr Blipp became aware of the fact that the student who sat on the other side of Alan had yet to arrive. His eyes grew large and his head was a mass of pulsating blood vessels.
“WHERE IS 6C! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIM!” Blipp bellowed, his rage and impotent fury aimed solely at Alan.
“Ba.ba…ba…”stuttered Alan, sheep-like. This did not help Blipp’s disposition. Blipp looked for the entire world as if Alan had removed Willock from the face of the earth, or at the very least locked him in the broom-cupboard, solely to inconvenience him. And was now making sheep-noises to taunt him that he had done so.In order to save his chum’s embarrassment, and to stop Blipp’s head exploding, Bill finished off the sentence. “Ballet class. He’ll be here in a minute.” Bill had inadvertently now also incurred the wrath of Blipp.
“BALLET CLASS! BALLET CLASS!” Blipp was barely able to blurt the words out. He managed to cram so much disgust into those two words that students would have been forgiven for thinking that ‘Ballet Class’ was known to be a cover for Communist spy recruitment activities.
Eddie Scamp then drew Blipp’s fire away from Bill.
“Yes Sir. Don’t you recall that Willock has been given SPECIAL DISPENSATION to miss some of YOUR REGISTRATION classes with his DANCING ACTIVITIES?” On the face of it, the wily Scamp has uttered the truth, though the emphasis of his words succeeded in enraging Blipp further. Was this his Machiavellian intent? Given that Bill was now directly below the spittle-projection machine that was now Mr Blipp, Bill wondered if that game of rackets two weeks ago had cost him dear. Scamp was grinning with content. Had he succeeded, for foul reasons of is own, in pushing Blipp to the edge of sanity just as he opened Bill’s desk? Blipp was lost for words and close to meltdown.
It was this moment that Willock chose to pirouette into the room.
His body moving as one unit, Willock spun towards his desk, the full weight of his body equally distributed onto the balls of his feet and totally oblivious to his near manslaughter of Mr Blipp. As graceful as his movements were, Blipp did not appreciate their beauty, his eyes could not have protruded any more if they had been on stalks; they tracked the chubby dancer as he glided to his desk in silent disbelief “BALLET DURING REGISTRATION!!! EXPLAIN!!” was all that Blipp could eventually muster.
Up until this verbal explosion, Willock had been unaware of the fact that all eyes in the classroom were now on him. As Blipp spoke, Willock gave a small leap into the air, using centrifugal force to deliver himself into his chair in style.
Blipp was now honing in on Willock like a small boy spying frogspawn in a neighbour’s pond. Despite his fury, Blipp allowed himself a malevolent chuckle; surely, he thought, a boy who did ballet during registration must be sufficiently warped enough to turn his hand to thievery. By the time he had manoeuvred himself alongside 6C, the two activities were one and the same in Blipp’s fevered brain.
Willock had now realised that he was in the line of fire for some misdemeanour or other that had transformed his form tutor into the repressed bundle of fury that now towered above him. Fumbling in his pocket, Willock produced an ink-stained, crumpled note, which he held out in front of him as one would a white flag.
“Mother told me that there would be opposition to my natural abilities” he sniffed, nose in the air.
A gamut of emotions ran through Blipp’s head. If the presumptive thief-takers brain were a lightbulb, an excess wattage would have shattered the object within a millisecond. Sheer disgust at the activity left him speechless, then caused him to slobber and babble incoherently, before lapsing into to sheer silence: the timing on the note gave Willock an excuse a reason for being late.
“I cannot imagine what you have me pegged down as doing, Sir, but my exertions for my art leave me utterly fagged. I couldn’t possibly turn my hand to anything energetic after 9am”
Bill admired the way that Willock could maintain his temperament and verbally joust with tutors; he did not, however, admire his taste in clothes. As the crucial note was returned to the inner recesses of Willock’s trousers, the distinctive pink chiffon of tutu could be glimpsed.
As Blipp prepared to launch a cocktail of nonsensical gibberish and phlegm towards the class, the ballet boy tossed in his parting shot.
“Whatever investigation is being carried out, Mr Blipp,” said Willock, flourishing a limp wrist across the desks of the remaining students, “I daresay you will find the answer…out there. “
The sweep of the dancer’s hand acted as a pointer to the question at hand. Angry as he was, Blipp saw the logic of the fey student. He needed to get back to his goal: the filthy, filthy, filcher.
Bill mentally gulped. Alan, however, was looking at his watch, apparently unconcerned. As Alan looked up slowly and met Bill’s gaze, somewhere a bell rang – the soundtrack to an inner sense of relief. Just as well that Blipp’s manic gaze was firmly fixed on Bill, who managed to show no relief, as a greater picture of last-minute-reprieve-relief could not have been found, even in a Texan courtroom, than on Alan’s face.
For once, Blipp managed to speak slowly and deliberately, and all in the classroom heard it despite the dying sound of the bell. He held Bill’s gaze as he spoke.
“Stand up slowly class. Keep your hands where I can see them. File slowly and languidly into the hall. This isn’t over YET”
A collective chill swept through the class, despite the fact that two-thirds of the room has apparently been exonerated from blame. None felt the effects of the chilling words more than Bill. Blipp seemed a more potent threat now that he had seemingly regained his composure. Did he know the guilty secret of 5A? Was this all some terrible game to Blipp, to crank up the tension?
“You will all be back here in ten minutes – DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING FROM THIS ROOM”
Bill managed to shoot a furtive backward glance at Blipp as he turned the corner to exit the area of theft; the teacher had visibly crumbled. He was lying on his back on the floor dribbling at the mouth. Blipp had needed the tension-break as much as the students.
Alan hurried himself discreetly to fall into step with his compadre.
“Whew! That was a close one!” he exclaimed, as the two chums spilled out onto the playground. “I thought you were a goner in there for sure!”
“We’re not out of the woods yet Alan” said Bill, a look of grim determination coming over his face.
“Time is tight. We now have ten minutes to think of a way to remove the television, find out who tried to put me in the frame for the thievery, and identify the actual pilferer!”
“Superb!” exclaimed Alan, unable to keep the pure admiration for his steadfast chum from his voice.
True to form, when the bell sounded again for first lesson, a mere ten minutes had elapsed, although an air of quiet confidence surrounded the two classmates as they headed back to class. Alan and Bill had formulated a plan, which would hopefully restore the natural order of things to Popplesworth.
Bill took up his pre-arranged place as first in line for the classroom, tidily jostling Eddie Scamp out of pole position.
Further down the line of students filing into the classroom to be tutored in the ways of righteousness was Alan. Their path to enlightenment was blocked, however, as Alan fell over, causing much distraction and all eyes to be drawn towards his floorward progression. Alan’s flailing arms and loud cries of ‘aaarrgh!’ had a touch of slapstick about them, and given that Alan had managed to bring down several passing first years during his route to the deck, Blipp was in amongst the thick of things immediately. By the time Blipp had removed several first years from the melee by their ears or similar, the ultimate goal of the diversion had been achieved. Alan had ghosted into the classroom, and had begun to furiously head-butt the guilty television set. Within no time at all, Bill had nutted the TV into several manageable pieces, placing several large chunks of circuit board and broken glass into the now validated desk of Alan.
Several others he secreted about his person, most notably down his voluminous pants. Bill then tried to scatter the rest of the broken plastic and circuitry amongst the indigenous conkers and yoyos within his desk.
Alan had milked his moment in the spotlight for all it was worth, and now made his way slowly back to his desk. A comment was surreptitiously aimed in his direction en route.
“Good comedy fall” opined Dupont, a faint smile playing across his face as he pointed discreetly towards Bill.
However, that was all the student from across the Channel offered. The air of silence which always surrounded Dupont told Alan that, for reasons known only to the French pupil, the ‘Entente Cordiale’ was holding firm.
“Hmmmmmmmm” wondered Alan to himself, as he once more turned his attention towards Bill. The mission seemed to have been accomplished, and with not a moment to spare.
Blipp had now entered the arena of electrical chicanery that was Row 6, although to the two chums, his hovering form no longer represented the Angel of Death. He had begun motioning for the desk to be opened long before he had reached Bill’s workspace, who had duly obliged.
“What’s this?” said Blipp, surveying the electrical wreckage that littered the inside of Bill’s desk, apparently oblivious to the gashes which now marked his bloody brow.
“Why, it’s nothing sinister Mr Blipp” offered Bill. “Just collecting a few circuit boards for my Father, whose hobby is building up PC’s for disadvantaged children who can’t afford private tuition”, he said, as a piece of glass fell from his forehead.
The teacher on the edge of sanity began to fluster, but shuffled off to his next suspect, feeling his net tighten. By default, the equipment MUST be in one of the remaining three desks on the back row.
Alan and Bill exchanged a knowing glance. Bill’s quick thinking, his pants, and his brow of steel had saved him.
Blipp had moved onto the back row, where Eddie Scamp could be glimpsed proffering an unrequited chocolate hobnob to the teacher.
“Well, Alan” whispered Bill to his chum, “did you do as I asked?”
“Of course Bill. When Blippy opened your desk and found no apparent evidence of thievery, I looked around the room to see who reacted with the most surprise. Down there at the front, Wormsley nearly dropped through the floor!”
As always, Bill was impressed by the thoroughness with which his confidante Alan had executed his part of the plan.
“Good show Alan!” enthused Bill, punching him light-heartedly on the arm. “Why, yes, look at the miscreant now!” he said, gesturing subtly at Wormsley. “He still looks baffled and even paler than usual.”
Behind them, an unholy wail escaped from the unfortunate form teacher who had reached the end of his desk search empty-handed.
The two lads shot the suspect an icy glare in unison, to make it plain that they were on to his evil machinations.
“Come to think of it, I’m not surprised at all that Wormsley’s the thief” said Alan. He’s never once tried out for the rugger first fifteen, and I caught him looking at his watch during the last test match”.
Bill added to the character assessment “I’ve never liked him” he said. I’ve half a mind to give him a good punch on the nose before we turn him in”.
As Mr Blipp’s unconscious form was carried from the room, Alan chuckled. “Ha ha” he said. “Old Blippy will soon recover from his failure to catch the vile pilferer when I finish writing up my Head Boy’s report -including a detailed paragraph or two on the Wormsley evidence.”
“He hee” giggled Bill in support. “Wandering eyes during an Ashes series – whatever next.”
The substitute teacher’s attempt to capture the spirit of Blipp’s lecture went relatively unnoticed, especially to Alan, who spent the entire period beavering away on his report. Both chums were keenly awaiting the bell which would signal the beginning of their lunchtime questioning and medium-to-light bludgeoning of Wormsley.
Alan and Bill were surprised to find no trace of the suspected thief over lunch, and severely dejected, they trudged back to the classroom for afternoon lessons. However, it came as an even greater surprise to Bill when he opened his desk to find the severed head of Wormsley inside.
“Crikey” said Bill.
(c) Glyn James 2008