he said, “And by the way, if Charles Morgan, Nan Pilgrim and Nirupam Singh haven’t already looked at the main notice board, they should do so at once. They will find they are down for lunch on high table.”
Both Nan and Charles knew then that this was not just a bad day – it was the worst day ever. Miss Cadwallader sat at high table with any important visitors to the school. It was her custom to choose three pupils from the school every day to sit there with her. This was so that everyone should learn proper table manners, and so that Miss Cadwallader should get to know her pupils. It was rightly considered a terrible ordeal. Neither Nan nor Charles had ever been chosen before. Scarcely able to believe it, they went to check with the notice board. Sure enough it read: Charles Morgan 2Y, Dulcinea Pilgrim 2Y, Nirupam Singh 2Y.
Nan stared at it. So that was how everyone knew her name! Miss Cadwallader had forgotten. She had forgotten who Nan was and everything she had promised, and when she came to stick a pin in the register – or whatever she did to choose people for high table – she had simply written down the names that came under her pin.
Nirupam was looking at the notice too. He had been chosen before, but he was no less gloomy than Charles or Nan.
“You have to comb your hair and get your blazer clean,” he said. “And it really is true you have to eat with the same kind of knife or fork that Miss Cadwallader does. You have to watch and see what she uses all the time.”
Nan stood there, letting other people looking at the notices push her about. She was terrified. She suddenly knew she was going to behave very badly on high table. She was going to drop her dinner, or scream, or maybe take all her clothes off and dance among the plates. And she was terrified, because she knew she was not going to be able to stop herself.
She was still terrified when she arrived at high table with Charles and Nirupam. They had all combed their heads sore and tried to clean from the fronts of their blazers the dirt which always mysteriously arrives on the fronts of blazers, but they all felt grubby and small beside the stately company at high table. There were a number of teachers, and the Bursar, and an important-looking man called Lord Something-or-other, and tall, stringy Miss Cadwallader herself.
Miss Cadwallader smiled at them graciously and pointed to three empty chairs at her left side. All of them instantly dived for the chair furthest away from Miss Cadwallader. Nan, much to her surprise, won it, and Charles won the chair in the middle, leaving Nirupam to sit beside Miss Cadwallader.
“Now we know that won’t do, don’t we?” said Miss Cadwallader. “We always sit with a gentleman on either side of a lady, don’t we? Dulcimer must sit in the middle, and I’ll have the gentleman I haven’t yet met nearest me. Clive Morgan, isn’t it? That’s right.”
Sullenly, Charles and Nan changed their places. They stood there, while Miss Cadwallader was saying grace, looking out over the heads of the rest of the school, not very far below, but far enough to make a lot of difference. Perhaps I’m going to faint, Nan thought hopefully. She still knew she was going to behave badly, but she felt very odd as well – and fainting was a fairly respectable way of behaving badly.
She was still conscious at the end of grace. She sat down with the rest, between the glowering Charles and Nirupam. Nirupam had gone pale yellow with dread. To their relief, Miss Cadwallader at once turned to the important lord and began making gracious conversation with him. The ladies from the kitchen brought round a tray of little bowls and handed everybody one.
What was this? It was certainly not a usual part of school dinner. They looked suspiciously at the bowls. They were full of yellow stuff, not quite covering little pink things.
“I believe it may be prawns,” Nirupam said dubiously. “For a starter.”
Here Miss Cadwallader reached forth a gracious hand. Their heads at once craned round to see what implement she was going to eat out of the bowl with. Her hand picked up a fork. They picked up forks too. Nan poked hers cautiously into her bowl. Instantly she began to behave badly. She could not stop herself. “I think it’s custard,” she said loudly. “Do prawns mix with custard?” She put one of the pink things into her mouth. It felt rubbery. “Chewing gum?” she asked. “No, I think they’re jointed worms. Worms in custard.”
“Shut up!” hissed Nirupam.
“But it’s not custard,” Nan continued. She could hear her voice saying it, but there seemed no way to stop it. “The tongue-test proves that the yellow stuff has a strong taste of sour armpits, combined with – yes – just a touch of old drains. It comes from the bottom of a dustbin.”
Charles glared at her. He felt sick. If he had dared, he would have stopped eating at once. But Miss Cadwallader continued gracefully forking up prawns – unless they really were jointed worms – and Charles did not dare do differently. He wondered how he was going to put this in his journal. He had never hated Nan Pilgrim particularly before, so he had no code-word for her. Prawn? Could he call her prawn? He choked down another worm – prawn, that was – and wished he could push the whole bowlful in Nan’s face.
“A clean yellow dustbin,” Nan announced. “The kind they keep the dead fish for Biology in.”
“Prawns are eaten curried in India,” Nirupam said loudly.
Nan knew he was trying to shut her up. With a great effort, by cramming several forkfuls of worms – prawns, that was – into her mouth at once, she managed to stop herself talking. She could hardly bring herself to swallow the mouthful, but at least it kept her quiet. Most fervently, she hoped that the next course would be something ordinary, which she would not have any urge to describe, and so did Nirupam and Charles.
But alas! What came before them in platefuls next was one of the school kitchen’s more peculiar dishes. They produced it about once a month and its official name was hot-pot. With it came tinned peas and tinned tomatoes. Charles’s head and Nirupam’s craned towards Miss Cadwallader again to see what they were supposed to eat this with. Miss Cadwallader picked up a fork. They picked up forks too, and then craned a second time, to make sure that Miss Cadwallader was not going to pick up a knife as well and so make it easier for everyone. She was not. Her fork drove gracefully under a pile of tinned peas. They sighed, and found both their heads turning towards Nan then in a sort of horrified expectation.
They were not disappointed. As Nan levered loose the first greasy ring of potato, the urge to describe came upon her again. It was as if she was possessed.
“Now the aim of this dish,” she said, “is to use up leftovers. You take old potatoes and soak them in washing-up water that has been used at least twice. The water must be thoroughly scummy.” It’s like the gift of tongues! she thought. Only in my case it’s the gift of foul-mouth. “Then you take a dirty old tin and rub it round with socks that have been worn for a fortnight. You fill this tin with alternate layers of scummy potatoes and cat-food, mixed with anything else you happen to have. Old doughnuts and dead flies have been used in this case—”
Could his code-word for Nan be hot-pot? Charles wondered. It suited her. No, because they only had hot-pot once a month – fortunately – and, at this rate, he would need to hate Nan practically every day. Why didn’t someone stop her? Couldn’t Miss Cadwallader hear?
“Now these things,” Nan continued, stabbing her fork into a tinned tomato, “are small creatures that have been killed and cleverly skinned. Notice, when you taste them, the slight, sweet savour of their blood—”
Nirupam uttered a small moan and went yellower than ever.
The
