Chapter 8.
Fortunately we only went through the Minuet a couple of times, then Ms Cutter chose the people to do it in the production. We were secretly relieved about this, as even Sarah was doubtful about being able to convince some of the boys to dance.
‘What sort of costume would we be wearing?’ Aaron asked. ‘We don’t have to wear tights, do we? Because if we do, then no way am I going to do it.’ The other boys nodded in agreement.
‘How about we wear medieval suits of armour complete with broadswords and sabres?’ Jason asked hopefully.
‘I thought perhaps some type of tunic or tabards,’ Ms Cutter said hesitantly, and the boys all fell about making vomiting noises. Mike pretended to faint and a couple of them went all mutinous and there were mutters of ‘no way am I going to dance, anyway.’
Even Ms Cutter could see there was going to be a big problem with this so she sighed. ‘All right then. I suppose that riding gear would be acceptable. By that I mean leather boots and trousers and a shirt with a collar.’
‘We could wear jeans,’ suggested Jason.
‘No, not jeans.’
‘But Ms Cutter…’
‘No way are you wearing jeans. Not at all. No.’
‘But Ms Cutter…’
‘What part of no don’t you understand, Jason?’
Rangi said, ‘I’ve got a neat pair of white gumboots that used to belong to my cousin when he worked at the freezing works, before he got laid off.’
Ms Cutter said, ‘No thank you, Rangi. Those are not the sort of boots I had in mind. I was thinking of riding boots.’
So in the end Ms Cutter had to choose boys who went to Pony Club and had the right sort of gear or else who could borrow it from their sisters.
Some of the boys wanted to wear swords for the Minuet but Ms Cutter said ‘no, definitely not,’ and then the bell went and we had to go to Science. The best part was she had been so busy telling the boys off she forgot to give us any homework. I was sure she would make up for it the next lesson though!
The boys who were doing the fight scene from Romeo and Juliet were going to use swords, much to their delight, and Mr Sadler offered to give them lessons after school in the gym on Friday afternoon. All of us girls wanted to watch so practically the whole class turned up. Mr Sadler looked pleased we were so keen.
‘I’m happy to show you how to do this,’ he began ‘I used to do a fair bit of fencing when I was younger.’
Hamish sniggered. ‘Do you favour wooden strainer posts or concrete ones, sir?’ he asked. Mr Sadler frowned. He told Hamish to come into his office and they went in and shut the door. We listened really hard but we couldn't hear anything. The boys were all hoping he would be walloping Hamish as there is a rumour that Mr Sadler keeps a leather strap in his office, even though none of us has actually seen it. No such luck. It sounded like he was just telling Hamish off. There certainly weren’t any screams of pain. After a couple of minutes they came out again. ‘Right, let’s start again,’ Mr Sadler said. All the boys stood up except Hamish.
‘Aren’t you coming to learn to fight?’ asked Mike.
Hamish muttered something we couldn’t quite hear but it soon became apparent that he was going to be a tree in the production instead.
Mr Sadler started by teaching the boys different movements and told them how to hold their heads and where to put their feet.
‘It looks a bit like one of our ballet classes,’ Ruby whispered to Theadora. Fortunately, none of the boys heard her or I wouldn’t have liked to open her lunchbox for a week or so. There would have been bound to be spiders or beetles in it!
‘Everyone please find a partner, take a stick and hold them still, I said still Mike,’ instructed Mr Sadler. ‘We will now do some fencing moves. Make sure you don’t connect with your opponent. I have no wish to explain to your parents why you have all gone home from school injured. It wouldn’t look too good on my resumé.’ He grinned at us. We all like Mr Sadler. ‘It will still look very effective, particularly if you practise with your partner so he knows what to expect and how to react to it.’
When they finally started the fighting with the bamboo sticks, it looked awesome! Mr Sadler made them practise so they got really good at slashing and ducking. Occasionally someone would forget to duck in time and get whacked on the head with the bamboo and there would be a howl of pain from whoever's head it was. They looked pretty impressive though, as Mr Sadler made them stand tall and put one hand on their hip and turn sideways. That’s to make yourself into a smaller target for the other person to hit. I guess it makes sense. Probably makes it easier to turn and run away as well, if the truth be told.
Even though Mr Sadler just used pieces of bamboo to practise with instead of swords, the boys made some really brilliant ones in woodwork. They painted them silver with spray paint and glued on bits of coloured glass and wrapped cord around the handles so they looked really authentic. Only thing is, they were not very strong so the fighting had to be pretend. You know, lots of ‘take that,’ and ‘hah,’ and ‘have at you,’ while they waved the swords around but didn’t actually connect with each other.
Everyone was pretty stoked with the fight scene. Mr Saddler said, ‘You boys don’t need any more rehearsals as you can practise on your own or in groups now, and it will look better if it is free and natural and not too over-rehearsed.’
That was a relief. The one thing the Dance/Drama production was not going to be was over-rehearsed. It was hard to get all the kids along to rehearsals what with music lessons and sports practises. All the teachers had decided that the end of the year was a good time to put on special performances or competitions so some of the kids had to practise their piano or flute playing for hours on end or go to extra lessons. The cricket trials were held as well and the boys went around muttering things like ‘silly mid-on’ and ‘bowled out.’ Plus there were the usual things like physio appointments and people getting detentions or being off sick and staying home from school.
Not that anyone in our family ever gets to stay off school because of sickness. In our house you need a coroner’s certificate before you get to stay home.
I’ll go,
‘Mum, I’ve got a really bad headache today so can I stay home?’
And she’ll go,
‘Oh, is it the Maths test today? You should have done more work for it. Bad luck, you’re going to school.’
Dad’s not much better. If I say I have to stay home because I have a cold he tells me how when he was young they had to go to school every day even if they were half dead of pneumonia. And that meant walking forty miles barefoot through the snow on two broken legs etc. etc.
Sarah’s parents are really nice. They let her stay home whenever she wants to only she hardly ever gets sick. If she does, it’s much more glamorous that anything the rest of us get. She gets gastroenteritis when the rest of us have a twenty-four hour tummy bug. We chuck and heave but she just lies in bed to recover, looking pale and interesting and having special foods cooked for her. Can't see that happening in our house.
‘Mum, I’m not feeling well. I’d really like some roast chicken.’
‘Well, fancy that! I’d really like some roast chicken as well.’
‘Can I have some then?’ (Hopefully)
‘No, I don’t happen to have any roast chicken at the moment. Eat up your mince and stop complaining.’
After Labour Weekend, Ms Cutter, the cow, decided it would be a good idea if we read a different one or even two of Shakespeare’s plays each weekend for homework, then spent part of a lesson reading bits of them and discussing them in class. Erk. As if we didn’t have enough to do already. She chose the plays we were doing for our production and said,
‘This will help to give you a deeper understanding of the Bard so you can put on a more meaningful performance. I would like you to find a quote from each of the plays and put it into the sort of language we use today.’ There were gasps of horror at this and some very dir
ty looks were directed at Sarah for being the cause of the whole thing. Fortunately for her, the quote idea didn’t last long. The headmaster made one of his unannounced class visits just then.
‘Carry on, carry on. Don’t mind me. Just pretend I’m not here,’ he said jovially, walking to the back of the room where we could all feel his gimlet eyes boring into our backs. He does this from time to time, does Mr Micklejohn. He seems to think the class will go on as normal but all it means is that we all start being really polite to the teachers and each other. The teachers don’t tend to yell at us with him in the room either, so it’s not all bad.
Ms Cutter simpered and asked, ‘Has anyone found a good quote that they would like to share with the rest of the class?’
To everyone’s amazement Mike put his hand up.
‘Yes Mike?’ asked Ms Cutter, pasting an interested smile on her face.
‘What bloody man is that?’ said Mike.
You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone sat there in shock and Ms Cutter went absolutely rigid. She drew in a deep breath then realised that she could hardly do her usual screaming act in front of the headmaster. Her eyes glittered dangerously.
‘Mike Savage, you will apologise for that remark immediately.’
‘But it’s Shakepeare, Ms Cutter,’ protested Mike.
‘I’ve never heard such…’
‘I’ll handle this,’ said Mr Micklejohn, striding forward to stand beside Mike. The rest of us cowered cravenly in our seats and tried not to cringe too obviously as he walked past us. ‘Shakespeare is it?’
‘Yes, sir. Macbeth. Act 1, Scene 2,’ said Mike with an expression of injured innocence.
‘Is that so?’ barked Mr Micklejohn, who obviously had no idea whether it was or not. A few people opened their copies of MacBeth and started frantically looking it up.
‘Yes, and I can put it in modern language too. I’m buggered if I know who that f…’ began Mike. At that point Mr Micklejohn marched over and grabbed Mike by the ear between a finger and thumb and led him out to the corridor where we could hear him still protesting, ‘I was only doing what Ms Cutter asked us to do. It was Shakespeare. It was a quote. She told us to do it…’ getting fainter and fainter as they disappeared down the corridor to the headmaster’s office. The bell went then so Ms Cutter told us we could go and made off hot foot to the staffroom.
We groaned and yawned though all seven of the plays. I didn’t find it too bad as I had read them all already to find the bits we were using in the show. The boys liked the bits where some of the characters insulted others and went round saying things like, ‘stay, on thy peril,’ and ‘fie upon it.’
We all got into the spirit of it and it became an unofficial competition to see who could come up with the best insult for the day. Brian was overseeing the rehearsing of the fairy scene one Monday lunchtime when Gemma grabbed his arm to get his attention.
‘Unhand me, thou cream-faced loon,’ said Brian grandly.
‘How dare you insult me like that?’ Gemma gasped.
‘It’s a quote from Shakespeare,’ Brian told her kindly.
‘You are a disgusting, horrible beast,’ fumed Gemma.
‘Is that a quote too?’ asked Brian, knowing quite well that it wasn’t.
Gemma was furious and turned and walked out without another word. The rehearsal was nice and peaceful after that but we knew it wouldn’t last. All afternoon we saw groups of ballet girls whispering together and they all sulked and pouted at Brian for the rest of the week. Fortunately he was too busy to look up any other good insults to quote at them so things finally settled down again.
Every time we had English, and Ms Cutter asked if we had done our homework, at least one of the boys would pipe up, ‘I have done the deed.’
Ms Cutter got pretty sick of it after a while and screamed at them,
‘You are grating all my days of quiet with turbulent and dangerous lunacy,’ which we all thought was showing off dreadfully. She then told us it was what the king had said about Hamlet and we all looked as bored as we could until she yelled at us to start doing comprehension. I hope we don’t get her again next year.