Lulu and the Duck in the Park (6 page)

    “It really is!” said Mellie. “It really, really is a real actual duckling!”

“Weep,” insisted the duckling.

“What does it want?”

“Could it want a drink?” wondered Lulu. She wet her finger and held it so that a drop of warm water touched the duckling’s beak.

“Weep!” it said, and swallowed the drop, and then another and another, and then it fluttered with sudden energy, and stepped out of its shell.

Lulu and Mellie forgot the classroom. They forgot Mrs. Holiday and
Harry Potter.
They forgot the guinea pig and the park. They sat on the cold bathroom floor with the hat nest between them, and for a long time all they said was: “Look!” and “Oh!” and “did you see that?”

In the classroom Mrs. Holiday was having a hard time. Class Three said she was not reading
Harry Potter
properly. They knew this was true because they had all seen the movie. They kept putting up their hands to complain, saying things like:

“Are you skipping bits, Mrs. Holiday?” and, “She’s not skipping bits, she’s putting extra bits in,” and, “when will we get to the train?” and, “My mom read it to me and there was nothing about drills,” and, “Hagrid didn’t talk like that!”

It seemed to poor Mrs. Holiday that every time she looked up, dozens of hands were waving in the air. Each hand was attached to a complaining listener.

“If you would like me to read you a book that has not been made into a movie, I can do that very easily,” said Mrs. Holiday at last, and picked up
Key Stage 2 Mental Math.

The waving hands vanished and Harry Potter’s adventures continued. But after a while the questions began again.

“Is this book true?” and, “Mrs. Holiday, can you do magic?” and, “I’ve never seen an owl.”

“
I’ve
never seen a rat.”

“I’ve never seen a
toad.”

“I’ve never seen an owl, or a rat, or a toad!”

“Hands down!” roared Mrs. Holiday, unable to bear one second more. “Yes, you too, Henry! Whatever it is, I don’t want to know!”

So Henry sat quietly and did not tell her that the guinea pig was out until it actually vanished along the windowsill and out of the window.

That was why it wasn’t for a while, not until the guinea pig was tracked down and recaptured, and the window closed, and everyone sitting quietly on their hands doing mental math, that Mrs. Holiday remembered Lulu and Mellie.

“We have to go back to class,” Mellie was saying to Lulu. “I have to anyway, otherwise Mrs. Holiday will think you are sick. I’m surprised she hasn’t remem—”

That was when Mrs. Holiday charged into the bathroom.

Mrs. Holiday stood in the bathroom doorway and looked down at Lulu and Mellie and the duckling, all together on the bathroom floor, and her mouth opened and closed and opened and closed like a duck that had lost its quack.

“Lulu!” she said at last.

“Mrs. Holiday,” said Lulu earnestly. “I didn’t bring this duckling to school. I didn’t bring any animal to school. I promise I didn’t.”

“Please don’t swap the guinea pig for those awful stick insects,” pleaded Mellie.

“It was only an egg when I picked it up,” explained Lulu. “You can’t call an egg an animal.”

“Lots of people bring eggs to school,” pointed out Mellie. “Packed lunches.”

“Weep!” said the duckling. “It rolled out from the bush where the white-winged duck had her nest,” said Lulu. “I picked it up just before it got smashed on the path. All the other eggs were broken. I was going to take it to the vet.”

“Oh, Lulu,” said Mrs. Holiday, sighing.

“She made it a hat nest to keep it safe,” said Mellie. “But it hatched anyway.”

“Where did it hatch?” asked Mrs. Holiday. “Under my sweater,” said Lulu.

“Lulu,” said Mrs. Holiday, “I have been teaching in schools for twenty-seven years. In all those twenty-seven years, no one has ever hatched a duckling under their sweater...”

Mrs. Holiday paused to take a very clean folded handkerchief out from her pocket. She dabbed it carefully at the corner of each of her eyes.

“...as far as I know,” said Mrs. Holiday, and dabbed her eyes again.

Was she laughing, or was she crying? Lulu and Mellie could not tell.

“Well,” said Mrs. Holiday, putting her handkerchief away and becoming her old bossy self again. “This is no place for a duckling. It belongs in the park. Maybe... maybe... You girls wait here!”

With that she was gone, and Lulu and Mellie were left staring at each other.

“Was she angry?” wondered Lulu, but Mellie shook her head and said she did not know.

The duckling was crying again. “weep, weep.”

A lost, unhappy sound.

Lulu looked around the room. She saw bright, shabby paint and the underside of sinks. Drain pipes and tiles. A notice on the door: DON’T FORGET TO WASH YOUR HANDS!

Mrs. Holiday is right,
Lulu thought.
This is no place for a duckling.

She was still thinking this when Mrs. Holiday came back. She was carrying a box and she was in a great rush.

“We have twenty-five minutes until the bell rings,” she told Lulu and Mellie. “Hurry up! The secretary has very kindly agreed to stay with Class Three (heaven help her). Get your jackets, girls, and we will go back to the park. Perhaps we can find the duck with the white wing and give her back her duckling again.”

In no time the duckling was rushed into the box.

The secretary was given Mrs. Holiday’s exotic cookie tin to use as a last resort.

And then Lulu and Mellie and Mrs. Holiday set off to find the duck with the white wing, in spring sunshine that felt as warm as summer.

The park was as quiet as if nothing had happened. The paths were swept clean of spoiled nests and broken shells. The flower beds were tidy again. No huge silly dogs tore through the bushes. No children squealed in the bandstand. On the lake the ducks were almost silent. Some of them slept on the little islands, one eye open, one leg tucked up. Little chains of ducklings looped in and out of the reeds at the edge.

“Measuring the perimeter,” said Mellie.

But on the bank by the bandstand a brown duck with a white wing searched among the bushes. Searched and searched, and called and called.