Ten of the Best: School Stories with a Difference - Wendy Cooling

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a big chin, but I had never imagined that I might look like a witch. And yet, after all, witches were even more wild and magical than fairies. Witches were dangerous, so being a witch at the school fancy-dress ball might be a bit of an adventure. I suddenly felt I might have a lot of fun being a witch.

      My father made me a pointed hat out of cardboard, rolling it, gluing it, and then painting it black. While I practised swishing a broomstick and cackling, my mother made me a black dress. I thought I was rather good at cackling, and perhaps I was. I certainly cackled as if I meant it. (I still do!)

      The great night came. All the school children turned out, ready to sing and dance and to surprise each other. And my mother was right. There were lots and lots of fairies, but only one wicked witch. Me! I showed off, skidding around on the slippery floor of the local hall, waving my broomstick and cackling loudly. The fairies slid away from me. Even the cowboys and Indians looked nervous. We danced the dances we had been taught to dance at school, we ate a small supper of scones and pikelets, and then the fancy-dress ball was over. The pink fairies became ordinary little girls once more. The cowboys and Indians disappeared. The cackling witch disappeared too – well, almost disappeared.

      The next day at school a few children called me, ‘Witchie!’ They didn’t really mean any harm. It was just ordinary teasing, and if I had been really clever I would have laughed and taken no notice. After all, anyone could see that I was just another one of the school children. Yet somehow or other the name-calling made the cackling witch spring to life in me once more. After all, if I kept on being a witch those two worlds – the everyday world and the storybook one – might melt into one another.

      ‘Yes,’ I told those other children, ‘I am a witch. I can do magic spells, and I also have a poisonous bite like a snake.’

      But my story just did not work in the school world. Other children caught up with me on my way home from school shouting, ‘Witch! Witch! Witch!’ at me. Some of them just wanted to tease me, but there were one or two of them who were actually angry with me, and one girl swung me round yelling, ‘Witch!’ into my very face. I grabbed her arm and bit her just to prove to everyone how poisonous my bite could be. How I longed to turn those shouting children into frogs! They would have respected me then. I would have been surrounded by hopping frogs, all croaking and pleading and promising that if only I turned them back into children, they would be my friends forever. The strange thing was that I wanted other children to like me.

      Anyhow, I certainly did not enjoy being a witch without magic, particularly when I was on my way home from school. Sometimes, I would run as I left the playground, making for home with other children chasing after me. Sometimes, I would turn in at strange gateways and hide on the verandas of houses that belonged to people I did not know. I would knock on doors, telling the astonished women who answered my knocking that other children were chasing me. The women would look down at me, puzzled and frowning, for they were busy, and of course they didn’t know just what was going on outside their gates. In any case, there was nothing they could do to save me. In the end I always had to go back to the street and keep running towards home. That story – the story of the witch with the poisonous bite – had certainly not worked out the way I had hoped it would. No one respected me because of it.

      All the same I learned something from all this – something which altered the way I felt about the adventures other people were having at school. And to this very day, more than fifty-five years later, I can still feel that lesson working in me.

      There were small shed-like shelters in our playground into which we were expected to cram ourselves if it began to rain while we were outside at playtime, and during one particular break I joined a group of children to torment another girl. I have no idea to this day why we ganged up on her, and do not even remember her name. I only know that we drove her into one of the shelter-sheds, pointed at her and cried out a nonsense rhyme that I still remember:

       Stare! Stare! Like a bear,

       Sitting in a monkey’s chair.

       When the chair began to crack

       All the fleas ran up YOUR back.

      I was really enjoying being part of that chorus and part of that gang, all shouting and pointing. For once I felt I was a true part of the playground world. The girl leaped on to one of the seats in the shelter-shed and flattened herself against the wall. Suddenly, as I chanted and pointed, along with all the others, I remembered what it had been like a few weeks earlier when I was the one who was being chased, with other kids shouting, ‘Witch! Witch! Witch!’ as they ran after me. My arm flopped down at my side and I stopped chanting. If I had been a true hero I would have tried to rescue that girl who was hemmed in in the shelter-shed, but I was just too scared to try. I simply walked away.

      You might think that these things – the things that happened to me and the things I saw happening to other people – might have taught me to be more sensible. No way! Though I no longer wanted to be a witch with a poisonous bite, I still wanted the everyday world to become marvellous around me. I still wanted to be the hero of some story. Day followed day in an ordinary real-world way, and then, suddenly, I had (once again) a chance to transform myself in storybook fashion. But (once again) it did not work out in the way I had hoped it would.

      This time it began, not with a fancy-dress ball, but with a film that came to our local cinema. It was The Jungle Book, the story of an Indian boy, Mowgli, who, lost in the jungle when he was a baby, was adopted by wolves. Mowgli grew up among animals and learned to speak their languages, so that he could talk not only to wolves but to tigers, monkeys and snakes, as well. I loved that film. I was changed by it. Indeed, I loved it so much that I tried to make it come true for me in the everyday school-playground world.

      At that time there were English children at my school – children who had been sent to live with New Zealand grandparents, so that they would escape the bombing of London. I stole part of their true story, stole part of Rudyard Kipling’s invented story and twisted them into a story of my own. ‘I flew out from London,’ I told other children in the school playground, ‘but the plane crashed in the jungle. I was found by wolves and I lived with them there in the jungle, learning to speak the language of the animals.’ This wasn’t just an invented story (I declared). It was true.

      Things began slowly. I tried out this story on one or two children who told other children and my story spread around the school. Soon little groups began to challenge me once more. I did my best to prove that what I claimed was true. I invented a sort of mumbling, nonsense language which I tried out on passing dogs. When the dogs looked at me in astonishment I declared that they could understand what I was saying, but this only made the other children shout with laughter. I grew more and more determined to show them that I really belonged to the magical world of animals. What do animals do? They eat. What do they eat? I began eating grass and leaves and drinking from roadside puddles, just as some animals did, trying to prove I was truly linked to them. It was the only proof I could think of at the time.

      Even when I began eating grass the other children at school were all far too sensible to believe my story. But boys and girls began to come up to me in the playground bringing handfuls of leaves and berries. ‘Eat this!’ they would demand, thrusting something – a dock leaf or a dandelion – towards me and I would eat whatever they waved in my face. I had to. I remember how some leaves burned my tongue and how horrible some of the berries tasted. However, I did not hesitate for a moment. I found out, years later, that the teachers at school knew what was going on out in the playground, but none of them interfered, though for all they knew some of the leaves and berries I was eating could have been poisonous. Once again that school playground seemed to stretch itself out all the way between school and my home. ‘Eat this! Eat this!’ other children cried as we walked home, thrusting out their grass and leaves and berries, and I would chew and then swallow whatever they offered me.

      Chasing a witch with a poisonous bite can become a little boring after a while and so can the sight of someone eating leaves and drinking out of puddles. But just as other children were growing tired of seeing me eat leaves I accidentally did something that excited them all over again. I ate a

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