CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE WONDERS OF EDUCATION

Griselda finds her future at Scrumblenose University is seriously threatened....

   That first day, as the sun dawned over the ancient buildings that formed Scrumblenose University, promised to be one of rapid learning so far as Griselda was concerned. It had to be because her last formal education had been years and years earlier when she had been a small child and her navy blue knickers had habitually fallen round her ankles as a consequence of the poor elastic available in those far off days, a manufacturing poverty which had been a major source of amusement to many of the boys in her class and their slightly soiled little minds. But those days were long behind her and the knickers but a vague memory, and she had barely thought of them for more years than she cared to remember. Some things are best left to sink out of memory, and the underwear of long ago was one of them, especially navy blue school knickers.

Now she was back on what she looked on as a potential treadmill that she’d have to do something about it or suffer the consequences �" and she had no plans to suffer anything. She wasn’t the suffering sort! But she did know that although the University of life might have equipped her with many an essential skill it had left vast parts of the curriculum untouched. In particular, it was fifty years since she had last picked up a book, and that had been one of the top shelf variety that displayed monochrome and barely dressed young men disporting their musculature whilst wearing bulging underwear and gesticulating with outstretched hands at nothing in the distance. Studying might, she thought, require some short-cuts.

After the assembly in the hall she made her way to the students’ common room where she immediately bumped into the young man she called Spotty (she didn't like the name Lucifer) from the Treehuggers band of weirdos, (that latter being her own mental description). It had crossed her mind that she might need some gentle assistance with her studies, and he might be a likely candidate and to her joy she immediately discovered that his stammer seemed to be slightly on the mend, which boded well for any communication she felt she might need to have with him in the future. During her first brief meeting with him she'd found it most trying waiting for him to conclude even relatively simple sentences. It had been a case of she knew what he was saying and had even worked out her response, but in time to forget it.

“What happened to you last n-n-night?” he asked. “We had a whale of a time, and manna descended on us from the h-h-heavens like in the good book!”

“I came with my elderly friend,” she told him. “You remember? It was her bed-time so I had to lead the poor old soul away”

Then he banged the flat of one hand against his forehead and nodded whilst his face lit up with a brilliant smile. “Of course!” he almost shouted.

She looked at him and decided that cruelty would be better than kindness. Delusion, she thought to herself, delusion is an evil this youth could do without. He'll be better for the truth. It'll make a man of him, and that'll probably do him more good in the long run than would p***y footing around talking about miracles and all that nonsense. And anyway, I don’t like the way he’s prone to shouting when it plain isn’t necessary!

“It was semen,” she said. “The stuff that sometimes comes out of your … well, you know what part of you I mean. I suppose it's all right if you like that sort of thing, but I found it messy and irritating.”

“Pardon?” he asked, clearly puzzled.

“You heard. It was semen, young man, that came like manna from the heavens because that's what you asked for in the clearing in the wood, with the shadows all around and what you saw as magic in the air. You asked for the juice of life, remember? You implored a tree! Surely you haven’t forgotten because I’ll bet the tree hasn’t! But I prefer to call it semen rather than manna because that’s what it was - and that's what you got!

“It can't...” His face went pale as though some terrible affliction was about to take his spirit and soul and dash what was left to the floor.

“Oh, but it can,” she purred. “You see, I know these things. It comes with age!”

“But you're younger than me!” he almost shouted. “H-h-how can you say when it c-c-comes with age when you're too young to have any age!”

She grinned at him but made a mental note to be careful how she behaved when she was in one of her increasingly fascinating alter egos. In reality she knew what she was: a decrepit old woman with warts, but when she adopted the persona of the young woman she fondly looked upon as her own niece it was easy to forget the reality. “I’m old in experience,” she murmured obliquely. “Anyway, I was telling you about taking the air… it’s so good for you, you know, the brisk evening air … it clears the mind … you’ll have to come with me some time. I discovered a nice little place, hidden away, it is, with trees and fields … you’d like it there, I know you would!”

“I-I-I would?” he blushed. She could tell, by the uncomfortable expression on his face and the way he furtively glanced down at the brevity of her little tartan mini-skirt that he was getting ideas beyond those involved in tree hugging.

“But I...” his voice was strangled in his throat and his eyes bulged like onions trying to leave the sockets on his face.

She was about to start calming him down because it was obvious to her that his hormones were being encouraged to overwhelm his decency when the door was flung open and Professor Stroggleoff stormed in.

“Hey! Prof!” protested one of the more senior students. “This is students only, remember?”

“Sod you!” snarled the professor, his almost uncontrollable beard seeming to fly in every direction at the same time and his eyes flaring and flashing as if he was a mare in foal. “It’s that b***h I’m after!” and he raged up to Griselda as if he might throttle her without further ado.

“Wh-wh-who are you calling a b***h?” demanded Spotty, pushing himself forwards, rather bravely, thought Griselda, seeing that he was challenging the Principal who probably had powers that could instantly dismiss the wretched youth and send him hurtling into no-man’s-land the other side of the College walls at the drop of a hat.

“Keep your nose out of matters that don’t concern you!” snapped Professor Stroggleoff. “This female … female … female harridan has threatened the veracity of my University, my noble house of learning, my temple of knowledge, and she’s not going to get away with it!”

Griselda could see that Spotty was on the verge of leaping to her defence and he went up in her estimation to the extent that she thought she might take him for the wild pleasures of fresh air in the lands around the college, but first she had better take command of a situation that was already showing signs of getting ugly.

“It’s all right,” she whispered at him, and then she turned and flashed a brilliant smile at the beetroot-faced Professor. “What have I done to upset you this time?” she purred.

“You know!” he barked. “And as of this moment you are expelled! I order you to go from this place, now, this moment, and take your wretched chattels with you, and depart whilst you still have the breath in you to do so!”

There was a silence in the room, one that Griselda barely noticed because she became aware of a force, one that she could neither understand nor counter, lifting her from the floor she had been standing on, just an inch or two, nothing melodramatic, and edging her towards the still open door. And it was as though she had been frozen, made immobile, had the will to control her movements erased from her being. There was nothing she could do, and as she passed the Professor she read, in his gleaming eyes and on his lips as they protruded from the depths of a white beard, that she had better learn not to challenge her betters or she would come to a very sticky ending indeed.

She understood the message, all right, but couldn't find it in her heart to agree with it. And so, with no control herself and unable to do one thing about it, she moved like a skater teetering just above the ice towards the door of the students' common room and out, towards the front entrance of Scrumblenose University where she would find herself expelled before her lessons had even begun.

But she was sure as sure could be that her removal would be a very temporary thing indeed. She hadn't finished with her education yet!