Why? Why had they trusted him? He continually misbehaved. From the moment he’d emerged from the bush in the playground, he had done nothing but try to land the boys in trouble. The first day he came up to visit their school, he played enough pranks to last the entire year.
He turned up to some classes in fancy dress and mocked the teachers behind their backs. He sat on teachers’ laps, wrote rude words and drew funny pictures on the
blackboards. The teachers would then ask who was responsible for the graffiti? And, as they tried to discover who the culprit was, he would stand next to them at the front of the class, with his hands on his hips and a frown upon his face, as he disapprovingly shook his head from side- to-side. He would stare at the boys and laugh as he wiggled his hips and give them a double thumbs up. The boys looked away as they struggled not to laugh.
He also had a tendency for changing subject books during lessons, partly to confuse the teachers, but also to see if the boys could contain themselves.
During one such lesson (on Greek gods), Mrs Halligan was
standing at the front and addressing the class in her normal manner – arms folded across her chest and a stern expression on her face, while she surveyed the room to ensure they were giving her their undivided attention.
As she was telling one boy to stop prodding the girl in front of him and pay attention, Terry reached up and removed the book on Greek mythology, which lay on her desk, and replaced it with one hidden down his top. He stood and watched as Mrs Halligan reached behind her, grabbed the book, and brought it around to the front, ready to show the class. As she continued to talk to the students, she opened
the book and stopped. She was not staring at Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war as she was expecting, but a step-by-step guide on how to make the perfect Cornish pasty.
