Painting the Tank and other stories

By Stone de Rouffignac

‘I hope they’ve got curry sauce,’ said Liz.

‘Nah,’ replied Becky. ‘That’s only in Indian chippys.’

‘Mushy peas, then.’

‘Only in Yorkshire chippys,’ said Becs.

‘Rebecca goes to boarding school, she’s fifteen years old, she’s got her GCSEs this year and she’s bored...’

At least, that’s what it said at the beginning of book one. Now it’s a year later, she’s sixteen, her GCSEs are over and she’s just started on her A levels, but she still manages to find time for another four adventures with the same crowd of friends that you met in the previous stories.

This is the second book in the Rebecca series.

Now read on...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paperweight Press
• Release date: Oct 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781903477182

Stone de Rouffignac

Stone de Rouffignac is a pseudonym.The real Stone de Rouffignac taught physics for more than thirty years, variously in a coeducational boarding school, an international school, and two girls’ day schools.

Book preview

PAINTING THE TANK

and other stories

‘Rebecca goes to boarding school, she’s fifteen years old, she’s got her GCSEs this year and she’s bored…’

At least, that’s what it said at the beginning of book one. Now it’s a year later, she’s sixteen, her GCSEs are over and she’s just started on her A levels, but she still manages to find time for another four adventures with the same crowd of friends that you met in the previous stories.

This is the second book in the Rebecca series.

Now read on…

By the same author

Over the Top and other stories

(Rebecca Series book 1)

Painting the Tank and other stories

(Rebecca Series book 2)

Sinking the Ship and other stories

(Rebecca Series book 3)

Taking the Plunge and other stories

(Rebecca Series book 4)

8 is Three Twos—Complicated

The Text—A short school story

PAINTING THE TANK

and other stories

Stone de Rouffignac

Copyright © Stone de Rouffignac, 2000

First published in 2002 by

Paperweight Press

Springfield House, 5 Spring Hill Terrace, Whitby, North Yorkshire, YO21 1EG

This edition published in 2015 by Paperweight Press

The moral right of the author, writing under the name of Stone de Rouffignac, is asserted according to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Stone de Rouffignac is a pseudonym

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Conditions of sale:

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-903477-18-2

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

A.N.U.S.

Painting the Tank

A Tight Spot

The Long Puddle

Thank You!

About the Author

Extract of Sinking the Ship

Author’s Note

All these stories are fiction, and so are the characters, but each story is based on events which actually happened.

The stories are all set in the 1990s, when there were no mobile phones (you had to find a phone box) and Year 11 was called Fifth-form.

Each story is self-contained, but they make a lot more sense if they are read in the order in which they appear in the book.

Remember that this is the second book in the series.

A.N.U.S.

September…

Becky

---

‘We’re going to A.N.U.S!’

Cobley slammed into the dorm, and I sat up so quickly I hit my head on the shelf above Damien’s bed. Hard.

‘For God’s sake, Cobley!’ I hissed. ‘Why do you have to rush around frightening the life out of people! Anyway,’ I went on, ‘you’re not even supposed to be in here. Go away!’

‘Look who’s talking!’ retorted Cobley. ‘If I’m not supposed to be in here, you certainly aren’t. Perhaps I should mention it to Mrs Bagshott!’

‘You wouldn’t!’

‘Wouldn’t I?’

‘Cobley,’ said Damien. ‘Sit down and have some toast, and tell us what you’ve come to say, and don’t breathe a word to Mrs Bagshott, or I will personally break your stupid neck!’

Mrs Bagshott is my housemistress, and it was only because I knew she’d gone to town in her car that I had dared to be where I was, because Cobley was right, I was Not, with a capital N, supposed to be there.

We were in Top Steps Dorm, which is home to six boys in upper-sixth. Cobley is still in fifth-form, although he’s sixteen, and I’m now in lower-sixth, so neither of us should have been there just for that reason alone, but whereas Cobley would probably get off with a good talking to if he was caught, I stood a serious chance of being expelled if Mrs B. found out, because it is absolutely forbidden for girls to visit the boys’ dorms!

And I don’t think it’s fair! It’s not as if me and Damey were doing anything—you know what I mean! I only went there for some toast and coffee. Honest!

I’m serious! No girl would be stupid enough to do that in one of the dorms. Not in the middle of the afternoon. Not even my sister, and she’s pretty stupid. No, I went there for two reasons. The first was for the toast and coffee, because Jules, silly cow, had tried to toast muffins in our toaster, even though it’s only designed for sliced bread. Of course, they got stuck and the whole lot went up in flames! And Mrs B. won’t let us have a new one until we’ve suffered for at least a week! The second reason was because it’s against the rules! Well, you have to have some excitement, and what are rules for if not for breaking! And I wanted to see Damien, of course!

But then that prat Cobley had barged in and spoilt it!

Anyway, we could see he was desperate to tell us something important, so we made him wait until all the toast was done, and then we let him speak.

‘We’re going to A.N.U.S.’

‘What on earth,’ said Damien, ‘is A.N.U.S?’

‘Not what? It’s a place!’

‘Where on earth,’ I said, ‘is A.N.U.S?’

‘Scotland.’

‘Scotland?’

‘Scotland. It’s a cave.’

‘Then it is what!’ cried Damien.

‘It’s where as well!’

‘Cobley!’

‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘We’ll shut up and listen, and you can just tell us all about it. OK?’

‘Right. A.N.U.S. is an abbreviation. It stands for Allt nan Uamh Stream cave, and it’s in Gaelic.’

‘And…’

‘Listen! It’s on the slopes of Ben More Assynt, it’s 400 miles away from school, and we’re going there in two weekends time. With Ventures.’

‘Who is?’

‘Well, I am, and you can if you want, and anyone else until the minibus is full.’

‘Who says?’ I was getting cross again. I’m on the committee, but this was the first I’d heard of it.

‘Mr Rundle. Tony. I’ve just been talking to him.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘In the car park.’

I stormed out. I was going to give Mr Rundle a piece of my mind! You can tell what sort of state I was in, because I rushed straight down the steps without even checking to see if the coast was clear first, and I’d only just got to the bottom when Mr Plant, our chemistry teacher, loomed round the corner! He looked at me over the rim of his spectacles—he always does that when he suspects something—but he didn’t say anything so I just kept going and didn’t stop until I reached the car park.

I looked around. No sign of Tony. If Cobley had been making this up…

Then I saw the feet, sticking out from under the minibus. I closed the distance, and spoke.

‘Is that you?’

‘No, it’s somebody else. Go away!’

‘It is you! Is it true?’

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘No, it isn’t true.’

‘What isn’t true?’

‘Whatever you wanted to ask me! Rebecca, haven’t you got anything better to do than stand around asking stupid questions?’

‘Oh!’ I said, pleased. ‘How did you know it was me?’

‘Because I’m not likely to be having this sort of conversation with anyone else.’

Now I wasn’t sure what to think. Was he paying me a compliment, or was it an insult? I decided it would be safest to ignore it.

‘Cobley says we’re going to Scotland.’

‘Does he, indeed?’

‘Yes, and it’s the first I’ve heard about it, and I’m supposed to be on the committee, and I don’t think it’s fair, and…’

‘Becky, calm down. Nobody’s going anywhere unless I can fix this fuel pipe, but it might be a possibility for the committee to discuss. I’ve got a book about it which might interest you. Why don’t you get the others together and you can all have a look at it, later tonight.’

Thus appeased, I went back to tell Damien. Cobley had gone so we were alone, but I thought I’d better not risk staying there any longer. Instead we went to find Greg to fix up an extraordinary committee meeting for after supper. Greg is now our chairman, having taken over from Bianca when she left school at the end of last term. He’s in upper-sixth, like Damien, so this is his final year at school too. If you remember, I said he was a very quiet lad, and he still is, but in quite a dignified way. He’s eighteen already, and I’m sure some of the young kids in first-form think he’s one of the teachers!

Mind you, Damien has changed a lot since I first joined Ventures. He used to play the fool most of the time, but now he’s more responsible. Perhaps that’s my influence! He still plays rugby, but it’s not the only thing he thinks about. He has another interest!

Having said that, I still feel guilty about what I did to Zak. You probably remember I was going out with this guy from another school, and we’d been together for about six months when Damien took my hand during a hike and I realized things had changed. But Zak wasn’t on the hike, and it was only a week until end of term, after which me and Nic were flying home to Germany for the summer holidays. No chance to see him, to break the news gently, you see.

I’d had to phone him—not something I enjoy doing at the best of times—and I knew this was going to be the worst phone call of my life!

+ + +

‘Hello, it’s Becky.’

‘Hi, Becky! How’re things?’

‘OK. Look,’—I thought it best if I got straight down to it—‘there’s something I’ve got to say.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s about us…’

‘Us?’

‘Zak, I know this is going to be a shock, but Damien asked me out…’

‘Damien!’

‘And, I’ve said… Zak? Zak!’

The line was dead. He’d hung up. OK, I suppose I was a bit blunt, but that’s the problem with using the phone—there’s no eye contact, and no body language. I phoned straight back, but it was Abby who answered. Zak’s twin sister, in case you’ve forgotten.

‘Hello?’

‘Abby? It’s Becky.’

‘Becky! Was that you on the phone to Zak?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What on earth did you say to him!’

I told her.

‘You’re not angry with me too, are you?’ I asked.

‘It’s not a question of being angry, Becky. I’ve changed boyfriends a few times as well, but couldn’t you have let him down a bit more gently than that?’

‘I’m sorry! It’s difficult. Is he taking it very badly?’

I found out from her, later, that he’d spent the whole afternoon locked in his room, and had then stormed out and got himself mixed up with something with green hair who could spell her own name and sex and not much else. That had lasted for all of a week. Then for the next couple of weeks he had refused to go out at all.

‘Why do we have to make choices?’ I said to Liz, as soon as we got back to school.

‘Law of the jungle,’ she replied. ‘Males compete for females so as to pass on their genes, and the female chooses the genes she thinks are best.’

‘Do you seriously think I would choose to have kids who look like Damien?’ I laughed. ‘There’s got to be something else!’

It wasn’t long after that when I got a letter from Abby, saying that Zak had settled down