GROOSHAM GRANGE
EXPELLED
It was dinner time at wiernotta mews. Mr. and Mrs. Eliot were sitting at the dinner table with their only son, David. The meal that night had begun with a large plate of raw cabbage with cheese sauce because Mr. and Mrs. Eliot never ate meat. The atmosphere was distinctly chilly. That afternoon, the last day of the Christmas term, David had bought home his school report. It had not made pleasant reading.
“ELIOT HAS NOT MADE PROGRESS”, the maths teacher had written. “HE CAN’T DIVIDE OR MULTIPLY AND WILL, I FEAR ADD UP TO EVERY LITTLE.”
“WOODWORK?” the carpentry teacher had written. “I WISH HE WOULD WORK”
“IF HE STAYED AWAKE IN CLASS IT WOULD BE A MIRACLE,” THE RELIGION TEACHER HAD COMPLAINED.
“VERY POOR FORM, ‘the form master had concluded.
“HE WILL NEVER GET AHEAD,” the headmaster had agreed.
MR Eliot had read all these comments with growing anger. First his face had gone red. Then his fingers had gone white. The veins in his neck had gone blue and his tongue had gone black. Mrs. Eliot had been unsure whether to call a doctor or take a colour photograph, but in the end, and after taking several glasses of whisky, he had calmed down
“When I was a boy,” he moaned, “If my reports were not first class, my father would lock me in a cupboard for a week without food. “ “Where did we go wrong Mrs Eliot sobbed, pulling at her mauve-tinted hair. “What will the neighbours say if they find? They will laugh at me! I am ruined!”
“My father would have killed me if would have a report like this””He would have tied me down to the railway crossing and waited for the charring cross.....”
“We could always pretend we haven’t got a son,” Mrs Eliot wailed “We could say he’s got a rare disease. We could say he fell off a cliff”
As you will have gathered from all this, Mr and Mrs Eliot was not the best parents you could think or hope to have. Edward Eliot was a small fat bald man with a bristling moustache and a wart on his neck. He...