week and they would start every week for the rest of the year spending the whole week dreading it.
“You boy, Tristan isn’t it?” Ms Anderson barked, pointing at Tristan.
“Yes Miss,” answered Tristan cheerily.
“It’s not Miss, it’s Ms. Come here!” she commanded.
Tom couldn’t look, Tristan walked down to the front of the class blissfully unaware of the superhuman hearing capabilities of Mr Sakamoto’s private secretary and part time Etiquette teacher. It was like watching a lamb to the slaughter.
“Did you wish to share your conversation with the rest of the class?” she asked acidly as Tristan reached the front.
Tristan suddenly realised he was in trouble and stood silent.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Ms Anderson and I will be teaching you proper Etiquette. Mr Kennedy, would you be so kind as to join us up here?”
Tom stood up and walked slowly to the front and joined Tristan.
“Gentlemen, although I use that term loosely, would you like to repeat your conversation to the class?”
Both shook their heads vigorously.
“So what have we learned today, gentlemen?”
“It’s impolite to whisper,” offered Tom.
“Excellent, did anyone else in the room not know that?” she asked the class.
No hands went up.
“It seems everybody else knew that. Gentlemen, perhaps you both require some remedial help to catch up with the rest of your colleagues,” she said smiling at them both.
Both shook their heads.
“Now, now, there’s no need to be bashful gentlemen, nobody thinks less of you. However it would be unfair to burden the rest of the class with your inadequacies to date. Lunch every Sunday will begin your remedial work and we’ll see how quickly you can catch up,” she smiled and placed her thumb and forefinger together and opened and closed them, just like how you would use a pair of tweezers thought Tom.
“But…” both Tristan and Tom began to respond but were met by a hand and stare that suggested it may get worse with any further talk.
They walked back to their seats with Sunday lunch to look forward to.
“Now ladies and gentlemen, we will begin our lessons with how to eat a banana…”
Half the class began to laugh but the look from Ms Anderson cut the laughter instantly.
“Could you all please join me at the table?”
The next hour was spent learning how to eat a banana with a knife and fork, receiving a copy of Debrett’s and the biggest homework task to date. They had to memorise the correct form of address for hundreds of titles. Etiquette was now officially the worst class on the timetable and Tom and Tristan were going to have it twice a week.
“So what are we going to do tonight?” asked Lela as they walked back to their block.
Tom and Tristan were still on a downer, Sunday with hairy lip, neither could think of anything worse. They had tried but so far, nothing came close, even Ahmad’s suggestion of cleaning the army base toilets with a toothbrush had received a positive nod from both.
“Whatever,” responded Tom shrugging his shoulders.
“How about ten pin bowling?” suggested Mingmei.
“Excellent idea,” replied the girls.
Tom, Tristan and Ahmad groaned.
“What’s wrong with bowling?” asked Chen.
“You’ll see,” replied Tom. “Wait a minute, there’s Zach, he’s American. I’ll bet he’s a good bowler.” Tom ran across and invited Zach for a game, he was hoping he’d even things up a little. They might even beat the girls for a change.
Four hours later, a humiliated boys team made their way to bed, Tom and Tristan had rounded off a terrible day with a crushing defeat. Zach and Chen were both hopeless. Zach it transpired had never bowled before in his life and neither had Chen. At least Oleg had bowled before and managed to maintain an almost acceptable score line.
However Lela had pulled an ace in the hole, she had made up her team numbers with Elena and Madeleine from their class and one of Madeleine’s friends, Erika. It appeared Tristan’s theory was correct, all Scandinavian women were gorgeous whether they were blonde or brunette. Tristan had been useless, Tom not much better, only Ahmad had bowled anything like normal, unaffected by the Scandinavian beauties.
It was the most crushing defeat Tom had ever suffered at Lela’s hands.
“See you in the morning loser,” shouted Lela as she went to her room. She was loving it, Tom always had been a bad loser and she loved winding him up about it.
Tom didn’t respond, he just slammed his door loudly. It had been a very bad day.
Reaper answered the phone the second it rang.
“You’re late,” he barked.
Ling was not impressed.
“We were bowling,” she answered glibly. She was tired, she had just spent a week doing homework and was not in the mood.
Reaper stifled a laugh, he hadn’t thought about the classwork Ling would have to do. She had to protect her cover.
“Did you win?” he smirked.
“That’s not important,” she snapped. “Are we a go for my mission?” she asked impatiently.
“Yes, my men will be in place and if you pull this off, you’re looking at a bonus $1 million!”
“Thank you, I’ll keep you updated,” she said coolly, trying to hide her excitement.
They ended the call, although using very secure and encrypted transmissions, Reaper did not want to risk it. The island may have a few surprises his client wasn’t aware of but he doubted it.
One of the twins watched the student sneak outside their targets’ block and make a quick call. He couldn’t make out who it was but thought it was strange. He’d speak to his brother, maybe he’d know what was going on.
Chapter 34
Tristan and Tom still hadn’t cheered up. The thought of Sunday lunch with Ms Anderson just stuck in their minds. It didn’t help that the girls were still revelling about the previous evening’s overwhelming victory, over breakfast.
It was 9.50 a.m. when they left the restaurant and walked across to the sports stadium. Tom had clicked on the Sports button on the timetable to see what was in store for them, hoping it would be something nice and easy to break them in gently.. However all that popped up on the screen, was ‘Sports, Sport Stadium 10.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.’, no further detail.
As they walked into the stadium, it appeared they were not the only class who had been given the same instructions. The stadium was full, Miss Sullivan was there and ushered them to the seating block labelled H.
“What’s going on?” whispered Lela to their Class Principal.
“Just take a seat, we’re about to start,” she replied avoiding the question.
At exactly 10.00 a.m., Mr Sakamoto walked into the middle of the stadium and looked around him at the stands full of students.
“Welcome,” he announced through the tannoy system. “I hope you’ve all had a good first week,” he shouted enthusiastically.
From the response around him, Tom realised that it wasn’t just his class who had found it hard going as Mr
