Batman Smells

The playground has its own rules. Nobody on the other side of that door has got even the faintest clue.

Nobody starts it. It just starts. One second there's a playground. The next there's an argument.

Jamie says Robin ran away.

Billy turns round so fast he nearly falls over. That's not even a bird joke, Jamie. What is actually wrong with you. The song is about a bird doing a bird thing, Jamie. A bird thing. Running is not a bird thing, Jamie. Running is what YOU do. Is it a bird thing, Jamie. Is it.

Jamie says running is funnier than flying and crosses his arms.

Lucy makes a noise through her nose. Right, she says. So in the proper version, the correct version, the one that actually goes how it goes, Robin laid an egg. She doesn't look at Jamie when she says this. She looks at everyone else.

Jamie opens his mouth.

Nobody looks at him.

Jamie closes his mouth and goes back to thinking about Robin running away, which is funnier, he doesn't care what anyone says.

Priya has been standing with her arms folded for about thirty seconds now, weight on one hip, waiting. Right, she says. So. My motorway is the M9.

Lucy's head comes up. My motorway is the M4, she says. And on the M4 it was definitely his pants.

Priya raises an eyebrow. It wasn't pants on the M9, she says. It was something else.

What something else, says Billy.

Priya leans in. The something else goes round the group in a whisper, ear to ear, taking its time. The first two people who hear it put their hands over their mouths. The third falls off the bench. The fourth says I don't get it and looks around hopefully.

Seven faces turn toward them at exactly the same moment.

I don't get it, they say again, slightly quieter.

Nobody says anything. Nobody needs to.

Then Declan steps forward. He puts his hands in his pockets. Kojak's in mine, he says.

Who, says everyone.

The detective, says Declan. Lollipop one. Off the telly.

What telly, says everyone.

Declan looks at them for a moment. It was before your time, he says. It was before MY time. It was before basically everyone's time except me nan's. He pauses. Robin nicked his lollipop.

Why, says Sophie.

Declan shrugs. That's just what happened, he says, in the tone of someone who has never once felt the need to question it.

Billy, who has been standing slightly apart from the group since the pants discussion, says right, well, in mine there are weapons.

Whose weapons, says everyone.

Donald Duck's, says Billy.

James looks up from the wall where he's been quietly peeling paint. Mickey Mouse has also got weapons in mine, he says. Same verse. Both of them.

There is a pause.

Both of them, says Lucy.

Both of them, says James.

At the same time, says Billy, who wasn't expecting this either but is not going to show that.

Everyone thinks about this for a moment. Several people open their mouths. Several people close them again. Declan nods slowly, as if this is simply the latest in a long line of things that do not surprise him.

Then Sophie steps into the middle of the playground. The group shifts without anyone deciding to shift, opening up around her.

Her cousin, she says, came over from Sweden.

Right, says the group.

And Sweden, says Sophie, has a bear in it.

Right, says the group, more carefully.

Sophie says they paint the bear's bum.

The group waits.

The colour changes, says Sophie, every time her cousin sings it. Pink. Blue. Once her cousin did it tartan.

Total silence.

One second.

Then Jamie is on the floor. Actual tears. Billy has walked several feet away and is facing the fence and making a noise that belongs to no known language. Priya is gripping Lucy's arm with both hands. Declan watches all of this from where he's standing and nods again, once, the way you'd nod at rain.

Once things have died down to a noise that is merely very loud, Aisha says her class used to do the TAA version.

What's TAA, says Billy, still facing the fence.

Airline, says Aisha.

Billy turns round. Was, he says.

Yeah, says Aisha. Went bust.

Jamie, flat on his back on the tarmac, says the song outlived it then.

The song outlives everything, says Aisha.

The group goes quiet. Even Jamie goes quiet. The tarmac is cold and he doesn't get up.

Then Mr Henderson comes over from the other side of the playground, lanyard swinging, with the specific walk of an adult who has decided he is about to be helpful.

Right, he says. What's all this then. Let's sort this out.

He looks at them. They look at him.

Mr Henderson, says Lucy, what's the right version of Jingle Bells Batman Smells.

Mr Henderson opens his mouth. He closes it again. He looks at the middle distance. He's quiet for quite a long time.

In mine, he says eventually, very quietly, Robin laid an egg.

Everyone looks at Jamie.

Jamie looks at the sky.

But, says Mr Henderson, and something in his voice makes everyone look back, there's also a second verse. He stops. In mine there's a second verse.

What's in it, says Priya.

Mr Henderson looks at his shoes. There's a car, he says. And someone loses something. On a motorway.

Which motorway, says Priya.

Mr Henderson thinks about it. The M6, he says.

Nobody has ever heard of an M6 version. Nobody knew there was an M6 version. The M6 version has been out there this whole time, in Mr Henderson's head, all through register and literacy and lunch, just sitting there.

The playground erupts.

Mr Henderson takes a small step back.

What, he says. What did I say.

Nobody owns this song. Nobody wrote it. It started somewhere dead far away, California maybe, and got pressed into new mouths in new playgrounds, picking up motorways and detectives and bears and airlines and Disney characters with weapons, dropping them, picking them back up slightly wrong, the wrong version becoming the right version becoming someone else's wrong version in a different city, a different decade, a different country that doesn't even speak English but apparently still needs, very urgently, to sing something about a bear.

And it will still be here long after this lot have gone inside. Long after they've grown up and got lanyards of their own. Passed down to the next year, and the next, from one playground to every other playground, the same way it always has been, the same way it always will be.

The bell goes.

It is the only jingle in this school that everyone agrees on.

Jamie gets up off the tarmac.

He still thinks running is funnier.