In need of my favourite red pen for marking, I’d been scrabbling around in my handbag which, as usual, was awash with all manner of bits and pieces, from the minutes of that week’s staff meeting to a desiccated tangerine. After what seemed like several minutes’ fruitless searching, my fingers finally found what they were after and I fished my pen from the depths of my bag in triumph. Unfortunately the speed at which I brought it to the surface dislodged an ancient Tampax, which proceeded to launch itself across my desk in a perfect arc. Its near faultless landing, in the middle of Adrian Pettifer’s Abacus Maths 6 text book, warranted a round of applause from Houston, Texas. As it was, Adrian had looked at the Tampax, I’d looked at Adrian, and, like Pluto claiming Persephone for his own in the underworld, I’d smiled sweetly, pocketing the offending object with a simple, ‘Mine, I think, Adrian,’ and then proceeded to mark his maths with huge and overzealous green ticks.
Right, we have someone new joining us today, everybody. This is Tyson and I want you all to make sure you look after him and make him feel at home.’
I stopped talking and weighed up this new child in front of me. Tyson? Not really an aristocratic name, surely. William, Charles, George maybe. But Tyson? He didn’t look as if he had a drop of blue blood in him either, his regulation buzz cut and stud earring more West Yorkshire council estate than North Yorkshire country estate. He was pleasant enough though, and buckled down straight away to the job in hand once I’d returned to the classroom from my half hour’s non-contact time. The rest of the class, fresh from a week’s break, seemed open to the non-negotiable idea of getting on with some hard work and I began to relax into the routine of being back with the children.
Apart from tender, itchy boobs that were a constant reminder of my present state, I was able to switch off from the problem of being pregnant and concentrate on the intricacies of factors and multiples.
My relaxed state lasted only until break time. Desperate to see Grace, I hurried down towards the staff room but Valerie stepped out, ambushing me into the tiny cupboard she liked to call the deputy head’s room.
‘A quick word, Harriet?’ Valerie trilled, pouncing on me and dragging me into her cupboard in much the same way I’d seen Bones carry off a field mouse.
‘Is it important, Valerie? I really could do with a cup of tea.’ And a pee. I’d forgotten what pregnancy, even early pregnancy, does to one’s bladder.
‘Won’t take a minute. It’s this report, dear.’
I groaned inwardly. ‘What report?’ I knew I sounded irritable, but I was desperate for the loo.
‘This report you wrote on Neil Smith.’ She wafted the paper in my face. Neil had left my class a couple of weeks previously and I’d been asked for a fairly detailed report on all aspects of his work by his new school.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ I asked. ‘Shouldn’t it have gone off by now?’
‘Well, yes, and I would have sent it before half term if you’d written it up on the computer. But quite honestly, Harriet, I can’t send this.’
‘You’re not sending it because I wrote it by hand rather than typed it up?’
Valerie peered at me over her glasses. ‘I just don’t understand why you’ve written that you feel Neil needs to be much nicer to otters.’
‘Otters?’ I looked at Valerie. Had she been drinking? I took the offending piece of A4 paper and scanned it quickly looking for any evidence regarding river mammals, and then started to giggle. ‘Others, Valerie. I’ve written that Neil needs to be nicer to others, not otters.’
‘Oh right, dear, right. It’s your handwriting that’s caused the other big problem too. You see your “o”s and “r”s look just like “a”s and “n”s,’ she paused, ‘with rather unfortunate results.’
‘What?’ I frowned. What was the old bat going on about now?
Valerie moved closer, peering over my shoulder at the one-page but nevertheless quite extensive report I’d written on Neil. The fumes from Poison, her perfume, were beginning to have a serious effect on the remains of my breakfast, but she had me up against the filing cabinet and there was no escape.
Admittedly I’d been in a hurry when I wrote the report. My printer had been out of paper and I’d scribbled it off by hand rather than go all the way down to the stock room for new paper, anxious to complete it before the holiday. But I still couldn’t see any major problem with it.
‘The word “work” appears, as it obviously should in a child’s school report, many times.’ Valerie said, her tone placating. ‘Unfortunately, dear, the word doesn’t read as “work.”’
I scanned the page and began to giggle again as I read: ‘Neil has wanked consistently well throughout this half term’ ‘Neil has wanked his socks off in science’ ‘Neil has particularly impressed me with his French oral wank’ ‘Neil has enjoyed wanking with his peer group …’ And the pièce de resistance: ‘I’m sure Neil will continue wanking to the best of his ability at his new school.’
Valerie looked at me sympathetically, but without an ounce of humour in her small grey eyes. ‘I think you get my drift, dear? Shall we say tomorrow morning, typed up and on my desk?’
Sniggering to myself, I desperately wanted to recount this little dialogue to Grace, but what had happened last week was a barrier between us. I was missing her so much, felt quite isolated knowing that she was near and yet apparently avoiding me. Besides, the bell had gone to resume lessons, and, if I didn’t get to the loo, I was in great danger of delivering my literacy lesson with my hand held tightly between clenched thighs.
I usually made a point of sitting next to Grace during staff meetings – she would make me laugh by writing little notes and drawing cartoons on her agenda – but this lunchtime was different. She merely nodded at me across the room and went to sit with Margaret Walker and her cronies. Feeling like the kid in the schoolyard with no mates, I was miserable. I decided to suck up to Tony Drummond, our new head, and parked myself next to him. He’d only been with us since September and, while the consensus was that he was a bit wet, I was beginning to like him very much. As with any new head teacher, but especially a very young one who had stepped into the shoes of a much-loved, much older head, he’d had to work hard to establish his authority. Valerie Westwood, whose overlong nose had been put out of joint when she’d been turned down for the job herself, had been particularly deprecating about him, and those in her gang had, like a kitten-heeled bunch of lemmings, followed suit. Both Grace and I, perhaps because we were nearer in age to Tony, or simply to wind up Valerie and her cronies, had made a beeline for him in the past few weeks and, while we still didn’t know too much of his personal circumstances, had learnt he was unattached, ‘but looking!’
‘I’ve spent all half term trying to buy a sheepskin rug,’ Sandra Young, one of our Year 4 teachers, was now saying conversationally to anyone who was listening as we waited for Valerie Westwood to join us from where she was berating a poor unfortunate in the dinner queue.
‘House of Fraser does some good ones,’ Margaret said. ‘Have you been there?’
‘They only have single skins. I want a really large one. Maybe two skins sewn together.’
‘I’ve got a huge one,’ Tony Drummond joined in, oblivious to the polite smirks from the women in the room. ‘In fact it’s made from four skins sewn together.’
‘Blimey, painful or what?’ Grace sniggered, and the entire room collapsed in hysterics, unable to stop even when Valerie finally walked in, glaring at us in much the way she used to keep Year 6 in order.
Even Tony was chortling, seemingly unembarrassed by his double entendre. I looked at him curiously. He seemed different, confident – glowing almost. I glanced across at Grace, and realised what it was. I bet he’d found himself a woman at last. Both he and Grace had the same ‘I’m in love’ aura about them and were suffused from sex – and lots of it.
Good on him, I thought, pleased.
Overriding Valerie who had begun to take over the staff meeting as usual,
Tony plunged straight in, putting her in her place by suggesting she take the minutes.
Last on the agenda was the announcement that, whilst Ray the caretaker’s continuing bad back was preventing his return to work, he was to be congratulated on the fact that his partner had just produced their fifth child during the half-term holiday.
‘Ok for sex then?!’ I scribbled on Tony’s agenda, forgetting for the moment that he was my boss.
‘Yes, thanks very much!!’ he wrote back, grinning at me.
Maybe Tony Drummond could be my new best friend, I mused, walking back to my classroom in readiness for the afternoon session.
By the end of the first session of the afternoon I was exhausted. I just wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep. When I’d been pregnant with Kit I’d regularly put Liberty down for her afternoon nap and put myself down for one as well. What luxury! Here I was, pregnant again, but this time my brain and body thirteen years older, trying to remember the ‘My very eccentric mother just shot uncle Norman’s pig’ mnemonic for the solar system, when I was barely able to remember my own name.
The science lesson had gone down really well though, and the kids had asked if they could make up their own mnemonics after break, so at least I could get some marking done and try to make a quick getaway when school finished for the day. I had to pick India up from school as Sylvia wouldn’t be back until that evening.
Fighting sleep, I was desperately trying to concentrate on the digits in Darren Slater’s maths book. They seemed to have a life of their own, moving out of focus or jumping around the page so that I couldn’t quite work out what they were or where they were supposed to be. The children, working in pairs on their planet mnemonics, would occasionally give a hoot of laughter as they came up with something rude or absurd, but on the whole their voices were as low and soporific as a night-time lullaby. So it was that I was unaware of my classroom door opening until Valerie Westwood announced, ‘You have a visitor, Mrs Westmoreland.’
Thirty-six pairs of eyes, including mine, turned as one. For a few seconds I couldn’t get my befuddled brain into gear to work out who it was standing in the doorway with Valerie. I knew I’d seen her before, and fairly recently too, but it was only when she spoke that I realised who she was.
‘Hello children. Mrs Westmoreland very kindly invited me to your school to meet you all. It’s such a long time since I’ve been to school. What are you all up to?’ All eyes, including Valerie Westwood’s raised ones, turned back to me. What the hell was her name? I couldn’t introduce her as ‘the inebriated Lollipop-head’ from Amanda’s dinner party.
I needn’t have worried. Suzy totally took over the classroom, introducing herself in her clipped tones and networking the room as if she were at one of her drinks’ parties. She sat with the children, apparently genuinely interested in what they were up to and reading out some of the funnier mnemonics in an accent the kids had only ever heard on the BBC. Even Darren Slater and his cronies, obviously impressed by her designer gear, made an effort to be civil (Darren, bless him, telling her that he was particularly interested in Uranus rather than ‘yer anus’ as he’d repeated constantly to the rest of the class before her arrival).
With the rest of the class enraptured by Suzy’s voice and presence, and with ten minutes to go before the end of the day, I beckoned Tyson over to my desk in order to sort out the admin work that goes hand in hand with a new arrival.
‘Blimey, Miss, you’ve got big tits!’ Tyson stared at me in wonder. Horrified not only that my pregnancy-inflated chest should evoke such a comment from an eleven-year-old, but that he had the audacity to utter it in my presence, I looked him full in the face and hissed,
‘I beg your pardon!’
‘Yer tits, Miss. My teacher at my last school only had little ones. And she only ever did ‘em in red ink, never in green.’
Fighting the hysterical cackle that was about to be released not only on young Tyson and the rest of the class but also on Suzy’s swinging, perfectly streaked bob, I patted Tyson’s hand repeatedly and with great affection.
‘So, Tyson,’ I breathed, once I’d got myself and my patting under control, ‘Mrs Westwood tells me you have something to do with The Duke of Leeds.’ I looked him over at close range to see if I could decipher a noble brow perhaps, or an aristocratic nose.
‘S’right, Miss.’
‘So should we call you, “Your Grace”,’ I laughed, trying to ferret out just what his position was in the Royal line.
‘Grace?’ Tyson looked at me in surprise. ‘That’s a girl’s name, Miss. Me name’s Tyson. You know, like the boxer.’
Realising I’d better stop being nosey and get on with the task of filling in his details, I said, ‘So, Tyson, where are you living now that you’ve moved to Farsley.’
Tyson looked at me as if I was a mad woman. ‘At the Duke of Leeds, Miss.’
‘You’re living with the Duke of Leeds?’ He was going further up in my estimation. Christine, my sister-in-law, would be very impressed.
‘Yeah, well at the Duke of Leeds, Miss. Me mum’s moved in with the landlord and she’s working behind the bar.’
Suzy hung around while the children were dismissed and then joined me at my desk.
‘It’s really good of you to make time to come over, Suzy,’ I smiled, and meant it. ‘The kids always enjoy the diversion of having someone new in the classroom.’
‘I’ve really enjoyed it,’ she barked. ‘I bet you never thought I’d take you up on your word.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I admitted, ‘but I’m really glad you did.’
‘Well, at a bit of a loose end at the moment.’ Suzy retrieved her Chloe bag from where she’d left it under Darren Slater’s table.
‘I’m surprised you say that. I thought you’d have a constant round of lunches and charity dos and girly things …. I trailed off, I wasn’t quite sure what women like Suzy did do with their lives.
‘Well, I do normally, but my partner in crime is off again.’
Warning bells began to ring.
‘Your partner in crime?’ I asked, smiling pleasantly.
‘Yes, Mandy.’ Suzy leaned towards me, smiling confidentially. I could smell cigarettes and Chanel No. 5. ‘Entre nous and the doorpost, she’s got the hots for some chap. Rather gorgeous-looking chap he is too. Actually, I think he was at the Hendersons’ for dinner the night that you were there.’ Suzy screwed up her face, as she searched her memory for details of that particular evening. ‘Do you remember him? Tall, chunky and blonde with devastating brown eyes? I know we were all rather spiffy that night – well at least I was. Spent quite a bit of the evening in the loo in fact.’ Suzy giggled, nudging me in the ribs as she did so. ‘And I couldn’t for the life of me work out for ages what the name and address you’d given me on the envelope was all about. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘you must have noticed him. Even though Mandy made sure she kept him to herself all evening. None of the rest of us got a look in. I’m amazed David puts up with it.’
‘So where is she then?’ I asked, trying to be nonchalant. Nonchalance is actually very hard when your stomach is churning and your heart going ten to the dozen. If I’d been half asleep an hour ago, I was most certainly very awake now.
Suzy sighed theatrically. ‘Italy of all places. Can you imagine? Wouldn’t you just love to be in Milan at the moment with some gorgeous, illicit hunk?’ She poked me playfully in the ribs once again. I wanted to poke her, not so playfully, in the eye with a rusty nail. ‘Hang on a minute, I’ve got a photo of him! Ginny Fairweather – do you know Ginny? Lovely girl, but a bit of a monkey, like Mandy. Well, Ginny happened to bump into them in Milan – she was there for the new spring collection, lucky girl, and caught them red-handed. What a scream she is! Anyway, caught them on her BlackBerry and emailed the photos to me this morning. Did I recognise Mandy’s new man? Who was he? Well, for once, I was one up on Ginny. Recognised him immediately from that dinner party. I mean, how can you forget those devastating e
yes? Hang on, here we are. What do you think of that? Do you remember him now?’
Suzy thrust her mobile phone under my nose. Nick was sitting at what looked to be a café table, both arms wrapped tightly round Mandy. Her head was buried into his chest and he appeared to be kissing her hair, his eyes almost closed.
Suzy drew breath for a nano-second before going on, ‘We’d actually got two days at The Sanctuary booked as well. Thought we’d treat ourselves to a bit of pampering. But then she tells me that Mick has rung her up from Italy. Says he desperately needs her in Milan. Can’t be there without her.’
‘Nick,’ I said through gritted teeth.
‘Sorry? Oh yes, Nick.’ Suzy looked at me, eyebrows raised. ‘Ah, you do know who I mean, then. Gorgeous isn’t he? Anyway, there goes our little treat. Don’t suppose you’re available? I do so hate going off (she pronounced it ‘orff’) on my jollies tout seul.’ Suzy turned to look at me, saw the pile of unmarked books that was threatening to fall off my desk, and sighed, ‘No, I think not.’
‘I need to get off, Suzy,’ I said, wanting to be away from her. ‘I have my younger daughter to pick up. She wasn’t too well this morning.’ I looked directly at her before adding meaningfully, ‘And she’s missing her daddy terribly.’
Suzy reached for her bag, searching for her car keys, totally oblivious to my last comment. Turning her lollipop-head to me, eyes wide with horror she squeaked, ‘There’s something in there. Something that certainly wasn’t there an hour ago.’
‘What do you mean, “something”? What kind of something?’
Gingerly, Suzy opened the bag fully before dropping it in fright. ‘Good God, Harriet, there’s a rat in there.’
I picked up her bag and held it at arm’s length. Nothing seemed to be moving. Was she having some sort of hallucination? Perhaps she was an alcoholic and regularly saw elephants coming out of the wall and rats in her bag. Putting the bag onto my desk, I peered in. There, supine on top of soft, black leather gloves and an expensive-looking wallet, at the climax of his very last adventure, was a peaceful, but obviously very dead, Humbug.
Goodness, Grace and Me Page 25
