by Jilly Cooper
‘Does she live in New York full time?’ asked Janna.
Sally nodded: ‘We had a son; he died.’ Oh, the sadness of those flat monosyllables. Sally pointed to a photograph of a beautiful blond boy with Hengist’s dark eyes. ‘So Hengist misses her dreadfully.’
‘I’m so terribly sorry,’ mumbled Janna.
‘I know you are,’ said Sally. ‘I’m just nipping downstairs to organize drinks and coffee and pay Dora.’
After that, Janna sat on Sally’s four-poster and talked to Mrs Walton, who was really a joy to look at and to smell – great wafts of scent rising like incense from her body.
‘Emlyn’s very attractive, isn’t he?’
‘Extremely, but sadly spoken for.’
‘He is?’ asked Janna in disappointment.
‘He’s going to marry Hengist’s daughter Oriana.’
‘A shrewd career move – lucky Oriana.’
‘Lucky indeed. Emlyn’s so bats about her he agreed to wait until she’d tried being a foreign correspondent. Alas, she’s been so good at it, she seems to have lost any desire to settle down.’
‘Oh, poor Emlyn.’
‘Sally isn’t that displeased by the turn of events; she doesn’t think Emlyn’s quite good enough,’ confided Mrs Walton as she repainted her lips a luscious coral. ‘Despite his amiability, he’s very left-wing. Hates the Tories, hates the royal family, and hates rich spoilt children. He didn’t get a first either, although he’s a wonderful teacher. Hengist dotes on him. They have rugger in common, but Sally feels that macho Welsh rugger bugger tradition isn’t for Oriana – she needs someone more subtle and better bred. Sally tries not to show it because she’s such a gent,’ went on Mrs Walton, ‘but she also feels Oriana isn’t bats enough about Emlyn. I mean, if you had a hunk like that, would you base yourself in New York pursuing all those terrifying assignments?’
Sally wants me to go to the cinema with Emlyn because she knows I fancy Hengist rotten, decided Janna, and if I get off with Emlyn it will free Oriana and get me out of Hengist’s hair.
Suddenly, she felt very tired. ‘I must go.’
‘Let’s have lunch,’ said Mrs Walton.
‘I can’t really get away.’
‘Well, come to supper then.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘I’ll ring you at Larks.’
At that moment Mrs Walton’s mobile rang. It was Stancombe from downstairs.
‘I’ll call you,’ she mouthed at Janna.
How can I ever have enough of love and life, thought Janna as she put on her dreary green cardigan.
Downstairs, she found Jupiter talking to Hengist, who had lucky Elaine stretched out on the sofa beside him with her head in his lap.
Sheena, having dispatched Rufus home to relieve the babysitter, was arguing with Piers and waiting to get a lift from Stancombe who was still on his mobile.
Then Janna started to laugh.
‘All part of our caring ethos,’ Gillian Grimston was droning on to Emlyn, who had fallen asleep in an armchair.
‘Caring Ethos,’ mused Hengist. ‘Sounds like a fifth Musketeer, the priggish older brother of Athos or Porthos. Caring Ethos.’ He smiled at Janna, gently setting aside Elaine’s head so he could get up. ‘Have a drink.’
‘I’m off,’ she said, ‘I’ll drive very slowly.’
‘You will not, you’ve had a horrid shock. Emlyn is going to take you,’ said Sally firmly.
As they left, Hengist imitated the Family Tree, standing big, strong and dark behind Sally’s fairness, his arms wrapped around her: we are an item.
‘Will you be home tomorrow afternoon?’ he asked Janna. ‘I’ll drive your car back, and we can discuss where we go from here – put Saturday night in your diary.’
Everything out in the open, so unlike Stew, thought an utterly confused Janna.
‘I’d like a word, Sheena,’ said Sally as she closed the front door.
Trees brandished their remaining leaves in the wind like tattered orange and yellow banners. Janna tried to quiz Emlyn about Hengist and Sally but, guilty he’d spent half-term and so much money in New York with Oriana rather than with his mother and sick father in Wales, he was uncommunicative.
He didn’t say much but he was sweet to make a long detour into Larkminster via the Animal Hospital. The little dog hadn’t come round from the anaesthetic, said the nurse, but should pull through. They had saved the eye but probably not the tail.
He’d need to spend a few days in hospital.
‘And then I’ll come and collect him,’ said Janna.
I’m going to call him Partner, she decided, then if anyone asks me if I’ve got a partner, I can say yes.
Most of the Sundays carried lurid accounts of Amber Lloyd-Foxe and Cosmo Rannaldini being suspended for drugs, and everyone blamed the leak on Sheena Anderson.
22
Janna knew that if confronted Monster and Satan would deny torturing Partner. Instead she decided to unnerve them by relating the incident in detail at assembly the following Monday.
‘Animals feel pain just as we do. They’re more frightened because they have no idea why such evil things are happening.’ Her voice broke: ‘Partner was such a trusting little dog.’
‘Bastards,’ spat Pearl.
‘Murderers,’ sobbed Kylie Rose.
‘The bad news is that it was so dark I’m not sure which Larks pupils were involved but the good news is I rang the hospital this morning and despite his horrific burns Partner’s getting better all the time. He may still lose his tail but when he comes out of hospital he’s moving in with me.’
Cheers from the children.
‘I’m going to bring him into school because I know you’ll love him and I’m sure he’ll recognize the evil bullies who tortured him and we can report them to the police and RSPCA.’
Five minutes after assembly, Rowan gleefully reported that Satan and Monster had been seen belting down Smokers’ and over the wall.
‘One pair I don’t mind truanting,’ said Janna.
Feral, on the other hand, was another matter. Each day he missed he slipped further behind. There was no point setting up minibuses, pitches and running tracks if he wasn’t there to profit from them.
Paris and Graffi went vague when questioned so Janna dropped a line to Feral’s mother asking if she might pop in to discuss her son on the way to Hengist’s civic dinner. At least it would give her a chance to check out the dreaded Shakespeare Estate.
Outside she could see shrivelled pale brown leaves tumbling out of the playground sycamores and imagined them falling from Hengist’s Family Tree revealing the interlocked incestuous grapplings to the white sky.
She tried not to get excited about Saturday’s dinner, for hope would be hope of the wrong thing. At least it would be a change from paperwork and she could finally give her slinky new off-the-shoulder dress an airing. The night before she rubbed lots of scented body lotion into the shoulder that was going to be exposed before falling into a rare and blissful eight-hour sleep.
Waking with optimism, she popped into the hospital to take Partner a bowl of chopped chicken. Still heavily sedated, he greeted her with barks of joy and shrieks of pain as he wagged his poor burnt tail. He really was a sweet little dog, with one ear pointing skywards, a freckled fox’s face, a pink nose, sad chestnut-brown eyes, short legs and a rough red and white coat.
‘We’ll be two short-arsed, mouthy redheads living together,’ she told him, ‘and exploring the country instead of working all weekend.’
Having measured his neck size and promised she’d fetch him home tomorrow, she spent a fortune in Larkminster’s pet shop on a sky-blue collar and lead, a name disk, dog food, pig’s ears, a blue ball and a blue quilted basket decorated with moons and suns.
Out in the street, rustling through shoals of red and gold cherry leaves, her happiness evaporated as she caught sight of a Gazette poster: ‘Is Janna Curtis turning her back on failing Larks?’
Buyin
g a paper, she found a smiling photograph of herself, Hengist and Jupiter at the prospective-parents’ day on page three. Accompanying it was a snide story saying she was being wooed by the independent sector and had recently dined with the Brett-Taylors, Jupiter Belvedon, his wife and property tycoon Randal Stancombe. How much longer would she bother with a bog-standard school she had failed to improve?
With a scream of rage, Janna scrunched up the paper, sending three pigeons fluttering up into the rooftops. Why in hell hadn’t the piece mentioned Gillian Grimston had been at dinner too?
Larks was always left open on Saturdays for the rare members of staff who might want to catch up or prepare lessons. Fortunately no one seemed to be around when Janna arrived so she would have time to prepare a denial. But as she walked down the corridors, rejoicing in the colour and vitality of the children’s work on the walls – Larks was not failing – she heard crashes and screams coming from her office and broke into a run.
She was greeted by devastation as a hysterical Pearl, who’d already pulled the books out of the shelves and thrown every file on the carpet with Janna’s in-tray scattered on top, was now upending desk drawers.
Her spiky rhubarb-red hair was coaxed upwards like an angry rooster, her coloured make-up was streaked by tears and studs quivered like the Pleiades on her frantically working face.
‘Bitch, cunt, slag!’ she howled, catching sight of Janna. ‘I know you’ve got the ’ots for Feral, you ’orrible slag, wiv your cosy little tea parties.’
She ripped Janna’s date calendar off the wall: pointing a frantically trembling finger at 3 November: ‘“Feral’s mother seven p.m.” You never bothered visiting my mum.’ She started tearing the calendar to pieces.
‘Stop it.’ Janna tried to stay calm. ‘Steady down. Whatever’s brought this on?’
But a screaming Pearl had started on the pictures. Crash went Hold the Dream and Desiderata over the back of a chair, followed by the big photographs of Fountains Abbey and the Brontës’ house at Haworth.
‘For God’s sake, you’ll get glass in your eyes,’ pleaded Janna, wondering the best way to grab her.
Crash, sending out another fountain of splintered glass, went Stew’s photograph of all the children at Redfords.
Pearl then hurled Janna’s Diorissimo against the window smashing both with a sickening crunch, followed by a bottle of ink against the white wall which spilt down over the flower-patterned sofa. Then she picked up Stew’s little Staffordshire cow.
‘Oh please, no,’ gasped Janna.
‘You sad bitch!’
Crash went the cow, hitting the fridge and fragmenting into a hundred pieces. Pearl, like a cornered cat now, rather than a furious rooster, was clawing, screaming, spitting. Slowly, slowly Janna talked her down.
‘Please tell me what’s the matter. I’m not cross, I’m here for you,’ until Pearl collapsed sobbing on the ink-stained sofa.
‘Thought you liked us, miss, but the paper says you’re leaving us for those stuck-up snobs.’
A tidal wave of relief swept over Janna.
‘Then they’ll have to carry me out in a coffin. I love you at Larks. You’re my children and I’m going to take a big photograph of you all and put that on the wall.’
Sally and Hengist, she explained, had kindly invited her to dinner to meet other teachers and people who might help Larks.
‘So we can buy more textbooks and go on more jaunts and invest in some fun, young, new teachers. I’d rather live in a cage full of cobras than teach in an independent school.’
‘What about the cow?’ sniffed Pearl, picking up a fragment of horn from the carpet. ‘Was that precious?’
‘Not any more,’ said Janna, realizing it was part of a past that had gone away. ‘And the only reason I haven’t asked you over to the cottage is because of your Saturday job, and I’m not sure how you’d cope with the walk in those heels. The boys are coming tomorrow afternoon instead to meet my new dog. Please come too, and be very gentle with him, boys can be a bit rough. Look at what I bought him at the pet shop.’ She opened the carrier bags she’d left in the corridor. ‘And let’s have a coffee and a chocolate biscuit.’
Later, as, chattering, they made an effort to straighten the room, Pearl noticed the invitation to the civic dinner which Hengist had posted to Janna.
‘That’s tonight. “Jubilee Dinner”. Looks a posh do. I hope we can have a street party. My mum’s always going on about how great they was in seventy-seven. Look, to make up for this’ – Pearl waved a blue-nailed hand round the devastation – ‘I’ll make you up for tonight, do your hair, give you a make-over, like. It’d be really cool. Then I could photograph you, put it on the wall like Graffi’s pictures and Paris’s stories and fucking goody-two-shoes Aysha’s chemistry project.’ Pearl was suddenly wildly excited. ‘I’ll find you a dress too.’
‘That would be champion,’ said Janna. Anything not to shatter this rapprochement. ‘Let’s meet at five-thirty.’
‘Make it earlier,’ said Pearl, suddenly authoritive. ‘I did the morning stint at the salon. That’s where I read the Gazette. I need time to do it proper. You go home and have a nice bath. I’ll meet you back here at four.’
When Janna dutifully returned, Pearl refused to work her magic in front of a mirror.
‘It stresses me to be watched.’
So Janna tugged her desk chair into the middle of the office and got stuck into planning the next human resources meeting, which would cover staffing.
She was sure Ashton Douglas and Crispin would demand redundancies or her budget would never balance. But with any luck the dinosaurs like Mike Pitts, Basket, Skunk, even Cara Sharpe might consider early retirement.
‘She’s an evil bitch, that Cara.’ Pearl peered over Janna’s shoulder as she cut her hair.
‘If I’m not allowed to look, neither are you,’ reproved Janna, ‘and not too much off.’
‘My mum always says that. I’m going to lift the colour with a few highlights.’
‘Not too tarty,’ pleaded Janna, ‘I’m trying to be an authority figure,’ then cautiously enquired about the Shakespeare Estate.
Pearl shrugged. ‘Council uses the place as a bin bag to dump all the bad families. Most of the dads are in the nick like mine or on nights and never see their kids.’
Finally, having washed Janna’s hair in the Ladies, blow-dried it and made her up from a range of colour that would have been the envy of Titian, Pearl sprayed gold dust on her shoulders. Then, dismissing the black off-the-shoulder number Janna had brought in as too mumsy, she helped Janna into an incredibly short fern-green handkerchief dress which gave her a cleavage worthy of Mrs Walton.
‘You look wicked, miss.’ Pearl held up Janna’s hand mirror, about the only thing unsmashed. ‘Now you can look.’
Janna didn’t recognize herself. Even under the office strip lighting she looked absolutely gorgeous.
‘That can’t be me. I look like a film star.’
‘Good material to work on,’ conceded Pearl.
She had covered Janna’s face in light-reflecting moisturizer, then put shimmering highlights on her cheekbones, and narrowed and rounded Janna’s squarish chin with blusher, before blending in sparkling powder.
To make the eyes huge and vulnerable she had drawn black along the upper lash line, mingled all the golds, oranges and russets on the lids, then thickened the lashes with three layers of brown mascara.
Most seductive of all, on Janna’s big mouth, instead of pale pinky coral, she had used a deep plum red gloss.
‘Weee-ee.’ Janna shook her head, swinging rippling cascades of rose red, emerald green and chestnut hair. ‘Which flag of the world am I? You’re a genius.’
‘You look amazing, miss,’ said Pearl happily. ‘Go out and pull.’
‘Where did you find all this incredible make-up?’ asked Janna, suspecting it had been knocked off.
‘They often pay me in make-up at the salon,’ said Pearl airily.
&nbs
p; Janna was far too kind to put Pearl down by saying the whole thing was completely OTT and was vastly relieved when Pearl wrapped a long, tasselled flamingo-pink shawl round her shoulders.
‘This is lovely and the dress too.’
‘My mum’s,’ said Pearl hastily.
‘Won’t she mind?’
‘Doesn’t know – it’s my babysitting fee.’
It was only when she was driving to the Winter Gardens, praying none of the big shop owners would recognize their stolen wares on her that Janna remembered she’d promised to pop in on Feral’s mother at 12 Macbeth Street. She’d been crazy to pick this weekend. It was like entering a war zone, as coloured stars exploded in dandelion clocks and rockets hissed into the russet Larkminster sky, crashing and banging to a counterpoint of jangling fire engines and screaming police sirens.
How could the people of Afghanistan cope with incessant American bombing – or was she twice as scared because she’d had a baptism of fireworks with Partner a week ago?
The Shakespeare Estate was a concrete hell, hemmed in by a high circular wall, which separated it from the beautiful, prosperous golden town, the serenely winding river and the lush countryside beyond. Cul-de-sacs named after Shakespearean characters ran like spokes in a wheel from this circular wall into a bald piece of land, known as the Romeo Triangle, which had a much graffitied pub, broken seats and a boarded-up newsagent’s. Gangs of youths in hoods with sliding walks prowled the streets chucking stones or bangers at Janna’s green Polo as she drove past. Rasta and R and B music fortissimo, blaring televisions, couples having violent domestics were interrupted by the screams of prostitutes. Fireworks lit up the crazed emaciated faces of Ixions chained to the wheels of their addictions.
‘Never get out of your car and walk,’ Pearl had warned.
But there was no space outside number 12, so Janna was forced to park fifty yards away and totter up Macbeth Street on her high heels. All the windows of number 12 were broken or boarded-up. The front garden contained stinking, unemptied dustbins, an old fridge and a burnt-out BMW. No one answered the door, the paint of which was blistered and dented with kicks. Youths, gathering on the pavement, were hurling fireworks into next door’s garden. A curtain flickered and Janna caught a glimpse of a terrified old man.
