Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  Next to Theo, looking pained, sat deputy head Alex Bruce, known as Mr Fussy because he was always whingeing about something and who was now pinching the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. Next to Alex was his friend, Biffo Rudge, head of maths, who got so carried away coaching the school eight, he was always riding his bike into the River Fleet. Biffo, a cherry-red-faced bully, with bristling hair like an upsidedown nail brush, had a crush on Dora’s poor twin brother, Dicky, and (if Dicky were to be believed) dressed up in a black leather dress very late in the evening. Next to Mr Fussy and Biffo was their ally, Joan Johnson, No-Joke Joan, Dora’s housemistress, who was hell-bent on making Boudicca, the only girls’ house, outstrip the boys’ houses academically.

  There was no way Joan was going to let Dora rest from her labours like the saints.

  In the row in front, romantic-looking Piers Fleming, head of English, was asleep. Not surprising. When Dora had crept out at six o’clock to walk her chocolate Labrador, Cadbury (who was currently living a clandestine existence with the school beagles), she had seen Piers scuttling in, probably from shagging Sheena Anderson in London. Sheena’s husband Rufus, head of geography, having dressed and fed himself and his children, and got them to school, was now frantically preparing his first lesson. Piers smelt of Paco Rabanne, reflected Dora, Rufus of baby sick. One could see why Sheena preferred the former.

  If she leant back, Dora had an excellent view round the silver lectern of the Lower Fifth – Bagley’s equivalent of Year Nine – and the naughtiest form in the school.

  Although it contained boffins like Primrose Duddon, and ‘Boffin’ Brooks, who was both geek and boffin, the Lower Fifth boasted the luscious, long-limbed Bagley Babes. Otherwise known as the Three Disgraces, they included Dora’s heroine, Amber Lloyd-Foxe, who had a mane of flaxen hair, exeats on Saturday morning to hunt with the Beaufort and who was now reading love letters from boys at Eton, Harrow and Radley. The second Bagley Babe was Milly Walton: emollient, charming and auburn-haired but overshadowed by her ravishing mother Ruth.

  Making up the trio was Jade Stancombe, Randal’s ‘little princess’, who had long, shiny dark hair and was as bitchy as she was beautiful. Jade’s street cred had rocketed because of her on-off relationship with Cosmo Rannaldini and because she’d been recently rushed from a party to hospital with alcoholic poisoning to blot out the ‘pain of my parents’ separation’. Jade had in fact been spoilt rotten all her life, and was miffed because her parents were, for a second, thinking of their impending divorce rather than her.

  Everyone was scared of Jade. Milly and Amber loved her for her cast-offs – she seldom wore even cashmere twice – and for trips in the Stancombe jet, though you had to be prepared to endure Randal’s groping.

  The Bagley Babes indulged in lots of hugging and kissing and, from the humming of vibrators after dark, you’d think bees were swarming. As a new girl, Dora got fed up with making toast and running errands for Jade, and applying fake tan to the small of her very sleek back. She drew the line at shaving Jade’s Brazilian.

  As well as the Bagley Babes, the Lower Fifths were enlivened by Lando France-Lynch, the Hon. Jack Waterlane and Amber’s twin brother, Junior Lloyd-Foxe, who all had Coutts cheque cards and accounts at Ladbrokes and whose sparse intellect was compensated for by their dazzling athletic ability, which had led them to forming their own cricket team: the Chinless Wanderers. With life also revolving round the school stables where they kept their horses and the beagle pack, little time was left for academic pursuit.

  And if Babes and Wanderers weren’t enough in one form, there was Cosmo Rannaldini, machiavellian master of the universe, and his pop group the Cosmonaughties. Jade Stancombe thought Cosmo was ‘sex on cloven hoofs’. Dora thought he was the most horrible boy in the school.

  Known as the Bagley Byron, Cosmo had the same lustrous black curls as the poet, but his pale, cruel face was leaner and his dark, soulful eyes less protruding.

  ‘Oh God, our help in ages pissed,’ sang Cosmo. Only five foot seven, our little Prince of Darkness had two bodyguards. The first was Anatole, son of the Russian Minister of Affaires, whose vodka bottle chucked out of an attic window was responsible for the glazed expression on the chaplain’s face. The second was Lubemir, from Albania, who claimed his family were asylum-seekers, but whose safe-breaking skills and habit of paying school fees with rare works of art suggested rather an affiliation with the Mafia. Pupils tended to seek asylum as Lubemir approached. No one was going to beat up Cosmo with those two around.

  Next to the Cosmonaughties sat Xavier Campbell-Black, hunched and miserable. Dora tried to like him because he was the brother of her best friend Bianca, but she’d been horrified recently to see him beating up his horse. Although if you were fat and ugly, and had a heart-rendingly pretty sister after whom every boy in the school lusted, you probably had to take it out on something.

  Last hymn over, Dora fell to her knees and really prayed for the safety of Cadbury and Loofah and her dear Bianca, who kept waving and giggling at her from the body of the chapel, and for her brother Dicky, who was always being bullied or jumped on because he was so small and pretty.

  Dicky had a much better voice than Dora, but had deliberately sung flat at the compulsory audition, because he’d get even more jumped on if he had to wear chorister’s robes.

  ‘Grant me lots of good stories to sell,’ prayed Dora.

  The twenty pounds from the Gazette for the story of Janna dining with the Brett-Taylors wouldn’t keep Cadbury in Butcher’s Tripe or pay the massive mobile bill from chattering to Bianca. How could she talk to her press contacts without a phone? Life was very hard.

  The glazed chaplain was just blessing everyone, when a hitherto absent Hengist swept in, bounding up the steps of the pulpit, as always raising blood pressures and fluttering pulses as he smiled round.

  ‘If I may keep you a moment,’ he began in his deep, infinitely thrilling voice. ‘You all heard the lesson: “Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, the blind.”

  ‘Well, just as the Lord invited the poor to his party, we will be inviting those less fortunate than you to our school tomorrow, when sixteen pupils from Larkminster Comprehensive will spend the afternoon with us.’

  A rumble of mirth, interest, disapproval and incredulity swept round the chapel.

  ‘These are children often from tragically impoverished backgrounds, who have only played football on concrete between tower blocks, who often care for handicapped, senile, abusing or drug-addictive parents, who after long days at school have to clean the family home, look after brothers and sisters, iron, cook, shop and hold down evening or weekend jobs to make ends meet.’

  Glancing round, moved by his own eloquence, Hengist noticed Cosmo Rannaldini, long lashes sweeping his high cheekbones, playing an imaginary violin, and snapped:

  ‘Save that for the orchestra, Cosmo. Sixteen children from Years Ten and Nine will visit us,’ he went on. ‘You will recognize them from their crimson sweatshirts and black tracksuits.’

  ‘And yobbo accents,’ said Jade Stancombe.

  ‘Takes one to know one,’ murmured Amber Lloyd-Foxe.

  ‘A list of both staff and pupils selected to look after our visitors will be found on the noticeboard,’ added Hengist. ‘I know you and Larks have been sneering at each other for generations, but tomorrow you will have a chance to break down traditional class barriers, and to treat your visitors with the kindness and consideration of which I know you are capable.

  ‘As those selected are too old to kick off with Pass the Parcel, and too young – officially that is’ – Hengist raised a thick black eyebrow – ‘to break the ice with a large vodka and tonic, we will begin with a team-building exercise in Middle Field, supervised by Mr Anderson and Mr Fleming, which I think you’ll enjoy, followed by a tour of the school in general and early supper in the General Bagley Room.

  ‘Tomorrow is only a re
cce. In future Larks will be spending more time with us and sharing our magnificent facilities. So please look out for anyone looking lost in a crimson sweatshirt and remember our Bagley emblem of the lion protecting the fawn and our motto: “May the strong defend the weak”.’

  Dora was absolutely livid when she consulted the noticeboard and discovered the Bagley Babes, the Cosmonaughties and the Chinless Wanderers had been chosen to entertain Larks rather than her form. Think of the stories she’d miss.

  She was not, however, as furious as Alex Bruce when he saw the list of staff and pupils and realized Hengist had ridden roughshod across his timetable.

  Fortunately Miss Painswick, the dragon who guarded Hengist, was off with flu, and Alex was able to storm into Hengist’s darkly panelled book-lined office, which was on the first floor of the Mansion and, like the bridge of a ship, enabled Hengist to overlook the playing fields and escape if he saw anyone he didn’t like coming up the drive.

  Alex’s mood was not improved to find Hengist reading The Times and listening to some noisy symphony on Radio 3.

  ‘I must protest, S.T.L., on the peremptory way you have imposed your will, hijacking members of staff without any consultation. Who is going to take Piers and Rufus’s classes now?’

  ‘Oh, go away, Alex,’ said Hengist irritably. ‘We must try and learn how the other ninety-five per cent live in this country.’

  Alex cracked his knuckles. ‘Before you rush into this scheme, S.T.L., we should apply to join the Government Building Bridges programme which for a start would entitle us to some funding.’

  ‘Any initiative from this Government involves far too much red tape.’

  ‘Our parents will be understandably displeased,’ continued Alex. ‘How can we justify putting up our fees – I got a most offensive letter from Rupert Campbell-Black this very morning – if we reject potential funding?’

  Then, as Hengist turned to the crossword:

  ‘I don’t expect you realize, grant money could be particularly advantageous to the maintained school involved, funding transport costs and cover for teachers. If you’re anticipating any expensive joint productions, you could be depriving your’ – Alex was about to say ‘precious’ but changed it to – ‘“friend” Janna Curtis of fifty thousand pounds.’

  ‘Good God.’ Hengist put down his pen. ‘That’s not bad.’

  ‘And there’s no reason we ourselves shouldn’t apply for a grant retrospectively.’

  ‘Then look into it, you’re so good at that sort of thing. Now, if you please.’

  But Biffo Rudge, also unchecked by Miss Painswick, had barged in, redder in the face than ever, bellowing, ‘Our parents will be up in arms that fees they’re struggling to raise are being squandered on the very students from whom they wish their children to be distanced.’

  Bringing up the rear, like Boudicca leading her troops into battle, came No-Joke Joan, who had just learnt from the notice-board that the Bagley Babes, none of whom were working hard enough, had been enlisted. Nor did she trust them with Feral Jackson or Paris Alvaston. Couldn’t Hengist select three other young women?

  ‘My decision is final,’ said Hengist, turning up Brahms’s First.

  ‘But S.T.L. . . .’ Joan longed to defy Hengist, but her ally Alex Bruce, who’d got her in post at Bagley, was shaking his head.

  ‘Make a note of it – our time will come,’ he murmured as a delighted Hengist swooped on an incoming call, then to his horror realized it was Dora’s mother, the awful Lady Belvedon whom Painswick would never have let through.

  ‘Quite frankly, Hengist,’ she was squawking, ‘I don’t bankrupt myself as a poor widow in order that Dicky and Dora pick up common accents. The late Sir Raymond would turn in his grave. I also insist the party doesn’t include Feral Jackson, who’s been up before me and spent several weeks of the summer holidays in a Young Offenders’ Institute; a most vindictive fellow.’

  Hengist filled in five across and let her run. If he kept saying, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ a glowering Biffo, Alex and Joan might go away.

  Having ascertained from the noticeboard that the Cosmonaughties, the Chinless Wanderers and the Bagley Babes were all rather surprisingly included in the party to entertain Larks, Cosmo Rannaldini decided to give physics a miss.

  Humming Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1, which he was playing and conducting in a concert at the weekend, he sauntered across the quad to the school office to discover Painswick, Hengist’s secretary, was off sick. She must be ill to desert Hengist. Instead, Painswick’s junior, the ravishing but daffy Jessica, whom Hengist only employed to keep visiting fathers sweet and because her typos made him laugh, was in charge. Jessica was an old friend of Cosmo, having worked as a production secretary on his late father’s last film. Jessica wanted to pop down to Bagley village to buy a birthday card for her nan. So Cosmo offered to man the office.

  Having checked the weekly bulletins and Hengist’s diary, he tapped into Painswick’s computer to find out who was coming from Larks, and whistled. Talk about the dregs: not just Johnnie Fowler and his hell-cat girlfriend Kitten Meadows, and Rocky who went berserk if he didn’t take his Ritalin – that had possibilities – but all the Wolf Pack.

  Feral was four inches taller than Cosmo and had once hit him across Waitrose’s drink department. Cosmo did not want his crown as the Byron of Bagley taken away.

  He therefore proceeded to email the entire school and most of the parents in histrionic terms, listing the dramatis personae, warning that barbarians were at the gate and that Bagley could anticipate the worst mass rape since the Sabine Women.

  ‘A marauding army of Sharons and Kevs will plunder your cattle and your mobiles. Lock up your Rolexes, iPods and your credit cards; pull up the drawbridge; get the oil boiling on the Aga: we will fight to the death.’

  He was just enlarging Janna and Hengist’s photo in the Gazette to stick on the noticeboard when Dora Belvedon sidled in.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To be part of the welcome party when Larks comes over,’ said Dora piously. ‘It’s so important to break down social barriers.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Cosmo, ‘you want to flog the story to the press.’

  Unlike his current squeeze Jade Stancombe who considered Dora to be ‘a mouthy disrespectful brat’, Cosmo rather liked little Miss Belvedon. Her blond plaits were coming untied, her blue-green eyes were suspicious and disapproving and her little nose stuck in the air, but her pursed mouth was sweet. He liked her fearlessness, resourcefulness and jaundiced view of life. She could be trained up as a useful accomplice. And if he won over Dora he could gain outwardly unthreatening access to the desirable Bianca.

  ‘You were waiting at dinner when Janna dined with the B-Ts,’ said Cosmo, offering Dora one of Painswick’s humbugs.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Must be something going on between Hengist and Janna for him to allow scum like this in here.’

  ‘If you’ll stop bullying my brother Dicky . . .’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever. So what gives with Janna and Hengist?’

  ‘She’s got a ginormous crush on him. I delivered a sealed love note to her house on Sunday; it was like chucking petrol on a bonfire: whoosh!’

  ‘Is Randal Stancombe after her too?’ Cosmo got a fiver out of the inside pocket of his tweed jacket. ‘Giving her that minibus?’

  ‘No.’ Dora accepted the fiver. ‘He was showing off to Mrs Walton. He had his hand up her skirt all dinner – disgusting letch.’

  ‘Lucky Stancombe.’

  Dora accepted another fiver, and another after the revelation that Piers Fleming had come in at six that morning.

  ‘Piers likes Sheena Anderson. He put his hands between her bosoms when no one was looking. Thank you.’ She shoved yet another fiver into her bra.

  ‘What a decadent world we live in,’ sighed Cosmo. ‘If we can instigate a punch-up or, better still, a broken jaw tomorrow, it’ll make every national. You pick up what you can behind the scenes.
Here’s my mobile number. I’d better have yours. If you’re good, I’ll buy you a mobile that takes photographs, then you can photograph the Duddon valley in the shower.’

  Sally Brett-Taylor picked up a telephone and rang Larks.

  ‘Janna, my dear, we’re so looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. Tell me, what do your chaps really like best to eat?’

  Sally was such a brick, reflected Janna, you could chuck her through a window.

  27

  The morning of Larks’s visit began for Hengist with a glorious fuck. His favourite breakfast aperitif was going down on his beautiful wife, licking her clitoris, seeing it and the surrounding labia swelling pink, hearing her squeaks and gasps of pleasure, then her breath coming faster until she flooded into his mouth, so slippery with excitement that he could instantly slide his cock inside her.

  Sally was like a clearing in the jungle no one but he had ever discovered. No one else knew the joy of making love to her. No one had warmer, softer, sweeter-smelling flesh, or higher, more rounded breasts and bottom, or prettier legs.

  Sally’s clothes were so straight. No one seeing the silk shirts tucked into the wool skirts which fell just below her knees suspected the luscious underwear: the suspender belts, French knickers and pretty bras in pastel satins; the Reger beneath the Jaeger. Strait is the gate; once through it was all pleasure, which left Hengist purring and utterly relaxed.

  Downstairs he switched on the percolator, threw a croissant into the Aga, later smothering it with Oxford marmalade, chatted to Elaine the greyhound and turned on BBC 1 to hear Oriana’s latest brief bulletin from Kabul, protesting on the plight of Afghan women. Thank God, she was alive.

  Sally knew her husband was excited about Larks’s visit. In turn, recognizing the slight widening and worry in Sally’s eyes, Hengist murmured that Janna was only an Oriana substitute. ‘I like someone to spar with – chippy, chippy, bang, bang – and she’s so desperate to make Larks succeed.’