Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  Sally understood Hengist’s craving for novelty. She watched his confident lope, head thrown back, wind lifting his dark hair, shoulders squared. Last leaves were tumbling out of the trees, tossed in every direction, gathering round the bole of a big chestnut, whirling like the tigers circling until they turned into melted butter in Little Black Sambo. Sally’s heart swelled as she saw Hengist suddenly dance and skip as he rustled through the dry leaves.

  She must get on. There was lots to do: organizing smoked salmon and scrambled egg and puds for the Larks pupils; arranging a wrapped bottle of champagne and a light lunch for Randal Stancombe; and masterminding an Old Bagleian reunion dinner this evening.

  Swinging out of sight, Hengist ruffled the hair and asked after the parents of two Upper Fourth boys, before grappling briefly with the second fifteen’s scrum half and then discussing with him Bagley’s chances against Fleetley on Saturday.

  ‘We’ll bury them, sir.’

  Mist was curling ghostly round the last fires of the beeches as he stopped to joke with gardeners, busy putting the flower beds to rest; ferns hanging limp and dark and a few pinched ‘Iceberg’ roses being the last inhabitants.

  Robins and blackbirds stood round indignantly glaring at a squirrel who, having taken over their bird table, was wolfing all their food. Hengist shooed it off. It was after all the duty of the strong to protect the weak.

  It was going to be a beautiful day. The sun was breaking through as he settled into his big office chair, upholstered in burgundy leather, which had once belonged to the Archbishop of Singapore. Radio 3 was playing Brahms’s Third Symphony, written when the composer was hopelessly in love, as Hengist leafed through his post. He so adored not being pestered to do things by Miss Painswick.

  Then his telephone rang. Jessica wasn’t good at fielding calls. This one was from a father, furious that his tone-deaf daughter hadn’t been awarded a music scholarship.

  No sooner had Hengist put down the telephone than Jessica rushed in to say the Daily Telegraph was on the line.

  ‘We wondered what had happened to your copy,’ asked John Clare, the hugely respected and influential education editor.

  ‘What copy?’

  ‘On the contribution of competitive sport to the public-school ethos.’

  ‘Christ, when was it due?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Jesus, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I can give you till four o’clock.’

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ yelled Hengist. Painswick would have reminded him. He dialled Emlyn Davies. ‘You’ll have to kick-start this Larks operation.’

  ‘I’ve got rugby all afternoon.’

  ‘Not any more you haven’t. I’ll get shot of this piece as fast as I can.’

  ‘Absolutely fucking typical,’ roared Emlyn as he slammed down the telephone.

  Next Hengist dialled Alex Bruce.

  ‘I’ve got to borrow Radcliffe. Someone’s got to type this piece.’

  ‘Why can’t Jessica?’

  ‘Jessica’s not safe. Remember “There’s no such word as cunt”?’

  Alex Bruce winced. ‘High time you learnt to use a computer.’

  ‘You know technology makes me cry.’

  ‘Absolutely typical,’ screamed Alex slamming down the telephone and, turning to Mrs Radcliffe, his PA: ‘Hengist wants you to type out his article.’

  Mrs Radcliffe tried not to look pleased. Hengist was so attractive and so appreciative.

  Rufus then rang in and said he wouldn’t be able to organize the team-building exercise as one of his children had chicken pox and needed looking after.

  ‘Why can’t your wife do it?’ snapped Hengist.

  ‘She’s in London.’

  28

  ‘What is the dress code?’ Gloria had asked for the hundredth time.

  ‘Trousers, jumper, warm jacket and flat shoes to run around in,’ Janna had replied firmly.

  Then, early on Wednesday morning, watched by a bleary-eyed Partner, she had proceeded to wash her hair and scatter rejected clothes all over the bedroom before settling for shiny brown cowboy boots, cowgirl dress in woven pink and blue wool and a dark red jacket with a rich red, fake-fur collar. It looked wacky but sexy and elicited wolf whistles from all the children when she arrived at Larks.

  ‘You said we had to wear trousers,’ reproached Gloria, who’d shoehorned herself into her tightest jeans, but added a Sloaney twinset, Alice band and Puffa.

  Jason, rolling up in a tweed jacket, grey flannels, a striped shirt and round-necked dark blue jersey, looked as though he’d already crossed over. Mags Gablecross, in a lilac coat and skirt that reminded everyone what a pretty woman she was, was having great difficulty not laughing at Cambola, who looked equipped for a Ruritanian shooting party in a moss-green belted jacket, plus fours and a Tyrolean trilby trimmed with a bright blue jay’s feather.

  Knowing the other staff were waiting for things to go wrong, Janna had organized everything to the nth degree. Then Chally came bustling smugly into the office. ‘Cara’s just rung.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Janna through gritted teeth.

  ‘The poor dear’s sick.’

  ‘Is she ever anything else,’ said Janna, instantly regretting it as Chally bridled.

  ‘Let’s pretend you never said that. Cara’s been signed off with stress for at least a week.’

  ‘She could have rung in earlier,’ snapped Janna, thinking of a hundred children with their minds and mouths open and only young Lydia and martyred Basket to cope.

  ‘It was perhaps a mistake for both you and Jason to desert the English department.’

  ‘Cara was perfectly OK last night.’

  ‘Outwardly, perhaps,’ reproved Chally. ‘Inwardly she was humiliated by your announcing a joint play with Bagley. She feels her authority slipping away – we all do.’

  Janna was tempted to throttle Chally with today’s bright orange scarf. It was too late to get in a supply teacher.

  Instead Wally rigged up a new film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the main hall for the children to watch and then write an essay about.

  Janna hugged him. ‘Thank God for you.’

  Stancombe’s minibus was already twenty minutes late. The selected children were getting edgy. No matter that they’d knocked off Bagley’s caps for generations. That had been on the streets of Larkminster. Now they faced an away fixture in toff country. Those not chosen to go were jealous and taunting. Fights were breaking out all over the playground.

  Matters weren’t helped by Kylie Rose turning up in a pretty mauve pansy-patterned wool dress and a little blue velvet jacket, saying she hadn’t realized they had to wear uniform.

  ‘And you look wicked, miss,’ she added to get the attention off herself.

  ‘She just wants to hook a toff boyfriend,’ said Pearl furiously, ‘and we’re stuck in bloody uniform.’

  ‘That’s enough, Pearl,’ said Janna. ‘And take off those hoop earrings. A dog could jump through them. All right, Aysha?’

  Aysha, the cleverest girl in the school, nodded. Despite dark hair hidden by a headscarf, her features were serene and lovely. Inside she fought panic. Her father, in Pakistan on business, was due back any day. Her much more liberal mother had bravely signed today’s consent form. If her father found out he would beat both of them.

  The boys, wearing massive trainers and tracksuits with the hoods up, were swigging tap water from Evian bottles, unwilling to reveal they couldn’t afford spring water.

  ‘Have you taken your Ritalin, Rocky?’ asked Janna.

  Other boys had discovered that crushed Ritalin snorted gave you a high as good as cocaine and had been offering Rocky ten quid for his daily intake. Rocky liked money to buy chocolate and fizzy drinks, which made him even crazier.

  Rocky also had a huge crush on Kylie who led him round like a great curly-polled red bull.

  ‘I want to go on the bus,’ he was now grumbling.

  ‘We all do.’ Trying to keep her temp
er, Janna got out her mobile to learn that Stancombe had an important lunch in London, but would arrive at Bagley around three-thirty, officially to hand over the bus, which would be arriving any second.

  ‘It’s not coming, it’s all a hype,’ taunted Monster Norman.

  Graffi, Feral and Paris retreated behind a holly bush for a cigarette, which became a second and a third as they all waited.

  Then, just when they’d given up, Kylie shouted:

  ‘Here it comes, here it comes, and it’s ginormous!’

  The bus, the same crimson as Larks’s sweatshirts, had black leather upholstery, an upright lavatory like an upended coffin, a television and seated at least twenty-four. On the sides, so no one could mistake its benefactor, was printed in gold letters: ‘Larkminster Comprehensive School Bus donated by Randal Stancombe Properties’. On the front the destination said: ‘Bagley Hall’.

  ‘Wicked!’ yelled the children.

  But as they surged forward, struggling to be first up the steps, Satan shouted: ‘Yer mother,’ to Feral. Next moment Feral had jumped on Satan and Monster on Johnnie Fowler, at the same time aiming a kick at Paris. Graffi leapt to Paris’s defence. Everyone was yelling and pitching in, when suddenly the driver climbed down out of the bus. Instantly every child retreated in terror. Then, as he swept off his baseball cap, revealing a dark, shaven head and lighting up the grey day with his diamonds and his white teeth, Janna recognized Feral’s Uncle Harley.

  ‘Miss Curtis.’ He took her hand. ‘As beautiful as ever.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I do a bit of work for Mr Stancombe. Sorry I’m late, the garage was changing the number plates.’

  ‘It’s wonderful, thank you so much,’ cried Janna as the selected children climbed on in a most orderly fashion.

  Janna was about to leap on too, when Rowan came running across the playground: ‘Toilets are blocked again, and Mrs Norman’s on the warpath.’

  A second later, Stormin’ Norman came charging across the playground.

  ‘Why isn’t my Martin on that bus? Why’s he bein’ discriminated against, you cheeky cow?’ The fist poised to smash into Janna’s face stopped in mid-air. ‘Mornin’, Harley, just discussin’ logistics wiv Janna.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ ordered Harley, who’d been showing Wally how the bus worked.

  Amazingly, Stormin’ Norman did.

  ‘You wouldn’t like a job here?’ asked Janna.

  Harley flashed his teeth and advised her to get going. He’d sort everything this end.

  ‘He’s dead sexy, your uncle,’ said Gloria as Feral tried to get lost against the black leather.

  ‘Quick, miss. Baldie Hyde’s just driven up,’ shouted Graffi.

  Janna needed no further encouragement. Cheered off by other pupils who ran down the drive, banging its sides, the bus pulled away, quite jerkily at first, as Wally became accustomed to the gears.

  ‘I’m going to be sick,’ announced Kylie. ‘Can we open a window?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Pearl. ‘It’d fuck my hair.’

  As the bus crossed over the River Fleet into the country, pupils charged up and down, trying out the coffin lavatory, fiddling with the windows, standing on the seats to test the luggage rack.

  Mags Gablecross, knitting a shawl for a prospective grandchild, handed round a tub of Heroes. Miss Cambola got everyone singing: first ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’, then ‘It really ain’t surprising That we’re rising, rising, rising.’

  ‘Up the fucking social scale,’ sang Graffi to howls of laughter.

  Outside, the red ploughed fields were covered in flocks of birds having staff meetings.

  ‘Miss, miss, Johnnie Fowler and Kitten Meadows have been in the toilet for five minutes,’ cried Kylie.

  Janna smiled and walked up and down encouraging everyone.

  Paris, ecstatic to be in her company for a whole day, thought she’d never looked more beautiful. The red fur softened her little freckled face. Her perfume made him sneeze and his senses reel, particularly when she sat down and took his hand.

  ‘You’ll flip when you see the library. Have you written any more poems?’

  ‘Not a lot.’ Actually he was wrestling with one about Janna herself called ‘Perihelion’. Such a beautiful word, it meant the point in its orbit when a planet was nearest the sun. He was the planet that craved its moment of perihelion close to his sun: Janna, her flaming hair spread out like the sun’s rays.

  Love had sabotaged his cool, but he tried to be more inscrutable than ever, gazing out at old man’s beard glittering like cast-aside angels’ wings in the hedgerows.

  ‘Here’s Bagley, playground of the rich,’ said Graffi, catching sight of the big gold house through the thinning trees.

  Getting out her powder compact Janna took the shine off her freckled nose and, in the driving mirror, met Wally’s wise, kindly eyes, which missed nothing. ‘Be careful,’ they said.

  The bus swung left, through pillars topped with stone lions, up a drive past red and white cows, muddy horses, black-faced sheep, ancient trees in khaki fields; past heroic sculptures; past a signpost pointing the way to the bursar’s office, the science laboratory, the music hall, the sick bay, the headmaster’s rooms – Janna gave a shiver. Would there be room for her?

  All around, Bagley pupils were walking to classes, girls in sea-blue jerseys, soft beige pleated skirts and slip-on shoes, the boys in tweed jackets and grey flannels. Passing eternal playing fields on the right and the big square Mansion on the left, Wally turned left, then left again up a little drive through a big oak front door into a quadrangle in the centre of which a bronze lion tenderly sheltered a fawn between its paws.

  ‘Bleedin’ ’ell,’ said Feral, ‘it’s a fuckin’ castle.’

  ‘Bigger than Mr Darcy’s house,’ conceded Pearl.

  ‘It’s Goffic,’ breathed Johnnie Fowler, gazing up at the pointed turrets and narrow windows.

  ‘Ah, isn’t that lion sweet,’ cried Kylie.

  As the bus doors buckled, aware of hundreds of eyes looking down at them from offices and classrooms, the Larks children swarmed out into the sunshine, steeling themselves for mockery.

  Then, as though one of the heroic sculptures, perhaps Thor, God of Thunder, had come to life, curly-haired, square-jawed, massive-shouldered and battling to curb his fury, Emlyn Davies strode out to meet them.

  On Saturday, the five Bagley rugby teams had away matches against Fleetley, the school from which Hengist had departed under a cloud and the one he most wanted to bury.

  Emlyn had intended spending the afternoon fine-tuning each team, trying out different moves and combinations of players, before making a final selection. Hengist would be the first to raise hell if Bagley didn’t wipe the floor with Fleetley, but had now dragged Emlyn away to oversee his latest self-indulgent distribution of largesse, leaving that pompous woofter Denzil Harper, head of PE, in charge. Sometimes Emlyn loathed Hengist. Everyone had to pick up the fucking pieces.

  He had just broken the news that Hengist was irrevocably tied up all afternoon to a stricken Janna and her bitterly disappointed children, when Hengist made him look a complete prat by erupting into the quad, dark hair on end, ink all over his hands.

  ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa. I’m so sorry, children. I failed to hand in an essay yesterday and have to stay in all afternoon to write it.’ Then, seizing Janna’s quivering hands, he kissed her on both flaming cheeks. ‘Darling, I’m mortified, how delicious you look. Diorissimo, isn’t it?’

  Then he turned his spotlight charm on the other teachers – kissing Mags and telling her on what good form her husband Tim had been the other night; praising a piece on Boccherini Miss Cambola had written for last week’s Classical Music: ‘I’d no idea he was such a fascinating character!’; urging Gloria to try out the newest equipment in the gym: ‘I’d so value your opinion. What pretty women teach at Larks! And young Jason, hello. I can’t remember whether you’re in Year Nine or Year Ten,’ followed by a
shout of laughter, which cracked up the children.

  Jason, who’d quickly put his striped shirt collar inside the crew neck of his dark blue jersey because Hengist had, tried to be a good sport.

  Then, turning to the children, Hengist explained that with Miss Painswick away and his excitement about their visit, he’d completely forgotten to write his piece for the Telegraph about ‘the importance of competitive games’. ‘You lot, being obsessed with football, know all about that,’ he went on, shaking hands with each of them.

  ‘I know Miss Curtis has only chosen special people: Johnnie Fowler, the great cricketer, you must try out the indoor school later. And Aysha, the budding Stephen Hawking, what part of Pakistan d’you come from? I know it well,’ followed by a couple of sentences in Urdu.

  ‘And Feral, the ace footballer, whom I am determined to convert to rugger, you’re the right build. Lily Hamilton, an old friend, and a fan of yours, Feral, tells me you support Arsenal. And here’s Graffi, another old friend, how’s the mural of Larkminster going? Janna says it’s fantastic. I’ve just bought a Keith Vaughan for the common room. I’ll show it to you later.

  ‘And here’s Pearl, who transformed Janna last Saturday, an amazing effort, although you had a lovely subject’ – quick smile at Janna – ‘will you help us with make-up for our play next term? We’re planning to join forces. You must look at our theatre.’

  ‘Yes, please, sir.’ Pearl, the cross robin, had suddenly turned into a lovebird.

  Yesterday Janna had emailed Hengist photographs of every child with little biogs, but never expected him to memorize them. She felt overwhelmed with gratitude.

  Noting how she was blushing, Paris thought: the smarmy bastard, he’s miles too old for her. Then Hengist swung round, his smile so warm and sympathetic.

  ‘And you must be Paris. I love your poems. Janna showed me “The Spire and the Lime Tree”. I gather you can also mimic anyone, so you must have a big part in our joint play. You’ll find a terrific drama section in the library. Have a look at Wilde, Coward and Tennessee Williams, great writers, great dialogue, great parts for you.’