Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  Hengist and Sally were kind, but Olympian and remote, like Jupiter and Juno, and hadn’t invited her to a single dinner party.

  There were enough boys in the school in love with her and girls, madly admiring, to feed her ego, but she wanted a husband or a steady partner to love and cherish.

  Vicky found her thoughts straying rather too often to Cosmo Rannaldini, sexy little beast, with whom she had gone much too far on the field trip. Now he sat, staring at her, a wicked smile snaking round his full lips, unnerving her as she tried to initiate him and the rest of Middle Five B into The Pardoner’s Tale. Anatole and Lubemir, meanwhile, were playing poker. Milly was painting her nails; Amber was writing to one of her numerous boyfriends; the Chinless Wanderers were studying the Sun, deciding which horses to back, except for Lando, lazy great beast, who was asleep.

  ‘Can you tell me, Lando, what Chaucer is trying to say here?’ she asked sharply.

  Lando opened an eye. ‘Can you tell me who the fuck Chaucer is?’

  The class fell about.

  ‘Don’t use horrible language, Lando, that’s another fiver for the swear box. And don’t be so obtuse.’

  Lando stretched out a large polo-stick-calloused hand for the Collins dictionary. ‘What does “obtuse” mean?’

  Vicky’s lips tightened. She found the Middle Fifths very difficult and not nearly admiring enough – particularly Paris, who, as they had both come from Larks, should have supported her. His stroppy behaviour was becoming the talk of the staffroom with Hengist showing a curious reluctance to put the boot in.

  Vicky showed no such reluctance when in the Middle Fifths’ next English lesson, three days later, she asked them to describe a happy family experience in the holidays, using simile, metaphor, oxymoron and personification.

  ‘Please, Miss Fairchild,’ whispered Milly, ‘Paris doesn’t have a family.’

  ‘Of course he does. He has the bursar and his wife, his new foster family,’ said Vicky, so that everyone looked at Paris. ‘You could write a most interesting essay on adjusting to your new placement, Paris, and how Bagley compares with Larks.’

  ‘“Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it”,’ spat Paris.

  ‘My mother,’ piped up Amber, ‘says placement is the most difficult part of a dinner party. She always forgets to do a seating plan, and is pissed by the time we get into the dining room. Why doesn’t one learn important things like that in maths?’

  ‘I hardly think Biffo’d be an expert,’ said Milly. ‘It’s even worse if you’re a single woman. If my mother asks Randal to dinner, is it coming on too strong to put him at the head of the table, or will he be miffed he’s not on her right?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Milly,’ exploded Vicky.

  ‘Silly Milly,’ echoed Jade, sticking her tongue out at Milly.

  ‘Write it as a play, Paris,’ suggested Vicky, ‘then we could all take parts.’

  ‘Or as a poem,’ quipped Cosmo. ‘Living with the bursar could not be worser.’

  ‘Shut it,’ hissed Paris.

  ‘Paris in fact is quite a poet,’ went on Cosmo, dramatically whipping out a rainbow-coloured notebook. ‘Listen to this epic about a snail,’ which he proceeded to declaim in a camp Cockney accent:

  ‘“O Snile, your gli-ering trile, leads from the gu-er up to anuvver gu-er on which to bang your ’orns.”’

  As Paris gave a howl of rage, uneasy laughter broke out round the room.

  Milly put a hand on Paris’s arm. ‘Ignore him.’

  ‘Here’s another little gem,’ continued Cosmo, turning the page, knowing instinctively that Vicky didn’t like Paris. ‘Here’s what our new boy thinks of Bagley:

  ‘Death is like a boarding school

  From which you never come home

  Where your name is carved on a gravestone

  Rather than sewn inside your clothes.’

  ‘Doesn’t scan,’ complained Boffin.

  ‘You bastard,’ whispered Paris, turning on Cosmo.

  ‘I think it’s rather good,’ said Primrose Duddon with a shiver.

  ‘I think it’s very good,’ came a voice from the back of the class.

  It was Piers Fleming, head of English, who’d dropped in to listen to Vicky’s class. ‘May I?’ He grabbed the rainbow-covered notebook and read both the snail poem and the death poem again, but in a normal and beautiful voice.

  ‘The second one,’ he went on, ‘reminds me of Robert Frost describing a disused graveyard:

  ‘The verses in it say and say:

  “The ones who living come today

  To read the stones and go away

  Tomorrow dead will come to stay.”

  ‘It has the same icy hand on the heart. I’m going to put forward your poems for the school anthology,’ he told Paris. ‘We publish it every three years. You’re probably too modest to submit your own stuff, so thank you, Cosmo, so much, for drawing it to my attention.’

  Cosmo was hopping.

  As the bell went and the Middle Fifths packed up, Piers very kindly suggested to Vicky she might fare better with one of the less demanding sets. If Piers and Vicky had seen the Middle Fifths at their next lesson, however, they might have changed their opinion, as the entire set listened enraptured to Theo Graham introducing some of their GCSE Latin texts.

  ‘Poets were like rock stars around the first century AD,’ he was now telling them as, hip hitched on to the side of a desk, he puffed away on a forbidden cigarette. ‘Just as you lot might enliven an evening with a video or a takeaway or by hiring a stripagram for a party, the Romans sent out for a slave to read poetry.

  ‘Some poets like Martial, who was charming and very witty, recited their own poems at dinner parties, but most of them were read by slaves. You didn’t make money as a poet in those days, but people could sponsor you. Horace was earlier, of course, but he was such a good poet – we’ll be looking at his stuff in a minute – that a rich Etruscan gave him a farm and a huge estate.’

  ‘Just think if he’d liked your poems, Paris,’ giggled Amber. Paris grinned and gave her a middle finger.

  Lighting one cigarette from another, Theo shuffled down the row and lifted a lock of Amber’s blond hair.

  ‘You’d have been in trouble as a slave, miss, because Italians liked blondes, so lots of society ladies dyed their hair blond, and when it fell out, they shaved the heads of the blonde slaves and used the hair as a wig.

  ‘That’s probably why Pyrrha in our first poem was considered such a beauty, Horace describes her as braiding her flaxen locks.’

  ‘Paris would have cleaned up as a poet and a blond,’ said Milly.

  Feeling much happier, Paris came out of Theo’s class slap into Poppet Bruce, who was always nagging him to drop in on her and Alex and pour out his soul. Now she wanted him to go public.

  ‘Could you address our Talks Society next week? If a talk is too daunting, I could always interview you.’ Paris raised a pale eyebrow. ‘It would be such a broadening experience for our group to hear your views on your foster placement and being in care.’

  The lad was certainly good-looking, decided Poppet, and the same age as their daughter, Charisma. She was very touched when Paris put a hand in his pocket and handed her a tenner.

  ‘How kind, but you don’t have to pay to join our little society.’

  ‘No, it’s for the two fines I’m about to get,’ said Paris icily. ‘You just want me to slag off Patience and Ian, to give you and Mr Fussy ammunition against them. So fuck off.’ Then he spat at her feet, just falling short of her grubby sandalled toenails.

  Poppet didn’t miss a beat.

  ‘I know you’re hurting, Paris, and don’t really mean it.’

  ‘Hurt is a transitive verb,’ snapped Paris, ‘and I do.’

  Despite half the staff competing to make him tell them if anything was wrong, Paris felt it was as weak to admit terror as to display love and dependency. And so he waited for Cosmo. Whether it was a bomb in the tube or on Big Ben, the terr
orists would strike sooner or later. He had already found a rubber snake in his bed and still kept hearing rumours about the notorious Pitbull Club.

  It was after midnight on the second Saturday of term. Theo, after downing a bottle of whisky in his room, had passed out, his snores ripping open the night. Smart, in the next-door cell, had long since wanked himself to sleep over a photograph of Jade Stancombe. Paris could hear the Virginia creeper flapping limp hands against the window, floorboards creaking, Tarquin’s ravishing strides, doors softly opening and closing. Just like Oaktree Court. Starting to shake, already drenched in sweat, he pulled Thomas the Tank Engine over his head. The chattering of his teeth would wake the dead.

  Suddenly the duvet was wrenched off him and a torch brighter than the full moon shoved in his face.

  ‘Get up, pretty boy.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Get up,’ repeated the voice.

  In the dim light, he could make out a hooded figure, then groaned as the torch was rammed into his ribs.

  ‘You’re invited to the Pitbull Club. Move it.’

  Paris froze, nearly shitting himself, heart crashing.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ he croaked, kicking out at another hooded figure that appeared on the right.

  ‘Come on, Gay Paree.’ He knew that voice. Next moment its owner had grabbed his hair, tugging him viciously to his feet.

  ‘New boy’s initiation. Let’s see how brave you are,’ mocked another slighter figure hovering behind.

  The figure on the left jabbed him with the torch again. Paris moaned, then, reaching behind him, grabbed the knife from under his pillow. Leaping at the first figure, catching him off balance, pulling him against his own body, clamping him with his left hand, he put the knife against his throat.

  The torch crashed to the floor.

  The muscular, almost square body, left him in no doubt about the identity of the tormentor.

  ‘Get out, unless you want your throat cut, Albanian pig.’

  ‘Put him down,’ ordered the larger of the figures on the right, who had a deep voice, and was moving in. Paris caught a waft of brandy.

  ‘Don’t come anywhere near me,’ he spat, then, running the blade down Lubemir’s cheek, split it open, drawing blood. ‘I’m not just shaving him. Next time I’ll cut deeper.’ Kneeing Lubemir in the kidneys, he sent him crashing to the floor.

  ‘Get him,’ said the smaller figure on the right – with less conviction as, in the light from the fallen torch, Paris approached with knife poised.

  ‘You don’t scare me,’ snarled Paris. ‘I’ll cut up the lot of you, and you’ll lose more than your plait this time, Miss Stancombe.’

  Jade gave a gasp, and fled, followed by Lubemir and Anatole.

  Down in the cellar, the leader of the pack in his astrakhan coat was admiring his reflection as he snorted coke from a framed mirror lying on an ancient desk. His eyes were glittering but no less cruel.

  Other figures stood round self-consciously, rather apprehensively, drinking from bottles or smoking.

  Millbank, a new boy in blue-striped pyjamas, almost fainting in terror, was loosely tied to a chair. He had bitten his lip through trying not to cry. Despite the heat from the boilers, he shivered uncontrollably.

  ‘Where’s Paris?’ snapped Cosmo.

  ‘Won’t come,’ said Anatole.

  ‘How pathetic is that. Three against one.’

  ‘I’m not risking it,’ said Lubemir, removing a blood-saturated handkerchief from his slashed cheek. ‘He knows who we all are.’

  ‘How?’ Cosmo was hoovering up every last speck of cocaine.

  ‘He listen,’ said Anatole. ‘How you think he’s such a good mimic?’

  ‘I’m going back to Boudicca,’ bleated Jade. ‘It was bloody scary.’

  Cosmo grabbed her arm. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ Then: ‘You can bugger off,’ he told Millbank. ‘You got off lightly, but don’t breathe a word’ – he jerked his head at Lubemir, who held the cigarette he’d just lit to Millbank’s jumping cheek – ‘or we’ll really sort you out. Understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ sobbed Millbank and fled.

  Cosmo turned to the others.

  ‘Are you honestly telling me three of you couldn’t sort out that etiolated wimp?’

  ‘He pulled a knife on us,’ protested Lubemir.

  ‘Oh dear,’ sighed Cosmo, ‘I do hope he didn’t hold it like a pencil.’

  62

  Alex Bruce was incensed when Hengist gave any pupil who applied permission to go on the Countryside March. Far too many of the applicants had retakes the next day and would be exhausted and probably hungover.

  ‘And is championing blood sports really part of our Bagley ethos?’ asked Alex querulously.

  ‘Damn right it is,’ snapped Hengist. ‘Bagley Beagles have been going for nearly a hundred years and’ – he waved a hand in the direction of Badger’s Retreat – ‘isn’t that country worth saving?’

  Patience asked Paris if he’d like to join her on the march.

  ‘Rupert Campbell-Black, Ricky France-Lynch and Billy Lloyd-Foxe are all going. Rupert’s taking his dogs. It should be a fun day out.’

  Paris replied coldly that he didn’t approve of blood sports.

  ‘Alex and Poppet don’t either,’ said Patience with rare edge. ‘It’s not just blood sports, it’s the whole tapestry and livelihood of the countryside, which this Government is hell-bent on destroying, totally undermining the poor farmers. If hunting goes, thousands of people will lose their jobs, and thousands and thousands more horses and hounds will be put down. People who make such a fuss about killing foxes don’t give a stuff about the horrors of factory farming or the dreadful transport of live animals.’ Realizing she was shouting, Patience stopped in embarrassment.

  ‘Still bloody cruel.’ Paris stalked towards the door. ‘Is Ian going?’

  ‘No, he’s dining with a supplier.’

  ‘I’ll dogsit,’ said Paris as a peace offering.

  Later he kicked himself when Dora told him that Xav and Bianca were also going, adding:

  ‘Bianca’s such an applause junkie, she can’t resist crowds and photographers.’

  Deliverance seemed at hand when Xav asked Paris to join them. Alas, social services stepped in. Paris couldn’t join their party because Rupert hadn’t been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau.

  ‘I can’t imagine he ever would be,’ said Alex nastily.

  Boffin Brooks rose at six most mornings ostensibly to conjugate Latin verbs but in reality to spy on his housemates. Early on the Saturday before the Countryside March, he caught Xav in bed smoking a spliff and reading a porn mag. Noting the ecstasy with which Xav was inhaling, like a chief drawing on a peace pipe, Boffin launched into a sermon in his nasal whine:

  ‘People smoke to look cool, Xavier, or because they’re forced to by bullies or peer pressure.’

  Boffin’s spectacles enlarged his bulging eyes. Shaving his meagre ginger stubble, he had deheaded several spots, reducing his face to an erupting volcanic landscape. His full red lips were salivating at the prospect of reading that disgusting porn mag before he handed it over to Alex.

  ‘I might be fractionally more lenient, Xavier, if you told me who sold you the stuff.’

  ‘I’m not grassing up anyone, so piss off.’ Inhaling deeply, Xav blew smoke rings at Boffin.

  Boffin looked pained.

  ‘It must be in your blood, Xavier. Colombia not only trains and supports the IRA and many other forms of terrorism, but also destroys billions of lives as the drug centre of the world.’

  ‘Nice place for a weekend break.’

  ‘Only place you won’t be this weekend is the Countryside March. My only recourse is to report you to Mr Bruce,’ at which point Xav launched himself at Boffin.

  ‘You little idiot,’ Hengist yelled at Xavier later in the morning. ‘I know how you wanted to go on that march. Why on earth did you screw up? Drugs are not allowed and that’s the second time Bo
ffin’s teeth have been knocked out in a year. How can I do anything but gate you? Your father will be devastated.’

  My father couldn’t give a stuff, thought Xav despairingly. He’ll just regard it as another cock-up on my part.

  My first leave-out and no one to look after me – thank God, thought Paris as Patience and Ian left the house.

  He brushed Northcliffe, partly from self-interest to keep the dog’s pale gold hair off his clothes; then he lit a fag and, pouring himself a glass of red, collapsed on the sofa in front of the television, where he was shortly joined by Northcliffe, who was not allowed up when Ian was around. Liverpool had won yesterday, so Paris flicked over to mock the Countryside March for a second and stayed to pray.

  ‘There’s Dora,’ he shouted in excitement, shoving Northcliffe’s face towards the screen as, dressed in jodhpurs and a hacking jacket, Dora marched proudly past chattering to Junior and the Hon. Jack, who were blatantly smoking and shouting to pretty girls among the mass of spectators lining the route.

  They were followed by Isa Lovell, former champion jockey, now Rupert Campbell-Black’s trainer, with his swarthy gypsy face, and by Rupert Campbell-Black himself, still the handsomest man in England, his eyes the colour of blue Smarties, his face expressionless as he ignored the cheers of the crowd. He was accompanied by half a dozen dogs: lurchers, terriers and Labradors, who kept stopping to fight each other and attack dogs in the crowd, until Rupert called them back.

  Inside, Rupert was raging and desolate that Xav as part of the clan wasn’t beside him. Instead, running to keep up, was Junior and Amber’s father, Billy Lloyd-Foxe, laughing helplessly, grey curls astray, wearing a tweed coat with no buttons and an equally buttonless shirt, held together by his tie.

  Reporting the march for the BBC, shouting over the tooting of hunting horns, Billy was giving an unashamedly biased commentary. ‘This is the countryside fighting back, making its protest seen and heard, with the largest march London has ever seen.’

  Even Paris couldn’t restrain a cheer for the three couple of the Bagley Beagles, sterns waving like wheat in a high wind, and in their midst, a large grinning chocolate Labrador pausing to gobble up a discarded Cornish pasty.