Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  Sally Brett-Taylor, who often popped in to tend the garden, always sought Xav out to see how he was and give him the gossip, to which Janna was unable to stop herself listening.

  Oriana was due home at Christmas for a long stint. Hengist was utterly obsessed with the rugby World Cup.

  ‘If there’s any possibility of England reaching the final, he’s been asked by Venturer to fly out and cover it. So exciting,’ confided Sally. ‘He’s also been terribly busy writing speeches for Jupiter for the Tory Party conference.’

  Once Larks was up and running, Janna was distracted by a constant stream of visitors. Wendy Wallace wrote a lovely piece for the Times Educational Supplement. The BBC in Bristol came over to interview the children and told the viewers how well the experiment was working.

  Ashton Douglas was not happy with this publicity, particularly if it established a precedent and failing schools all over the country started clamouring for buildings and funding to enable them to keep going for another year for the sake of a few Year Tens.

  Meanwhile Rupert was keeping his distance. He’d enjoyed The Mayor of Casterbridge, and in his present mood, was very tempted to auction Taggie at Sotheby’s. He’d struggled to the end of act one of Macbeth. He only thawed fractionally when Taggie brought him a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a foot of Toblerone with her first pay packet. He yawned like Jonah’s whale when Xav and Taggie gossiped about Larks.

  ‘Is Janna interviewing cooks? I thought this was a temporary job?’

  ‘She’s trying, but she’s got so much to do,’ mumbled Taggie, who also had so much to do and was as distressed by Rupert’s rage as by Bianca’s refusal to come home at weekends.

  Bianca, who was too proud to tell her parents how much she loathed boarding, was also furious Xav was having such a good time.

  ‘He gets away at four and often doesn’t have homework even in the subjects he’s taking. I have to work until six o’clock and have two hours’ homework after that.’ And she stormed into Miss Painswick’s office to ring Childline.

  In the second week of October, when the gutters were filling up with leaves and conkers crashing down, Cosmo, Anatole and Lubemir, armed with a huge bottle of vodka for Janna, rolled up at Larks, uninvited, to see what sort of cock-up Xavier was making of his life.

  In the corridor they bumped into Xav himself, who started to shake. Fortunately, he was flanked by Johnnie, Monster, Feral and Graffi.

  Any skirmish was averted by Janna coming out of her office and offering the Cosmonaughties a cup of tea and lardycake and expressing profound gratitude for the vodka.

  The trio returned to Bagley absolutely furious.

  Why couldn’t they smoke, use their mobiles in class, not wear uniform, call the teachers by their Christian names and have cosy lessons on sofas?

  ‘It’s great at Larks,’ Anatole admitted to the rest of a madly curious Upper Fifth. ‘Xav is doing really vell and getting A stars.’

  ‘Boffin Black,’ mocked Cosmo, ‘born in a Bogotá gutter, he’s found his own level. How could Mr Fussy have let such a genius slip through his fingers?’

  ‘Oh, cool it, Cosmo,’ snapped Lubemir, who was profoundly grateful to Xav for not shopping him over Dicky Belvedon’s boat trip. ‘Xav looked really good, he’s lost so much weight, and Pearl, Feral, Graffi, Kylie and Johnnie – all of them – sent their best to you,’ he added.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Amber.

  ‘To me?’ asked Paris, looking up.

  ‘No, how funny,’ drawled Cosmo, ‘no one mentioned you at all, not even Janna, who’s had the most awful haircut. They’ve all forgotten you.’

  93

  Paris was faring patchily at Bagley. Work, particularly in English, Latin and Greek, was miraculous. He had caught up with and overtaken the class. Playing regularly for the third fifteen had given him a rugger bugger swagger and the friendship of Lando, Junior and Jack Waterlane, who all found his help with both homework and coursework invaluable. In turn they protected him from Cosmo and Boffin, who were furious he had so often supplanted them as teacher’s pet.

  Things were going less happily at home, where Paris kept on drinking Ian’s drink, staying out late, and being sullen and uncommunicative when Ian and Patience’s friends dropped in.

  Ian was already uptight because of a fee-fixing scandal, which had just broken. As a comparatively new bursar, he had received emails and telephone calls from other independent school bursars round the country, and assumed it was standard practice to compare notes on fees. Now two major public schools had turned supergrass and the independents were being accused of forming a cartel and denying parents the chance to seek cheaper options.

  Alex Bruce, predictably, had gone into a frenzy of disapproval, demanding total access to Ian’s files and accusing him of sharp practice.

  As Alizarin Belvedon, Sophy’s husband, was working flat out for a major exhibition in New York and London, and Sophy was working at least three days a week at Larks, Patience frequently looked after their three-year-old daughter Dulcie, which, as well as the yard, meant a lot of work. Dulcie, with blonde curls and huge dark blue eyes, was utterly adorable and very self-willed. She adored Paris and, accompanied by Northcliffe, trailed constantly round the house after him, interrupting his homework.

  The afternoon Cosmo returned from Larks and taunted Paris that no one had asked after him, Paris had stormed out of the classroom and Lando had run after him, trying to comfort him.

  ‘Don’t rise, man, Cosmo’s just winding you up because he’s jealous. I’ll walk back to the Coach House with you, I need to check Barbary. He was lame yesterday, and on the way you can tell me the plot of The Mayor of Casterbridge.’

  But as they shuffled through a burning fiery furnace of leaves, Paris snapped, ‘Look it up in the Oxford Companion to English Literature, you idle sod. I’m pissed off doing your donkey work,’ and ran ahead into the gloom.

  Reaching the yard, he found Patience giving the horses haynets and Dulcie, in pale blue denim dungarees and a blue and white shirt, trying to sweep up straw with a fork. Both called out to Paris, but he belted upstairs and slammed his bedroom door.

  How could Janna not ask after him? How could Graffi, Pearl and Feral forget him?

  ‘“I am – yet what I am, none cares or knows”,’ he quoted bitterly. ‘“My friends forsake me like a memory lost.”’ Glancing round the room, he flipped.

  Whoosh went the fixtures, cards and photographs on the mantelpiece. Whoosh off the shelf by the window went the china Labrador head bookends containing his poetry books; crash went pots of felt tips, marker pens and biros, and piles of files and videos, as he tipped over his work table and upended chairs.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fucking Cosmo.’

  ‘Pawis, Pawis,’ said a voice, accompanied by banging on the door. ‘Pawis, let me in.’ It was Dulcie.

  ‘Fuck off,’ screamed Paris, hurling a stapler on the floor so its innards spilled out.

  Dulcie looked round in delight. ‘Whatyerdoin’, Pawis?’

  ‘Trashing this room, now sod off.’

  The radio hit the wall with a sickening crunch. A vase of winter jasmine, picked and arranged by Patience, crashed to the floor.

  ‘Let’s play twashing,’ screamed an enchanted Dulcie, picking up a video of Macbeth.

  ‘No,’ yelled Paris as she chucked it against a skirting board, following it with a bust of Homer, which lost its nose.

  ‘All fall down.’

  ‘Not that either,’ howled Paris as she grabbed a leather-bound copy of the Greek Epigrams given him by Theo, and dropped it in the winter jasmine water, before smashing Paris’s alarm clock on the floor.

  ‘Twashing, twashing,’ crowed Dulcie, pulling books out of shelves.

  Only when she grabbed the snow fountain containing the Eiffel Tower, given him by his mother, did Paris finally come to his senses. Catching it just in time and returning it to the window sill, he burst out laughing, and gathering up Dulcie, tossed her in the ai
r until she screamed with even more delight. It was thus how Patience found them.

  ‘We’d better tidy things up before Grandpa gets home.’

  Ian was less amused and rang Theo to ask him over for a drink and to seek advice about Paris.

  Putting down the telephone, before taking up his translation of Sophocles, Theo looked out of his study window on to the playing fields and woods of the school he loved so dearly. Maybe he’d last another year? He was in terrible pain, but he must cling on to finish Sophocles and to set Paris on course. One felt the ecstasy of teaching and opening up such a receptive mind half a dozen times only in a career.

  Hearing a thud, Theo noticed Hindsight, his vast ginger tom cat, had landed on a table by the window, endangering a bust of Socrates, and in greedy pursuit of a peacock butterfly clinging to one of the brown curtains. Groaning, Theo crossed the room and cupped the butterfly in his hands, pulling down the window handle with his little finger. He hated chucking butterflies out in winter but today was perhaps mild enough for it to survive. He laid it on a wisteria stem. Next moment it had taken off into the dusk. Perhaps he could do the same for Paris.

  Ignoring Hindsight’s filthy thwarted look, he pressed three emerald-green Anadin Ultra out of their silver wrapping and washed them down with neat whisky from the bottle.

  Later, he limped over to the Old Coach House, admiring a huge fox-fur ring round the moon – a presage of storms to come.

  He liked Cartwright, who poured a good mahogany whisky. He was a little inflexible for Paris perhaps, but kinder and more down to earth than some silly, sandalled, muesli-munching liberal. Noticing a yellow brick road of Wisdens along the bookshelf, Theo was touched when Ian shyly produced Theo’s own translation of The Bacchae and asked him to sign it. They then got on to their favourite topic, bitching about Alex Bruce.

  ‘The archives are definitely for the chop,’ grumbled Ian. ‘What does it matter to Alex if Bagley old boys won six VCs or that one got the Templar Prize for a biography of Auchinleck?’

  ‘He’s got an even more sinister plan for reports,’ growled Theo. ‘A computer program limited to a choice of a hundred and forty different phrases to describe a pupil and his work. Christ, when one considers the infinite riches of the English language. “Think of the time you’ll save,” said Alex. “You’ve only got a handful of pupils anyway, Theo Graham, and they’ll drift away as the classics lose their relevance.”’

  ‘“He loves no plays, As thou dost, Antony,”’ sighed Ian, ‘“he hears no music.”’

  ‘I hear the scratching of new brooms,’ shivered Theo, ‘scratch, scratch, scratch along floorboard and carpet, sinister as the dry snake scales crawling up the roof in Rikki Tikki Tavi. I’m sure Hengist is going to Fleetley.’

  ‘God, I hope not,’ said Ian in horror as he topped up both their glasses. ‘We’ll all be for the high jump. Hengist is spending too much time away, not even doing anything worthy like fundraising. He must watch his back. D’you think a word with Sally?’

  But the door had burst open and in ran Dulcie, wearing a blue dressing gown and mouse slippers.

  Ian’s angry face softened. ‘Come to say goodnight, darling?’

  ‘Let’s play twashing,’ cried Dulcie, picking up a photograph of her Aunt Emerald and smashing it on the floor, followed by a cranberry red glass bowl, which Ian, once a fine slip, leapt forward and caught.

  ‘That’s enough, Dulcie,’ he said sharply, as The Bacchae flew across the room.

  ‘Twashing,’ cried Dulcie, beaming at her grandfather and briskly upending Theo’s overflowing ashtray on the carpet, followed by a Staffordshire milkmaid. ‘Pawis and I played twashing this afternoon.’

  She took a swig of Theo’s whisky and spat it out.

  ‘Ugh, poison.’

  ‘Very possibly,’ agreed Theo.

  After Patience had bustled in and whisked Dulcie off to bed, Ian said, ‘Paris’s influence, I’m afraid. He’s being tricky at the moment.’

  ‘Testing you,’ said Theo. ‘He’s terrified of losing you and the comfort and security you’ve given him. I’m photostatting a very good poem called “Yearning Difficulties” he wrote this week. Don’t let him know I’ve shown it to you.’

  Upstairs, as Patience read Jemima Puddleduck to Dulcie, she was aware of Paris stealing down the landing. He loved listening in, particularly when Patience was teaching Dulcie nursery rhymes. He also loved playing with Ian’s old train set, showing Dulcie how to work it with infinite patience because he was enjoying himself so much. It broke Patience’s heart that he’d missed out on a childhood.

  Pretending they were presents from Dulcie, she’d brought him a teddy bear, a duck for his bath and a CD of nursery rhymes. She’d also rooted out Emerald and Sophy’s old copies of The Just So Stories, The Jungle Book and Hans Andersen.

  Dora insisted Paris was like Little Kay in The Snow Queen. ‘His heart must be melted before it freezes over completely.’

  Paris had filled out from rugby, was nearly six foot and so beautiful, Patience couldn’t take her eyes off him. She felt so sorry for poor besotted Dora, who put sweets in his locker, and who was having a horrid time at home.

  Randal Stancombe was in hot pursuit of her mother, piling on the presents, inviting Anthea on thrilling trips. He was clearly very taken. Anthea was pretty, clear-sighted, excellent at running a home – Ruth had been a slut and very lazy – and wonderful in bed.

  Anthea, in her turn, was captivated by Randal’s money, but found him difficult to control; and she’d rather wait until he got his K, so she could move seamlessly from Lady Belvedon to Lady Stancombe. She was touched by the way he wanted to win over her children, but she wished he wouldn’t try quite so hard with Dora. So did Dora who, when she was at Foxglove Cottage, slept with Dicky’s camel-hair dressing gown buttoned up to her neck and Cadbury, who loathed Stancombe, across her legs.

  ‘I’m going to make myself a chastity belt in D and T,’ she told Bianca.

  Anthea had made a huge fuss about Stancombe’s birthday one Sunday in late November, giving him a beautiful glass engraved with his initials and buying a card to which she insisted Dicky and Dora added their names.

  ‘I don’t ever wish him to return happily,’ stormed Dora.

  Randal was charmed by his present. Then, having said the only thing he’d rather drink from the glass was Anthea herself, spoilt it all by murmuring that:

  ‘Of course, the most precious gift a woman can give a man is her daughter.’

  Anthea had gone bright red.

  ‘Don’t make disgusting jokes. Dora hasn’t had her first period yet and she’s not remotely interested in boys except for that gormless Paris Alvaston.’

  While Anthea was cooking his birthday lunch next door, an unrepentant Randal had stroked Dora’s cheek.

  ‘I’ll have to put you down for a few years, then you’ll mature like the finest wine.’

  Revolted, Dora had stormed off to tell Paris and Dicky as they queued in the drizzle to go into chapel that evening.

  ‘Randal Stancombe is desiccating our father’s bed.’

  ‘And we’ve got to spend Christmas with that poisonous Jade,’ sighed Dicky.

  ‘Jade had the gall to complain to Joan she was a victim of peer abuse because Amber chose to go to the cinema with Milly rather than her,’ said Dora scornfully. ‘Joan took Jade’s side. That woman’s getting such a hold on Bagley. She’s finally got permission for her all-female window in the chapel. She’s chosen Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie, I ask you!’

  ‘Who’s Elizabeth Fry?’ asked Dicky.

  ‘She was a penis reformer,’ said Dora.

  ‘I wish she would do something about mine,’ said Dicky gloomily.

  Worst of all for Dora, Cadbury was in jeopardy again. He’d been banished from the kennels for gobbling up all the beagles’ food, and was back in the air-freshened, floral-print femininity of Foxglove Cottage with Anthea. ‘Mummy forgot to get him any Butcher’s
Tripe, so she fed him on cat food. No wonder he farted throughout their romantic candlelit dinner, just like the bombardment in Iraq. Any minute you’d expect Oriana Brett-Taylor to pop up announcing Breaking Wind.’

  Paris laughed. He loved Dora in this mood.

  ‘Now Mummy’s threatening to have him castrated because he growls at Stancombe. She’s longing to give him away,’ exploded Dora, ‘so I must go home again next weekend and sort it. I feel so guilty deserting Bianca. She’s too proud to go home and I won’t be around to protect her from Cosmo.’

  I’d protect her, thought Dicky wistfully.

  ‘Poor Bianca’s jealous because Taggie and that murderous brute Xavier are getting on so well with Feral.’ Grabbing hymn and prayer books, Dora handed them to Paris and Dicky. ‘Bianca loves Feral so much and he never rings or texts her.’

  Not by a flicker of expression did Paris betray how interested he was.

  94

  Bianca was indeed miserable. Joan continually hassled her to work harder and she desperately missed Rupert and Taggie and the cosseting at Penscombe. In the past, she had flirted with everyone but escaped in the evenings; now there was nobody to shield her from Jade’s bitchiness or Cosmo’s lust. So many parents were splitting up. If Taggie and Rupert weren’t getting on they might be next. Cruellest of all, Feral had never got in touch.

  The following Friday, smelling baked cod which she detested, Bianca decided to skip lunch and wander down the pitches. She had been slightly cheered by an excellent dancing lesson and intimations that she might land the part of Cinderella in the Christmas ballet. Most of the trees were bare now, but the beeches still hung on to a few orange leaves, reminding her of the towering wood behind the house at Penscombe. Feeling the familiar crunch of beech husks beneath her feet, overwhelmed by homesickness, Bianca decided to bury her pride and go home tomorrow. Turning two cartwheels, she started practising dance steps.