Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  I’ve had a gloomy, insecure childhood, thought Paris; God help me if the rest of my life is even worse. I remember, I remember the children’s homes where I wasn’t born.

  He turned to the next question: ‘Describe a place you hate.’

  I hate my own heart [wrote Paris] because it is cruel and hard. My best friend, Dora, is honourable and good like Piggy in Lord of the Flies. She has helped me revise all my exams: where the world moves and sits in space, Martial’s recipe for happiness, drumlins, the Battle of Arginusae and the trials of the Generals. She gave me a beautiful good-luck card decorated with four-leaf clovers, but I tore it up and told her to piss off, because I was uptight. I would like to apologize to Dora on behalf of all my sex. Where women are concerned, we always get things wrong and I most of all. Dora is well named because she is adorable.

  I hate my heart because it lets me down; its beat quickens when I hear beautiful music or poetry, but when a friend tries to get close, it freezes over. To twist Catullus: whenever I love, I seem to hate or resent as well. We dissected a pig’s heart in biology, but if you dissected my heart, it would pump not blood but poison.

  ‘A place I hate,’ wrote Boffin Brooks, ‘is the headquarters of the Tory Party.’

  The place I hate is my deputy headmaster’s drawing room. He calls it a lounge, which is a complete misnomer because no one could lounge in such an uncomfortable place [wrote Lando]. The chairs are ramrod hard; the sofas murder your coccyx. No parents stay more than five minutes because he offers such tiny glasses of indifferent sherry and doesn’t want anyone to linger. There are no pictures, no books except the very odd scientific manual. When you enter, you always get a lecture on bad behaviour.

  ‘The place I hate is a vivisectionist’s laboratory where the animals’ vocal cords are cut on arrival so their screams cannot upset the staff or visitors,’ wrote Amber and made herself cry even more cataloguing other iniquities.

  Glancing round, Primrose Duddon smiled sympathetically and shoved a box of Kleenex in her direction.

  I like Primrose, decided Amber, I like her much better than Milly or Jade. Primrose had helped her with revision beyond the call of duty. Amber resolved to buy her a cashmere jersey as a thank-you present. On the other hand, it would take a lot of cashmere to accommodate Primrose’s splendid bosom and might be rather expensive. Better to give her scent instead.

  111

  The sun had long since set, but it was still so hot that, despite wearing only shorts, a cotton shirt and loafers, Theo had left his study windows wide open. In the past month, he had been soothed by the ‘liquid siftings’ of the nightingales in the laurels. Tonight they had all departed – like pupils at the end of term. Would he still be alive next year to hear them?

  He had been wrestling with a difficult letter in answer to a telephone call telling him one of his favourite old boys, Jamie Pardow, had been killed in Iraq.

  ‘We knew you were fond of each other,’ Jamie’s father had said, ‘in fact in his very last letter home, he said: “If you see Theo, tell him I’m still not tucking my shirt in.”’ The father’s voice had cracked then and he’d had to ring off.

  Such a lovely boy. Theo shook his head. He should be writing reports. He should be working on Sophocles. Instead, he poured another large Scotch to wash down a couple more painkillers. A bottle of morphine, illegally prescribed by James Benson, was hidden behind the books, for when things became unendurable.

  Would he could take something to ease the ache in his heart that after the end of term he wouldn’t see Paris for eight weeks. In a way it would be a relief. He needed to be alone to calm his fever, to think about the boy. He knew Ian Cartwright, Cosmo and even Dora were jealous of their friendship. He must try not to favour him next term.

  On a positive side, he was delighted Paris was on course for A stars in Greek and Latin. Hengist, who had a key to the school safe and, against all the rules, often looked at finished papers, had reported exquisite translations of Homer and Virgil, wise, witty, lyrical comments on Ovid and Horace and Iphigenia’s pleading for Orestes and flawless unseens in the language papers. How Socrates would have loved him.

  Paris, according to Hengist, had also submitted brilliant papers in other subjects, including a matchless first history paper. ‘He writes so entertainingly.’

  Paris had science tomorrow morning and a second history paper in the afternoon, covering the Russian Revolution and Nazi Germany, which had both fascinated and haunted him. Then it was all over.

  Although it was after eleven, golden Jupiter was the only star visible in a palely luminous blue sky. The trees on the edge of the golf course, olive green in the half light, seemed to have faces, hollow-eyed, too, after a month of exams. The mingled stench of rank elderflower and decaying wild garlic was overwhelming.

  As Hindsight padded in, leaping on to the table, Theo grabbed his glass – there was enough whisky spilt over the reports and his translation of Sophocles already – and guided the cat’s fluffy orange tail away from the halogen lamp. A mosquito was whining around his bald head looking for a late supper; Theo lit yet another cigarette to deter it.

  He smiled briefly as he caught sight of a poster on the wall Paris had had framed for him for his birthday, which showed a woman with a balloon coming out of her mouth saying: ‘I’m voting for Martial, he’s not clever, he’s not honest, but he’s handsome.’ Alex had banished it from Theo’s classroom as being too sexist.

  Theo had seen a lot of Paris in the last ten days. Not entirely, he was realistic enough to recognize, because Paris relished his company. The boy, it appeared, had been so gratuitously cruel to poor little Dora that that dear, kind, soul Patience Cartwright had ticked him off roundly. This had so shocked Paris, he had since shunned the Cartwrights’ and spent his evenings working in the library or talking to Theo. Theo suspected and genuinely hoped Paris was much fonder of Dora than he let on. He could do worse. Dora was brave, resourceful and good-hearted.

  The evenings together had been an exquisite pleasure. They had listened to music and discussed books and Paris’s choice of AS levels: Greek, Latin, theatre studies and English. Paris also brought Theo the latest gossip. How Lando had been caught listening to the Empire test match on his walkman during science, how Anatole had mistaken downers for uppers and slept peacefully through French, and how Boffin, ‘stupid twat’, was already immersed in one of next year’s set books: The Handmaid’s Tale.

  Hengist was in Washington, due back this evening, but grounded by a strike. He had nevertheless rung in to wish Paris luck in his final history paper tomorrow.

  Theo emptied the bottle into his glass. On his desk lay an advance copy of Alex’s Guide to Red Tape (or Tape as it was now known), which the self-regarding idiot had presented to Theo to illustrate that he, Alex, despite being busier than anyone, was capable, unlike Theo and Hengist, of meeting deadlines.

  Theo, instead, turned to Aeschylus, whose Philoctetes, covered in drink and coffee rings, he’d been reading earlier. Philoctetes, driven crazy by a snake bite, as he was by his ransacked spine. How admirable was Maurice Bowra’s translation:

  Oh Healer death, spurn not to come to me.

  For you alone, of woes incurable, are doctor,

  And a dead man feels no pain.

  Theo hoped this were true. Awful to reach the other side and immediately find oneself bound on a wheel of fire, like Ixion.

  Back in his cell, Cosmo peeled off his mother’s blond wig, which she’d worn for Norma and in which he had disguised himself in his walk down to Bagley village to pleasure Ruth Walton.

  He had finished The Secret History, the best book he had ever read, in which young people had totally waived morality and taken justice into their own hands. He had put on Matthias Goerne, a voice of unearthly beauty, singing Bach cantatas and was flipping through scores for the end-of-term concert. But he was not happy.

  He had spent half an hour earlier mending Theo’s DVD machine, but Theo’s eyes still didn’t
rest on him with as much tenderness as they rested on Paris. No matter that he was going to get straight A stars and one for shagging from Ruth Walton, Cosmo wanted to be loved best by all the people by whom he wanted to be loved best. Even Hengist had rung from Washington to wish Paris luck.

  He never rang me, thought Cosmo bitterly.

  Cannoning off the walls on his way to bed around midnight, Theo saw a light on in Paris’s room and went in. On the Thomas the Tank Engine duvet lay the boy’s dark green history revision folder. In his sleeping hand was clutched the Greek Epigrams which Theo had given him for his sixteenth birthday. Theo was touched.

  Paris looked so adorable with the lamplight falling on his long blond lashes and silky, flaxen hair. Playing cricket without a cap had brought a sprinkling of freckles and a touch of colour to his pale face. In sleep, the wolf cub relaxed and one could appreciate the beauty and casual grace of his body. Theo removed the Greek Epigrams.

  Cosmo, skulking on the landing on the lookout for trouble, froze at the sight of Theo’s battered copy of Philoctetes and his late-night whisky outside Paris’s bedroom.

  Suddenly terrible screams ripped the night apart, followed by anguished sobbing, which slowly subsided. Five minutes later, Cosmo, lurking in the shadows, saw Theo, a faint smile on his cadaverous features, coming out of Paris’s room and going through the green baize door into his own apartment.

  Cosmo retired to his cell and, setting aside the end-of-term concert scores, lit a fag, poured himself a large brandy and reflected. Alex Bruce wasn’t his greatest fan, particularly since the Poppet art department incident. Poppet had even asked Cosmo to address the Talks Society on the morality of onanism. It wouldn’t hurt to win some brownie points.

  After a preliminary rootle round Theo’s study, Cosmo let himself out of the front door, dropped his empty brandy bottle in Poppet’s bottle bank and knocked on the Bruces’ door. Alex, awake, much enjoying a third read of Tape, was soon reassuring Cosmo that he had done exactly the right thing.

  Telling each other it was for Paris’s sake, they let themselves into the house and to Theo’s study, which thankfully looked out over an entirely deserted golf course. Judging by the bottles in the waste-paper basket, Theo was unlikely to wake up.

  Alex’s lips pursed at the overflowing ashtrays and the pile of reports unmarked, except by whisky stains. From Theo’s desk drawer, Cosmo unearthed some love poems to Paris in Greek.

  ‘Who was it said Greek letters on a blank page look like bird’s footprints in the snow?’ asked Cosmo, then when Alex clearly didn’t know the answer, added, ‘These are pretty explicit, sir, and those letters here, here, here and here, spell Paris, although it could be the Paris who triggered off the Trojan War.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ The gleam of triumph in Alex’s eyes was obscene, particularly when, from under Theo’s desk drawer lining paper, Cosmo pulled ravishing nude photographs of Paris, with the Eiffel Tower tattoo on his right shoulder, as well as a DVD in a plain brown wrapper.

  Hearing a crash, they both jumped out of their skins, but it was only Hindsight arriving through the window.

  ‘I’m amazed that cat hasn’t died from passive smoking,’ said Alex, shoving him out again. Breathing more heavily than a French bulldog on the job, Alex then fastidiously parked his bottom on Theo’s rickety chair and put the DVD into the machine, which came up with a film of ravishing naked youths re-enacting classical myths with men sporting curly hair and ringleted beards.

  ‘That’s Narcissus and that must be Ganymede,’ volunteered Cosmo.

  ‘Don’t look.’ Alex clapped a sweating hand over Cosmo’s eyes.

  ‘All part of my development,’ said Cosmo, tugging the hand away.

  The mosquito, earlier deterred by Theo’s cigarettes, whined, circled and plunged her teeth into Alex’s arm.

  ‘I thought Mr Fussy was going to pounce,’ Cosmo told Anatole next morning. ‘I couldn’t tell if he was more turned on by the porn or the chance to nail Theo. The Martial voting poster on the wall and Red Tape chucked in the bin were the dernière paille.’

  112

  Arriving at the police station in the early hours of the morning, Theo was locked in a windowless cell measuring five foot by eight foot and strip-searched. This included a policeman getting out a latex glove and telling him to bend over. He was then moved to another cell, by which time, deprived of whisky, cigarettes and morphine, he was crawling up the walls. Every so often, officers lifted the flap in the door to look at him.

  He realized he had entered the twisted world of the morally repulsive when he saw the stony contempt on the faces of the two interrogating officers, one man, one woman, who obviously wanted to find out if he were part of a wider paedophile ring.

  ‘I’m innocent.’

  ‘Those photographs and that DVD weren’t innocent, sir.’

  ‘They were planted. Look, I need to make a telephone call, I’m worried about my cat.’

  ‘Cat’s least of your worries, sir.’

  The policewoman clearly found him distasteful. He’d grabbed a maroon polo neck knitted for him by an aunt, but was still in his shorts, knees continually knocking together. Stinking of booze, fags and sweat, grey stubble thickening, he must cut a repugnant figure. They had removed his shoelaces and his belt, so his shorts kept falling down.

  As the night wore on, they kept trying to make him confess.

  ‘I’m innocent, I never laid a finger on the boy.’

  ‘What about those nude photographs?’

  ‘Never saw them before in my life; you won’t find any of my fingerprints; must have been taken years ago – Paris has got a completely different haircut.’

  ‘And the images of an obscene nature on the DVD machine?’

  ‘The sixth form gave it to me as a Christmas present. I can’t work the damn thing.’

  ‘And the poems?’

  ‘Certainly, I wrote those.’ Theo groaned; his back was excruciating. ‘Nothing obscene about them. I’ve been framed.’

  ‘They all say that. You’re in denial, Theo. Admit your guilt, you’ll feel so much better. Then you can be put on a course for sex offenders.’

  ‘And never teach again.’

  ‘You were carried away, you’d had a bit too much to drink. Do you always entertain young boys alone? D’you sit close to them? D’you always make a habit of going into their rooms at night?’

  Sadness overwhelmed Theo. Paris must have shopped him.

  ‘If you confess,’ the policewoman was now saying cosily, ‘you might easily get off. Crown won’t want a lengthy trial; happens a lot.’

  The only reason he might confess, thought Theo, as the sky turned from electric blue to the rose pink of sunrise, was to get some more morphine.

  In the morning, he came up before the magistrates and was given police bail, on condition that he didn’t get in touch with anyone from the school.

  ‘You must not speak to any members of staff,’ he was told, ‘or discuss the incident with anyone. You’re to have no contact with the boy or any of the pupils. You must give an address well away from the school.’

  Theo gave them the name of a dilapidated cottage on Windermere, left him by the aunt who’d knitted the maroon polo neck.

  The case would now be adjourned for a pre-judicial review, which might take three weeks. Theo would come up in court three weeks after that. If the magistrates decided there was a case, it would be tried in a Crown court, probably not before Christmas.

  Outside the court, Theo found Biffo, who had been selected by Alex as a safe bet to pack up his belongings. Biffo had also driven over in Theo’s ancient Golf, which was loaded up with books, clothes, bottles of pills. He had also packed Theo’s credit cards and cheque books, the seven plays of Sophocles, the manuscript in progress and Theo’s notebooks.

  ‘Where’s my cat?’ demanded Theo.

  ‘I couldn’t find him.’ Biffo couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘All the police cars and disturbance must have scared him.’<
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  ‘You must find him!’ Theo was nearly in tears. ‘I’ve had him since he was a kitten.’

  ‘You often left him in the summer holidays.’

  Biffo, Theo felt, at last had a legitimate excuse for detesting him.

  ‘You’ve got to help me, Biffo, I must talk to Paris and Hengist.’

  ‘You can’t talk to anyone. Hengist is still away, anyway. You can ring me, here’s my number, but only about things unconnected with the case.’

  ‘I’m not resigning, I’m innocent.’

  ‘I can’t discuss it.’

  Theo gave Biffo the address and telephone number of his cottage in Windermere. ‘At least give it to Artie.’

  ‘I can’t promise anything. I’ve filled your car up with petrol.’

  ‘Please try and find Hindsight, I’ll pay for someone to come and collect him.’

  Theo was still missing when Paris returned from his history exam. Barging into his housemaster’s sealed-off study, he found whole shelves of books and Theo’s manuscript gone, and Biffo nosing around.

  ‘Is Theo back?’

  ‘Gone away.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

  ‘Don’t be fucking stupid. I need to phone him. He never said goodbye; what’s he supposed to have done?’ Paris was nearly hysterical, particularly when Hindsight jumped in through the window and, mewing piteously, started weaving round his legs. ‘Theo must have been pushed; he’d never leave without Hindsight. Tell me.’

  Biffo backed away as, from a miniature Greek urn on Theo’s desk, Paris grabbed a pair of scissors.

  ‘I’ll have those,’ said Dora, grabbing the scissors as she marched in with a plate of cod from the kitchens and the Larkminster Gazette, which she handed to Paris.

  ‘Page three,’ she added as she started to cut up the cod for Hindsight.