Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘I want the place to look so good, people will really want to send their children to Larks.’

  Paris said nothing. Oh God, she thought, he has no parents, I’m a tactless cow. Changing the subject hurriedly, she said she was planning a project on the lark.

  ‘In literature, art, music and real life. I don’t know if larks are singing at the moment, but we could take a tape recorder into the fields. I’m going to call the project “Larks Ascending” to symbolize our climb out of special measures.’

  ‘“To hear the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night,”’ murmured Paris, handing her a tattered copy of Anna Karenina.

  ‘“From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise,”’ carried on Janna, clapping her hands. ‘Fantastic, exactly the kind of stuff we need. Will you copy it out for me and perhaps write a poem about a lark yourself?’

  Larks were always having to move on because of tractors ploughing and harrowing, and people sowing seed and spraying pesticides and fertilizers, thought Paris bitterly, just like him moving from home to home.

  Whoops and yells from next door indicated that Arsenal must have scored.

  ‘Tell me about Graffi,’ said Janna as she slotted Northanger Abbey between Emma and Persuasion.

  ‘His dad earns good when he’s in work. Nice bloke but the money seems to evaporate in the betting shop or the pub. Graffi’s got two elder brothers and a sister; then, after him, his mother had a Downs Syndrome baby, and all the attention goes on her. Graffi gets the shit kicked out of him by the elder kids, but his mother – when she works in the pub evenings and Sundays – expects Graffi, because he’s easy-going, to look after his sister. Graffi loves her to bits but he gets jealous and worries she’ll be bullied when she goes to primary school next year.’

  ‘Where does he live – on the Shakespeare Estate?’

  ‘Hamlet Street. Feral’s Macbeth, Kylie’s Dogberry, Pearl’s Othello – which figures: she’s dead jealous. Monster Norman’s Iago, which figures too.’

  ‘Is it really rough?’

  ‘If you want respect, the only way is to act tough and deal drugs,’ said Paris. ‘Randal Stancombe’s sniffing round the place, wants to offer it a leisure centre.’

  ‘So young people have somewhere to go in the evening to keep them off the streets,’ volunteered Graffi, returning at half-time.

  ‘I like the streets,’ grumbled Feral. ‘I don’t want no youth club woofter teaching me no ballroom dancing.’

  ‘More walls to draw on,’ said Graffi. ‘I like that lady next door. She’s got terrific pictures on her wall, that nude over the mantelpiece looks straight out of a porn mag. That elderflower wine’s not bad neiver; she said it didn’t matter as we wasn’t driving.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Janna saw Feral pick up a very pretty pink and white paperweight, put it in his pocket, then put it back again.

  ‘What d’you want to be in life, Feral?’ she asked.

  Feral gave her his huge, charming, dodgy smile.

  ‘Twenty-one, man.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘If you live on the Shakespeare Estate, it’s an achievement to stay alive to the weekend,’ explained Graffi. ‘I’ve done this drawing of Lily’s cat.’

  ‘That’s so good.’ Janna took it to the light. ‘You must give it to Lily. When you get back from the second half, I’ll have your tea ready.’

  While Paris became immersed in The Catcher in the Rye, Janna produced a real Yorkshire tea, with lardy cake, dripping toast, jam roly poly, crumpets and very strong tea out of a big brown pot.

  As a returning Feral and Graffi helped her carry it to the table outside, Feral looked up at the kitchen beam. ‘What’s that long thick black thing called?’ he asked.

  ‘Feral Jackson,’ quipped Graffi.

  ‘Fuck off, man,’ said Feral, who was in a good mood. Arsenal had won resoundingly.

  The sinking sun was turning the stubble a soft mushroom pink. Housemartins and swallows gathered on the telegraph wires; rooks were jangling in the beeches; a purple and silver air balloon drifted up the valley, like a bauble escaped from a Christmas tree. As the boys sat down on a rickety old garden bench and devoured everything, helicopters kept chugging overhead.

  ‘Is there an air show on or something?’

  ‘Naaah,’ sneered Graffi, ‘it’s toff kids being taken back to Bagley Hall.’

  With only a slight stab of guilt, Janna realized none of her emails had been to thank Hengist Brett-Taylor for his bottle of champagne.

  ‘That dark blue one’ – Graffi pointed towards the sky – ‘belongs to Rupert Campbell-Black, who my dad hero-worships because Rupert’s given him so many winners. And that’s Randy Scandal,’ he added as Rupert’s helicopter was followed five minutes later by one in dark crimson bearing Randal Stancombe’s name in gold letters and his logo of a little gold house.

  ‘Randal’s got a hot daughter called Jade,’ said Feral. ‘I wouldn’t mind giving her one, wiping the smug smile off her face.’

  Paris shivered. Oaktree Court was a grand old building set back from the main road on the way to St Jimmy’s and Searston Abbey. Randal Stancombe’s henchmen had been spotted in the grounds. Converted, it would make splendid luxury flats in the catchment area of the two schools, and once again Paris’s security would be blown.

  Seeing the shiver, and how inadequately Paris was dressed in his thin nylon tracksuit and trainers with the soles coming off, Janna suggested they went inside.

  ‘It’s nice here,’ said Graffi.

  ‘Nadine, your social worker, rang me yesterday,’ Janna told Paris.

  ‘Nosy old bitch,’ said Paris flatly.

  ‘She spoke well of you,’ laughed Janna. ‘She said you told the other children fantastic stories at bedtime. Why don’t you write them down?’

  ‘Did once. Cara Sharpe said they were crap.’

  ‘That’s only her opinion,’ said Graffi. ‘She’s head of drama as well as English but I don’t fink she’s read a play since she left uni.’

  ‘I told her I wanted to be an actor and she pissed herself.’ Paris gave a cackle. ‘She said: “With an accent like yours, you’ve got to be joking.”’

  For a second, Janna gasped in terror.

  ‘That was extraordinary. That was Cara’s laugh and voice exactly.’

  ‘Paris can do anyone,’ said Feral.

  ‘Do Mike Pitts,’ said Graffi, wiping his hands on his jeans and picking up his pen to draw Janna.

  Paris pursed his lips: ‘“If it weren’t for my professional commitment, I’d have left teaching yearsh ago and been earning a million a year running I-Shee-I.”’

  Janna gave a scream of laughter. Once again the imitation was perfect. Paris had even caught Mike’s drunken slur.

  Then he did Rowan: ‘“Ay’m so busy juggling my job, my husband and my two little girls, I forget to have ‘me’ time.”’ Paris looked up from under his lashes like Rowan did.

  ‘You’re brilliant,’ cried Janna, ‘you must become an actor.’

  ‘“Moost I really? Thut’s lovely, in fuct it’s chumpion,”’ said Paris.

  ‘That’s me,’ giggled Janna. ‘I thought I’d lost my accent a bit down here.’

  Paris smiled – and Janna felt truly weak at the knees. He was like some Arctic Prince who’d strayed southwards and might melt any moment in the autumn sunset.

  I will do anything to make his life better, she told herself.

  They were reserved but not shy, these boys. Although only thirteen or fourteen, they were old before their time, hardened and aged by poverty, loss, lack of security and the contempt of others. But at the same time, they were all hunky: muscular from the fight to survive, and sure of their sexuality.

  Overwhelmed with longing for both a lover and a child of her own, Janna was aware that Feral, Graffi and Paris fell halfway between the two. Suddenly she knew she had to send them home.

  ‘We must decide a fee for
the mural,’ she told Graffi.

  ‘Five grand a day,’ Graffi grinned, looking round for the picture he had drawn of her, but Paris had already whipped it.

  Janna gave Paris a carrier bag for his books and, for all of them, a big bag of Cox’s apples from the tree at the bottom of the garden. But running upstairs for a cardigan, glancing out of her bedroom window, she saw them chucking the apples at each other. Paris, with his long nose still in The Catcher in the Rye, stretched out a hand to take a perfect catch as they sauntered up the lane.

  Back in the kitchen, the laptop she’d been working on had been opened. Then she gave a gasp of horrified amusement.

  To the words: ‘Get rid of three-quarters of the teachers, I wish’, someone had added, ‘Why not start with Cara Sharpe, Mike Pitts, Skunk Illingworth, Chalford (you ain’t met her yet), Sam Spink, Robbie Rushton and Hot Flush Basket for a start.’ Janna’s sentiments exactly.

  She ought to work, but she was so pleased to be interrupted by a call from Lily saying she’d enjoyed the wine-tasting as much as Feral and Graffi: ‘What delightful boys. Feral’s going to help me make sloe gin and Graffi did an excellent drawing of General, caught the angle of his whiskers exactly. If I hadn’t fallen out with him, I’d show it to my nephew Jupiter, who’s a dealer when he’s not being an MP. Feral gave me a spliff.’

  ‘Lily,’ said Janna shocked.

  ‘I haven’t had one since another nephew, Jonathan, got married. Come and have a drink.’

  Janna slept fitfully. Outside her window, Mars blazed golden and angry, a ginger tom cat seeing off a fierce dog. I’ve got to fight and win, she thought.

  11

  With Mars in the ascendant, the battle raged on at Larks. On Monday, a physics supply teacher was so unnerved by her first encounter with Year Nine E that she fled down the drive with singed eyebrows and blackened fringe and was never seen again.

  ‘Who was she covering for?’ demanded Janna.

  Rowan glanced up at the timetable: ‘Sam Spink. She’s gone to the TUC conference.’

  ‘She never asked me.’

  ‘She cleared it with Mike Pitts last term. There was a memo’ – Rowan looked disapprovingly at Janna’s dramatically diminished in-tray – ‘but it seems to have been chucked away.’

  ‘How long’s she gone for?’

  ‘All week. Sam’s awfully conscientious. She feels it’s crucial to exchange views and keep up with modern legislation.’

  ‘You bet she does, when it involves swilling brandy Alexanders all night in the Metropole.’

  Returning from a shouting match in Mike’s office, Janna caught Robbie Rushton and Gloria the gymnast sneaking in at midday, claiming that the boat on which they’d been sailing had run aground.

  ‘So will you if you skive any more,’ yelled Janna.

  A day of hassle left her drained and defensive. Remembering the support the governors at Redfords had given Stew when the going got tough, she looked forward to pouring out her grievances to her own governors, who’d been so friendly at her interview and who were, after all, responsible for Larks’s appalling state.

  The meeting was held after school in A18, classroom of Robbie Rushton, who, for once in a hundred years, made a point of working late, so Debbie the cleaner had to sweep and arrange chairs and glasses of water around his martyred presence.

  ‘Robbie’s so conscientious,’ cooed Cara to arriving governors, as he finally took himself and a huge pile of marking away.

  Classroom A18 was one of the worst. Damp patches on the ceiling resembled the map of India and Bangladesh. A rattle of drips was filling up two buckets. Year Eleven, ironically, were studying the story of water: irrigation, the rain cycle, domestic canals and wells. Year Ten, on the other hand, were learning about earthquakes, photographs and diagrams of which also covered the peeling walls. It wasn’t long before Janna wished the floorboards would split open and swallow her up.

  Mike Pitts wasn’t present, but his spies were. Rowan Merton, wafting Anaïs Anaïs, had changed into a clean white shirt and was taking the minutes. Cara, as a teacher governor, having saved Monster Norman from being expelled last week, was thick as thieves and parked next to his mother, Stormin’ Norman, also a parent governor.

  Bring me my bully-proof vest, muttered Janna.

  Kylie Rose’s mother, Chantal, another parent governor, held up the whole proceedings by saying: ‘Can we discuss this?’ at every new item and making eyes at snuffling Crispin Thomas, whom she didn’t realize was gay and who looked fatter than ever.

  Crispin was accompanied by his boss, Ashton Douglas, S and C Services’ Director of Education, an infinitely more formidable adversary who utterly unnerved Janna. His handsome, regular features were somehow blurred like soap left too long in the bath. An air of vulnerability (created by a lisp and soft light brown curls flopping from a middle parting) was belied by the coldest green eyes she had ever seen. Languid as a Beardsley aesthete, Ashton wore a mauve silk shirt, a beautifully cut grey suit and reeked of sweet, cloying scent.

  He was now murmuring to Sir Hugo Betts, the camel on Prozac. Sir Hugo was disappointed Janna didn’t look nearly as bonny as at her interview, so there would be even less to keep him awake.

  Russell Lambert as chairman droned on and on, loving the sound of his own voice and expressing sadness that Brett Scott, the jolly director of Larkminster Rovers, had resigned, not having appreciated the extent of a governor’s workload. He had been replaced by a local undertaker, called Solly, who at least can bury us, thought Janna.

  She longed to weigh in on the atrocious state of the school, but in a subtle shift of emphasis, she was now held responsible for all Larks’s evils. Five other pupils had gone out of county to other schools. Attendance was down by sixty-seven.

  ‘What plans do you have to impwove the situation?’ asked Ashton Douglas silkily.

  Janna told them about her prospective-parents’ evening.

  ‘Hope it’s not an EastEnders night,’ warned Chantal Peck.

  Russell then expressed the governors’ horror at the disastrous league-table results, with commendable exceptions – they all nodded deferentially at Cara Sharpe. What was Janna intending to do about that?

  ‘I need a massive increase in funding,’ said Janna, ‘and must smarten up the school. Take this classroom. If you’re into virtual reality, we can re-create the monsoon season every time it rains. If we don’t mend the roof, we’ll need an ark. And moving to Australia’ – she tore a peeling strip of paper off the walls – ‘we can re-create the eucalyptus.’

  No one smiled.

  ‘No, it isn’t funny,’ agreed Janna. ‘We also need hundreds more textbooks; we need to replace four computers. We need an IT technician.

  ‘On the non-teaching side, we need a part-time gardener to sweep up the leaves, which will soon be cascading down from the trees – the only proud thing in this place. Above all we need a decent cook’ – both Cara and Rowan Merton were frantically making notes – ‘to give the children a really nourishing hot meal in the middle of the day. Dinners here are the only food many of them can rely on, but they’re so disgusting, most of the kids won’t eat them.’

  ‘Mrs Molly does her best with limited resources,’ protested Cara.

  ‘There was a blood-stained plaster in the shepherd’s pie on Friday.’

  ‘The shepherd must have cut himself shearing,’ murmured Solly the undertaker with a ghostly chuckle.

  ‘And most of all’ – Janna plunged in feet first – ‘we need some more teachers. Ten of them, including my head of history, Mrs Chalford, whom I’ve never even met, are off with stress. The only way to attract new talent is to pay them better.’

  But no more money was forthcoming.

  S and C Services, Ashton Douglas reminded her smoothly, had been brought in by the Government because the local education authority couldn’t balance the books. Janna must learn, like everyone else, to economize.

  ‘We must have more money.’ Janna banged the
table with her little fist. ‘You’re a private company. You’re not in this for love but to make a fat profit, that’s why you don’t want to give any extra to me. But it’s so defeatist to let us self-destruct.’

  There was a horrified pause and a flicker of amused malice in Ashton Douglas’s cold green eyes.

  ‘Your job, my dear, is to sort out the mess.’

  ‘I’ve been here a week. If I’m going to sort out this “mess” I need your support. I lost my best teacher last week.’ She daren’t in front of Cara and Rowan say that Mike Pitts was useless. ‘The junior staff are utterly demoralized. The children—’

  Clearing his throat, Ashton Douglas cut right across her.

  ‘With wespect, we shouldn’t be discussing teaching matters in fwont of Mrs Sharpe. If you need funding, I suggest you look for sponsors in the town: Wandal Stancombe, or Gwant Tyler, our local IT giant. Get the local community on side.’

  ‘Why not mobilize your parents?’ suggested Crispin Thomas, smiling at Stormin’ Norman and Chantal. ‘Last year Searston Abbey and St Jimmy’s raised fifteen and twenty thousand pounds respectively.’

  ‘They’ve got hundreds of middle-class parents who aren’t struggling to pay any school fees,’ raged Janna. ‘Of course they chip in. We don’t have middle-class parents at Larks.’

  ‘Ay take exception to that,’ bridled Chantal Peck.

  ‘That uncalled-for wemark should be struck from the minutes,’ said Ashton. ‘If you attwacted more pupils, we could allow you more money. So concentrate on your prospective-parents’ meeting. Wod Hyde will also be here to advise you next week.’ Then, at Janna’s look of outrage: ‘You’ll find him a bweath of fwesh air.’

  ‘An image that conjures up icy winds blasting in from Siberia,’ snapped Janna, ‘blowing everything that matters out of the window. I don’t want Rod Hyde telling me what to do. I just need more money.

  ‘The children need some treats,’ she pleaded. ‘They have such bleak lives. We should offer them rewards: a fun day out to look forward to and in recognition of good behaviour.’

  ‘What did you have in mind?’ asked Crispin sarcastically.