by Jilly Cooper
‘What a wonderful story.’ Janna shook her head. ‘I’d love a dog, but I’m out all day.’
‘Take it into school, you’re the head, the children would love it. Homesick children at Bagley are always asking if they can take Elaine, our greyhound, for a walk.’
He waved for the bill. As Janna gulped her gin and orange, he paid with American Express, then got a tenner out of his notecase for Freddie.
‘Thank you so much,’ Janna told the boy. ‘Is this a full-time job?’
‘No, I’m starting at New College next week.’
‘Well done. Where did you go to school?’
‘Bagley Hall,’ said Freddie.
‘One of our nicest boys,’ murmured Hengist as he and Janna went out into the sunshine. ‘His father walked out, so his mother worked all hours to pay the fees.’
‘Why the hell didn’t she send him to a comprehensive?’
‘Because Freddie was happy with us. A lot of our parents are poor,’ said Hengist sharply. ‘They just believe in spending money on their children’s education rather than cars, holidays and second houses.’
Wow, he can bite, thought Janna.
‘Don’t forget your spoon.’ Handing her the box, Hengist smiled down at her. It was as though the sun had shot out from the blackest cloud. ‘Come and see my school,’ he said. ‘Please.’
‘Well, very quickly,’ said Janna ungraciously. ‘I’ll follow you in my car.’
14
I am way over the limit both physically and mentally, thought Janna as, determined to keep up with Hengist, she careered down twisting, narrow, high-walled and high-hedged lanes made slippery by a recent shower of rain.
Bagley Hall, surrounded by exuberant wooded hills, sprawled over a green plain like one of those villages glimpsed from a train where you imagine you might start a thrilling new life.
The school itself was dominated by a big, golden Georgian house, known as the Mansion, which formed one side of a quadrangle. Behind were scattered numerous old and carefully matched modern Cotswold stone buildings, to accommodate 800 pupils and at least 150 staff.
Girls and particularly boys craned to look as Hengist whisked Janna round endless, many of them surprisingly pokey, classrooms. These were compensated for by a library to rival the Bodleian, entire buildings devoted to music or art, a magnificent theatre and a soaring chapel with Burne-Jones windows glowing like captured rainbows.
‘Science etc. is over there.’ Hengist waved dismissively at an ugly pile through the trees. ‘A subject about which I can never get excited; besides, it’s the domain of my deputy head, Alex Bruce.’
Outside, he showed her a swimming pool nearly as big as Windermere, running tracks and a golf course. Smooth green pitches stretched eastwards to infinity. To the north, a large bronze of a fierce-looking general on a splendid charger looked out on to an avenue of limes.
‘That’s General Bagley, our founder, famous for putting down troublemakers after the Black Hole of Calcutta and being effective at the Battle of Plassey.
‘Our house is two hundred yards to the west, hidden by the trees,’ he added, ‘and very pretty. We’re very lucky. You’ll see it when you come to dinner.’ Then, when she raised an eyebrow at his presumption: ‘To meet Randal Stancombe. That’s Rupert Campbell-Black’s adopted son, Xavier, originally from Bogotá.’ Hengist lowered his voice as a sullen, overweight black boy surrounded by a lot of chattering white thirteen-year-olds splashed past through the puddles on a cross-country run.
‘Xavier’s acting up at the moment,’ explained Hengist. ‘Hard to fade into the background if you belong to such a high-profile white family. Adolescents so detest being conspicuous and Xav’s not helped by having a ravishing younger sister, Bianca, of a much lighter colour.’
‘Poor lad being saddled with such an uncaring father.’ Janna was getting crosser by the minute. ‘Having plucked him out of Bogotá, how could Rupert have shunted him off to the vile prison of a boarding school?’
‘He wanted to come here,’ said Hengist mildly. ‘People do, you know, and his stepbrother and -sister both did time.’
When he showed Janna the new sports hall, she really flipped.
‘It’s a disgrace, kids getting such privileges because they’ve got wealthy parents. No wonder society’s divided. Think how Graffi would thrive in the art department and Paris in the library. Think how Feral would scorch round those running tracks.’
‘There’s no reason why they shouldn’t.’
But Janna was in full flood: ‘Why should rich kids have such an easy route in life?’ Furious, she snarled up at him, an incensed Jack Russell taking on a lofty Great Dane.
‘Janna, Jann-ah,’ drawled Hengist, ‘by “easy route”, I presume you mean being put into “upper-class care”. Surely you don’t want your precious Larks children subjected to such a “vile prison”? That ain’t logic.’
‘Stop taking the piss. You know exactly what I mean. I want kids of all classes to go to day schools together, have access to these kinds of facilities and fulfil their potential. All this system does is make your odious stuck-up little toffs despise my kids and make them feel inferior.’
‘Dear, dear,’ sighed Hengist, stopping to pick up a Mars bar wrapper. ‘So it’s wicked of me to improve my school because it demoralizes children who don’t come here.’
Then he noticed the tears of rage in her eyes and the violet circles beneath them. They had reached a lake fringed with brown-tipped reeds. Falling leaves were joining golden carp in the water. Next moment, a chocolate Labrador surfaced, shaking himself all over Hengist’s yellow cords.
On the opposite bank, a blonde head appeared between the fringed branches of a weeping willow and shot back again.
‘Dora,’ shouted Hengist.
Very reluctantly, a pretty little girl with blonde plaits and binoculars round her neck emerged, followed by an even prettier one, with dark gold skin, laughing brown eyes and glossy black curls.
They were poised to bolt back to school, but Hengist beckoned them over:
‘Meet two of my odious stuck-up little toffs, Dora Belvedon and Bianca Campbell-Black, two new girls this term. How are you both getting on?’
‘Really well,’ said Dora, eyes swivelling towards the chocolate Labrador, who was now chasing a mallard.
Both girls were wearing sea-blue jerseys, white shirts, blue and beige striped ties and beige pleated skirts, which Bianca had hitched to succulent mid-thigh.
‘This is Miss Curtis, the new head of Larks,’ Hengist introduced Janna. ‘Shouldn’t you be playing some sort of game?’
‘PE, but we both had headaches and needed fresh air.’ Frantic to change the subject, Dora turned to Janna, ‘How are you getting on at Larks?’ she asked politely.
‘Very well,’ lied Janna. ‘Are you Sophy Belvedon’s sister-in-law?’
Dora brightened. ‘I am.’
‘Sophy and I taught at a school in Yorkshire,’ explained Janna.
‘She and my brother Alizarin have got a sweet little baby called Dulcie. All my brothers are breeding,’ sighed Dora. ‘I’m an aunt four times over; such an expense at Christmas!’
‘How’s Feral Jackson?’ asked Bianca. ‘I think he’s cool.’
‘So does Feral,’ said Janna.
‘That was an excellent essay you wrote on Prince Rupert, Dora, you obviously liked his dog,’ said Hengist. ‘And I’ve been hearing about your dancing, Bianca, I hope you’re going to teach me the Argentine tango.’
‘It’s dead sexy. Women dance really close and rub their legs against men’s. Daddy wants to learn it.’
‘Is he going to win the St Leger?’
‘I hope so.’
‘I don’t recognize this dog,’ Hengist patted Cadbury, who’d bounced up again. ‘Whose is it?’
‘One of the masters, we don’t know all their names yet,’ said Dora quickly. ‘But we offered to walk him. We’d better get back, he might be worried. Bye, sir. Bye, Miss Curtis. B
est of luck at Larks.’
Dog and children scampered off.
‘That was a near one,’ muttered Bianca. ‘We’d better dye Cadbury black. Do you think Mr B-T and Miss Curtis fancy each other? She’s very pretty, and he’s not bad for a wrinkly.’
Janna, however, was off again. ‘How can Rupert Campbell-Black send that adorable scrap to a boarding school?’
‘Bianca’s a day girl,’ said Hengist.
‘I thought they all boarded.’
‘Not at all. We’ve got several day pupils, and lots of them go home at weekends, so they can drink and smoke unobserved.’ Then he added: ‘Come and see my pride and joy.’
The gold hands of the chapel clock already pointed to twenty to four.
I ought to go back. Why am I allowing myself to be swept away by this man? thought Janna as she ran to keep up with his long, effortless stride.
Hengist, who loved trees passionately and was always sloping off in the spring and autumn to rejoice in the changing colours, led her down the pitches to a little wood called Badger’s Retreat, which was filled with both newly planted saplings and venerable trees. On the far side, as a complete surprise, the ground dropped sharply down into a broad green ride with beech woods towering on either side and a glorious view of villages, fields and soft blue woods on the horizon.
Janna gasped.
‘Lovely, isn’t it? Some criminal idiot back in the fifties gave planning permission to build here.’ Hengist’s voice shook with anger. ‘Desirable residences with a view. Every time Bagley runs into trouble, there’s talk of selling it off. The moment I got here, I planted more trees to discourage this. Those enormous holes are badger sets. If anyone built houses, the badgers would burrow up through the floors.
‘This is what we call the Family Tree,’ he added, pointing to a huge sycamore with a single base, out of which three separate trees hoisted a great umbrella of yellowing leaves into the sky. Like three bodies locked in muscular embrace, their trunks gleamed from the recent rain.
‘This is the father.’ Hengist tapped the biggest trunk, which, from behind, was pressing its chest and pelvis against the mother trunk, with its branches around her and around the child trunk, which was leaning back against its mother. The branches of all three were stretching southwards towards the sun, many of them resting on the ground, as though they were teaching each other to play the piano. The bark, acid green with lichen, was cracked in many places to reveal a rhubarb-pink trunk.
‘How beautiful,’ breathed Janna, ‘like a marvellous sculpture.’
‘Like a family, struggling for freedom,’ said Hengist, ‘yet inextricably entwined and protecting each other. When we first came here, we noticed it, the way families cling together and hide their problems. It was May, and the new leaves were thick and overlapping, like parrots’ plumage, concealing trunks and branches.
‘We have a daughter, Oriana, who works for the BBC as a foreign correspondent. We did have a son, Mungo, but he died of meningitis.’
Betraying his desolation for only a second, Hengist pulled off a sepia sycamore key.
‘I used to tell Oriana she could open any door with one of these and you can too, my darling.’ He put the key in Janna’s hand, closing her fingers over it.
I must not fancy this man, she told herself.
‘Oh look,’ said Hengist, ‘the Lower Sixth has been here.’
In the long pale grass lay an empty vodka bottle and several fag ends. ‘The retakes must have been harder than expected,’ he added, picking up a couple of red cartridge cases.
As Janna glanced at her watch and said, ‘Help, it’s nearly a quarter past four,’ Hengist could feel a black cloud of depression engulfing her.
‘Thank you for lunch and the spoon,’ she stammered as he opened her car door.
‘I’d like to help, and I hope it’s not just facilities you and I are going to share,’ said Hengist, kissing her on the cheek.
‘Hum,’ said Dora Belvedon, nearly falling out of the biology lab window, ‘Mr B-T definitely fancies her.’
15
Hengist Brett-Taylor had been born fifty-one years ago in Herefordshire. His parents were upper-middle-class Liberals and academics: his mother specializing in plants, his father a revered early English history don at Cambridge, hence the choice of Hengist’s Christian name. Hengist had been educated at Fleetley and, between 1969 and 1972, read history at Cambridge. Here he got a double Blue for cricket and rugger and later played rugger for England, clinching the Five Nations Cup with a legendary drop goal from just inside his own half. As a result of too much sport and an overactive social life, Hengist, to his parents’ horror, only scraped a 2.1.
At a May Ball at Cambridge, Hengist met Sally, a headmaster’s daughter, as beautiful as she was straight. Their wedding took place in the chapel at Radley, where Hengist had started teaching history in autumn 1972. A daughter, Oriana, was born in 1973. Hengist had hoped for a son who would play rugger for England and whom he intended to call Orion.
Hengist prospered at Radley and was overjoyed in 1976 when Sally produced a son, Mungo. The birth was so difficult that Sally and Hengist decided two children were enough.
In 1979, Hengist returned to teach history and rugger at his old school, Fleetley, which now rivalled Winchester and Westminster in academic achievement. Fleetley’s head, David ‘Hatchet’ Hawkley, was determined to keep the school single sex, believing that girls distract boys from work.
In 1984, tragedy struck when little Mungo died of meningitis. This nearly derailed Sally and Hengist’s marriage, particularly as Sally had just discovered that her husband had been dallying with David Hawkley’s ravishing and promiscuous wife, Pippa.
Although Fleetley took only boys, as a huge concession, because Hengist and Sally couldn’t bear to be separated from their now only child, David Hawkley had allowed the eleven-year-old Oriana into the Junior School. A contributory factor was that Oriana was far brighter than any of the boys in her class.
Gradually, Sally unfroze and she and Hengist mended their marriage. In 1989, however, Pippa Hawkley had been killed in a riding accident and, going through her desk, a hitherto unsuspecting David Hawkley discovered passionate letters from Hengist, which also contained the odd dismissive crack about David himself. Hengist, therefore, departed from Fleetley under an unpublicized cloud, which not even Oriana gaining straight As in twelve GCSEs could lift.
In 1995, later than if he hadn’t screwed up at Fleetley, Hengist had been appointed headmaster of the notorious and wildly out-of-control Bagley Hall. Applying the same foxiness and energy that he displayed on the rugby field, Hengist miraculously turned Bagley round in six years.
Bagley was now snapping at Fleetley and Westminster’s heels in the league tables, and lynching every other school at rugger and cricket. Hengist had signed on for another five years until summer 2005 but, easily bored, was looking for new challenges. His ambition was to thrash David Hawkley in the league tables and take over Fleetley when David retired. But he was also toying with the idea of politics. His chairman of governors, steely Jupiter Belvedon, the great white Tory hope, was only too aware that Hengist, as a media star, would add a desperately needed dollop of charisma to the party.
Oriana, meanwhile, had got a first at Oxford and joined the BBC. Although attached to her parents, she couldn’t handle the claustrophobia of their love and expectation, and had pushed off abroad as a foreign correspondent. Despite a somewhat contentious relationship, Hengist missed Oriana dreadfully.
One of the reasons Hengist had turned Bagley round was because he was a genius at recruitment. He had so many celebrities among his parents that, in summer, the school helicopter pad wore out more quickly than the wickets.
Interviews with prospective parents took place in Hengist’s study, usually in front of a big fire with papers spread all over his desk and everyone relaxing on squashy sofas. Hengist also insisted on the prospective pupil being present and addressing him or her as much as
the parents.
To the fathers, who remembered catches flying into his big hands like robins and his dark mane streaming out as he thundered like the Lloyd’s Bank horse down the pitch at Twickenham, Hengist was an icon. The mothers just fantasized about sleeping with him. The children said, ‘I like that man, I’d like to go to that school.’
As a result Bagley was overbooked until 2010.
Hengist was a great teacher because he was a great communicator. But, because it involved too much hard work, he preferred to leave the GCSE and A level pupils to his heads of department and teach the new boys and girls so he could get to know them. Hengist believed in praising, and always fired off half a dozen postcards a day telling staff or pupils they had done well.
He was a genius at inspiring staff and delegating, but hopelessly bored by admin and red tape, which was why, to relieve himself of this burden, he had appointed Alex Bruce from the maintained sector as his deputy head.
Hengist was aware that the charitable status awarded to the independent schools, which saved them millions of pounds a year, was under threat from the Government unless they could prove they were sharing their facilities with the community and in particular with the local state schools.
Bagley already had a distinguished history of pupils helping in neighbouring hospitals. From the Lower Fifth onwards, each child was allotted a couple of OAPs whose gardens they weeded and errands they ran. But this wasn’t quite enough.
What more charming and advantageous diversion, reflected Hengist, to mix philanthropy with pleasure and help out Larks and that adorable crosspatch. And it would so irritate the heads of the other local schools.
16
Larks was revving up for its prospective-parents’ evening. All the displays were in place. There was terrific work on the walls, including Pearl’s A star essay on dressing the three witches in Macbeth. Year Ten had turned a room into a spaceship. Year Eight were doing agriculture in geography, and although Robbie Rushton had been far too lazy and bolshie to provide any input, his deputy Adele, whom he’d employed to disguise his imperfections, had weighed in and, with the help of the children, created a farm with coloured cut-outs of animals, machinery and a farmhouse kitchen with bread, milk, butter, cheese and a ham on the table.