Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Just the right scarlet for that doublet, a very Elizabethan scarlet.’

  Jupiter, meanwhile, was hell-bent on discomfiting Russell, Ashton and Crispin, who were all allied to the hung Labour/Lib Dem county council, who so frustrated his Tory ambition.

  ‘And we’ll hang them out to dry at the next election,’ he murmured to Rupert as they paused to admire Mrs Gablecross’s French café and enquire after her husband, the Chief Inspector, an old friend of them both.

  Word had, by this time, got around that Rupert was at Larks and there was a further chance to get on telly, so there was a mass exodus from the other schools with parents and children storming up the drive. A reporter who’d only been at the Gazette for a week, tipped off by a Venturer cameraman, also belted over to Larks with his photographer. Hengist immediately introduced them to Janna, then took them by the arm, showing them the Larks Ascending display and the bombed farm.

  Satan Simmons and Monster Norman were soon being interviewed.

  ‘We built it up, then trashed it to create a wartime situation,’ Monster was saying.

  ‘Like the Chapman brothers or Rachel Whiteread,’ said the reporter.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’

  Photographs were also taken of Rupert, Jupiter and Hengist with Janna. Parents were everywhere, demanding autographs: ‘You sending your kids here, Rupert? How’s Taggie? Any tips for Cheltenham?’

  ‘We didn’t get food at St Jimmy’s or Searston Abbey,’ said the other parents as they fell on Debbie’s hot dogs. ‘Lovely atmosphere here. I like these old buildings. More ambience. Hello, Jupiter. He’s our MP.’

  Jupiter, who reminded Janna of the lean and hungry Cassius, told the Gazette that as Shadow Education Minister and Larkminster’s MP, he took a great interest in local schools.

  ‘I am delighted Janna Curtis appears to be turning round this one, after only a few weeks. Good to have a young, energetic and charismatic head. You’re to be congratulated, Ashton.’ He smiled coolly at a seething Ashton Douglas. ‘I hope you’re providing adequate financial support. Janna tells me she needs textbooks, computers, playing fields and a new roof.’

  ‘We can’t have raindrops falling on our head or anyone else’s,’ said Rupert, looking up from the Evening Standard.

  Janna got the giggles.

  ‘Ashton, well done,’ said Hengist, coming out of a side door, trailing children. ‘You must be delighted you chose Janna. I’ve never seen such a change.’

  Ashton looked as though he’d swallowed a wasp.

  Venturer Television arrived, filmed the sea of parents and then interviewed Hengist about his interest in Larks.

  ‘Janna and I have been discussing plans to share our facilities,’ Hengist told them. ‘The council sold off Larks’s playing fields, so we’d like to offer them access to ours, and to our libraries, art departments, science labs and running tracks. We’re very early in discussions, but it’s an exciting project. We’ll both learn from each other.’

  ‘We’ll teach them fist-foiting, shooting and Formula One driving,’ yelled Graffi and was shushed.

  ‘When will this happen?’ asked the Venturer presenter.

  ‘I’m off to America and we’ve got half-term, but very soon after that, I hope. To merit our charitable status, we independent schools must increasingly demonstrate we’re of benefit to the community,’ Hengist concluded smoothly. ‘We’ve always offered bursaries to bright children; we’re merely carrying on a tradition.’

  ‘First I’ve heard of it.’ Russell Lambert was puffing out his cheeks.

  ‘Janna and I’ – Hengist smiled in her direction – ‘had a working lunch yesterday. She’s made a great start, but as one who had problems at the beginning with Bagley, I’d like to offer my support.’

  ‘Rod Hyde’s already doing a grand job,’ snapped Ashton, ‘and I’m not sure how Larks staff will feel about bonding with an independent.’

  ‘We’ll have to find out,’ said Hengist coolly, ‘but three heads are always better than one.’

  ‘Come on, I need a drink.’ Rupert was getting bored. ‘Can I keep this dog?’

  Briefly, Hengist drew Janna aside: ‘Pretty dress. At last she rose, and twitched her mantle blue: tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re playing at,’ muttered an utterly confused Janna, ‘but thank you for rescuing us.’

  ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow.’

  ‘Goodbye, goodbye.’ Reluctantly, the children waved Hengist off.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Jupiter told Janna, then, handing his card to Graffi: ‘I’d like to see more of your stuff.

  ‘That was rather injudicious,’ he added a minute later as the black polished shoes of the three men rustled through red and gold leaves towards the car park. ‘Do you honestly want Bagley overrun by a lot of yobbos?’

  ‘I want the world to know how good and philanthropic my school is. Caring conservatism must show it has balls,’ said Hengist mockingly.

  ‘Are you sure Bagley won’t corrupt those innocent Larks hooligans?’ asked Rupert. ‘Do you really want bricks heaved through your Burne-Jones windows?’

  ‘“We must love one another or die”,’ replied Hengist sanctimoniously.

  ‘I hope you don’t want to get into Janna Curtis’s knickers,’ warned Jupiter, pressing the remote control to open the doors of his Bentley. ‘The Tory party can’t afford any more sleaze.’

  ‘I like this dog.’ Rupert patted his cardboard collie. ‘It can round up the Tory unfaithful.’

  Paris lay on top of his bed at Oaktree Court. A girl in the room opposite had been screaming for nearly an hour. Fucking Blenchley, not to let him out, when Janna had been kind enough to pin up his poem beside those of Shakespeare, Milton and Shelley. He murmured longingly:

  ‘Teach me half the gladness

  That thy brain must know;

  Such harmonious madness

  From my lips would flow,

  The world should listen then, as I am listening now.’

  He would have liked to shag Benita who slept next door, but if ever he left his room, a red light went on in the warden’s office.

  Shutting his eyes, he dreamt of making love to Janna: ‘such harmonious madness’. He must get out of this place.

  Waving the Gazette next morning, Gillian Grimston, head of Searston Abbey, telephoned Rod Hyde. ‘That swine Hengist Brett-Taylor’s never offered us a blade of grass. It’s just because Janna Curtis wears tight jumpers and bats her eyelashes.’

  ‘Hengist has always been a ladies’ man.’

  ‘I’d hardly call Janna Curtis a lady.’

  ‘It’ll all end in tears,’ said Rod Hyde grimly, thinking of his stolen hat.

  Nor was Randal Stancombe pleased. He didn’t fork out £20,000 a year for Jade’s school fees only for her to mix with riff-raff.

  18

  The following evening, Janna recounted the latest events to her new friend Lily Hamilton as they sat at Lily’s kitchen table making sloe gin, selecting blue sloes from a pile Lily had picked earlier in the day, pricking each one with a needle before dropping it into a waiting bottle. Lily was progressing much faster because Janna kept pricking her fingers or missing the bottle whenever she got on to the subject of Ashton or Cara or Russell.

  ‘They were foul. If Hengist and his friends hadn’t rolled up . . .’

  Lily smiled. ‘I told you Hengist was nice.’

  ‘I reckon he was more interested in bugging Ashton,’ said Janna firmly, but the glow of gratitude still warmed her.

  ‘You’re returning your sloes to the pile,’ chided Lily.

  ‘Oh help, sorry.’

  Just as she was topping up their glasses, Janna’s mobile rang.

  ‘Is that Janna?’ asked an incredibly plummy voice. ‘It’s Sally Brett-Taylor. We were wondering if you’d come and dine on October the twenty-sixth. Hengist so enjoyed his lunch with you, and we’ll try and rustle up some fun locals for you to meet. As
it’s a Friday, we won’t bother to dress.’

  And be running around nude, reflected Janna, then said she’d love to.

  ‘Lovely, eight for eight-thirty, bye-ee.’

  ‘Bye-ee, bye-ee,’ muttered Janna as she hung up. ‘That was Mrs Brett-Taylor,’ she told Lily. ‘She sounds very jolly hockey sticks.’

  ‘She’s a sweet thing,’ said Lily. ‘Terribly kind, keeps Hengist on the rails, remembering names, edging him out of parties if he’s getting drunk or indiscreet.’

  Janna was further touched on Monday to receive a cheque for three thousand pounds from Venturer Television.

  ‘Hope this might buy a few textbooks,’ Rupert had written, ‘and your children might enjoy this film.’

  It was Gladiator, which Janna allowed all the excited children to watch that afternoon as a reward for their good behaviour.

  As a result of the prospective-parents’ evening, thirty parents put their names down for Larks in autumn 2002 and the editor of the Gazette nearly sacked his news editor when a most flattering piece about Larks Comp appeared on the front page. This was accompanied by a smiling picture of Rupert, Hengist, Jupiter and Janna.

  Inside were pictures of Graffi, Pearl, Monster and Satan surveying the trashed farm and a large headline: ‘Larks Ascending’.

  An overjoyed Janna bought twelve copies of the paper and sent photocopies to all the parents. Even more excitingly, the Gazette published Paris’s poem ‘To a Skylark’, no longer a blithe spirit, whose trill was a burglar alarm, warning of the pillaging of the countryside.

  ‘Paris Alvaston’, wrote Hengist in his diary.

  Poor Paris was unmercifully ragged at the children’s home.

  Sam Spink, meanwhile, called a union meeting to protest against Larks accepting any favours from the private sector. Alex Bruce, deputy head of Bagley, who’d come from the maintained sector, was equally unamused. His friend Rod Hyde had briefed him on the ‘challenging behaviour’ of Larks’s pupils.

  ‘Do we really want these hooligans to invade Bagley? You’re always complaining of overwork, Senior Team Leader,’ he reproved Hengist. ‘Why not let me mentor Janna Curtis? I could slot in a visit to Larks on Fridays.’

  ‘I’m only overworked by things I don’t enjoy and Janna Curtis is very pretty,’ said Hengist and laughed in Alex’s shocked face.

  After the parents’ evening, Hengist had telephoned Janna as promised.

  ‘I’m deadly serious about Larks and Bagley getting together. But I’ve got a hellish October. Lectures in Sydney and Rome, a headmasters’ conference in Boston, not to mention half-term, so let’s aim at early November.’

  With that, he had drifted off and, like everyone else, been distracted by the American bombing of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, particularly as his daughter Oriana was reporting for the BBC from there.

  Larks’s pupils, whose spirits had been lifted by Hengist’s visit and watching Gladiator, fell back into their old ways. Janna seemed to spend her time wrestling with red tape, refereeing fights, putting buckets under leaks and sparring with Rod Hyde, who said:

  ‘Typical Hengist B-T behaviour, swanning in to cash in on the publicity. That’s the last you’ll see of him.’

  It was so humiliating to have nothing to report when the Gazette and other papers rang for news of the bonding, and heartrending when the children kept asking when they’d get a chance to play football on a decent pitch. Janna was too proud to call Hengist, but as the leaves changed colour and tumbled from the trees, she felt enraged he hadn’t rung and was determined to look as glamorous as possible at his wife’s dinner party.

  This was preceded by a day from hell.

  In the morning, guilty that she hadn’t tapped any local fat cats for sponsorship, Janna had visited Grant Tyler, a Larkminster electronics giant who, with his long, yellow face ending in a pointed chin, looked just like a parsnip.

  ‘And what do I get out of sponsoring Larks?’ he had demanded rudely.

  ‘Some of our clever children could do work experience here,’ said Janna brightly, ‘and might want to work for you as a career.’

  Mr Tyler’s face had turned from parsnip yellow to the purple of aubergine. ‘If you think I’d let your ragamuffins over my threshold—’ he had roared, and Janna had walked out leaving him in mid-sentence.

  Later in the day she gave Cara Sharpe a final warning for bullying a little Bangladeshi pupil who’d been unable to produce a note explaining her absence because her mother didn’t speak or write English.

  Janna was also worried about Feral, who’d been truanting persistently. She’d sort him out next week. But tonight she was leaving on time to shower and wash her hair at home and remove the red veins in her eyes with an iced eye pad, before putting on a lovely new off-the-shoulder black dress: all the things she had had time to do before a date with Stew in the old days.

  As she came out of Larks, fireworks, anticipating a forthcoming Bonfire Night tomorrow week, were popping all over town. Walking towards the car park, she heard a terrified whine, followed by shouts of laughter. Tiptoeing further into the garden, stumbling down Smokers’ Bank, she froze in horror to discover Monster Norman and Satan Simmons in the long, pale grasses above the pond. No doubt carried away by their success in trashing the cardboard animals, they were now trying the real thing and torturing a little dog. They had tied its front legs together; Monster was winding a rope round its muzzle. Satan was swearing as he tied a large rocket to its tail. Monster was also smoking. Having stubbed his cigarette out on the shoulder of the desperately writhing animal, he groped for a lighter and set fire to the rocket’s blue paper.

  ‘Stop that,’ screamed Janna as both boys leapt out of the flight path.

  Seeing her storming down the bank, they bolted, howling with laughter, down the hill over the wall. Next moment, the rocket exploded. Unable to soar into the air, it thrashed around on the ground, shooting out green and bright pink stars, dragging the dog with it.

  Whipping off her coat, Janna flung it over the wretched animal, gathering it up, dunking it in the pond. As the sparks finally fizzled out, the dog wriggled. At least it was alive. In the gloom she could see its red and white fur singed on its face, sides and paws. It was a small mongrel with brown ears and a brown patch over one eye. Freeing its muzzle, untying the rocket with frantically trembling hands, Janna carried it up the bank to her car. It was hardly breathing now. Finding Wally and help would waste time. Laying the dog on the back seat, trying not to upset the poor little thing by sobbing, soothing it with: ‘Good boy, brave boy, hang on a bit longer, darling,’ she hurtled round to the Animal Hospital, off the High Street.

  Here a sympathetic vet said it was their first Guy Fawkes casualty, but they were expecting a lot more; that the dog had been very badly burned and would probably lose his tail and an eye.

  ‘It’s only just breathing, hasn’t got a collar, probably a stray, terribly thin, kinder to put it down.’

  The dog, who suddenly seemed to symbolize Larks, gave a whimper.

  ‘Try and save him,’ pleaded Janna.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ The vet looked regretfully at her watch. ‘I’m supposed to be at a dinner party.’

  ‘Oh Christ, so am I,’ said Janna. ‘Can I drop by later?’

  ‘Ring if you’d prefer. You’d better get something on those burns.’

  Weeping with rage and horror, Janna plunged into the night. At least she had a proper reason to exclude Monster and Satan, except they’d both deny it. There was plenty of the dog’s blood on her, but probably not on them.

  Heavens, it was a quarter past eight. She had no time to change or wash her hair. In a lay-by, she ripped off her bloodstained T-shirt, leaving on her old olive-green cardigan and black skirt. Her stockings were laddered to bits. She’d look as poor and scruffy as the toffs would expect a state-school teacher to be, she thought savagely.

  She was so distraught, she didn’t reach Bagley until nine, where her animosity escalated as various i
ncredibly polite children gave her directions.

  ‘If you like, I’ll hop in and guide you,’ a little Hooray Henry said finally. ‘Should get a good dinner. Mrs B-T’s a terrific cook.’ Then, noticing the bloodstained T-shirt in the back, he reached nervously for the door handle, until Janna told him about the dog.

  ‘They ought to be shot, or rockets tied to their dicks. That’s diabolical. We always give our greyhounds tranquillizers at home when there are fireworks around – at least we did,’ he said sadly.

  ‘Here we are,’ he announced as the headlamps lit up brilliant red and crimson dogwood and maple and drifts of white cyclamen on either side of the drive.

  As they passed arches trailing last year’s roses and yew hedges cut into fantastic shapes, including a greyhound, Janna knew she’d come to the right house, which reared up, greyish yellow, shrouded in creeper, with some sash and some narrow casement windows, topped by roofs and turrets on different levels.

  ‘It’s a bit of a mishmash,’ said her companion. ‘Part Elizabethan, part Queen Anne, but very nice.’

  A mongrel of a house, thought Janna, but strangely appealing, like the little dog fighting for his life.

  ‘I hope your dog recovers,’ said the boy, running round and opening the door for her, ‘and you have a good evening.’

  ‘Thank you so much. What’s your name?’

  ‘Dicky Belvedon.’ As he rang the bell for her, she realized he was Dora’s twin.

  ‘How are you getting back?’

  ‘I’ll walk. It’s not far, and I can have a smoke in peace.’

  A plump, middle-aged woman answered the door. Relieved that Hengist’s wife wasn’t glamorous, Janna was about to apologize for being late, when a truly pretty blonde ran out.

  ‘Hello, Janna, I recognize you from your picture, I’m Sally B-T.’

  After her, slipping all over the floorboards, wagging her tail, dark eyes shining, long nose snaking into Janna’s hand, came Elaine, the white greyhound. Seeing such a happy, healthy dog, Janna burst into tears.