Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘You poor darling.’ Sally turned, waved to the crowd in the room behind her to have another drink and whisked Janna upstairs. ‘What’s happened?’

  Collapsing on the four-poster in the prettiest blue, lilac and pink bedroom, Janna explained about the dog.

  ‘They’re operating now. He was so defenceless and it was Larks children that did it. What can have happened to kids to turn them into such brutes?’

  ‘They don’t know any better. But poor little dog, and you’ve burnt your poor hands. They must be agony. We’ll ring the sick bay and get something for them.’

  ‘I’m fine, honestly. I’m so sorry I didn’t have time to change.’

  There was a knock on the door, and a large glass of gin and orange, followed by Hengist, came round the door.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘No! Poor Janna’s had the most awful time.’

  Sally, decided Janna – all her antagonism evaporating – was simply sweet. She was terribly Sloaney in her pie-frill collar and tartan blanket skirt, with wonderful rings on her rather wrinkled hands. But she was so friendly and kind.

  ‘Now, please, borrow anything,’ she told Janna. ‘I’m afraid my make-up’s not very exciting. A dash of lipstick and mascara is about my limit, but help yourself. And here’s a nice cream shirt, if you’re too hot in that cardigan. The bathroom’s next door. Don’t hurry.’

  Having downed half the gin and orange, Janna felt perkier and the urge to spy. The curtains of the huge four-poster were patterned with sky-blue and pink delphiniums. On Sally’s bedside table were Joanna Trollope and Penny Vincenzi, on Hengist’s, French poetry and a biography of Louis XIV. A big dressing gown in forest-green towelling (to match his eyes) hung on the bathroom door. Janna imagined it wrapped round his hot, wet body. The Joy of Sex and Fanny Hill were well-thumbed in the shelves. Old maps of Greece and Italy covered the bathroom walls. Water gushed out of a lion’s mouth into a big marble basin.

  Janna took her hair down, but it looked so lank and straggly she put it up again. Sally’s base was too pink, so she merely applied a little cherry-red lipstick to her mouth and blanched cheeks, and took off the shine with a pale blue swansdown powder puff dipped in a cut-glass bowl.

  She now needed some perfume. Beautiful was pushing it. She’d smelt it on Sally. Instead, she slapped on a cologne called English Fern and was immediately transported back to La Perdrix d’Or and the wonder of her lunch with Hengist.

  Comus, with damp, crinkled pages, was open beside a glass vase of yellow roses. ‘What hath night to do with sleep,’ read Janna.

  You could say that again. She glared at her hollow cheeks and even hollower eyes. Sally’s cream shirt falling to her knees like a nightdress made her look even more drained, but anything was better than the dreary cardigan.

  Pale but interesting, Janna, she told herself. If that dog pulls through, I’m going to keep him.

  19

  Hearing the neighing and yelping of the upper middle classes three drinks up, Janna nearly turned and ran. Entering the double doors she found everyone up the other end examining some picture and paused in reluctant admiration because the huge lounge was so warm and welcoming.

  Flames leapt merrily in the big stone fireplace. A crimson Persian carpet covered most of the polished floorboards. Battered sofas, armchairs and window seats in fading vermilion, old rose and magenta begged her to curl up on them. Poppies, vines and pomegranates rioting over the scarlet wallpaper battled for space with marvellous pictures. Was that really a Samuel Palmer of moonlit apple blossom? In bookshelves up to the ceiling fat biographies, history, classics, lots of poetry, gardening and art books, all higgledy piggledy and falling out, pleaded to be read. More books jostled with photographs of former pupils on every table, music scores rose from the floor in piles around the grand piano.

  Any space left was crammed with family memorabilia: an old-fashioned gramophone with a convolvulus shaped speaking trumpet, a papier mâché HMV dog, busts of Wagner and Louis XIV, a staring female figurehead taken from a nineteenth-century fishing ship, a ravishing marble of Demeter with a sweat band restraining her curls – every object with a story.

  This blaze of colour was reflected in a wooden mirror over the fireplace and softened by lamplight falling on great bunches of cream roses.

  Never if I pored over House & Garden for a million years could I produce a room as beautiful, thought Janna wistfully, then angrily that independent heads must be grossly overpaid to afford places like this.

  Hengist seemed to have read her mind, because he swung round and bore down on her with another vat of gin and orange.

  ‘You poor darling, poor little dog, bloody bastards, I’d like to ram great lighted rockets up their arses.’

  He was wearing a shirt in ultramarine denim, which turned his dark-green eyes a deep Prussian blue. From the breast pocket he produced a tube and a silver sheet of pills.

  ‘The sick bay sent this over for your poor hands. Let me put some on at once.’

  ‘It’s only one hand, and it’s fine.’ Janna snatched the tube, knowing she’d tremble far more if he touched her.

  Hengist’s suntan had faded; his face was sallow and rumpled rather than golden and godlike. The trips to the States and Sydney must have been punishing, but his spirits were high and his eyes filled with amusement and expectation.

  ‘It’s so nice to see you again. I can’t wait to open my facilities – such a dreadful word – to your children and particularly you.’ Bloody patronizing Little Lord Bountiful, thought Janna, wincing as she applied the gel, then wiped her hands on her skirt.

  ‘Now swallow these,’ ordered Hengist, pushing out two Anadin Ultra. When Janna looked mutinous he added, ‘Or I’ll hold your nose and stroke your throat.’

  Feeding the pills into her mouth, letting his fingers rest on her lips a second too long, he held out the gin and orange for her to wash them down.

  ‘Good girl. Now what are we going to argue about this evening: dyspraxia, ethnic diversity, gifted children?’

  ‘Are my kids ever going to be allowed to play on your pitches?’ asked Janna furiously.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, of course they are.’

  ‘No one believes you.’ The hurt and humiliation poured out of her. ‘Ashton Douglas, Rod Hyde, Mike Pitts, Crispin Thomas are all sneering at me.’

  ‘Bugger Ashton,’ said Hengist, ‘although he’d rather enjoy it. I swear the first – no, second week in November. The red carpet awaits. Feral, Graffi, Paris, whoever you like.’

  Janna, who’d been staring fixedly at his strong, smooth neck and emerging six o’clock shadow, raised her eyes and found such affection and tenderness on his face, she was quite unable to speak. Thank God, Sally rescued her.

  ‘Janna, come and meet everybody. Be careful, this carpet is a high-heel hazard. You’ve met Elaine?’

  ‘I have.’ Janna ran her hand over the pink silken belly; Elaine, showing herself off to advantage on a russet chaise longue, opened a liquid dark eye and waved a tail in greeting.

  The buckets of gin and orange were kicking in and Janna was cheering up, there was so much to look at. The watchful, saturnine Jupiter Belvedon actually pressed both planed cheeks against hers before telling her how much he’d enjoyed visiting her school. He then introduced Hanna, his lovely blonde Norwegian wife, who was as warm and curvy as he was cold and thin, and who must be a colossal asset to him in his constituency.

  ‘Hanna’s responsible for those exquisite flower paintings in our bedroom,’ explained a hovering Sally.

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ said Janna. ‘My next-door neighbour, Lily Hamilton, has lots of them too.’ Then she blushed as she remembered how cruelly Jupiter had turfed Lily out of a lovely house. Fortunately Jupiter, having parked her, had moved off so Janna was able to reassure Hanna that Lily was fine and a wonderful neighbour.

  ‘What’s she up to?’ asked Hanna.

  ‘Making sloe gin. Keeping us all entertained.’

&n
bsp; ‘I miss her so much,’ sighed Hanna.

  I am behaving really well at a smart Tory dinner, Janna told herself in amazement. Then, goodness, jungle drums! Sally was introducing her to Randal Stancombe.

  Just as black panthers and leopards, sighted in woods and along river banks and terrorizing whole communities, often turn out to be domestic cats with fluffed-out winter fur, Stancombe, despite his fearsome reputation, was in the flesh much less alarming than she’d imagined. He was certainly sexy, with a handsome predator’s face, scorching dark eyes that seemed to burn off Janna’s clothes, blow-dried glossy black curls and a mahogany suntan, set off to advantage by a linen shirt even whiter than Elaine. Asphyxiated by his musky aftershave and blinded by his jewels, Janna snatched away her burnt hand before it was crushed by his rings.

  ‘Delighted to meet you, Jan, Henge says you’re doing a great job at Larks, catch up with you later,’ and he turned back to his companion, quite understandably, because she was the most glorious, pampered, expensive-looking beauty with shining chestnut hair, creamy skin, wide hazel eyes and luscious smooth coral lips.

  This ravishing adventuress, Hengist whispered in Janna’s ear, was the Mrs Walton he’d enticed on to the Bagley board as a parent governor, to ensure not only full houses at governors’ meetings, but also that the other governors were so distracted by lust that they OKed all the decisions already made by Hengist and Jupiter.

  ‘Very different from my parent governors,’ giggled Janna, thinking of Chantal Peck and Stormin’ Norman. ‘When did they meet?’

  ‘About ten minutes ago.’

  Feeling his laughing lips against her ear, Janna experienced a surge of happiness. Sally then whisked her off to meet Gillian Grimston, head of Searston Abbey, who had a lot of teeth like a crocodile whose mother had failed to make it wear a brace, and who was asked out a lot because of her ability to offer the Larkshire middle classes an excellent free education, rather than for her charm or good looks. She was patronizing but amiable, and commiserated with Janna on having Rod Hyde on her back.

  ‘He’s so conceited and bossy.’

  She then banged on about her workload, which had cost her her marriage, and Searston Abbey, which had already raised thousands for Afghanistan war victims, thus giving Janna plenty of opportunity to watch Stancombe freefalling down Mrs Walton’s cleavage and only just disguising his irritation when Jupiter joined them.

  Determined to crack every aspect of society, Stancombe was not only pressing Hengist to make him a Bagley governor, but having watched Jupiter’s rocket-like ascent was anxious to buy into that camp and be a formative influence in Jupiter’s breakaway Tory party. Jupiter, who liked Stancombe’s money better than Stancombe, was playing hard to get.

  ‘The Afghan Fund is part of our caring ethos,’ droned on Gillian Grimston, wishing Mrs Walton were one of her mothers.

  ‘I’d rather have an Afghan hound,’ giggled Janna. Oh dear, she was getting drunk again.

  ‘Dinner,’ announced Sally.

  The dining room was equally seductive, with bottle-green jungle-patterned wallpaper, and chairs upholstered in ivy-green velvet round an oak table as dark and polished as treacle toffee.

  Light came from red candles flickering amid more white roses and a chandelier overhead like a forest of icicles, which set the regiments of silver and glass glittering.

  Ancestors under picture lights looked down from the walls, except for a portrait by Emma Sergeant over the wooden fireplace, which showed the young Hengist, solemn-faced, dark eyes raised to heaven, poised to kick his legendary drop goal at Twickenham. Pausing to admire it, Janna felt Sally’s arm through hers.

  ‘I insisted on hanging it there. It was painted some time after the event. Hengist thinks it’s awfully showing off, but I so love it. Hope you didn’t get too stuck with Gillian. She’s a good old thing and probably a useful ally. Are you OK? Hands not too sore?’

  ‘You are kind,’ sighed Janna.

  Even kinder, Sally had invited two single men to sit either side of Janna. One was Emlyn Davies, a blond giant with a battered face who taught history and rugger. The other, Piers Fleming, was head of English. Dark and romantic-looking, like Shelley’s younger brother, wearing a steel-blue smoking jacket, he confessed he had great difficulty keeping the Bagley girls at bay.

  ‘I’d screw the lot, if I weren’t going to be banged up for under-age sex. Some of them are so gorgeous and so precocious, and worst of all’ – he nodded across at Stancombe, who was being reluctantly prised away from Mrs Walton – ‘is Randal’s daughter Jade, and no one can expel her because Daddy’s poised to give the school a multi-million pound science block – bloody waste of money.’

  They then got on to the more edifying subject of English literature.

  Noticing Hengist at the head of the table flanked by lovely Hanna Belvedon and even lovelier Mrs Walton, whose taffeta dress, the stinging emerald of a mallard’s head, seemed to caress her body with such love, Janna’s spirits drooped. Then Hengist smiled at her and mouthed, ‘Everything OK?’ And suddenly it was.

  Two big glass bowls of glistening black beluga caviar resting on crushed ice were placed on the table, eliciting moans of greed all round. Accompanying them were little brown pancakes, bowls of sour cream, chopped shallot, hard-boiled egg and wedges of lemon.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Mrs Walton, as her glass steamed up with the addition of iced vodka. ‘Thank goodness I’m staying here and can get legless.’

  ‘Shame with such lovely legs,’ Stancombe leered across the table.

  How the hell do I eat this lot? wondered Janna.

  As if reading her panic, Sally called down the table, ‘Do make up Janna’s blinis for her, Piers, her hands must be so sore.’

  ‘My favourite food,’ confessed Jupiter.

  ‘Where did it come from?’ asked Gillian Grimston.

  ‘Moscow,’ said Hengist. ‘Anatole, one of our pupils and the son of the Russian Minister of Affaires, chucked an empty vodka bottle out of an attic window and nearly concussed the chaplain—’

  ‘And was, I presume, excluded?’ Gillian looked shocked.

  ‘Good God, no,’ said Hengist, ‘Anatole’s a lovely boy. Always pays his own school fees in cash – probably laundered – out of a money belt. If only other parents were as prompt.’

  ‘My cheque’s in the post,’ murmured Mrs Walton.

  ‘Anyway, Anatole’s mother was so grateful, she immediately sent us a ton of caviar.’

  ‘Jupiter would kill for caviar,’ said Hanna as her husband put two huge spoonfuls on his plate.

  And much else, thought Janna. Not Cassius, she decided, he’s more Octavius Caesar to Hengist’s Mark Antony.

  Janna wasn’t sure about the caviar. She drowned it in lemon juice and took huge slugs of vodka. Perhaps she should give hers to the emaciated man across the table, who had a tired, bony face and flopping very light red hair, and was already piling a second helping on to his blue glass plate.

  ‘Rufus Anderson, head of geography.’ Piers lowered his voice. ‘Head in the clouds, more likely, always leaving coursework on trains. Eats hugely at dinner parties because his wife, Sheena, doesn’t cook and whizzes up to London to a high-powered Fleet Street job, leaving Rufus to look after the kids. Note his sloping shoulders weighed down by baby slings.’

  ‘Then they should get an au pair,’ said Janna sharply. ‘Her career is just as important as his.’

  ‘Not at Bagley, it isn’t. Wives are expected to be helpmates. Sheena’s hopping that Emlyn on your left was offered a job as a housemaster last year and Rufus wasn’t. Rufus is miles cleverer than Emlyn or me. Sheena doesn’t appreciate she’s the only thing in the way of her husband’s advancement. That’s her down the table hanging like a vampire on Stancombe’s every word.’

  As Mrs Walton was soft, passive and voluptuous, Sheena Anderson was rapacious and hard. She had sleek black jaw-length hair, a hawklike face only adorned by eyeliner and a lean, restless body. No jewe
llery softened her short sleeveless black dress.

  ‘I’d love to interview you for the Guardian,’ she was telling Randal Stancombe.

  ‘They always give me a rough time.’

  ‘Not if I wrote the piece. You could approve copy.’

  Like Jack-the-lad-in-a-box, Stancombe kept texting, emailing, doing sums on his palm top, leaping out of his seat to telephone or receive calls, leaving his mountain of caviar untouched.

  ‘We could do it one evening over dinner,’ urged Sheena.

  But Stancombe was checking his messages. ‘Bear with me a minute, Sheen,’ and he shot into the hall again. Through the doorway, he could be heard saying, ‘Sure, sure, great, great, call you later.’ Switching off his mobile, he punched the air. ‘Yeah!’

  ‘Good news?’ enquired Sally as he slid back into his seat.

  ‘Just secured a plot of land in Colorado, Sal, a ski resort to be exact.’

  Janna caught Jupiter’s eye and just managed not to laugh.

  Gillian Grimston, who’d been subjected to Stancombe’s back, was not used to being ignored. ‘Where is this resort?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not at liberty to reveal as yet, Gilly.’ Stancombe flashed his teeth. ‘In fact, bear with me again, Sal and Henge, if I make another call,’ and he retreated again.

  ‘That’s how he keeps his figure,’ said Piers.

  Sheena, much to Sally’s disapproval, had whipped out and was muttering into a tape recorder.

  ‘How did you get started?’ she asked when Stancombe returned.

  ‘As a barrow boy. One of my customer’s husbands gave me a job as an office boy in a property company. Kept my ear to the ground. Gave the CEO hot tips until he promoted me to head of the agency division. Two years later I took away all my contacts and started Randal Stancombe Properties. Rest is history. According to the Rich List, in Central London alone we own eight hundred buildings let to blue-chip companies.’