Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  Feral stretched out a hand and touched a nipple sticking through her bra and T-shirt and very gently ran his finger round and round it, until Amber was trembling with longing to be kissed. He had such white even teeth, such a wonderful smile, such curly black eyelashes.

  ‘It’s so important to overcome traditional barriers,’ murmured Amber.

  Feral found her colouring so exquisite against the yellow hazel, and faded tawny oak, he said, ‘You suit autumn.’ Putting a hand on her tracksuit trousers, he repeatedly tapped a finger against her clitoris. ‘Like that?’

  ‘Amazing.’

  Unable to bear the tension, Amber leapt to her feet and stumbled deliberately in a rabbit hole, allowing Feral to catch her. For a second they gazed at each other, burst out laughing, then he kissed her. He smelled so lovely and tasted faintly of peppermint, his tongue flickering as delicately as his fingers had, then growing more and more insistent until her legs would have given way if his arms hadn’t held her like steel bands.

  ‘Oh Feral,’ gasped Amber, ‘talk about lift-off,’ then, as his snake hips writhed against hers and his cock seemed about to burst through his trousers: ‘I don’t think you’re entirely in control of your tower.’

  ‘Stop taking the piss, man.’

  ‘Oh, wow,’ moaned Amber. As Feral’s hand crept inside her T-shirt, her hand in turn slid down his flat belly and thighs and encountered hard steel.

  ‘Ah,’ she whispered. ‘I see you also dress on the left.’

  ‘I don’t take chances.’

  Letting her go, Feral whipped out his knife, running his finger down the blade, smiling at her. Amber stood her ground, determined to show no fear. Neither jumped much as they heard Boffin Brooks’s strangulated whine.

  ‘Number eight ought to be around here somewhere.’

  Reaching up Feral cut through the string which tied stapler and flag to an overhead branch and chucked them into a wild rose bush. Then, putting away his knife, he pulled Amber behind a big oak tree, hand over her mouth to stop her laughing.

  ‘We don’t want Boffin catching up wiv us.’

  ‘I’ve never snogged anyone black before,’ murmured Amber, prising off his hand and pulling his head down. ‘What have I been missing?’

  30

  Earlier, in London, Randal Stancombe and Rufus Anderson’s wayward wife Sheena lunched on smoked salmon and champagne in one of his many apartments.

  ‘It’ll be an excellent photo opportunity,’ Sheena reassured him, ‘and brilliant for your profile both locally and nationally to help a school that serves an estate with such a high level of deprivation. People will recognize your sincerity about cleaning up the area. If the rest of the press are expected at Bagley at three-thirty I suppose we ought to go,’ she added regretfully.

  ‘We could have another drink,’ said Stancombe, unbuttoning her dress. Sheena was very tasty and it was one way of finding out if she’d hidden a tape recorder anywhere.

  Back at Bagley, the Lower Fourth were studying Tennyson. Poor Miss Wormley, whom the class referred to as Worm Woman, had made the mistake of asking Dora Belvedon for her views on the Lady of Shalott.

  ‘Well, Sir Lancelot with his flowing black curls and his broad brow was pretty cool,’ began Dora, ‘like a young Mr Brett-Taylor. But next minute he’s described as flashing into the crystal mirror. We had a flasher in Limesbridge when we lived there. Our gardener, actually. He was always waving his willy at people, so it must have been a shock for the Lady of Shalott, she’d led such a sheltered life. No wonder she suddenly got her period.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Dora.’ Miss Wormley had gone very pink.

  ‘She did too. “The mirror cracked from side to side; ‘The curse has come upon me,’ cried The Lady of Shalott.” They called a period “the curse” in medieval times when my mother was young, so she wasn’t going to be much good to Sir Lancelot that day. No wonder he kicked on.’

  Apart from Dora’s brother Dicky, who had his burning face in his hands, the rest of the Lower Fourth were in ecstasy. They loved it when Dora got into her stride. Dora, however, was frantic to escape.

  ‘I simply must go to the loo, Miss Wormley, I’ve got a frightful tummy upset. I’ll burst all over the floor if I don’t.’

  And Wormley let her go. Anything to be spared more literary interpretation.

  By the time the Lower Fourths had moved on to the next poem, about a snob called Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Dora was falling out of the lavatory window, binoculars trained on Middle Field as the teams shrieked, yelled and raced about.

  There was Xavier Campbell-Black actually laughing – that must be a first – with a girl in Eastern clothes. Kylie Rose and the Hon. Jack were having a very heavy snog behind a holly bush. Jack was so dopey, Dora hoped he’d remember to use a condom. Lord Waterlane would go ballistic if he got Kylie pregnant. If only she had a camera, the Mail would love that story – talk about Posh and Complications. That dickhead Boffin was grumbling to Mr Davies about something. Dora could just make out Graffi and Milly Walton building a tower together. Janna was looking bleak, probably missing Hengist. And Amber, Dora’s heroine, was sauntering out of Middle Field, doing up her bra, straightening her clothes, followed by – yuk! – Feral Jackson. How could Amber fancy him? She wouldn’t if she knew he’d kicked a football through Loofah’s legs. Dora got out her mobile to ring the press.

  Great cheers rent the air as Junior Lloyd-Foxe got a text to say Shining Sixpence had won by five lengths.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry I only got him at ten to one. That’s a hundred and thirty quid I owe you,’ he told Graffi. ‘Thanks for the tip. Bloody good.’

  Graffi’s balloon would clearly be the most beautiful but not the first completed.

  ‘Come on, Graffi, we must beat that twat Boffin,’ pleaded Pearl.

  ‘Rocky and Kylie’ll hold him back,’ muttered Graffi, gluing on extra strips of violet.

  ‘We must beat that horrible Cosmo.’

  ‘Feral and Lando will hold him back even more.’

  ‘Feral makes up for it by running quick.’

  Cosmo, in fact, was white with rage. He’d always fancied Amber, and she’d pushed off with that snake Feral, leaving him with Lando (who was immersed in week-old racing pages) and only Kitten Meadows to bully, who kept rolling her eyes, clapping her hands over her mouth and giggling.

  ‘Why do you laugh when it’s not funny?’ he asked evilly.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  Kitten flushed, looking round for Johnnie to protect her, but Johnnie, part of Primrose Duddon’s team, was gazing longingly at Pitch One. To hit a six on it would be really something.

  Having cut out a doughnut-shaped piece of cardboard to reinforce the bottom disk of violet tissue paper, Graffi shoved his fist through the paper.

  ‘This is where the hot air goes in, Milly.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You ever come into town?’

  ‘It could be arranged. Here’s my mobile number.’ Milly wrote it on a fragment of daffodil-yellow tissue paper, shoving it into Graffi’s jeans pocket, fingers splaying over his thigh.

  ‘Stop wasting time,’ said an envious Spotty Wilkins.

  ‘Your balloon’s the prettiest,’ said Milly.

  Graffi’s smile was unwavering. ‘No, you’re the prettiest.’

  To reinforce his team’s balloon, Rocky had also been instructed to cut a piece of cardboard shaped like a doughnut and now pretended to eat it. Everyone laughed so Rocky started really to eat it.

  ‘Stop that, you stupid idiot,’ screamed Boffin.

  ‘Leave Rocky alone, you great bully,’ shouted Kylie. Then, as Rocky went on chewing the cardboard: ‘Stop that, you stupid asshole.’

  ‘Now who’s being both bullying and offensive,’ said a shocked Boffin.

  ‘Rocky’s my friend, I’m allowed,’ snapped Kylie, adding as an afterthought: ‘You’re the asshole.’

  ‘Very well said, Kylie,’ brayed the Hon. Jack.


  Jade Stancombe wasn’t happy. Cosmo had ignored her all afternoon. Amber had pulled the divinely wayward Feral. Graffi was so busy gazing at Milly he’d put a fist through his balloon and was frantically patching. The enigmatic Paris, whose beauty was undeniable, was ignoring her. Paris was in fact watching Janna and Emlyn, wondering how that great ape could train his binoculars on a distant rugby game when the loveliest woman in the world stood beside him.

  My poor father has spent a fortune on a bus to enable Larks and Bagley to indulge in an orgy, thought Jade furiously, and no one’s asked me to join in.

  ‘Why are you staring at me?’ she rudely asked Paris, who shrugged and turned back to the balloon to which Lando and Anatole, delighted at their winnings, were proving surprisingly good at adding finishing touches.

  Aysha and Xavier were also working well, Aysha deftly gluing the paper Xavier had cut out as they built a beautiful control tower, nearly three feet high with crenellated turrets.

  The hour and a half was nearly up. Shrieks of rage, frustration and triumph rent the air.

  ‘I feel like the end of a jumble sale,’ said Mags, looking at the empty trestle table from which every scrap of tissue paper had been whipped.

  ‘Finished,’ yelled Primrose Duddon, whose team, even with Johnnie on board, had indulged in no dalliance or illicit boozing and had completed their orange and Prussian-blue balloon to loud cheers. As there was no sign of Stancombe, Emlyn presented Primrose with a red rosette.

  ‘Well done,’ he told her, then, turning to Janna: ‘Should we release the balloons as they come in?’

  ‘More impact if they all go off together,’ said Janna, and was nearly sent flying by a furious Boffin.

  ‘Sir, sir, someone’s been cheating, cutting free the staplers in the wood so I’ve been unable to complete our map. Objection! Objection!’

  ‘It’s only a game,’ said Emlyn, mindful of the gathering press. ‘No one’s getting any prizes.’

  Graffi’s round balloon, in diamonds of primrose yellow, shocking pink and violet, was judged to be the most beautiful; Xav and Aysha’s control tower the finest; Cosmo’s tower the biggest and tallest, which, everyone agreed, figured. Nearly all the participants were chatting and laughing now.

  As the balloons were lined up on the edge of the cricket pitch, the chapel weathercock, which had been watching proceedings, swung away as the warm south wind, which would have swept the balloons over the golf course, changed to north-east. Now, with luck, it would carry them over the Mansion.

  ‘Stick ’em up.’

  Feral reached instinctively for his knife as Gloria ran out brandishing two hot-air paint-strippers, followed by Cambola, Jason and Janna bearing hairdriers. Emlyn then handed out cardboard tubes to plug into the cardboard hole in the bottom of each balloon.

  ‘Too phallic for words,’ muttered Cosmo as the nozzles of hairdrier and paint-strippers were applied to the lower end of the cardboard tubes.

  Emlyn was studying the building pack.

  ‘Are all staff wearing protective gloves and all balloons held firmly by a team member?’ he shouted.

  ‘Yes,’ went up the cry.

  ‘Well, turn on the heat.’

  Scarlet and black, navy and emerald, Prussian blue and orange, shocking pink, violet and yellow, mauve and dark green: the balloons bobbed like tropical fish.

  Mauve and dark green, held by Paris as Janna’s hairdrier poured hot air inside it, quivered most. Jade put her hand round the cardboard tube, pretending to toss it off, then, encountering an icy look from Paris, blushed and let go.

  ‘Do you like the bus my father gave you?’ she demanded.

  ‘It’s absolutely wonderful,’ cried Janna, ‘it’ll change our lives. We can’t thank him enough.’

  ‘The balloons should take four minutes to fill up,’ advised Emlyn.

  Kitten stood well back. ‘I’m sure the glue’s going to catch fire.’

  ‘Out of nuffink, just bits of paper and glue, we’ve made somefing beautiful,’ said Kylie in a choked voice. Like we could be, she thought.

  The press had now arrived in force and, with no sign of Stancombe, photographed balloons and happy, excited children.

  ‘Everyone ready?’ yelled Emlyn.

  ‘No,’ protested Lando France-Lynch.

  ‘He’s never been able to get it up,’ shouted Junior.

  ‘They’ll never fly either,’ mocked Cosmo and, as everyone was concentrating on the balloons, whipped Amber’s mobile from her pocket.

  ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,’ shouted Emlyn. ‘Five, four, three, two, one, lift-off.’

  Away went the balloons, the tropical fish metamorphosing into a swarm of coloured butterflies, flying over the gold trees into the bright blue autumn sky.

  Lubemir and Boffin’s black and red balloon caught on the spikes of a sycamore, triggering off a stream of Albanian expletives until a gust of wind freed it to bob after the others. Sailing south-west over the Mansion, Primrose’s orange and Prussian-blue prizewinner stalled on the gold weathercock.

  ‘First time she’s bounced on top of a cock,’ giggled Amber.

  ‘Let’s see how far they go,’ said Feral, taking her hand and together they raced through trees and school buildings, followed by a whooping Milly and Graffi, Lubemir and Pearl and, after exchanging shy smiles, by Aysha and Xavier.

  ‘Black shit sticks together,’ observed Cosmo. Jade laughed and slid her hand into his.

  ‘Xav has just been very rude to me, I think he needs taking down a peg or two.’

  ‘Or three, or four, or five,’ agreed Cosmo. ‘It will be arranged.’

  ‘The Montgolfiers always maintained—’ began Boffin.

  ‘Oh, shut up, Boffin,’ said Primrose.

  Janna and Paris stood side by side watching until the last balloon floated out of sight.

  ‘They’re a symbol of Larks,’ whispered Janna. ‘We’re going to take off and really fly and so will the partnership with us and Bagley—’ Her voice broke.

  Turning, Paris saw tears spilling over her lower lashes. Taking the hairdrier from her, he put it on a trestle table, then somehow his hand slid into hers and they smiled at each other.

  ‘God speed,’ cried out Janna, as the last emerald and navy balloon bobbed briefly between the tall chimneys, ‘such a wonderful omen.’

  Paris didn’t know when to let go of her hand, so he left it to her.

  Interesting, reflected Cosmo, who was standing behind them. Miss Curtis clearly likes toyboys as well as wrinklies.

  The rugby fifteens, probably wrecked from all that pounding on hard ground, had gone in, so Emlyn also observed Janna and Paris. She’s very near the edge, he decided, and so besotted with Hengist, she’s unaware of the havoc she’s wreaking on that poor boy.

  ‘That was a great success,’ he said loudly.

  Janna let go of Paris’s hand, and was soon telling the hovering press that ‘Larks and Bagley’s partnership couldn’t have been illustrated taking off in a more romantic and beautiful way.’

  31

  Stancombe still hadn’t turned up, but the Larks and Bagley balloonists, over orange juice and slices of Mrs Axford’s cherry cake in the pavilion, were getting on much too well to care. Nor did they notice Cosmo slipping Amber’s mobile into the pocket of Feral’s tracksuit top, which he’d left hanging on the back of his chair.

  Amber and Milly were wildly impressed when they discovered Pearl had done Janna’s Winter Garden make-up.

  ‘I mean she’s pretty for a wrinkly today, but in that picture with Hengist, she looks like Meg Ryan, and you can see Hengist really, really fancies her,’ said Amber.

  ‘Will you make me up one day?’ begged Milly.

  ‘Pearl’s going to do the make-up for a joint production,’ said Amber.

  ‘Then I can quite confidently play Helen of Troy,’ giggled Milly.

  Pearl was in heaven.

  ‘What d’you want to see this afternoon?’ asked Amber.

&n
bsp; ‘The theatre, and Graffi’s desperate to see the art department. He’s dead talented.’

  ‘Dead lush as well,’ sighed Milly.

  ‘Not as lush as Feral,’ said Amber.

  ‘Feral’s my boyfriend,’ said Pearl sharply.

  ‘Ah,’ said Amber.

  If Feral were taken, which was indeed a body blow, she’d better call Peregrine. She patted her pockets. Where the hell was her mobile?

  Johnnie Fowler, who’d been too uptight to have any lunch, had a fourth piece of cherry cake as he discussed safe-breaking and drugs with Lubemir.

  ‘I tried to kill Miss when I were high on crack, so I went cold turkey.’

  ‘Ve vould have allowed you to kill Alex Bruce,’ said Lubemir. He turned to Feral: ‘Vat vould you like to do this afternoon?’

  ‘Amber Lloyd-Foxe.’ Feral shook his head in wonder. ‘She’s the hottest girl I’ve seen in years.’

  Amber, however, had slid out of the dining room, raided the art department and was racing towards the car park.

  Dora, spitting with rage, was leaning out of the science lab window as Stancombe’s crimson and gold helicopter finally landed on the grass, to be greeted by a diminished press corps fed up with waiting. As Larks’s splendid minibus glided on to the field for the official presentation, no one realized that Amber Lloyd-Foxe had graffitied the back with silver spray paint.

  Larks pupils lined up in two rows like ball boys at Wimbledon as Stancombe leapt lithely down on to the grass. Even today, when he’d cultivated an au naturel Richard Branson look – carefully ruffled hair, open-necked check shirt, designer jeans and a shadow of stubble, he didn’t get it quite right. The tan was too mahogany and the Dolce & Gabbana label deliberately worn outside his belt.

  Striding out to meet him, Alex Bruce explained why Hengist was tied up. Stancombe was incensed.

  ‘You’d have thought . . .’

  ‘I know, I know, I’m afraid our Senior Team Leader is a lawlessness unto himself.’

  Next moment, Sheena Anderson had jumped down, and a gust from the helicopter took her black dress over her head to reveal black hold-ups, a neat Brazilian and a wodge of white loo paper shoved between her legs. This was greeted by whoops and wolf whistles. Cosmo whipped out his camera. Dora nearly fell out of the window as a furious Sheena tugged down her skirt.