by Jilly Cooper
‘I’ll come and have that drink,’ said Janna, just finding time to open a note from Lydia: ‘Lovely day; kids very good. We all missed you but heaven without Cara, please burn this.’
Mercifully the Ghost and Castle was empty, except for the skeleton propping up the bar. No disaffected Larks staff in sight. Funny how I lived in the pub when I was at Redfords, thought Janna. Her hair still felt on fire where Hengist had stroked it. Mags insisted on buying the drinks and, between gulps, carrying on knitting the scarf for her future son-in-law.
Mags had the beautiful complexion and sweet unruffled serenity, thought Janna, that a Raphael Madonna might have achieved in middle age if her life had not been torn apart by the tragedy of a son’s death.
‘Thank you ever so much for coming.’
Mags smiled. ‘It was a huge success. You’re right to be proud of your children. You’ve given them so much confidence. Both sides were amazed how much they liked each other.’
Mags prayed the saga of Boffin’s teeth wouldn’t reach the press. She wondered if she should tell Janna about it, then Janna put everything out of her mind by asking her if she’d like to be deputy head.
‘You’d be so good, Mags. The kids love and trust you, and so do the staff. Your lessons are so popular and you don’t grind axes all day.’
Looking at Janna’s little face, at the pallor beneath the dark freckles and the eyes that never seemed far from tears these days, Mags was deeply touched.
‘That’s the sweetest compliment I’ve ever been paid. If you’re part-time, people regard you as a dilettante. But truly two and a half days a week are enough for me, so I can be there for Tim when he’s on a big case and comes home wiped out, and for the children and soon, fingers crossed, the grandchildren who will all want a part of me and expect me to drop everything. And we’ve got Diane’s wedding coming up. I’m better all round if I don’t spread myself too thin.
‘I’ll support you all the way,’ she went on, ‘and the others aren’t that antagonistic. Sam Spink is a troublemaking cow, but you get that in any school. Forget the Dinosaurs. The rest of the staff like you very much, they’re just terrified and poisoned by Cara. You must get rid of her.’
‘Hengist and your nice husband said the same thing.’
‘Cara made a play for Hengist once, asked him to dance. He rejected her with a finesse only he’s capable of.’
‘Really?’ Janna longed to know more, but didn’t want to appear too keen. ‘I think Cara’s mad. Did you see her ripping apart those anemones? Do you think there’s a conspiracy against me?’
Mags looked up, startled.
‘The Gazette won’t leave me alone. There was a piece yesterday about the staff leaving in droves. Russell and S and C deliberately thwart my every move. They seem to be willing me to fail.’
‘I’ll have a word with Tim,’ said Mags thoughtfully. ‘You know I disagree passionately with private education, but I have to say both teachers and pupils were terrific today.’
Over at Bagley, Cosmo, Lubemir and Anatole were enjoying their game: shoving Xavier’s dark head down the lavatory, holding him under as they pulled the chain.
‘Might wash you white, black shit. Black shit should go down the bog,’ taunted Cosmo, giving Xav a vicious kick in the ribs.
‘Don’t bruise him,’ reproved Anatole.
‘Bruises don’t show up on black shit.’
‘He is not getting whiter.’ Lubemir yanked Xav out by the hair to examine his face. ‘Try some bleach.’ He emptied half a bottle of Domestos into the water before ramming Xav’s head back again.
Xav squeezed shut his eyes so the bleach couldn’t burn them but, forced to open his mouth to breathe, gulped and choked as bleach went down his throat.
Cosmo meanwhile, having wolfed down some muesli and a crushed bloc of lavatory freshener, retched and, yanking aside Xav’s head, threw up into the lavatory bowl before shoving Xav back again.
‘In you go, black bastard.’
Xav thought he’d choke with revulsion and his lungs would explode with pain. Death would be better than this.
Please God, let me die.
Mags had left her Renault outside the Ghost and Castle. As Janna wandered back to Larks’s car park, she found the words: ‘Go back to Yorkshire you dirty bitch’, scrawled in scarlet lipstick across her windscreen.
I mustn’t panic, she told herself. It couldn’t be Cara, she was off sick. Heart thumping, terrified her brakes had been tampered with, or a mad murderer might rise up in the back to strangle her, she drove very slowly back to Wilmington.
As she leapt out of her car, Partner hurtled out of Lily’s house, then stopped at her feet, whimpering and crying.
‘I’m so sorry to leave you so long, love,’ she said, gathering him up, bitterly ashamed that he was trembling as violently as she was.
Lily admitted that the little dog had missed her dreadfully.
‘He’s fine with me for a bit, then he seems to panic you’re not coming back.’
‘I’ll take him into Larks tomorrow,’ said Janna. ‘I guess I need a guard dog.’
35
Janna was so tired, neither terror of Cara nor dreams of Hengist kept her awake. It seemed only a second later that her alarm clock was battering her brain. Six o’clock already. Tugging a pillow over her head for five more minutes, she was roused at a quarter to seven by Partner tugging off her duvet with his teeth.
Thanking him profusely, showering, dressing, wolfing a piece of toast and marmalade, she took her cup of coffee, torch and dog out for a quick run across the fields, soaking her trousers with dew, tripping over molehills, splashing through streams.
‘In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light.’
Partner charged ahead, barking joyfully, chasing rabbits, but as they returned to the cottage, his tummy dragged along the ground, his pointed ear and the remaining plumes on his tail drooped lower and lower at the prospect of Janna abandoning him.
‘It’s all right, darling, you’re coming too.’
Hope springing eternal, Partner gazed up, ginger head on one side, onyx eyes shining, then went berserk, squeaking and jumping four feet off the ground. As she put his basket and a bag of biscuits in the car, he rushed off to collect his lead, then leapt into his basket in the back.
There was an apricot glow in the east. As they passed the signpost for Bagley, she wondered if Hengist ever thought of her. She kept remembering his powerful body thrust against hers. She must find herself a boyfriend.
‘I’ve got you,’ she called back to Partner, who swished his tail, then as she crossed the bridge into Larkminster, her mobile beeped. Glancing at the screen, she read: ‘Yr toff Bagley friends won’t save you, you rancid old tart’ and nearly ran into one of the Victorian lamp-posts. She must go to the police.
Shaking uncontrollably, moaning with terror, she sought refuge in the boarded-up newsagent’s next to the Ghost and Castle. As she picked up the papers, she was fractionally cheered when the owner, Mrs Kamani, who was always grumbling about the children shoplifting, suddenly announced how delightful they’d been on television last night.
Having installed Partner with a Bonio in his basket under her desk, Janna distracted herself from the foul text message by checking on yesterday’s press coverage. It was pretty good except for the Gazette, which angled its report on caring Stancombe giving Larks a £25,000 minibus and taking time out from his impossibly busy schedule to fly down to Bagley.
As the purpose of his generosity had been to rescue Larks pupils from the poverty of their ambitions and a life of crime, Stancombe had felt it sadly ironic that after these same pupils had stormed the helicopter during the opening ceremony, several gold ashtrays, a silver cigarette case and a bottle of champagne had gone missing.
‘Rubbish,’ howled Janna. ‘The helicopter was also swarming with Bagley pupils.’
The piece was illustrated by a glamorous picture of Stancombe and Jade, of Larks and Bagley chi
ldren looking bored, and of Janna, as usual, smiling coyly up at Hengist.
When was Col Peters going to ease up?
Thank God the television coverage would be seen by millions more people than read the Gazette.
Most of our parents can’t read anyway, Janna was shocked to find herself thinking. The rest of the press had followed Venturer’s lead, photographing Kylie in her flowered dress: ‘We thought Bagley would be stuck-up snobs, but they were really nice people.’
The Guardian had clearly dropped Sheena’s piece on Stancombe, who’d be livid. They had however included a charming photo of the black children: Xav, Aysha and Feral, sending Aysha’s proud but panic-stricken mother out to buy every copy in case her husband saw it on his return from Pakistan.
Only that most scurrilous of tabloids the Scorpion excelled itself by showing Cosmo’s somewhat fuzzy pictures of the geography master’s wife flashing her Brazilian as she descended from Stancombe’s chopper and of ‘Rough Trade Counter’ on the back of the bus, which had a caption: ‘This is what snooty Bagley really thought of Larks’. However, this hadn’t stopped ‘Toff Love’, the caption on a picture of Kylie Rose, ‘a 13-year-old single parent’, breaking down social barriers with the Hon. Jack Waterlane behind a holly bush.
‘Jack’s lush,’ enthused Kylie Rose . . .
Janna couldn’t stop laughing. What would Hengist say? She was brought back to earth by a call from Crispin Thomas furiously cataloguing her iniquities. How could Janna have deserted her post? One would have thought Nelson had gone ashore to frolic with Lady Hamilton during the Battle of Trafalgar.
‘If you grant a handful of kids absurd privileges, the rest will act up.’
Janna left the telephone on her desk, made a cup of coffee, and when she picked it up again, Crispin was still snuffling.
‘If Rod Hyde hadn’t held the fort yesterday . . .’
Oh God, another text message was coming through. Janna steeled herself, but it was from Hengist.
‘Hurrah for Toff Love. Ignore Gazette, coverage great and should take Sheena down a few square pegs. A bientot. H B-T.’
Trying to keep the silly grin off her face, Janna found Crispin still yakking: ‘I’m surprised you have nothing to say to justify such a lapse. It will be top of the agenda at the governors’ meeting next week.’
As Wally came in whistling Prokofiev One, Janna handed him a bottle of whisky.
‘What’s this for? I had a great time. The wife loved seeing us on TV and taped the programme. That Emlyn Davies is a smashing bloke. And that’s a nice little dog. Is this Partner? Looks like a cross between a fox and a woodlouse. Come on, boy.’
Partner cowered in his basket.
Then Rowan raced in weighed down by Tesco carrier bags.
‘How did it go? Lovely piece on Venturer; the kids looked so happy and you looked so pretty, and you were great, Wally. Oh! This must be Partner, isn’t he adorable? Look at his sweet face. He must be part cairn, part Norfolk. Look at his poor bare tail, but I’m sure it’ll grow back. Goodness he’s sweet.’
Thus encouraged, Partner edged forward.
‘We had a lovely day at Bagley Hall,’ announced Janna at assembly. ‘Later, we’ll tell you about it and the wonderful things planned for the future. But first, I want to introduce a new member of Larks. I hope you’ll be very kind to him; it’s so hard starting late in the term.
‘Many of you have been asking what happened to the little dog who nearly died when some cruel boys tied a rocket to his tail. The answer is he recovered, he’s living with me in Wilmington and he’s so clever, when I overslept this morning, he pulled the duvet off my bed to wake me up. But he gets frightened on his own during the day and howls, thinking he’s been abandoned again. So he’s going to come to school every day to be our mascot, bringing us luck. His name is Partner,’ she added as Rowan carried him proudly up on to the stage and handed him over.
‘I want you all to say “Howdy, Partner”, like the cowboys.’
‘Howdy, Partner,’ roared the delighted children.
Partner quivered at such a big crowd, particularly when Janna carried him down the steps so Year Seven in the front row could stroke him. Then suddenly he caught sight of Paris, who had hugged him and so gently bathed his sore tail and, leaping down, he jumped into Paris’s arms.
‘Now we really know how much time Paris Alvaston spends at our Senior Team Leader’s cottage,’ muttered Red Robbie, who was furious that Gloria had had such a lovely time in a capitalist playground yesterday.
‘That remark should be withdrawn,’ cried an outraged Cambola. She strode up to the piano. ‘Now we will sing “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, with special emphasis on the Lord God loving all creatures great and small.’
Cambola started playing. The children started singing, but had great difficulty carrying on when Partner put back his ginger head, like the fox in Aesop’s fable, and howled until Miss Cambola rose from the piano and conducted him with her pencil, so he howled even louder and the singing broke up because everyone was laughing so much.
As a dog who could end assembly five minutes early, Partner’s fame was assured.
36
Cara had only been off sick five minutes before a flood of Larks teachers, realizing how wonderful school was without her venomous demoralizing presence and unable to face the prospect of her return, handed in their notice. These included Adele, Robbie Rushton’s deputy, who would now have no means of supporting two little children; Jessamy, Mike Pitts’s teaching assistant; Gloria, the gymnast; Lydia and Lance, the newly qualified teachers; and, most surprisingly, Miss Basket, who, because no one else would employ her, everyone thought would ensure her pension by clinging on by her bitten fingernails to the end of time.
Lydia summed up the exodus:
‘I love Larks and you, Janna, but I can’t handle Cara any more. I feel sick with terror every morning. She’s supposed to watch my teaching and encourage me, but I haven’t had a page of notes since I’ve been here. And she punishes me by inciting her favourites to act up. Kitten Meadows stood with her hands on her hips and said, “You’re just jealous because I’m hotter than you,” then spat in my face. When I complained, Cara just laughed and said, “If you can’t handle sassy girls!”
‘We’re supposed to go to the deputy head if we’ve got a problem with her, but as he’s shagging her anyway, he’d just grass me up, then she’d murder me.
‘I’m scared of her, Janna. Please let me leave at Christmas.’
‘I’ll see what I can do, but please reconsider.’ Janna felt bitterly ashamed that she hadn’t protected poor Lydia, who’d been so plump and pretty when she’d joined the school, and was now a thin, pale, trembling wraith.
She must tackle Cara, but how?
It was the same at governors’ meetings. Although Cara, as a teacher governor, left the room when staff, salary or financial matters were discussed, Stormin’ Norman, like Mike Pitts, would report back any snide remarks and Cara would put in the stiletto.
Janna herself grew increasingly fearful as the obscene telephone calls continued. One night her tyres were let down; on another a circle of barbed wire rested against her windscreen.
Some people are terrified of snakes, others of spiders. Janna was terrified of madness. As an imaginative child often left alone at night when her mother went out cleaning, she’d lived in fear that the inhabitants of a nearby lunatic asylum would escape across the fields and come screaming and scrabbling at her bedroom window. Later, dotty Miss Havisham and Mr Rochester’s first wife, imprisoned upstairs with her crazy mirthless laugh, had haunted Janna’s nightmares. For years, she wouldn’t touch apples in case they’d been poisoned by the evil queen in Snow White. Most frightening of all was the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz, who, in her sudden appearances and wanton capacity for disruption, reminded her most of Cara.
Thank God for brave little Partner, curled up on her bed or at her feet. Janna longed to put on Dorothy’s shiny red shoe
s, gather him up like Toto and escape down the Yellow Brick Road – but first she must stand up to the governors . . .
Cara in fact limped in a week later, flanked by Satan, Monster and sassy Kitten Meadows, and in time for the after-school governors’ meeting. This was held in Cara’s classroom, whose walls were covered with masks of everyone from Tony Blair to Maria Callas, gazing sightlessly down from the black walls. Blood-stained rubber knives, instead of scarlet anemones, stood in a blue vase on the table.
Cara looked so deathly pale and red-eyed, and her rasping voice was so pathetically muted, Janna wondered why she had ever been scared of her.
‘That’s green base and red eyeshadow,’ muttered a passing Pearl scornfully.
Fear is the parent of cruelty, but also of sycophancy. Thus staff and pupils were so terrified that Cara, through her KGB system, would learn they had been slagging her off that she returned to a heroine’s welcome of cards, flowers and bottles of wine.
There was also a full house at the governors’ meeting.
Sir Hugo Betts had had a good lunch and was fighting sleep. Sol the undertaker had just had the satisfaction of burying a very rich local businessman. Cara was flanked by a solicitous Stormin’ Norman and by Crispin, who was wearing dark glasses to hide a stye and flustering Miss Basket who, in the absence of Rowan at the dentist, was taking the minutes on her laptop and kept begging people to ‘slow down please’. Basket was also terrified that Cara might have bugged Janna’s office and found out why she was leaving.
Ashton Douglas was flipping distastefully through a pile of cuttings on the Bagley jaunt. Sir Hugo Betts put on a second pair of spectacles to admire Sheena’s Brazilian. Russell Lambert, his mouth sinking at the corners like the mask of tragedy on the wall, exuded disapproval, particularly at Partner curled up on Janna’s knee.