Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  Ashton kicked off, deploring Janna’s involvement in the trip to Bagley, ‘against the advice and pwinciples of your colleagues and your Labour/Lib Dem county council, who you know are violently opposed to integwation. The result was an unprecedented outbweak of destruction and a lamentable pwess.’

  ‘It was not lamentable, except for the Gazette,’ protested Janna. ‘I’ve had so many nice emails. It’s been so good for the kids’ morale.’

  Support then came from an unexpected source.

  ‘My Kylie had the most wonderful day of her life,’ enthused Chantal Peck.

  ‘We noticed,’ said Stormin’ Norman sourly.

  ‘Sally Brett-Taylor was most gracious to Kylie Rose, encouraging her to persevere with her singing, because it’s a flexible career for a single mother. Cosmo, Dame Hermione Harefield’s son, also said Kylie’s voice is remarkable. The day was a ’uge success.’

  ‘Because your slag of a daughter got orf with an ’Ooray.’ Stormin’ Norman was brandishing her short umbrella like a baseball bat.

  Chantal, however, decided to rise above this insult.

  ‘Jack is a charmer,’ she said icily. ‘He’s already texted Kylie Rose seventeen times.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d love you as a muvver-in-law,’ snarled Stormin’.

  ‘Ladies, ladies,’ said Russell smoothly. ‘Cara wishes to make a point.’

  ‘I don’t feel,’ quavered Cara, ‘that whoever planned this ill-judged trip appreciated the fragile egos of our students. Anarchy broke out because those left behind felt undervalued.’

  ‘’Ear, ’ear,’ growled Stormin’.

  ‘We have great plans for the future,’ said Janna quickly, ‘for a joint concert and a joint play next term. The theatre at Bagley is big enough for all our parents and children, so no one will feel excluded.’

  ‘Except the Larks head of drama and English,’ said Cara pathetically.

  ‘Please slow down,’ wailed Miss Basket.

  ‘We can’t spend an entire meeting discussing Bagley Hall and Larks,’ said Ashton.

  ‘I would like to register,’ boomed Russell Lambert, ‘that I found all the publicity so distasteful, I’m contemplating stepping down.’

  Janna murmured:

  ‘He, stepping down

  By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock,

  Came on the shining levels of the lake . . .’

  Her thoughts were wandering. Odd that King Arthur and St Joseph, two of the most famous cuckolds in the world, were also regarded as the most noble of men.

  ‘Janna,’ said Ashton sharply.

  ‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ mumbled Janna, which didn’t help.

  ‘We have decided to form a sub-committee to discuss the Larks–Bagley partnership,’ went on Ashton.

  ‘Why not a Government enquiry?’ quipped Sol the undertaker, winking at Janna.

  ‘Let us move on to the high level of truancy,’ went on Russell . . .

  ‘It’s down ten per cent,’ protested Janna.

  ‘That’s not enough.’

  ‘Anyone like one of my choccy biccies?’ said Cara, getting a packet out of her bag. ‘So many presents and I got forty-two get-well cards.’

  ‘No one’s used to you ever taking time off,’ gushed Miss Basket, blushing even redder as she met Janna’s eye.

  ‘Could we instead move on to wedundancy?’ said Ashton.

  As teacher governors were excluded from discussions about staff or financial matters, Russell asked Basket and Cara to leave.

  ‘I can speak for all of us in saying how pleased we are you’re back, Cara.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ cried Miss Basket.

  ‘Thank you,’ whispered Cara.

  Crispin leapt up to open the door for them, adding:

  ‘Cara’s a lovely woman, such a dedicated teacher.’

  ‘I hope she hasn’t come back too soon,’ said Russell. ‘She looks very pulled down.’

  ‘Wedundancies,’ said Ashton. ‘I’ll make notes now Miss Basket’s gone. We’ve examined your budget situation, Janna. Your only hope is to instigate at least eight wedundancies.’

  Janna, who was drawing a picture of Crispin as a pig in a trilby, replied that it was sorted.

  Ashton looked up, startled.

  ‘Nine people handed in their notice this week.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ said Russell.

  Janna took a deep breath. She might as well be hung for a Sharpe as a lamb.

  ‘They’re all terrified of Cara.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Ashton.

  ‘This is disgraceful,’ exploded Russell. ‘Look at all the cards and flowers greeting her return.’

  ‘Those people were sucking up to her, as his minions fawn over Saddam Hussein. Cara shamelessly favours certain children over others.’ Janna looked straight at Stormin’ Norman. ‘That’s why they sent her cards.’

  ‘These are very serious accusations,’ said Ashton.

  ‘And very serious transgressions. I have already given Cara three formal warnings for intimidating children, and made a note of numerous others. I also assumed that teacher governors left the room during human resources discussions, so that the rest of the board could talk off the record in the strictest confidence.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Russell heartily. ‘Within these four walls.’

  ‘I’d therefore like to reiterate that Cara Sharpe is poisoning our school.’

  There was a squawk of a tape running out.

  ‘Ha,’ said Janna. ‘So this meeting is being recorded.’

  Pouncing on Stormin’s bag, she whipped out a recorder and played it back.

  ‘“Cara Sharpe is poisoning our school”,’ said the tape.

  ‘I must have left it on by mistake,’ puffed Stormin’, for once discomforted.

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Janna. ‘Just for the record, I’m keeping this.’ Removing the tape, she dropped it into her bag. Then she turned furiously on Ashton and Russell. ‘I don’t understand you. Because of my ailing budget you demand redundancies. But when nine teachers hand in their notices, which will cost you nothing compared with the vast amount you’ll have to fork out if you have to make people redundant, you don’t seem remotely pleased. This saves money, which I thought was your top priority.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Sol. ‘Janna’s achieved what you wanted, cheaply and painlessly, so stop whingeing.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Sir Hugo, waking up.

  The meeting broke up in uproar.

  Only after she had escaped did Janna start shivering. How long would it take Cara to get her revenge?

  When she finally got home several hours later, the outside light came on to illuminate a front door daubed with red paint: ‘Get out of Larkshire, cradle-snatching bitch’.

  Far more dreadful, Partner was frantically sniffing at something on the step. It was a little black cat with its throat cut, its poor body still warm. The nutters were out to get her.

  Running into the house, she rang Mags Gablecross and left a terrified, pleading message.

  37

  After a night with her four-poster shoved against the bedroom door, Janna was passionately relieved first thing to get a call from Chief Inspector Gablecross. He and Mags had been away meeting fellow in-laws and only just checked their messages. Could he pop in around eleven-thirty after break, when hopefully most staff and children would be in lessons?

  Janna liked the Chief Inspector as much as when she first met him. The world immediately seemed a better and safer place. Face to face across her desk, rather than side by side at the Winter Gardens dinner, she noticed the shrewdness of his curly lashed green eyes. His rugby player’s body, running not unpleasantly to fat, and his slow, soft, gentle voice, evoking the drinking of cider in pubs on the edge of fields of buttercups, reminded her a lot of Emlyn Davies.

  And after Janna had reiterated how much she liked and admired Mags, and Gablecross had said how much he liked Partner, who was now chewing on a dried pig’s ear, and di
dn’t Janna think he was part dachshund, part corgi, Janna shut the door and told him everything from the daubed windscreen to the murdered cat.

  ‘Cara should be having a rest period,’ Janna said finally, ‘but she’s taking Nine E, which includes the Wolf Pack, because Lydia stayed at home. She’s really conscientious but she couldn’t hack it now Cara’s back.’

  Janna was badly frightened, observed Gablecross, but fighting like a little terrier. He admired her guts.

  ‘Could you show me round the school?’

  The Chief Inspector had an even more dramatic effect on the children than Uncle Harley. The din in the corridors subsided as though a radio had been turned off. Pupils slid into classrooms. Guilty parties shot into the toilets. Satan Simmons leapt out of a window he’d just broken and set off bleeding like a pig down the drive.

  Year Nine E were reading The Mayor of Casterbridge, which Paris thought was a fabulous book. Was it possible that his own father had sold him and his mother at a fair, and his mother, unable to support him, had left him on the children’s home steps? He was touched Henshaw the Mayor loved Elizabeth-Jane just as much when he discovered she wasn’t his natural daughter. Perhaps some father could one day love him. He also liked Hardy’s pessimism. He’d have made a good EastEnders scriptwriter.

  Paris, on the other hand, was churning inside. Lydia, who normally took this class, had thoughtlessly asked the pupils to write an essay about their family tree and bring in photos of their parents and themselves as babies.

  Most of the children on the Shakespeare Estate hadn’t seen their fathers for years, if ever. Cara was joyfully poised to skin Lydia alive for such gross insensitivity, but meanwhile she intended to have fun and with a cackle picked up Rocky’s photograph.

  ‘What a hideous baby you were.’

  As Rocky’s face fell like a chastised Rottweiler, the class tittered out of fear, rather than agreement.

  ‘You were an even uglier baby, Feral,’ went on Cara, ‘and goodness me, where did your mother meet your father, Pearl?’

  ‘In the dole queue,’ said Pearl sulkily.

  ‘’Spect it’s the only time they did meet,’ taunted Satan. In the front row with Kitten Meadows, who’d had a row with Johnnie Fowler, he was egging Cara on. ‘Pearl’s father’s inside.’

  ‘And when my dad comes out, he’ll get you if you don’t stop fucking bugging me,’ spat Pearl.

  ‘Don’t swear.’ Cara turned with such venom, Pearl shrank away.

  Cara had reached Paris. Beside him Graffi, stressed that he had a zit bigger than the Millennium Dome, was texting Milly, whom he was meeting for a first date after school. Paris had had a lousy week. He’d borrowed a copy of Private Lives from Bagley library without asking and last night, kids in the home had ripped it to pieces. Inside it had been signed ‘To Hengist, love Noël’. He’d meant to give it back, but now no one would believe him. He wasn’t sleeping because of Janna; he’d been watching her all week and knew she was unhappy. He’d hardly spoken to her since the Bagley trip, but he’d been taking Partner for walks round the school grounds.

  Cara was poised for the kill. Kitten and Satan were grinning in anticipation.

  ‘I see you’ve forgotten to bring in any photographs or produce an essay, Paris.’ Then, when Paris didn’t answer: ‘Have you lost your tongue?’

  ‘I don’t have parents to write about,’ he muttered.

  ‘He don’t know who they are and he hasn’t got no photographs of himself as a baby nor a family tree,’ protested Graffi furiously.

  ‘How unfortunate,’ drawled Cara, then cruelly intoned:

  ‘“Rattle his bones over the stones; He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns!”’

  Only a few grasped the significance of the lines. Fear of Cara inhibited even the Wolf Pack.

  Cara detested Paris for his beauty, his brains and, most of all, for his adoration of Janna. She had seen his lovelorn looks and had pieced together torn-up notes in the bin. Stalking Janna herself, she’d had to be very careful not to be apprehended by him.

  Gablecross and Janna had just slid into the classroom and witnessed Cara’s narrow scarlet back quivering like a cobra poised to strike. At the sight of Gablecross, Feral edged towards the window.

  ‘Where are you off to, Feral Jackson? Sit down,’ screeched Cara. Then, turning back to Paris, with her mad laugh: ‘I’m not surprised your mother didn’t want to keep you. If you only had a fraction more charm . . . Still, I’m sure Janna is like a mother to you, or would you rather be her toyboy?’

  Cara had lost it, evil seemed to gush out of her. The class edged away. Only Paris stood his ground. Janna was poised to move in, but Gablecross put his hand on her arm.

  ‘Can’t you give me an answer?’ screamed Cara. ‘You insolent lout.’

  ‘Shut up,’ yelled Paris. ‘Janna’s the loveliest woman in the world. You’re just a jealous old bitch.’

  Next moment, a mobile rang and Graffi snatched it up. His shoulders hunched in ecstasy: ‘Milly, lovely!’ As Cara swung round to silence him, he thrust out his palm in a lordly fashion: ‘Talk to the hand, dearie.’

  Paris made the mistake of laughing. Next moment Cara had whacked him so hard that she left a red handprint darkening on his face; then, as he ducked, balling his fists to strike her, she lashed at him again with the back of her hand. Unable to stay neutral a moment longer, Partner wriggled out of Janna’s clutches and, yapping furiously, rushed forward to defend his friend.

  ‘You fucking animal,’ screamed Cara, snatching up a pair of scissors lying on the table and jabbing first at Partner, then at Paris.

  ‘Put that down,’ thundered Gablecross.

  A heavy man but as quick on his feet as Feral’s idol, Thierry Henry, he was across the room grabbing Cara’s arms from behind and slapping on handcuffs.

  ‘Let me go,’ she screeched.

  ‘Cara Sharpe, I am arresting you. You do not have to say anything, but . . .’

  ‘Just like The Bill,’ cried Kylie in ecstasy.

  Janna called Russell Lambert.

  ‘You’d better call an emergency governors’ meeting. I’ve got rid of ten teachers now. I’ve just fired Cara Sharpe.’

  ‘Hey ho, the witch is dead,’ sang the children, racing along the corridors and round the playground and for once no one hushed them. By the afternoon, a raving mad Cara down at the police station had, between bouts of wild laughter, confessed to everything from graffitiing Janna’s windscreen to leaving the murdered black cat outside Jubilee Cottage. By late afternoon the teachers, realizing Cara had really gone, started sidling into Janna’s office, saying that, after a lot of heart-searching, they’d decided not to resign. Even arch red Robbie Rushton announced that he couldn’t live with himself deserting a sinking ship.

  Refraining from expressing doubt that anyone else could live with him, Janna took him and everyone else back, and then went out and got drunk with them all in the Ghost and Castle. Mike Pitts bought her a huge gin and orange, and confided that he actually approved of the Larks–Bagley partnership and it would be grand if they could get a football team up and running, then admitted he’d played once for Brentford.

  Partner had a wonderful evening, picking up the general euphoria, being fed crisps and pork scratchings, sitting on the bar stool being fussed over as everyone discussed his possible parentage.

  ‘He can take over from Cara as a teacher governor,’ said Mags. ‘Essential not to have a spy or a sneak.’

  Partner dusted the bar stool with his increasingly plumey tail.

  The only real resistance to Cara’s sacking came from Satan and Monster, who, revved up on crack and armed with crowbars the following morning, threatened Janna on her way to assembly. Partner, however, had barked so furiously before flying at Satan’s ankles that both Satan and Monster had fled down the drive. Enough people witnessed this display of canine courage to secure Satan’s exclusion and Monster’s long-term suspension.

  With Monster, Satan and Car
a out of the way, children terrorized in the past came flooding back into school over the next few weeks, and attendance went up by twenty per cent.

  Partner, who had acquired cult status by seeing off the forces of darkness, also proved a huge help in the battle against truancy. Each week, the class with the best attendance was rewarded with the task of looking after Partner for the next week. Partner adored children and, as long as Janna left her door open and he could pop back and check she was there, was quite happy. He was soon heading and pushing footballs around with his nose and delivering praise postcards, an idea Janna had picked up from Hengist, and certificates of merit. With one child holding one end of the skipping rope, and Charlie Topolski, who was in a wheelchair, holding the other, Partner learnt to skip. When he got tired, he would leap on to Charlie’s knee, lick his cheek and curl up.

  Because he had suffered himself, the little dog seemed to know instinctively how to comfort a lonely child. Bad readers grew in confidence when allowed to read to Partner. When a school photograph was taken, he took pride of place on Janna’s knee.

  38

  Janna decided to postpone crossing the bridge of redundancies which, if it were anything like the bridge over the River Fleet in the rush hour, would take for ever. Right now she needed a head of English and drama.

  In the past Janna had not felt confident enough to bring in her own people. Now Larks was so much happier, she felt justified in approaching Vicky Fairchild, an aptly named beauty of twenty-nine, who looked nearer sixteen. Vicky had long, dark hair, which fell in a thick fringe over melting, dark brown eyes and a pearly complexion, which grew more luminous with tiredness. She was incredibly slender, making the much shorter Janna feel like a bull terrier, and as a member of Janna’s department at Redfords, had been an admirer and a huge support.

  When Janna rang her to offer her head of drama, adding that as Vicky would have to give in her notice, she presumably couldn’t start until the summer, Vicky instantly revealed she was leaving Redfords at Christmas.

  ‘It was so horrible there without you, Jannie.’ Then, in her sweet, breathy little girl’s voice: ‘And I haven’t been well. Nothing serious.’