Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘I’ve hardly been near the place,’ she squeaked, dropping to the floor to claw back her belongings. ‘I’ve been too busy.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Ashton sighed with pleasure. ‘But I’m afwaid people are talking about you and Hengist.’

  Retrieving a tampon from under Crispin’s desk, Janna banged her head.

  ‘I know you feel demonized by the Gazette,’ went on Ashton, ‘but you have a good fwiend in Col Peters. These are the pictures he refused to publish, and instead handed over to us.’

  Playing the ace, Ashton produced out of his crocodile note-case a photograph of Janna in Hengist’s arms, her cheek rammed against his, her eyes closed in ecstasy. She was wearing a dark blue shirt; a painting of leaping rugby players could be seen in the background.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she protested. ‘This was at an audition surrounded by hundreds of teachers and children. Who took it, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘We’re not at liberty.’

  ‘Well, I want to know. Hengist and I were knocked out – Paris Alvaston had just auditioned. We’d found our Romeo. You’ll see how brilliant he is on the opening night.’

  ‘Rather unbridled enthusiasm,’ observed Crispin. God, he was loving this. ‘Particularly when you put it beside this,’ and pointed to another shot of Hengist’s hand stroking Janna’s cheek and then two cuttings of her smiling adoringly up at Hengist at the Winter Gardens civic dinner and on the air-balloon day.

  ‘The cumulative effect is unfortunate,’ said Ashton sympathetically. ‘We understand. It’s so easy for lonely unmarried women of a certain age to develop these cwushes. Hengist is very charismatic, but Sally Bwett-Taylor is such a good egg.’

  ‘There is absolutely nothing between Hengist and me,’ said Janna furiously, her face feeling as though it had just come out of the microwave. ‘Head teachers have common problems and practice to discuss. Hengist has been genuinely kind and constructive.’

  ‘In future I’d go to Wod Hyde,’ urged Ashton. ‘He is after all your official mentor. You don’t want tittle-tattle to sabotage the excellent work Larks’s teachers are doing at Bagley. Vicky Fairchild is first class. Give her her head.’

  ‘I am her Head,’ spat Janna.

  ‘No need to be facetious. Just leave Hengist alone.’

  Blinded by tears, Janna fumbled her way out to the car park. Ironically, Hengist seemed to feel the same as S and C; he hadn’t been in touch for weeks.

  Partner, leaping on his hind legs, grinning and scrabbling in ecstasy, body shaken by frenziedly wagging tail, stopped her chucking herself into the swift-flowing river.

  You’re the only male in my life from now on, she vowed grimly. Vicky can get on with it.

  41

  Paris was missing Janna desperately. He had to be back in the children’s home by nine and was thus denied any of the jolly after-rehearsal get-togethers. He’d invested so much in the play because he thought Janna would be there all the time. He longed to talk to her about his part. Vicky never listened and wanted to impose her own views. Graffi was so busy painting scenery, designing posters, camping it up as the Nurse and snogging Milly, he had abandoned Janna’s mural which was nearly finished anyway, so the tea parties at Jubilee Cottage had been scrapped.

  The Bagley Babes all fancied Paris like mad, but miffed he was always reading and wouldn’t respond, they took the piss out of him instead. Milly was convinced he’d been put off by her costume, which was white muslin, high-waisted, sleeveless, with a buttercup-yellow sash like a little girl’s party dress.

  ‘It’s so drippy. It’s only because Sally Brett-Taylor’s made it and Vicky’s so far up her,’ stormed Milly.

  Sally in turn was charmed by Vicky, disloyally thinking how nice it would be to have a daughter with whom you could discuss girly things and who didn’t always disagree. She had invited Vicky to supper with Emlyn the night Ireland thrashed Wales, and Emlyn, unable ever to envisage his country’s rugby revival, arrived utterly legless. Hengist had had to drive him home before the crème brûlée and let him into his flat. Sally only just stopped herself unbuttoning to Vicky that Emlyn wasn’t really the ideal son-in-law. Emlyn also seemed the only male in Bagley not besotted with Vicky. The bursar was making a complete idiot of himself hanging round the rehearsal rooms.

  But, as February gave way to March, most of the cast were shaping up splendidly. Feral as Tybalt was an unexpected, if reluctant, star.

  ‘“Why, uncle, ’tis a shame”, such a crap line,’ he grumbled to Paris.

  ‘Think of Uncle Harley.’

  ‘Everything he does is a shame,’ shuddered Feral, then, launching back into his part: ‘“To strike him dead, I hold it not a sin.”’

  He was gratified one of the highlights of the evening was going to be his dance with Bianca Campbell-Black at the Capulets’ ball.

  Normally football was Feral’s passion. At every opportunity, down on the grass went the fleece, down twelve feet away went the school bag. Instantly a ball would be kicked between them. But, having agreed Dirty Dancing was their favourite film, Bianca and Feral practised their sexy Argentine tango routine, with Bianca rubbing her legs up Feral’s, with increasing excitement.

  After one particularly successful rehearsal, during which the room seemed to fill up with lustful schoolboys who should have been in lessons and an accompanying Cosmo broke two strings of his guitar, Feral sloped off for a quick game of football while Bianca returned to the changing rooms.

  No one was about for her to chatter to – a great deprivation for Bianca. She was just wriggling out of her sweaty leotard when she felt herself grabbed from behind.

  ‘You shouldn’t dance so sexily,’ said a smoky, bitchy voice as hands crept over her little breasts.

  It was Cosmo, who was very strong. Next moment, he’d yanked her against him, clamping her between his legs and bending over her shoulder, forced his lips down on hers.

  ‘Lemme go.’ A revolted Bianca, despite writhing like an eel, was unable from this angle to knee him in the groin, even when he plunged his tongue deep down her throat. Retching, gagging, she struggled harder.

  Then she heard a crash as a bench was knocked over and Cosmo was dragged off and punched in the face, sending him toppling backwards into a rail of dresses. Feral then opened the window and, gathering Cosmo up, hurled him out on to Sally Brett-Taylor’s precious bed of spotted hellebores.

  ‘Keep your filthy hands off her,’ he howled. Tugging the window shut, he turned to Bianca, who was struggling to replace her leotard. Seizing Jade Stancombe’s big soft dark blue towel, Feral wrapped it round her frantically shuddering body.

  ‘You OK, little darlin’?’

  ‘Yes. No.’ Fighting back the tears, Bianca rubbed the back of her hand across her bruised mouth again and again. Cosmo’s tongue had been so disgustingly hard, wet and bobbly underneath, her mouth felt raped.

  Feral put an arm round her, then, flourishing an imaginary sword with the other: ‘“To strike him dead, I hold it not a sin.”’

  ‘“Why, uncle, ’tis a shame”,’ mumbled Bianca.

  ‘It is too.’ Feral felt so sorry for her. ‘Let’s go and find your teddy bear.’

  He tried to joke and Bianca had giggled through her tears, but he wanted to kill Cosmo. Bianca was only twelve, but holding her had released some highly unavuncular feelings in Feral.

  He so wished Janna was here to advise him and steady the ship.

  Vicky seemed to read his mind. As they were waiting in the drizzle for the minibus back to Larks, she could be heard grumbling to Cambola: ‘I can’t understand why Janna opted out of this production. When she was at Redfords, she never missed a rehearsal. I suppose she was there longer and felt closer to the pupils.’

  Seeing the hurt in the children’s faces, Cambola snapped that Janna was frantically busy.

  ‘She was never too busy at Redfords,’ said Vicky smugly.

  Pearl, meanwhile, was taking her responsibility for make-up very seriously and ha
d managed to persuade Paris to let her dye his pale eyelashes and apply dark brown eyeliner before he and Milly were photographed by Cosmo for Graffi’s posters.

  Cosmo would never forgive Feral, but he was enough of a perfectionist to want to get the best out of Paris and Milly. The results had an unearthly beauty, and posters of the star-crossed lovers were soon plastered all over Larkminster. Tickets designed by Graffi, with a dagger plunged into a bleeding heart, were also selling well.

  Paris, as a result, was being teased rotten both at Larks and Oaktree Court, particularly when the inmates got hold of a poster, gave it golden ringlets and a scarlet rosebud mouth and scrawled ‘Homo and Juliet, good on you, Woofter’ underneath.

  ‘You haven’t arrived until you’ve been graffitied,’ Graffi told him airily.

  At the beginning of March, three weeks before the opening night, Year Nine and Bagley Lower Fifth had to decide what GCSE subjects they wanted to take in 2004. Ninety per cent opted to take drama with Vicky, almost as many as those who wanted to take history with Emlyn Davies. After such a vote of confidence, Vicky felt entitled to put pressure on Paris to gallop up the gangway to the stage and when he baulked, to suggest they use a stand-in.

  ‘Cosmo, Lando, Junior, Jack Waterlane, all great riders, could put on your jacket and breeches, thunder up the gangway in the half-light, chuck their reins to Dora, jump across the orchestra on to the stage and exit right into Capulet’s tomb. Next scene, which is the interior of Capulet’s tomb, you barge in having reappropriated your clothes.’

  ‘That would work,’ mused Jason.

  If Emlyn were here, Vicky wouldn’t have dared, thought Paris, who was at breaking point.

  ‘I’m not having a stand-in and I’m not doing this fucking play,’ he snarled and walked out.

  Dora caught up with him halfway down the drive and took his hand. ‘Just come and meet Mrs Cartwright – the bursar’s wife – she’s lovely. They live in the Old Coach House, through the woods.’

  The faded leaves on the path matched the brown ploughed fields; other fields were the same pale fawn as the sheep that had been grazing them. The woodland floor was turned emerald by wild garlic leaves.

  Dora led a grey-faced, frantically trembling Paris into the yard, where hunters and polo ponies with clipped manes stared out over the bottle-green half-doors. A smell of leather and dung made him want to throw up.

  ‘This is Mrs Cartwright,’ said Dora. ‘She’s a brilliant horsewoman.’

  Paris looked unenthusiastically at the big-boned, large-nosed maroon-complexioned woman in the clashing scarlet Puffa.

  ‘Hello Paris,’ brayed Patience Cartwright, holding out a rough mottled hand that had never seen a manicure. ‘I hear you’re a wonderful Romeo.’

  Not only did she look like a horse, she sounded like one.

  ‘I don’t ride,’ he said icily.

  ‘This is Beluga,’ said Dora. ‘He’s extremely kind and loves people, unlike Loofah, my pony’ – she stroked the brown and white nose of a small skewbald leaning meanly out of the next box – ‘who doesn’t.’

  ‘The thing to do is to get on Beluga’s back in the middle of the field for a few moments,’ advised Patience, ‘so if you fall orf it’s nice and sawft.’

  Paris quarter-smiled. At least he could bone up on his Hooray accent.

  ‘Here’s a carrot to sawften him up,’ giggled Dora.

  The saddle was very slippery and the ground below seemed miles down in Australia, but Beluga had a thick black mane to cling on to. Beluga was also lazy and devoted to Plover, Patience’s mare, and therefore quite happy plodding round the fields on a lead rein.

  After days of downpour it was a wonderfully gentle, sunny day. Woodpeckers laughed inanely in trees already glowing russet, amethyst and warm brown with swelling buds; the singing birds exhorted him not to be frightened. Very gradually Paris unfroze; sweat dried on his pinched face.

  ‘You’re doing really well,’ encouraged Patience. ‘If ever you want him to stop, just pull very gently on the reins.’

  A cock pheasant waddled across their path, showing off ginger, scarlet and bright green plumage and a neat white collar.

  ‘The shooting season’s over. Such a relief for him,’ said Patience.

  ‘Just like Boffin Brooks as Friar Lawrence,’ observed Paris. ‘Same silly beaky face and fussy walk.’

  Patience brayed with laughter.

  ‘Boffin’s a little beast.’ She lowered her voice furtively as though a passing rabbit might grass her up. ‘He drives my husband Ian mad suggesting to Alex Bruce ways the school could economize. He’d have the stables turned into an IT suite, whatever that might be.’

  ‘Can we go a bit faster?’ asked Paris.

  ‘Of course, if you’re sure.’

  Paris nodded, taking a firmer grip on Beluga’s mane.

  Patience bypassed the trot, which was bumpy, going straight into a much smoother canter up a green ride flanked with hazels. Paris gave a gasp of terror, but by the time they’d reached the gate on the crest of the hill, he’d settled into the rhythm.

  ‘Can we canter back to the stables?’ he asked twenty minutes later.

  And they did.

  Paris slid off, trembling violently, hanging on to Beluga as his legs collapsed like plasticene. ‘Thanks, horse.’

  ‘Awfully well done,’ said Patience. ‘You’re really good with animals. Dora was saying how Elaine Brett-Taylor loves you.’

  ‘Well done,’ said Dora, who’d been up in the hayloft watching through binoculars. ‘Looks as though you’ve ridden for ever.’

  ‘Different ball game clattering up the gangway surrounded by a yelling audience,’ grumbled Paris.

  ‘We’ve got three weeks,’ said Patience soothingly. ‘Come and have a cup of tea.’

  She led him into a messy kitchen, with bridles hanging from a clothes horse, plates and mugs still in the sink and ironing, reminding him of Janna’s in-tray, rising to the ceiling.

  ‘Christ!’ Paris had caught sight of a photograph of a stunningly beautiful girl on the dresser.

  ‘That’s my sister, Emerald,’ announced Dora, ‘and to muddle you completely, she’s Mrs Cartwright’s daughter.’

  How on earth could a dog like Patience give birth to something so exquisite, wondered Paris, then blushed when Patience read his mind and laughed.

  ‘They always say the fairest flowers grow on the foulest dung heaps, but actually we adopted Emerald and when she sought out her natural mother, she turned out to be Dora’s mother, Anthea.’

  ‘The old tart,’ chuntered Dora, ‘having sex before marriage.’

  ‘Dora,’ reproved Patience, seeing Paris grinning.

  ‘We adopted both Emerald and Sophy, who’s a schoolmistress,’ explained Patience, ‘and longs to move to the country. She’s a great friend of your headmistress, Janna Curtis. I keep hoping to see her at rehearsals so I can introduce myself and ask Janna to supper.’

  Glancing out of the window towards Bagley, appreciating the extent and complexity of its spread of buildings, Paris felt himself flushing as he always did when Janna’s name was mentioned.

  ‘I must go,’ said Dora wistfully. ‘Joan’s taking prep. Where’s Northcliffe?’

  ‘Our golden retriever,’ Patience explained to Paris. ‘Gone to work with Ian.’

  ‘Cadbury’s still living with the beagles,’ sighed Dora. ‘I wish he could live here.’

  ‘Not sure if Northcliffe would like that, he’s awfully territorial. I’ll ask Ian.’ Patience had taken off her red Puffa to reveal a purple knitted jersey on inside out.

  After Dora had gone, she made very strong tea and toast and then surreptitiously scraped mould off some pear jelly entitled ‘Poppet Bruce 2000’, before discovering to her relief some chocolate spread and a coconut cake stuffed with glacé cherries.

  ‘Were they very young when you adopted them?’ asked Paris.

  ‘Very, we were so lucky, and they’ve both got heavenly babas of their o
wn now. It’s so crucial for adopted people to have their first blood relation.’

  Euphoric that he’d conquered his phobia of horses, Paris, over a second cup of tea and third slice of cake, found himself most uncharacteristically unbuttoning to Patience about his fruitlessly advertising for a family.

  ‘There was no takers. Guess I looked too likely to knife them in their beds.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’ Patience looked as though she was going to cry. ‘Anyone would feel privileged and overjoyed to have you for a son. Everyone thinks so highly of you at Bagley. Your Romeo is the talk of the staffroom.’

  Paris shrugged.

  ‘I do hope’ – Patience blushed an even darker maroon – ‘you’ll drop in and see us, like Dora does, even if you don’t want to go on riding.’

  Seeing Paris’s eyes straying to a bookshelf crammed with poetry, much more thumbed than the cookery books, she explained: ‘My husband loves poetry. Matthew Arnold’s his favourite. I’m awfully badly read, but Arnold wrote a lovely poem called “Sohrab and Rustum”, which has a sweet horse in it called Ruksh who sheds real tears’ – Patience’s voice trembled – ‘when his master unknowingly slays his own son in battle. You must read it.’

  ‘Horses cry when their masters die in the Iliad,’ said Paris, reaching out his hand for more coconut cake, then pausing.

  ‘Please have it,’ begged Patience. ‘We used to say whoever had the last piece got a handsome husband and a thousand a year, which wouldn’t go very far these days.’

  ‘I could use it,’ said Paris.

  ‘I do hope you’ll have another go on Beluga. I think you’re a natural.’

  42

  Gradually as March splashed into its third week and Bagley was lit up by daffodils, the excitement began to bite. Wally borrowed a lorry to transport props and scenery made by Larks parents, which included a four-poster painted with flowers for Juliet and a wrought-iron balcony: ‘More suited to a Weybridge hacienda,’ said Hengist, ‘but perfect for sixteenth-century Verona.’

  The dress rehearsal in front of pupils from both schools was scheduled for Wednesday evening; the big night for governors, parents and friends would take place on Thursday.