by Jilly Cooper
‘Well done, old boy. Patience and I thought we’d drive over to Fleetley to cheer you on. We’ll take a picnic. If the weather’s foul we can always eat it in the car.’
‘What the hell am I going to do?’ Paris asked Xav five minutes later.
‘Aren’t they always pushing steroids outside Larks? You could take some and test positive.’
‘Don’t be fucking stupid.’
Wandering off down the cloisters Paris went slap into Emlyn, to whom he’d spoken very little since the beginning of term. He wasn’t in Emlyn’s set for history, and Theo, unable to bear the thought of Paris’s beautiful straight nose being broken, had so far managed to get him out of rugby. But Paris trusted Emlyn.
‘Can I have a word, sir?’
Thirty seconds later he was in the safety of Emlyn’s classroom. Stalin’s poster smirked down from underneath his thatch of black moustache. I’ll be shunted off to the Gulag any minute, thought Paris.
‘I screwed up,’ he told Emlyn flatly. ‘I didn’t win the steeplechase. I lurked in the bushes and slid into the back of the leaders.’
‘I thought as much.’ Emlyn dropped four Alka-Seltzers into a glass of water. Yesterday’s lunch with Hengist had run into dinner.
Emlyn then got a pile of essays on Hitler out of his briefcase and started to mark the one on the top with a yellow pen entitled Afghanistan Airlines.
Bastard, thought Paris, as Emlyn put a thick red tick halfway down the margin.
‘Sit down,’ snapped Emlyn. ‘Theo showed me that essay you wrote on the Aeneid. It was very good. Shame he encouraged you to wimp out of rugby. I suppose he sees you hurling discuses or driving chariots. If you come and play for my under-fifteen side, I’ll get you out of athletics.’
‘How?’ asked Paris sulkily.
‘As Hengist still runs this school, rugby takes precedence. It’d also please Ian. He’d go berserk if he knew you’d been cheating in the steeplechase and anything’s better than the total humiliation of running next Saturday.’
Emlyn had reached the end of Cosmo’s essay, and wrote: ‘A+. You obviously identify with the Führer.’
‘OK,’ said Paris.
‘If you play on my team’ – Emlyn grimaced as he downed half the glass of Alka-Seltzer – ‘you must give one hundred per cent.’
Emlyn might not have been so co-operative if he hadn’t yesterday morning received a telephone call from Janna, saying she was worried about Paris and could Emlyn keep an eye on him.
‘Keep an eye on him yourself,’ Emlyn had told her disapprovingly. ‘How many times have you seen him this term?’
‘I’ve been frantic,’ replied a flustered Janna. ‘We’ve got Ofsted any minute, and S and C are still refusing to give me any more money.’
So Emlyn said he’d see what he could do, adding, ‘Let’s have dinner and catch up and I’ll tell you how to bamboozle Ofsted. I’ll call you.’
As a fine former rugger player, Ian was thrilled, particularly when Emlyn gave Paris private coaching in the basics required of an all-rounder before his first game.
Tackling Emlyn, Paris felt like a flea trying to topple a charging rhino. Emlyn also gave him some videos of internationals to watch with Ian, but Paris still thought it was a strange, brutal, muddy game compared with football. And he already had pierced ears, without having them bitten through.
For the first game, Paris rolled up with hair tangled and unkempt, wearing shirt and shorts still muddy from his brief run in the steeplechase. Nor did he give a hundred per cent because he was terrified of getting hurt.
‘If you play hard enough, you won’t realize you’re hurt till afterwards,’ Emlyn assured him at half-time, and once the game was finished took him aside.
‘Have you got a girlfriend, Paris?’
Paris went scarlet, kicked the grass and shook his head.
‘I should think not, if you go round looking that scruffy. Don’t think your hair’s seen a brush since the beginning of term.’
‘Such a fucking awful haircut’ – Paris spat on the grass – ‘doesn’t deserve one.’
The next game, Paris rolled up with his hair brushed, boots polished, clean shorts. The snow-white collar of his sea-blue and brown striped rugby shirt emphasized his deathly pallor. He was in a foul temper and soon into fights, quite prepared to thump and knee in the groin anyone of either side who bumped into him.
Emlyn kept up a stream of reproof: ‘Don’t hang on to the ball, don’t tackle so high, those boots are to kick balls, not heads in. Rugby’s not a free-for-all, it’s a team game.’
He was about to send Paris off when the boy scooped up the ball, sauntered towards the posts, kicked a perfect drop goal and raised a middle finger at the other players.
That evening Emlyn called Lando and Junior over to his flat for a beer. The two boys loved the big living room, which had a huge comfortable sofa, a massive television with Sky for all the sport, shelves crammed with books on rugby and history, and a view, once the leaves fell, of General Bagley and the Lime Walk.
Pictures included a few watercolours of Wales, photographs of rugby fifteens, portraits of Emlyn’s heroes: J. P. R. Williams, Gareth Edwards and Cliff Morgan; and in a corner a group photo of himself, a giant towering over giants in the Welsh rugby team. The record shelves were dominated by opera and male voice choirs. On his desk were photographs of his late father, mother and sisters, and the exquisite Oriana, who seemed more distant than his father. If he didn’t see her soon, his dick would fall off.
‘Which one of you would like to take on Paris Alvaston?’ he asked the boys.
‘How?’ asked Lando.
‘In a fight.’
Both boys looked startled.
‘We’ve got to break the ice around him somehow.’
‘I will,’ said Lando. ‘I’m pissed off with the stroppy, arrogant little git.’
The following afternoon was cold, grey and dank with a vicious wind. The Colts were playing to the right of Badger’s Retreat, separated from other games by a thick row of conifers.
Passing the Family Tree, seeing Oriana’s initials on the trunk, Emlyn was overwhelmed with longing. She hadn’t written for three weeks. Was she still in Afghanistan? If he flew out at Christmas, would she be too caught up with work to find time for him? His face hardened. It was a day to take no prisoners.
Within minutes of kick-off, Paris was landing punches, spitting and swearing. Groped too vigorously in a tackle, he turned on Spotty Wilkins, throwing him to the ground, fingers round his throat: ‘Keep your fucking hands off me.’
Lando and Junior pulled him off.
Emlyn blew his whistle and formed the boys into a circle.
‘I see you’re spoiling for a fight, Paris.’
‘I’ve had it with those fuckers.’
‘Good,’ said Emlyn coolly, ‘Lando is only too happy to beat the shit out of you now.’
Lando stepped into the ring, long dark eyes for once alert, massive shoulders, scrum cap and gumshield giving him an inhuman look of Frankenstein’s monster, body hard as teak, four inches taller and two stone heavier than Paris.
‘Come on, wimp, I’m waiting.’
‘This is worse than the Pitbull Club,’ hissed Paris, turning on Emlyn. ‘You’ll get the sack for this.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Junior, trying to balance the ball on his curly head. ‘It’s your word against ours and there are lots of trees in the way. Go on, bury him, Lando.’
Lando took a step towards an expressionless but inwardly quaking Paris. Emlyn was also quaking inside that he’d taken such a risk.
‘You can either fight Lando,’ he said quietly as Paris raised two trembling fists, ‘or become one of the squad, and fight for them rather than against them. You’re potentially a bloody good player, you’ve got the build, the eye and the short-term speed. We’d all be on your side.’
Paris glanced round the group; Junior, Jack, Anatole, Lubemir, Lando, Smartie, Spotty and the rest: all impassive, watchful, much st
ronger and bigger than him. Then he looked at Emlyn, an implacable giant, with the big smile for once wiped off his face. The pause seemed to go on for ever. He heard a whistle from a nearby pitch and the rumble and hoot of a distant train on which he could be off searching for his mother. But she had left him. Ian and Patience were his only hope. He held a shaking hand out towards Lando.
‘OK,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve behaved like a twat, I’m sorry.’
‘Well done.’ Emlyn clapped a huge hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do in rugby.’
‘The lads gave him a round of applause,’ Emlyn told Janna over a bottle of red in the Dog and Duck that evening. ‘They also gave him a lot of ball in the second half, and he played a blinder.’
‘You took a hell of a gamble,’ reproved Janna. ‘Poor Paris could have been beaten to a pulp. You should have been fired.’
‘I know.’
‘How can you justify such bully-boy tactics?’
‘I pray a lot.’
Miffed she wasn’t more grateful, he asked her what was the matter.
‘Bloody Gazette ran a libellous piece today saying: “In a county of too many schools, Larks would be a suitable case for closure.”’
‘They’re only flying kites.’
‘Not with Ofsted about to finish us off.’
Janna was also shocked by the change in Emlyn. The fat jester had gone; so had the double chin. His cheeks were hollowed and new lines of suffering formed trenches round his normally laughing mouth. No longer ruddy and bloated, he looked like Ulysses the wanderer returning from an endless and scarring war.
He was wearing too-loose chinos held up by a Welsh international rugby tie, a dark blue shirt and a much darned grey sleeveless pullover which Janna guessed had belonged to his father, about whom over more glasses of red he talked with great pain.
‘Like John Mortimer in A Voyage Around my Father – that should be a set book – I just feel lonely now he’s gone, and racked by lost opportunity. Why didn’t I tell him I loved him more often? I betrayed him by going to Bagley – he could never understand it; and although Dad and Oriana were in the same camp, they never really got on. He couldn’t comprehend anyone who’d been brought up with every advantage being so ungrateful.’
‘How’s your mum?’ asked Janna.
‘Crucified, bewildered, stoical. They’d been together forty years.’
Janna let him talk. It was a pleasure to watch him and to listen. Now the spare flesh had gone, he had such a strong fine face and, after a summer back in the valleys, his lovely lilting voice seemed deeper, with the Welsh open vowels more pronounced.
Oriana, it seemed, had provided little comfort when he’d flown out to see her in the summer holidays.
‘She doesn’t have the same relationship with her father.’
‘But Hengist adores her,’ said Janna unguardedly.
Fortunately Emlyn was too preoccupied to notice.
‘Maybe, but she doesn’t admire what he stands for. She can’t understand how sad and guilty I feel. She’s too taken up with the present, devastated at the plight of the Afghans. She’s got a lead to Bin Laden, and plans to infiltrate herself into some Taliban spy ring. She could easily pass for a boy.’
‘Oh poor Emlyn.’ Janna topped up his glass.
‘Sally and Hengist’ – she felt her voice thickening – ‘must be out of their minds with worry.’
‘I’m sure. But they keep themselves busy. Hengist has been at some conference in Geneva all week. He’s expected back this evening.’
Janna was just smirking inwardly because she was going to see him tomorrow, when Emlyn added,
‘Why have you fallen out with Paris?’
Janna’s glass stopped on the way to her mouth. Careful, she told herself, Emlyn doesn’t miss things.
‘He was dangerously crazy about you. I always suspected he accepted that place at Bagley as the only possible escape route. He’s giving Patience and Ian a really hard time. Trashed their place a few Sundays back, and although he seems to get on with Theo, he’s been arguing and swearing and spitting at other teachers.’
‘He was used to arguing and swearing and spitting at Larks. I bet you played up at school.’
‘I was utterly angelic,’ said Emlyn piously. ‘I spent my entire school career as still as still’ – briefly his face broke into a smile – ‘outside the headmaster’s office.’
Janna laughed, but her mind was racing.
‘Everything Paris loved has been taken away from him,’ said Emlyn, his huge hands taking Janna’s. ‘He lost his mother; endless schools and care homes where he made friends; teachers; foster parents: all taken away. Oaktree Court, however much he loathed it, was familiar. His life’s been like living in an airport. All the love and understanding you gave him, I guess he misconstrued it. It’s hard for teachers. We have to be so careful not to inspire passion in kids who have had no love, and lead them on to yet another rejection.’
Not just in kids, thought Janna, removing her hands, which felt so comfortable in his.
‘Let’s get legless,’ said Emlyn, about to get another bottle.
Janna shook her head: ‘I’ve got Ofsted in a fortnight. Hengist calls it “Orfsted”.’
God, what a slip.
Emlyn looked at her speculatively.
‘What happened on the geography field trip?’
Suddenly he was much too big for their corner table, his eyes boring into her.
‘I went to bed with a migraine.’ At his look of scepticism, she insisted, ‘I did truly. I was so tired; I nodded off and missed everything. You’re always nodding off,’ she added defensively.
‘We’re not talking about me. Paris was evidently good as gold until the last night. But he’s so angry now. Did you turn him down?’
‘I don’t have to answer these questions,’ said Janna furiously.
‘Course you don’t, lovely, but you’re so instinctively warm and tactile. Perhaps he misinterpreted the maternal nature of your affections.’
‘Now Paris has got a new school, I’m sure he’ll settle down and find himself a nice lass.’
A few days later, Dora was lurking in the main hall, hoping to bump into Paris. She knew his timetable backwards. He was so preoccupied with learning rugby with Emlyn, he hardly noticed her. Late for English, because he’d been practising drop goals, he came hurtling through the yellow lime leaves carpeting Mansion Lawn.
‘Shut your eyes,’ she called out.
‘If it’s not seeing the new moon through glass, I’m not interested. Last time I wished for an A star for my Simon Armitage essay, effing Vicky only gave me a C plus.’
‘Much better than that.’ Seizing Paris by the arm, joltingly aware how he’d thickened out and muscled up since term began, Dora dragged him down the cloisters. ‘Now you can look.’
The board was painted in dark blue gloss, like the board outside Larks. Here the gold lettering said ‘Notices’. At Larks it said: ‘Head Teacher: Janna Curtis’. Oh Christ, when would it stop hurting?
‘You don’t seem very pleased.
‘What for? I’m late for English.’
‘Here, stupid.’ Dora pointed to a list of names.
In Emlyn’s square, clear writing, Paris read, ‘France-Lynch (Capt), Waterlane, Lloyd-Foxe, Smart, Rostov . . . Alvaston.’ ALVASTON!
He couldn’t speak; he shut his eyes as warmth flowed through him. He hadn’t let Ian, Theo or Hengist down. He’d been picked to play for the Colts on Saturday. Even better, it was a needle match against St Jimmy’s, who’d always sneered at Larks and hated Bagley even more. As the first, second and third fifteens would also be playing, the residual resentment between maintained and independent would come bubbling to the surface.
‘How d’you feel about St Jimmy’s being your first fixture?’ asked Dora.
‘Great!’ Paris punched the air. ‘Set a yob to catch a yob. I’ve always wanted to wipe the smirk off Baldie Hyde’s fac
e.’
‘Ian and Patience will be au dessus de la lune,’ said Dora, rushing off to ring the papers.
66
Saturday dawned meanly with the sun skulking like a conspirator behind charcoal-grey clouds, which provided the perfect backdrop for the gold leaves tumbling steadily out of the trees. Distant Pitch Four, where the Colts were playing, was hidden by a net curtain of mist. Despite this, a glamorous photograph of Paris as Romeo, sold to the Express by Dora, captioned ‘Scrumpet’ and announcing his rugby debut and desire to bury St Jimmy’s, had attracted a sprinkling of press and a largish crowd.
‘Only been playing a few weeks,’ crowed Ian, who was watching with Patience, Artie Deverell and Theo, who in an old Prince of Wales check coat and a trilby on the back of his bald head looked like a bookie. Artie noticed with a stab of anguish how grey, now his Tuscany tan had faded, his friend looked in the open air. But Theo was in high spirits and getting stuck into Patience’s bullshots. Five other boys from his little house, other than Paris, Anatole and Smart, were playing on various sides and only two from Alex Bruce’s. Boffin Brooks, officious little shit, was one of the touch judges in the Colts game.
Then Theo growled: ‘Here comes Rod Hyde, hubristic as ever,’ as Rod, having travelled in the first coach singing revivalist hymns with his teams, strode about self-importantly, clapping leather-gloved hands on the shoulders of his ‘men’ – literally. They looked twice as old and hulking as their Bagley counterparts. Rod was wearing a new black leather coat, tightly belted, to show off his manly figure, and a new big black hat under the brim of which his eyes crinkled at the prettier mothers.
‘Mr Hyde who never turns back into nice Dr Jekyll,’ observed Theo sourly. ‘Ah, here’s little Vicky Fairchild with a pretty foot in both camps,’ as Vicky, seductive in a long purple coat and a black fur hat, paused to kiss first Poppet and Alex and then Rod and Sheila Hyde.
‘Isn’t it thrilling Paris is playing?’
‘I’m sure your counselling has helped,’ said Poppet eagerly.
‘I do feel I’m easing his passage,’ smiled Vicky.
‘The ambition of every Bagley master,’ murmured Artie Deverell as the Colts ran on to the field.