Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  Debbie had been thrilled yesterday when the inspectors lunched in the canteen and had second helpings both of goat curry and rhubarb crumble and were constantly requesting more flapjacks for the interview room.

  Things were dicey when they caught up with Feral, sulky because he was having a one-to-one lesson with Sophy Belvedon in the individual learning unit, which had once been the changing rooms before the football pitch was sold off.

  Sophy, realizing Feral would only attempt to read if he were interested, had blown up both Sunday’s football reports on Arsenal and pages from a biography of Sol Campbell.

  ‘You’re not thick, Feral,’ Sophy was telling him. ‘People are stupidly characterized these days as gifted, able or with needs.’

  ‘I’ve got needs all right. I need a fag and a shag,’ said Feral, grabbing Sophy and burying his sleek face in her splendid breasts.

  ‘I don’t think my husband Alizarin would like that.’ Sophy edged away her legs and hips, leaving her bosom in Feral’s strong grip. ‘He’s six foot four and built like an oak tree.’ Then, as Feral reluctantly released her: ‘Not that you’re not utterly gorgeous.’

  ‘Wiv needs.’ Feral batted his long eyelashes. He liked Sophy but he found it humiliating to be taught on his own. It was all Paris’s fault for deserting him.

  Wade and Miss Spicer asked Feral a little about work and then about the other teachers.

  ‘Miss went to court with me in August; her evidence got me off. She got me a job working for two coffin-dodgers, mowing, chopping logs and fings; later me and Lily got wasted on sloe gin.

  ‘Most of the teachers are shit here,’ Feral went on. ‘Chalford’s shit, so’re Robbie and Skunk, Miss Basket’s crap too, she ought to be able to control us. Mrs Gablecross is nice, we can talk to her about anyfing. I need a fag.’ Feral shook an empty pack in irritation. ‘That no-good mother-fucking niggerbasher Monster Norman pinched my last one.’

  ‘You can’t call him that,’ said Miss Spicer faintly.

  ‘You can’t call him that,’ corrected Feral mockingly, ‘but I can, ’cos I’m black and underprivileged. As a representative of an underprivileged effnic minority, I can call him anyfing I like.’

  Sophy tried not to laugh, particularly when Miss Spicer rallied and asked Feral if he felt underprivileged.

  ‘People call you “black shit”.’ Feral tipped back his chair, testing their reaction through narrowed speculative eyes. ‘But if you play football well enough, you earn eighty grand a week and in a few seasons go from being “black shit” to God. That’s why I’m gonna become a footballer. Put a recommendation in your report’ – he tapped Miss Spicer’s clipboard – ‘that Larks needs a football pitch.’

  ‘Thank you, Feral and Mrs Belvedon,’ said Wade.

  Checking the dining room at lunchtime on the second day, Janna’s heart sank to see Miss Spicer and a jolly blond member of the team called Mrs Mills tucking into toad in the hole and deep in conversation with Rocky. Did he know that Larkshire had one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the country?’

  ‘Sure,’ replied Rocky. ‘That’s ’cos Kylie Rose lives here.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s quite right,’ said Mrs Mills, who was dieting and reluctantly setting aside a piece of gold, utterly delicious, batter. ‘Do you find sex education enlightening, Rocky?’

  ‘Sex education is wicked, man.’ Rocky bit suggestively on a sausage. ‘They never stop banging on about STDs but they tell you lotsa ways to have sex – blow jobs, going down and fings, anal sex – without getting girls up the duff.’

  ‘That’s enough, Rocky,’ said Janna firmly. ‘Go and get yourself some dessert, you know you like jam roly-poly.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Janna, ‘Rocky gets carried away. Can I get you some sweet?’

  Both Miss Spicer and Mrs Mills felt they’d had enough.

  ‘Would you like to hear my poem about a skylark?’ asked Rocky, returning.

  ‘That sounds nice,’ said Mrs Mills bravely.

  ‘I heard a skylark singing so sweetly in the sky,’ began Rocky, seeing relief dawning on the faces of his listeners, ‘but when I looked to find him, he dumped right in my eye.’

  ‘I think I’d like to see the D and T department now,’ said Mrs Mills.

  ‘I’ll take you there,’ said Janna and was just expounding on the splendid work being done when they heard screams. Rounding the corner they nearly fell over Pearl, who was lying on top of Kitten Meadows, holding clumps of her hair in order to smash her head on the stone floor.

  ‘Take it back.’

  ‘No,’ squealed Kitten.

  ‘Take it fucking back.’ Smash.

  ‘No.’ Clawing at Pearl’s face with long silver nails, Kitten drew blood. ‘You always look fucking crap.’

  ‘Fucking don’t.’ Pearl smashed her fist into Kitten’s face, whereupon Kitten hit Pearl on her left breast.

  ‘Ow,’ screamed Pearl.

  ‘Please stop,’ called out Basket faintly from the safety of her classroom.

  As a crowd gathered – ‘C’mon, Pearl, c’mon, Kitten’ – Wade Hargreaves emerged from a history lesson, so Janna dived in on the right, ducking blows, trying to prise the contestants apart.

  A second later, Sophy Belvedon had rushed up and dived in on the left. As Kitten tried to elbow her in the ribs, she said: ‘Won’t work, I’m much too fat to feel anything.’

  ‘Stop it, both of you,’ yelled Janna.

  At that moment Wally arrived and with his superior strength dragged off a spitting, wriggling Pearl.

  ‘Take her to my office,’ panted Janna. ‘You can go to the gym,’ she told Kitten, ‘and both of you will have detentions tonight and tomorrow.’ Then, when they furiously protested, continuing trying to kick out at each other: ‘That’s final, now get out of my sight.’

  Having administered smelling salts to Basket, Janna, aware that a button had been ripped off her suit and her neatly piled-up hair had come down, retreated to the Ladies where she met Sophy coming out, and said, ‘Thanks so much for your help.’

  ‘That Basket’s a wet hen.’

  ‘Hush.’ Janna put her finger to her lips. Seeing an engaged sign on one of the doors she crept into the next-door booth. Climbing on to the seat and peering over the partition she discovered Miss Spicer knitting and reading Good Housekeeping and was so startled she fell back into the lavatory bowl with a shriek.

  ‘Checking for spies?’ asked Miss Spicer dryly.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘One needs a break from inspection.’

  ‘And from being a head,’ sighed Janna.

  ‘Hello,’ added Miss Spicer as Partner’s snout appeared under her door. ‘That is a delightful dog, he seems to know instinctively when a child is sad. He was trailing that pretty fair-haired Bosnian girl this morning.’

  Shaking her wet boot Janna climbed down.

  ‘That’s probably because we made Danijela our bird girl. Every morning she takes out a tin of scraps which contains rich pickings from the kitchen. We couldn’t think why the birds were standing indignantly round with their wings on their hips until we discovered’ – Janna’s voice quivered – ‘Danijela was emptying the tin into her school bag for her friends in the refuge.’

  ‘Can’t take on everyone’s burdens,’ said Miss Spicer briskly, but her coffee-bean eyes were kind as she washed her hands vigorously before applying Bluebell hand cream. Then, painting her small mouth bright orange and rearranging the folds of her scarf, she announced she was off to the Appletree annexe to monitor some science lessons.

  Miss Spicer had an eventful day. She was observing one of Mr Mates’s experiments when the roof of Appletree finally caved in on her and Year Ten E, who emerged unhurt but much aged by grey, dust-filled hair.

  ‘It worked with the other division,’ bleated a shaken Mr Mates, who had to be reassured that the collapsing roof had nothing to do with his experiment.

  ‘How lousy are thy dwellings, oh S an
d C,’ sang Cambola, whose music department next door had also been submerged.

  ‘They’ll have to give us a new roof now,’ said Mags Gablecross.

  Next day Pearl gave Wade Hargreaves even more pressing reasons.

  ‘I spend half an hour straightening my hair every morning, then the rain pours through the roof and it goes all kinky; that’s why Kitten Meadows said my hair was crap and that’s why I hit her. If we had new roofs this wouldn’t happen.

  ‘My dad’s a boxer,’ she went on, ‘so it’s in my genes to land punches. Fights isn’t Miss’s fault. She’s great, and so’s Mrs Belvedon, the new English teacher.’

  ‘I’m just going to watch Mrs Belvedon giving Year Eight a lesson on The Tempest,’ said Wade.

  ‘Oh bugger,’ grumbled Sophy, retrieving some dropped folders, then, as Year Eight giggled: ‘You’ll have to move your table, Stefan and Josef, I’m much too fat to get through that gap.’

  ‘You do sound posh, miss.’

  ‘If you think I’m posh you should hear my mother.’

  ‘Paris is living with her?’ asked Kata from Kosovo longingly. ‘How’s he getting on?’

  ‘Fine.’ Sophy was amazed by Larks’s ongoing obsession with their lost leader. ‘Now to Caliban. My husband Alizarin has done a painting of him.’ On the whiteboard appeared a picture of a ferocious-looking beast, half wild boar, half gorilla, but with the saddest eyes.

  ‘See his long nails for digging up pig nuts for his master. Caliban is a really sympathetic character,’ Sophy went on, ‘he’s a bit ugly, but he longs to help and be loved and he says beautiful poetic things. Some horrid sailors are shipwrecked on his island and get poor Caliban drunk, so he makes a fool of himself. He adores Miranda, his boss’s daughter.’

  A picture of a pretty blonde in a ruff and long Elizabethan dress appeared on the whiteboard. ‘But she’s in love with someone else, and I’m sure you all know how it hurts when you love someone who doesn’t love you.’

  Wade Hargreaves couldn’t imagine anyone not loving Sophy.

  ‘And I bet lots of you boys when you go to parties feel shy of chatting up girls, so you drink too much and fall over – well, that’s Caliban.’

  ‘He’s gentle giant like King Kong,’ piped up Kata.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And Monster Norman, except he’s horrible.’

  ‘No, no.’ Sophy looked round nervously. ‘Anyway, this is Alizarin’s picture, and now I want you all to produce your own idea of Caliban. You’ve got paints on each table and plasticene and paper. Try not to paint each other. Anyone who comes up with an interesting idea can have one or two of these.’ She waved a tin of Quality Street. ‘Now: ready, steady, go.’

  Sitting at the back of the class Wade and Miss Spicer made notes on their clipboards and watched Sophy advising, praising, laughing, screaming with joy – ‘That is so good!’ – and occasionally remonstrating: ‘Don’t put that blue brush back in the white pot, Jasper.’

  The children, particularly the ones who couldn’t speak English, were having a ball. As they slapped on paint or modelled in plasticene or clay, a wonderful zoo emerged.

  ‘I can’t do his nails,’ wailed Kata.

  On cue in pattered Partner and obligingly held up a paw so they could see his claws.

  ‘Good boy.’ Sophy hugged him and rewarded him with the Quality Street green-wrapped triangle which was all chocolate.

  ‘That is really cool, Anwar,’ she cried, pausing beside a Pakistani boy’s desk. ‘You’ve made Caliban look happy because he’s asleep. That’s in the text: he was so hurt by humans, only in dreams did he find happiness, and when he woke he cried to dream again. This is so good. Brilliant colours too. Lay it out on that chair to dry.’

  What a lovely young woman, thought Wade wistfully. Shortly afterwards he was so impressed by another painting of Caliban he sat down on Anwar’s picture to study it and was left with red, blue, green and purple splodges all over the seat of his elegant beige suit.

  The children screamed with laughter.

  ‘Oh, goodness,’ wailed Sophy, ‘you look more like a mandrill than a nimble marmoset. I’m so sorry. I’ll get it dry cleaned or take it home and wash it for you.’

  ‘Don’t give it a thought, I might start a fashion.’

  Janna, who’d just been forced into giving Monster a detention for cheeking some other member of the inspection team, was vastly cheered when she peered into Sophy’s classroom and saw even Miss Spicer laughing.

  As the bell rang for break, Year Eight bore Wade off to the playground to show him the bird table.

  ‘That’s a robin.’

  ‘No, stupid, it’s a bullfinch.’

  ‘This is the pond,’ said Kata, leading him out into the garden. ‘We’re going to clean it to encourage wild lives. Wally’s made a ladder so anything drowning can climb out. And he’s going to build a duck house and a bridge to the island.’

  ‘Perhaps Miss Curtis will get you some fish.’

  How nice he is, thought Janna, watching from the window, but we mustn’t be lulled into a false security.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked as he returned from his tour to her office.

  She’d just put on the kettle, when Stormin’ Norman roared in. ‘You know Martin don’t do detentions on a Thursday. You’re depriving him of his liberty.’

  She was about to punch Janna, who was protesting that surely it was Wednesdays, when Wade stepped out from behind the door, where he’d been admiring some stills from Romeo and Juliet.

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘And ’oo the fuck are you?’ yelled Stormin’ Norman. ‘Another of ’er fucking fancy men?’ But at least her fist stopped in mid-air.

  They were interrupted by the arrival of Chally, bright red in the face.

  ‘One of the Croatians has exposed himself to Year Seven. I said, “We don’t do things like that here, Roman, put it away,” but he laughed in my face so I called back-up.’

  ‘Front-up, more likely,’ said Janna, trying not to laugh.

  ‘This is serious, Senior Team Leader.’

  They were distracted yet again by a yell and the crash of plasterboard. Pearl’s boxer father had rolled up drunk again and discovered Graffi’s father, whom he suspected of once pleasuring his wife, fast asleep in the interview room.

  ‘I told you it was in my genes,’ said Pearl smugly as the police arrived to remove both her father and Stormin’ Norman.

  71

  On Friday afternoon Wade called a meeting after school to report on his team’s findings. Russell, Ashton and Crispin arrived early. As the interview room had been temporarily totalled by Pearl’s boxer dad, they were ushered into Janna’s office, where they drank tea, guzzled Debbie’s chocolate cake and rubbed their hands in anticipation of a serious drubbing for little Miss Curtis.

  Crispin, who was perched on the sofa beside Ashton, murmured that Debbie was an excellent cook.

  ‘She’ll be looking for a job tomorrow,’ murmured back Ashton. ‘I’ll put in a good word at County Hall. Perhaps she could come and do for me.’

  As Mike Pitts was still off with stress, Mags had been asked by Janna to stand in for him. Pacing up and down outside, Mags had never felt so tired. She was so worried for Janna, who never failed to wear her generous heart on her sleeve.

  ‘Any room for a little one?’ said Cindy Payne, the Larkshire county councillor in charge of education, parking her red-trouser-suited bottom on the sofa between Crispin and Ashton. Both men would have liked to edge away but were too firmly wedged.

  Russell had commandeered a big upright chair. In his hand was another letter of complaint from Miss Miserden about Larks hooligans swearing and kicking balls into her garden.

  ‘Thought you might like to see this, Inspector.’

  Wade, sitting at an imported table shifting papers and flanked by Miss Spicer and Mrs Mills, hardly glanced at the letter before handing it back.

  ‘Sorry to keep you.’ Janna rushe
d in followed by Partner. She settled down at her desk, ramming her hands between her thighs to conceal their trembling. So many things had gone wrong; so many bricks dropped; so many children out of control. Mags, sliding into a little red armchair beside her, squeezed her arm.

  Through the window they could see the children running home through the pouring rain, their coats over their heads. After the row at the last governors’ meeting, Russell’s eyes refused to meet Janna’s.

  ‘Hope you survived,’ he said heartily to the three inspectors.

  ‘Extremely well,’ said Wade, then turning to Janna, ‘thank you for your hospitality. We have been made most welcome and given every assistance in forming our opinions.’

  Then he unleashed both barrels. Larks in a word was being used by S and C and the county council as a pupil referral unit, or rather a dumping ground for all the rubbish kids with behaviour problems that were expelled from other schools.

  ‘After four days, however, my team and I were delighted to see what efforts are being made by the staff to tackle attendance, unauthorized absence and deplorable behaviour. Support for vulnerable pupils is excellent, as is mentoring. Despite standards being constantly eroded by the behaviour of certain parents and a very disruptive band of children, bad behaviour is dealt with swiftly. Special needs are catered for well within very limited resources. Overall adherence to the curriculum has also been observed.’

  Slowly, slowly, Janna felt her foot leaving the bottom of the sea as she drifted upwards towards the sunlight.

  Wade consulted his notes. ‘The teaching of the older staff is less than satisfactory. Their lessons are often dull, their marking unhelpful.’ He pinpointed Chally, Mike Pitts, who had once sacked him, Skunk, Basket, Sam Spink and Robbie. Janna bit her lip: all her bêtes noires.

  ‘On the other hand, language teaching was excellent.’ Wade smiled at Mags. ‘So was Miss Cambola’s music and Mr Mates’s science.’ He then praised Janna’s appointments: the new deputy head of history and the head of D and T, and in particular Sophy Belvedon. ‘Quite excellent, we much enjoyed her English lesson bringing in both art and drama disciplines.