by Jilly Cooper
As they reached the pond, Joan put a big red finger to her lips:
‘We might see the reedling. You can identify him by his brown back and grey and black head, and sometimes orange and lavender feathers. Reedlings are often known as bearded tits.’
‘Plenty of those at Larks,’ quipped Johnnie Fowler.
In front of the island, a blasted tree had collapsed, half in, half out of the water, its reflection like the strong limbs, torso and thrown-back head of a sleeping god. Above it rose poplar saplings and the whiskery grey ghosts of willowherb.
‘I can see a bearded tit,’ shouted Rocky.
‘That’s a moorhen,’ reproached Joan.
‘Not a hen, I know hens.’
‘Note the beautiful yellow and crimson leaves of the bramble.’
‘I can see a bearded tit.’
Practically garrotting Rocky, Anatole grabbed Lily’s binoculars. Through the willowherb, black disks encountered black disks. Despite the lack of wind, the poplar saplings were shivering to the right of the pale blue duck house, as Anatole caught sight of a bearded figure in a flat cap.
‘There is bearded tit on island,’ he confirmed in his deep voice.
‘It’s the prowler!’ screamed Pearl. ‘He was looking up my panties yesterday. No one believed me.’
‘Perv, perv, filthy perv!’ chorused the remaining children, who were soon joined by the rest of the party spilling out of the undergrowth in various states of undress and intoxification, yelling: ‘Nonce, filthy perving nonce.’
As they searched the water’s edge for pebbles to hurl at him, Partner rushed forward barking furiously.
‘It’s the prowler, miss,’ repeated Pearl.
Reluctantly, Joan moved her binoculars from the water. ‘Could have sworn I saw a natterjack.’ Then, focusing on the island: ‘Good God, there is a bloke there.’ She blew her whistle. ‘Calm down, students. If need be I shall make a citizen’s arrest.’
Cheered on, she strode forward. But PC Cuthbert, hell-bent on promotion, who’d been hovering behind a vast cedar, was too quick for her. Racing round the pond, swaying precariously across Wally’s bridge, he caught the prowler attempting to escape the same way.
The prowler was indeed wearing a flat cap and dark glasses and sporting a bushy grey beard. Hanging from his neck, binoculars and digital camera clashed against each other. Turning, nearly falling into the pond, he regained the island, calling out:
‘Good afternoon, officer, I can explain everything. I’ve been photographing wildlife for a book I’m writing.’ He had a snuffling voice that reminded PC Cuthbert of his aunt’s pekingese. Probably an asthmatic.
‘May I have a look at your camera, sir?’
The prowler then tried to make a run for it, and in other circumstances would have wondered if he’d gone to heaven when this forceful young constable flung him against the duck house to rousing cheers from the bank and slapped him into handcuffs. In the struggle his beard came off to reveal an orange goatee and several chins.
‘I can explain everything, officer,’ repeated the prowler. ‘My name is in fact Crispin Thomas, Deputy Director of S and C Services, responsible for the education of Larkshire’s children.’
‘Funny way of showing it, sir.’
‘I am actually doing undercover research into challenging behaviour and whether the curriculum is being adhered to in Larkshire’s schools. Mike Pitts and Janna Curtis can certainly confirm my identity.’ His voice rose as PC Cuthbert dragged him across the bridge.
‘Janna’s away this afternoon,’ shouted Graffi, ‘and she don’t owe you no favours, and if it’s past dinnertime, Pittsy wouldn’t know you from his Aunty Vera.’
On disembarking, PC Cuthbert removed the camera from around Crispin’s neck, dislodging his flat cap and grey wig to reveal startlingly orange hair.
‘That’s my property,’ screamed Crispin, as PC Cuthbert began looking at the camera’s screen.
Clicking through, he found many shots of a questionable nature, namely Pearl urinating and displaying a lot of naked bottom; of sweet little Year Seven photographed from a low angle, their skirts flying as they leapt for a ball; of Kitten Meadows giving Johnnie Fowler a blow job; of Jack Waterlane unhooking Kylie’s bra; of Monster sniffing glue; of Graffi and Feral hurling tiles off the roof last Friday and Partner trying to shag Miss Miserden’s cat.
An everyday story of Larks Comp – but enough to convince PC Cuthbert he had done the right thing. He wasted no time in summoning back-up in the form of a second officer to ride in the back seat of the car with the prowler.
‘I am arresting you on suspicion of taking indecent photographs of children,’ he told Crispin and proceeded to caution him.
When Crispin screamed that he was a friend of PC Cuthbert’s Chief Constable and would get him sacked and, despite his handcuffs, attempted to run away, Partner rushed forward and nipped him sharply on the ankle.
‘Ouch,’ screamed Crispin.
‘Do any of you recognize this gentleman?’ demanded PC Cuthbert.
‘Never seen the dirty nonce before in our lives,’ lied the children. ‘Lock him up.’
Puce, spluttering, swearing he’d sue for wrongful arrest, Crispin was borne off to the station. Joan thought he looked vaguely familiar but it was probably only his identikit photo in the paper. He looked a thoroughly depraved individual. How splendid if he were the Rutshire prowler.
After a very unpleasant session both in a police cell and under interrogation, Crispin was released when a furious Ashton rolled up to identify and bail him.
Chief Inspector Gablecross, who’d been working on poor little Bethany’s murder all day, was also able to identify him. But Crispin still had the photographs and the false identity to explain. He was not sure the police believed his excuse about an undercover operation. Ashton was incandescent with rage. How could Crispin screw up so monumentally?
Janna was even angrier when she and Cambola got back from a meeting with the cathedral choirmaster and learnt what had happened, particularly when Hengist rang, having heard the news, and treated the whole thing as a huge joke.
‘So perfect for a self-confessed wildlife photographer to cut his teeth on Larks Year Ten and Bagley Middle Fifth. Joan is thoroughly over-excited and longing to go to court.’
‘Crispin was lurking on the island to give himself ammunition against us,’ stormed Janna.
‘I know and he could easily have caught you and me. We must be careful. See you later, darling, and don’t wear any knickers.’
73
To Larks’s disappointment, the Gazette failed to report Crispin’s arrest and subsequent release; they were too busy leading on a forthcoming review of Larkshire’s secondary schools. According to inside information leaked to them, Larkminster Comp was the preferred option for closure.
Janna was on to Col Peters in a trice.
‘What inside information?’ she yelled.
‘We cannot reveal our sources,’ said Col primly.
‘You bloody well should when they’re libellous and vindictive. You’re just putting people off sending children to Larks and utterly demoralizing my parents, teachers and children.’
‘Your kids can read our newspaper? They must be improving.’
‘Bastard!’ howled Janna.
As a result Larks pupils were mocked in the street by St Jimmy’s, Searston Abbey and even the choir school.
‘Sink school, stink school, you’re closing down, you’ll soon be gone.’
After Ofsted’s recommendations, Janna had hoped for more funding or at least that Appletree would be rebuilt. Instead, at the end of the month, Ashton and Crispin, in a fit of spite, ordered Appletree to be boarded up and its science, D and T and music departments to be relocated to the main building. This not only devastated the teachers – Mr Mates had had his labs in Appletree for nearly forty years – but also the pupils, who felt less valued than ever.
When Janna complained, Ashton merely replied bitchily t
hat with so many surplus places, Larks pupils couldn’t even be filling the main building.
Hostile and bewildered, the children slipped back into their old, bad ways, particularly the Wolf Pack. Pearl was disrupting every class; Kylie was miserable and doing no work beause she’d just lost a baby. Feral and Graffi were truanting and acting up. The only chemistry the latter two did for the rest of the term was to make up a paste with an ammonium triodide base. This they spread thinly over the platform in the school hall the morning Rod Hyde rolled up on a fault-finding mission and insisted on taking assembly. His pacings up and down the platform triggered off such a series of explosions that, fearing a terrorist attack, there was a stampede out of the hall. Rod, punching pupils out of the way, was at the forefront. On learning the truth, he fired off a furious email to a gratified S and C: ‘This school is so dreadful, it must be closed down.’
‘My Rod and staff don’t comfort me,’ moaned Janna as she and Hengist lay in her double bed that evening, so sated with sex they could hardly lift glasses of Hengist’s Veuve Clicquot to their lips.
‘I had to give Graffi and Feral a detention,’ she went on, ‘but I had great difficulty not laughing. Pity it didn’t blow Rod up. Where are you supposed to be?’ she asked.
‘Dining with some prep-school heads. The things I do to fill up my school.’
Tomorrow he and Sally were taking Randal and Mrs Walton to the ballet in Paris and a party at the British Embassy afterwards. Clinton and Hillary and a host of luminaries were expected.
‘I have to ensure Randal meets everyone, he is such a starfucker. He won’t shut up until I nail down the poor dear Queen to open his bloody science block.’
‘I’m the one who needs a science block. How’s he getting on with Mrs Walton?’
‘Moved her into a penthouse flat and picking up her bills, so her spirits will be lifted as well as her body.’
‘Improving on previous bust,’ giggled Janna.
‘God, I’m going to miss you,’ groaned Hengist as Janna crawled down, trickling champagne over his cock before sucking it off.
Janna was ashamed how her love affaire with Hengist insulated her at least momentarily against the horrors of Larks. Nor, she comforted herself, was any school with such a glowing Ofsted report likely to be closed down.
The morning after Hengist had left for Paris, she was horrified to see Alex Bruce, in a tracksuit, jogging up the drive on a courtesy visit.
‘Thought your Year Ten bods might profit from some chemistry coaching’ – Alex vigorously polished his spectacles – ‘now they’ve started their GCSE syllabus.’
But when he insisted Year Ten remove their coats and baseball caps, spit out their chewing gum and sit at their desks rather than on top of them, they started pelting him with rulers, rubbers and pencil boxes. Then Johnnie Fowler picked up a brick and, pretending it was a grenade, lobbed it at Alex.
‘Sending him belting down the drive,’ Janna told Hengist when he rang that evening.
‘Already training for the next steeplechase,’ sighed Hengist.
‘The children can’t stand him.’
Nor could Alex stand them and wrote an even more damning report to S and C than Rod Hyde.
After that they were into the Christmas frenzy of reports, school plays, end-of-term parties, carol concerts and, apart from an official Christmas card, Janna didn’t hear from S and C until January.
It was during mocks, whilst she was appreciating the vast amount of work needed to be put in by Year Eleven before May in order to boost Larks’s place in the league tables, that a very amicable letter arrived from Ashton.
In it he wished her a very happy New Year and asked if, after school on 4 February, he could visit Larks.
‘At last,’ Janna told a staff meeting joyfully, ‘S and C have responded to our Ofsted and are going to give us some funding.’
Exhorted by Janna, most of the children stopped trashing and vandalizing and pitched in to make the school look as attractive as possible. As a jokey reminder about the leaking roof, Year Eight had created a rainforest in reception. Janna also aimed to nudge Ashton about rebuilding Appletree and the labs.
The fourth of February dawned bitterly cold, with an east wind howling through every ill-fitting window.
‘Pity we can’t light a fire with all those DfES directives,’ grumbled Rowan as she turned on the storage heater, which Emlyn had dropped in to keep Janna warm on long, late evenings. On a low table, she arranged the pansy-patterned tea set that the children had given Janna for Christmas.
Are pansies quite the right message for Ashton and Crispin? wondered Janna.
On her desk was a copy of the latest Review of Secondary Schools, packed with faulty statistics about Larks’s results, attendance, surplus places and future intake. When confronted, smiley-faced Cindy Payne from the county council had airily dismissed them as typing errors, but had made no attempt to correct this publicly. Nor had the review made any mention of Larks’s successful Ofsted.
‘I must discuss it rationally with Ashton,’ Janna told herself. ‘I must not lose my temper.’
Thank God the children would be out of the building before he rolled up. There had been far too many fights recently. Many of the kids looked up at her window and waved as they set out for home. She mustn’t let them down. Partner, knowing teacups led to biscuits, bustled in wagging ingratiatingly.
‘You are not to bite Crispin,’ said Janna sternly.
‘They’re here,’ shouted Rowan. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind my sloping off? I must get Scarlet to the doctor.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ Janna ran towards reception, proudly thinking what a contrast the riot of colour in every classroom made to the chill, grey, dying day outside. This was a good and thriving school.
Her first shock was that Ashton had brought Cindy Payne. Her second that they totally ignored all the effort that had been made, even the Indians, cowboys and big toothy horses Graffi had designed for Year Ten’s American Wild West display, as they marched along the corridor to Janna’s office.
‘They’ve been working so hard,’ she said lamely, then after a pause: ‘Where’s Crispin?’
‘He’s moved on,’ said Ashton, discarding his former deputy as casually as he whipped off an exquisite dark blue cashmere overcoat and palest pink scarf, dropping them over a chair. A pink silk bow tie enlivened a waisted pale grey suit and silver-grey shirt. As usual, he’d drenched himself in sweet, suffocating scent as if to ward off the fetid air of Larks.
Cindy today had matched a red nose and woolly flowerpot hat to the inevitable scarlet trouser suit. But the effect was not one of cheer. Her round face had the relentless jollity of a sister in a ward of terminally ill geriatrics, but her little eyes, like Ashton’s, were as cold as the day.
‘Those storage heaters are very dear to run,’ she said disapprovingly.
‘They keep me warm at night when the central heating goes off,’ snapped Janna. ‘Remembering how saunaed you are at S and C, I didn’t want you to catch cold.’
Stop bitching, Janna, she told herself.
Cindy’s smile became more fixed, then her face really lit up as Debbie arrived with tea, which included egg sandwiches and a newly baked batch of shortbread:
‘Hello, Debs! You do spoil us, what a wonderful spread.’
‘What a feast,’ said Ashton heartily.
‘Shall I be mother?’ asked Cindy, flopping on to the sofa, narrowly missing Partner who retreated sourly to Janna’s knee. ‘I still haven’t taken off that half-stone I put on over the festive season, but I won’t be able to resist Debs’s legendary shortbread.’
Ashton, with an equally greedy expression on his face, was gazing at a blow-up of Paris playing Romeo.
‘He got into twouble knocking out a wef last term. Old habits die hard, I suppose.’
‘He’s playing regularly for the Colts,’ said Janna sharply.
‘Don’t be so defensive,’ teased Cindy, hiding the pansies on h
ers and Ashton’s plates with sandwiches. ‘A sarnie for you, Janna?’
‘I’m OK, thanks.’
Picking up his plate, Ashton moved on to last summer’s photograph of the whole school (except for Paris, he noticed, who had probably gone off joy-riding on trains by then). But there was Paris’s alter ego, Feral Jackson, another beauty, clutching his football. All the children and teachers were laughing with Janna in the middle with that blasted dog on her knee.
‘Nice one of Debs,’ he said idly. ‘Excellent sandwiches. She’s one person who won’t have any difficulty getting another job.’ Then, as Janna looked up, startled: ‘There’s weally no easy way to say this, but I’m afwaid Larks is scheduled for closure at the end of the summer term.’
Partner squeaked as Janna’s stroking hand clenched on his shoulder. She felt as though she’d stepped back off a cliff with a bullet straight between her eyes.
‘But you haven’t even seen over it,’ she whispered. ‘We’ve spent days making it look lovely.’
‘We don’t need to see over a school to close it down.’
‘But why?’ stammered Janna.
‘Do you really need us to tell you?’ Ashton idly added sweetener to his tea and joined Cindy on the sofa. ‘The figures speak for themselves.’
‘We had a wonderful Ofsted.’
‘The most wonderful Ofsted in the world can’t change the fact that you have four hundred and fifty, probably four hundred by now, students wattling around in a building meant for twelve hundred. Your wesults are dreadful, truancy and vandalism are sky high.’
‘The latest Review of Secondary Schools was rigged.’ Janna could hardly speak through her stiff lips. ‘All the figures were wrong and you averaged them over four years, so of course no improvement was discernible. You said they were typing errors, but you never publicly corrected them. We were doing fine until you changed the bus routes and leaked that rumour about Larks being targeted for closure back in November. Why didn’t you hang a plague sign over the school gates?’