Wicked!

by Jilly Cooper

  Dora vowed on this occasion not to ring any newspapers, Bianca was so desolate. She’d eaten nothing. Dora had to finish the spring rolls and prawns and bag up Bianca’s duck for Cadbury. Unable to bear seeing her happy friend cast down, she suggested they call on Feral.

  It was getting dark. The Shakespeare Estate was only 750 yards away, but they might have been plunging thousands of miles into the depths of hell. Rasta music fortissimo, football commentary, shouts and screams poured out of graffitied buildings. Jeering gangs of youths roamed the streets. Tarts screamed abuse. Addicts, like corpses dug up from the grave, hung stinking and unwashed over broken fences.

  ‘If only Cadbury was here to defend us,’ quavered Dora as a snarling Dobermann hurled itself against a gate. ‘Shall we try another day?’

  ‘We’ll be safe when we find him,’ pleaded Bianca. ‘Here we are. Macbeth Street, number twelve.’

  All Feral’s windows were boarded up, as though he no longer allowed himself to look out on the world. The garden was full of burnt-out cars, fridges and wheelless bikes. Running up the path, Bianca hammered on the front door, which was answered by a fat man in a filthy vest, clearly off his face with drugs. Leering, swaying, he beckoned them inside, where Uncle Harley, immaculate as ever in black leather, Feral’s diamond cross gleaming at his neck, was watching a revolting film in which a man and a woman were clearly enjoying sex with a little girl.

  ‘Not something you’d show the vicar,’ mocked the fat man.

  Nearly asphyxiated by a stench of sweat, puke and fags, ready to bolt, but hearing the front door bang behind them, Dora bravely announced they’d come to see Feral.

  The fat man jerked his head. ‘Next door.’

  In the kitchen they found glasses and plates piled high in the sink and a woman, presumably Feral’s mother, lying moaning on the floor in a drug-induced stupor, surrounded by playing children.

  Then Bianca gasped as she caught sight of Feral, stripped to the waist, shiningly beautiful in this midden of squalor, masculinity in no way diminished by the fact he was working his way through a pile of ironing and trying to feed a yelling baby in a high chair.

  Bianca was still speechless, but over the lecherous cajoling of the man in the porn film, Dora yelled:

  ‘It’s us, Feral.’

  Feral looked up in horror. Hissing like a cornered wild cat, he screamed at them to get the fuck out.

  ‘I wanted to say sorry for Daddy,’ sobbed Bianca, ‘and see if you were all right.’ Then, when Feral said nothing: ‘I love you.’

  ‘Well, I don’t love you. Get out.’ As he hobbled towards them, brandishing the iron in their faces like a riot shield, Dora caught sight of a bandage on his ankle.

  Next moment, Uncle Harley had lurched into the room and made a grab at Bianca who, catching him off balance, shoved him crashing against the sink, smashing several glasses. Dora meanwhile had clouted the fat man with her bag and unchained the door, enabling them to flee out of hell. Seeing their terrified faces, a prostitute screeched, ‘Taught you a lesson, did it? Don’t mess with Uncle Harley.’

  Dora and Bianca didn’t stop until they reached the bridge. Leaning against it, gasping for breath, Dora couldn’t stop shaking.

  ‘What an utterly disgusting, revolting place.’

  Bianca couldn’t stop crying; her only emotion was sympathy for Feral living with those crackheads.

  ‘That’s why he’s so poor,’ she wailed, ‘and why he wouldn’t go on the geography field trip, or take up that games scholarship at Bagley. There’d be no one to look after those children. What are we going to do? I daren’t tell Mummy and Daddy where I’ve been.’

  ‘I’ll just call Dicky and check Cadbury’s OK. I expect they’re both watching disgusting porn on the internet too. Then let’s take a taxi to Janna’s.’ Dora put an arm round Bianca. ‘Don’t cry. She’ll know what to do.’

  Music louder than any on the Shakespeare Estate poured out of Jubilee Cottage. The Brigadier had been sent a crate of red by a fan and he and Lily were teaching Janna and Emlyn the Charleston. They were all hammered.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, we haven’t got enough for the taxi,’ were Dora’s first words.

  After Emlyn had paid it, Bianca gazed into space shuddering whilst Dora, one hand on her hip, the other gesticulating wildly, described their adventures.

  ‘Poor Feral,’ she said indignantly. ‘Rupert called him a “black bastard” and chucked him out of Penscombe, although he and Bianca were only snogging, or as Mummy calls it “heavy petting”. Mind you, there are plenty of pets at Penscombe.’

  Meeting the Brigadier’s eye, Lily tried not to laugh.

  No one was laughing by the time Dora had finished.

  ‘Oh poor, poor Feral,’ whispered Janna.

  ‘We must rescue him,’ wept Bianca.

  ‘I think we’ve all drunk too much to do anything tonight,’ said Emlyn. ‘Janna and I’ll go round in the morning and sort it out.’

  ‘Feral’s got a soccer trial on Monday. Should cheer him up,’ volunteered the Brigadier.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ sighed Dora, ‘he was lame as a cat.’

  ‘That’s from escaping out of my bedroom window,’ wailed Bianca. ‘It’s all bloody Daddy’s fault.’

  ‘Better stay the night,’ Lily told Dora and Bianca to the Brigadier’s regret.

  ‘Shall I come with you?’ asked the Brigadier next morning, as he tried to keep down a Fernet-Branca.

  ‘Fewer of us the better, less ostentatious,’ answered Emlyn as he coiled his long length into Janna’s green Polo.

  ‘Something rotten in the state of Larkminster,’ he observed as Janna drove past smashed-up playgrounds, shuttered shops, shells of houses, front gardens full of junk instead of flowers, and parked at the end of Macbeth Street. Emlyn edged her inwards so he could walk on the outside of the pavement.

  ‘Although this is the sort of hell-hole where I should walk on both sides of you.’

  At first Feral wouldn’t open the door.

  ‘If you’re from the social,’ observed an old biddy scuttling past, ‘they’ve gone.’

  Hearing a baby crying, Emlyn continued thumping.

  When Feral finally let them in, they found him alone with three young children and the howling baby, whose nappy he’d just changed. From the mop in a bucket of suds, he’d obviously been cleaning up the floor. There was no fridge. Flies were everywhere.

  After a lot of coaxing and a cigarette from Emlyn, he admitted that Uncle Harley and his mother had pushed off abroad to punish him. Gradually, eyes cast down, stammering out the sentences, occasionally returning to his former hauteur, he explained how he’d stolen to feed his brothers and sisters and carried a gun to protect them.

  ‘Harley used my mother as a tom, kept her short of money and drugs, to make her reliant and desperate. Anyfing I earn from Lily and the Brig, she takes to feed her habit. Even if I hide it in the toes of my trainers, she finds it. Does my head in. What’ll happen to her? She’s not beautiful any more; Harley’ll kill her.’

  As Feral got up to wave away a swarm of flies settling on a plate of beefburgers, Emlyn noticed him hobbling.

  ‘So you’re no good for the trial on Monday?’

  ‘Fanks to Mr Rupert Fancy-Black, I’ve gotta let the Brig down.’

  ‘Does Harley give you a hard time?’

  Feral nodded bleakly. ‘He went ballistic I wouldn’t deal when I got access to all those rich Bagley kids. Nearly buried me when I turned down that boarding place.’

  Now the howling baby was sleeping in her arms, Janna wanted to howl herself. Feral had been so proud, so brave, his constant lack of funds the only giveaway. Emlyn was being wonderful too. With one child on each muscular thigh, and the third watching, he was singing nursery rhymes to them.

  ‘They’re not going into care!’ Feral became almost hysterical. ‘They’ll never come back.’

  ‘Only for a bit, while we sort ourselves out,’ promised Janna. ‘Everyo
ne needs a leg-up occasionally. I accepted money from Randal Stancombe to keep Larks going.’

  With trepidation she called Nadine who, fired up by a new scheme to unite social services and the education and health departments, turned out to be an absolute star.

  The Brigadier, who had just been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau to teach history at Larks, had grown so fond of Feral, he asked him to stay until things got straight. Janna would be up the road with Lily next door, so Feral wouldn’t be lonely, and he could do the odd job round the house. Nadine then arranged for the children and the baby to be taken into temporary care with a good, kind family in the next village, so Feral could pop in and see them whenever he wanted. Feral listlessly agreed to everything because he saw no other way out. He loved Bianca, but like Juliet she was not yet fourteen; Rupert would always show him the door.

  ‘Rupert called me a “black bastard”,’ he kept telling the Brigadier.

  Feral moved in, but like a feral cat, he couldn’t bear being trapped and begged the Brigadier not to lock the doors at night. ‘I’ll be your guard dog, man.’

  86

  Janna had worked flat out throughout the summer holidays supervising the rebuilding of Appletree, because the moment she stopped being busy, she was wiped out by guilt, sadness and despair. These feelings were reinforced by record temperatures, dire news of global warming and melting icebergs. Would there be a world at all for the children to inherit?

  Despite gallant work by the remaining teachers, there had been so much disruption during the summer term that in the end only eight per cent of Larks children achieved the Magic Five. Ashton was on the telephone in seconds.

  ‘Dear, dear, dear,’ he gloated, ‘how lucky for you we OK’d Appletwee first. If we’d had a sight of these wesults, you’d never have got your building. I do pray you do better with Year Ten.’

  The Times Educational Supplement had reported that the proportion of U grades was the highest ever.

  ‘Most of them from Larks,’ observed Ashton bitchily.

  Janna had also observed a faint neglect of late. Throughout July, Hengist had frequently rolled up at Appletree around dusk to admire work in progress, before making love to her in the long, pale, dry grass of Smokers’ with the stars emerging as voyeurs overhead.

  ‘Do you know it’s illegal to have sex out of doors?’ Janna had teased him on his last visit. ‘I’m sure Miss Miserden’s got a periscope.’

  ‘It’s called outreach, because I reach out for you,’ said Hengist.

  Above them on the right of an apricot-pink harvest moon, Mars, like an angry red-gold lion tossing his mane, dominated the evening sky.

  ‘This year’s belonged to Mars,’ said Hengist, as he zipped up his trousers, ‘that’s why you won your battle over Year Ten, but you must watch Ashton. I don’t know what he can still do to hurt you, but I don’t trust him. Two thousand and four, thank God, will be Venus’s year. She’ll shine so brightly, I’ll fall in love with you all over again.’

  As he smiled down, he noticed, like scratches on a scraper board, new lines on her face.

  ‘Darling, you must get a break. Why not come and crash out for a few days in the house we rent in Tuscany? I’ll call you.’

  But after that visit in late July she had heard nothing for nearly five weeks. She knew he was back because she’d read in the Independent about the fundraising evening and Rupert’s GCSE, which he’d only finally agreed to take because all the papers claimed he’d never pass. Janna had been tempted to drop him a line and ask him if he’d like a place at Larks. That would solve any woman-teacher recruitment problem.

  Throughout the summer, her thoughts had flickered too often to Emlyn. She was so grateful to him for helping sort out Feral that she called him to say the Welsh National Opera were doing Turandot at the Bristol Hippodrome. If she got two tickets, would he like to come?

  ‘And I’ll buy you dinner afterwards.’

  ‘I can’t, lovely; I’ve got a lot on.’

  And Janna felt snubbed.

  ‘When I suggested another night,’ she told Lily, ‘he said he was going to see his mother. He hasn’t flown anywhere to see Oriana this summer. Do you think’ – Janna loathed the thought – ‘he’s got someone else?’

  Lily shook her head.

  ‘I’m sure he’s still crazy about Oriana and thinks that somehow, if he’s faithful, God will reward him.’

  ‘How complicated,’ sighed Janna. ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Bit chilly and critical. Ambitious like her father, but she lacks Hengist’s warmth and joie de vivre.’

  87

  Hengist was full of joy as he changed for dinner at St Matthew’s, his old Cambridge college. He and Sally had had such a magic evening last night, listening to Mahler Three at the Proms and watching a rainbow soaring out of the turning trees, which after rain were all glittering gold in the setting sunlight. They had then rushed up to bed and made such warm, passionate love that they had forgotten their mobiles, lying like lovers side by side on the terrace table, both still working perfectly in the morning, despite a further shower of rain – like our marriage, thought Hengist.

  He was still battling not to be too triumphalist over Bagley’s leap in the league tables; they were only a place below Fleetley. What matter if, to Alex’s fury, St Jimmy’s were only five places behind Bagley?

  Dear Theo had, once again, got everyone through everything. He must put him forward for a Teaching Award, it would so annoy Alex.

  The evening at St Matthew’s was all Hengist could have wished for: exquisite food and wine and, although he loved women, as a man who had always charmed his own sex, he found there was something so wonderfully uncorseted about an all alpha-male evening. He loved keeping the table in a roar. He adored the wheeling and dealing, the superior gossip, learning of a brilliant undergraduate who, after he came down, might like to spend a year or ten teaching at Bagley, and dropping in turn hints about a brilliant Bagley boy.

  ‘We plucked him out of the state system and a children’s home. Theo’s been coaching him.’

  There was a lot of chuntering about admissions tutors being forced to accept lower grades from poorer students and a great deal of laughter over Rupert Campbell-Black’s GCSE.

  ‘You know him well, Hengist.’

  ‘Love him – but he’d rather die than fail.’

  ‘His son is a rare pianist, I never thought the Grieg could reduce me to tears.’

  Over the port, people started table-hopping and the Master drew Hengist into a window seat, and in a voice as soft as the bloom on the black grapes asked him if he’d be interested in Fleetley.

  ‘Hatchet Hawkley’s retiring in two thousand and five.’

  ‘The end of a great era,’ said Hengist lightly.

  ‘May we put your name forward, Hengist?’

  Hengist looked at the wise, knowing face:

  ‘I don’t know how delighted Hatchet would be. I used to be one of his junior masters . . . Our son Mungo . . .’

  Hengist didn’t add that his passionate affaire with Hatchet’s wife, Pippa, had only been discovered by Hatchet after her death.

  ‘I know you have painful memories,’ said the Master.

  ‘Sally more.’ Through the dusk Hengist could see the first yellow leaves falling on yellowing lawns.

  ‘Hatchet has always been laid back about recruitment,’ urged the Master, ‘you could raise it to new heights.’

  ‘I’ll think about it very seriously,’ said Hengist with that smile that could melt icebergs.

  After a college restoration meeting the next morning, followed by a light, excellent lunch and a trip to buy a lovely oil of a greyhound for Sally, Hengist was in celebratory mood, and picked up his mobile:

  ‘Darling, I’ll be with you around eight and don’t wear any knickers.’

  As he left, he noticed a mower cutting to pieces any fairy rings on the college lawn.

  In Hamburg, negotiating the building of a hypermark
et, Randal Stancombe rang Ruth Walton between meetings. Their relationship had recently suffered a setback. Lorraine, his estranged wife, had not been amused when reports on Randal, goading Rupert into taking a GCSE, had referred to Ruth as ‘the utterly gorgeous new love of his life’. Nor had Milly; outraged at being banned from seeing Graffi, she had promptly accused Randal of groping her. Ruth had staunchly dismissed this as fantasy on Milly’s part, but did suggest it might be better if she and Randal cooled it until next week, when Milly was safely back at Bagley.

  Randal now rang in the hope that the coast might be clear. Sadly it wasn’t.

  ‘We’ve got to do Milly’s trunk. She’s put on seven pounds in the holidays, most of it round the bust.’

  Like her mother, thought Stancombe. He must keep his hands off Milly.

  ‘And I’ve got a Bagley’s governors’ meeting early evening. After that Milly and I are getting a takeaway; she says we never talk these days.’ Ruth added more hot water to a jacuzzi as big as the Bagley lake. ‘But once term starts, I’m all yours.’

  ‘What a lovely “all”,’ purred Stancombe.

  Ten minutes later, racked with lust, he decided to kill the meeting and fly home for the night. He bought Milly a bottle of Obsession at the hotel shop and he would sweep her and Ruth out to the La Perdrix d’Or. Somehow he must persuade Ruth to marry him. To hell with Lorraine taking him to the cleaners; he could afford it. Ruth made him feel like a god in and out of bed and after all the surgery he’d paid for, he felt he owned most of her anyway.

  As he let himself into the Cavendish Plaza flat he allowed her to live in for nothing, he was touched at first to find candles on a table. Ruth, like the good mother she was, was taking her bonding session with Milly very seriously. Two bottles of his Krug, lobster and strawberries in the fridge were pushing it a bit, as was the Château d’Yquem. There was even a rocket and asparagus salad and, most caring of all, home-made mayonnaise.