High Jinx

by Sara Lawrence

  ‘Mum came down on Friday night with Ian, her not-so-new boyfriend. I think this one’s going to last.’ Chastity grimaced as best she could, although the clay mask was drying fast and somewhat restricting her facial movements. ‘He says he wants to buy a flat in Brighton so they spent the night and looked at loads all day Saturday. I had dinner with them at the Hotel du Vin – he’s all right I suppose, and at least he really seems to love Mum. And I guess if he does get the flat I’ll probably get a key which will be good for all of us. Anyway, I told Morris I was staying with them and them that I was coming back to school and spent Saturday and Sunday with Paul. It was brilliant, but I’m missing him madly already! What about you?’

  ‘Oh, I had a lovely time mostly stuffing my face and messing about with the dogs. Took Pansy out for a nice ride and George came home on Saturday so we got quite pissed and just hung out with the dogs really.’ Jinx grinned, ‘Let’s hear it for being suspended!’

  ‘By the way, Chas, have you seen Liberty anywhere? Fanny said she saw her going off somewhere with Stella on Friday.’

  ‘Yep’ – Chastity was scrubbing her face at the corner sink and sounded muffled – ‘she spent the weekend with Stella in London.’

  ‘Did she ask any of you lot?’ Jinx asked, nibbling on the corner of a broken nail.

  ‘No – totally NFI. Not that we would have wanted to go anyway. Lib’s been a bit off with all of us since the row last week, but she did say they were going clubbing or something.’

  ‘Well, you know what the only decent response to NFI is?’ Jinx said grinning broadly. ‘FGA!’

  ‘What’s that?’ Chastity looked confused.

  ‘Fucking Go Anyway. Ha! Now that would have pissed the stupid bitch off. Not that you’d have wanted to spend the weekend with her.’

  Jinx wanted to tell Chastity what she’d learned from Jennifer but decided to wait until she’d got her, Liv and Charlie all in the same place otherwise she’d just have to repeat herself loads of times. Instead, she proudly brandished the vanilla vodka before opening Chastity’s mini-fridge and pulling out a bottle of tonic and a lime.

  ‘Chastity Maxwell,’ she said, dead impressed, ‘ten out of ten. I don’t know anyone our age who takes drinking as seriously as you. Limes for fuck’s sake! You’re brilliant.’

  ‘Thanks, Jinx.’ Chastity bent low in a mock bow before jumping back on to her bed and chucking one of her squashy cushions at Jinx. ‘I obviously take after my mum. I’m getting an ice machine for Christmas. So are they not back yet then? I know Morris is cool and everything but he’s really keen on his Sunday-night rule. The only time I’ve seen him really lose it this term was when Xanthe and Melissa rolled in absolutely steaming at eleven a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘I don’t think so. By rights I shouldn’t even give a shit, particularly as Lib’s being so pathetic and not speaking to me, but I can’t help worrying about her going off with Stella. You know what she’s like – not exactly the most streetwise, especially in fucking London. And look what happened last time the two of them went out – it was a fucking disaster. It’s not really Morris I’m concerned about – Stella doesn’t give a shit about anyone except herself.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Chastity sighed. ‘And she sucks up to Lib like I’ve never seen. You should have seen them on Friday – we were all nearly puking. I think you were right the other day you know: Liberty is a bit stupid. In the nicest possible way,’ she added hastily when Jinx scowled.

  ‘Of course she is, but that’s part of her charm, isn’t it? It makes her more fun somehow … the poor daft cretin. What you see is what you get. Well, I’m not fucking phoning her. You do it, Chas – go on, just see where she is and point out to her in words of not more than one syllable that she’ll definitely be in loads of trouble if she doesn’t hop it back here quick smart.’

  Chastity was dialling the number when they heard a commotion in the corridor outside. Jinx stuck her head round the door and looked over to the hall area. Sure enough, Liberty and Stella were standing in the foyer being berated by Mr Morris who was wearing his pyjamas and looking incredibly cross. She motioned for Chastity and the two of them lay on the floor with the door open a crack so they could hear what was going on without being seen.

  Stella was wearing a very short denim miniskirt, black-patterned fashion tights and platform shoes. A pale-pink peasant blouse was visible underneath her tailored H&M beige trench coat and she had a Mulberry weekend bag slung over her shoulder. Liberty was wearing jeans tucked into Stella’s Chloe boots and had her long hair tied in a side ponytail like Stella’s. Both of them were wearing full make-up and they looked at least twenty-five.

  ‘What time do you call this?’ Mr Morris was tapping his watch and glaring at the pair. ‘No, Stella, don’t interrupt me. I don’t want any of your excuses.’

  Stella folded her arms and gave him a very frosty look.

  ‘Christ she’s rude,’ Jinx whispered in Chastity’s ear. ‘Just look at the face on her! He’s only doing his bloody job.’ There was an unwritten rule that the girls didn’t cheek any of the nicest teachers, especially those – like Mr Morris – who really made life very easy for them.

  ‘You all know you’ve got to be back at nine-thirty on Sunday nights,’ he continued. ‘If Mrs Bennett had decided to do one of her unscheduled walkabouts tonight it would have been me that got it in the neck.’

  ‘It’s very naughty of you to take advantage of me like this, especially as I give you so much freedom in the lower sixth.’

  Whilst Stella stood there scowling and refusing to look him in the eye, Liberty at least tried to make amends. ‘We’re sorry, Sir, we really are. We should have phoned when we realised our train was going to be massively delayed, but both our phones had run out of batteries and the payphone at the station had been vandalised.’ She smiled beseechingly at him from underneath her manically fluttering black eyelashes.

  ‘A likely story,’ sniggered Chastity under her breath. ‘Look at her! Do they think he’s stupid or what?’

  ‘Apology noted, Liberty. Thank you. And what about you?’ Mr Morris turned to look at Stella. ‘Have you got anything to say for yourself or are you just cross at having been caught?’

  Stella mumbled something that Jinx and Chastity couldn’t hear from their prone vantage point down the corridor, but whatever it was had a decidedly sarcastic tone to it.

  ‘Right.’ Mr Morris did not look pleased at all. ‘If that’s the way you want to play it you can be gated all this week. That means no trips into Brighton whatsoever and I want you to report back here to me at six o’clock on the dot every night this week.’

  Stella looked furious as she hefted her bag further on to her shoulder and swept through the swing doors in the direction of the stairs leading to her corridor. She turned to give Mr Morris a very black look and disappeared off without saying another word.

  Liberty apologised again and then started making excuses for Stella. ‘She didn’t mean it, Sir, I promise. We’re both just really tired and the train was an absolute nightmare. Does she really have to …’

  ‘Thank you Liberty. I appreciate the sentiment but there is absolutely no way I’ll be spoken to like that. The punishment stands.’

  He locked Tanner House’s front door, said an unusually terse goodnight to Liberty and headed through the front door of his staff flat, adjacent to the foyer on the ground floor.

  Jinx and Chastity quickly rolled out the way of their own door and quietly closed it as Liberty headed their way. They lay on the floor giggling about Stella’s punishment. ‘She fucking deserved that, the rude bitch,’ Jinx said delightedly. ‘Good old Brian!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Chastity added, equally mirthfully, ‘and it means we can go out every night this week if we want and leave her behind. And tired my arse – that was a come-down face if ever I’ve seen one.’

  Although the punishment was nothing like as bad as it could have been, they gave each other a high five and poured another vodka and
tonic in celebration.

  Whilst Jinx and Chastity drank their vodka and cackled like witches imagining the many and varied punishments they would dearly like to dish out to Stella, Mrs Gunn was knocking back the whisky alone in her flat. She’d ordered her deputy – a rather timid woman called Miss Cusk who had a permanent absolutely terrified expression on her face – to take over the evening shift in the house study and insisted that she not be disturbed even if the place was burning down around her, so bad was her imaginary migraine.

  It said something about the state of her mind that Gunn had an even grimmer look about her than usual. The lights were dimmed to their lowest setting and she’d turned the TV sound right down. She hadn’t turned it off of course – the world really would have to end for that to happen. The girls who had the misfortune of living in the rooms above her flat always said she’d probably have the fucking six o’clock news beamed into her bloody grave. Skinny Myrtle lay on the scratchy red rug next to the sofa with her paws over her head, as if she could sense the strange atmosphere in the room but didn’t know what to make of it.

  Gunn was absent-mindedly fingering the globe that sat next to her sofa, twirling it round on its axis with her fat forefinger stuck on Japan. She put the whisky tumbler to her lips and tilted her huge head back. A solitary piece of fast-melting ice was all it contained so she reached for the bottle by her feet. A combination of a bit of bad luck on the dogs and the huge private hospital bill her mother had faxed through that morning with a terse note asking her to pay it meant she was back on the Famous Grouse.

  Gunn growled as she realised the litre bottle was empty. She’d only bought it that morning and she’d only been up here drinking for about two hours. Things were bad, very bad indeed. She vented her rage on Myrtle, who scuttled away to hide in the kitchen when Gunn growled so viciously, screaming after her that she was nothing but a bloody dead weight, and why should Gunn be expected to feed and water her when she gave nothing in return, and why in hell didn’t she put herself to some kind of use around the place. Which was a bit rich, considering she was a dog.

  Gunn stomped into the kitchen, causing a quivering Myrtle to dash back into the sitting room. She thumped and banged and rooted around, becoming progressively redder in the face as she sought something, anything, to drink. Eventually she unearthed an ancient bottle of ouzo from the bucket filled with cleaning products underneath her sink. A Greek girl’s parents had given it to her for Christmas years ago and she remembered now that she’d stashed it down there in case of a real emergency, which this clearly was.

  Gunn, of course, never usually had cause to look in that bucket as she never stooped so low as to actually wipe down her own counters or clean her oven. No, why should she? She’d caught one of the cleaners filling out an extra hour a day on her timesheet and had threatened to report her to the bursar and have her sacked unless she cleaned Gunn’s flat twice a week. The poor woman, whose husband had fallen off a ladder doing a window-cleaning job, had had no option but to do it as she had three small kids to feed and couldn’t afford not to.

  Gunn normally hated ouzo, but she was so desperate she’d have drunk methylated spirits without a second thought if she’d been able to find any tonight. In fact, she thought bitterly as she ripped the top off and caught a whiff of it, she’d probably prefer a nice icy meths to this terrible aniseed crap but needs must.

  Gunn filled a glass with ice and thudded back into the sitting room, swearing and muttering under her breath like a mad woman. Myrtle waited for her to seat her huge bulk back down on the sofa before slinking past her and dashing back into the kitchen. The poor dog clearly didn’t want to be anywhere near her mistress when she was in such a filthy and unpredictable mood.

  Gunn downed a full glass in one before placing it on the occasional table next to her and stretching herself out full length on the sofa. She put her arms behind her head, crossed her legs, closed her eyes and sighed deeply.

  What a funk I’m in, she thought. What a terrible bloody funk. And it was the worst kind it could possibly be, and for all her normal grievances, strops and general bad temper it was one that she’d never experienced before.

  Gunn sighed again, before opening one eye and glaring at the phone on her desk. She’d been staring at it pretty much all day, willing it to ring. Every so often, mindful of her mother’s favourite ‘a watched pot never boils’ cliché, she’d trundled downstairs to harangue the juniors, glare evilly at the parents dropping their daughters back to school or glance through her beloved punishment book.

  She’d not managed to stay away for more than ten minutes though, before hefting herself back up the stairs and hopefully crashing through the door only to be faced with the desolate sight of no red blinking light indicating a message. She’d even unplugged it a few times to check it was still working. It was. For the first time in recent memory there was no option for Gunn but to face the unpalatable truth. There was no message.

  Gunn lay there in the near dark, sweating despite the cold breeze blowing in through the open window. She’d always believed her awful migraines to be the absolute apex of pain, but the painful thoughts running through her mind tonight hurt much worse, and deeper somehow. She was slowly facing up to a lot of things she’d never allowed herself to think about before.

  She gulped down another full glass of ouzo, finding she was quite enjoying the sickly taste of it now she’d guzzled her way through half the bottle. She decided she’d have one more glass before bed and stumbled into the kitchen in need of more ice, her huge bulk swaying slightly from side to side.

  As she re-entered the sitting room the phone rang. Gunn stood stock still in the doorway for a couple of seconds then dropped her drink on the floor in her haste to reach it, not appearing to notice the smashed glass, sticky ouzo and melting ice all over the rug. She shuddered, cleared her throat and swallowed nervously a couple of times before picking it up.

  ‘Susan?’ she asked in an unprecedentedly girlish and hopeful voice, ‘is that you?’ Her face lit up in a beatific smile that not a single one of the girls in her house, her colleagues or anyone else that came into contact with her had ever seen, and she settled down on the sofa clutching the handset as if it were the most precious, delicate thing in the world.

  Jinx scowled at Liberty and Stella as they walked into Mrs Carpenter’s room for their tutor group arm in arm. Liberty hadn’t mentioned a word about the note she’d left in her room, had pointedly ignored her in the bathroom that morning and was obviously still in a raging mood about the fact that she’d had a go at Stella the week before. And frankly, Jinx thought, she was beginning not to give a shit.

  As Stella and Liberty sat down on either side of her she didn’t look at either of them, took her mobile phone out of her bag and started composing a joint text message to Liv, Charlie and Chastity, saying she had news about Stella and suggesting they all go out for dinner that evening.

  She was damned if she was going to show any weakness in the face of Liberty’s ridiculous obduracy and Stella’s smug delight. In fact, she’d have dearly loved to turn round and push Stella off her chair – that would wipe the smug smile off the bitch’s face. She would have done it too, if she didn’t think Mrs Bennett might actually expel her this time.

  Liv swaggered in with wet hair with minutes to spare, having clearly just jumped out of the shower. She was holding her phone and walked straight up to Jinx. ‘Hey, Jin, you’re on for tonight,’ she said, before throwing a pointed sideways evil glance in Stella’s direction. ‘Charlie’s got a doctor’s appointment this morning but she says she’s up for it too – we can’t wait to hear your news.’

  Liberty wasn’t quick enough to stop a spark of interest from playing about her face, but Stella, unconcernedly re-applying her pink lipstick in her gold hand mirror, didn’t appear to have heard them.

  Mrs Carpenter walked in beaming, clearly in one of her extra good moods. She trilled her customary ‘good morning girls’ in an unusually high-pitc
hed voice and placed her steaming mug of coffee on the desk in front of her before sitting down in her ergonomic chair and looking round the room.

  ‘Ah, Jinx,’ she practically sang, ‘good to have you back.’ Her eyes moved along the back row and came to rest on Liv. Immediately, her face turned sour and the class braced itself for one of her manic mood swings.

  ‘Olivia Taylor,’ the singsong nursery school voice was gone, replaced with a harsh bark, ‘how dare you come into my classroom with wet hair.’

  Every girl in the class suddenly seemed to take great interest in the books and pencil cases spread out on the desks in front of them, not wanting to attract attention to themselves or look at Liv in case she pulled one of her funny faces and made them laugh.

  ‘You know how I feel about personal grooming.’ Mrs Carpenter was obsessed with the girls’ appearance and, in fairness to her, regularly gave them lectures about professionalism in the workplace.

  Charlie had once made the mistake of cheekily pointing out that Stagmount was not, in fact, an office and Mrs C had gone into such a marvellous rant about the fact that they were nearing the end of their school careers and she was merely preparing them for their inevitable existence in the real world that none of them had dared turn up under-dressed or without brushed and dry hair ever again.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Jinx caught Stella nodding as if she was in full agreement with their tutor and felt a burning desire to stick the sharp end of her compass into her denim-clad thigh.

  Just as Mrs Carpenter was winding up a marvellous soliloquy that Shakespeare himself would have been proud of and would no doubt end in lines or a gating or litter picking around the grounds, there was a knock at the door. A tiny first year stood there, shaking and clutching a piece of paper in her hand. Mrs Carpenter’s mood changed as fast as the wind.

  ‘Come in, sweetheart,’ she trilled in the same singsong voice she’d been using earlier, ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of here. These big girls don’t bite you know. Ha ha ha – what have you got there, darling?’