Wicked! (114 page)

‘So you walked back here, poor Martin.’ Janna poured boiling water over Danijela’s tea bag.

‘I got nowhere to go.’ Monster looked round pathetically.

There was a long pause. Pittsy looked at his feet, so did Cambola, so even did Mags and Emlyn. Janna counted to ten.

‘You better come home with me, Martin. We’ll put a note through your mum’s door: “I’m in Miss Curtis’s house.” You’ll have to sleep on the sofa.’

Then she caught sight of Emlyn, his face a death mask.

‘I’m off. Night, everybody.’ He gathered up his car keys and was gone.

Janna caught up with him in reception. Graffi’s black good-luck cat grinned down at her unsympathetically.

‘Come in for a drink on the way home,’ she pleaded. ‘We can put Monster to bed.’

‘Where?’ snapped Emlyn.

‘In the lounge. We can talk in the kitchen.’

‘Talking wasn’t what I had in mind.’

Janna’s heart started to thump in excitement, then faltered as Emlyn said, ‘And I’m not coming to any of those jaunts next week, I’ve got interviews.’

‘You what?’ Janna fought back tears of disappointment. Every trip had been planned with him in mind. ‘Who with?’ she asked, following him through the front door.

‘The Welsh Rugby Union, among others.’

Out in the warmth of Midsummer Night’s Eve, the bitter acid tang of elder and the overwhelming sweetness of the white philadelphus mingled to symbolize the bitter sweetness of the evening.

‘You’re lovely, Janna; all things to all children,’ said Emlyn bleakly, ‘but you’re not going to change. I’m fed up with women who want to save the world.’

As he strode towards his car, Janna ran after him. ‘I’m sorry about Oriana’s baby. I know you’re upset: please talk to me about it.’

‘I don’t need any counselling. Poppet Bruce had a go earlier.’ And he was in his car, storming down the drive, not even bothering with lights or a seatbelt.

Janna couldn’t bawl her heart out because of Monster.

‘So much food left,’ she said, returning to the staffroom. ‘If we put it in the fridge, the children can have it tomorrow.’

‘There isn’t going to be a tomorrow,’ sobbed Rowan.

Cambola, however, switched off her mobile, tears drying on her beaming face.

‘Jack and Kylie have just asked me to be godmother to little Ganymede.’

Both the Brigadier and Lily had been drinking, so they left the car at Larks and took a taxi to Elmsley church, where the Brigadier put a balloon on his wife’s grave. Then they walked hand in hand down the tree tunnel with shafts of moonlight piercing the leaf ceiling lighting on Lily’s pearls and the Brigadier’s diamond shirt studs.

Pearl had forced a fish-paste sandwich on Lily, made by her mum, to keep up her strength, so Lily had to do something to sweeten her breath. Pearl’s proffered Juicy Fruit chewing gum might have pulled her bridge out. Fortunately, she always kept three boiled sweets in her bag, one for the walk there, one for the walk home and one just in case. The just in case was blackcurrant, which she was sucking furiously.

Despite his outward sangfroid, the Brigadier was more nervous than he had ever been under fire.

Just outside Wilmington, they paused to rest against a five-bar gate. The Brigadier took a deep breath. Lily looked so beautiful with her silvery hair and her face bathed in moonlight.

‘Darling Lily, I fell in love with you on the second of October two thousand, the day you moved into Wilmington.’

There was a crunch of boiled sweet as he took her in his arms, kissing her gently then passionately, and both their teeth stayed put.

‘Oh, Christian, my Brigadearest,’ sighed Lily.

‘If I go down on one knee, will you help me up afterwards?’

‘Of course.’

‘Sweetest Lily, will you do me the great honour of marrying me?’

‘Oh yes, yes I will.’

Anxious to kiss his betrothed, Christian held out a hand, Lily gave it a tug, but he was too heavy for her, and next moment had pulled her down on the grass beside him. The only way they could clamber up, some time later, still laughing helplessly, was gate bar by gate bar.

Back at Larks, Graffi and Johnnie, who’d been indulging in a hilarious spot of dogging, observing Basket’s plump white bottom bobbing up and down in Skunk’s heaving Vauxhall, had returned to the staffroom to mob up Janna.

‘Not sure Monster wants to come home with you, miss. Finks you’re going to jump on him.’

‘There’s a perfectly good lock to the lounge door,’ snarled Janna. ‘Come on, Martin, I can’t abandon Partner any longer.’

Having once bound a firework to Partner’s tail, Monster showed even more reluctance to spend the night under the same roof.

‘He’ll get me in the night, miss.’

Janna drove home very slowly, tempted to knock on Emlyn’s door, but there was no car outside. She had great difficulty not strangling Monster, particularly when the hulking great beast announced he was starving, then complained the scrambled eggs Janna made him were too sloppy.

Partner growled so much at such ingratitude, Janna let Monster sleep in her bedroom, and heard the key turn in the lock.

Outside, it was getting light, the longest day dawning after the longest saddest night. Except for the jaunts, which were meaningless without Emlyn, Larks was over. She must face up to the fact that she was totally, hopelessly in love with him and had utterly blown it by not being there when he needed her. Having sobbed herself to sleep, her first lie-in for weeks was interrupted by pounding on the door at six o’clock.

‘Can you run me into Larkminster, miss? It’s my paper round.’

116

‘Teachers should never go on holiday for at least a fortnight after the end of the summer term,’ Pittsy was always saying. ‘One needs two weeks at home unwinding and invariably contracting some bug, then fourteen days abroad in the sun, before a fortnight psyching oneself up for the rigours of the autumn term.’

Janna had no such luxury. She had to work out her contract with S and C until the end of August, leaving Appletree immaculate for the new incumbents, whoever they might be, and supervising the removal of property by neighbouring schools, who were so avaricious, she was tempted to put a ‘do not remove’ label on Partner’s collar.

To depress her further, it rained throughout July and August as estate agents and developers splashed through the school grounds, skips filled with water and rubble, windows were boarded up, machinery dismantled and cork and whiteboards ripped down, until only Janna’s office remained operational.

In it, apart from her personal belongings, were a framed photograph of the staff and children of Larks High in happier days and the computer and printer, out of which the GCSE results would thunder.

Still on the wall was the cupboard Emlyn had put up by nonchalantly hammering in the screws. Janna never dreamt she would miss him so dreadfully. Her constant companion as a child had been a vast English sheepdog, whose huge reassuring presence she kept imagining round the house for months after he died. So it was with Emlyn. He had landed his grand job with the Welsh Rugby Union, but, according to the Brigadier, he was hoping to get back to Larks for Results Day on 26 August. The children so longed to see him.

Even after term was ended, they hadn’t been able to accept the dream was over and still piled in every day: ‘Let’s play bingo, miss,’ or offering to help her clean the building and littering it with Coke cans and crisp packets.

As Results Day approached, they grew increasingly jittery about not getting enough grades to qualify for sixth-form places in colleges or other schools, or for a good job, or to satisfy their parents, or to not feel a fool in front of their friends.

None of them aspired to the miracle of the Magic Five, which would give Larks a point in the league tables.

In the evenings, Janna had visited every parent on the Shakespeare Estate, trying to explain that further education didn’t just mean top-up fees and the loss of a family breadwinner.

She was most worried about Feral, who’d left the sanctuary of the Brigadier’s cottage and moved with his mother into a two-bedroom flat so poky there was hardly room for his football. If his mother stayed off drugs until Christmas, her other children might be returned to her. But she was so listless and easily cast down, Feral was terrified she’d lapse, particularly if Uncle Harley rolled up again. He hated leaving her, even to stack shelves with Graffi every night.

As Janna was shredding confidential papers referring to the staff at Larks, she had come across one of Feral’s essays which young Lydia had kept. He must have dictated it to Paris.

My dream [he had begun] is to leave home when I’m nineteen and be married by the time I’m twenty to the girl I stay with for the rest of my life and have two children. I’m going to buy a house in a nice area for my children to grow up decently. I will buy a car for my wife. She can go to work or look after the children. I’m going to give her a big posh kitchen worth £1,000 and go on holiday three times a year, twice abroad and once to Skegness.

‘Well done, Feral,’ Lydia had written, ‘work hard and chase your dream.’

It was dated March 2002, just after he had met Bianca. Oh, poor Feral, Janna nearly wept, the desire of the moth for the star.

At least this year the incessant rain had kept alive the saplings Wally had planted last autumn; perhaps they might symbolize the survival of her children.

Against all this, she longed constantly for Emlyn and could have done without Basket popping in, flashing Skunk’s diamond and saying, ‘I know you’ll find a Skunk of your own when you least expect it,’ until Janna nearly kicked her teeth in.

Janna shared Wednesday 25 August with Mags and Pittsy, closeted together in her office, sworn to secrecy until the official release time which was eight o’clock on the morning of the twenty-sixth.

The results arrived by email and, as they were downloaded, were logged on to a big wall chart with a list of candidates’ names in alphabetical order down the left-hand side, and the subjects starting with history along the top. It was surprising Miss Miserden didn’t ring up and complain about the shrieks and yells of excitement as the trio caught sight of and analysed each result.

‘We’re going to need several king-size boxes of tissues tomorrow,’ confessed Mags, ‘but, bearing in mind how far behind they were at the beginning of the year, haven’t some of our no-hopers done well?’

Pittsy was delighted he’d got more candidates through than Skunk or Basket. Serve them right for being so smug. The Brigadier and Emlyn had done very well in history, Mags and Lily in languages, Janna and Sophy in English.

Over at Bagley, the mood was less rowdy, but just as feverish, as, in scenes resembling Wall Street, department heads reached for their calculators to check if they’d beaten other departments, or set in train computer programmes to work out the crucial percentage of children who’d got the Magic Five. Could they have overtaken Fleetley, St Paul’s or Wycombe Abbey, or shaken Rod Hyde off their heels?

Miss Painswick was flapping around so that the moment the official results came in tomorrow and were checked for inconsistencies, they would be faxed or emailed immediately to candidates on yacht, grouse moor, Aegean isle or, in Paris’s case, the Old Coach House.

At six o’clock on the morning of 26 August, Janna dressed herself in a clinging new yellow and white striped T-shirt and tight sexy white jeans, in case Emlyn showed up. She then drove to the central post office in Larkminster to pick up the envelopes with coral labels containing official result slips for each candidate.

After yesterday’s downpour it was a beautiful day: very hot with a bright blue sky flecked with little cirrus clouds and larger grey cumulus clouds, behind which the sun kept disappearing, as if to illustrate the miseries or splendours of each candidate.

The press awaited Janna at Larks.

‘How’s Rupert Campbell-Black done?’

‘No idea.’

‘And his son, Xav, the thick one?’

‘I’m not going to tell you.’

She then rushed into her office and spent the next hour with the other staff, shoving the results into envelopes for each child, checking them against yesterday’s emails. Aysha had got an A star, not an A, for maths, Kitten an E rather than a D for English lit.

‘I nearly wore
my
white jeans,’ said Rowan, ‘but I thought it was too casual for such an important day. Oh look, here’s an email from Emlyn. Oh no! He’s had to fly out on some pre-season rugby tour. He sends huge love to us all and good luck. The kids will be gutted.’

Et moi aussi
, thought Janna. Oh Emlyn! But she must hide her despair; it was the children’s day.

Most schools just pin up the envelopes on the wall for pupils to collect. Janna, however, sat in her office determined to go through every result with every child as they lined up in the corridor, frantically chewing gum, faces dead, pacing up and down.

‘I’m going to get all Gs.’

‘I’m going to get straight Us.’

Pearl, shaking and sobbing, had to be carried by Mags and Cambola into Janna’s office – Pearl the former truant and disaster area. Janna jumped up and hugged her.