Wicked! (57 page)

‘You will certainly lose your job, young lady.’

‘Doesn’t matter, I’ve got another one to go to.’

‘Don’t be too sure of that.’

Driven out of Jack’s bedroom, Shagpile II were indulging in another shrieking stint of skinny-dipping. Reaching the pool, Paris stopped in his tracks to find Janna counting heads. As though nothing had happened, she turned and smiled at him.

‘Oh, there you are. Are you OK?’

Paris was about to shout that she was a fucking slag, when he caught sight of a body in the shallow end, deathly pale even in the moonlight, hair streaming, stick legs askew, and realized it was Pearl surrounded by a flickering halo of blood. At first he thought she must have started her period and to save her humiliation looked round for a towel. Then he realized the blood was gushing from her wrists and, leaping into the water, he dragged her to the side. Hoisting her on to the flagstones, he yelled: ‘Quick, she’s cut herself.’

Janna rushed forward.

‘Oh, poor child. Ring for an ambulance.’ Crouching down, she put an ear to Pearl’s chest. ‘She’s breathing, but unconscious, and terribly cold.’

Miss Cambola came running into the garden. ‘We must make a tourniquet.’ Tearing off her orange and black scarf, she wound it round and round Pearl’s arm. ‘Put your finger on the knot,’ she ordered Paris. Then, turning to Janna: ‘We must get her straight to hospital for a blood transfusion. If we meet the ambulance coming the other way, at least we save time.’

‘I’ll drive, I haven’t been drinking,’ said Janna. ‘What the hell happened?’ she asked as a suddenly sobered-up Amber, Junior and Paris helped her and Cambola carry Pearl to Joan’s convertible.

‘Fucking Cosmo. Shagged her, texted everyone to say she was a slag, then dumped her by text,’ said Amber.

Jade, back in her bedroom, was calling her father. ‘Daddy, Daddy, I’m having a horrible time. Paris Alvaston tried to rape me, he came on so strong and I didn’t want to reject him because he’s a yob and Xavier Campbell-Black tried to rape me too. I didn’t want to be unkind, but he was drunk and went at me like an animal. I had to knee him in the balls. And, oh Daddy, someone’s cut off all my hair, I look hideous. Everyone’s drunk; all the teachers are shagging and skinny-dipping.’

‘Calm down, princess. Who’s in charge?’

‘Joan but she bunked off with Cambola to hear Cosmo’s mum in some opera and Skunk and Biffo went to look at some lousy eclipse and Rufus’s gone home, he thinks his wife’s bunked off.’

‘Who’s in charge?’

‘Janna, but she bunked off to bed and now she’s taken some girl who’s slashed her wrists to hospital. We’re staying in such a lovely old castle and Rocky’s gone berserk and broken the place up. Everything’s out of control. My diamond bracelet’s been nicked and oh, my hair, Daddy.’

‘Did anyone actually rape you, princess?’

‘No, but they tried.’

‘Go to bed and I’ll fly down and collect you first thing.’

Stancombe came off the telephone and turned to Rufus’s wife, Sheena, stretched out beside him on black satin sheets.

‘Mission accomplished,’ he said triumphantly. ‘There’s no way the blessed Janna and Larks will survive this disaster.’

‘The pupils have bonded so well,’ mocked Cosmo as, back in their bedroom, he and Lubemir heated up an electric kettle to light their spliffs on the element, ‘that the teachers felt redundant and soon will be declared so.’

‘I wonder how the Lower Sixth are getting on with their tour of the battlefields,’ pondered Lubemir.

‘Ought to start by studying the one downstairs,’ said Cosmo.

Alex and Poppet Bruce had spent the day walking in Wales. They had booked into a nearby hotel but, seeing lights still on in the castle, decided to drop in to see Biffo, Skunk, Joan and dear little Vicky and enjoy some free drink.

They found Joan in a state of shock. Desperately guarding her position, fulminating to hide her guilt she had been skiving, she whisked them as quickly as possible out into the garden.

‘Where are the students?’ asked Alex.

‘In their beds.’

‘What on earth happened?’ asked Poppet, who loved trouble.

‘A young woman, Pearl Smith, slashed her wrists. Janna Curtis has rushed her to Casualty. I’ve been trying to ring Pearl’s emergency contact number in Larkminster, but the telephone appears to be cut off.’

‘Why did she try to end her life?’ pressed Poppet.

‘Oh, some love affair,’ replied Joan. Dame Hermione would never forgive her if she shopped Cosmo. Anxious to get off the subject: ‘And Jade Stancombe has behaved in a most reprehensible way. She was observed in flagrante with both Paris Alvaston and Xavier Campbell-Black. She must be excluded.’

Alex Bruce turned pale.

‘We can’t exclude Jade. We’d jeopardize our Science Emporium. Stancombe’s been supportive when we’ve fired anyone else’s kids, but he wouldn’t like it if we excluded Jade. We must limit the damage. Don’t call the police or the parents or the ambulance.’

‘Janna Curtis insisted on taking Pearl to hospital,’ said Joan.

‘Well, I suppose Pearl is her responsibility.’

At that moment Biffo and Skunk strode in, laughing heartily.

‘Alex, Poppet, how good to see you. We’ve seen the most dramatic eclipse,’ said Biffo. Then, lest Alex should think they’d been skiving, he added that they’d taken Boffin, Alex’s favourite pupil with them. ‘He couldn’t believe his eyes. We’ve packed him off to bed. No doubt he’ll debrief you tomorrow, Alex. I could do with a Scotch, couldn’t you, Skunk?’

Joan was just debriefing them about the last six hours, heaping blame on Janna, when Bertie Wallace, hot from his mistress, walked in, whereupon Joan heaped blame on Rocky.

‘Quite an achievement,’ said Bertie, surveying the devastation. ‘Rocky should get a job with the council demolishing old buildings. Fortunately for me, this house is in my wife’s name. I doubt if she’ll be quite so sanguine, but I expect it’s insured.’

Janna rang Joan from the hospital. Pearl, thank God, was out of danger. They had given her stitches and a blood transfusion. She was conscious and Janna had spoken to her. Then she asked if she could have a quick word with Paris.

‘I know he’s worried.’

Even though it was nearly three a.m., Paris was awake, lying on top of his duvet, gazing at the ceiling. He took the telephone into a deserted bedroom.

‘I thought you’d like to know Pearl’s going to be OK and you probably saved her life.’ Then, when Paris didn’t answer: ‘She’s all right, Paris.’

‘You’re fucking not.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘If you hadn’t sloped off to bed with a made-up headache and Hengist Fucking Brett-Taylor, none of this would have happened, you dirty bitch.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I saw Hengist at your window, stripped off and flaunting his six-pack, you fucking slag.’

‘Oh Paris,’ pleaded Janna in horror, but he had hung up.

56

Bagley pupils who’d been on the field trip were gated until the end of term, which was only a few days away. As Dora Belvedon had not been among the participants, it fell to Sheena Anderson to sell the story of ‘Toff School in Mass Orgy’, complete with gory details of skinny-dipping, group sex, trashing of our precious heritage and, finally, of a young woman nearly dying from a suicide attempt.

The person who carried the can was Janna. She was the only head on the trip, and the catastrophe had occurred when she was in charge. She had let the maintained sector down. Hengist was very sympathetic to her plight and had bollocked his staff for leaving her exposed, but he was not prepared, ‘for both our sakes, darling’, to reveal his part in distracting Janna during the evening.

Parents were fortunately mollified by magnificent exam results released in August, in which Bagley, helped no doubt by Cosmo’s leaked papers, had drawn away from St Jimmy’s and edged towards Fleetley.

Larks did infinitely better than the previous year: up from four per cent to ten per cent of the pupils getting the requisite five A–C grades known as the Magic Five, but they were still near the bottom of the Larkshire league. Any satisfaction was doused by Ashton Douglas’s call.

‘Vewy disappointing wesults, Janna. We’ll need a post-mortem on these and the geography field trip.’

On the credit side, Pearl bounced back quickly – cheered by all the sympathy and by a large bunch of pink roses on Dame Hermione’s account, plus a card from her ‘very sensitive’ little son saying: ‘Sorry, I was a rat. Love, Cosmo.’

Remembering how she had smashed Janna’s Staffordshire cow, Pearl organized a whip-round from both Bagley and Larks children who’d been on the field trip and raised enough money to buy an even prettier Herefordshire cow from Larkminster Antiques.

‘Miss loves cows.’

‘She don’t love Chally or Basket or Spink or Joan,’ grumbled Graffi, but he designed a beautiful card, saying ‘You’re a star’ in gold and purple sequins and everyone signed it and wrote fond messages inside apologizing that the trip had gone pear-shaped, but insisting they had had the best time ever, and thanking her for all her kindness.

Janna, overwhelmed, stroked the spotted red and white cow, and blushed and wept with joy over the card. Only after she’d read it half a dozen times did she notice Paris’s name was missing.

When asked, Pearl had also blushed. ‘Paris gets funny.’

I doubt it, thought Janna.

Paris had blanked her for the rest of the term and when she’d given him a lovely edition of Housman’s poems as a leaving present, had just put it back on her desk. How would he treat Hengist, she wondered, when he got to Bagley?

Paris had also fallen out with Feral who, resentful the field trip had been a riot, grew crosser when Paris refused to debrief him and Graffi.

‘Did you shag Amber and Jade?’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Did you shag Vicky or Gloria? Did you shag Miss?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Feral then queried the wisdom of moving in with Ian and Patience. ‘Be careful, man. People only foster in order to abuse. That Ian looks a fascist perv and she’s an ugly cow. I suppose you can always phone Childline.’

Paris, fuelled by rage, misery and apprehension, hit Feral across the playground. The fight went to ten rounds and was not made up. Once again, longing for his lost mother overcame Paris. Two days before the end of term, he vanished, taking to the trains to find her. After two days of panic, social services in Larkminster received a call from a stationmaster in Land’s End saying Paris was stopping the night with him and his wife, but would be put on the train back to Birmingham tomorrow. Seeing Nadine’s stuffed-sheep face on the platform at New Street, however, beside grim bully Blenchley and Crispin snuffling in disapproval, Paris jumped trains and went off to Edinburgh.

‘Children dumped by their mothers never stop looking for them,’ said Nadine, which hardly helped a desperately nervous Patience.

So Paris never said goodbye to Larks, even when he was safely returned to Oaktree Court and started packing up his few belongings in the expectation of moving to the Cartwrights. Janna felt wiped out by guilt. She should have levelled with both Patience and Nadine that Paris had only been thrown off course and was likely to act up appallingly because he’d been let down by yet another mother figure.

‘I needn’t say I was in bed with you,’ she begged Hengist, when he visited Jubilee Cottage after the field trip. ‘I can just say some lover rolled up.’

‘You’re in enough trouble as it is,’ said Hengist firmly. ‘Some bloody counsellor will worm it out of Paris and then we’ll be really in the shit. We deserve a little happiness. It’s going to be difficult enough to see each other as it is.’

So, just as Paris felt horribly guilty but let Rocky take the rap for trashing Gafellyn Castle, Janna also kept quiet. Hengist had bewitched her, as blindingly dazzling as low winter sun reflected in icy puddles. She found it impossible not to revel in such unfamiliar happiness.

Throughout the long, hot summer, she was amazed and gratified how often he managed to see her. Luckily, hers was the last cottage in the village, with no house opposite, and Lily’s wise sapphire-blue eyes were too short-sighted to recognize Hengist when he crept in during darkening evenings, wearing a confiscated baseball cap, shades and shoes wet from the increasingly heavy dews.

He frequently rolled up with one of Elaine’s Bonios for Partner, who, instead of barking, whimpered and wriggled his little body with joy.

When Hengist was unable to see her, he rang, having learnt from his pupils to acquire a second pay-as-you-go mobile so Painswick couldn’t trace his calls. He wouldn’t, however, write to Janna when he was away. ‘Too risky. I trust you, darling, but not the press.’ Instead he gave her poetry books with pages marked:

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new . . .

‘I feel dreadfully guilty about Sally,’ Janna told him repeatedly, but Hengist always claimed that was his department.