Wicked! (77 page)

Ashton and Cindy were getting increasingly rattled. If only the Americans could bomb Larks, but with their track record, they’d probably miss and take out Cavendish Plaza and the Close instead.

As a counter measure, S and C deliberately held their first public meeting to debate Larks’s fate on the far side of town on a night when Larkminster Rovers were playing at home. As a result hardly any Larks supporters showed up and instead of pleading her case quietly and reasonably, as she’d intended, a riled Janna lost her cool and a lot of support as she heckled the speakers. A dreadfully dismissive report in the
Gazette
followed.

Meanwhile, Wally with a son, Emlyn with a hoped-for future wife and Hengist and Sally with a daughter were increasingly worried that Bush and Blair would raise two fingers to the UN and plunge into war.

‘It’s all oil. They don’t want the Russians and the French to get their hands on it,’ said Hengist.

Wandering across the dry cracked pitches to the Family Tree, he fingered Oriana’s carved initials on its trunk. Was she going to be taken from him like Mungo? He longed to ring Janna and find solace in her freckled arms, but he was nervous that any transgression might invoke the anger of the gods, so he walked home to Sally.

Before the second public meeting, which was to take place in late March, Hengist met Rupert and Jupiter at Jupiter’s flat in Duke Street, St James’s, which had a lovely view over the park lit up by white daffodils and young green willows. A pink moon on its side like a rugby ball hung above Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Would they suffer the same fate as the Twin Towers if Britain got into bed with the Americans? wondered Hengist.

The charming flat had once belonged to Jupiter’s father, Raymond, a highly successful art dealer. Consequently, the walls were covered with wonderful pictures. On a side table was a photograph of Jupiter, his beautiful sweet-natured wife Hanna and their adorable two-and-a-half-year-old son Viridian.

‘That should come in useful when we’re electioneering,’ said Hengist.

Jupiter, who was as pale as Rupert and Hengist were dark brown from skiing, smiled coolly.

‘When are we going to war?’ asked Hengist.

‘Any minute, pushed as much by the unqualified encouragement of IDS as by Blair’s ambition.’ Jupiter glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got to be back in the House in an hour. Would you like a drink?’

‘I’d like several,’ said Hengist. ‘Christ, what a day.’

Rupert looked up from the sofa and the racing pages of the
Evening Standard
. ‘Oriana’s fantastic on the box.’

‘Isn’t she? I see her face on every bulletin – so frustrating to touch the screen not her.’ For a second Hengist betrayed his desolation, then, reverting to his usual flippancy: ‘I was so depressed by my own company, I made the mistake of taking Randal Stancombe for a walk down the pitches this afternoon. He showed an unhealthy interest in Badger’s Retreat, but failed to notice leaves leaping out of the wild cherry, breathtaking against a navy blue sky, or the sweeps of primroses and violets. Only sees land as a way of making money.’

‘I wouldn’t argue with that,’ said Rupert.

‘Can we skip the nature notes and get on with the meeting?’ said Jupiter, pouring Hengist a large whisky.

Hengist turned back from the window where he could see cranes like malignant vultures preying on the city, destroying and rebuilding everywhere.

‘We’ve got to save Larks Comp.’

‘Whatever for?’ Jupiter looked amazed. ‘We can’t anyway, once a school’s targeted for closure, it’s doomed. Only point of public meetings is for the county council and S and C to pretend they’ve listened to people’s views. Anyway,’ he went on, shooting soda into his own glass, ‘do we really want to antagonize Stancombe, who’s good for a massive donation, in order to save a small, pretty awful school? We’ve also got to work with S and C.’

‘You have no heart,’ drawled Rupert, getting out a pen to do the quick crossword. ‘Janna Curtis was rather pretty, I remember.’

‘I can afford to antagonize Stancombe even less,’ admitted Hengist, ‘he’s giving me a six-million-pound science block. But you could take him on, Rupert.’

‘I don’t mind. His daughter’s foul to both Xav and Bianca. What’s he got against Larks?’

‘He wants it and the entire Shakespeare Estate razed to the ground so they don’t lower the tone of his absurdly overpriced Cavendish Plaza.’

‘It’s the Casey Andrews sculpture in the forecourt that should be razed,’ Rupert said. ‘Who was the brother of Romulus, five letters?’

‘Remus,’ said Hengist. ‘I suspect Randal’s after Larks’s land. Whoever buys it, S and C and the county council will make a killing. So this meeting’s the ideal opportunity to discredit both Lib Dem and Labour and make them look like heartless, unprincipled shits.’

‘I like a good fight,’ mused Rupert. ‘Taggie and I got together when we were rushing round Gloucestershire, pitching for the Venturer franchise.’

‘And Janna Curtis has been very shabbily treated,’ pleaded Hengist.

Rupert glanced up, white teeth lighting his dark brown face.

‘So you did get into her knickers.’

‘Certainly not,’ snapped Hengist. ‘Caesar has to be above suspicion as well as his wife these days.’

76

The gods appeared to be on S and C’s side. On the night of the second public meeting, which was held in a WI hall five miles south of Larkminster, the weeks of dry weather ended in a torrential rainstorm, which halted windscreen wipers in their tracks and turned country lanes into raging rivers.

‘Larks parents and teachers’ll never turn out in this,’ gloated Ashton. ‘
EastEnders
and the war in its twelfth day will keep them safe in front of the TV. It’ll be a walkover.’

He was therefore appalled on arrival to discover chairs being frantically unstacked to accommodate the crowd, a foyer reeking of drying macs and anoraks, and steaming umbrellas huddled together like coloured mushrooms at the back of the hall. The bar was already crowded out.

Emlyn and Wally, desperate to be distracted from the war, had all evening been bussing in parents from the Shakespeare Estate, bribing them with beer, wine, Dawn’s hot sausage rolls on the way, and the prospect of a lift home, so they could drink themselves insensible. Stormin’ Norman and Pearl’s boxer dad were already well away.

They were soon joined by friends and fellow tipplers from the protest marches; Lily, the Brigadier, Ian and Patience Cartwright, whose daughter, Sophy, would be out of work if Larks were shut down.

The Brigadier was rather shyly autographing anti-closure leaflets.

‘Love your programme, Brig.’

‘All that matters is that every student achieves his or her potential,’ intoned Cindy Payne as she hung up her soaking wet cape. One had to have nerves of steel to close down a school.

Having heard rumours that both Randal Stancombe and Rupert Campbell-Black were expected, Cavendish Plaza wives, with streaked hair, gold jewellery and beauty department make-up, were out in force. They’d all vote for closure, as would their drenched husbands, who’d nervously left their Mercs and Porsches in the car park before scuttling through the downpour, as would a bristling posse from the Close and the older Larkminster houses.

But there was a dangerously large anti-closure contingent from Bagley: including Dora and Dicky, Bianca, Amber and Milly and the Chinless Wanderers, who, changing allegiance on another front, had become thoroughly excited at the prospect of war in Iraq and kept marching about saluting each other.

‘Why aren’t you in school doing your prep?’ asked Cindy disapprovingly.

‘Part of our citizenship course is understanding how local government works,’ said Amber piously. ‘Mr Brett-Taylor was very anxious we should be present.’

Fuck Hengist, thought Alex, who never swore, even mentally, except in extremis and who had just rolled up with Chally and Poppet, plus her latest baby.

Alex was stressed. Over the weekend Poppet had insisted he look after the kids while she lay outside RAF Fairford protesting against the war. Tonight she had insisted on bringing Little Gandhi and would later breastfeed him. Nothing wrong with that, but this simple act of motherhood seemed to engender such misogyny in his Bagley colleagues.

In the foyer and his father’s astrakhan coat, Cosmo examined notices about singing workshops and evenings of circle dancing, as he played ‘The Lark Ascending’ on his violin. Not missing a trick, he watched the Great and not-so-Good: Ashton, Cindy, Russell, Chally and now Alex and Rod and their wives, drinking cheap red or white in an ante-room. Talk about a witch’s coven. And what had happened to Ashton’s Sancho Pansy, Crispin?

Cosmo had exchanged a soulful eye-meet with Ashton when he arrived. In front of him, on the floor, he had also placed a dark blue butcher-boy’s cap to swell the fund to save Larks. He had already raised two hundred pounds, half of which he intended to keep. His mother, despite her millions, was tight with money.

Inside the hall, Cambola was cheering everyone up playing golden oldies on the tinny upright piano.

‘“Night And Day”,’ sang the Brigadier, sweeping Lily into a quickstep.

‘Who’s chairing this meeting?’ she asked.

‘Col Peters.’

‘That’s totally loaded against Larks for a start; you ought to chair it, Christian. Talk of the devil.’

A hiss went round the hall as Col Peters, more toad-like than ever, put his crinkly black hair and bulging eyes round the door, then retreated to the ante-room.

Dora, meanwhile, was in her element talking on three mobiles.

‘Great turnout. I’ll ring you the moment it’s over, Mr Dacre.’

The rain was growing more frantic, scrabbling against the windows, begging to be let in out of the storm. A shudder and hiss went through those present from the Shakespeare Estate as Uncle Harley walked in in a black fur-lined suede jacket and more jewellery than all the Cav Plaza wives put together.

‘Useful if there’s a power cut,’ giggled Amber.

Having clocked who was present, Uncle Harley took up his position against a side wall where he could watch both platform, hall and gallery, which was also nearly full up.

There was an equal hiss from Cav Plaza, remembering too many broken windows and missing car radios, as Feral slid in bouncing his football. He was absolutely soaked, his black curls flattened, raindrops leaping off his black lashes and running down his shining face. He had just exchanged a damp high five with Lily and the Brigadier, when Bianca, who’d specially worn a new crimson ra-ra skirt and a shocking pink fake-fur coat, leapt up and waved. It was a year since they’d danced together in
Romeo and Juliet
.

‘Over here, Feral, I’ve kept a seat for you.’

Feral had no option; nor did he want one. Padding up the aisle, drenching people as he wriggled along the row, he dropped into the chair next to heaven.

‘You’re frozen,’ wailed Bianca and, putting his ball under her seat, she whipped off her pink coat and wrapped it round him and everyone whooped and whistled. ‘No, keep it on,’ she cried, doing up the buttons.

Feral beamed.

‘Suits you. Wolf in sheep’s clothing,’ shouted Johnnie Fowler.

Feral rolled his eyes, flung back his head and howled three times. Then he turned to Bianca. ‘How yer doin’?’ And he couldn’t say any more, she was so adorable and gazing at him with such joy, her little shoulders hunched in ecstasy.

‘When are we going to dance again?’

‘Soon,’ said Feral, tapping his feet as Cambola broke into a jazzed-up version of ‘Hark, Hark! the Lark’, because Janna was trying to slink in unobserved, aware she looked rough, ducking to avoid the exploding of flashes. Larks was about to break up for the Easter holidays and there’d been so many loose ends to tie up with children and teachers leaving, she’d had no time to wash her hair, which, lank and out of condition, she’d pulled back off her pale, pinched, face. She was wearing a silk dress the colour of faded bracken and an amber necklace, both of which Hengist had given her.

But he’s not coming, she thought, glancing round the hall in despair and shame that she could think of him when her school was falling round her ears.

‘No comment, for the moment,’ she told the reporters.

‘Miss! Miss!’ Pearl shot out and, dragging Janna into the Ladies, applied coral lipstick and blusher to her blanched cheeks. ‘That fluorescent light really drains you.’

‘It’s my Jane Eyre look.’

‘Triffic turnout,’ said Pearl proudly. ‘My boxer dad’s come; he’s getting pissed with Lily and the Brig.’

‘Thank you, dear Pearl.’ Hitching up her smile two minutes later, Janna braved the hall, moving from parents to teacher to pupil thanking, cheering, encouraging, only accepting a Perrier water so she didn’t lose her rag as she had at the last meeting, before taking her seat in the second row, between Mags and Sophy Belvedon.

As the clock struck half past seven Col Peters, reluctant to wait any longer, trooped on to the platform followed by Cindy, Ashton, Russell Lambert, leading Labour and Lib Dem councillors, and the Bishop of Larkminster, whose window Feral’s football had cracked. To accommodate them all, the Prussian-blue curtains on either side of the platform had to be drawn back even further.