Wicked! (8 page)

Dora sighed and helped herself to blackberries in the hedgerows. Loofah was much too small for her. He’d need lifts soon to stop her feet scraping the ground. He also bucked, sat down and bit people, but she loved him far too much to sell him. Life was very hard when you had so many animal dependants. Dora edged a KitKat out of her jodhpur pocket to share with the two of them. Her mother, Anthea, was always warning Dora she’d get spots and never attract a boyfriend.

Who wanted soppy boyfriends? thought Dora scornfully.

Dora had thick, flaxen plaits and even thicker curly blonde eyelashes, which seemed designed to stop the peak of her hard hat falling over her turned-up nose. Her big eyes were the same drained turquoise as the sky on the horizon. Slender, small for her age, she was redeemed from over-prettiness by a determined chin and a mouth frequently pursed in disapproval.

And Dora had much to disapprove of. Her beautiful mother, Anthea, in appearance all dewy-eyed softness, was in reality catting around with loads of boyfriends, including an awful old judge and a rose-grower – both married – and playing the disconsolate, impoverished widow for all she was worth. Fed up with the school run and anxious to enjoy an unbridled sex life, Anthea clearly wanted Dora out of the way, locked up at Bagley Hall.

The sole plus for Dora was that for several years she had been augmenting her income by leaking stories to the press. Her mother’s romantic attachments had provided excellent copy.

Bagley Hall should prove even more remunerative. Hengist Brett-Taylor, the head, whom her mother fancied almost as much as Rupert Campbell-Black, was never out of the news. Her twin brother Dicky, who’d been boarding since he was eight and was so pretty he was the toast of the rugby fifteen, had torrid tales of the antics of the pupils.

But alas, her chilly eldest brother, Jupiter, as well as being MP for Larkshire, was chairman of the governors at Bagley Hall and, petrified of sleaze, had already given Dora a stern lecture about keeping her Max Clifford tendencies in check: ‘If I hear you’ve been tipping off the press about anyone at Bagley or in the family, particularly me, there’ll be big trouble.’

Jupiter was a beast, reflected Dora, appropriating the family home and all the money when her father died, so Dora, Dicky and their mother Anthea were now crammed into tiny Foxglove Cottage in Bagley village.

Ancient trees stroked the bleached fields with long shadows as Dora reached the outskirts of Larkminster. As she crossed the bridge, the cathedral clock struck eight. Ahead, she could see the beautiful golden houses of the Close, the market and the thriving bustling town. Trotting past St Jimmy’s, the highly successful boys’ school, entering the Shakespeare Estate, Dora was overtaken by an Interflora van heading nervously towards Larks Comp.

No one drove through the Shakespeare Estate by choice because of the glass and needles all over the roads. Screaming and shouting could be heard issuing from broken, boarded-up windows. Discarded fridges and burnt-out cars littered the gardens. An ashen druggie mumbled in the gutter. A gang of youths, hanging round a motorbike, hurled abuse at Dora as she passed.

Dora didn’t care. She called off Cadbury who was taunting a snarling pit bull on a very short lead and looked up enviously at the satellite dishes clustered like black convolvulus on the houses. Her mother was too mean to install Sky in Foxglove Cottage.

Next door to the Shakespeare Estate, as a complete contrast, was a private estate called Cavendish Plaza, which was protected by huge electric gates, security guards and a great abstract in the forecourt, sculpted by Dora’s gallery-owning father’s most awful artist, Colin Casey Andrews, which was enough to frighten off any burglar, thought Dora sourly.

Cavendish Plaza was one of the brainchildren of developer Randal Stancombe, who was slapping houses, shops and supermarkets all over Larkshire and whom her mother also thought was frightfully attractive, but whose hot, devouring, knowing dark eyes made Dora’s flesh crawl.

Cavendish Plaza had its own shops and access to the High Street on the other side. Dora, riding on, came to a chip shop with boarded-up windows and a pub called the Ghost and Castle, then stiffened with interest as she saw the notorious Wolf Pack slouching out of the newsagent’s, loaded up with goodies. Feral Jackson was breaking the cellophane round a chicken tikka sandwich.

Everyone knew Feral. Although not yet fourteen, he was already five feet nine with snake hips, three-foot-wide shoulders and a middle finger permanently jabbing the air. He’d been up before Dora’s mother at the Juvenile Court in the summer for mugging.

‘And gave me such a disgustingly undressing look when we remanded him in custody,’ her mother had complained.

In the end Feral had been sent for a month to a Young Offenders’ Institute, and if he recognized her as her mother’s daughter he’d probably knife her as well. Dora shot off down a side road.

Janna’s arrival at Larks was, in fact, causing universal excitement.

Rod Hyde, head of St Jimmy’s, picked up a magnifying glass to look at a photograph of Janna in the
Larkminster Gazette
. She had nice breasts and an air of confidence that would soon disappear. Pride comes before a fall. Rod Hyde was full of such little homilies. ‘Good schools are like good parents,’ he was always saying, ‘caring and demanding.’

Rod Hyde was very bald but shaved his remaining hair. He had a firm muscular figure, a ginger beard, and believed in exercise and cold baths. St Jimmy’s’ results had been staggeringly good this year and they were edging nearer Bagley Hall in the league tables.

As a local super head, Rod Hyde was certain his friends, who ran S and C Services, would soon send him into Larks on a rescue mission. He would much enjoy giving Janna Curtis guidance.

Randal Stancombe, property developer, finished working out in his rooftop gymnasium. Before having a shower, he picked up his binoculars and looked down with pride on Cavendish Plaza, his beautiful private estate with its mature trees, still-emerald green lawns and swimming pools, where topless tenants were taking advantage of the Indian summer.

Randal’s hands, however, clenched on his binoculars as he turned them towards Larks Comp. He could see all those ruffians straggling in, scrapping, stopping to light fags or worse. Randal’s tenants were constantly complaining about stolen cars and streets paved with chewing gum.

Janna Curtis looked pretty tasty in her photograph in the
Gazette
, decided Randal. She might make bold statements about turning the school round, but this Lark had two broken wings. S and C Services were bound to keep her so short of money, she’d soon be desperate for sponsorship. Interesting to see how long she’d take to approach him. Randal loved having power over women.

Randal’s daughter Jade, a very attractive young lady, rising fourteen years of age, was starting her third year at Bagley Hall and dating a fellow pupil, Cosmo Rannaldini, the son of Dame Hermione Harefield, the globally famous diva. One forked out school fees mainly for the contacts. Randal would soon ask Dame Hermione to open his hypermall outside Birmingham.

Over at Bagley Hall, Hengist Brett-Taylor, who’d just spent five weeks in Umbria to avoid the middle classes and those with new money, was drafting a speech for the new pupils’ parents.

‘May I first issue a very warm welcome to all of you here tonight,’ he wrote. ‘But also point out what will rapidly become clear to you as the years roll by: that the headmaster of Bagley Hall is rather like the figurehead on an old wooden sailing ship. It is vaguely decorative and there is a clear understanding that one really ought to have one if one is to be seen doing the proper thing, but it is of course of absolutely no practical use whatsoever and does nothing.’

Hengist’s glow at nearing the top of the country’s league tables in both A and GCSE levels was slightly dimmed by having to face several more massive hurdles at the start of term. In addition, he had to address the first staff meeting, the first assembly, the drinks party or ‘shout-in’ for new staff, not to mention keynote speeches to new pupils and sixth-formers and finally the first sermon in chapel on Sunday week.

The problem was to avoid repeating oneself or descending into platitudes, which was why Francis Bacon’s essays, full of invigorating epigrams, was open on his desk. Hengist, who was terrified of boredom, was simultaneously drinking black coffee, listening to Brahms Symphony No. 2 on Radio 3, watching a video of Bagley’s first fifteen’s recent tour of South Africa and fondly admiring a white greyhound fast asleep on her back on the window seat.

Thank God all the holiday activities – sport and foreign trips – had passed without mishap. ‘Toff school goes berserk in convent on rugger tour’ could leave a huge clear-up job at the beginning of term.

Hengist gazed out at a sea of green playing fields broken only by the white rugger posts and a little wood, Badger’s Retreat, in the distance, to which he kept adding young trees.

The Brahms had finished. Bagley’s first fifteen had reached half-time. Picking up the
Larkminster Gazette
, Hengist looked at Janna’s picture and shook his head:

‘Poor, poor little lamb to the slaughter.’

The Bishop of Larkminster, on his knees in his bedroom in the Bishop’s Palace overlooking the River Fleet, was praying without much hope that Janna Curtis, only a child herself, would be able to tame those dreadfully disturbed children who came from such appalling backgrounds. Next moment, he jumped out of skin still pink from his bath as a football parted the magnolia grandiflora and crashed against a pane of his Queen Anne window.

Creaking to his feet and bustling to the window, the Bishop caught a glimpse of white teeth like the crescent moon in a wicked laughing black face as, having retrieved his ball, the invader dropped back into the road. Here his companion, with a can of blue paint, was changing the ‘u’ in ‘Please Shut the Gate’ to an ‘i’.

‘Little buggers,’ thundered the Bishop.

The Wolf Pack had no intention of going into school. The grass was too long to play football. So they played in the street. Fists were shaking and windows banged in fury as their ball shed the petals of a yellow rose, then snapped off the head of a tiger lily, before knocking down a row of milk bottles like ninepins.

Feral had finished his chicken sandwich but was still hungry, as he and Paris argued the merits of Arsenal and Liverpool. They once had a fight over whether Thierry Henry was a better player than Michael Owen that had gone on for three days. Feral and Graffi were careful not to mention programmes they had watched last night in front of Paris. Viewing in Paris’s children’s home was strictly limited. The television was switched off at nine and monitored for sex and violence, which meant no
Big Brother
,
EastEnders
, or
The Bill
.

Pearl Smith, in a vile mood, was kicking a Coke tin. One of the few pupils at Larks who looked good in the hard crimson of the school uniform, she wore a skimpy crop top in that colour instead of the regulation sweatshirt. Her arm throbbed where she’d cut herself last night, after her mother’s boyfriend had pushed her across the room for pinching her new baby sister.

Graffi, who’d appropriated another can of paint, was writing ‘Stancombe is an asshole’ on an outside wall of Cavendish Plaza.

‘Very limited vocabulary,’ mocked Paris, opening a stolen bar of Crunchie.

‘Fuck off, professor,’ replied Graffi. ‘Teach me some new words then.’

Feral, meanwhile, had opened a nicked
Larkminster Gazette
and was studying Janna’s picture.

‘Don’t look much,’ snarled Pearl. ‘Crap ’air, crap figure.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Graffi, to wind her up.

Next moment, Kylie Rose, the fifth member of the Wolf Pack, carrying a pregnancy kit stolen from the High Street, joined them.

‘I only got Mum to babysit Cameron by promising I’d go into school,’ she told the others, then, peering at the
Gazette
, ‘A-a-a-a-h. Janna says she’s looking forward to meeting us. Isn’t she pretty?’

‘Let’s go and take the piss,’ said Feral, handing the paper to Paris. ‘Wally might have mowed the grass.’

Feral could do anything with a football and now, seeing Dora Belvedon approaching, drove it between the conker-brown legs of her pony, Loofah, who reared up. Only Dora’s excellent seat kept her in the saddle. Enraged, she rode straight at the Wolf Pack. As he leapt out of the way, Feral slashed at Loofah’s reins with a knife, adding in a hoarse deep voice: ‘Fuck off, you snotty little slag.’

Next moment Cadbury, the Labrador, came storming to the rescue, barking furiously. Feral, who was terrified of dogs, bolted, followed by the others. Only Paris, who protected and looked after Robin, the old fox terrier who lived at his children’s home, stood his ground with hand outstretched, until Cadbury wagged his tail and licked the Crunchie crumbs off his fingers.

He had the palest face Dora had ever seen.

‘Don’t you dare suck up to my dog,’ she yelled.

‘Fuck off, you stuck-up bitch,’ hissed Paris.

His face stayed with Dora. Apart from the curled lip and gelled, spiky hair, he looked like the ghost on the inn sign of the Ghost and Castle.