Wicked! (100 page)

With Stormin’ Norman on the sidelines yelling the heroes on, Larks was gradually transformed into a ‘lean, mean, killing machine’.

100

Hengist meanwhile, aware that Bagley needed to do more to bond with the community, challenged Larks to a fun charity rugby match on the last Sunday of term.

Randal Stancombe, as Larks’s increasingly self-confessed backer, immediately donated a rugby ball in gold plate, on which the name of the winning team would be engraved.

‘And when you move on to your next school,’ he told Janna, ‘you must carry on the fixture,’ murmuring that he had great plans for a new school on the water meadows below the Cathedral, ‘a city academy, which you would run.’

Janna couldn’t fail to be flattered and although Randal gave her the creeps since their hideous sexual encounter back in September, she had to recognize that with the £120,000, the rebuilding of Appletree and the minibus, which could now take half the school to matches or outings, he had provided fantastic support. So she smiled over gritted teeth when he popped in to show off her brave experiment to high-powered friends, hinting she’d never have pulled it off without his six figure leg-up.

Emlyn detested Randal sauntering in as though he owned the place. As if he could possibly build a school on the water meadows, when they were well below the flood plain. Randal was far more likely to flatten the Shakespeare Estate.

Nor did Randal miss an opportunity to drop in on Taggie’s classes. Lady Belvedon might be the blow-job queen, but Mrs Campbell-Black was the stuff of dreams and far too sweet to patronize or put him down as Anthea often did.

‘How’s your hubby’s GCSE going?’

‘He’s working very hard,’ sighed Taggie.

Taggie had another admirer, Pete Wainwright, the new Larks Rovers under-manager, a bluff, tough Lancastrian, with whom she’d been liaising over her class’s coursework. As well as lunch in the director’s boxes, this included a pre-match meal for the players and snacks for the crowd.

Pete Wainwright was so impressed, he was thinking of adopting Taggie’s menus for the club. Taggie, in turn, was determined ‘to screw her courage’ (a phrase that came from one of Rupert’s set books) to ask Pete to give Feral a trial.

Despite Taggie’s success at work, things were not easy at home. Rupert, displaying the same competitive streak that took him to the top as a showjumper and an owner-trainer, was hell bent on winning his bet. Having ploughed his mocks, he had given up drink for Lent and incessantly mugged up his set books as hounds checked between coverts or his helicopter flew him to race meetings round Europe.

Xav seemed much happier, although in despair that Aysha, having completed her coursework in record time, had reluctantly gone back to Pakistan to meet her future husband. Xav was also panicking about the proposed match against Bagley. Would they flay him alive?

Taggie was more worried about Bianca who, on the occasions she came home, was moody and detached: the dancing sunbeam permanently hidden behind dark clouds. Over half-term she’d shut herself away in her room. On the Sunday afternoon, Taggie was wearily clearing away lunch and planning her lesson for tomorrow: ‘a cake for a celebration: christening, birthday or wedding’, when Bianca rushed in in tears.

‘Darling! Whatever’s the matter?’

‘I don’t want to go back to Bagley tomorrow.’

‘Oh, angel.’ Taggie’s heart leapt guiltily: how blissful if Bianca had decided to go back to being a day girl. ‘Whyever not?’

‘Because I want to go back tonight,’ sobbed Bianca, ‘but bloody Daddy’s so busy writing an essay on
Pride and Prejudice
he’ll only take me first thing tomorrow morning. He says I’m obsessed with boys, like Lydia Bennet.’

With the lighter evenings, Bianca had made plans on her return to drug Jade Stancombe’s cocoa, climb out of her dormitory window and run to Middle Field, straight into Paris’s arms. The effort required for the two of them to be alone added frisson to their affaire. They had made love in Plover’s loose box, behind the bicycle shed, in the science lab and the boathouse and had somehow escaped discovery.

Bianca adored Paris; she was reduced to jelly when their eyes met in chapel, or their hands clasped in the corridor. But she found him very difficult to talk to. He was wonderful at making love, his touch so sure and tender, but he was undemonstrative; he told her that she was beautiful, but never that he loved her. There was a detachment and cool about him that fascinated while intimidating her. He was so clever: he sent her witty text messages, wrote her poems she didn’t understand and he was always reading. Bianca, who never read, liked chatting, dancing and shopping. It was also impossible to escape Dora who, like a dog suspecting its owners are about to go out, clung ever closer.

Paris had been devastated by Emlyn’s departure. Rugby, such a release of aggression, had lost much of its charm. He could always talk to Emlyn, who understood the demons and anger lurking beneath the surface.

Hengist, stung by Oriana’s accusations that he’d given up teaching, was now taking the Upper Fifth’s history set abandoned by Emlyn. This was a revelation to the pupils because he made the subject so vivid and amusing. On one occasion, they acted out the Munich Conference. Boffin, with his supercilious, toothy face, made the perfect Chamberlain, Lubemir was Mussolini, and the nasty German diplomat demanding more and more of Czechoslovakia was naturally Cosmo.

Lessons went in a flash. Paris wanted to tape every word. You could hear the tramp of jackboots, smell the gas of the concentration camps as Hengist built up the nightmare menace of Nazi Germany.

Hengist, desperately missing Oriana, found great solace in teaching Paris. So did Theo, whose back grew increasingly painful as he laboured to finish Sophocles, but was somehow soothed as he and Paris talked long into the night, devouring the great classical writers.

Obsessed with work, Paris had less time for either Bianca or Dora, but he still went back to the Old Coach House on Sundays, shutting himself in his room to read and work and never too busy to admit Dulcie and Northcliffe, who both loved nothing better than to curl up on his bed.

Paris’s over-active imagination was invariably triggered off by things he read. When a Sunday tabloid, early in March, claimed that badly abused children often torture animals and abuse smaller children, he grew utterly distraught, banishing a tearful Dulcie, pushing away a bewildered Northcliffe, terrified of harming them, before trashing his room.

Ian, under continuing pressure from Alex Bruce, was fed up with Paris and increasingly muttering about returning him to care. Only last week, when he had merely removed a leaf from the boy’s hair, Paris had clenched his fists and nearly thumped him.

This terrified Patience. As Paris was doing
Macbeth
for GCSE coursework, in a desperate attempt to cheer him up and provide him with inspiration, she drove him, on the third Saturday in March, to see a Royal Shakespeare performance. Paris, who’d wanted to slope off and see Bianca, hardly spoke and listened to a tape of
Lord of the Flies
all the way there.

Poor Patience, no intellectual, was desperately tired and, despite the thunderclaps and battle din, fought sleep throughout the play. She was worried Paris minded being seen in public with such an old scarecrow and tried to keep her raucous voice down. When they went to the bar in the interval, lots of people gazed at the white beauty of Paris in his severe dark grey school suit and then at her, pondering the connection. She had ordered half a bottle of white and some smoked salmon sandwiches, cobwebbed in cellophane, and thought what a ghastly middle-class, middle-aged thing to do.

‘“Screw your courage”, “Is this a dagger”? We always intoned, “Out, damned spot!” when we had spots at school.
Macbeth
’s so full of quotations,’ she gabbled, desperate to keep the conversation going.

Paris answered in monosyllables. Patience longed to get tanked up, but she had to drive home. Conscious of Paris’s set, white face beside her on the return journey, she was filled with despair. Ian was right. It wasn’t working. He clearly loathed living with them. A small voice inside her also said: He might be more grateful.

It was after midnight when they reached home, greeted by a grinning, sleepy-eyed, singing Northcliffe.

‘I do hope the play didn’t upset you too much,’ said Patience. ‘It is very harrowing and so sad at the end.’

As Paris went towards the door, she asked if there was anything about it he’d particularly liked.

‘The bogs in the theatre were nice,’ muttered Paris and shot upstairs.

Patience went out to check the horses, who at least whickered and were pleased to see her, even when she sobbed into Plover’s dappled grey shoulder. When she finally came to bed, she found Ian in a martyred heap. ‘Of course I haven’t slept, I’ve been worried stiff about you on those roads.’

Next day was Mothering Sunday – a traditional day for children in care to go berserk because they were made so aware of not having a mother around. Remembering last year’s hysterical scenes, when Paris had broken up his room yet again, screaming how he missed his mother and that Ian hated him and anyway, Ian and Patience were so old, they’d die soon and he’d be sent to another foster home, Patience steeled herself.

She’d fed the horses and, as it was a mild day, turned them out in their rugs. She was simultaneously frying bacon, grilling sausages and mushrooms and emptying the bins when Paris walked in. Grabbing the black bin bag and taking it to the dustbins outside, he dropped an envelope on the kitchen table.

He’s leaving, thought Patience in panic, oh please God no, but, opening the letter with trembling hands, she found a Mother’s Day card of shocking pink roses, with the words ‘To a Wonderful Mother’ on the front.

‘Dear Patience,’ Paris had written inside. ‘Thank you for
Macbeth
. It was so awesome I couldn’t speak afterwards. Love, Paris’.

She had to read it three times before the words swam before her eyes, then she broke into noisy sobs.

‘I’m sorry.’ An appalled Paris, returning, snatched the card from her. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘No, no.’ With one large, red hand, Patience reached for the kitchen roll, with the other she snatched back her card.

‘It’s the most wonderful thing that ever happened. It’s just unexpected, that’s all. I was worried we were old and boring and you didn’t like living here.’

Paris shrugged. ‘Well, I do.’

‘We want you to stay with us more than anything,’ muttered Patience. ‘We’ve tried to act cool because we didn’t want to frighten you or make you feel claustrophobic.’

Paris said nothing, but his normally ashen face was flooded with colour.

They were brought back to earth by the smell of burning sausages. Next moment Dulcie marched in with the little wheelbarrow given her by the builders working on the Randal Stancombe science block. Today it was full of sand.

‘Those men better get their arses into gear,’ announced Dulcie, ‘or the building won’t be fucking ready in time.’

Patience turned to retrieve the sausages and Paris rescued the bacon on the Aga, both trying to hide their laughter, which diffused the situation.

101

The match between Larks and Bagley’s third fifteen took place a week later, on an unexpectedly mild evening. Unbeaten all term, Bagley regarded victory as so certain that the entire team had raging hangovers from a tarts and vicars party the night before. For those in need of succour, Cosmo, still in his dog collar, was circulating with a big brown jug frothing with Alka-Seltzer.

‘Attila the Hunk can’t work miracles,’ he said bitchily, ‘even if he does have scores to settle.’

‘It’ll be more than fifty–nil,’ said Lando, who hadn’t bothered to wash off his tart’s eyeliner and scarlet lipstick. ‘I’ve had a bet.’

Over at Larks, Xav was refusing to get on the bus.

‘Please don’t make me go back to Bagley,’ he begged Emlyn. ‘They’ll lynch me for bullying Dicky.’

‘Not if I’m around. You’re the only player with big match experience, who knows the capabilities of the Bagley team.’

As a V-sign to Alex Bruce, who’d sacked them both, Emlyn had made Xav captain. It had been worth it to see the terror and delight on Xav’s broad, normally impassive face.

Now terror predominated.

‘Cosmo and Lubemir are in the team, they’ll bury me.’

‘Feral’s the one they’ll try and bury. You’ve got to be there for him, to stop him losing his rag. He didn’t sleep last night.’

‘Nor did I,’ grumbled Xav.

Feral ricocheted between longing and panic. Pete Wainwright from Larkminster Rovers was coming to the match and, if impressed, might offer Feral a trial. He might also see Bianca again. Agonizing rumours had filtered through that she and Paris were an item. How could he not murder Paris?

Under his cheerful air of imperturbability, Emlyn was churning worse than his team at the prospect of returning to Bagley, ‘the land of lost content’, where he’d been so happy and hopeful and so hurt and humiliated by Oriana’s coming out. Hengist wouldn’t miss an opportunity to emphasize the good he was doing for the community, so the press would be out in force – raking things up.