Wicked! (11 page)

Janna smiled and moved on. Rounding the corner, she went slap into Mike Pitts. Obviously tipped off by beady Rowan, he was spluttering to Miss Basket, the menopausal misfit who taught geography.

‘As a dedicated professional for twenty-five years, I’m not having some chit of a young woman sitting in on my lessons.’ Catching sight of Janna, he turned an even deeper shade of magenta.

Miss Basket melted into the Ladies. Janna followed Mike into his office.

‘Could we have a word?’

Mike glanced at the clock. ‘I’m teaching in five minutes.’

Clearly a bit of a handsome dandy, judging by past cartoons of him as a cricketer and footballer on the walls, Mike looked dreadful now: his puffy face as bloodshot as his eyes; snowfalls of scurf on the shoulders of his blazer. Joss sticks glowed on his desk. His hands shook as he fussily shoved papers into a blue folder.

Poor man, thought Janna, I usurped him.

‘We ought to try and get to know each other,’ she stammered. Then, on wild impulse: ‘Would you like to come to supper on Sunday?’

‘My wife and I prefer to forget school at the weekend.’

Janna flushed. ‘Well, perhaps a drink during the week?’

‘Quite frankly, I’m too drained. I find if one has fulfilled one’s professional commitments, socializing at the end of a working day is not on the agenda. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’

Bastard, thought Janna. Feeling the parched earth of a drooping jasmine on the window ledge, she instinctively picked up the green watering can beside it.

‘Don’t,’ yelled Mike, adding hastily, ‘I like to look after my own plants. Women overwater.’

That’s gin in that watering can, thought Janna, catching a whiff.

Mike glared at her, daring her to confront him.

‘We have to work together . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

‘I must go.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ insisted Janna.

In his classroom, they found a sweet-faced Indian girl in a pale blue sari: a teaching assistant who helped the slower pupils, particularly the foreign ones with poor English, by explaining questions to them and showing them how to write the answers. She was now laying out worksheets and consulting an algebra textbook, and told Janna she had been at Larks for four terms. She loved the job because it was so rewarding seeing understanding dawning on the children’s faces and how the slow ones blossomed if you took time to explain things.

‘I’d like to start an after-school maths club.’

‘Wonderful idea. Come and see me.’

‘We must get on,’ interrupted Mike, ‘the students will be here in a minute.’ Tetchily, he handed the Indian girl a page of squares and triangles. ‘Can you get me some marker pens and photostat this?’

‘She’s great,’ said Janna as the girl left the room. ‘What’s her name?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

And Janna flipped. ‘This is disgraceful. She’s the only black teacher in the school, she’s been here a year and you don’t know her name.’

‘She’s only a teaching assistant.’

‘Working her butt off for you and the kids. You ought to know everyone in your department and what they’re up to, and in the school, you’re deputy head, for God’s sake.’

‘I will not be spoken to like that.’

Both jumped at a knock on the door. It was Rowan Merton, dying to find out what was going on.

‘Phone for you, Janna.’

‘I’m busy.’

‘It’s Russell Lambert, our chair of governors. Says its urgent.’

Bitterly regretting her outburst of temper and aware she had made an even more implacable enemy, Janna ran back to her office.

Russell, whom Janna could still only think of as Babar, king of the elephants, head of the Tusk Force, was at his most portentous.

‘Good morning, Janna, bad news I’m afraid. Harry Fitzgerald, head of a school in the north of the county, has had a coronary. Ashton Douglas, head of S and C, has just phoned. They want Phil Pierce to take over as head immediately.’

‘Can’t they take Mike Pitts and his joss sticks?’ wailed Janna unguardedly.

‘You’ll need your deputy head,’ reproved Russell. ‘You’d be very weak on the maths front if Mike goes.’

‘I’ll never survive without you,’ Janna moaned later to Phil, who had the grace to look sheepish.

‘I’m sorry, Janna, I hate to let you down, but I can’t resist the chance to be a head.’

He didn’t add that Janna had been disturbing his sleep recently: she was so brave but so vulnerable. He loved his wife; safer if he took himself out of harm’s way.

‘Anyway, Harry Fitzgerald will probably pull through and I’ll be back in a few weeks.’

‘I’m only cross because Skunk Illingworth will have to be promoted to head of science. He’ll be so up himself. When are you going?’

‘Tomorrow.’

Crispin Thomas from S and C Services rang later.

‘You’re providing a bloody sight more challenge than support, swiping my best teacher,’ stormed Janna.

Crispin laughed fatly. ‘We know, we know. We’re going to send Rod Hyde, the super head from St Jimmy’s, round to give you a hand next week.’

Outside, rain was still tipping down; the awful playground was filling up with puddles.

‘I don’t need Rod Hyde. I was hired to run this joint. Our playground needs a makeover for a start,’ and Janna hung up because of more screams and yells coming from the direction of the history block.

Running into the classroom, Nine E again, she found tin soldiers and a model battlefield scattered all over the floor. Next moment, a display of shrapnel and shell splinters, the collection of Lance, the newly qualified teacher, went flying. Lance and his teaching assistant were cringing in a corner and the appalling Monster Norman, no doubt feeling he had lost face after his fight with Feral yesterday, had taken centre stage as he menaced a terrified sobbing Asian girl.

‘Teacher’s pet, teacher’s pet,’ he hissed. ‘Paki swot, Paki swot.’

His victim was Aysha Khan, who’d made such progress after two terms that Janna had singled her out in assembly.

The children, diverted by fights – this was their theatre – had formed a four-deep circle round the participants.

‘Black rubbish, black shit,’ taunted Monster, then spat in Aysha’s face.

‘Stop that,’ shouted Janna, pushing her way through the crowd, too enraged to be frightened.

Monster, who she noticed had a shadow of moustache on his sweating upper lip, had a lit cigarette in his hand.

‘Go home, fucking Paki bitch,’ he yelled and was about to burn her arm when Janna dragged his hand away, grabbing the cigarette, stamping on it and turning on him.

‘How dare you!’

‘Go on,’ mocked Monster, ‘touch me, hit me, you try it. I’ll get you fired, you’ll never work again, you sad bitch.’

‘You loathsome thug.’ Caution had deserted Janna once more. ‘Get out of here, you revolting bully.’

‘Go on, miss, ’it ’im,’ yelled Pearl.

‘My mum’s a governor.’ Monster’s evil, sallow, pasty face was disintegrating like goat’s cheese in liquid as he gathered saliva in his mouth.

‘I don’t care. Out, out!’

‘Well done, miss,’ cheered the children as Monster, already on his mobile to his mother, pummelled his way out of the classroom.

‘Are you all right, miss?’ asked Kylie Rose. ‘Shall I get you a cup of tea?’

In the doorway, Wally was shaking his head again. ‘When will you learn, Janna?’

A hovering Jason ‘Goldilocks’ Fenton was also highly amused.

‘Wherever you go, there’s a rumpus. So exciting. I might not hand in my notice after all.’

Janna turned on him furiously too. ‘Out,’ she yelled.

She was picking up toy soldiers and sorting out a mortified Lance – ‘I wanted to defend you, but I couldn’t somehow. Not sure I’m cut out to be a teacher’ – when there was a further rumpus in the corridor.

‘Where’s Miss Fucking Curtis?’ bellowed a voice and Monster Norman’s mother, predictably nicknamed ‘Stormin’’, square, massive and enraged, with a whiskery jaw thrust out, came barging in.

‘Why are you always picking on my Martin?’

She raised her fist. Janna got out her mobile.

‘If we can’t discuss this, Mrs Norman, I’m calling the police. Your Martin was sadistically bullying another pupil.’

Only Wally seizing Mrs Norman’s arm stopped her punching Janna in the face.

To Janna’s horror, the following day, two governors (Russell Lambert and Cara Sharpe), Crispin Thomas from S and C and Mike Pitts (as deputy head), overturned Monster’s exclusion, mostly on Cara’s testimony.

‘Martin’s a sweet, caring boy,’ she cooed, ‘I’ve never had any trouble with him.’

‘Nor have I,’ agreed Mike, who was wearing a purple shirt to match his nose as he helped himself to another extra strong mint.

‘He abused Aysha in the most revolting and racist way,’ raged Janna. ‘He terrorizes half his classmates. We’ll never get a happy school with kids like him around.’

‘Don’t forget you incur a hefty five-thousand-pound fine every time you permanently exclude a pupil,’ snuffled fat Crispin, accepting a mint. ‘It’s not as though you’re oversubscribed or rolling in money. You really must be more restrained in your attitude. I’m getting complaints from all over and you’ve only been here three days. Calling Martin a “loathsome thug” is hardly the way to address challenging behaviour.’

Monster was suspended for three days.

The children were devastated when they heard of Phil Pierce’s defection. Their favourite teacher had become just another rat leaving a sinking ship.

9

On Saturday morning, Janna sneaked into Larks to tackle her towering in-tray unobserved by Rowan Merton. Following Stew’s maxim that if anything’s important, people will write a second time, she chucked ninety-five per cent of her ‘bin-tray’ into six black dustbin bags. Perhaps Mike Pitts had a ‘gin-tray’ – he’d locked his office, so she couldn’t check his watering can.

Yesterday afternoon, Miss Cambola had flung open the staffroom door and, rattling the teeth of the Dinosaurs and nearly bringing down the whole crumbling building, sang at the top of her voice: ‘Thank God it’s Friday.’

She had also written on the back of a postcard of Caruso: ‘Congratulations! You have survived a whole week and done well, Regards, Maria Cambola’, reducing Janna to tears of gratitude.

Having fired off thirty emails, mostly thanking people who’d sent her good-luck cards, Janna made the decision to hold a prospective-parents’ evening at the end of the month. This would give her the clout and everyone the incentive to smarten up the school, painting as many classrooms as possible and papering walls and corridors with some decent kids’ work, even if she had to write and draw it herself. Full of excitement, she first wrote copy for an ad in the
Larkminster Gazette
, inviting prospective parents to the event, then secondly, a glowing report of Larks’s progress and plans for the future. These she delivered to the Gazette on the way home.

Earlier in the week, she had rung Mr Blenchley, the care manager of Oaktree Court, Paris’s children’s home, who sounded bullying and humourless and who had a thick clogged voice like leftover lumpy porridge not going down the plughole.

Little Kata from Kosovo was adjusting to the regime, he said, and it was all right for Paris to come to tea with Graffi:

‘But as the lad pleases himself, I doubt he’ll show up.’

It was one of those mellow, hazy afternoons only September can produce. Midges jived idly with thistledown. The field at the end of the village was being ploughed up, two men in yellow tractors sailing back and forth over the Venetian-red earth and waving at Janna as she sat in the garden worrying about her first governors’ meeting on Monday. There was so much that needed tackling: permission to fire three-quarters of the staff for a start.

A flock of red admirals was guzzling sweetness from the long purple stems of a buddleia bush, but ignoring the honeysuckle next door – like pupils flocking to St Jimmy’s and Searston Abbey rather than Larks, she thought sadly. She was just wondering how to galvanize the staff at Monday’s morning briefing when the doorbell rang.

To her delight and amazement, it was Graffi, bringing both Paris and Feral. As they swarmed in, laughing and larky as the players in
Hamlet
, Janna suspected they had been enjoying a spliff or two on the way.

‘How grand to see you. No Kylie and Pearl?’

‘Kylie’s minding baby Cameron,’ said Graffi, ‘giving her mum a day off. Pearl’s got a hairdressing job. Don’t think she’d have got here on those heels, anyway.’

‘Did you walk all the way?’ asked Janna, and then thought: How stupid, how else could they have afforded to come?

Taking Graffi by the arm, she led them down the hall into the kitchen, newly painted buttercup yellow and brightened by good-luck cards and framed children’s drawings.

‘Are you starving? I was planning to give you “high tea”, as we call it in Yorkshire, a bit later,’ she asked, getting out dark green mugs and a big bottle of Coke.