Wicked! (120 page)

Sally glanced at a very loving photograph in some nightclub and a letter which began: ‘Ah love, let us be true To one another!’ in Hengist’s writing, and threw it aside. Randal had his blue spotted handkerchief at the ready.

‘Get out, you revolting sneak,’ yelled Sally.

‘I could make you happy’ – a squirt of Gold Spot – ‘I can’t bear to see you so alone,’ and Randal had grabbed her, tugging her towards him, burying his full, cruel lips in hers, pressing his muscular body against her.

‘You b-b-bastard,’ screamed Sally.

‘My, you’re a foxy lady,’ panted Stancombe as under her discreet cashmere jumper, he’d discovered splendid breasts, supported by a pale blue lacy bra. Putting his other hand up her tweed skirt, he encountered stockings and suspenders but no panties; remembering Hengist on the answerphone to Ruth: ‘Darling, don’t wear any knickers,’ he added, ‘You know you want it, Sally.’ He would have taken her on the sofa if it hadn’t been for Elaine.

‘I don’t,’ shouted Sally. ‘If you don’t get out I’ll call the police,’ and gathering up Volume One of the
Shorter Oxford Dictionary
, she clipped him round the ears, sending him reeling backwards, splintering an occasional table.

‘Why, you vicious cow . . .’

Rushing to her mistress’s defence, Elaine nipped Randal on the back of his thigh, then darted off as the doorbell rang.

‘GET OUT,’ sobbed Sally.

Randal, in his haste, had not shut the front door properly. Next minute Paris, clutching a half-bottle of Ian’s brandy, marched in. ‘I wanted to see you were OK. Oh, sorry.’

Elaine accompanied Paris, snaking her long nose into his hand, whacking his jeans with her tail.

‘Randal was leaving,’ gasped Sally, hastily reloading her bra and pulling down her jersey.

‘Good,’ said Paris, noticing a trickle of blood flowing from Randal’s forehead.

‘You’ll regret it, Mrs Brett-Taylor. I came offering support,’ shouted Randal, banging the front door behind him.

Paris went to the kitchen and poured Sally a large brandy, which she choked on but which warmed her.

‘What did he want?’

‘To gloat. He brought some hideous flowers.’

‘Bin them.’

‘Not the flowers’ fault, must give them the chance of a few more days of life.’

Sally slumped, shivering, on the sofa. Both Ruth and Janna . . . Oh, Hengist. And he’d sworn after Pippa: never again. Wretchedness was sinking in as his laughing, open, reassuring face looked down at her from Daisy France-Lynch’s charming little portrait on the right of the fireplace . . . Paris, having topped up her glass, was meanwhile consumed with his own concerns.

‘I’m sorry, but no one will tell me the truth. Did Mr Brett-Taylor switch my and Boffin’s papers?’

‘No, he wrote yours. It was a very wrong thing to do. But he knew how brilliant you were and couldn’t bear you not to produce the goods.’

‘So Boffin really did only get a B.’

Paris’s satisfaction, however, was short-lived.

‘According to Dora, who’s been hanging around Painswick’s office, Hengist will be fired if he doesn’t resign, so both Theo and Hengist lost their jobs because of me.’

Paris was deathly white now, trembling in horror.

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘And if Hengist goes, Artie will be next and Ian and Patience will be turfed out.’

‘Theo may well get off.’

‘But Hengist’s career’s ruined.’

‘No, no, there are thousands of things he can do – write his books . . . Oh, God.’ Tears were pouring down Sally’s face; shock was taking over as she knelt by the fire, sweeping up non-existent ashes.

‘What did Stancombe really want?’

‘To badmouth Hengist. Oh, Paris . . .’ Sally wiped her eyes with a sooty hand, ‘I shouldn’t be telling you, but Randal said Hengist had been . . . been . . . having an affaire with Ruth Walton. I didn’t want to believe it, but he produced such a happy photo of Hengist and Janna in Paris.’ She clutched her head. ‘I mean Ruth.’

‘Janna?’ said Paris unthinkingly. ‘That was in Wales.’

‘Then it’s true.’ Picking up the lovely little Staffordshire dog, which had fallen off the occasional table during Randal’s descent, Sally promptly dropped it on the fender where it smashed in a dozen pieces. ‘Oh no, watch out for Elaine’s paws, that was a wedding present.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Clumsily Paris swept up the pieces. ‘I never told anyone. I caught them on the geography field trip. He was at her bedroom window.’

‘So that was why you never came and saw us?’

‘Sort of. Fuck, I never meant to tell you.’ He tipped the fragments into the waste-paper basket.

Sally couldn’t stop crying. Paris wasn’t embarrassed; people had always been crying in the children’s home. He put his arms round her. ‘I’ll look after you. I’m sure they were one-night stands and one thing is certain: Mr Brett-Taylor adores you. Like Brutus, you are his true and honourable wife, as dear to him as the ruddy drops that visit his sad heart.’

‘Oh P-p-p-p-paris.’

He was stroking her hair; Elaine snuggled up on the other end of the sofa, so he stroked her too.

‘You ought to go,’ gulped Sally.

‘Have you got a best friend I can ring?’

‘Not really, Hengist was my best friend.’

Paris felt so sorry for her. He gave her another top-up of brandy, then kissed her juddering mouth very tentatively.

‘Hush, please don’t cry.’

Sally struggled like a captured bird, then went still.

Paris was amazed by the voluptuousness of her body. Sliding his hand up her silken black legs, he encountered shaved pubes, or did women her age go bald down there? It felt smooth, then sticky. Her legs were long and slim and there was only a tiny roll of fat round her waist.

Sally gave a moan as his hand slipped between her legs and slowly, caressingly, moved upwards. The other hand unhooked her bra; out tumbled beautiful, high breasts, still darkened by the Tuscany sun.

‘I always dress up for Hengist when he’s been away,’ she muttered.

For thirty years, only Hengist in his heavyweight strength had made love to her. Paris was Narcissus, Adonis, Endymion, a slender Greek youth with a body and a cock as hard and white as marble. He didn’t give her time to think, because it was the only way he knew of lessening both their anguish. It was quick and, because of his kindness, extraordinarily cathartic.

Afterwards, as if she were Little Dulcie, he removed the rest of her clothes, dressed her in a white cotton nightgown and put her to bed.

‘Got to do my teeth.’

‘Do them in the morning, they won’t fall out.’

Then he filled up a hot-water bottle and found her a sleeping pill in the bathroom cupboard.

‘I don’t take them,’ protested Sally. ‘Hengist tries to cram too much in and has bouts of insomnia.’

‘Take one now.’

Sitting on the bed, Paris stroked her face.

‘Elaine,’ she mumbled.

‘I’ll take her out and see she gets something to eat.’

‘And the poor, hideous flowers.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t feel guilty in the morning. I reckon Hengist owed us.’

She was woken from heavy sleep by the telephone. It was Oriana.

‘Mum, it’s just come over the internet. “Toff school head arrested for cheating”. Is it true?’

Sally shook herself into consciousness.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘What happened? How could Dad?’

Clutching the telephone, Sally wandered groggily downstairs. Paris had put Stancombe’s chrysanthemums in the mauve bucket with which Mrs Cox cleaned the kitchen floor. There was a bowl of untouched cold roast beef beside Elaine.

‘You’re beautiful,’ Paris had written on the hall mirror in marker pen, ‘all the guys fancy you.’

Oriana was still talking: ‘Dad threw up his entire career for one GCSE?’

‘I guess so,’ said Sally, ‘and we’re getting a divorce.’

‘That’s not like you, Mum.’

‘I can cope with cheating but not being cheated on.’

Echoing her father last Christmas, Oriana told the press that ‘when one of your family does something reprehensible, you take it on the chin.’

124

Once Sally demanded a divorce, Hengist seemed to lose any interest in fighting his case. Despite Rupert bringing down an ace barrister to defend him, he refused to offer any excuse. His actions had been unforgivable. He apologized unreservedly for the distress he had caused a great school and particularly his wife and Paris Alvaston. He appeared unmoved when he was subsequently sent down for three months. Life without Sally was such hell anyway, it didn’t much matter whether he was locked up or not. He insisted on no visitors.

Bagley was devastated. Hengist had been hugely popular. He had raised the school’s profile at the same time as his own, and any liberty he had taken with his globe-trotting he had returned in glamour, vision, kindness and fun.

‘“There hath passed away a glory from the earth,”’ sighed Cosmo.

Bagley also loved Sally. They knew how tirelessly she had shored up Hengist, how kind she had been, particularly to the non-teaching staff, how many miserably homesick children she’d comforted, how diligently she’d rammed coronation chicken into square plastic boxes and raced up motorways to organize fundraising dinners.

Now the dream was over. She and Hengist had split up and were to be chucked out of their ravishing house because Poppet and Alex, as acting head, wanted to move ‘their brood’ in before Christmas. Ideally, they would have liked Sally, who’d met Her Majesty on numerous occasions, to be out before the Queen’s visit, but were loath publicly to appear uncaring. Then there was the little hurdle of the next governors’ meeting when, hopefully, Alex would be confirmed as head with a salary of £150,000 a year.

Poppet kept dropping in on Sally to measure up rooms and windows and offer counselling. ‘I’m sure once you leave Bagley, you’ll find it easier to achieve closure.’

‘Should we organize a leaving present?’ she asked Alex. ‘After all, Sally is leaving Hengist and Bagley. Perhaps a small refrigerator or a Dyson; I expect she and Hengist have only one between them.’

‘And who will have custody of Elaine?’ sobbed Dora, who would no longer be able to boost her pocket money and pick up stories waiting at Hengist and Sally’s dinner parties.

‘At least Alex and Poppet won’t need Pickfords to move their lack of furniture,’ drawled Amber. ‘They could probably get it all into Van Dyke. Joan is definitely flavour of the month. Lando’s got her at ten to one to get deputy head rather than Biffo.’

Rumour and suspicion were swirling round like autumn mist. Alex was determined to scrap the school beagles before February 2005, when hunting was bound to become illegal, and close the stables, which pandered to an elitist few and was the centre of subversive activity. He had also introduced a tagging system to ensure pupils were always in the right lesson and safe in their houses by eight o’clock.

‘There’ll be no more shagging in Middle Field,’ sighed Milly as they waited to go into chapel, ‘and Theo won’t be allowed back even if he’s proved innocent. Stancombe’s builders are pulling down the classical library and the archives as we speak. Look what I’ve just found in the skip: Theo’s translation of Medea.’

Paris snatched it. ‘I’ll have that.’

The press had a field day. Ashton Douglas was interviewed at length about his ‘great wegret’ that, against his better judgement, he had allowed Paris Alvaston to be plucked from the security of a care home and thrust into the hothouse atmosphere of a rich decadent public school, where he had had to suffer the humiliation of being cheated for when an exam was beyond his capabilities.

Col Peters’s hatchet job in the
Larkminster Gazette
: ‘The Head that wasn’t there’, picked up by all the nationals, listed Hengist’s away days, leaked by Alex. Alex, photographed very flatteringly, was quoted as saying his goal was to put Bagley back on the rails and engage with the wider community.

In the same
Gazette
there was a profile of Ashton Douglas, entitled ‘Schools Saviour’, with a picture of him accepting a cheque from Randal Stancombe for £25,000,000 for the sale of Larks High School, which would go towards the education of Larkshire’s children. Randal was quoted as saying he had very exciting plans for the area, including health and sports centres, playgrounds, a row of shops, even a police station for the Shakespeare Estate.

Nudged by Randal, Alex had immediately axed all Hengist’s plans for the Queen’s visit, liaising with the Lord Lieutenant and the royal household and guaranteeing Randal as much access to Her Majesty on the day as possible.

‘Engaging with the community’, Alex had also invited a lot of local movers and shakers to meet the Queen, but had pointedly left out Artie, Ian and Patience and, more seriously, Biffo, who was even more upset when he saw the agenda for the next governors’ meeting and discovered he was not being put forward for deputy head.

‘You promised me this, Alex, when I supported you over the Theo business.’