Wicked! (16 page)

Janna always liked people who looked straight at you, but Hengist unnerved her; those amused appraising eyes never left her face. He was just
so
attractive. Determined not to be a partridge to his twelve bore, she went on the offensive.

‘You can’t order venison. Poor deer.’

‘A poor deer got into the garden last night and demolished the remainder of Sally’s roses. He’d have gobbled up your lovely suit in seconds.’

Getting hotter by the minute, Janna was too embarrassed about the make-up on her camisole top to undo her jacket.

‘How did you turn Bagley round?’

‘Fired a lot of masters. Found several old codgers already dead in the staffroom, which saved me the trouble. We were horribly under-subscribed. Every time the telephone rang, it was someone resigning or removing a pupil. The children were running wild.’

‘Sounds familiar.’

‘They’re still pretty wild,’ admitted Hengist. ‘You think you’ve got delinquents at Larks. I’ve got the offspring of celebrities and high achievers, who are often just as neglected and screwed up. The divorce rate among the parents is frighteningly high.

‘My first move was to set off the fire alarm at midnight on my first Saturday of term,’ he went on. ‘Ten Upper Sixth boys were so drunk, they couldn’t get out of bed. In chapel on Monday, I named them all, then fired the lot. The parents, whom I’d alerted, were waiting outside. Then I told the rest of the school, “Your last five days of bad behaviour are up.” I think it shocked them. None of the boys kicked out were very bright,’ he added. ‘One should never fire clever pupils.’

Janna didn’t know how to take this patter. Hengist, like jesting Pilate, flitted from subject to subject, never waiting for an answer.

Then he switched tack, unnerving her further by asking her all about herself, her cottage and about Larks. She was too proud to tell him about the antagonism of the staff, but he was so sympathetic, interested and constructively helpful and the cheese fritters were so delicious, particularly washed down by more champagne, Janna was having such a nice time she was ashamed.

‘How d’you cope with the workload?’ she asked.

‘I have a brilliant PA, Miss Painswick, who’s a dragon to everyone but me and drives my wife Sally crackers. I appointed a deputy head, Alex Bruce, from the maintained system, who understands red tape and I’ve no doubt one day will strangle me with it like Laocoön. He
likes
filling in forms. He’s a friend of your nemesis, Rod Hyde, same awful class. And I’ve got a brilliant bursar, Ian Cartwright; he’s just back from Africa having extracted two years’ unpaid school fees from a Nigerian prince.’

‘With so many people looking after you,’ asked Janna waspishly, ‘what on earth do you find to do?’

‘Given the quality of my staff,’ murmured Hengist, ‘my job consists largely of keeping out of the way,’ and again smiled so sweetly and unrepentantly Janna melted.

‘Do you have many women teachers?’ she asked as she attacked her sole.

‘Alex Bruce’s wife, an Olympic-level pest, teaches religious studies, which includes everything except the Bible. Miss Wormly teaches English and we’ve got a head of science with absolutely no sense of humour, known as “No-Joke Joan”. She also runs our only girls’ house: Boudicca, a “thankless task”. Miss Sweet, the undermatron of Boudicca, takes sex education, poor thing. The girls, who are sexually light years ahead, help her along.’

He’s got a divinely deep husky voice, even if I do disapprove of everything he says, thought Janna, unbuttoning her jacket.

‘You ought to employ more women,’ she said fretfully.

‘I’m sure. You don’t want a job, do you?’

‘I’d rather die than work for an independent school.’ Then, feeling she’d been rude: ‘This sole is wonderful. How can I stop truancy? It’s shocking among the boys.’

‘What do they like best?’

‘After Hallé Berry, probably football.’

‘Start a football club.’

‘We haven’t got any pitches. Lots of land, nearly ten acres, but we can’t afford to have it levelled.’

‘I’ll introduce you to Randal Stancombe. You’re so pretty and he’s so rich, he’ll give you some money.’

‘Do you have a football club at Bagley?’

‘No, we’re a rugger school.’

‘Of course,’ said Janna sarcastically. ‘I suppose you played rugby for
your
school.’

‘Mr Brett-Taylor played rugby for England,’ said Freddie. ‘Everything all right, sir?’

When he’d gone, Janna asked if there were lots of drugs at Bagley.

‘Probably. We only expel on a third offence. Why squander twenty thousand a year? A boy was sacked from Fleetley last week because they found cannabis in his study. He’s expected to get straight As and is an Oxbridge cert, so we took him straightaway. His parents are so grateful, they’ll probably pay for a new sports pavilion.’

‘I can’t afford to exclude,’ said Janna crossly. ‘I get fined five grand every time.’

‘Whatever happened to the word “expel”?’ sighed Hengist. He quoted softly:

‘Shall I come, sweet Love, to thee,

When the evening beams are set?

Shall I not excluded be?’

Stretching out a big suntanned hand, on the little finger of which glinted a big gold signet ring, he gently stroked Janna’s cheek.

‘Pretty, you are. Don’t work yourself into a frazzle over Larks.’

‘Don’t patronize me.’ Blushing furiously, Janna jerked her head away. ‘We’re just hopelessly underfunded. Bloody rural Larkshire. Can you really introduce me to Randal Stancombe?’

‘Of course. Randal wants to build us a vocational wing. When I was young, vocation meant pretty girls becoming nuns and plain ones going off to be missionaries in Africa. Now it means thick boys training to be plumbers and thick girls learning to run travel agencies.’

‘I know what “vocation” means,’ spat Janna. ‘I didn’t know you took any thick children.’

‘Rupert Campbell-Black’s son Xav is destined to get straight Us,’ confessed Hengist. ‘In compensation, it wildly impresses parents to catch a glimpse of Rupert on Speech Day.’

Janna was getting so flushed with drink, she took off her jacket – sod the spilt make-up. People kept stopping at their table to say hello to Hengist, and praise something he’d written in the
Telegraph
or said on television.

Each time, he introduced Janna, then gave the other person twenty dazzling seconds of charm, before saying they must forgive him, but he and Janna had things to discuss.

‘My children aren’t thick,’ protested Janna when they were alone again. ‘They know the players and fixtures of Larkminster Rovers inside out. All I want to do is make a difference to children in a community who don’t have the advantages I had. Education is about empowering children to access parts of themselves they haven’t accessed,’ she concluded sententiously.

Hengist raised an eyebrow. ‘Can it really be English language you teach?’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Janna so loudly lunchers looked round. ‘No, I don’t want any dessert. My teachers stop talking when I come into the room: would I had the same effect on the children. Show them any kindness and they spit and swear at you. But now, the wildest of them all, Feral Jackson, comes to tea with me on Saturdays,’ she added proudly, ‘with Graffi and Paris. Paris is a looked-after kid, I must show you some of his poems, they’re brilliant.’

Poor little duck, she’s adorable when she gets passionate, thought Hengist, only half listening, examining Janna’s glowing freckles, the fox-brown eyes, the full trembling mouth, the piled-up Titian hair, which seemed to want to escape as much as she did. Lovely boobs too, quivering in that pink satin thing.

‘My children have such terrible lives,’ she was saying. ‘My old school, Redfords in the West Riding, was an oasis of warmth and friendliness. I want that at Larks.’ Tears were now pouring down her cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She blew her nose on her napkin.

‘I know your old head, Stew Wilby,’ said Hengist. ‘Met him at conferences. Brilliant man, a visionary but a pragmatist like me.’

He took Janna’s hands, stroking, comforting, as if she were a spaniel frightened by gunfire in one of the sporting prints.

‘I’ll help all I can. S and C Services worry me. I’m not sure they’re kosher.’

‘Ashton Douglas’s vile, and Rod Hyde’s a bully,’ sniffed Janna.

‘Sally likes most people, but she can’t bear him,’ agreed Hengist. ‘Says he’s so pompous and stands too close, with terrible coffee breath.’

‘How did you find someone as lovely as Sally?’ asked Janna wistfully.

‘Have you time for another drink?’ Hengist waved to Freddie.

‘Oh, please. Could I have a gin and orange instead, please?’

Anything, she was appalled to find herself thinking, to extend lunch. Hengist was like the kingfisher or the rainbow, you longed for him to stay longer. Without realizing, she pulled the toggle off her hair.

‘Sally, at twenty-one,’ began Hengist, bringing her back to earth, ‘had so many admirers. She was so pretty – still is – but her father, another head, didn’t approve of me. Thought I was a bit of a rugger-bugger and hellraiser, appalled when I didn’t get a first. Anyway, Sally turned me down. I was devastated. My own father, however, told me not to be a drip. Said Sally was the best girl I was likely to meet, I must try again.

‘So I invited her to the dogs the following night. She wore a pale blue flowing hippy dress. We backed a brindle greyhound called Cheerful Reply. After a drink or two in the bar, we joked that if Cheerful Reply won, Sally would marry me.

‘Darling, it was a photo finish between Cheerful Reply and a dog called Bombay Biscuit. So we had several more drinks and a nail-biting quarter of an hour waiting for the result, which was Cheerful Reply ahead by a shiny black nose.

‘Euphoric, probably at winning all that money, Sally agreed to marry me. I’ve never known such happiness: even better than being selected for England.’

‘Lucky Sally,’ sighed Janna.

‘Lucky me. My parents were living in Cambridge at the time,’ went on Hengist. ‘I took the Green Line bus home, sitting up with the driver, so excited and tanked up, I told him everything and he said:

‘“Isn’t it amazing how racing dogs influence events?” Wasn’t that perfect?’ Hengist burst out laughing. ‘Sally and I have had greyhounds ever since.’

‘What a wonderful story.’ Janna shook her head. ‘I’d love a dog, but I’m out all day.’

‘Take it into school, you’re the head, the children would love it. Homesick children at Bagley are always asking if they can take Elaine, our greyhound, for a walk.’

He waved for the bill. As Janna gulped her gin and orange, he paid with American Express, then got a tenner out of his notecase for Freddie.

‘Thank you so much,’ Janna told the boy. ‘Is this a full-time job?’

‘No, I’m starting at New College next week.’

‘Well done. Where did you go to school?’

‘Bagley Hall,’ said Freddie.

‘One of our nicest boys,’ murmured Hengist as he and Janna went out into the sunshine. ‘His father walked out, so his mother worked all hours to pay the fees.’

‘Why the hell didn’t she send him to a comprehensive?’

‘Because Freddie was happy with us. A lot of our parents are poor,’ said Hengist sharply. ‘They just believe in spending money on their children’s education rather than cars, holidays and second houses.’

Wow, he can bite, thought Janna.

‘Don’t forget your spoon.’ Handing her the box, Hengist smiled down at her. It was as though the sun had shot out from the blackest cloud. ‘Come and see my school,’ he said. ‘Please.’

‘Well, very quickly,’ said Janna ungraciously. ‘I’ll follow you in my car.’

14

I am way over the limit both physically and mentally, thought Janna as, determined to keep up with Hengist, she careered down twisting, narrow, high-walled and high-hedged lanes made slippery by a recent shower of rain.

Bagley Hall, surrounded by exuberant wooded hills, sprawled over a green plain like one of those villages glimpsed from a train where you imagine you might start a thrilling new life.

The school itself was dominated by a big, golden Georgian house, known as the Mansion, which formed one side of a quadrangle. Behind were scattered numerous old and carefully matched modern Cotswold stone buildings, to accommodate 800 pupils and at least 150 staff.

Girls and particularly boys craned to look as Hengist whisked Janna round endless, many of them surprisingly pokey, classrooms. These were compensated for by a library to rival the Bodleian, entire buildings devoted to music or art, a magnificent theatre and a soaring chapel with Burne-Jones windows glowing like captured rainbows.

‘Science etc. is over there.’ Hengist waved dismissively at an ugly pile through the trees. ‘A subject about which I can never get excited; besides, it’s the domain of my deputy head, Alex Bruce.’

Outside, he showed her a swimming pool nearly as big as Windermere, running tracks and a golf course. Smooth green pitches stretched eastwards to infinity. To the north, a large bronze of a fierce-looking general on a splendid charger looked out on to an avenue of limes.