Wicked! (23 page)

‘I’ll slide down your banister any time,’ murmured Mrs Walton.

‘How about making a generous donation to Larkminster Comp?’ asked Emlyn idly. ‘And give them a minibus.’

‘Oh, hush,’ said Janna, blushes surging up her freckles.

‘What a good idea.’ Mrs Walton smiled. ‘Then they could name the bus after you.’

‘Even a second-hand one,’ suggested Hengist. ‘If Larks is bonding with Bagley, they’ll need transport.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Oh, go on, Randal,’ cooed Mrs Walton.

Stancombe was trapped. A muscle was rippling his bronzed cheek, but he was so anxious to impress her.

‘Right, you’re on, Jan.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ gasped Janna. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘Make a note of it, so you don’t forget,’ insisted Mrs Walton.

‘Larks minibus,’ wrote Stancombe on his palmtop, then looked across at Mrs Walton, the hunter setting the deer in his sights. ‘You owe me,’ he mouthed.

‘I hope he won’t pull out of this science block,’ whispered Hengist. ‘Alex Bruce insists it’ll look good on the prospectus, but oh dear me, builders in hard hats here for over a year and a sea of mud. I’ll probably have to take Stancombe’s dunderhead son as a quid pro quo, but I’m not having him on my board. And if he wants to get into Boodle’s, he’ll have to buy the building.’

‘Why are you so ungrateful?’ asked a shocked Janna.

‘At heart, I don’t trust him.’

A vibration in Stancombe’s trouser pocket signalled an incoming call. Fascinated by Stancombe’s mobile, the very latest model, which could actually take pictures and even flashed up on the screen a little photograph of who was calling, Dora shimmied forward to offer Stancombe more wine. Then she nearly dropped the bottle as a disgusting photo of a naked blonde with her legs apart indicated one of Stancombe’s girlfriends was on the line. Stancombe hastily killed the call, and started taking photographs of everyone at the table, which gave him the excuse to immortalize Mrs Walton.

All the same, thought Dora, it was a wonderful invention and would hugely help her journalistic investigations to have a little camera inside her mobile. What a good thing too that revolting Stancombe was off his grub. His untouched beef would make a terrific doggie bag for Cadbury, who didn’t like caviar.

‘My daughter Jade is in a relationship with Cosmo Rannaldini, Dame Hermione Harefield’s son,’ Stancombe was proudly telling Mrs Walton. ‘Dame Hermione was very gracious when Jade went to visit. As Milly and Jade are good friends,’ he continued, ‘I hope you’ll be able to make a long weekend skiing before Christmas.’

‘I’m sure we could fit it in.’ Mrs Walton’s exquisite complexion flushed up so gently, Stancombe could just imagine her generous, sensual mouth round his cock.

‘Come home with me tonight,’ he whispered.

‘I can’t really, Sally’s offered me a bed.’

‘It’s awfully kind of you to offer us a minibus,’ Janna told him when he finally tore himself away to talk to her. ‘I hope you haven’t been compromised.’

‘No way, I come from a poor family myself, Jan, seven of us in a tiny flat. Your kids deserve a leg-up.’

‘I’m particularly grateful for Feral Jackson’s sake . . .’ began Janna.

Stancombe choked on his drink. He’d been so knocked sideways by Mrs Walton, he’d been manoeuvred, without realizing it, into benefiting his bête noire Feral Jackson, who rampaged through the Shakespeare Estate and nearby Cavendish Plaza terrifying tenants and, only this evening, chucking around lighted fireworks.

Twigging he wasn’t exactly flavour of the month, Janna suggested Feral would behave much better if he had a focus in his life.

‘It’d better not be my Jade,’ snarled Stancombe.

‘Rugger channels boys’ aggression in an awfully positive way,’ said Sally, scenting trouble.

Fortunately Stancombe was distracted by Dora. He liked her shrill little voice, her gaucheness, untouched by masculine hand, her antagonism, her tiny breasts pushing through her blue dress, her figure which hadn’t yet decided what it was going to do with itself. He wondered if she had any pubic hairs yet. He’d met Anthea, her mother, at Speech Day, a tiny, very pretty lady. Dora was larger than her mother already. That sort of thing made a young girl feel lumpy and elephantine. Dora would benefit from a little attention.

Dora was serving white chocolate mousse with raspberry sauce when she noticed Stancombe’s hand burrowing under Mrs Walton’s green silk skirt and was so shocked she piled an Everest of mousse on to Mrs Walton’s plate.

‘Heavens, Dora,’ cried Mrs Walton, tipping half of it on to Stancombe’s plate, ‘are you trying to fatten me up?’

Dora watched appalled as Stancombe removed his hand to spoon up his mousse, then shoved it back up Mrs Walton’s skirt.

Marching furiously back to the kitchen, Dora made another note on the pad in her coat pocket, before returning with a brimming finger bowl, which she plonked in front of Stancombe. ‘Like one of these?’ she hissed.

Emlyn glanced over and roared with laughter. Everyone else was distracted by a querulous knock on the door.

One of Hengist’s tricks for keeping people on the jump was to exclude from dinner parties those who felt they should have been invited. A case in point was his deputy head: Alex Bruce, a fussy-looking man with spectacles and a thin, dark beard which ran round his chin into his brushed back hair, edging his peevish face like an oval picture frame. He now came bustling in:

‘A word please, Senior Team Leader.’

‘It can’t be that important.’ Hengist patted a chair. ‘Have a drink and sit down. You know everyone except Janna Curtis, the marvellous new head at Larks. Janna, this is Alex Bruce, the superpower behind the throne.’

Alex nodded coldly at her, and even more coldly at Mrs Walton, whose presence on the board, making things easy for Hengist and Jupiter, he bitterly resented.

This must be Hengist’s cross, thought Janna, the man he feared was going to strangle him in red tape. He certainly looked cross now.

‘Joan Johnson’s just been on the phone,’ Alex told Hengist. ‘She caught Amber Lloyd-Foxe and Cosmo Rannaldini snorting cocaine. Dame Hermione was incommunicado when I tried to call, but I took the liberty of suspending Amber Lloyd-Foxe. When I phoned her mother, Jane, she complained it was the middle of the night – it’s actually only eleven-thirty – and when I appraised her of the situation, she said: “How lovely, Amber can come to the Seychelles with us.” I don’t believe Jane Lloyd-Foxe was entirely sober; anyway she refused to drive over and collect Amber.’

Typical, uncaring, public-school parent, thought Janna disapprovingly.

‘I’m afraid I hit the roof, Senior Team Leader,’ went on Alex.

Cosmo Rannaldini up to no good with Amber Lloyd-Foxe? Randal was also looking furious: was his precious Jade being cheated on?

‘Shall we go upstairs?’ said Sally, glancing round at the women.

Do they still keep up that ritual? thought Janna, outraged to be dragged away, particularly when she heard Alex recommending exclusion, and Hengist replying in horror that Cosmo was an Oxbridge cert.

21

Upstairs, Sally drew Janna aside on to the blue rose-patterned window seat. ‘My dear, it’s so nice you’re here. Jolly tough assignment, Larks, but I’m sure you’ll crack it. You will come to me if I can be of any help?’

Advise me how not to fancy your husband, thought Janna.

‘I’m so glad you got on with Emlyn,’ went on Sally. ‘You must go to the cinema with him and some of the other young masters. I’m awfully fond of naughty little Piers. And you must meet our daughter.’ Sally pointed to a photograph in a silver frame on the dressing table.

‘Oriana Taylor,’ gasped Janna. ‘My God! But she’s an icon. So brave and so brilliant during September the eleventh and the war in Afghanistan. Hengist never said she was her. I didn’t realize. I’d die to meet her, and so would our kids.’

‘We must arrange something next time she’s home. Oriana is rather left-wing,’ confessed Sally. ‘Bit of a trial for her father. Having profited from a first-rate education, she now thinks we’re horribly elitist.’ Sally smiled. ‘I expect you do too. She gets into dreadful arguments with Hengist.’

‘Does she live in New York full time?’ asked Janna.

Sally nodded: ‘We had a son; he died.’ Oh, the sadness of those flat monosyllables. Sally pointed to a photograph of a beautiful blond boy with Hengist’s dark eyes. ‘So Hengist misses her dreadfully.’

‘I’m so terribly sorry,’ mumbled Janna.

‘I know you are,’ said Sally. ‘I’m just nipping downstairs to organize drinks and coffee and pay Dora.’

After that, Janna sat on Sally’s four-poster and talked to Mrs Walton, who was really a joy to look at and to smell – great wafts of scent rising like incense from her body.

‘Emlyn’s very attractive, isn’t he?’

‘Extremely, but sadly spoken for.’

‘He is?’ asked Janna in disappointment.

‘He’s going to marry Hengist’s daughter Oriana.’

‘A shrewd career move – lucky Oriana.’

‘Lucky indeed. Emlyn’s so bats about her he agreed to wait until she’d tried being a foreign correspondent. Alas, she’s been so good at it, she seems to have lost any desire to settle down.’

‘Oh, poor Emlyn.’

‘Sally isn’t that displeased by the turn of events; she doesn’t think Emlyn’s quite good enough,’ confided Mrs Walton as she repainted her lips a luscious coral. ‘Despite his amiability, he’s very left-wing. Hates the Tories, hates the royal family, and hates rich spoilt children. He didn’t get a first either, although he’s a wonderful teacher. Hengist dotes on him. They have rugger in common, but Sally feels that macho Welsh rugger bugger tradition isn’t for Oriana – she needs someone more subtle and better bred. Sally tries not to show it because she’s such a gent,’ went on Mrs Walton, ‘but she also feels Oriana isn’t bats enough about Emlyn. I mean, if you had a hunk like that, would you base yourself in New York pursuing all those terrifying assignments?’

Sally wants me to go to the cinema with Emlyn because she knows I fancy Hengist rotten, decided Janna, and if I get off with Emlyn it will free Oriana and get me out of Hengist’s hair.

Suddenly, she felt very tired. ‘I must go.’

‘Let’s have lunch,’ said Mrs Walton.

‘I can’t really get away.’

‘Well, come to supper then.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘I’ll ring you at Larks.’

At that moment Mrs Walton’s mobile rang. It was Stancombe from downstairs.

‘I’ll call you,’ she mouthed at Janna.

How can I ever have enough of love and life, thought Janna as she put on her dreary green cardigan.

Downstairs, she found Jupiter talking to Hengist, who had lucky Elaine stretched out on the sofa beside him with her head in his lap.

Sheena, having dispatched Rufus home to relieve the babysitter, was arguing with Piers and waiting to get a lift from Stancombe who was still on his mobile.

Then Janna started to laugh.

‘All part of our caring ethos,’ Gillian Grimston was droning on to Emlyn, who had fallen asleep in an armchair.

‘Caring Ethos,’ mused Hengist. ‘Sounds like a fifth Musketeer, the priggish older brother of Athos or Porthos. Caring Ethos.’ He smiled at Janna, gently setting aside Elaine’s head so he could get up. ‘Have a drink.’

‘I’m off,’ she said, ‘I’ll drive very slowly.’

‘You will not, you’ve had a horrid shock. Emlyn is going to take you,’ said Sally firmly.

As they left, Hengist imitated the Family Tree, standing big, strong and dark behind Sally’s fairness, his arms wrapped around her: we are an item.

‘Will you be home tomorrow afternoon?’ he asked Janna. ‘I’ll drive your car back, and we can discuss where we go from here – put Saturday night in your diary.’

Everything out in the open, so unlike Stew, thought an utterly confused Janna.

‘I’d like a word, Sheena,’ said Sally as she closed the front door.

Trees brandished their remaining leaves in the wind like tattered orange and yellow banners. Janna tried to quiz Emlyn about Hengist and Sally but, guilty he’d spent half-term and so much money in New York with Oriana rather than with his mother and sick father in Wales, he was uncommunicative.

He didn’t say much but he was sweet to make a long detour into Larkminster via the Animal Hospital. The little dog hadn’t come round from the anaesthetic, said the nurse, but should pull through. They had saved the eye but probably not the tail.

He’d need to spend a few days in hospital.

‘And then I’ll come and collect him,’ said Janna.

I’m going to call him Partner, she decided, then if anyone asks me if I’ve got a partner, I can say yes.

Most of the Sundays carried lurid accounts of Amber Lloyd-Foxe and Cosmo Rannaldini being suspended for drugs, and everyone blamed the leak on Sheena Anderson.

22

Janna knew that if confronted Monster and Satan would deny torturing Partner. Instead she decided to unnerve them by relating the incident in detail at assembly the following Monday.