Wicked! (27 page)

In agony, Paris noticed her swollen, reddened eyes, ringed by vestiges of Pearl’s eyeliner, and loved her more than ever. Had she had bad news? He’d kill anyone who hurt her. Instead he knelt down by the sofa and began to coax out the little dog.

‘Come on, good boy.’ At least Graffi could string out a few more afternoons adding Partner to the mural.

Janna took a reviving slug of sloe gin. ‘You must all speak very quietly,’ she begged, ‘and avoid any sudden movements. Partner’s scared of humans.’

‘And I’m scared of dogs,’ said Feral, keeping his distance and defiantly bouncing his football.

‘It’s lovely to see you again,’ Janna told him, but noticed in dismay a purple bruise on his cheekbone and that one of his eyes had closed up. She prayed that Uncle Harley hadn’t done him over. He was wary of her today, with no sign of that wide, charming, dodgy, insouciant smile.

Later, when conversation moved on to the subject of films, Janna asked if anyone had seen
Shrek
. They all shook their heads, which meant Uncle Harley had lied about Feral’s mother taking Feral and the other children to the cinema last night.

While Graffi got down to work, Pearl, her shiny black eyes darting, wanted to hear all about last night. Janna told her, omitting the indecent proposal from Uncle Harley, the row with Col Peters, the attempted wine-drenching of Cindy Payne and the screaming match with Hengist.

‘Everyone thought I looked fantastic. Lots of people didn’t recognize me. Others who’d previously ignored me were all over me. I felt like a princess.’

‘Meet any nice guys?’ said Pearl.

Shut up, Paris wanted to scream.

‘Think there’ll be anything in the paper?’

‘Well, they took my picture with Hengist B-T and he told a reporter about your brilliant make-up.’

‘Nice guy, Hengist,’ observed Graffi, mixing rose madder with burnt sienna to paint in a copper beech. ‘Like to see him again.’

‘Knowing the
Gazette
,’ said Janna quickly, ‘they’re bound to print the most hideous pictures, but I’ll try and get some prints. I’m afraid I spilt wine over your mother’s lovely dress and left the shawl behind. I’ll get it dry-cleaned.’

‘Don’t matter,’ said Pearl.

‘Probably nicked,’ murmured a grinning Graffi.

‘Shurrup,’ snarled Pearl.

Feral was examining the mural. It had come on since his last visit, with a wedding spilling out of the cathedral, dog walkers in the water meadows and otters and fish in the turquoise river.

‘It’s cool,’ he said, then, aggressively bouncing his football, sent Partner under the sofa again.

‘Stop it, you’re scaring the dog.’ There was such ice in Paris’s voice and eyes that Feral stopped.

‘Why don’t you play in the garden?’ suggested Janna.

Lily struggled to her feet. ‘I’m off to watch Arsenal. You coming, Feral?’

Janna was feeling really ill – perhaps Ashton had spiked her drink. She wasn’t up to cooking for this lot and there was nothing in the fridge except Partner’s cold chicken.

‘How’d you like a Chinese?’

‘Wicked,’ said Pearl. ‘I’ll come and help you.’

Paris could have knifed her.

Looking at Pearl’s heels, Janna decided to drive.

‘Why don’t you come with us?’ Pearl asked Paris.

‘I’ll stay with the dog,’ said Paris sulkily.

‘Oh, would you?’ Janna’s face lit up. ‘He’s really taken to you. You’re an angel.’

Paris thought he would live after all.

The increasingly bare woods seemed to have been invaded by swarms of yellow and orange butterflies as leaves drifted down. The sun was already sinking.

‘Everywhere you look, the colours make you want to be a fashion designer,’ observed Pearl as they drove towards Larkminster.

‘I met Feral’s Uncle Harley last night,’ said Janna.

There was a long pause, then Pearl said, ‘He’s not a real uncle. He’s kind of scary, laughing one moment, crazy wiv rage the next. People say he’s got Feral’s mother hooked on crack’ – her voice faltered – ‘so he can do what he likes wiv her.’

Listen, listen, listen, Janna urged herself, let Pearl stumble into more indiscretion.

‘Don’t tell anyone I told you, miss, but Harley’s the Shakespeare Estate supplier. Also collects rents for Randal Stancombe. You don’t want to be late paying or Uncle Harley cuts you up.’ White-knuckled, Pearl’s little hands were clenched on her thin thighs.

‘He seemed keen for Feral to stop truanting.’

‘Only so Feral can push drugs. ’Spect he heard about us bonding wiv Bagley. Means Feral’ll have access to rich kids.’

Oh dear. Hengist had said the same thing.

‘Uncle Harley gave Feral’s brother Joey a gun for his sixteenth birfday, same as a deaf warrant. You didn’t hear this from me, miss.’

As they waited outside the Chinese takeaway for their order, which included a double portion of sweet and sour prawns for Feral, Pearl grew more expansive.

‘My boxer dad got a prison sentence for burglary, feeding a drug habit. He’s convinced Harley shopped him. Last year’ – Pearl lowered her voice, shiny robin’s eyes darting round for eavesdroppers – ‘Feral ran away because Uncle Harley beat him to a pulp. No one went looking for him. Frozen, bleeding to death and half starving, he was forced to crawl home. He’s so proud, Feral. Never asks for help, feels he’s got nuffink to offer in return. Don’t say anyfing, miss. I’m not supposed to know these fings, picked them up, listening.’

‘You’ve been so helpful, Pearl, this’ll be our secret.’

‘Did they really like my make-up?’ asked Pearl.

When they got back to the cottage, Partner only barked once, wagging his tail as Janna went into the sitting room but staying put on the sofa beside Paris.

‘Oh look,’ shrieked Pearl. ‘Sorry, sorry, Partner,’ she whispered. ‘Graffi’s drawn him into the fields wiv you, miss. You’ve both got the same colour hair.’ Then she started to giggle because Graffi had painted in Mike Pitts, Cara, Skunk and Robbie: instantly recognizable as gargoyles.

Janna tried to look reproving. ‘I’ll never be able to ask any of them for a drink now. Did anyone ring?’

Paris shook his head, noticing how she kept checking her mobile for messages and how she now pounced on the telephone when it rang.

Janna felt herself winded by disappointment when, instead of Hengist, it was the shrill voice of Dora Belvedon.

‘You probably don’t remember me, Miss Curtis. I was waiting at table when you came to dinner with Mr and Mrs Brett-Taylor and we met by the lake. I’m having tea with my Aunt Lily, she says your new dog has arrived. Could I come and see him and bring your shawl back? And I’ve got a letter for you from Mr Brett-Taylor . . . Miss Curtis?’

But Janna was out of the house in a flash.

Dora had been dying to steam the letter open but wily old Hengist had sealed the blue envelope with green wax, imprinted with his crest of a griffin and a lion.

Dora felt only mildly guilty she had sold the story about ‘Bagley beckoning Janna Curtis’ to the
Gazette
. Janna would be far happier teaching at Bagley than that horrible Larks.

‘I’ve heard of a new CD that stops dogs being frightened of fireworks, Miss Curtis. You play it every day when they’re having their dinner and they get used to the bangs.’

But Janna wasn’t listening, she had torn open the envelope and it wasn’t just the setting sun reddening her face.

‘Darling Janna,’ Hengist had written. ‘Sorry I bawled you out. I just want to open every door of your advent calendar for you. Very much looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday afternoon. Bring about sixteen to twenty children; they can play football and case the joint and have tea together. I’ll ring you this evening. Love, Hengist.’

She was brought back to earth by Dora’s gasp of delight. ‘Oh, what a sweet dog, he looks like Basil Brush.’

Suddenly Janna’s hangover had vanished.

‘We’re coming over to Bagley next week,’ she told Dora. ‘Paris and Feral are indoors, and Pearl and Graffi. Do come and meet them.’

Dora sidled away. ‘I’ve come to see Aunt Lily. She misses the family since my horrible brother Jupiter chucked her out of her house. Another time. That is a very cool dog.’

Dora had not forgiven Paris for telling her to fuck off or Feral for kicking his football between her pony Loofah’s legs.

Birds were singing agitatedly as the day faded. It was getting cold, so they had tea in the kitchen. It amazed Janna that so much food should vanish so quickly. Feral had cheered up; he’d been at Lily’s sloe gin, Arsenal had won convincingly and he was delighted to have an extra helping of prawns. Partner, exhausted by his social afternoon, snored in his blue basket among the moon and stars.

Radiant, able to eat and even keep down a glass of wine, Janna broke the news of the trip on Wednesday.

‘Randal Stancombe’s been really kind and given us our own minibus to enable us to go to plays and rugby and football matches against other schools, so please stop writing rude things on the walls of Cavendish Plaza.

‘And on Wednesday,’ she went on, ‘a bus load of Larks pupils has been invited over to Bagley on a recce.’

‘Wreck will be the operative word,’ snapped Paris.

‘Send Johnnie Fowler,’ taunted Pearl. ‘He’ll break the place up. I wouldn’t want to meet those stuck-up snobs,’ she added sulkily.

‘How would you all like to go?’ said Janna.

‘You’d send us?’ asked Graffi slowly.

‘Yep.’ Janna smiled round at their incredulous faces. ‘And some pupils from Year Ten, just to look round and have some tea and see what we’d like to do in the future: playing golf, using the running track. The art and the music rooms are to die for; they’ve even got a rock band.’

‘I don’t want to go,’ said Paris flatly.

‘You wait until you see the theatre and the library.’

‘Can Kylie come?’ asked Pearl.

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘Why us?’ muttered Feral. ‘We’re the school dregs.’

‘No you’re not,’ said Janna crossly. ‘I want to show Bagley what attractive, talented pupils Larks has and that, once and for all, our manners are just as good as theirs.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Feral, licking sweet and sour sauce off his knife and rolling his huge eyes at Janna, so everyone burst out laughing. From his basket, Partner wagged his gauze-wrapped tail.

‘I’d like to go,’ said Graffi. ‘I’d like to see Hengist again.’

‘He really liked your work, Graffi, and your poems,’ she added to Paris. ‘Please come.’

‘OK,’ said Paris, ‘but what’s in it for them?’

‘They want to break down conventional social barriers,’ said Janna hopefully.

After they’d gone, Lily popped in with some lavender oil. ‘Put a few drops on your pillow and you’ll fall into a deep sleep. You look much better already.’

Janna was floating on air. She had a bath and sprinkled lavender oil all round her room and on her pillow, then she took Partner out for a last pee and put him in his basket in the kitchen. ‘Stay there, love,’ she said firmly, then forgot everything because Hengist rang.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she babbled, ‘I just lose it when people attack Larks. I should never have said those awful things to Col Peters.’

‘You were suffering from toad rage,’ said Hengist.

When she floated upstairs five minutes later, she found Partner out like a light, his ginger head on her lavender-scented pillow. Even his snores didn’t keep her awake.

25

Forgetting her own violent antipathy towards private education, Janna was taken aback by the fury produced by the proposed visit to Bagley. The matter was thrashed out at Monday’s after-school staff meeting by which time most of the participants had digested as deadly poison the
Gazette
piece with a headline: ‘Brett-Taylor confirms Bagley–Larks bonding’.

The copy, which included flip remarks from Hengist about the need to get chewing gum and hooligans off the streets, was accompanied by a glamorous photograph of himself and Janna in front of a vestal virgin. Janna was smiling coyly. Hengist’s lazy look of lust was so angled as to be aimed straight down her cleavage.

‘Just as though they were playing Valmont and Madame de Merteuil in some amateur dramatics,’ spat Cara.

The piece ended with a paragraph about Janna’s make-up being created by a Year Nine student, fourteen-year-old Pearl Smith.

‘“We like to encourage enterprise in Larks’s pupils,” joked Miss Curtis.’

Pearl had borrowed a fiver off Wally and rushed out and bought ten copies and a cuttings book.

As staff gathered in explosive mood, down below they could see Janna drifting round the playground chatting, laughing, bidding farewell to the children, adding a last handful of crumbs to the bird table, and praising the new litter prefects who were shoving junk into bin bags.

As she came in Wally, who’d been making garage space for the new minibus, warned her the mood was ugly: