Wicked! (38 page)

‘Jack’s lush,’ enthused Kylie Rose . . .

Janna couldn’t stop laughing. What would Hengist say? She was brought back to earth by a call from Crispin Thomas furiously cataloguing her iniquities. How could Janna have deserted her post? One would have thought Nelson had gone ashore to frolic with Lady Hamilton during the Battle of Trafalgar.

‘If you grant a handful of kids absurd privileges, the rest will act up.’

Janna left the telephone on her desk, made a cup of coffee, and when she picked it up again, Crispin was still snuffling.

‘If Rod Hyde hadn’t held the fort yesterday . . .’

Oh God, another text message was coming through. Janna steeled herself, but it was from Hengist.

‘Hurrah for Toff Love. Ignore
Gazette
, coverage great and should take Sheena down a few square pegs. A bientot. H B-T.’

Trying to keep the silly grin off her face, Janna found Crispin still yakking: ‘I’m surprised you have nothing to say to justify such a lapse. It will be top of the agenda at the governors’ meeting next week.’

As Wally came in whistling Prokofiev One, Janna handed him a bottle of whisky.

‘What’s this for? I had a great time. The wife loved seeing us on TV and taped the programme. That Emlyn Davies is a smashing bloke. And that’s a nice little dog. Is this Partner? Looks like a cross between a fox and a woodlouse. Come on, boy.’

Partner cowered in his basket.

Then Rowan raced in weighed down by Tesco carrier bags.

‘How did it go? Lovely piece on Venturer; the kids looked so happy and you looked so pretty, and you were great, Wally. Oh! This must be Partner, isn’t he adorable? Look at his sweet face. He must be part cairn, part Norfolk. Look at his poor bare tail, but I’m sure it’ll grow back. Goodness he’s sweet.’

Thus encouraged, Partner edged forward.

‘We had a lovely day at Bagley Hall,’ announced Janna at assembly. ‘Later, we’ll tell you about it and the wonderful things planned for the future. But first, I want to introduce a new member of Larks. I hope you’ll be very kind to him; it’s so hard starting late in the term.

‘Many of you have been asking what happened to the little dog who nearly died when some cruel boys tied a rocket to his tail. The answer is he recovered, he’s living with me in Wilmington and he’s so clever, when I overslept this morning, he pulled the duvet off my bed to wake me up. But he gets frightened on his own during the day and howls, thinking he’s been abandoned again. So he’s going to come to school every day to be our mascot, bringing us luck. His name is Partner,’ she added as Rowan carried him proudly up on to the stage and handed him over.

‘I want you all to say “Howdy, Partner”, like the cowboys.’

‘Howdy, Partner,’ roared the delighted children.

Partner quivered at such a big crowd, particularly when Janna carried him down the steps so Year Seven in the front row could stroke him. Then suddenly he caught sight of Paris, who had hugged him and so gently bathed his sore tail and, leaping down, he jumped into Paris’s arms.

‘Now we really know how much time Paris Alvaston spends at our Senior Team Leader’s cottage,’ muttered Red Robbie, who was furious that Gloria had had such a lovely time in a capitalist playground yesterday.

‘That remark should be withdrawn,’ cried an outraged Cambola. She strode up to the piano. ‘Now we will sing “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, with special emphasis on the Lord God loving all creatures great and small.’

Cambola started playing. The children started singing, but had great difficulty carrying on when Partner put back his ginger head, like the fox in Aesop’s fable, and howled until Miss Cambola rose from the piano and conducted him with her pencil, so he howled even louder and the singing broke up because everyone was laughing so much.

As a dog who could end assembly five minutes early, Partner’s fame was assured.

36

Cara had only been off sick five minutes before a flood of Larks teachers, realizing how wonderful school was without her venomous demoralizing presence and unable to face the prospect of her return, handed in their notice. These included Adele, Robbie Rushton’s deputy, who would now have no means of supporting two little children; Jessamy, Mike Pitts’s teaching assistant; Gloria, the gymnast; Lydia and Lance, the newly qualified teachers; and, most surprisingly, Miss Basket, who, because no one else would employ her, everyone thought would ensure her pension by clinging on by her bitten fingernails to the end of time.

Lydia summed up the exodus:

‘I love Larks and you, Janna, but I can’t handle Cara any more. I feel sick with terror every morning. She’s supposed to watch my teaching and encourage me, but I haven’t had a page of notes since I’ve been here. And she punishes me by inciting her favourites to act up. Kitten Meadows stood with her hands on her hips and said, “You’re just jealous because I’m hotter than you,” then spat in my face. When I complained, Cara just laughed and said, “If you can’t handle sassy girls!”

‘We’re supposed to go to the deputy head if we’ve got a problem with her, but as he’s shagging her anyway, he’d just grass me up, then she’d murder me.

‘I’m scared of her, Janna. Please let me leave at Christmas.’

‘I’ll see what I can do, but please reconsider.’ Janna felt bitterly ashamed that she hadn’t protected poor Lydia, who’d been so plump and pretty when she’d joined the school, and was now a thin, pale, trembling wraith.

She must tackle Cara, but how?

It was the same at governors’ meetings. Although Cara, as a teacher governor, left the room when staff, salary or financial matters were discussed, Stormin’ Norman, like Mike Pitts, would report back any snide remarks and Cara would put in the stiletto.

Janna herself grew increasingly fearful as the obscene telephone calls continued. One night her tyres were let down; on another a circle of barbed wire rested against her windscreen.

Some people are terrified of snakes, others of spiders. Janna was terrified of madness. As an imaginative child often left alone at night when her mother went out cleaning, she’d lived in fear that the inhabitants of a nearby lunatic asylum would escape across the fields and come screaming and scrabbling at her bedroom window. Later, dotty Miss Havisham and Mr Rochester’s first wife, imprisoned upstairs with her crazy mirthless laugh, had haunted Janna’s nightmares. For years, she wouldn’t touch apples in case they’d been poisoned by the evil queen in
Snow White
. Most frightening of all was the wicked witch in
The Wizard of Oz
, who, in her sudden appearances and wanton capacity for disruption, reminded her most of Cara.

Thank God for brave little Partner, curled up on her bed or at her feet. Janna longed to put on Dorothy’s shiny red shoes, gather him up like Toto and escape down the Yellow Brick Road – but first she must stand up to the governors . . .

Cara in fact limped in a week later, flanked by Satan, Monster and sassy Kitten Meadows, and in time for the after-school governors’ meeting. This was held in Cara’s classroom, whose walls were covered with masks of everyone from Tony Blair to Maria Callas, gazing sightlessly down from the black walls. Blood-stained rubber knives, instead of scarlet anemones, stood in a blue vase on the table.

Cara looked so deathly pale and red-eyed, and her rasping voice was so pathetically muted, Janna wondered why she had ever been scared of her.

‘That’s green base and red eyeshadow,’ muttered a passing Pearl scornfully.

Fear is the parent of cruelty, but also of sycophancy. Thus staff and pupils were so terrified that Cara, through her KGB system, would learn they had been slagging her off that she returned to a heroine’s welcome of cards, flowers and bottles of wine.

There was also a full house at the governors’ meeting.

Sir Hugo Betts had had a good lunch and was fighting sleep. Sol the undertaker had just had the satisfaction of burying a very rich local businessman. Cara was flanked by a solicitous Stormin’ Norman and by Crispin, who was wearing dark glasses to hide a stye and flustering Miss Basket who, in the absence of Rowan at the dentist, was taking the minutes on her laptop and kept begging people to ‘slow down please’. Basket was also terrified that Cara might have bugged Janna’s office and found out why she was leaving.

Ashton Douglas was flipping distastefully through a pile of cuttings on the Bagley jaunt. Sir Hugo Betts put on a second pair of spectacles to admire Sheena’s Brazilian. Russell Lambert, his mouth sinking at the corners like the mask of tragedy on the wall, exuded disapproval, particularly at Partner curled up on Janna’s knee.

Ashton kicked off, deploring Janna’s involvement in the trip to Bagley, ‘against the advice and pwinciples of your colleagues and your Labour/Lib Dem county council, who you know are violently opposed to integwation. The result was an unprecedented outbweak of destruction and a lamentable pwess.’

‘It was not lamentable, except for the
Gazette
,’ protested Janna. ‘I’ve had so many nice emails. It’s been so good for the kids’ morale.’

Support then came from an unexpected source.

‘My Kylie had the most wonderful day of her life,’ enthused Chantal Peck.

‘We noticed,’ said Stormin’ Norman sourly.

‘Sally Brett-Taylor was most gracious to Kylie Rose, encouraging her to persevere with her singing, because it’s a flexible career for a single mother. Cosmo, Dame Hermione Harefield’s son, also said Kylie’s voice is remarkable. The day was a ’uge success.’

‘Because your slag of a daughter got orf with an ’Ooray.’ Stormin’ Norman was brandishing her short umbrella like a baseball bat.

Chantal, however, decided to rise above this insult.

‘Jack is a charmer,’ she said icily. ‘He’s already texted Kylie Rose seventeen times.’

‘I’m sure he’d love you as a muvver-in-law,’ snarled Stormin’.

‘Ladies, ladies,’ said Russell smoothly. ‘Cara wishes to make a point.’

‘I don’t feel,’ quavered Cara, ‘that whoever planned this ill-judged trip appreciated the fragile egos of our students. Anarchy broke out because those left behind felt undervalued.’

‘’Ear, ’ear,’ growled Stormin’.

‘We have great plans for the future,’ said Janna quickly, ‘for a joint concert and a joint play next term. The theatre at Bagley is big enough for all our parents and children, so no one will feel excluded.’

‘Except the Larks head of drama and English,’ said Cara pathetically.

‘Please slow down,’ wailed Miss Basket.

‘We can’t spend an entire meeting discussing Bagley Hall and Larks,’ said Ashton.

‘I would like to register,’ boomed Russell Lambert, ‘that I found all the publicity so distasteful, I’m contemplating stepping down.’

Janna murmured:

‘He, stepping down

By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock,

Came on the shining levels of the lake . . .’

Her thoughts were wandering. Odd that King Arthur and St Joseph, two of the most famous cuckolds in the world, were also regarded as the most noble of men.

‘Janna,’ said Ashton sharply.

‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ mumbled Janna, which didn’t help.

‘We have decided to form a sub-committee to discuss the Larks–Bagley partnership,’ went on Ashton.

‘Why not a Government enquiry?’ quipped Sol the undertaker, winking at Janna.

‘Let us move on to the high level of truancy,’ went on Russell . . .

‘It’s down ten per cent,’ protested Janna.

‘That’s not enough.’

‘Anyone like one of my choccy biccies?’ said Cara, getting a packet out of her bag. ‘So many presents and I got forty-two get-well cards.’

‘No one’s used to you ever taking time off,’ gushed Miss Basket, blushing even redder as she met Janna’s eye.

‘Could we instead move on to wedundancy?’ said Ashton.

As teacher governors were excluded from discussions about staff or financial matters, Russell asked Basket and Cara to leave.

‘I can speak for all of us in saying how pleased we are you’re back, Cara.’

‘Hear, hear,’ cried Miss Basket.

‘Thank you,’ whispered Cara.

Crispin leapt up to open the door for them, adding:

‘Cara’s a lovely woman, such a dedicated teacher.’

‘I hope she hasn’t come back too soon,’ said Russell. ‘She looks very pulled down.’

‘Wedundancies,’ said Ashton. ‘I’ll make notes now Miss Basket’s gone. We’ve examined your budget situation, Janna. Your only hope is to instigate at least eight wedundancies.’

Janna, who was drawing a picture of Crispin as a pig in a trilby, replied that it was sorted.

Ashton looked up, startled.

‘Nine people handed in their notice this week.’

‘Whatever for?’ said Russell.

Janna took a deep breath. She might as well be hung for a Sharpe as a lamb.

‘They’re all terrified of Cara.’