Wicked! (4 page)

The fight to save Redfords had been unrelenting, but who minded working until midnight, week in, week out, when you were in love with the headmaster, Stew Wilby, who had made you head of English before you were thirty and who frequently put down his magic wand to shag you on the office carpet?

In the end Stew couldn’t bring himself to leave his wife, Beth, and had retreated into a marriage far more intact than he had made out. People were beginning to gossip and the warmth of the reference Stew had sent to the governing board at Larks – which he had showed her yesterday: ‘I shall be devastated to lose an outstanding teacher, but I cannot stand in Janna Curtis’s way’ – gave Janna the feeling that he might be relieved to see the back of her.

‘Staying with Beth, staying with Beth,’ mocked the wheels as the train rattled over the border into the wooded valleys of Larkshire. In her positive moments, all Janna wanted was to escape as far as possible from Stew into a challenge that would give her no time to mourn. Larkminster Comp seemed the answer.

She was met at the station by Phil Pierce, Larks’s head of science. Bony-faced, bespectacled, mousy-haired, he wore a creased sand-coloured suit, obviously dragged out of a back drawer in honour of the heat wave and jazzed up by a blue silk tie covered in leaping red frogs.

Phil didn’t drive Janna to Larks via the Shakespeare Estate to bump over litter-strewn roads and breathe in the stench of bins dustmen were too scared to empty. Instead he took her on the longer scenic route where she could enjoy the River Fleet sparkling, the white cherry blossom in the Town of Trees dancing against ominously rain-filled navy-blue clouds and the lichen blazing like little suns on the ancient buildings.

‘How beautiful,’ sighed Janna, then bristled with disapproval as she noticed, hanging overhead like birds of prey, a number of huge cranes bearing the name of Randal Stancombe.

‘That capitalist monster’s doing a lot of work,’ she stormed, ‘and I didn’t realize that fascist bast— I mean fiend was MP here,’ as she caught sight of posters of pale, patrician Jupiter Belvedon in the window of the Conservative Club. ‘I bet he’s in league with S and C Services,’ she added furiously. ‘Private companies only take over education to make a fat profit.’

‘Representatives of S and C Services will certainly be at your interview later,’ said Phil Pierce gently, ‘so perhaps . . .’

‘I’d better button my lip,’ sighed Janna, ‘and my clothes,’ she added, doing up the buttons of the crocus-yellow dress she had bought from Jigsaw after school yesterday.

Looking at the terrace houses painted in neat pastels, their front gardens bright with wallflowers and forget-me-nots, Janna wondered if Larkminster might be too smug, rich and middle class.

As if reading her thoughts, Phil Pierce said: ‘This may seem a prosperous county, but there’s a very high level of socioeconomic deprivation. Eighty per cent of our children are on free school dinners. Many have special educational needs.’

‘I hope you receive sufficient funding.’

‘Does anyone?’ sighed Phil. ‘This is Larks.’

Janna was agreeably charmed by the tawny, romantically rambling Victorian building perched on the side of a hill, its turrets and battlements swathed in pink clematis and amethyst wisteria, its parkland crowded with rare trees and with cow parsley and wild garlic advancing in waves on wildly daisied lawns.

Phil kicked off by giving her a quick tour of the school, which was conveniently empty of challenging children because it was polling day at the local elections.

All one needed for outside, reflected Janna, were a pair of secateurs and a mowing machine. The windows could also be mended and unboarded, the graffiti painted over and the chains, taps and locks replaced in the lavatories. The corridors and classroom walls were also badly lacking in posters, paintings and written work by the children. Redfords, her school in Yorkshire, was like walking into a rainbow.

She was disappointed that there were no children around, so no one could watch her taking a lesson. This had always secured her jobs in the past. Instead she was given post to deal with, to show off her management skills, and made a good impression by immediately tackling anything involving media and parents. She was also handed two budgets and quickly identified why one was good, the other bad.

She was aware of being beadily scrutinized by the school secretary, Rowan Merton, who was conventionally pretty: lovely skin, grey eyes, dark brown bob; but who simultaneously radiated smugness and disapproval, like the cat who’d got the cream and found it off.

Still too nervous to eat, Janna refused the quick bite of lunch offered her by Phil Pierce. She was then whisked away to an off-site interview because the governors were equally nervous of the Larks deputy head, Mike Pitts, who, livid he hadn’t been offered the job, was likely to grow nasty when sobering up after lunch.

Only as Janna was leaving the Larks building did the heavens open, so she didn’t appreciate in how many places rain normally poured in through the roof.

2

Janna was interviewed round the corner, past a row of boarded-up shops, in a pub called the Ghost and Castle, which was of the same tawny, turreted architecture as the school. The landlord was clearly a joker. A skeleton propped up the public bar, which was adorned with etchings of ghosts draped in sheets terrorizing maidens or old men in nightcaps. Rooms off were entitled Spook-Easy and Spirits Bar. The plat du jour chalked up on a blackboard was Ghoulash at £4.50.

Janna giggled and wondered how many Larks pupils were regulars here. At least they could mug up for GCSE in the Macbeth room, whose blood-red walls were decorated with lurid oils of Banquo’s ghost, Duncan’s murder and a sleepwalking Lady Macbeth. Here Larks’s governors, a semi-circle of the Great and the Good, mostly councillors and educationalists, awaited her.

Think before you speak and remember eye contact at all times, Janna told herself as, beaming at everyone, she swivelled round like a searchlight.

The chairman of the governors, Russell Lambert, had tiny eyes, sticking-out ears, a long nose like King Babar and loved the sound of his pompous, very put-on voice. A big elephant in a small watering hole, thought Janna.

Like most good teachers, she of necessity picked up names quickly. As Russell Lambert introduced her, she clocked first Brett Scott, a board member of Larkminster Rovers, who had an appropriately roving eye and looked game for a great night on the tiles, and secondly Crispin Thomas, deputy educational director of S and C Services, who did not.

Crispin, a petulant, pig-faced blond, had a snuffling voice, and from his tan and the spare tyre billowing over the waistband of his off-white suit, had recently returned from a self-indulgent holiday.

Under a painting of the Weird Sisters and infinitely more terrifying, like a crow who’d been made over by Trinny and Susannah, quivered a woman with black, straight hair and a twitching scarlet mouth. Appropriately named Cara Sharpe, she was a teacher governor, supposed to present the concerns of the staff to the governing body.

And I bet she sneaks to both sides, thought Janna.

‘Cara is our immensely effective head of English and drama,’ said Russell sycophantically.

So she won’t welcome any interference on the English front from me, Janna surmised, squaring her little shoulders. At the end of the row, the vice-chairman, Sir Hugo Betts, who resembled a camel on Prozac, fought sleep.

Russell Lambert made no bones about the state of the school: ‘Larks is at rock bottom.’

‘Then it can only go up,’ said Janna cheerfully.

Her audience knew from her impressive CV that she had been a crucial part of the high-flying team that had turned around disastrously failing Redfords. But then she had been led by a charismatic head, Stew Wilby. If she took on Larks, she would be on her own.

She also seemed terrifyingly young. She had lots of dark freckles and wild, rippling dark red hair, a big mouth (which she seldom kept shut), merry onyx-brown eyes and a snub nose. She was not beautiful – her jaw was too square – but she had a face of great sweetness, humour and friendliness. She was small, about five feet one, and after the drenching of rain, her crocus-yellow dress clung enticingly to a very pretty figure. A teardrop of mascara on her cheekbone gave a look of Pierrot.

Phil Pierce, who was very taken, asked her how she would deal with an underachieving teacher.

‘I’d immediately involve the head of department,’ replied Janna in her soft Yorkshire accent, ‘and tactfully find out what’s wrong. Is it discipline? Are the children trampling all over him? Is it poor teaching? Academically has he got what it takes, or is he presenting material wrongly? And then, gently, because if he’s underachieving he’ll have no confidence, try and work it through. After this,’ she went on, ‘he would either succeed or fail. If the latter, he’s not right for teaching, because the education of children is all that matters.’

The semi-circle – except for scowling Cara Sharpe, Rowan Merton, who was taking the minutes, and Sir Hugo Betts, who was asleep – smiled approvingly.

‘What are your weaknesses?’ snuffled Crispin Thomas from S and C.

Janna laughed. ‘Short legs and an even shorter fuse. But my strengths are that I adore children and I thrive on hard work. Are the parents involved here?’

‘Well, we get the odd troublemaker,’ said Russell heartily, failing to add that a large proportion of Larks parents were too out of it from drugs to register. ‘The children can be challenging.’

‘I don’t mind challenging children,’ said Janna. ‘You couldn’t find more sad and demoralized kids than the ones at Redfords, but in a few months—’

‘Yes, we read about that in the
Guardian
,’ interrupted Crispin rudely.

Janna bit her lip; they didn’t seem interested in her past.

‘I want to give every child and teacher the chance to shine and for them to leave my school with their confidence boosted to enable them to survive and enjoy the world.’

She paused hopefully. A loud snore rent the air followed by an even more thunderous rumble from her own tummy, which woke Sir Hugo with a start.

‘What, what, what?’ He groped for his flies.

Janna caught Phil Pierce’s eye and burst out laughing, so everyone else laughed except Cara and Rowan.

Janna had expected the board to get in touch in a week or so, but Russell Lambert, at a nod from Crispin Thomas, asked her to wait in an ante-room entitled Your Favourite Haunt. Phil Pierce brought her a cup of tea and some egg sandwiches, at which she was still too nervous to do more than nibble. Phil was such a sweet man; she’d love working with him.

Breathing in dark purple lilac, she gazed out of the window at buildings darkened to the colour of toffee by the rain and trees as various in their greenness as kids in any school. Beyond lay the deep blue undulation of the Malvern Hills. Surely she could find fulfilment and happiness here?

She was summoned back by Rowan, looking beadier than ever.

‘We’ve decided not to waste your time asking you to come for a second interview,’ announced Russell Lambert.

Janna’s face fell.

‘It was good of you all to see me,’ she muttered. ‘I know I look young . . .’

‘We’d like to offer you the job,’ said Russell.

Janna burst into tears, her mascara mingling with her freckles as she babbled, ‘That’s wicked! Fantastic! Are you sure? I’m going to be a head, such an honour, I promise to justify your faith, that’s really wicked.’

The half-circle smiled indulgently.

‘Can I buy you all a drink to celebrate?’ stammered Janna, reaching for her briefcase. ‘On me, I mean.’

‘Should be on us,’ said the director of Larkminster Rovers. ‘What’ll you have, love?’

‘Not if she’s going to catch the fast train home,’ said Russell, looking at his watch, ‘and Crispin and I have to talk salaries and technicalities with . . . may I call you Janna?’

Half an hour later on the Ghost and Castle steps, Janna was still thanking them.

‘I’d like to walk to the station,’ she confessed. ‘I want to drink in my new town. Doesn’t matter if I get the later train. I’m so excited, I’ll float home.’

But as she hadn’t yet signed the contract, Russell, not risking Janna anywhere near the Shakespeare Estate, steered her towards his very clean Rover. Despite the stifling heat of the day, he pulled on thick brown leather driving gloves as though he didn’t want to leave fingerprints on anything. As he settled in the driving seat, she noticed how his spreading thighs filled his grey flannel trousers.

As they passed the offices of the
Larkminster Gazette
, a billboard announced Randal Stancombe’s latest plans for the area.

‘That greedy fat cat’s got a stranglehold on everything,’ spat Janna.

‘Wearing my other hat,’ reproved Russell, ‘as chair of the local planning committee, I can assure you Randal is a very good friend indeed to Larkminster, not least because of the thousands of people he employs.’

Feeling he’d been squashing, he then suggested Janna might like to ring her parents with news of her job.

‘Mum passed away at Christmas.’ Janna paused. ‘She would have been right proud. I wish I could text her in heaven. We came from a very poor family; Mum scrubbed floors to pay for my school uniform, but she loved books and always encouraged us to read. She used to take me to see the Brontës’ house in Haworth. I read English because of her.’