Wicked! (66 page)

This, according to the Bruces and a reproachful Nadine, would never have happened if Patience hadn’t abandoned Paris so early in his foster placement to defend evil blood sports. Poppet promptly emailed the Cartwrights the telephone number of P.U.K.E., ‘which stands for Prevention, Understanding, Knowledge, Education, a support group which takes a non-judgemental view of binge drinking’. ‘Call them,’ urged Poppet.

Patience put the email in the bin.

Paris and Xav were heavily fined and as punishment had to knock in endless posts and blue and brown flags for Sunday’s steeplechase. This enabled them to earmark an outwardly impenetrable clump of rhododendrons and laurels about seventy-five yards from the start.

Xav had planned to invite Paris back to Penscombe that Sunday but the whole school was ordered to stay at Bagley to take part in the steeplechase or at least witness Alex Bruce achieve his personal best.

On a grey dank Sunday afternoon, with fog forecast, the Biffo Rudge Trophy for the first member of staff past the post and the Gordon Brooks Cup for the first pupil, donated by Boffin’s father, glittered on a trestle table, reflecting the turning gold limes surrounding Mansion Lawn. Silver shields for the next five in both categories were stacked in a cardboard box.

The six-mile course itself was shaped like the frame of a tennis racquet. Contestants left Mansion Lawn, ran under General Bagley Arch, down the east side of the drive, past thick rhododendron clumps, turned left at the lion gates and continued in a big circle round the villages of Bagley, Wilmington and Sedgeley, turning left again at the lion gates, pounding up the west side of the drive under the arch to the tapes in front of the Mansion.

In chapel that morning, Biffo, nailbrush hair bristling even more fiercely, had sternly set out the rules:

‘Students in the past have let down the school and themselves, straying into public houses, cafés and shops along the route. But your target is to be the first back here, where Gordon Brooks and I will be holding the tape. Occasionally pupils have taken short cuts, pretending they have completed the course. Wardens everywhere will be monitoring such transgressions. Any cheating or flouting of rules will be severely punished. Above all act on your own initiative. Don’t let anything or anyone distract you from your goal.’

Despite this, all the pubs and shops along the route were staying open expecting excellent business. Janna, Lily and Brigadier Woodford had heaved deckchairs and several bottles and Melton Mowbray pork pies on to the Brigadier’s flat roof to enjoy the spectacle.

As kick-off time approached, competitors gathered on Mansion lawn, chatting, shivering, running on the spot and jogging round in little circles.

The smart money for pupils was on Kippy Musgrave, a Lower Fifth beauty, already fleeter than a whippet from running away from lustful masters. Denzil Harper, the ultra-fit head of PE who ran marathons for the county, was favourite for the Rudge Cup, a rather stocky hare who had reckoned without Alex Bruce’s tortoise, according to Boffin Brooks.

‘I don’t approve of gambling, sir, but I’ve put a whole week’s pocket money on your being first past the tape.’

Boffin, his spectacles misting up in an orgy of toadyism, sporting long grey shorts which failed to disguise a bottom wider than his shoulders, breath reeking of breakfast kipper, was also determined to be in the first six.

Members of the first fifteen, including the glamorous captain, Tarquin Courtney, had perfected that rugby star walk, sticking out their chests, straightening their legs backward with each stride to make their thighs judder. Big bruisers, they outwardly treated the whole steeplechase as a joke but underneath, like Alex, they were hell-bent on winning.

Alex himself was in a trance. One must go inside oneself. Following Bianca’s example, he had tied a red bandanna round his head; he was flexing his thigh muscles backwards as he swayed and hummed. Poppet, jogging on the spot in shorts and a purple vest, displaying Black Forests of armpit hair, was chopping up bananas for Alex and other runners from his house.

‘We want Bruce students in the first six.’

Their G and T daughter Charisma was waiting along the route to ply Alex and Boffin with glucose tablets. Anxious to beat as many masters as possible, No-Joke Joan had, like Alex, been jogging round the campus for weeks.

‘Have you seen her thighs?’ asked Artie Deverell faintly. ‘Like barons of beef.’

‘Our Joan would be more interested in the baroness,’ murmured back Theo, who was increasingly grateful for swigs from Ian Cartwright’s hipflask. Patience, beside them, had gone purple with cold; Ian, looking bleak, had still not forgiven Paris, who hadn’t been near the Old Coach House since Sunday and whom he couldn’t see anywhere. Probably too ashamed to show his face.

‘I want ten pounds on Paris Alvaston for a win,’ Dora, currently on three mobiles to various newspapers, told Lando who was keeping a book.

‘Don’t waste your money, he’s two hundred to one.’

‘I don’t care.’

A chorus of wolf whistles greeted Vicky running out in a clinging pale pink fleece and pink pleated skirt, her hair in bunches.

‘I am
so
nervous,’ she told Poppet.

Alex detranced enough to say: ‘Why not run behind me, little Vicky, until you get into your stride?’

She couldn’t fail to be inspired by his tall good figure ahead of her.

‘“Mark my footsteps, good my page!”’ mocked Cosmo, still in his astrakhan coat.

‘Line up everyone,’ shouted Biffo as the big hand of the chapel clock edged towards five to three.

In a long race with over three hundred runners, it didn’t matter if everyone started at once, but Mansion Lawn was now entirely covered with competitors. The Mansion itself dozed in a shaft of sunlight which had broken through the clouds.

‘Where the hell’s Hengist?’ muttered Biffo to Joan as he fingered the starting pistol. ‘Why is he always deliberately insultingly late?’

‘He looked over his shoulder For athletes at their games,’ murmured Theo, noticing that Cosmo had at last tossed his astrakhan coat to Dora, and, oh dear, was sliding a thieving hand between Vicky’s thighs. There was Smart, stubbing out a fag, but where was Paris? Theo hoped he hadn’t done a bunk. Hengist, who was keeping a paternal eye on the boy, had suggested Paris would benefit from a few hours’ Latin and Greek coaching a week. Theo sighed. The temptation would be irresistible.

Ah, here at last was Hengist, flushed from a good lunch, laughing, joking, but in no hurry and making no apologies.

Biffo longed to turn the pistol on him.

‘Get ready, everyone,’ he bellowed. ‘Two minutes to the off.’

Alex Bruce had been doing a quick interview with Radio Larkshire.

‘Forgive me, the race awaits.’

‘Of course, deputy headmaster.’

As Alex strode towards the start line, he passed Emlyn, who’d just enjoyed a long lunch at Hengist’s.

‘Why aren’t you taking part?’ he demanded.

‘With stars like you, Alex?’ Then, when Alex looked simply furious: ‘Best of luck.’

Fifty yards down the drive, Paris and Xavier waited in their rhododendron hideout. Paris was watching the start through binoculars. ‘One minute to three. Mr Fussy’s crouching down with one knee bent, and the other stretched out like the Olympics. Now he’s bowing his head. God, he’s a twat. OK,’ he whispered to Xav.

Crash went the starting pistol, which Paris and Xav had bought on the internet from Bristol last week.

Off set the runners, pounding down the drive, past the rhododendron clump, spilling out on to the roughly mown grass on the left, stepping up their speed to be first through the lion gates.

‘Stop,’ thundered Biffo, brandishing his unfired pistol, ‘that was a false start. Stop the race,’ he shouted into his walkie-talkie to Mr Meakin who, desperate to redeem himself after letting Xav out last weekend, rushed forward waving his arms: ‘Stop, stop.’

But the leading runners and Tarquin Courtney, who thought Meakin was a wimp and had been ordered not to be distracted by anything, waved two fingers at him and pounded on.

A second later, another avalanche of runners including Vicky and Cosmo sent Meakin flying into a hawthorn bush.

‘Blessed are the Meakin for they shall inherit the earth,’ shouted Cosmo.

Not until a hundred and fifty or so pupils and masters, including Alex Bruce, had flowed out of the gates did Biffo manage to convince the wardens of the false start.

‘Just like the National in nineteen ninety-three,’ whinnied Jack Waterlane, who’d been planning to run off and see Kylie, ‘except the front runners are halfway to Wilmington.’

Alex Bruce walked back to the Mansion, gibbering with rage, froth flying from his lips.

‘Get everyone back. The race must be rerun.’

‘Too late,’ sighed Hengist. ‘Unfair disadvantage to those who’ve run a mile already; they’ll be exhausted.’

‘I and many others have been training for months to achieve a pitch of fitness.’

‘I know, Alex,’ said Hengist sympathetically, ‘it’s too bad. I felt the same when I did my Achilles tendon just before the England–France game. Run it tomorrow.’

‘The sixth form are off to CCF camp.’

‘Then we’ll have another steeplechase next term.’

‘The weather is too unreliable.’

‘Who fired that pistol?’ spluttered an approaching Biffo.

‘Better call a stewards’ enquiry,’ said Emlyn gravely.

Theo and Artie were having great difficulty keeping straight faces.

‘Poor Mr Fussy,’ said Patience, ‘he was so keen to win.’

‘What’s going on,’ whispered Xav from the dark of the bushes.

‘Obviously a terrific row,’ said Paris, who’d climbed a rhododendron bush to peer out. ‘Biffo’s gone purple and is waving his hands. Hengist is trying not to laugh. Poppet Bruce is jumping up and down, saying this is what she hates about competitive games. Her husband’s more competitive than anyone.’ Paris dropped back on the ground.

‘It couldn’t have gone better,’ said Xav in ecstasy.

‘Hush, here comes Boffin Brooks on a bike, we’d better stay put.’

Pedalling furiously, Boffin reached the back runners on the outskirts of Wilmington village.

‘Stop, stop,’ he yelled, riding straight through them. ‘The race is being rerun, stop.’

‘Fuck off, Boff,’ said Junior, ‘it’s not the Tour de France.’

‘Get off that bike, we were told not to cheat,’ called out Lando, coming out of the Dog and Duck clutching four gin and tonics.

‘Everyone’s got to go back and start again,’ panted Boffin.

‘Oh, shut up,’ grumbled Junior, ‘you just want Mr Fussy to win. Throw him in the ditch, Anatole.’

‘You’re not allowed to drink spirits,’ squealed Boffin.

‘It’s vater, you prat,’ said Anatole, chucking Boffin and his bike into the stream that ran along the street.

Five minutes later, help was at hand. Joan had jumped into her British racing green MGB, which the girls in her house had nicknamed Van Dyke, and, hooting imperiously, had overtaken the front runners in Wilmington High Street. Just below a cheering Janna, Lily and Brigadier Woodford, she turned Van Dyke sideways to block the road where it narrowed, before going into the country. The red light of her great roaring face turned everyone back.

‘The school buses are on their way to transport you back to the start,’ she told them.

‘If I have a heart attack,’ said Cosmo in outrage, ‘I shall get Cherie Booth to represent me.’

Back at Mansion Lawn Alex Bruce was still arguing with Hengist.

‘This is a Bagley tradition we must not lose, headmaster.’

‘You never stop saying tradition is the enemy of progress,’ snapped Hengist, who for once felt outmanoeuvred.

‘Someone fired that pistol,’ said Biffo furiously. ‘I am absolutely determined to get to the bottom of—’

‘Kippy Musgrave,’ shouted a voice in the crowd to howls of mirth.

‘Who said that?’ roared Biffo.

Hengist bit his lip. Emlyn, Theo and Artie, standing on the Mansion steps, were openly laughing.

Xav and Paris were in heaven.

‘We did it, we fucked the steeplechase.’

They were just about to slope off into the woods and chuck the starting pistol, wiped clean of fingerprints, into a bramble bush when, to their horror, runners came sulkily shuffling back.

‘It’s bloody unfair, I was in the lead.’

‘Dotheboys Hall! I’m going to sue the school.’

‘If any masters or boys have coronaries, Alex, I’ll hold you personally responsible,’ said an outraged Hengist, who’d planned to slope off to Jubilee Cottage. Now he’d be presenting cups at midnight.

Pretending he needed to collect a file, he retreated to his office to ring Janna.

‘Sorry, darling, I was so longing to see you, but I can’t make it.’

‘Probably just as well, Lily and Brigadier Woodford are downstairs getting plastered. I do miss you. But it was terribly funny.’

‘Wasn’t it? Robot the Bruce is not amused. They’ll be pounding past your door again in a few minutes.’