Wicked! (67 page)

The sun had set, peeping out under a line of dark clouds like a light left on in the next room, as the weary winners, six of them bunched together, finally hobbled through the lion gates into the home straight. A hundred yards behind them, out of eye-shot, concealed by a bend in the road, came the second batch.

Just before the latter turned into the gates, a new willowy, white-blond competitor shot out of the rhododendrons, followed by a smaller, plumper, dark companion. Not having exerted themselves all afternoon, they were fresh enough to catch up with the front runners, and the white-blond boy in a glorious burst of speed began to overtake them.

Perched on the window seat in Hengist’s study, peering through the gloom, Theo caught sight of Paris and yelled for the others.

‘He’s leading. God, he’s going to do it, come on, Paris.’

The window seat nearly collapsed as Artie, Emlyn, Hengist, Patience, Ian and Elaine joined Theo, yelling their heads off as Paris passed a panting heaving Denzil and flung his breast against the tape. Xav coming in eleventh was just in the medals.

‘Exactly like
Chariots of Fire
,’ sighed Dora. She got out her calculator. ‘I’ve made two thousand pounds.’

The joy in Ian’s face was enough. Patience was crying openly as Paris accepted the Brooks Cup from an outraged and twitching Gordon Brooks.

‘What a triumph, well done, Paris,’ said Hengist, shaking him by the hand.

Paris was so overwhelmed by the reception he forgot to scowl at his headmaster. Boffin Brooks and Alex, who were in the second batch and just missed medals, were absolutely livid.

‘Never saw Paris Alvaston during the race,’ panted Alex.

‘Neither did I,’ said Boffin.

‘It was such a muddle, I’m surprised anyone saw anyone, particularly in the dusk,’ said Hengist smoothly.

‘I paced myself,’ Paris, playing up for the cameras, told Venturer Television. ‘Long before I came to Bagley, I perfected my technique running away from the police.’

‘I’m convinced it was my counselling,’ Vicky was telling everyone.

Back at the Old Coach House, Ian was so delighted he opened a bottle of champagne and shared it with Patience, Dora and Paris.

Perhaps they do like me after all, thought Paris.

Later Hengist rang Janna.

‘Paris won; I hope you’re pleased. He was so elated he forgot he loathed me. I think we’re winning, darling.’

65

As Middle Five B shuffled towards history the following morning, Milly Walton rushed up and kissed Paris.

‘Well done, terrific news, you deserve it.’

‘Well done,’ said Primrose Duddon, blushing scarlet.

‘Well done,’ said Jade, smiling at him for the first time that term.

‘What you talking about?’

‘Go and check the noticeboard.’

‘Well done, Paris,’ said Tarquin Courtney, captain of rugby and of athletics, who had passed his driving test and kept a Porsche in the car park. He knows my name, thought Paris in wonder. Then he went cold. Looking up at the noticeboard, he discovered that after his triumph in the steeplechase, he’d been selected for the athletics team against Fleetley on Saturday.

‘This is the one Hengist always wants to win,’ confided Tarquin. ‘There’s training this afternoon. We can sort out whether you’re best at sprint or middle distance.’

Oh shit, thought Paris, particularly as next moment Ian charged out of the bursar’s office and thumped him on the back.

‘Well done, old boy. Patience and I thought we’d drive over to Fleetley to cheer you on. We’ll take a picnic. If the weather’s foul we can always eat it in the car.’

‘What the hell am I going to do?’ Paris asked Xav five minutes later.

‘Aren’t they always pushing steroids outside Larks? You could take some and test positive.’

‘Don’t be fucking stupid.’

Wandering off down the cloisters Paris went slap into Emlyn, to whom he’d spoken very little since the beginning of term. He wasn’t in Emlyn’s set for history, and Theo, unable to bear the thought of Paris’s beautiful straight nose being broken, had so far managed to get him out of rugby. But Paris trusted Emlyn.

‘Can I have a word, sir?’

Thirty seconds later he was in the safety of Emlyn’s classroom. Stalin’s poster smirked down from underneath his thatch of black moustache. I’ll be shunted off to the Gulag any minute, thought Paris.

‘I screwed up,’ he told Emlyn flatly. ‘I didn’t win the steeplechase. I lurked in the bushes and slid into the back of the leaders.’

‘I thought as much.’ Emlyn dropped four Alka-Seltzers into a glass of water. Yesterday’s lunch with Hengist had run into dinner.

Emlyn then got a pile of essays on Hitler out of his briefcase and started to mark the one on the top with a yellow pen entitled Afghanistan Airlines.

Bastard, thought Paris, as Emlyn put a thick red tick halfway down the margin.

‘Sit down,’ snapped Emlyn. ‘Theo showed me that essay you wrote on the
Aeneid
. It was very good. Shame he encouraged you to wimp out of rugby. I suppose he sees you hurling discuses or driving chariots. If you come and play for my under-fifteen side, I’ll get you out of athletics.’

‘How?’ asked Paris sulkily.

‘As Hengist still runs this school, rugby takes precedence. It’d also please Ian. He’d go berserk if he knew you’d been cheating in the steeplechase and anything’s better than the total humiliation of running next Saturday.’

Emlyn had reached the end of Cosmo’s essay, and wrote: ‘A+. You obviously identify with the Führer.’

‘OK,’ said Paris.

‘If you play on my team’ – Emlyn grimaced as he downed half the glass of Alka-Seltzer – ‘you must give one hundred per cent.’

Emlyn might not have been so co-operative if he hadn’t yesterday morning received a telephone call from Janna, saying she was worried about Paris and could Emlyn keep an eye on him.

‘Keep an eye on him yourself,’ Emlyn had told her disapprovingly. ‘How many times have you seen him this term?’

‘I’ve been frantic,’ replied a flustered Janna. ‘We’ve got Ofsted any minute, and S and C are still refusing to give me any more money.’

So Emlyn said he’d see what he could do, adding, ‘Let’s have dinner and catch up and I’ll tell you how to bamboozle Ofsted. I’ll call you.’

As a fine former rugger player, Ian was thrilled, particularly when Emlyn gave Paris private coaching in the basics required of an all-rounder before his first game.

Tackling Emlyn, Paris felt like a flea trying to topple a charging rhino. Emlyn also gave him some videos of internationals to watch with Ian, but Paris still thought it was a strange, brutal, muddy game compared with football. And he already had pierced ears, without having them bitten through.

For the first game, Paris rolled up with hair tangled and unkempt, wearing shirt and shorts still muddy from his brief run in the steeplechase. Nor did he give a hundred per cent because he was terrified of getting hurt.

‘If you play hard enough, you won’t realize you’re hurt till afterwards,’ Emlyn assured him at half-time, and once the game was finished took him aside.

‘Have you got a girlfriend, Paris?’

Paris went scarlet, kicked the grass and shook his head.

‘I should think not, if you go round looking that scruffy. Don’t think your hair’s seen a brush since the beginning of term.’

‘Such a fucking awful haircut’ – Paris spat on the grass – ‘doesn’t deserve one.’

The next game, Paris rolled up with his hair brushed, boots polished, clean shorts. The snow-white collar of his sea-blue and brown striped rugby shirt emphasized his deathly pallor. He was in a foul temper and soon into fights, quite prepared to thump and knee in the groin anyone of either side who bumped into him.

Emlyn kept up a stream of reproof: ‘Don’t hang on to the ball, don’t tackle so high, those boots are to kick balls, not heads in. Rugby’s not a free-for-all, it’s a team game.’

He was about to send Paris off when the boy scooped up the ball, sauntered towards the posts, kicked a perfect drop goal and raised a middle finger at the other players.

That evening Emlyn called Lando and Junior over to his flat for a beer. The two boys loved the big living room, which had a huge comfortable sofa, a massive television with Sky for all the sport, shelves crammed with books on rugby and history, and a view, once the leaves fell, of General Bagley and the Lime Walk.

Pictures included a few watercolours of Wales, photographs of rugby fifteens, portraits of Emlyn’s heroes: J. P. R. Williams, Gareth Edwards and Cliff Morgan; and in a corner a group photo of himself, a giant towering over giants in the Welsh rugby team. The record shelves were dominated by opera and male voice choirs. On his desk were photographs of his late father, mother and sisters, and the exquisite Oriana, who seemed more distant than his father. If he didn’t see her soon, his dick would fall off.

‘Which one of you would like to take on Paris Alvaston?’ he asked the boys.

‘How?’ asked Lando.

‘In a fight.’

Both boys looked startled.

‘We’ve got to break the ice around him somehow.’

‘I will,’ said Lando. ‘I’m pissed off with the stroppy, arrogant little git.’

The following afternoon was cold, grey and dank with a vicious wind. The Colts were playing to the right of Badger’s Retreat, separated from other games by a thick row of conifers.

Passing the Family Tree, seeing Oriana’s initials on the trunk, Emlyn was overwhelmed with longing. She hadn’t written for three weeks. Was she still in Afghanistan? If he flew out at Christmas, would she be too caught up with work to find time for him? His face hardened. It was a day to take no prisoners.

Within minutes of kick-off, Paris was landing punches, spitting and swearing. Groped too vigorously in a tackle, he turned on Spotty Wilkins, throwing him to the ground, fingers round his throat: ‘Keep your fucking hands off me.’

Lando and Junior pulled him off.

Emlyn blew his whistle and formed the boys into a circle.

‘I see you’re spoiling for a fight, Paris.’

‘I’ve had it with those fuckers.’

‘Good,’ said Emlyn coolly, ‘Lando is only too happy to beat the shit out of you now.’

Lando stepped into the ring, long dark eyes for once alert, massive shoulders, scrum cap and gumshield giving him an inhuman look of Frankenstein’s monster, body hard as teak, four inches taller and two stone heavier than Paris.

‘Come on, wimp, I’m waiting.’

‘This is worse than the Pitbull Club,’ hissed Paris, turning on Emlyn. ‘You’ll get the sack for this.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Junior, trying to balance the ball on his curly head. ‘It’s your word against ours and there are lots of trees in the way. Go on, bury him, Lando.’

Lando took a step towards an expressionless but inwardly quaking Paris. Emlyn was also quaking inside that he’d taken such a risk.

‘You can either fight Lando,’ he said quietly as Paris raised two trembling fists, ‘or become one of the squad, and fight for them rather than against them. You’re potentially a bloody good player, you’ve got the build, the eye and the short-term speed. We’d all be on your side.’

Paris glanced round the group; Junior, Jack, Anatole, Lubemir, Lando, Smartie, Spotty and the rest: all impassive, watchful, much stronger and bigger than him. Then he looked at Emlyn, an implacable giant, with the big smile for once wiped off his face. The pause seemed to go on for ever. He heard a whistle from a nearby pitch and the rumble and hoot of a distant train on which he could be off searching for his mother. But she had left him. Ian and Patience were his only hope. He held a shaking hand out towards Lando.

‘OK,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve behaved like a twat, I’m sorry.’

‘Well done.’ Emlyn clapped a huge hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do in rugby.’

‘The lads gave him a round of applause,’ Emlyn told Janna over a bottle of red in the Dog and Duck that evening. ‘They also gave him a lot of ball in the second half, and he played a blinder.’

‘You took a hell of a gamble,’ reproved Janna. ‘Poor Paris could have been beaten to a pulp. You should have been fired.’

‘I know.’

‘How can you justify such bully-boy tactics?’

‘I pray a lot.’

Miffed she wasn’t more grateful, he asked her what was the matter.

‘Bloody
Gazette
ran a libellous piece today saying: “In a county of too many schools, Larks would be a suitable case for closure.”’

‘They’re only flying kites.’

‘Not with Ofsted about to finish us off.’

Janna was also shocked by the change in Emlyn. The fat jester had gone; so had the double chin. His cheeks were hollowed and new lines of suffering formed trenches round his normally laughing mouth. No longer ruddy and bloated, he looked like Ulysses the wanderer returning from an endless and scarring war.

He was wearing too-loose chinos held up by a Welsh international rugby tie, a dark blue shirt and a much darned grey sleeveless pullover which Janna guessed had belonged to his father, about whom over more glasses of red he talked with great pain.