Wicked! (69 page)

He ought to know, thought Randal angrily.

‘Both takeovers,’ he replied lightly, putting an arm round Mrs Walton. ‘Ruth’s about to move in with me.’

‘If you walk through a head hold your storm up high,’ sang Dicky, who’d been drinking vodka in the rhododendrons with Xavier.

Revved up by Emlyn at half-time, the Bagley Colts fought back, and no one fought with more guts than Paris, battered by the terrible strength of the opposition. Tries from Lando and Junior, one of them converted by Lubemir, followed by a stylish drop goal from Anatole, brought the score up to 28–22. Victory was at last within Bagley’s reach.

The mist was coming down again; the light fading; the other games were over.

‘Come on, Paris,’ howled his fan club as he scooped up the ball. Escaping from a tangle of red, blue and brown jerseys and muddy shorts, he streaked down the pitch, pale hair flying, cheers in his ears. Seeing Brute Stevens pounding in like a mad bull from the right, he jinked to the left, bounding along the touchline, burying the ball triumphantly over the line at Boffin’s feet.

‘Disallow that if you dare, you sad bastard,’ he panted, then, raising the ball triumphantly, waved it to the crowds to roars of applause.

In the closing seconds of the game, he had put Bagley almost level. Junior’s conversion would clinch it. As photographers raced to get their pictures, Northcliffe broke free, bounding towards Paris, picking up a horse chestnut leaf as a prize. Paris could see Patience wiping her eyes, Ian joyfully brandishing his shooting stick, Theo waving his bookie’s hat in the air and Dora and Bianca jumping up and down.

Jack and Anatole charged out of the sin bin to ruffle Paris’s hair, and clap him on the back. ‘Well done, man.’

Hengist sloped off to report the triumph to Janna.

But against all this din, the whistle kept on blowing and not for the end of the match. After a long consultation with Boffin, the ref was walking in Paris’s direction.

‘I’m afraid the pass was forward and your foot was in touch.’

Paris’s muddy face contorted in fury.

‘Do you actually know the fucking rules of the game?’ he yelled. ‘It was not forward and I was not in touch.’

‘Don’t argue with the ref, you posh bastard,’ yelled Brute Stevens.

All the Colts were now shouting at the ref. From all round the ground came booing. Emlyn looked on stonily but impotently.

‘I have never witnessed such appalling sportsmanship,’ exploded Rod Hyde.

‘Come on, we’ve still got two minutes,’ pleaded Smartie.

Once again, Bagley stormed St Jimmy’s’ end. But tiredness and fury made them fumble.

‘Come on, Paris,’ he heard Bianca Campbell-Black screaming. Then the whistle blew long and plaintive, the train moving out of the station away from him, and it was over.

Rod Hyde had not been so happy since Margaret Thatcher was booted out of Downing Street. The maintained sector were proving themselves both intellectually and physically superior to the independents. He was already writing the piece in his head for
Education Guardian
. He was so proud of his students. ‘Well done, well done.

‘Bad luck,’ he called out jovially to Emlyn. ‘Several of our best players were off from injury. If we’d had our full side, you wouldn’t have stood a chance.’

‘Come and have tea in the common room,’ Sally said hastily to Sheila Hyde.

‘We were robbed,’ a sobbing Dora was telling the
Mail on Sunday
.

Paris walked back, covered from top to toe in red-brown Larkshire mud, Northcliffe beside him.

‘Beautiful, isn’t he,’ murmured Artie to Theo. ‘And, God, he’s brave.’

‘Paris played a very gallant game,’ insisted Ian.

‘He did,’ agreed Biffo grudgingly. ‘There’s no denying a first-rate public school can straighten out the most wayward lad.’

Through the twilight, he could see Paris stealthily approaching the little group round Rod Hyde and the ref who, relishing their moment of glory, were loath to leave the pitch.

‘Read the fucking rule book next time,’ hissed Paris and, smashing his fist into the face of the ref, sent him crashing to the ground.

There was a horrified pause, interrupted by a burst of cheering from the Bagley Colts.

‘Hit him again, he’s still moving,’ yelled Lando as the ambulance hurtled across the pitch.

67

Hengist loved post-mortems after games. He and Emlyn would play back videos, pinpoint achievements, discuss tactics for next week. Emlyn always saw the cause, while others watched the effect. When everyone else was cheering a try, he could tell you fifteen seconds back what moves had created it. After it was over, he could recount the whole game. He believed if you could get boys to use their brains and think, they’d be much better players and enjoy the game so much more. The boys loved Emlyn for his deep commitment, his expertise, his dedication to transmit the skills he had learnt, his extreme seriousness beneath the jokey exterior.

There was no jokiness in his face that evening as he knocked on Hengist’s door.

‘Oh dear,’ said Hengist a minute later. Throwing a log on the fire, he took a couple of cans of beer out of the fridge.

‘I hope you don’t mind, I told Paris to report to me up here,’ said Emlyn.

Paris climbed the stairs. His neck felt dislocated by Brute’s tackles; his knees locked together; his heart battered every bruised rib. Slower and slower he climbed, mocked on all sides by framed photographs of glorious former fifteens.

Inside Hengist’s study, Elaine, reclining upside down on a dark green sofa, lifted her tail. Flames dancing and crackling in the red-tiled William Morris fireplace were a cheerful contrast to the bleak faces of the two men, huge shoulders against the big bay window, through which Feral had once driven a golf ball. In the distance could be seen the orange glow of Larkminster.

‘Shut the door,’ snapped Emlyn.

Hengist retreated to his archbishop’s chair, picking up a copy of Matthew Arnold’s poems, which fell open at ‘Rugby Chapel’.

Coldly, sadly descends

The autumn evening [read Hengist]. The field

Strewn with its dank yellow drifts

Of withered leaves, and the elms,

Fade into dimness apace,

Silent . . .

He must get on with his biography of Thomas and Matthew Arnold. Jupiter was so demanding. Hengist wondered if he really wanted to go into politics.

Emlyn, his normally genial face like granite, paced up and down for a moment, and then let loose his thunderbolt. How dare Paris let down his side, his house and his school and behave like a hooligan on the field.

‘And you’ve let the independent system down, behaving like a yob in front of Rod Hyde, who you know will make political capital out of the whole thing.’ Emlyn mimicked Rod for a second. “‘We could have told you he’d revert to type.”’

After another two minutes of the same rant Hengist, who was a kind man, felt Emlyn was being too brutal. To lighten the mood, Elaine got to her feet and started running on the spot on the window seat, ripping the red Paisley upholstery with her long claws.

‘I really feel—’ murmured Hengist.

‘With respect, headmaster, don’t interfere,’ snarled Emlyn, then turned on Paris again. ‘You realize knocking out a ref is a criminal offence. He could suffer brain damage.’

‘No brain to damage.’

‘Don’t be bloody cheeky,’ howled Emlyn, ‘just get out of my sight.’

‘It’s not a laughing matter,’ said Hengist sternly, flipping over a page, he read:

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams . . .

It was the same poem he had marked in Janna’s copy. Poor Paris, he wondered, was he still hopelessly in love with her?

‘Get out,’ roared Emlyn.

Elaine shot under a sofa as Paris limped towards the door, shoulders hunched, the picture of desolation. He’d been so proud of being in the team; now he’d blown it. He’d let Bianca down too; he’d heard her screaming for him. Just as his desperately trembling hand reached for the polished brass doorknob, Emlyn drained his beer can and called after him.

‘I also have to thank you.’ Paris froze. ‘If you hadn’t knocked out that ref, I’d have been forced to do it myself.’

For a second Paris scowled round at him, then he smiled, slowly, infinitely sweetly. ‘Brute Stevens accused me of being a “posh bastard”, so I must be making some progress,’ and he was gone.

‘Christ, how can anyone resist that boy,’ sighed Hengist.

From then on Paris began to enjoy Bagley. He played regularly for the Colts. More importantly, Theo Graham began giving him four hours’ Latin and Greek coaching a week.

As Theo devoted to him that gift of teaching, that insight into another mind, that patience and ability to inspire and ignite, Paris had his first real glimpse of the enchanted world of the classics and became not altogether of this world. He lost things, he drifted in late, he forgot to eat. He was in love.

Theo was battling to finish his translation of the seven existing plays of Sophocles. Knowing Paris to be confused about his identity, he gave him
Oedipus Rex
, one of the plays he had completed, to read.

‘Not only the greatest play ever written,’ he told Paris at their first session in his crowded study, ‘it’s also all about adoption and of the dire consequences of not telling a child it’s adopted.

‘As an abandoned child’ – what Paris loved about Theo was that he never pussyfooted around a subject – ‘you must wonder if every man you meet is your father, or every woman you’re attracted to is your mother.’

‘Perhaps that’s why I fancy Bianca,’ said Paris dryly, ‘who’s so young she couldn’t possibly be my mother.’

Theo himself had reached an age when he no longer expected reciprocated love, just something to look forward to and dream about at night to distract him from the often terrible pain in his back.

The shadows under Paris’s eyes were the pale mauve of harebells, his eyes the grey of overcast skies. He had the straight nose and pallor of an Elgin marble, which Theo would never give back to the Greeks.

Theo now had a second goal, not just to live long enough to complete his translation of Sophocles, but also to get Paris into Cambridge.

68

The week before Larks faced Ofsted, as if deliberately to derail Janna, Ashton and Crispin had finally summoned her to S and C headquarters for the intended pep talk.

A lovely Hockney of a kingfisher-blue swimming pool brightened the beiges of the Evil Office, no doubt reminding the pair of the fortnight they’d just enjoyed in Tangier. Both were tanned, although Ashton must have plastered himself in factor 100 to stop his pink and white skin burning. Crispin was fatter than ever, his primrose-yellow shirt straining at the buttons to reveal his waxed chest. A new goatee beard failed to hide an extra chin. The sun had bleached both goatee and his hair a rather startling orange. The room reeked of Ashton’s chloroform scent as he launched straight into the attack.

‘S and C were bwought in to waise educational standards in Larkshire but we have just had to pay a massive three-hundredand-ninety-thousand-pound fine out of our annual management fee purely because you and a handful of rural schools failed to reach their targets. Your GCSE figures were among the lowest in Larkshire.’

‘Much higher than last year. We rose six per cent.’

‘Not enough. You’ve let us down.’

‘Are you aware’ – Crispin glanced at his typed notes – ‘your governors called an unofficial meeting because the parents were in such despair over the results and the lack of information provided?’

‘Only a few parents,’ said Janna, thinking of the pile of cards at the end of the summer term. ‘How dare the governors hold secret meetings? It’s illegal.’

‘A measure of their fwustration,’ sighed Ashton.

He’s getting a real buzz out of this, thought Janna, looking at his hateful soft features and unblinking serpent’s eyes. Putting out a delicately manicured hand, Ashton helped himself to a white chocolate from a shiny mauve box. Crispin’s piggy lips watered.

‘Your projected intake is also disastwous,’ went on Ashton.

‘The county council sabotaged that by changing the bus routes,’ said Janna quickly. ‘No parent is going to allow their eleven-year-olds to walk three-quarters of a mile from the school gates – particularly in winter. We were just getting known as a rapidly improving school then crap press ruins it. A lot of parents changed their minds about coming to Larks after the hopelessly biased reports on the geography field trip.’

‘Oh my dear, I was coming to that.’ Ashton nibbled another chocolate and finding it lime-centred, lobbed it, to Crispin’s distress, into the bin. ‘That disaster was of your own making. In this vewy office we warned you not to bond with Hengist B-T. Carried away by his glamour, you flew too near the sun. You were the only head in charge that fatal night. If Alex Bwuce hadn’t arrived and taken control, you’d all have lost your jobs. You’re lucky Wandal Stancombe didn’t have Paris and Xavier Campbell-Black up on a wape charge. Jade Stancombe was evidently so traumatized she couldn’t bear to go through the experience again in court.’