Wicked! (7 page)

‘You are well briefed.’ Mags smiled. ‘Your predecessor hardly recognized his staff.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ stammered Janna, ‘and your husband’s the great detective.’

‘He’d like you to say so. He said to call him if you get any hassle.’ Margaret popped the Chief Inspector’s card into Janna’s jacket pocket. ‘You must come to supper and meet him.’

Vastly cheered, Janna worked the room, enquiring after new babies, congratulating on engagements and new houses, expressing sorrow over deaths and hearing endless complaints about the new Year Nine and the Wolf Pack.

She was aware of Mike Pitts skulking in a corner not meeting her eyes and Cara Sharpe also avoiding her. In a scarlet dress, which clung to her rapacious, elongated body and matched her drooping vermilion mouth, Cara looked far more attractive than she had at Janna’s interview. Her ebony hair seemed softer and curlier, but her face was still as hard as the earth in those poor dead potted plants.

She was also busy upstaging other teachers over their GCSE results. ‘How did Mitzi do in geography?’ she called across to Miss Basket: one of the Dinosaurs who had buck teeth, a pale, wispy fringe and a twitching face shiny enough to check one’s make-up in, and who promptly stepped back into the Christmas decorations with a loud crunch, replying that Mitzi had only got a D.

‘You amaze me, she’s so easy to teach,’ mocked Cara. ‘She got A stars in drama, English and English lit. for me.’

Bitch, thought Janna and promptly told a crestfallen Miss Basket, ‘You did brilliantly with those asylum-seekers, getting C grades in such a short time.’

Miss Basket blushed with passionate gratitude. Cara looked furious. Then Janna spoilt it by congratulating Basket on a new grandson.

‘I never married,’ squawked Basket.

Everyone suppressed smiles except Cara Sharpe, who laughed openly before turning glittering eyes on Lydia, the NQT who was the most junior member of her department:

‘You’ve got Year Nine E tomorrow, Lydia, you’ll find them a doddle.’

Janna swung round in horror. Year Nine E included the Wolf Pack, Monster and Satan, not to mention autistic, often violent Rocky. They’d eat poor Lydia for the breakfast their parents probably wouldn’t provide.

‘You must look out for Paris Alvaston,’ Janna advised Lydia as Wally topped up their glasses. ‘I hear he writes wonderful stories.’

‘With respect,’ sneered Cara, ‘Paris is a no-hoper, like all the Wolf Pack. You have to tell them five times to do anything, they’re always late or don’t come in at all, and never do their homework. Paris, arrogant little beast, does what he pleases and the others follow suit.’

‘Not a doddle then, as you promised Lydia,’ flared up Janna, quite forgetting about keeping her trap shut. ‘That’s a very negative attitude.’

‘I’m entirely on Cara’s side. The Wolf Pack are beyond control.’ A tall man with blond curls and smooth golden-brown skin had joined the group. ‘Pearl’s a hell-cat and Kylie Rose a nympho. If I’m going to teach them, I want a chastity belt and CCTV in the classroom.’

This must be Jason Fenton, alias Goldilocks. He was certainly pretty, his regular features marred only by rather bulging blue eyes, as though the transformation from frog into Prince Charming had not been absolute.

‘We mustn’t let past behaviour dictate the future,’ Janna said firmly. ‘The Wolf Pack are clearly forceful characters.’

‘You can’t make a difference with that lot,’ drawled Jason, ‘they’re too damaged.’

The room had gone quiet, quivering collectively with expectation.

‘If you feel like that,’ said Janna furiously, ‘you shouldn’t be teaching here.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Jason smiled into her eyes. ‘I’ve been trying to see you all day to hand in my notice.’ Over the gasps of amazement he added: ‘But Rowan Merton wouldn’t let me cross your threshold,’ and, shoving an envelope into Janna’s hand, he turned towards the door.

A striking strawberry blonde in a non-existent skirt and a clinging pink vest glued to her worked-out body, whom Janna recognized as Gloria, the deputy head of PE, gave a wail: ‘When are you going, Jase?’

‘If one resigns on the first day of term, one can be over the hills and far way by half-term.’

‘And
where
are you going?’ hissed an incensed, wrong-footed Cara.

‘To Bagley Hall as head of drama,’ said Jason, filling up his glass on the way out.

‘That’s an independent,’ thundered Sam Spink.

‘I know,’ murmured Jason. ‘Adequate funding, nineteen weeks’ holiday, a decent salary and no Wolf Pack: need I say more? Here’s to me,’ and, draining his glass, he was gone.

Over a thunderous murmur of chat, Janna had to pull herself and the meeting together. Clapping her hands for quiet, assuring everyone she wouldn’t keep them long, she then had to express great regret that Larks had had to bid farewell to ten teachers she had never met. There were broad grins when she described a former ICT master as a ‘tower of strength’, when he’d evidently jumped half the female staff and impregnated two supply teachers, and laughter when she expressed deep regret at the death of some former head, who’d only emigrated with his wife to Tasmania.

‘Mike Pitts wouldn’t have slipped up like that,’ muttered Skunk Illingworth, the science Dinosaur, refilling his pint mug.

‘I will get to know you all soon,’ apologized Janna. She took a deep breath and looked round. Somehow she must rally them. Then Jason returned. Seeing him grinning superciliously and lounging against the wall, Janna’s resolve was stiffened and she kicked off by attacking her staff for their atrocious GCSE results.

‘We must start from this moment to improve. If we can get our children to behave, then we can teach them, and they will behave if they’re interested.’ She smiled at Lydia in the front row.

‘They will also behave if this is a happy school and they have fun here as well as learning. We must give them and the school back its pride so they’ll stop trashing and graffitiing the place.

‘Wally has worked so hard restoring the building over the holidays. Debbie has worked so hard cleaning up in here. Frankly, it was a tip.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wally clutching his head. ‘In turn,’ she went on, ‘I’d like you all to work hard transforming your classrooms. We want examples of good work on the walls and the corridors and colour and excitement everywhere.’ Then, beaming at the furious faces: ‘And will you all start smiling around the place, particularly at the children, making them feel valued and welcome.’

Only Phil Pierce, Lydia and Lance, Mags Gablecross and Miss Cambola, the busty music mistress, smiled back.

As Janna took a fortifying slug of white, she heard a loud cough to her left and, glancing round, saw Sam Spink tapping the glass of her watch.

‘You were saying?’ snapped Janna.

Marching over, Sam said in a stage whisper that could be heard in the gods at Covent Garden: ‘People have been in school since eight-thirty, nearly nine hours, working flat out to get everything shipshape. Many colleagues need to collect kids from childminders, others have long journeys home and want to be alert for their students tomorrow. I’m sure you’re aware that anything over eight hours is unacceptable. Any minute they’ll walk out of their own accord.’

‘OK,’ muttered Janna, turning to her now utterly captive audience, ‘we’ll call it a day. I’m afraid it’s been a very long one. Thank you all for coming. I look forward to working with you,’ then she hissed at Sam Spink, ‘and I’ll personally string you up by your Winnie-the-Pooh character socks if you ever cheek me in public like that again,’ before stalking out.

‘Remember always to smile around the school,’ Cara Sharpe called after her.

‘Never thanked me for taking Year Ten to Anglesey in July,’ repeated Skunk as he petulantly emptied bottles, then glasses into his mug.

Phil and Wally were kind and complimentary, but Janna knew she’d blown it.

‘This place needs shaking up,’ said Phil. ‘Would you like to come home for a bite of supper?’

‘Oh, I’d love to,’ said Janna longingly, ‘but I’ve got so much to do.’

She still hadn’t written her speech for assembly and her in-tray, to quote Larkminster Rovers’s battle hymn, was ‘rising, rising, rising’.

She was also jolted to realize that in the old days, before she’d become part of the high-flying team at Redfords, she’d have probably been out hassling senior management like Sam Spink: was poacher turning keeper?

The full moon, like a newly washed plate, followed her home – perhaps she
should
buy the staffroom a dishwasher. Jubilee Cottage was cold, smelt musty and didn’t look welcoming because she still hadn’t unpacked her stuff or put up any pictures. Most of them, admittedly, were adorning her office at Larks. Poor little cottage, she must give it some TLC along with five hundred disturbed children and at least twenty-eight bolshie staff.

A large vodka and tonic followed by Pot Noodles wasn’t a good idea either. She’d promptly thrown up the lot. Then she washed her hair. Nagged to present a more respectable image by her fellow teachers at Redfords, she had had her red curls lopped to the shoulders, then defiantly invested in a pink suit decorated with darker pink roses which should jazz up tomorrow’s proceedings.

As heads covered up to ten miles a day policing their schools, she had also bought a pair of dark pink shoes with tiny heels. She laid everything out on a chair. By the time she’d showered and put on a nightie, it was half past twelve.

She fell to her knees. ‘Oh please, dear God, help me to save my school.’

If you banged your head on the pillow and recited something last thing, you were supposed to remember it in the morning.

‘Feral Jackson, Paris Alvaston, Graffi Williams, Pearl Smith, Kylie Rose Peck . . .’ The faces of the Wolf Pack swam before her eyes throughout the night.

Then she overslept and didn’t get to school until eight-fifteen.

At the bottom of the drive, in anticipation of a new term, were already gathering lawyers’ assistants waiting to hand out leaflets encouraging disgruntled parents to sue the school, pushers lurking with offers of drugs or steroids, and expelled pupils hanging around to duff up pupils they’d been chucked out for terrorizing.

On her desk, Janna found a pile of good-luck cards, but nothing from Stew, not even a phone message. She was also outraged to receive a card on which Tory blue flowers – bluebells, flax and forget-me-nots – were intertwined and exquisitely painted by someone called Hanna Belvedon. Inside was a handwritten note from Jupiter Belvedon, presumably the artist’s husband and Larkminster’s Conservative MP, welcoming Janna to Larkshire and hoping she’d ring him if she needed help. As if she’d accept help from a rotten Tory.

Out of the window she could see pupils straggling up the drive, smoking, arguing, fighting. Several posters and the welcome-back sign had already been ripped down. There was a crash as a brick flew through a window in reception.

Two minutes before assembly was due to start, Rowan Merton bustled in quivering with excitement:

‘You might like to open this before kick-off.’

It was a beautifully wrapped and pink-ribboned bottle of champagne. Darling Stew had remembered. Turning towards the window, so Rowan couldn’t look over her shoulder, Janna opened the little white envelope and was almost winded with disappointment as she read: ‘Dear Miss Curtis, This is to wish you great luck, I hope you’ll lunch with me one day soon. Yours ever, Hengist Brett-Taylor’.

‘Who the hell’s Hengist Brett-Taylor?’

Rowan was so impressed, she forgot for a moment to be hostile.

‘Don’t you know? He’s head of Bagley Hall.’ Then, when Janna looked blank: ‘Our local independent school – frightfully posh. He was on
Question Time
last Thursday making mincemeat of poor Estelle Morris. Livens up any programme.’

‘Not Ghengist Khan,’ whispered Janna in horror, ‘that fascist pig?’

‘Well, I don’t approve of Hengist’s politics,’ said Rowan shirtily, ‘but he’s drop-dead gorgeous.’

‘He’s an arrogant bastard,’ who, now Janna remembered, had just poached Jason Fenton, another arrogant bastard. They’d suit each other. She was about to drop the bottle of champagne in the bin, when the bell went, so she put it in the fridge. She might well need it later.

Applying another layer of pale pink lipstick, she defiantly drenched herself in Diorissimo, buttoned up her suit to flaunt her small waist, and jumped at the sound of a wolf whistle.

‘You look absolutely gorgeous,’ sighed Phil Pierce, who’d come to collect her, ‘roses, roses all the way. The kids are going to love you.’

Hearing the overwhelming din of children pouring down the corridor into the main hall, Janna started to shake. The task ahead seemed utterly awesome.

5

Dora, the eleven-year-old sister of Larkminster’s Tory MP, Jupiter Belvedon, had heard that the young headmistress starting at Larks, the local sink school, was an absolute cracker. Dora thought this most unlikely. Schoolmistresses in her experience were such old boots that anything without two heads and a squint was described as ‘attractive’.

Dora had therefore risen at seven to ride her skewbald pony Loofah along the River Fleet and into Larkminster to check Janna out. Dora also needed to think. She was very exercised because she was starting boarding at a new school, Bagley Hall, in a week’s time. Dora’s mother, Anthea, kept saying Bagley Hall was like Chewton Glen or the Ritz, but to Dora it was prison – particularly as she’d be separated from Loofah and Cadbury, her chocolate Labrador, who bounded ahead of them putting up duck. Dora was worried about both Loofah and Cadbury. Her sweet father, who’d been dotty about animals, would have looked after them, but alas, he’d died recently and her mother regarded both animals as a tie and a needless expense.