Wicked! (71 page)

As Bob Marley was replaced by Schubert’s
Marche Militaire
, such a brisk jaunty tune, Janna found herself marching down the corridor. In reception, the inspector was crouched down admiring the largest of Graffi’s tigers.

‘This is a very fine beast,’ he said. Rising to his feet, he took Janna’s trembling hand. ‘Wade Hargreaves, and, from your photographs, you must be Janna Curtis.’

Janna had expected an ogre but the man smiling down at her was tall, slim, in his late thirties and with the genial friendliness of a yellow Labrador.

‘Welcome to Larks,’ said Janna in relief.

‘Oh Christ,’ muttered Mike Pitts, going green and reversing into his office, ‘it’s Wade Hargreaves. I sacked him when I was head of maths at Rutminster Comp.’

Wade Hargreaves was accompanied by, amongst others, a spinster called Miss Spicer, who had one of Chalford’s draped scarves, short spiky hair, a lantern jaw, disapproving coffee-bean brown eyes and who, having demanded a cup of peppermint tea, seemed disappointed when it was provided. Well done, Emlyn.

From then onwards Janna felt the sharp constant pain of a steel toothcomb being plunged into the scalp and tugged through tangled hair as Wade Hargreaves’s team went everywhere, talked to everyone and asked for every lesson plan, file and balance sheet to be taken into the interview room. Brandishing clipboards they moved around devouring timetables, schemes of work, attendance figures, the first tentative coursework of Year Ten, and listening to Sam Spink in her Hogwarts’ character socks, her massive thighs spilling over her chair like suet as she charted the inadequacies of Larks’s workload agreement.

Mike Pitts, unable to face Wade Hargreaves, disappeared home with stress. By contrast Mags Gablecross was everywhere, guiding, supporting, comforting staff who felt they had cocked up.

‘I could have done it so much better,’ sobbed Lydia. ‘I made a tape about Simon Armitage to nudge my memory but Johnnie Fowler got hold of it and played it back to the class and Miss Spicer.’

‘I got Ten C too revved up about Billy the Kid,’ said Lance dolefully. ‘One of the asylum-seekers pulled out a gun and Miss Spicer said I must remember that the Indians not the cowboys were the heroes.’

But there were good moments.

‘Until Miss came, I had no grown-ups to talk to,’ Pearl told Wade Hargreaves. ‘No one respected me. Now school remembers my birthday, I get a card and a Mars bar and a song in assembly. She’s going to help me take a make-up course.’

‘Miss is there for the mums,’ said Kylie. ‘She helps them fill in forms for the social and the courts. She listens when their partners leave them or they can’t pay their rent. She filled in my brovver’s driving licence for him, and she remembered Cameron’s birfday. Lots of teachers don’t know all our names. Miss even knows all our babies’ names.’

‘We get letters to take home in Urdu,’ said Aysha, ‘so Mum and Dad can understand what’s going on. Mum came to parents’ day for the first time; there was cake and orange juice and she talked to other mums.’

70

Assembly the following morning was a great success. Kylie Rose lifted the hair on the back of everyone’s neck singing ‘It’s a Wonderful World’. Aysha in her headscarf read from the Koran, Graffi from the New Testament – ‘Judge not that ye be not judged’ – which made Wade and even Miss Spicer smile. Danijela, one of the new asylum-seekers, read a Bosnian prayer, then the choir sang ‘How Lovely are Thy Dwellings’ so beautifully as the morning sun streamed through the stained-glass St Michael that even Miss Spicer wiped away a tear and Wade grinned across at Janna.

He was a terrific listener, as still as a wildlife cameraman who knows the only way to score is to move quietly. He and Miss Spicer were unfazed when Graffi’s father, who’d been in the pub all day, dropped into the interview room for a quiet kip before going home. Or when Pearl’s boxer father, just out of gaol, rolled up to get even with one of the pushers outside the school gates and try and catch a glimpse of his wife and her toyboy friend.

Debbie had been thrilled yesterday when the inspectors lunched in the canteen and had second helpings both of goat curry and rhubarb crumble and were constantly requesting more flapjacks for the interview room.

Things were dicey when they caught up with Feral, sulky because he was having a one-to-one lesson with Sophy Belvedon in the individual learning unit, which had once been the changing rooms before the football pitch was sold off.

Sophy, realizing Feral would only attempt to read if he were interested, had blown up both Sunday’s football reports on Arsenal and pages from a biography of Sol Campbell.

‘You’re not thick, Feral,’ Sophy was telling him. ‘People are stupidly characterized these days as gifted, able or with needs.’

‘I’ve got needs all right. I need a fag and a shag,’ said Feral, grabbing Sophy and burying his sleek face in her splendid breasts.

‘I don’t think my husband Alizarin would like that.’ Sophy edged away her legs and hips, leaving her bosom in Feral’s strong grip. ‘He’s six foot four and built like an oak tree.’ Then, as Feral reluctantly released her: ‘Not that you’re not utterly gorgeous.’

‘Wiv needs.’ Feral batted his long eyelashes. He liked Sophy but he found it humiliating to be taught on his own. It was all Paris’s fault for deserting him.

Wade and Miss Spicer asked Feral a little about work and then about the other teachers.

‘Miss went to court with me in August; her evidence got me off. She got me a job working for two coffin-dodgers, mowing, chopping logs and fings; later me and Lily got wasted on sloe gin.

‘Most of the teachers are shit here,’ Feral went on. ‘Chalford’s shit, so’re Robbie and Skunk, Miss Basket’s crap too, she ought to be able to control us. Mrs Gablecross is nice, we can talk to her about anyfing. I need a fag.’ Feral shook an empty pack in irritation. ‘That no-good mother-fucking niggerbasher Monster Norman pinched my last one.’

‘You can’t call him that,’ said Miss Spicer faintly.

‘
You
can’t call him that,’ corrected Feral mockingly, ‘but I can, ’cos I’m black and underprivileged. As a representative of an underprivileged effnic minority, I can call him anyfing I like.’

Sophy tried not to laugh, particularly when Miss Spicer rallied and asked Feral if he felt underprivileged.

‘People call you “black shit”.’ Feral tipped back his chair, testing their reaction through narrowed speculative eyes. ‘But if you play football well enough, you earn eighty grand a week and in a few seasons go from being “black shit” to God. That’s why I’m gonna become a footballer. Put a recommendation in your report’ – he tapped Miss Spicer’s clipboard – ‘that Larks needs a football pitch.’

‘Thank you, Feral and Mrs Belvedon,’ said Wade.

Checking the dining room at lunchtime on the second day, Janna’s heart sank to see Miss Spicer and a jolly blond member of the team called Mrs Mills tucking into toad in the hole and deep in conversation with Rocky. Did he know that Larkshire had one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the country?’

‘Sure,’ replied Rocky. ‘That’s ’cos Kylie Rose lives here.’

‘I don’t think that’s quite right,’ said Mrs Mills, who was dieting and reluctantly setting aside a piece of gold, utterly delicious, batter. ‘Do you find sex education enlightening, Rocky?’

‘Sex education is wicked, man.’ Rocky bit suggestively on a sausage. ‘They never stop banging on about STDs but they tell you lotsa ways to have sex – blow jobs, going down and fings, anal sex – without getting girls up the duff.’

‘That’s enough, Rocky,’ said Janna firmly. ‘Go and get yourself some dessert, you know you like jam roly-poly.’

‘Sorry about that,’ said Janna, ‘Rocky gets carried away. Can I get you some sweet?’

Both Miss Spicer and Mrs Mills felt they’d had enough.

‘Would you like to hear my poem about a skylark?’ asked Rocky, returning.

‘That sounds nice,’ said Mrs Mills bravely.

‘I heard a skylark singing so sweetly in the sky,’ began Rocky, seeing relief dawning on the faces of his listeners, ‘but when I looked to find him, he dumped right in my eye.’

‘I think I’d like to see the D and T department now,’ said Mrs Mills.

‘I’ll take you there,’ said Janna and was just expounding on the splendid work being done when they heard screams. Rounding the corner they nearly fell over Pearl, who was lying on top of Kitten Meadows, holding clumps of her hair in order to smash her head on the stone floor.

‘Take it back.’

‘No,’ squealed Kitten.

‘Take it fucking back.’ Smash.

‘No.’ Clawing at Pearl’s face with long silver nails, Kitten drew blood. ‘You always look fucking crap.’

‘Fucking don’t.’ Pearl smashed her fist into Kitten’s face, whereupon Kitten hit Pearl on her left breast.

‘Ow,’ screamed Pearl.

‘Please stop,’ called out Basket faintly from the safety of her classroom.

As a crowd gathered – ‘C’mon, Pearl, c’mon, Kitten’ – Wade Hargreaves emerged from a history lesson, so Janna dived in on the right, ducking blows, trying to prise the contestants apart.

A second later, Sophy Belvedon had rushed up and dived in on the left. As Kitten tried to elbow her in the ribs, she said: ‘Won’t work, I’m much too fat to feel anything.’

‘Stop it, both of you,’ yelled Janna.

At that moment Wally arrived and with his superior strength dragged off a spitting, wriggling Pearl.

‘Take her to my office,’ panted Janna. ‘You can go to the gym,’ she told Kitten, ‘and both of you will have detentions tonight and tomorrow.’ Then, when they furiously protested, continuing trying to kick out at each other: ‘That’s final, now get out of my sight.’

Having administered smelling salts to Basket, Janna, aware that a button had been ripped off her suit and her neatly piled-up hair had come down, retreated to the Ladies where she met Sophy coming out, and said, ‘Thanks so much for your help.’

‘That Basket’s a wet hen.’

‘Hush.’ Janna put her finger to her lips. Seeing an engaged sign on one of the doors she crept into the next-door booth. Climbing on to the seat and peering over the partition she discovered Miss Spicer knitting and reading
Good Housekeeping
and was so startled she fell back into the lavatory bowl with a shriek.

‘Checking for spies?’ asked Miss Spicer dryly.

‘Sort of.’

‘One needs a break from inspection.’

‘And from being a head,’ sighed Janna.

‘Hello,’ added Miss Spicer as Partner’s snout appeared under her door. ‘That is a delightful dog, he seems to know instinctively when a child is sad. He was trailing that pretty fair-haired Bosnian girl this morning.’

Shaking her wet boot Janna climbed down.

‘That’s probably because we made Danijela our bird girl. Every morning she takes out a tin of scraps which contains rich pickings from the kitchen. We couldn’t think why the birds were standing indignantly round with their wings on their hips until we discovered’ – Janna’s voice quivered – ‘Danijela was emptying the tin into her school bag for her friends in the refuge.’

‘Can’t take on everyone’s burdens,’ said Miss Spicer briskly, but her coffee-bean eyes were kind as she washed her hands vigorously before applying Bluebell hand cream. Then, painting her small mouth bright orange and rearranging the folds of her scarf, she announced she was off to the Appletree annexe to monitor some science lessons.

Miss Spicer had an eventful day. She was observing one of Mr Mates’s experiments when the roof of Appletree finally caved in on her and Year Ten E, who emerged unhurt but much aged by grey, dust-filled hair.

‘It worked with the other division,’ bleated a shaken Mr Mates, who had to be reassured that the collapsing roof had nothing to do with his experiment.

‘How lousy are thy dwellings, oh S and C,’ sang Cambola, whose music department next door had also been submerged.

‘They’ll have to give us a new roof now,’ said Mags Gablecross.

Next day Pearl gave Wade Hargreaves even more pressing reasons.

‘I spend half an hour straightening my hair every morning, then the rain pours through the roof and it goes all kinky; that’s why Kitten Meadows said my hair was crap and that’s why I hit her. If we had new roofs this wouldn’t happen.

‘My dad’s a boxer,’ she went on, ‘so it’s in my genes to land punches. Fights isn’t Miss’s fault. She’s great, and so’s Mrs Belvedon, the new English teacher.’

‘I’m just going to watch Mrs Belvedon giving Year Eight a lesson on
The Tempest
,’ said Wade.

‘Oh bugger,’ grumbled Sophy, retrieving some dropped folders, then, as Year Eight giggled: ‘You’ll have to move your table, Stefan and Josef, I’m much too fat to get through that gap.’

‘You do sound posh, miss.’

‘If you think I’m posh you should hear my mother.’

‘Paris is living with her?’ asked Kata from Kosovo longingly. ‘How’s he getting on?’

‘Fine.’ Sophy was amazed by Larks’s ongoing obsession with their lost leader. ‘Now to Caliban. My husband Alizarin has done a painting of him.’ On the whiteboard appeared a picture of a ferocious-looking beast, half wild boar, half gorilla, but with the saddest eyes.