Wicked! (76 page)

General the cat opened a disapproving yellow eye but didn’t shift as the cork flew across the room to the accompaniment of a hammering on the front door.

‘Oh hell,’ said Lily, ‘let’s pretend we’re out.’

But there was no escape as Janna barged in, followed by Partner; nor was there any word of apology as she collapsed on to the dark blue velvet chair by the fire, shaking uncontrollably, her reddened eyes wide and staring.

‘Oh Lily, oh Lily.’

‘You poor child, whatever’s the matter? Give her a drink, Christian.’

‘They’re closing my school down.’

‘They can’t do that.’

‘They can, they can! What’s going to happen to my children and my teachers and Wally?’

‘That’s rotten luck,’ said the Brigadier, handing her a glass. ‘You must fight it.’

‘I know, but I don’t know how to. I’ve been fighting since I took over.’ Janna gulped down half the champagne and carried on talking.

Lily, of course, insisted she stay to supper, and divided the potted shrimps and the beef and ale pie for two into three, and buttered a lot of brown bread.

Christian tried not to feel irritated when Janna drank most of the remaining champagne but, incapable of eating, fed all her pie to Partner.

‘I forgot to get him any food on the way home, and I left him shut in my office, I’m coming apart at the seams, I’ve got to be strong for the children. Larks is the only security they know.’ She started to cry again. Partner, his front paws on her knees, tried to stem her tears with a beef-flavoured tongue.

‘We’ll all fight,’ promised Lily. ‘Hengist will kick up a hell of a rumpus, and so will Rupert. And while my nephew Jupiter isn’t my favourite person, he’s excellent at putting the jackboot in – anything to discredit Cindy Payne and New Labour.’

‘I called her a fat cow.’ Janna was twisting a thread hanging out of Lily’s green velvet chair cover so violently it broke off and a mass of kapok billowed out. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’

Whatever happened to stiff upper lips, thought the Brigadier as Janna helped herself to the last of the champagne.

‘I’ve let so many people down.’ She sobbed. ‘People like Sophy Belvedon and the new head of D and T who’ve got children and massive mortgages because they’ve specially bought houses in the area. I feel like a captain who’s steered his great battleship on to the rocks.’

Lily patted Janna’s shoulder. ‘No one could have fought harder.’

The Brigadier felt ashamed. It was only because he’d so wanted to be alone with Lily.

‘Oh God, I must tell Russell,’ exclaimed Janna. ‘So many people to tell – the children are going to be the worst. Can I use your phone?’

Her shaking hand kept misdialling Russell’s number. She got the vicar and the local greengrocer before she finally reached him.

‘I heard, and I’m not surprised,’ he said heavily. ‘I gather you were extremely offensive to Cindy when she tried to be supportive. Why must you always construe help as criticism?’

‘Their help is like snake venom,’ shouted Janna and hung up.

‘He knew,’ she said flatly. ‘Ashton and Cindy must have been straight on to him.’

‘I smell collusion,’ said Lily. ‘First, you must appoint Dora as your press officer.’

Next morning Janna had the nightmare of breaking the news to the staff, taking an extended lunch hour, gathering them into the staffroom, feeling utterly sick at the sight of their stunned faces.

‘It can’t be true,’ muttered Lydia.

Basket burst into tears. ‘I’ll never get another job.’

‘We’re going to fight it, of course,’ said Janna quickly. ‘We’ve got two months to register protest.’

‘It wasn’t unexpected,’ said Mike Pitts. ‘When will the axe fall?’

‘Ashton said the end of the summer term, but that’s only a few months away.’ Janna looked bewildered. ‘He must mean summer two thousand and four, and that’s only if the Schools Organization Committee are all in favour.’

But when she dialled Ashton to check, he assured her if the Schools Organization Committee were unanimous, Larks would close in summer 2003.

‘You can’t close it so soon. You particularly can’t do that to Year Ten,’ whispered Janna in horror, remembering how she’d walked out on her GCSE classes at Redfords. ‘Year Eleven will be OK. They’ll take their exams in May and we’ll be able to see them through before we close down.’

Outside she could see the children in the playground. Graffi and Feral were idly kicking a ball around; Pearl and Kylie were reading the same magazine, stamping their feet to keep warm. All of them were perplexed by their extended lunch hour and, aware some storm was brewing, gathering in edgy little groups, glancing constantly up at her window. Are we in more trouble?

‘We can’t abandon Year Ten,’ she told Ashton firmly. ‘What about Aysha and Graffi and Kitten and Johnnie and Feral and Monster, they’ll never get a job and out of this hell if they don’t get any qualifications.’

‘Your beloved Wolf Pack,’ drawled Ashton.

‘And at least fifty others.’

‘Hardly the A team.’

‘They bloody are!’ yelled Janna, turning and catching Chally raising an eyebrow at Mike Pitts.

‘They’ve been totally disrupted by all the rumour and speculation about closure,’ she went on furiously, ‘and the incessant bitching of other schools. They haven’t completed any coursework, and they’ll be chucked out at the end of the summer term into an unfamiliar school for the second year of their course. It’s not bloody fair.’

‘If their last SATs were anything to go by,’ snapped Ashton, ‘they’re not likely to get any gwades anyway. Straight Us, I’d say.’

‘They’ve got to be given a chance.’

‘And you’ll have a chance to air your views at the public meeting.’

‘I’m afraid it’s summer 2003,’ she told the staff grimly, ‘so we’ve really got a fight on our hands.’

If anything convinced her of the need to fight it was the anguish and terror of the children. Pearl, sobbing that she’d thought they’d have five terms more; an inconsolable grey-faced Danijela: ‘I is only happy with you, this is my home.’ ‘Who will write our CVs and sign our driving licences,’ wailed Year Eleven.

The boys reacted with violence, hurling more tiles off the roof, tearing off door handles, kicking over desks, trashing classrooms; soon they wouldn’t have a school to close down. The
Gazette
and the television cameras were soon outside the door. The staff, panicking about lost jobs, gathered in corners, whispering and afraid, many of them blaming Janna.

But even the darkest cloud has a silver lining.

‘Can I have a word?’ demanded Chally later in the day, shutting Janna’s door behind her and rearranging a crimson-leafed scarf before announcing she was off to take up a deputy head’s post at St Jimmy’s.

‘Congratulations.’ Janna tried not to display her delight. ‘I’m really pleased for you. You’ll find it inspirational working with Rod Hyde. Is one of his Senior Management Team leaving?’

‘Not that I know of. They need an extra pair of capable hands. St Jimmy’s is so over-subscribed.’

Probably soon with an influx of the brightest children from Larks, thought Janna in outrage, but at least I won’t have to suck up to you any more, you old bat.

‘Every Chally shall be exalted,’ sang Cambola when Janna pulled her and Mags into her office to tell them.

‘Do you think there’s any hope she’ll be one of those high fliers who whisks all her key people away with her?’ asked Mags.

‘What bliss if she took Spink, Skunk, Pittsy, Robbie and Basket,’ sighed Janna.

Next moment, a red-eyed Rowan put her dark head round the door. ‘Hengist Brett-Taylor on the line, Janna.’

‘That should cheer up the poor little duck,’ whispered Mags as she and Cambola made themselves scarce.

‘Darling, darling!’ Hengist was ringing from Brussels. ‘I only just heard from Jupiter. Lily Hamilton rang him. She must feel really strongly; first time she’s spoken to him since he threw her out of her house. God, I’m sorry, are you OK?’

‘Fine.’ Janna battled not to cry. ‘At least Chalford’s just announced she’s leaving to be deputy head at St Jimmy’s.’

‘Two wrongs have certainly made a right there.’

‘And when I called Russell last night, an hour after I knew, he’d already been told.’

‘Sounds like conspiracy,’ Hengist echoed Lily, ‘what fun we’re going to have exposing them. Don’t worry, darling.’

‘How can I not? What will happen to my children?’

‘I’m sure Bagley can accommodate any of your Year Tens in with a shout. I’d love to have Graffi and Feral and Aysha and mouthy Pearl.’ Then, when Janna didn’t react: ‘You could join Bagley and keep an eye on them. You’re always saying how you miss teaching, and I could see more of you.’ His voice had grown softer, more husky.

‘How can you trivialize such a terrible thing, I’d never teach in an independent,’ yelled Janna. ‘You’ve already stolen my teachers, my brightest pupil and my heart, you’re not taking anything else,’ and she slammed down the receiver.

To her dismay, Hengist didn’t ring back. Was she misconstruing genuine help as criticism again?

Two days later she got a letter from Sally.

‘Hengist has told me. What a dreadful thing to happen. I’m so sorry. We must save Larks. Hengist has got something up his sleeve.’

75

Affection had grown so strongly between Bagley and Larks that when news of the closure hit the press, mostly via Dora, both schools joined forces to create an uproar.

Graffi’s poignant design of a lark escaping from a vicious black cat, with the slogan ‘Larks will survive’, was soon appearing on balloons, stickers, posters, waving placards and, indeed, scrawled on walls all over Larkminster.

Hengist, to Alex Bruce’s fury, blithely encouraged his pupils to join the public protests and marches against both the closure of Larks and the imminent war in Iraq, so they seemed hardly ever in school.

‘We bonded with Larks in good times, sir, we’re not going to desert them in bad times,’ Lando told Alex sanctimoniously.

‘But you’ve got double maths.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Lando, and he raced off to join Graffi and Johnnie on the picket line.

Save our school, boom, boom, boom, save our school, boom, boom, boom, it was so much more fun than lessons.

Tarquin Courtney was only too happy ferrying pickets around in his Porsche. Ashton was demented, particularly when someone spray-painted ascending larks all over his pretty Regency house in the Close.

Lily and the Brigadier were also in the thick of things. In March, to the horror of her nephew Jupiter, Lily whacked a Lib Dem councillor over the head with her placard. Luckily the officer poised to arrest her was PC Cuthbert, who promptly let her off.

Together, she and the Brigadier distracted themselves from the horrors of the war and the stock market by going on marches. Save our school, boom, boom, boom. ‘Why does my heart go boom, boom, boom,’ sang the Brigadier. The pilot of
Buffers
had been such a resounding success, his presence at Larks demos added considerable gravitas.

Emlyn added physical weight. With Attila the Hunk on the picket line, S and C heavies melted away. With war in Iraq seemingly inevitable, Emlyn was worried sick about Oriana in Baghdad, but he hid it well. He made all his history pupils write letters of protest to County Hall praising Larks, saying how much they’d enjoyed
Romeo and Juliet
, the field trip and the nature ramble in which an S and C executive, hell-bent on closing down Larks, was found in disguise spying in the bushes.

Only Boffin Brooks got under the wire, writing and sealing his own letter, claiming Larks was the most dreadful school he’d ever encountered.

Miss Cambola led every protest, playing ‘Hark, Hark! the Lark’ on her trumpet. Even Cosmo surprised everyone by proposing a concert in the water meadows near the cathedral. His mother, Dame Hermione, was a friend of the Bishop.

‘What could be more lovely, my lord, than classical melodies on a warm summer evening?’

When it leaked out that Cosmo was planning to feature himself and the Cosmonaughties, belting out ‘Cocks and Rubbers’, among their cleaner lyrics, the Bishop’s secretary slipped Cosmo a thousand pounds to go away, half of which Cosmo handed over to Larks.

Poor Feral, who never thought beyond tomorrow, which he thought would be spent at Larks, was terrified. Even incessant Arsenal victories didn’t cheer him. He laboriously made his own poster: ‘Saive are Skool’, which the Gazette photographed him nailing up outside Larks. The photograph appeared on the front page, with ‘sp’ signs in the margin and a caption: ‘Another reason why Larks should close’.

Stormin’ Norman started a Parents’ Action Group, but as most of the action consisted of thumping other parents, it soon fizzled out.

Dora was in her element with the press ringing her every day. In addition, she bravely went from house to house collecting signatures and even organizing a car-boot sale, to which she gave many favourite toys and several of her mother’s best dresses.

Paris, pretending not to be interested, read every paper and watched every bulletin. If Larks closed, Janna would leave the area and he’d never see her again. She looked so thin, pale and tense in her photographs. He ached to comfort her.