The Following Girls (19 page)

The double page spread was taken up with a gorgeous orangey-red octopus that Bunty had copied from her brother’s
Junior Britannica
. Bunty could really draw. Bunty could make colour pencil shading look as good as the examples on the lid of the tin (a Technicolor study of an African elephant running amok in a municipal flower bed). The body of the octopus was faithfully tinted with feathery strokes, every sucker coloured and shaded to create a glorious creature of Naples yellow, raw sienna, burnt sienna, Venetian red, Van Dyke brown, basking in a sunny cerulean sea, every feature fully and correctly labelled in neat black ink. But Miss Peters’ Biro had spoken, a red line looping spitefully across both pages, deliberately spoiling the picture: ‘This is not what you were asked to do.’

Baker, steaming with rage on Bunty’s behalf, moved her friend away from the open lab door and, taking the new thumb-sized tube of glue from her blazer pocket, jammed the nozzle into the keyhole and squeezed hard while the rest of the form shoved its way out of the room.

‘We will take our revenge.’

‘Where d’you get that?’ asked Queenie, suspiciously.

‘A friend,’ teased Baker.

There was a fifteen-minute break before the next exam and all four Mandies sprinted up to the bicycle shed to discuss plans for Founder’s Day, less than a week away.

‘Can we un-tune the piano?’

‘Nah. Probbly need special tools.’

‘And very dark glasses. And a labrador,’ said Queenie. ‘Skilled work, piano tuning.’

‘We could have a
go
,’ persisted Baker.

Stottie, who’d been playing since she was three, said they’d be better off just knackering a couple of strings so that the show would be in full swing before anyone noticed.

‘Who are they wheeling on for the speeches this year? Bob Hope? Katie Boyle?’

‘Lady Henry Clyde. Busy little bee, Lady Henry. She doesn’t just do schools,’ said Bunty. ‘Daddy caught her at some Rotary Club thing. “Depresses the parts other bores cannot reach,” Daddy says. Talks hind legs off donkeys, apparently.’

‘Talented.’

‘Shame none of us is getting a badge,’ said Bunty.

‘I’m getting my Grade Six piano,’ said Stott.

‘But your piano lessons aren’t here,’ protested Queenie.

‘Mum sent O’Brien the certificate for prize day porpoises and O’Brien’ll take credit for anything. Miracle she doesn’t do Brownie and
Blue Peter
badges.’

‘Excellent,’ grinned Baker. ‘I have devised a dastardly little plan. It calls for a small, syrupy polythene bag in one blazer pocket and a damp hankie in the other. I’ll supply the necessary.’

Miss Revie’s Maths exam was considerably easier than advertised. Lousy test results played very badly in the staff room and she was keen to crank up her average – particularly with young Miss Bonetti snapping at her heels. Miss Bonetti had worked wonders with the gamma group, most of whom normally turned spastic at the mere sight of a sheet of graph paper. ‘Let’s hope you can have a similar impact on
your
girls,’ Dr O’Brien had said to Miss Revie in that nasty, no-pressure way of hers.

Then again, Miss Revie had been pleasantly surprised by the consistently high standards achieved in the beta group’s spring term homework (their matrix sheets were particularly pleasing). She hadn’t wanted to risk them all forgetting everything they ever knew under ‘exam conditions’, so this afternoon’s paper was two thirds multiple choice. Statistically, in a group that size they should score a minimum of 22 per cent, even if they ticked the answers at random. Given the shameless eccentricity of the all-important rogue responses she had dreamed up (some of which were in degrees Fahrenheit), they should all score quite a bit higher than that. What’s more, a study in a recent issue of
Mathematics Teaching Today
had established that the weaker multiple choice candidates tended not to opt for answer A (ours not to reason why), and Miss Revie had adjusted the distribution of correct answers accordingly. All in all, Miss Revie was fairly confident that the results could be skewed in her favour; a fee-paying chimpanzee would stand a sporting chance.

‘No matrices in this one,’ she said as she handed round her papers. ‘Didn’t want to make it too easy peasy.’
Peasy
. The perky expression sat on Miss Revie’s face like a party hat on a bust of Beethoven. Miss Bonetti was very chummy, apparently. They liked chummy.

The Mandies had an easy-to-master deaf-and-dumb system for relaying multiple choice answers round an exam room, so the papers were finished even more quickly than the Maths mistress had anticipated, once Queenie got into her stride. More martyrs surrendered to the flames.

‘Be sure and check through your answers.’

Chapter 13

The Upper Shells were officially unexcited by a rubbishy boys’ school dance that coming Saturday, but had still talked of almost nothing else for a fortnight. In the cloakroom next morning, Brian and the lads were all fretting about what to wear, which was complicated to the power of six and then some because they insisted on buying identical clothes. Not that they necessarily minded dressing the same (‘Are you two sisters?’ always broke a lot of ice), but more than three of you and you risked looking like the Nolans. They were still at the French-length-skirt-or-trousers stage and trying to decide whether they should all wear their bowling shirts.

Bunty meanwhile was offering the usual prizes for the worst chat-up line.

‘Oh God, remember last year?’ groaned Queenie.

‘What?’

‘Some twerp comes over and actually says, “If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me” – must have been doing it for a bet.’

‘And you said?’ Bunty had heard it before but Bunty didn’t mind, never minded – Wise to her Morecambe.

‘And I take a drag on my Black Russian, puff a whiff in his face and say, “If I said piss off would you piss off?
”
’

Funny how it was funny the first time.

Queenie liked being asked, liked telling you about being asked but actual dates frightened her. What were you supposed to talk about? What did they expect you to do? Where did you draw the line? The other big turn-off was Mr McQueen, who insisted that boys collect Amanda from the house so that he could take a good look at them and could then spend the next fortnight pouring scorn on their shoes and referring to them as ‘the son-in-law’ until Queenie eventually brought home the glad tidings that she’d given whoever-it-was the push while Dad said he wasn’t good enough for his princess and Ma revealed she’d never liked him anyway. This was why people left home: mental cruelty.

Brian and Tash had the right idea really, reckoned Baker, because getting dolled up was the only seriously good bit: all mustering at Samantha’s house, crowding round her light-up make-up mirror, lips glossed like glacé cherries, smearing concealer on their spots, dabbing scent onto ‘pressure points’. Downhill after that. Shuffling rhythmically around a school assembly hall or a pub function room in near darkness, fending off approaches until you’d effected some kind of compromise between Dream Boy and Available Boy who would then join you in a pointless conversation that was the preliminary to a gropy slow dance. Which school did they go to? Did they like Lou Reed? Like talking to the Germans on the Baden Baden trip.
Haben sie Brüdern oder Schwestern
? Only you had to shout hard in their ears to be heard over Harold Melvin and his Bluenotes. Deaf Germans.

And then lover boy might buy you a paper cup of warm cola and tell you of his passion for canoeing or carpentry or Cream.

‘D’you really think there’s a single, solitary girl in the world who likes Cream?’ said Bunty. ‘Or Hank Zappa? Or Erich Von Daniken? Or motor racing?’

‘Davina Booth goes motor racing.’

‘Yeah, but only for pulling porpoises. Davina Booth is an evil cock-sucking whore. Well-known fact.’

Bunty wasn’t going to the dance. Bunty was busy.

‘Stottie, swee-tee?’ Bunty on the scrounge.

‘Yup?’

‘I’m staying at your house Saturday, OK?’

‘I’ll air the west wing, milady.’

‘Where you off to, Bunts?’ asked Queenie.

‘Ma and Pa have to go to a wedding in Shwop-sha somewhere, and I’m supposed to sleep over with a
chum
.’ A dirty cackle. ‘All will be revealed.’

Only it wouldn’t, would it? thought Baker. More secrets, more half-arsed fibs and apologies.

When the Mandies filed back in for Registration they found the beta Maths group in a huddle and Hilary Osgood in a frenzy of mental arithmetic.

Miss Revie, much to the disgust of the rest of the staff room, refused to list her results in order of merit, or to go to the bother of calculating a mean mark. For Hilary Osgood, who had twice won the class prize for Effort and whose reports were a master class in faint praise (‘Works steadily’, ‘Has done everything that could be expected of her’), that red Biro line drawn across the marks list was as good as a winning tape and she was lost without it. She was frantically making a list of all of the percentages on the noticeboard, trying (and failing) to divide 1352 by 26.

‘What are you doing, Hills?’

‘Five twenty-sixes are one hundred and thirty-two carry three . . . Oh
sugar
’ (‘strewth’ was reserved for major emergencies), ‘I need to find the average. Dad’ll kill me if I’m below average. What’s 1352 divided by 26?’

‘44,’ said Bunty, trusting to luck that even Hilary Osgood would have scraped a higher mark than that.

‘Honestly?’ A disbelieving look from Hilary. Could anyone, anywhere compute that fast?

‘Bunty can do sums,’ Baker reminded her, ‘does gin rummy scores without a pencil, remember: Bunty knows best.’

Bunty beamed. Friends again.

‘Wanna go shopping Saturday?’

‘Thought you were having your dirty weekend.’

‘Not
completely
filthy. It’s clean as a whistle till lunchtime. He plays five-a-side every Saturday morning. All weathers. Bee-
zarre
.’

‘Five-a-side what?’

‘Fuck knows.’

Funny how they did that. Even the keenest goal attack never netted a ball again after leaving school (apart from nutters like the Drumlin, ob-viously), but men carried on running about in shorts well into middle age. Dad was the same, some old school thing. He’d drive off before breakfast every Saturday and do Old Boyish things at a special clubhouse place out beyond the ring road, wisteria hanging gladly from the red brick façade like crocheted purple bunting. Wives were welcome (after a fashion) but they were only allowed into the licensed lounge (tables only) between six and seven. Spam and Baker had been once: Spam in bar, Baker in car, while Bob and the other old boys played on in a steady drizzle, tapping the ball a few feet, barking and grunting about the relative positions of legs and wickets. He was clearly having the time of his life.

He was much nicer that day. The other old boys were all peculiarly pleased to see him and he kept laughing and then making them laugh and then laughing again. A completely different man. Baker joined them in the bar and looked at Spam’s proud, puzzled smile at the man she married, back for the afternoon, like an access visit.

‘Nick goes to the pub with the lads afterwards, so chances are I won’t see him till gone three. Plenty of shopping time,’ urged Bunty.

Whenever Spam went shopping she came home with whatever rubbish she had bought, poured herself a gin and sat in the front room surrounded by carrier bags, taking out the things and looking at them and putting them back. If by any horrible chance they hadn’t had her size or didn’t have the matching oven gloves and she came home empty-handed, then her outing would be deemed a failure but the Mandies didn’t shop that way. Once in a while one of them would actually shell out for a lip gloss or a paperback or make a note of possible birthday presents to hint for, but most of the time ‘shopping’ meant drooling over the empty album sleeves in the record shop, cadging squirts of scent from disbelieving cosmetic consultants (
Diorella
for Bunty;
Rive Gauche
for Baker), striping the backs of their hands with lipsticks, or choosing their top three posters in the trendy stationery boutique. Bunty had wanted a Toulouse Lautrec and Dustin Hoffman last time they looked.

Then Bunty suddenly remembered that she couldn’t go shopping on Saturday after all.

‘Got to wash the car and mow the lawn.’ But those were Dominic’s jobs, weren’t they? More secrets. But Bunty wasn’t the only one with secrets.

The breaktime prefect patrol was considerably relaxed during exams, with most of the sixth form off revising the subjunctive or memorising Keats (or whatever bits of Keats had made it to
Cole’s Notes
– no sense knocking yourself out) and so Baker had no trouble sneaking up to the organ loft at lunchtime, leaving Bunty to a solitary fag behind the bike sheds – serve her jolly well right.

Baker hadn’t contributed much to the picnic (two apples and some chocolate biscuits from the tuck shop) and she nibbled on a Golden Delicious while Julia scoffed a pork pie and a packet of chocolate Swiss rolls.