Wicked! (117 page)

‘How’s Paris in himself?’

‘Withdrawn. We had a bit of a set-to just now. He wanted to ring Theo and tell him about the A stars to give him some comfort. But he mustn’t get in touch. All the press are hanging round. They all know it’s Paris, but he can’t be named because the so-called “offence” began when he was fourteen.’

‘Oh God, poor Theo. Will he get off?’

‘Christ, I hope so. The evidence is pretty damning. Case comes up later in the year, bound to coincide with the Queen’s visit. The press’ll make a meal out of two old queens. One shouldn’t laugh.’

Janna had taken refuge in her office; glasses and discarded envelopes were everywhere.

‘Jade only scraped five Cs, which won’t please Stancombe,’ Hengist was now telling her, ‘and, by the way, I’ve just seen Rupert on the box saying how much we helped him and slagging off Stancombe. It’s going to be a long time before dear Randal forgives either of us.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘I do miss you. Let’s have a drunken celebration before term starts.’

Dear Hengist, Janna smiled as she switched off her mobile.

Outside the playground was empty; Mr Khan had gone. Tomorrow, she thought wearily, she’d continue the battle to stop the parents chucking it all away. Lily’s wedding was at two-thirty; she’d better step on it. Hastily, she toned down her flushed cheeks and shrugged on her white jacket. What did it matter how she looked, if Emlyn wasn’t going to be there?

‘Next week,’ she told Partner as she tied a white silk bow round his neck, ‘you and I will look for a job and probably somewhere to live. Today all that matters is those fantastic results.’

But as she splashed Diorissimo on her wrists, Ashton rang.

‘I can see why you haven’t phoned, Janna, these wesults are dweadfully disappointing.’

‘Disappointing?’ cried Janna in outrage. ‘They’re brilliant. You should focus on where those children came from. No one expected them to get any grades at all. You forget there are four pass grades below C. They may not all have got brilliant grades but they got grades. It’s a miracle.’

‘Janna, Janna,’ sighed Ashton, ‘exonewating yourself as usual. It’s going to be tewwibly difficult justifying all the extwa funding you’ve had from the DfES. We expected far better.’

‘My kids really worked, so did my teachers,’ yelled Janna. ‘What d’you know about work, sitting in your ivory tower surrounded by hundreds of apparatchiks doing fuck all on vast salaries? Don’t talk to me about wasting money.’

‘No need to be offensive. You’ve failed, that’s all, but there’s no point in talking to you in this mood.’ Ashton rang off.

Like a slow puncture, Janna’s pride and delight ebbed out of her.

‘These are the children that God forgot,’ she whispered in horror as she gazed up at the happy, optimistic group photograph on the wall. ‘I’m not going to change anything for them; I just suffered from hubris, putting them through exams because I wanted to prove to the world that I was a brilliant head.’

119

To ward off her desolation over Emlyn’s absence and Ashton’s vile remarks, Janna got dreadfully drunk at Lily’s wedding and danced most of the night away with a euphoric Feral and Lily’s whacky, charming family, who included Dicky and Dora. Lily, in the same blue dress she’d worn to the prom, had no need of Pearl’s make-up. Never was a bridegroom prouder than her Brigadearest.

Next morning, groaning with hangover, Janna went over to Larks. She had only three days left to leave the place shipshape. Wally had lent her a van to clear out her belongings. At first, as she drove up the drive, she thought a television crew had rolled up, then she realized the place was swarming with workmen; one of them, in a bulldozer, had just smashed down half a dozen of Wally’s saplings. Drawing closer, she recognized Teddy Murray, Stancombe’s foreman, who’d supervised the rebuilding of Appletree.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘Taking over,’ said Teddy curtly.

‘On whose authority?’

‘Stancombe’s, of course.’

‘Stancombe?’ said Janna in horror as another bulldozer crushed Sally’s oriental poppies. ‘What’s he got to do with it?’

‘Owns the property. Just paid twenty-five million.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘See for yourself.’ Teddy waved a heavily tattooed hand towards the bottom of the drive and the hayfield of a lawn outside the ruins of the main buildings, where two big crimson signs announced ‘Randal Stancombe Properties’.

‘What’s he planning to do?’

‘Search me. Slap luxury houses all over it. Flog it to some supermarket giant. Flatten the Shakespeare Estate and move in some decent customers. All part of his caring “clean up Larkminster” campaign.’ Just for a second sarcasm predominated over indifference in Teddy’s voice. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, Janna . . .’ Revving up he smashed down two willows.

‘Stop it,’ screamed Janna, but he had wound up his window, so she ran into Appletree, to find all her stuff had been dumped outside her office.

She was on to Stancombe in a flash.

‘Have you bought Larks?’

‘I have indeed.’

‘You never said anything.’

‘You never let on you were coaching Rupert Campbell-Black, you treacherous bitch.’

‘I didn’t help him,’ protested Janna. ‘Rupert showed me one essay, from which I deleted a few swear words.’

‘After all the support I gave you,’ howled Randal, ‘I don’t feel predisposed to help you ever again.’

Janna gave a gasp of horror as, outside the window, she noticed a JCB gouging out the pond. What would be the fate of Concorde, the carp and the natterjack toads?

‘Anyway,’ went on Stancombe, ‘I put up the money for Appletree, so I own it anyway,’ and he hung up.

120

Boffin Brooks’s sense of grievance was aggravated on his return to Bagley to find both Cosmo and Paris had better grades.

‘I couldn’t have got a B in history,’ he spluttered to Alex. ‘I remember every word I wrote, I could only have got an A star.’

Urged by Charisma, Boffin had started wearing blue tinted contact lenses, which gave him a glazed, almost defenceless look – definitely Alex’s blue-eyed boy.

‘I have already contacted the exam board,’ Alex reassured him, ‘to request a clerical check that your history marks were added up correctly. If need be, there are good friends I can phone in the exam world, but I don’t want to be accused of pulling strings.’

Together they tackled Hengist, who was bogged down writing beginning-of-term speeches and welcoming new pupils and masters. He was not in a co-operative mood, telling Boffin not to be a bad loser and employing a lot of uncharacteristically hearty clichés like ‘biting the bullet’ and ‘taking it on the chin’.

‘We were also warned,’ he added sourly, ‘that only a limited number of candidates in each subject, irrespective of how well they did, were going to be allowed A stars. You were just one of the unlucky ones. The goalposts have been changed by this bloody Government.’

Boffin and Alex winced collectively.

‘It’s tough,’ concluded Hengist, then begged to be excused because the Queen’s Private Secretary and the Lord Lieutenant, General Broadstairs, who was also a Bagley governor, were coming to see him about the royal visit. ‘You cannot imagine the red tape. You should give them a copy of your book, Alex.’

Alex’s smile creaked.

Getting up, Hengist opened the door. ‘We’ve got just under eight weeks. I hope everything’s going to be ready in time.’

Retreating down the stairs, Alex swelled with rage; after all the spadework he’d put in on the royal visit, as usual, Hengist swanned in when it suited him.

‘I’m going to appeal,’ whined Boffin. ‘There’s no way I got a B. Mr Brett-Taylor never encourages me.’

Alex was equally determined not to let his star pupil down.

‘I shall request the return of your answer paper and have the marks checked, then we’ll ask for a total re-mark. It costs around sixty pounds; Bagley can foot the bill.’

‘What a beautiful school,’ said the Private Secretary as Elaine left white hairs all over his dark suit, ‘and what a beautiful dog.’

‘Isn’t she?’ said Hengist happily. ‘People think she’s snarling, but she’s really smiling.’

‘We have Labradors, they smile too,’ said the Lord Lieutenant, producing a file already as big as the Larkshire telephone book.

‘I want Her Majesty to have a really nice time,’ said Hengist, pouring Pouilly-Fumé into three glasses. ‘I know she’s got to open the Science Emporium, but I thought she might like to watch some polo if the weather’s fine and meet the school beagles? One of our star pupils, Paris Alvaston, might read out one of his beautiful poems and, of course, Cosmo Rannaldini, another star pupil, will be conducting the school orchestra and his mother, Dame Hermione Harefield, in a welcoming fanfare.’

‘That sounds a good start,’ said the Lord Lieutenant.

‘Recently, we bonded with a comprehensive,’ Hengist told the Private Secretary, ‘who did very well in their GCSEs. It would be a miracle for them if Her Majesty could hand out the certificates.’

Later, with an entourage of press officers and detectives, they walked a possible course. Approaching the Science Emporium, still a pile of rubble, they passed General Bagley’s statue.

‘That’s a fine beast.’ The Private Secretary patted Denmark’s gleaming black shoulder.

‘Isn’t he?’ agreed Hengist. ‘And his rider, our founder, General Bagley, is, I think, a distant relation of Her Majesty’s mother.’

‘How interesting.’ The Private Secretary made a note. ‘Her Majesty might like to refer to that in her speech. We’ll need potted biogs, in advance, of all the people she’s going to meet.’

No one was more excited about Paris’s results than Dora.

‘Ha, ha, ha, hee, hee, hee,’ she sang to her friend Peter on the
Mail on Sunday
a few days later. ‘Boffin Brooks has got a B.’

‘Any more news of Theo Graham?’

‘None, poor thing, he can’t get in touch with us or we with him, until after his court case. Paris has been transferred to Artie Deverell’s house. Artie’s really nice, but Paris can’t forgive him for not being Theo and Paris nearly strangled Cosmo yesterday for suggesting Hengist was stupid to put Paris into the house of yet another shirt-lifter.’

‘How’s the Queen’s visit?’

‘Chaos. Mrs Fussy’s refusing to curtsey and wants a dust sheet put over General Bagley. No one can decide on the right shade of red carpet. But guess what, I’ve bought a man’s wig and a white coat which I’ve splattered with paint so I can pose as a workman and listen in on meetings, so expect some good copy.’

‘Good girl.’

‘Randal Stancombe, my mum’s grotesque boyfriend, is flooding the place with workmen to get his Science Emporium up in time. It’s even got a space centre, so hopefully once it’s finished we can land Poppet and Alex on Mars for good.’

‘And your handsome headmaster?’

‘Utterly euphoric we’ve gone above Fleetley in the league tables and off next month to Bournemouth to the Tory Party conference with my brother Jupiter.’

Awaiting Rupert’s helicopter to fly him to Bournemouth, Hengist took Elaine for a quick walk down to Badger’s Retreat. In one hand, he had a piece of toast and marmalade, in the other, a private and confidential letter from David ‘Hatchet’ Hawkley, now Lord Hawkley, the head of Fleetley.

Dear Hengist [he read],

This is a difficult letter to write. This week you will be offered the job of headmaster of Fleetley, a school I have loved and cherished for twenty-five years. I have long deliberated over whether you are the right person to succeed me. You are a genius at recruitment and getting the best out of both masters and pupils, you are hugely entertaining, charismatic, with a foot in the old world and the new, and generally filled with the milk of human kindness.

In the past we have fallen out . . .

This was a massive understatement. Hengist righted himself after nearly falling down a rabbit hole. He had feared David Hawkley would block his candidacy, but in his fairness, he had not. The letter ended: ‘Look after my school, I trust you.’

Hengist was touched. It was a huge olive branch. Looking down, he saw Elaine had nicked his toast and marmalade. But would Fleetley remind Sally too much of Mungo and Pippa, David’s then wife, and would it turn out to be a grander, more rigid version of Bagley?

Here he could offer Paris the odd glass of champagne and the run of his books; here he could refuse to disband the school beagles and allow Dora to keep her chocolate Labrador. Could he cope with the lack of freedom? Hengist sighed. Jupiter had just offered him Shadow Education, which would be a complete change of career and an adventure.

Sally would make the perfect minister’s wife and Hengist had written Jupiter such a cracking conference speech that by next year he might have seized power. Hengist was flying down to make a fringe speech on education, before flying up to St Andrews in time for dinner at the Headmasters’ Conference.