Wicked! Read online

  The problem was to avoid repeating oneself or descending into platitudes, which was why Francis Bacon’s essays, full of invigorating epigrams, was open on his desk. Hengist, who was terrified of boredom, was simultaneously drinking black coffee, listening to Brahms Symphony No. 2 on Radio 3, watching a video of Bagley’s first fifteen’s recent tour of South Africa and fondly admiring a white greyhound fast asleep on her back on the window seat.

  Thank God all the holiday activities – sport and foreign trips – had passed without mishap. ‘Toff school goes berserk in convent on rugger tour’ could leave a huge clear-up job at the beginning of term.

  Hengist gazed out at a sea of green playing fields broken only by the white rugger posts and a little wood, Badger’s Retreat, in the distance, to which he kept adding young trees.

  The Brahms had finished. Bagley’s first fifteen had reached half-time. Picking up the Larkminster Gazette, Hengist looked at Janna’s picture and shook his head:

  ‘Poor, poor little lamb to the slaughter.’

  The Bishop of Larkminster, on his knees in his bedroom in the Bishop’s Palace overlooking the River Fleet, was praying without much hope that Janna Curtis, only a child herself, would be able to tame those dreadfully disturbed children who came from such appalling backgrounds. Next moment, he jumped out of skin still pink from his bath as a football parted the magnolia grandiflora and crashed against a pane of his Queen Anne window.

  Creaking to his feet and bustling to the window, the Bishop caught a glimpse of white teeth like the crescent moon in a wicked laughing black face as, having retrieved his ball, the invader dropped back into the road. Here his companion, with a can of blue paint, was changing the ‘u’ in ‘Please Shut the Gate’ to an ‘i’.

  ‘Little buggers,’ thundered the Bishop.

  The Wolf Pack had no intention of going into school. The grass was too long to play football. So they played in the street. Fists were shaking and windows banged in fury as their ball shed the petals of a yellow rose, then snapped off the head of a tiger lily, before knocking down a row of milk bottles like ninepins.

  Feral had finished his chicken sandwich but was still hungry, as he and Paris argued the merits of Arsenal and Liverpool. They once had a fight over whether Thierry Henry was a better player than Michael Owen that had gone on for three days. Feral and Graffi were careful not to mention programmes they had watched last night in front of Paris. Viewing in Paris’s children’s home was strictly limited. The television was switched off at nine and monitored for sex and violence, which meant no Big Brother, EastEnders, or The Bill.

  Pearl Smith, in a vile mood, was kicking a Coke tin. One of the few pupils at Larks who looked good in the hard crimson of the school uniform, she wore a skimpy crop top in that colour instead of the regulation sweatshirt. Her arm throbbed where she’d cut herself last night, after her mother’s boyfriend had pushed her across the room for pinching her new baby sister.

  Graffi, who’d appropriated another can of paint, was writing ‘Stancombe is an asshole’ on an outside wall of Cavendish Plaza.

  ‘Very limited vocabulary,’ mocked Paris, opening a stolen bar of Crunchie.

  ‘Fuck off, professor,’ replied Graffi. ‘Teach me some new words then.’

  Feral, meanwhile, had opened a nicked Larkminster Gazette and was studying Janna’s picture.

  ‘Don’t look much,’ snarled Pearl. ‘Crap ’air, crap figure.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Graffi, to wind her up.

  Next moment, Kylie Rose, the fifth member of the Wolf Pack, carrying a pregnancy kit stolen from the High Street, joined them.

  ‘I only got Mum to babysit Cameron by promising I’d go into school,’ she told the others, then, peering at the Gazette, ‘A-a-a-a-h. Janna says she’s looking forward to meeting us. Isn’t she pretty?’

  ‘Let’s go and take the piss,’ said Feral, handing the paper to Paris. ‘Wally might have mowed the grass.’

  Feral could do anything with a football and now, seeing Dora Belvedon approaching, drove it between the conker-brown legs of her pony, Loofah, who reared up. Only Dora’s excellent seat kept her in the saddle. Enraged, she rode straight at the Wolf Pack. As he leapt out of the way, Feral slashed at Loofah’s reins with a knife, adding in a hoarse deep voice: ‘Fuck off, you snotty little slag.’

  Next moment Cadbury, the Labrador, came storming to the rescue, barking furiously. Feral, who was terrified of dogs, bolted, followed by the others. Only Paris, who protected and looked after Robin, the old fox terrier who lived at his children’s home, stood his ground with hand outstretched, until Cadbury wagged his tail and licked the Crunchie crumbs off his fingers.

  He had the palest face Dora had ever seen.

  ‘Don’t you dare suck up to my dog,’ she yelled.

  ‘Fuck off, you stuck-up bitch,’ hissed Paris.

  His face stayed with Dora. Apart from the curled lip and gelled, spiky hair, he looked like the ghost on the inn sign of the Ghost and Castle.

  6

  Assembly at Larks was held in the main hall. On the walls in between doorways leading to classrooms hung bad portraits of former heads: bearded gentlemen in wing collars or wearing cravats with their hair brushed forward. There were also boards listing head boys and more recent heads. How cross Mike Pitts, skulking at the back, must have felt not to have made it up there.

  Moth-eaten bottle-green velvet curtains flanked the platform, whose only props included a lectern, a few chairs and, to the right, a grand piano. Behind, having remarkably escaped the school vandals, soared a stained-glass window depicting a languid Archangel Michael with his flaming sword raised to kebab an inoffensive little dragon.

  The dragon et moi, thought Janna, unless I catch this mob by the throat. The butterflies in her tummy had grown into blindly crashing pterodactyls as she stood in the wings, trying to concentrate on Phil Pierce’s flattering introduction. Although there were only three hundred children after the register had been taken, there seemed an awful lot of them. Above her, chewing gum and surreptitiously chatting into their mobiles, Years Ten and Eleven hung over the balcony rail. In the body of the hall stood Years Eight and Nine, who’d struggled to their feet when prodded by their various form tutors, who ringed them with arms folded like riot police anticipating trouble.

  With a thud of relief, Janna thought how attractive the children looked with their bright, curious faces: brown, black, yellow, pink, white, deathly pale, a few tanned, but now tinged with glowing ruby, emerald, violet, sapphire and amber by the light streaming through the stained glass. Both Wally and Phil crossed fingers behind their backs as she bounded up on to the platform, wearing an orange builder’s hat.

  ‘Good morning, everyone.’ She beamed round at her astonished audience. ‘I couldn’t decide whether to wear this or a bullet-proof vest, but you all look so friendly, I needn’t have worried, so let’s kick off with one of your favourite songs.’

  Crossing the platform she sat down at the piano and strummed out the introduction to the Larkminster Rovers battle hymn, then, with her sweet, pure voice ringing round the hall, launched into the first verse.

  As she reached the second, Miss Cambola, head of music, ran up the platform steps and, in a rich mezzo, splendid bosom heaving, joined in: ‘“Europe ain’t seen nuffink yet.”’

  After a stunned silence, everyone else joined in, roaring out the chorus to loud whistling, cheering and stamping of feet.

  How at ease she is with the kids, thought Wally as he uncrossed his fingers. And how bonny she looked in her rose suit, with her flaming red curls and her freckles breaking through her make-up.

  After a second encore, Janna shut the piano, bowed, then whipped off her hat and held it out to a smiling Phil Pierce, who dropped in a pound coin to roars of laughter.

  Janna turned to her audience. ‘I’m so pleased to be here.’

  ‘We’re not,’ shouted a voice from the gallery.

  Janna laughed: ‘Give me time.’
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  ‘She is very pretty,’ whispered Kylie Rose, ‘and nice.’

  ‘She’s ancient,’ snarled Pearl.

  ‘I was going through your personal files last night,’ continued Janna, ‘and discovered some truly excellent work.’

  She then praised several children who’d done well in exams and in class.

  ‘I particularly want to commend Aysha Khan’s progress in science, and Paris Alvaston’s essays, and Graffi Williams’s artwork.’

  ‘You can see it on walls all over the town,’ shouted a wag.

  ‘I want us to build on these wonderful successes, “rising, rising” like Larkminster Rovers till we get to the top. I’m determined to find what each one of you is good at. Everyone’s a star at something. Never be afraid to ask for help or to pop into my office to tell me your problems. I and the other teachers are here to help.’

  Seeing Cara Sharpe turn green like the witch in Snow White and raising her eyebrows to heaven, Janna took a deep breath:

  ‘I’d like to tell you a story about some begonias, which are kinds of bulbs I planted in pots on the window ledge in my classroom at my last school. I planted seven. They were red, yellow, orange, pink, crimson, cream and white.’

  ‘Oh, get on,’ yelled a bruiser Janna recognized as Satan Simmons.

  ‘These bulbs grew very fast on my window ledge,’ she went on, ‘except one little white one, which didn’t put out a single shoot. I was sure it was dead. Days passed and all the others bloomed in wonderful colours, red, yellow, orange, pink, crimson and cream.’

  ‘Cream ain’t a colour,’ shouted Pearl.

  ‘OK, OK,’ went on Janna. ‘But as Christmas approached, all the six had finished flowering. I was about to store them for next year and chuck the little white one in the bin, when suddenly it put out leaves and grew and grew until it flowered just at Christmas, when there were no flowers around. And it gave more pleasure than any of the other begonias. So if you’re a late developer, don’t worry, your time will come.’

  Now she’d got their attention, she went on: ‘You’re all good at something – there are all sorts of exciting new GCSEs. Have you thought of taking one in child development? All you need do is study a little brother or sister.’

  ‘Christ, no,’ sneered Pearl, lighting a fag.

  Janna’s eyes flashed.

  ‘And you’re good at smoking, Pearl Smith,’ she yelled in sudden outrage. ‘You’re only thirteen; how dare you ruin your lungs?’

  Pearl dropped her cigarette, staggered that Janna knew her name and age.

  ‘I want to see you in my office immediately after assembly,’ said Janna ominously. ‘You’re Pearl’s head of year, aren’t you, Mrs Sharpe? Please see that she’s there.’

  Cara Sharpe was hopping. So was Pearl when she reached Janna’s office. Her breath was coming in great gasps lifting her little crimson crop top even higher above her groin-level mini.

  She seemed to be deliberately breaking every school rule. Her hair drawn back into a cascade of ringlets was dyed more colours than the begonias. Studs gleamed from her belly button, nose and ears, from which, in addition, hung big gold loops. A silver cross nestled in her cleavage. A cat tattoo crawled under a gold ankle bracelet. More alarmingly, scars laddered her arms where she’d cut herself.

  Yet with her wide-apart stick legs above killer heels, her sharp nose and chin, her shiny dark eyes, which kept glancing sideways at Janna, and her savage perkiness, she resembled nothing so much as a robin.

  ‘How d’you know my name?’

  ‘Because I care about you,’ said Janna gently.

  ‘Don’t know me.’

  ‘I want to very, very much.’

  Pearl looked sullenly up at the photograph of smiling, waving Redfords pupils. ‘Your last school?’

  Janna nodded.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Yorkshire.’

  ‘Never been there. Miss Basket, our crap geography teacher, has never been to London.’

  Janna suppressed a smile.

  ‘We were the worst school in Yorkshire, right at the bottom,’ she said.

  ‘Like us.’

  Janna went to the fridge. ‘Would you like a Coke?’

  ‘OK. Mrs Sharpe’s a bitch.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Blames it on us that she didn’t get your job. If our SATs had been better, she would have. She never says anyfing nice when she marks our stuff.’

  ‘How’s your new baby sister?’ asked Janna.

  ‘Mum wanted to put her in my room – screams all night – and expects me to babysit so she can go out with her toyboy. I said no fucking way. I used to live with my boxer dad, but he’s inside for burglary to feed his habit.’

  A depressing smell of unflavoured mince was drifting up from the kitchens. I must do something about the food, thought Janna.

  ‘I had a sister who trashed my room,’ she said, ‘but we get on now. I’ve heard you’re very bright.’

  ‘Paris is the clever one,’ said Pearl. ‘If he wasn’t so cool, he’d get bullied for being a boffin.’

  They were interrupted by screams and yells; next minute, Kylie rushed in in high excitement. ‘Quickly, miss. Feral and Monster are killing each other in classroom G.’

  Not yet wired up, with no thought of summoning back-up or enlisting help from other staff, Janna hurtled down the corridor.

  ‘Christ, she’s fast,’ gasped Pearl as she and Kylie Rose panted after her.

  Half Year Nine E was standing on desks, cheering on the protagonists; occasionally they got so heated, they started punching each other. Graffi was grinning broadly and offering two to one on Feral winning. Paris lounged against the wall pretending to be reading David Copperfield, but watching and waiting to jump to Feral’s aid.

  Young Lydia, suffering a baptism of fire in her first lesson, cringed in a corner, a book called Dealing with Disruptive Students in the Classroom sticking out of her pocket.

  Janna promptly pummelled and shoved the audience out of the classroom, but they rushed round outside and continued to peer in through the window, applauding and egging on their heroes.

  ‘C’mon, Feral.’

  ‘C’mon, Monster.’

  Monster was as huge as a sea lion; Feral, lithe as a panther, prowled round, taunting him, hitting Monster in the eye, which started bleeding, then skipping out of the way as Monster tried to punch him in the stomach. Now they were locked, throwing blows, Feral wincing as he was crushed by Monster’s brute strength. Noticing Feral’s hand stealing down his jeans, followed by a flash of silver, Janna dived between them.

  ‘Stop it,’ she screamed over escalating shrieks and yells. Next moment Feral’s knife was thrust in her face, halting within an inch of her nose.

  ‘Pack it in, Feral,’ repeated Janna, ‘and you too, Monster.’

  Chivalry was not in Feral’s code, but he admired guts. The rest of the class crept back in through window or door.

  ‘You have a very sexy mouth, Feral,’ observed Janna. ‘If occasionally you raised it at both corners, and showed your beautiful teeth in a smile rather than an animal snarl, you could look very attractive. And please give me that knife.’

  Feral put down his knife and started to laugh, so everyone else did too.

  ‘She’s OK,’ muttered Pearl.

  ‘I said she was nice,’ said Kylie.

  ‘You’re wasted on Larks, miss,’ observed Graffi, ‘you should be refereeing Man U or Arsenal.’

  Janna turned to a quivering, ashen Lydia. ‘All right, love?’

  ‘F-f-fine.’ Then, with hero-worship in her eyes: ‘You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.’

  Phil Pierce and Mike Pitts, who were waiting in the passage, were not of the same opinion.

  ‘You stupid fool,’ said Phil. ‘You could have been killed. Why in hell didn’t you call for back-up?’

  ‘I forgot my radio mike,’ said Janna, jolted by his rage.

  ‘Well, for God’s sake, don’t
forget it again. This school is not the place for suicide missions.’

  Back in her office, Janna was greeted by a smug Rowan.

  ‘I’ve been trying and trying to page you. Both the Bishop of Larkminster and Mrs Kamani from the corner shop have been on the phone complaining about the Wolf Pack playing football and shoplifting. Evidently Pearl raised her skirt and distracted Mrs Kamani’s young son while the boys helped themselves. Next time she’s going to press charges.’

  It was after six-thirty. People had been banging on Janna’s door all day, wanting a piece of her or to give her a piece of their minds. News of her breaking up a fight had whizzed round the building, opinion dividing sharply as to whether she had been incredibly brave or glory-mongering.

  Crispin Thomas, ringing from S and C Services, no doubt tipped off by Mike Pitts or Cara, was in the latter camp.

  ‘Feral could have been up on a murder charge and the school brought into disrepute because of your thoughtless irresponsibility,’ he snuffled in his asthmatic, pig-like voice. ‘And what’s this about singing football songs in assembly?’

  Janna decided to call it a day and go home.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to Rowan as she took Hengist Brett-Taylor’s bottle of champagne out of the fridge, ‘you’ve been a great support.’

  Rowan, who knew she hadn’t, had the grace to blush.

  In reception, Wally was mending windows.

  ‘You did triffic,’ he told her. ‘Don’t listen to the others. Mike Pitts downloaded all his assemblies off the internet. The kids loved you. Just promise to wear that radio mike.’

  ‘It bulks out my skirt at the back,’ grumbled Janna.

  ‘Better be wired up than washed up, when you’re doing so good,’ said Wally.

  Maybe, but every poster she’d put up in reception had been ripped down. As she went towards the car park, she discovered someone spraying a large penis in dark browns, purples and pinks on a newly painted wall.