Free Wicked! by Jilly Cooper Page A

whom Lily introduced as the General, was stretched out unrepentantly in one corner. In the other lay an even larger stuffed badger. Seeing Janna’s frown of disapproval, Lily explained the badger was already stuffed when she acquired him.
    ‘He was in an auction, looking so sad and unloved, I got him for fifteen shillings.’
    Wondering if Lily was a bit dotty, Janna waved Hengist’s bottle of champagne. ‘Why don’t we drink this?’
    ‘Tepid champagne is a crime against nature,’ observed Lily. ‘Let’s cool it in the deep freeze and first drink this stuff, which is much less nice.’ She filled Janna’s glass with white.
    Parked between cat and badger, Janna admitted the day had been rough.
    ‘The older staff are so antagonistic, and they’re not giving any lead to the younger teachers.’
    Then she explained who’d sent her the champagne, which deteriorated into a rant against independent schools and ‘fascist bastards’ like Hengist Brett-Taylor in particular.
    ‘All those facilities wasted on a few spoilt kids, whose rich parents are too selfish to look after them and just pack them off into the upper-class care of a boarding school.’
    ‘I don’t think children in care jet home to Moscow or New York at the weekend,’ said Lily. ‘Or race up to London. And I promise you, Hengist is a charmer. I’m sure you’d like him if you met him. He doesn’t take himself at all seriously, he’s awfully good-looking, and he’s worked wonders with Bagley. They were a pack of tearaways five years ago. Now they’re near the top of the league tables.’
    ‘Perhaps he could give me a few tips,’ said Janna sarcastically. ‘Although it can’t be difficult with all that money and tiny classes and vast playing fields for the kids to let off steam. How d’you know him?’
    ‘My nephew Dicky’s a pupil, Dora his twin sister starts this term and Rupert Campbell-Black’s children go there as well.’
    Which sent Janna into more shivering shock-horror:
    ‘Rupert Campbell-Black’s the most arrogant, spoilt, fox-hunting, right-wing bastard.’
    ‘But again, decidedly attractive,’ laughed Lily, topping up Janna’s glass. ‘He does have – even more than Hengist – alarming charm.’
    The General heaved himself on to Janna’s knee, purring and kneading.
    ‘I must get a cat,’ sighed Janna, rubbing him behind his pink ears.
    ‘Do,’ said Lily, ‘then we can catsit for each other. Why did you take on Larks?’
    After a second glass on an empty stomach, Janna found herself telling Lily all about Stew.
    ‘He swore he was going to leave Beth, his wife, and marry me. He just had to see his son graduate, then it was his daughter’s wedding, then Beth’s hysterectomy, then it was going to be the moment Redfords came out of special measures.
    ‘But the afternoon we found out, he immediately rang up Beth: “Darling, we’ve done it, put a bottle of bubbly on ice,” and booked a table at the Box Tree. They went out to celebrate with the deputy head and his wife. I realized then he’d never leave her.’
    ‘You poor child.’ Lily patted her hand. ‘For many married people, particularly men, adultery is merely an amusing hobby.’
    ‘He really was a bastard,’ mused Janna.
    ‘But a left-wing one this time,’ observed Lily.
    Janna burst out laughing:
    ‘I was so desperate to get away from the situation, and so longing to be a head, it rather blinded me to Larks’s imperfections. Shall we tackle that bottle of bubbly now? And you can tell me why Hengist Brett-Taylor is so attractive and also about Wilmington.’
    ‘Very much “Miss Marple” territory,’ said Lily.
    ‘Who’s the handsome old gentleman who lives five doors down?’
    ‘That’s the Brigadier, Brigadier Christian Woodford. He always salutes my General’ – Lily nodded at the cat on Janna’s knee – ‘when they meet in the street. His wife died recently; nearly bankrupted himself paying her medical bills. She needed