Chapter Two.

An angel passing over the roof of Number 43 Sandringham Square that hot, Saturday morning, would have been struck by its expensive perfection. Verdi’s Rigoletto streamed out of the gleaming white French windows, over the black railings of the first-floor balcony and out into the square, to tease two roadsweepers, who decided it was probably Pavagrotty. Bacon smells from the basement, wafted onto the pavement, while the flowers in the window boxes wilted seductively.

Inside all was cool, and unharmonious. In the hall a Max Friedman glass sculpture retched at a tiger skin, Victorian holidaymakers at Southend-on-Sea looked in sepia incomprehension at the Tizia lamp on the Linley desk in the drawing room. Up and down the stairs fought a dozen unhappy marriages. A Steven Conroy urban brawl leered at a lifesize papier mâché Nubian slaveboy, bought on a whim from Harrods’ decorative furniture department. The ladder-backed Mackintosh chairs in the dining room froze in presbyterian disgust at the generous proportions of the Santiago School steel phallus, on which someone had stuck a New York City car sticker ‘Get Even With Your Children — Spend Their Inheritance’. ‘What inheritance Dickhead?’ had been added in felt-tip pen on a freezer label.

Upstairs, on the second-floor bathroom, a Saks silk dressing gown was sliding off a pile of Christie’s catalogues, and Placido Domingo’s La Donna È Mobile was now a duet, as Richard Longbridge lay in his deep circular jacuzzi belting out a reasonable baritone to his battery-operated rubber duck, on the perfidy of women. The tabloid newspaper he was reading was suspended above the bubbles on a reading frame, though the corners of the pages were wet, as the scented water moved.

He had dark, thick curly hair, large hands with manicured nails, and long legs which seemed to make the bath seem small. A generous fleshy, boyish face, which though still handsome, was now tipping expensively into early middle-age.

MILLIONAIRE’S SON WEDS MATRON AT TOP PUBLIC SCHOOL. Eton again, or was it Millfield’s turn? He stopped turning the pages.

‘Bloody fool, you’re not supposed actually to marry them’, Richard Longbridge observed aloud, while considering whether the big toe on his left foot was rheumatic, or just suffering from M.E. like the rest of him.

Undecided, he went back to his paper, unaccountably groaning with pleasure.

‘Schooldays are the best according to millionaire son Boyd Rogers, 19, who yesterday skived off lessons at his posh £11,000 a year public school to wed school Matron Michelle 16 years his senior.’

‘Posh public school my foot!’ He carried on reading.

As headboy Boyd, son of a multi-millionaire Texan businessman recovered from flu in the School San, romance blossomed at the exclusive St Anthony’s, Netbury, Wilts. ‘I couldn’t resist him even with a red nose and a temperature of 102!’ says Kirsty Munro, 36, who admits her mum and dad live in a Paisley council flat.’

‘Well I wouldn’t have admitted that for a start.’

The coy lovers revealed that they:

* Enjoyed midnight trysts at the school’s 85-acre lake.

‘Damp,’ said Richard.

* Had sex romps in the San

‘Those springs must have made a racket.’

* And following their secret wedding at a Swindon registry office, now plan to have a baby as soon as possible.’

Richard Longbridge stretched, and put the paper on the floor. ‘Another wee Mary who’s upwardly mob-i-le. Talking of whom....

Suddenly a girl, with short dripping hair emerged from the water. Breathing hard, she removed the peg from her nose and smiled at him.

‘What a star! Victoria, you’re wearing one of those ball-breaking smiles you’ve got to wear or else you lose points. I know the rules you know. How long were you under this time?’

‘Two minutes 48 seconds.’

‘Felt like longer. Australia’s answer to Esther Williams with sex appeal. Which, as we all know, she didn’t have. Come here.’ He pulled her towards him and kissed her,

•sending a wave of water pouring onto the French lacquered tiles. ‘You synchronised Sydney girls are really quite amazing.’ He kissed her again. ‘And I intend to work through the whole Olympic team! I’ll dive into the middle of one of those flower shapes you all make with your legs. Wham! Underwater sex for hours and hours and hours.’

‘You couldn’t keep up with us Richard.’

She put the peg on his nose, and got out of the bath, the waves reducing the now soaking paper to mush. Richard threw the frame on the floor, and gave her bare buttocks a slap.

‘Ouch! These things hurt, how can you stand wearing them. What cheek. I may be pushing it, but no-one can say I’m losing my stomach muscles then? Look at that!’

Contented, he disappeared beneath the bubbles.

‘Hello, who is it?’ Harriet managed to grab the phone with her eyes shut, but the flex had coiled itself round her alarm clock on the bedside table, and sent a glass of water spilling onto the carpet. Very clever.

‘Harriet, wake up, it’s eight o’clock.’

‘Laura, I was awake, though it is Saturday monring.’

‘Are you whingeing H.? No? Then try asking how are you my dear Laura, and how did you manage when the train broke down and you had to be transferred by bus to some god-forsaken branch line? And got in at nine o’clock.’

‘Well how are you then? What a disaster!’

‘I’ve been up since six. Landlady thought I’d like a fry up at five thirty, can you imagine?’

‘Poor old thing. What are the cast like?’

‘Oh not bad. Marjorie’s here. Good sort. Do you remember, we saw her in Ladies In Retirement in Bromley? Nightmare! David of course, looking all smouldering, and Fenella Frost. Knickers round her ankles as usual. And Derek you know, played the caretaker in Sampson?’

‘Oh him, give him my love.’

‘Asked after you. Were you still alive, that sort of thing.’

‘Nice of him.’

‘Old bore. Now what are you wearing this morning, wish I could do your slap, you never put on enough blusher.’

‘The blue hat, pink dress, and what do you think? Hair up or down?’

‘Down, none of the other mums will be able to sit on theirs.’

‘Wish you could come?’

‘I know, never even seen this school either. Looks frightfully posh in the photographs.’

‘Expensive.

‘Still, he’ll be able to do all the public-school boys’ parts when he’s older.’

‘Billy is not, repeat not, going into the Business.’

‘Yes I know, my son the cost accountant.’

‘Banker!’

‘Bye H. Enjoy the French master.’

Laura rang off. Incorrigible! Her mind ran on a single track. Harriet put back the phone, got up and and opened her bedroom window. Another beautiful day, thankfully. Nextdoor, Georgiana had already opened her French windows onto the terrace — woe betide anyone who said patio, social ban kin! Ella Fitzgerald was Taking Manhattan this morning.

‘Getting daring, Georgiana’, Harriet thought, and then she thought about the day ahead, seeing Billy, the first time for four whole weeks. Since the last exeat in fact, when he had come home for Sunday lunch, flopped on the floor, and stayed there watching old films, until it was time to take him back, weighed down with enough home-made muesli and biscuits for a year. He hadn’t even had the energy to go out for a walk. She went downstairs, a pile of ironing met hen gaze. Not a chance.

‘What an exciting life I lead, Moll’, she said, but the cat seemed unconvinced.

The fact that St Anthony’s had been described in the Daily Blare as a ‘posh public school’, as opposed to a threadbare operation, now packing in eight-to-thirteen- year-olds as well as senior boys, and selling off its art collection to break even, should, have started the day rather well. But for Henry Crouch MA the idea of sex romps in the san made him ill. And then there were the Governors, and the people at the Headmastens’ Conference, who would undoubtedly have a go, and the parents AND the prospective parents who would dislike the publicity. It was bad enough spending all one’s time marketing, the new educational madness, but now he would have to spend the summer embarrassed, and advertising for a new Matron — preferably post-menopausal!

The Headmaster charged up the path from his house towards the Main School. He didn’t take in the beauty of the grounds, the peacocks, nor the perfection of the Decimus Burton stonework. His gown billowed out behind him as he walked briskly past the boys emerging from the East Wing after breakfast. ‘Morning Sir, Morning Headmaster.’ Respectful enough, though he could detect the odd smirk.

Ahead of him, he saw some boys had started carrying notices down to the car park, and other smaller boys were bringing chairs into the main hall. There were sounds of violins from the music room, shouts from the Chapel. His shoulders came down from his ears. Speech Day, a great day for the school every year, and no smutty rag was going to spoil it. With renewed enthusiasm, he swung open the first of the double doors leading to his office and smashed into the brick wall.

It took fifteen minutes before they could locate Jones the handyman, by which time the blood had oozed onto his white collar. The only person who didn’t seem to be outraged was Hodges that design technology halfwit he’d been talked into taking on from the comprehensive. He was witteriflg on about first rate brickwork indeed! No he did not need Matron!

He remembered that he had the keys for the office French windows on this key ring, and walked round holding his nose with a Kleenex, only to meet the Chaplain, normally, the brand of Anglican so laid back as to be horizontal, now apparently about to have a heart attack in front of him.

‘Headmaster I’m afraid the boys have played a disgraceful practical joke, monstrous! I cannot conceive how no-one beard them.’

‘Mr Farrell, Jones is knocking the wall down now.’

‘It’ll take the fourth form as well as the fifth. Will there be time to remedy the situation? I doubt it. So little time!’

‘I’ve just said, Mr Farrell, Jones is knocking it down, it doesn’t take fifty boys.’

‘The pews Headmaster.’

‘Pews? So you’re not talking about my office being bricked up.

‘No indeed Headmaster. Some boys must have got into the Chapel last night and turned them all facing the wrong way. All eighty! They’ll all have to be taken out and put back in. I cannot believe it!’

Henry Crouch’s head throbbed. The phone rang inside the office just as Jones kicked through the first brick, and the nine o’clock bell rang. Too loud.

The room had been designed in the eighteenth century as an upstairs drawing room for the lady of the house, but now the fleshy cherubim, on the ceiling of Frobisher Dorm, (recently restored with an English Heritage Grant), had to contemplate nine beds, regulation lockers and teddy bears in varying Stages of putrefaction. Their friendly gaze was met in turn by the boys, who, when lying in bed in the early morning, would take Considerable time to estimate which had the smallest willy.

The Summer Term’s trading period usually ended on Speech Day, when the boys called in debts and offloaded incriminating stock before the Headmaster’s Inspection. The school’s internal black economy was based on two commodities, pornography and cigarettes. An 8% profit on a packet of Benson and Hedges, and 20% on a three-month-old copy of Penthouse at 50p per picture, was generally thought a healthy return by the braver, more entrepreneurial boys. There were of course unavoidable overheads such as the two fags and the centrefold usually demanded by the Dorm Captain but Jamie Longbridge and Billy Gosse were still quite pleased with their turnover.

‘That all Jamie?’ Billy finished adding it up on the calculator, and rubbed his eyes. He was pale and tired looking, as if he hadn’t eaten meat for a term.

‘Yeh. Mohammed took the Miss April in the end for two quid, tried to beat me down because of a tear but I told him to use his imagination!’ Jamie Longbridge the taller of the two, stopped counting and lolled back on the pillows, his arms and feet sprouting out of the ends of his school uniform. ‘Hurry up Billy, Johnson will be along in a minute.’

‘OK. I’ve finished except for this.’ Billy shut the accounts book, disguised by a dustcover of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, and began to divide the money. ‘Look Wilson, I’ve got you down here 5Op for those two fags and a four-inch pic. Here it is May the 9th, it’s now July. We want the money today, OK?’

‘OK. But do you two ever think about anything but money? It’s obscene.’

Billy Gosse and Jamie Longbridge did not deign to reply. Making money was the only thing that made life at school bearable. That and the promise of power of life and death over ten boys, which was what becoming Dorm Captain would mean next year.

To all the boys in the dorm, Speech Day meant less about glory and more about kit inspection, and disinfectant, pints of it, swashed about in large quantities to impress the parents, who of course you all prayed wouldn’t embarrass you by turning up too pissed, or groping someone else’s wife. Next door an appalling whistle came from the Senegalese twins ‘on the bogs’. ‘Piss off both you M’Bows, stop that noise, and polish the taps, stop dabbing at them.’

‘Do you know, Johnson, your lot are even more useless than mine.’ The Dorm Captains, magnificent at eleven, swaggered into the room. ‘Don’t you know how to make

hospital corners yet, Longbridge? Pathetic. Get off your arse and do them again properly.’

jamie didn’t exactly rush. Just wait till next term!

‘By the way boys, if you still have any fags or pics, off load them. Neame’S just been nabbed with fags in his washbag, the cretin. A grade A nerd, in fact. Not a chance of being Dorm Captain next year, and damp fags too. Wilson, no books on top of the locker, you know that.’

The door swung behind them.

‘I make that £32.47p after expenses’, announced Billy. ‘I think I’ll take my mother out to tea at Simpsons.’

‘You could buy her a car, the one she’s got can’t have cost more than a fiver.’

‘Naff off Wilson. At least she doesn’t have an electric blue Roller.’ Jamie hated the bullying Billy got. It wasn’t his fault his people didn’t have money.

‘I can’t imagine what we’re doing letting in one-parent families in here do you boys? Gossie, are you sure she pays full fees?’

‘Shut it!’ Billy sat quite still.

‘Sure she doesn’t give Crouch satisfaction in the hols?’

Several hospital corners were ruined in the fight, but the cherubim, who knew their priorities, never took their eyes off the cash.

‘Come on boys quickly, we should be rehearsing!’ The Chaplain was yelling. Inside the Chapel, the heating system was locked in its own Victorian time warp, and the Madonna, nicknamed Hypothermia, was normally the only person in the place not shivering. But now the air was thick with sweat and curses, as the boys heaved forty-foot-long pews made of solid oak out onto the lawn. In the searing heat, carved graffiti of the bored old boys already lay bare to the world.

‘Bloody Aston Martins! Think they own the motorway. Look did you see that? Madeleine don’t you think you’ve had enough. Look, it’s not even ten o’clock in the morning, for God’s sake!’

Several miles away from St Anthony’s, in the fast lane of the M4, a dark blue top-of-the-range BMW, containing Treasury Minister Eric Humble MP and his wife Lady Madeleine was cruising comfortably at eighty miles an hour.

‘Stop being so suburban and boring, Eric. Even the Queen Mother enjoys a nip in the morning. Given your well publicised stance as an arse-licking Royalist I thought you’d have known that. You are a dying breed by the way, I’m turning republican. Vive la République d’anglaise!’ She had reached the happy stage of her day, when she really didn’t care a fig what he thought.

‘If you could hear yourself, really hear yourself. Where the hell is this bloody school, which turning? Why did I agree to do this?’

‘You agreed to do it, because everyone makes the most enormous fuss of you, and you are nowhere near your ghastly constituents. But mainly you do it because you always think these Speech Days will magically rub some of the public-school ooffle dust off onto you. Though the truth is you can take the boy out of the small town, but you can’t take the small town out of the boy. Or the secondary modern in your case.’ She tapped his knee, the Minister squirmed. ‘I always wondered why you never joined the Labour Party? It’s that turn-off by the way.’

Flashing lights began to appear in his mirror. It was not the moment to pledge undying love for the residents of Limpthorpe North, or the Conservative Party. Nor was there time to point out that he’d been to the grammar school from sixteen. Actually. The Aston Martin moved smartly into the inside lane and turned off. Missed it.

Driving through the grounds following the signs to the car park, it struck Harriet as curious that since last year, the mothers had grown younger, and the fathers had aged, as if they had traded in the older mothers for younger models, and then exhausted themselves in the process. Poor little boys, flyblown WASPS, expense-account tummies spoiling the profile of their Brooks Brothers blazers. Yet she could always tell which men, in which cars would be coming to the school even from the turn-off on the M4, they had a sort of

expectant look at them, as if to say aren’t we clever? Tom would have taken them off so well, he could have cornered the market in well heeled character parts. If.

Harriet found these school events difficult. Not that Billy would have ever boarded if Tom had lived, he would have loathed the idea. Institutionalised child abuse he called it. She missed him all the time, even for the things that used to drive her mad. An ache, constant, even though these days she had almost forgotten what he looked like. Old photographs did not help, only the old videos, which she could not bring herself to watch.

In front, a well preserved Morris Minor protested bumping over the muddy tracks. The woman was putting her hat straight, she looked nervous. Harriet pushed her thoughts back to parent categories.

Yes, she preferred the jaloppy brigade who rolled up usually late in sensible shoes, and lots of dogs panting in the back. Oddly, it was usually the ones in the expensive cars whose sons were quietly removed from school because Daddy couldn’t make the fees. Lloyds, don’t you know, expressive whispers were usually followed by a but-for-the-grace-of-God shrug of the shoulders, even when it was more likely to be divorce, drugs or redundancy. The jaloppies meanwhile, gamely took in lodgers, and bed-and-breakfasters, and tried not to think about their lack of a pension.

The sun beat down on the car bonnet, the wind pushing the small clouds away over the top of the trees. The parking arrangements seemed better organised than last year, better signs, and she eased her Renault Five down the narrow lane toward the car park. Suddenly there seemed to be trouble. Raised voices, high-pitched screams. ‘I’d back up quickly if I were you.’ A tall man just getting out of a red expensive-looking sort of car was calling out to her. Too late. A Volvo came round the corner. She opened the door. Mud, everywhere. How odd, the heat of the last few days had not even begun to dry it out?

‘I gather we’ve been the victim of yet another Anthonian Speech Day practical joke. This is actually a bog.’

The man who had shouted at her had bent down. She took in the dark curly hair, the handsome face, even teeth, and green eyes. Who had an expensive dentist and tinted contact lenses? She smiled back.

‘Well, it can’t be worse than last year when they collapsed the marquee. Would you be kind enough to get my gum boots from the back.’

Harriet handed him the keys. In front of her a red-faced and overweight middle-aged man, was attempting to carry his wife up the lane, her lacy tights were already smeared with green. But the satin shoes were still immaculate, just. Not that one could laugh knowing what a pair of Blahniks cost, even second-hand. A woman in the bright blue Rolls convertible was standing up simply screaming at the poor chauffeur to do something. Anything! The boys must hate us very much, Harriet thought.

‘One pair of boots.’ She took the boots and stood up in the squelching mud. White lacy tights, pale silk dress

— Jean Muir second-hand, but who was to know? Oh dear, he was looking at her. What should she do? Would he like a press release? Health good, dress size 12, well 10 if she starved, long hair, wrinkles — not bad considering constant money worries. One previous owner.

‘Thank goodness, a girl who doesn’t have green wellies. He looked down at her, smiling, and held out his hand. ‘Richard Longbridge.’

Straight out of Mills and Boon, Harriet thought. He’ll be offering to carry me away from all this next.

‘Thank God you’ve got gumboots, I couldn’t have carried you, I’ve got a bad back. I was laughing so much about this Matron business I slipped getting out of the bath this morning.

‘Harriet Gosse, How do you do. Don’t worry, be prepared you see. I was a good boy scout.’

Harriet looked up at him, smiling. He’s terribly tall, she thought, too handsome, obvious. How old, verging on the distinguished, forty maybe. He clearly assumed that she would find him attractive.

‘Yes my son Billy told me about Matron and the Headboy last night. Apparently she’s really ancient so he tells me. Thirty six! Which made my evening.’

‘Children are horrible aren’t they? Ah but have you read

the Blare this morning. Did you know of the romps in the San, and the midnight trysts at the lake? No, I can see you have better things to do on a Saturday morning, quite right.’

‘Ironing actually.’

‘Yuk never do it. Our sons should do it for pocket money. Is your husband coming later?’

‘No. I’m ...‘

Here we go, Harriet thought.

‘A widow.’

He took her elbow as they continued up the track. One of the school peacocks screeched out in the distance, but then again, it could have been a muddy ex-mistress.

Billy couldn’t believe it. What was his mother doing? How embarrassing! Mum, he telegraphed with frantic eyes, get out. You shouldn’t be sitting in the front row. Go back. GO SACK! Oh, no, here come the Governors. He couldn’t look, and slid down below the eyeline of the pew in front.

Harriet couldn’t see the small face among rows of small faces. Frustrating, because it was nice to be in the front row. Last year she had barely been inside the building. But bow had this Richard Longbridge character found someone to look after her gumboots at the back, and then, while she was putting on her shoes, somehow commissioned a Prefect to Sweep them into the front row?

From the corner of her eye, arched necks behind her made ~her sense some broken hierarchy, and yet this man seemed to be perfectly at ease. She felt Tom was still around, perhaps perched up on the pulpit, making faces at her.

‘Richard, er, good to see you. Thank you for you help with the er, er.’ The Chairman of the Governors ushered a well-dressed couple to seats next to her. What help? Wasn’t he a Government minister, Humble someone? Phaw! Harriet could smell his wife’s breath. But then she thought marriage to a Politician had to be up there with actors and artists. And forgave her.

A distant trumpet sounded. No-one had come to turn them out. More trumpets. Richard Longbridge turned and Smiled at her mischievously, as the Headmaster led in the procession. So what did he do for a living which made him so secure in the world? Brain surgeon? City financier? Her father always said the best Englishmen were pirates.

‘Who’s that gorgeous governor sitting next to the lush in the front?’ A stage whisper back in the baritones reached Billy as he stood up to sing the first hymn. He slid his eyes along the floor to the congregation, and saw his mother’s white shoes. She hadn’t been turned out then, or got caught, down by the bog. Smart. He raised his eyes a bit further. What a dress! Must have cost a fortune, could she afford it? Although he knew there would be trouble, he was pleased she would be able to see everything this year. Who was she with? Looked a bit too pleased with himself.

Henry Crouch, the bridge of his nose now a rich purple, stood up to list the School’s benefactors starting with Edward II. The boys dozed, while fathers dreamt of lakeside bonks with Matron. The rest of the boys survived by picking the longest words in the hymn sheet and wrote down as many words they could make. Resurrection — rest, erection, nit, cost, rot, tin, set, cut, con, eon, ten, sure, sent, tire, net, not, sore, rise, runt.

Other boys, with parents abroad, sat calculating their Air Miles. The smallest boys looked out for their parents, desperate to see them putting on a show, even if they did not speak the rest of the year.

‘Whoso beset him round, with DISMAL stories.’ In the next hymn, fourth-formers were belting out just one word per verse, while the Upper Fifth compiled a league table of sisters and girlfriends. Which was a ten? Whose had the most zits, and the biggest tits?

Billy’s clear treble cut through the cold tedium. The Sanctus, sung in Latin, soared up to the roof and down to the cold congregation. Suddenly Harriet felt intensely proud. Her son. Hers! Private feelings masked by a hat. What being a widow is all about. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes, dispelled by a ladylike burp from her neighbour.

Afterwards they spilled out into the sunshine. Frightfully good fun! Fathers eyed up each others’ wives, mothers priced each other’s dress and ruined shoes. Their eyes glazed with long practice over the cheap hand-me-downs of the masters’ wives, who were always drafted in reluctantly on a three-line whip, their dowdiness more cruelly exposed than usual in the sun’s glare.

‘Lovely to see you again, Headmaster.’ Tinkly laughter. A hundred networks formed and re-formed in the heat, whilst waistcoated prefects oozing bonhomie, guided them down to the lake, for champagne. The little boys circled, looking for their parents.

‘Br Richard, just how did you get us into the first rnw?’

‘Well, Ifelt you needed a good view. Stop worrying! They were hardly going to kick us out. Anyway I’m helping to flog the pictures they were left with the house. I’m surprised the boys look so well fed, this place is an accountant’s nightmare. Ah there’s the boy with the champagne. I say!’

‘Mum!’ Billy darted through, followed by Jamie.

⁴Billy! You sang beautifully. Well done!’ Harriet knew It wasn’t the form to be over the top, so she gave him a quick hug, and smiled at his friend. ‘Hello are you Jamie? It’s so nice to meet you, at last. Longbridge, yes I’ve finally dicked, your father here helped me squelch out of the car park. He also got us the best seats in the place. Don’t ask me how!’

Jainie, his dark hair falling over one eye, looked at her appraisingly.

‘Mum, I was so worried you were going to be turned out In front of everyone!’

‘Billy, so was I! Darling you look so thin, I can’t wait to get you home to feed you!’

‘Tell me you two, where are the Headboy and Matron? There’ll be a few fixed smiles from his family today. Have you seen the morning paper?’ Richard was looking around, apparently sizing up the women, or so it seemed to Harriet.

‘No I haven’t. The Headboy’s over there, Sir, he’s talking to Lord Stanton, I can’t see Matron. Mum, the Lower sixth Switched the signs round for the car park, and they turned the pews round in the Chapel and bricked up Crouch’s

study!’ Billy suddenly kissed Harriet on the forehead. ‘You look nice.’

‘Thanks darling. But why do the tricks have to be so anti-parents?’ Harriet knew she was sounding old. ‘Those poor women have had their shoes ruined, we don’t all carry gumboots. Talking of which, I’d better get them from the Chapel.’

‘We’ve got to go now Billy, we’re serving the veg.’ Jamie tugged at his sleeve. He smiled shyly at Harriet, ‘See you after lunch Mrs Gosse.’

They disappeared. Harriet noticed that Jamie had barely spoken one word to his father, who was being so utterly charming.

‘Forget about the boots, no one’s going to nick them. Now, champagne for the lady,’ Richard Longbridge guided her down to the lake.

How odd that last year, she had felt so on the edge of events, and now suddenly this man was introducing her to people like an old friend? Through the heat, and the crowds, Richard Longbridge smiled at her, like a magician flourishing an unexpectedly cute white rabbit out of his top hat. But did she want to be a theatrical prop for this smoothie, thank you very much?

‘Most girls would pay!’

‘There’s just no God, dear.’

Later, two masters’ wives, clutching Coronation chicken, with white wine suspended on the edge of the plate in a plastic clip, looked across at Boyd Rogers who was pouring out the wine. Matron was chatting a bit too animatedly to some parents of the Junior boys about ten yards away. Her ‘bit of rough’ all right! His blazer could not conceal the body beneath, although the women at St Anthony’s had long suspected that the cool stare from those blue eyes came more from a lack of comprehension than any mysterious depths. Not that that diminished his allure. Clever men were so dull.

‘The Minister’s wife is knocking it back rather.’

‘Perhaps one of the boys should make sure she gets some pud.’

‘1 was horrified by what that reporter wrote, he made it up. Billy’s such a lovely boy Mrs Gosse! And he’s settled so well. So nice about the engagement. Not like some of them, Though I’d expected it. Have you seen the ring, its a diamond solitaire, Boydie calls it a rock!’

5hdeking with laughter, her hair tumbling very un-Matron-like, down her back, Kirsty Munro was proving more bubbly than the champagne.

‘Congratulations Matron, I’m sure you’ll be very happy.’ What was one supposed to say? Harriet thought. Good for wu for marrying up, get pregnant pronto? Or watch out, your mum-in-law has the sort of face-lift which looks as if the’s swallowed a cobra down on the ranch. Anyway that ~Iaswegian accent would no doubt go down a bundle in Houston.

‘You run a language school don’t you, Mrs Gosse?’

‘Er yes.’ Harriet was embarrassed, she kept seeing the woman on the station.

‘You see, Boydie’s got to start working for his father in the Paris office. Now he’s got to keep me in style. He won’t be going to University in the States now of course. Would you be able to give me lessons when we~ re in London before we go?’

‘Certainly, here’s my card give me a ring.’ However much she liked Matron, and however small his chances had ever been ~f getting into an Ivy League college, Boyd Rogers was paying a high price for a bit of adolescent sex. Although you could argue that as almost all men remained little boys in need of a Matron, eyes even Jamie’s father, old smoothiepants over there), so perhaps you could say Boydie had gone for a professional.

Theword ‘bonk’ seemed to have trailed after him like Banquo ‘s ghost all day, two people from the Blare had been flung out by the First Eleven, but Henry Crouch was at last grabbing a bit of chicken. A heavy ring-laden hand clasped him on the shoulder. ‘I gave you the pool, remember, and what You’ve given me is an ageing hustler to support, who’s put Out to the press, and who’s going to screw up my boy’s life?’

It was soft, hardly indignant even, yet the Texan drawl made Crouch freeze. Hector Rogers, Boyd’s father, did not look prepossessing in this heat. Henry Crouch swallowed hard. ‘I suggest that we have a word in my study.’

Well-bred murmurs rippled out of the lake, yet the surface of the day remained undisturbed.

These boys did not know they were bloody born. Up on the platform, standing behind a table decorated with a heavy white tablecloth, and some wilting flowers from the Headmaster’s garden, the Minister was praising the Headboy who had been so charming to him and his wife since their arrival. The sort of all rounder St Anthony produced. The sound system hissed, and he wondered why that raised such a laugh.

Boyd Rogers smiled too. Harriet remembered again the scene on Paddington station. Steaming, rampant testosterone.

Henry Crouch thanked the Minster, and announced that Lady Humble had kindly agreed to present the prizes, after which there would be tea and sandwiches on the East Lawn. Wilting parents muttered ‘Thank God for that!’

So much was everyone on automatic pilot, it was only the Head Boy, high in the triumph of his father’s disapproval, who noticed that Lady H. was far from well.

‘Headmaster,’ he hissed along the platform, ‘Headmaster, I don’t think she should.’

‘Shut up Rogers, I’ve had your father ranting at me in my study for half an hour. Now sit down!’ Crouch switched the microphone back on, wincing at the feedback. ‘Ladies & Gentlemen, we start with the Junior House awards for academic excellence.’

Apart from the recipients and their beaming parents, the rest of the audience was hardly listening. They were transfixed by the tall figure in the purple patterned Bill Blass dress, who swayed hypnotically like a snake after a double gin. ‘Hello darling, what a little poppet!’ They saw her kiss the first boy enthusiastically. Mothers looked at each other puzzled, she hadn’t sounded like that on Woman’s Hour.

‘This sort of thing always has a fatal fascination hasn’t it, just like when they lose their notes on the Nine o’clock News’, Richard whispered in her ear. And it was true, there was a horrible embarrassing inevitability, Harriet just sat there, frozen.

‘Do you know old Madeleine?’

‘Yes, she' s....'

‘Look at that! Now she’ll be mixing up the prizes, the old darling!’

This Richard Longbridge, was now clearly taking this poor woman’s humiliation as as a comedy turn laid on his amusement. Her husband looked apoplectic. But what sort of husband must he be, to make her drink like that.

Soon all order was lost on the prize table. Billy, up for the Prep School Award for English was offered a hug and Victor Ludorum. He’d been expecting a book token rather than this heavy silver cup, but took it anyway.Harriet clapped and clapped.

'You’ve got a lovely son Harriet’, Richard Longbridge said in her ear.

Otber boys who could not string a sentence together, took debating prizes, whilst the most knock-kneed boy in the school scooped the Rugby Cup. The atmosphere was becoming really rather jolly.

Finally, there remained just the St Anthony’s Cup for erall Achievement, donated by a grateful Iraqi, whose son scraped into Oxford against all odds. Made in Lebanese silver, embossed with sapphires, it flaunted unenglish exuberance. To one side, a thin pale Prefect waited, eyes narrowed. A consolation prize for not being made Headboy. He'd already made Crouch suffer.

Lady Humble, still swaying, steadied herself, gripping the ornate handles of the cup. Looking at it almost longingly.

‘And now the Award for the Prefect who has consistently made the most outstanding contribution to school life, the Winner is....'

Mr Crouch’s words were drowned in the applause. Hurrah! Relieved parents could almost taste the Darjeeling, and as the boy began to ascend the platform, Lady Madeleine Humble, dimly anxious not to make a mess on the damask tablecloth, vomited into the nearest receptacle.

Read Chapter One

End of Document • return to top

This document forms part of The Antonia Swinson Website • © 1999
Visit us again on http://www.antoniaswinson.co.uk or e-mail antonia swinson