Читать книгу Bed of Roses - Daisy Waugh - Страница 8

The telephone is already ringing when Fanny pushes open the Alms Cottage front door, so she is less demoralised than she might have been by the pervasive stench which hits her, of damp and human piss. The landlord said he would clean the place up before she arrived, but the peeling seventies wallpaper still lies in mouldy heaps on the carpet, and she has to climb over two years’ worth of junk mail and two dead mice to get into the sitting room. He obviously hasn’t been near the place.

In any case Fanny’s dealt with enough landlords over the years to be surprised by none of them any more, and Mr Ian Guppy’s creepy, half-simple manner when he showed her round in March led her to expect the worst. She has arrived in Fiddleford equipped with dustbin bags, disinfectant etc., and even some large pots of white paint. She enjoys the process of transforming a house into a home. It lends her New Beginnings a little added emphasis, which – after so many – is never unwelcome.

She clambers over the rubble and the mouse corpses and dives for the telephone – a telephone, she can’t help noticing, which is so old it might have been fashionable again, except that, like the ceiling, curtains, windows and walls, it’s stained the patchy yellow-brown of ancient nicotine.

‘Hello?’ She holds the receiver a few centimetres from her ear, for obvious reasons, but is nonetheless half-deafened by the explosion of childish screams which comes blasting out. ‘Hello?’ Fanny shouts above them. ‘Hello?’

An efficient feminine voice glides smoothly over the surrounding racket: ‘Oh, lovely. You’re there. I’m so pleased. I’m your neighbour, Jo Maxwell McDonald. Welcome to Fiddleford!’

Fanny recognises the name. General Maxwell McDonald, Jo Maxwell McDonald’s ancient father-in-law, is on Fiddleford Primary School’s board of governors for reasons neither he nor the school can quite remember. He participated most fulsomely during her interview, grilling her about the high turnover of jobs on her CV and then refusing, unlike all the others, to overlook her irrelevant replies. Fanny has developed a particular way of speaking during her job interviews, a sort of jargon-filled auto-lingo which kicks in as soon as the questions begin. She doesn’t understand why it works, but it does. One way or another – partly, of course, because of the shortage of teachers everywhere, partly because Fanny tends to be attracted to unpopular jobs – she has never yet failed in an interview.

‘I feel,’ she said to the General, ‘that multifaceted qualifications are essential for any modern head teacher in this day and age and I’m proud to have experience in a diverse cross section of educational establishments, enabling me to bring to Fiddleford a knowledge and understanding of children from a variety of backgrounds—’

‘Hmm? Yes yes, I dare say. But didn’t it occur to you you might learn something from occasionally staying in the same place?’

‘I needed to balance objectives,’ Fanny said solemnly. ‘The objectives of the students, first and foremost, and secondly the objectives of my own career development—’

‘What? You’re the restless type, are you?’

Fanny hesitated. She said, ‘Erm, no.’

‘You’ve not spent a year in the same place since you qualified!’

Fanny said, ‘Yes. Well. As I was explaining—’

‘Do you envisage spending longer than a year at Fiddleford?’

‘Certainly I do. I envisage spending many years here, helping to establish and nurture a learning culture and environment which—’

‘Mind you, that’s probably just as well, of course,’ he interrupted, ignoring her reply. ‘Because the government says it’s given us this time to improve. Ha. When we all know perfectly well –’ he glanced around at his fellow board members, who were all suddenly staring very hard at their notes, ‘what they’re actually giving us is this time not to improve. Isn’t that right? So they can feel quite justified in closing the ruddy place down. Thereby saving themselves a great deal of money. And frankly, Miss Flynn, with our track record I can’t say I blame them…Had you thought of that possibility, Miss Flynn?’

Fanny blinked. Of course she had.

‘Which gets you off pretty much scot-free, if I’m not mistaken. To continue your –’ he glanced down at her CV once again, ‘really – admirably adventurous life, as per before. With a short but impressive stint as a head teacher under your belt thrown in. Isn’t that right, Miss Flynn?’

And all she could do was blink, and blink again. ‘That’s not true,’ she said eventually, but she was blushing because of course, in a way, when he put it like that…

In the end Mrs Thomas (for fear of losing their one and only candidate) intervened to shut him up. Fanny, full of relief, and also guilt, threw the General a shamefaced sideways glance and caught him scowling at the outgoing headmistress with such intent ferocity that for most of the rest of the interview she’d had to struggle very hard not to laugh.

So Fanny remembers the General with a mixture of awe, annoyance and some affectionate respect. More to the point she knows all about the beautiful, businesslike daughter-in-law Jo Maxwell McDonald, and her ravishingly attractive husband Charlie, because she has read about them in magazines. Since opening their famous Retreat a few years ago Charlie and Jo have both become minor celebrities themselves.

Anyway, Fanny isn’t used to speaking to people she’s read about in newspapers. She’s a little disconcerted. ‘Hello, new neighbour,’ she says goofily. ‘How lovely. Thank you.’

‘That is Fanny Flynn, isn’t it?’ Jo says briskly. ‘Our new head teacher? Is that Fanny Flynn?’

‘Yes. Sorry. Being silly. Yes, this is Fanny.’

‘Only I thought it might all be terribly chaotic, since you’ve just arrived, and I wondered if you might like a bit of lunch…Plus I’ve got a small proposition to put to you. Hope you don’t mind.’

‘Ooh. Very intriguing!’ Immediately Fanny pictures herself tipping up at the famous Manor, still in her worn-out combats and dirty trainers, her shaggy mop of curly hair unwashed for over a week. She imagines sitting down to eat at an enormous mahogany dining table; Fanny Flynn (and Brute of course), Jo and Charlie Maxwell McDonald – and whichever glamorous, wicked celebrities they have staying up there today.

But then she looks around her at the peeling wallpaper. She notices the skirting board at her feet is sprouting mushrooms. ‘I’d love to, and I’d love to hear your proposition, whatever it may be, but really I can’t, not today,’ she says sadly. ‘There’s so much to do in here, and term starts tomorrow. I really ought to—’

‘Plus actually, while you’re on the line, I should remind you about the limbo evening on Friday night. You’ve heard about it, haven’t you?’

‘The limbo evening? No. I must admit—’

‘That’s what was worrying me, you see. I put a thing through your door but perhaps you haven’t had time—It’s in the village hall. Mrs Hooper – you’ll meet her, she lives at the post office – she’s brought in a man all the way from Exeter to teach us, and I’m terrified no one’s going to turn up.’

‘Oh, I’ll come,’ Fanny says cheerfully. ‘Why not? What time does it start?’

‘Six thirty. Very early. Everything starts terribly early in Fiddleford, God knows why.’

‘Keeps us out of the pub, I suppose.’

‘Hmm?’

‘Nothing.’

‘In any case, it should be a good opportunity for you to—’ But her children’s playful yells have by now reached a pitch which even their highly focused mother can no longer ignore. ‘Oh God, hang on a moment—’

Fanny peers at her crop of mushrooms and listens idly while Jo, with stirring management skills, brokers a moment’s silence from her two-and-a-half-year-old twins.

‘Sorry, Fanny.’ She comes back to the telephone. ‘Where was I?’

‘A good opportunity, I think.’

‘Exactly. It’s such a good opportunity for you to meet people. Tickets are only £3 and you have to bring your own drink, but don’t worry about that because we’ll be bringing plenty. And £1 goes towards repairing the disabled ramp in the churchyard. So it’s all in a good cause. What are you up to right now? Shall I come and fetch you in the car? You won’t want to run the gauntlet of that horrible wolf-pack at the gate, and lunch is more or less on the table. Why don’t I come down and pick you up?’

‘No, really, Jo. I can’t—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s no trouble at all. I’ll be down in three minutes. And it’s vegetarian, by the way. It’s always vegetarian with the children. Obviously. So no need to worry about that!’