‘Of course not,’ she says. ‘Thank you, Robert.’
‘My pleasure,’ he says, and winks.
While Robert relaxes at home, nursing his long thin body back to full strength, Fanny works harder than she ever has before. She teaches morning and afternoon and spends the evenings at home, alone at her kitchen table, wading dutifully through school paperwork. It occurs to her at the end of her third solid six-hour stint that she’s made no noticeable dent in the stack of papers still waiting to be dealt with: she could spend the rest of her life filling in forms and then what? Some poor sod would only have to process them. She picks them up and stuffs them tidily into a damp cupboard beneath the kitchen sink. To be looked at another day. In the future.
And even then Fanny can’t quite bring herself to stop worrying. Instead of calling friends, or sitting in the pub getting drunk with the locals, as she had previously imagined she would spend evenings in her new bucolic life, she puts brushes, paint pots and a long folding ladder into the back of the Morris Minor mini van, drives through the village to the school, and she stays up most of the night painting the central assembly room bright yellow.
Friday arrives – the day, as everyone in Fiddleford would tell you, of the great limbo cotillion. Fanny and her seventeen pupils, as a result of a deal cracked earlier in the week, spend the day dedicated to their village mural, which, by mid-afternoon, takes up an entire wall-and-a-half of her classroom. It’s a multi-spangled, multi-styled, glorious, uneven affair, and it transforms the room, just as Fanny had hoped it would.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Fanny announces, standing back to admire. ‘But CARTOGRAPHERS might find the total DISREGARD for any kind of CONSISTENT SCALE, quite INFURIATING…if not altogether INTOLERABLE.’ Her pupils write the words on the board and compete with each other to see who can use which one most effectively in conversation.
And so on. Fanny’s a good teacher. The children aren’t accustomed to being taught by someone with so much energy, so little regard for dreary adult protocols, and with a dog called Brute. They think she’s wonderful.
By the time they leave her alone, at the end of Friday, she is truly exhausted. Exhausted and, with the building quiet at last, even a little flat. She’s thought of nothing but the school since she walked into the building that first morning of term. And now it’s the weekend. Now what?
Somewhere on her desk, under the piles of paperwork, lies Mrs Haywood’s extended list of telephone callers, among them, calling for a second time, an ex-boyfriend from teacher training who was driving through the area and heard the radio interview; also Jo, who heard the radio interview; her mother, calling from her retirement flat in southern Spain, who hadn’t, and a triumphant message from her previous landlord, announcing he had discovered a coffee stain in the bedroom and would therefore be withholding her £950 deposit. But still no message from bloody Louis.
So. Unless she can make a friend at the village hall tonight,
or she gets lucky with another call-up to eat sodium-free pulses at the Manor, she faces spending the rest of the weekend alone. Which is OK. Of course…
Slowly, more slowly than she needs to, Fanny first closes her office, and then locks up the school. (Tracey Guppy the caretaker won’t do it, having recently declared the building spooked her. She won’t go near it when it’s empty.) She heads out, turns down the lane towards the village and begins the short trudge home.
But the gloom soon leaves her. It would be very hard, after all, not to be soothed by such a commute. The air smells so sweet, and the sun is warm on her back. Before long she is plucking idly at the long grass by the side of the road, and her mind has buried itself in her work. She has plans – for the school, for her tiny cottage, for making new friends in the village. Hundreds of plans. She thinks about Robert White, who’s a lecher, she decides, on top of everything else, on top of being an overall creep. She makes a mental note to find out the union rules on lechers and skivers, wonders how she might ever be able to get rid of him. Reminds herself to buy paint for her front door. Red, perhaps. Or dark pink. And to dig out her copy of
Tom’s Midnight Garden
to read to the older children. She is far from unhappy.
Fanny’s put on make-up for the Fiddleford limbo: sweeping black lines around her large grey eyes, and a lot of lip gloss. She’s wearing a pair of very fitted low-slung jeans, a transparent grey silk shirt with the top four buttons undone and a fancy black bra on show underneath.
She’s pulled her curly, paint-speckled hair into a pony-tail to camouflage the fact that she still can’t be bothered to wash it, and on her feet she’s wearing trainers – suede and still quite clean. All in all the look she has gone for is not, perhaps, ideal for a village headmistress on the evening she first properly meets her students’ parents. But Fanny’s not yet used to being a village headmistress, so she doesn’t think of that.
She decides it would be a friendly gesture to take a bottle of vodka with her because in her experience a lot of people, herself included, prefer drinking spirits to wine. So, with a pack and a half of Marlboro Lights, and a bottle of vodka only short of a few shots, she heads out.
The village hall is a few minutes’ walk away, beside the council-owned bungalow (where Tracey Guppy lives with her uncle), and just opposite the school. It’s a dreary little
building; a 1940s pebble-dashed hut, usually musty and empty, with a noticeboard outside advertising Wednesday Morning Bridge Club, Tuesday and Thursday Toddler Group, and not much else.
But that Friday evening it is throbbing. Fanny can hear the calypso beat, jaunty and foreign and completely incongruous, as soon as she steps out of her front door. In fact, though Fanny couldn’t have known it, Fiddleford village hall hasn’t seen so much action since the previous summer, when half the nation’s hacks squeezed in to witness the famous soap star Julia Biggleton (staying at the Manor Retreat after being outed as a transsexual) attempt to resuscitate her career by playing Lady Bracknell in Fiddleford Dramatic Society’s
The Importance of Being Earnest
.
This evening there is no Julia Biggleton expected. And yet by the time Fanny arrives, half an hour late, there must be sixty people standing awkwardly around that pebble-dashed hut, wishing they were somewhere else. It is an unlikely crowd for a limbo dance. At least half the people present are over seventy and by the look of them, too creaky even to stand for more than a few minutes without having to call for an ambulance. But a social occasion in a small village, even if it must include bending backwards under poles, is something the majority would be unwilling to miss. Needs must, as Jo would say. In the country. Needs must.
Fanny, of course, knows hardly anyone. She pauses at the door, vodka in hand, and casts a hopeful eye over the crowd. She sees old General Maxwell McDonald in blazer and tie, deep in conversation with the glass-eyed school secretary, Mrs Haywood. And his good-looking son Charlie at the far end of the room, smoking a cigarette with the limbo teacher from Exeter, who is wearing leggings. And there is Jo, of course, working another corner, in low-slung jeans and trainers, like Fanny, but with no make-up on, shiny clean
hair, and an opaque, exquisitely cut white shirt with not a hint of any underwear showing.
She spots Ian Guppy, her wily landlord, cowering in a space near the door immediately behind her. Clasping a can of cider in one hand and the burning butt of a cigarette in the other, and wearing a patterned brown jersey which seems to be choking him, he’s staring into the middle of the room desperate – or so it appears – to avoid eye contact with anyone.
Standing guard beside him and all around him is the reason why: a vast mountain of flesh which Fanny correctly assumes to be his wife. She is alarmingly large. Actually, she is obese. Next to her, Ian Guppy appears like a frightened pixie, half the man – an eighth the man – he was the only other time Fanny saw him, and with no trace of the horrible leer which had previously been stuck to his face.
On this occasion Mrs Guppy happens to be wearing a blue nylon leisure suit with a pair of new lilac slippers. But the main point about Mrs Guppy is her size. She is very large. And, in spite of her efforts with the talcum powder, which she has sprinkled liberally over her thick wiry hair and her great body, she smells strongly of frying and sweat.
She and Ian have eight children, so Mrs Haywood the glass-eyed secretary has informed Fanny. Three of them are currently in jail. One, now twenty-five, has been missing since he was fifteen. Two are in foster homes. Tracey Guppy the school caretaker, nineteen, is honest and drug free but not on speaking terms with either parent. Their youngest is Dane Guppy, eleven. He is the student who interrupted Fanny’s first assembly. (She’s taken to calling him John Thomas whenever he’s difficult, and each time he bellows with laughter. It lights up his waxy, suspicious face.)
At first glance Mr and Mrs Guppy look almost comical, Fanny thinks, huddled together, like Fatipuff and Thinnifer, in the corner of the room. And yet there is something
menacing about them too. Perhaps she imagines it – after all that Mrs Haywood said. But Fanny gets the impression that everybody in the hall is a little wary of them. They stand very much alone; the husband cringing under her giant wing, the wife with beady eyes flickering suspiciously through the crowd. Mrs Guppy exudes a quiet proprietorial violence which, since the publican’s wife was found with blood gushing down her legs and both arms broken, has kept libidinous females and her libidinous husband well apart. Or so Mrs Haywood said. Ian Guppy may leer, but after the incident with the publican’s wife he never strayed again. Apparently.
Fanny knows she ought to go up and say hello. But they look very uninviting. She scans the room for a more appealing alternative and unconsciously, out of nerves, twists the lid off her vodka bottle and takes a swig.
Tracey Guppy is glancing her way; hovering a good distance from her parents and managing to look pretty and optimistic in spite of the gene pool; in spite of a wretched perm and a chilly, tatty lime green mini-dress. Fanny starts walking towards her just as a young man – tall, with curly russet hair – attracts Tracey’s attention. The two of them fall immediately into animated conversation and Fanny hesitates, slightly embarrassed. She fiddles again with the cap on her vodka bottle.
‘Hey! Teacher!’ Fanny turns. Behind her Mrs Guppy, with an imperious nod of that vast head, is beckoning her over.
Shit
, Fanny thinks. Never should have hesitated.
‘Hello,’ Fanny says pleasantly, walking towards them. ‘And hello to you, too, Mr Guppy. This is quite a party.’
Mr Guppy mumbles something unintelligible, keeps his eyes to the floor.
‘Go and get Teacher a cup,’ snaps his wife. ‘You seen her! She’s been drinking out the bottle.’
He begins to move away.
‘Go on,’ she nudges him forward. ‘Don’t stand there with your eyes gogglin’ out like you never seen underwear before. Hurry up!’ Before Fanny has a chance to speak, Mrs Guppy motions her décolletage. ‘I didn’t know you head teachers was paid so short.’
‘What’s that?’ smiles Fanny.
‘I should cover y’self up before the men go shoving their cash down there.’
Fanny glances at her shirt. ‘Well!’ she says in astonishment. ‘Ha ha…goodness! And there was me thinking I was looking quite nice this evening!’ Mrs Guppy doesn’t smile. Fanny tries again. ‘Mind you – if there
are
any people shoving money around tonight, Mrs Guppy, I’d much prefer they shoved it down my shirt than anywhere else! You are Mrs Guppy, aren’t you? I’m Fanny Flynn.’ She holds out her hand. ‘I teach your son.’ Mrs Guppy doesn’t take the hand. It hangs in mid-air. ‘He’s…’ Fanny can’t quite think what to add. ‘Well – he has a wonderful sense of humour, doesn’t he?’
Mrs Guppy is not impressed. She stares coldly at Fanny. ‘It’s not Stinglefellows in ’ere, Miss Flynn.’
‘Yes. Yes, I noticed.’
‘Go home and put something decent on. You look worse than a prostitute.’
Fanny’s not easily bullied; not any more. Not ever again. She flushes, first in shock, and then anger, but she does not go home and put something decent on. She fixes her eyes on Mrs Guppy and slowly, deliberately, she undoes three more buttons, until her shirt is hanging open all the way to the navel.
‘And now, Mrs Guppy, what do I look like?’ she says. ‘What do I look like now?’ She turns away, without waiting for a reply.
Mrs Hooper from the post office, oblivious to everything but her own pleasure that night, bustles up to the limbo dancer from Exeter to suggest that it is time he began. She switches off the music, taps the microphone with impressive precision, as if she’s been tapping microphones all her life: ‘Testing…Testing…One two three,’ she says. And then, very suddenly, with a great uplift of volume: ‘Hello, girls and boys, ladies and gents! Welcome all and welcome sundry! CAN YOU ALL HEAR ME?’
‘They can hear you in bloody Exeter,’ shouts back Grey McShane. Fanny tries to smile. She has crossed the room and sidled up to Jo Maxwell McDonald, who was just introducing her to Grey’s beautiful – pregnant – wife, Messy. Her shirt still hangs absurdly open and she longs to do it up but she won’t as long as she knows Mrs Guppy’s eyes are on her, and they are. They still are. Burning into her back. She can feel them.
‘I said CAN YOU HEAR ME!?!’ Mrs Hooper bawls.
‘Hey!’ Messy McShane leans over to Fanny, ‘Do you realise your shirt’s undone?’
‘I know.’ Fanny tries again to smile but finds, to her horror, that her bottom lip is quivering.
‘RIGHT THEN. I’M MARGE HOOPER, AS MOST OF YOU PROBABLY KNOW.’ Mrs Hooper’s voice is making the windows rattle. ‘So welcome everyone and thanks ever so much for coming. We’ve got an action-packed evening ahead, and it’s all in a good cause, so—’
‘Switch off the microphone, would you?’ calls out Grey. ‘We’ll have animals aborting all over the fuckin’ county.’
There are grumbles of assent. Grey has been living in Fiddleford for several years – first at the Manor with the Maxwell McDonalds, then at the Gatehouse Restaurant – and though his relationship with the villagers certainly opened badly, with a violent brawl at the Fiddleford Arms, nowadays he is almost a popular figure. He’s a good employer, and though his rudeness is legendary he’s usually only saying what most people wish they dared to say. And he is often surprisingly kind.
On this occasion, however, Mrs Hooper chooses to ignore him. She’s been waiting many years to have a turn at the microphone, and not even Grey McShane is going to make her switch it off. ‘…So I hope you’ve all got your dancing feet on! Yes, you too, Albert! No excuses! It’s have-a-go Friday in Fiddleford this evening. Doesn’t matter how old you are, you’re never too old to learn!…So. Well! I suppose it’s time for me to introduce you to our fabulous expert coach, Mr Timothy Nesbit, who’s come all the way from Exeter…’
‘
Hey, Fanny!
’ giggles Jo suddenly. ‘
Look down!
Your shirt’s completely undone!’
‘So Timothy, if you’re ready, it’s over to you—Oooh!’ she pulls the microphone back from him just in time, ‘and I’ll be going round with raffle tickets in a minute. We’ve got some fabulous prizes…Mr McShane’s donated a dinner for two at the Gatehouse Restaurant, and for those of you with nice, big freezers, the Maxwell McDonalds have
donated half a bullock!…We’ve got a month’s supply of young Colin and Chloe’s bantam eggs; and Mrs McShane’s offered a giant hamper of her award-winning veggies, so there are loads of super prizes…A bottle of wine, a great big box of chocs from Mr Cooke; a super Ladyshaver from Pru. Absolutely unused, isn’t it, Pru? Unwanted Christmas present, I believe you said.’
Grey McShane, sitting at the back of the hall with his long legs stretched out in front of him and his arms crossed, starts snoring ostentatiously.
‘…Tickets are 20p each, or five for £1. Which is the same price, of course…’ Grey snores louder, and everyone begins to laugh. ‘But it makes it a nice round number, doesn’t it?’ Mrs Hooper shouts over them. ‘So – get your wallets out, ladies and gentlemen. Right then! Timothy? Are we ready? Let’s take it away!’
People mill about waiting for Timothy to finish his limbering up. They are mumbling quietly to each other, eyeing him distrustfully, dreading the moment when he insists they join in. Jo turns once again to Fanny, this time with a hint of impatience. ‘Fanny you do realise, don’t you? Your shirt—’
‘Of course I realise,’ says Fanny.
‘Well then, why—’
‘You’ll have to forgive us country bumpkins, Fanny,’ Messy interrupts tactfully. ‘We’ve been rotting away down here so long, haven’t we, Jo? We’re probably too damn dozy to realise it’s the absolute height of chic.’
‘No, we bloody well aren’t,’ snaps Jo. Who certainly isn’t. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Messy. It’s not chic. Her buttons have come undone.’
‘They
are
undone, Jo. They haven’t necessarily
come
undone. Anyway,’ Messy adds unconvincingly, ‘it looks great.’
Fanny takes a deep drag on her cigarette and then exhales, puffing smoke out of the side of her mouth, before leaning closer to the two women. ‘Tell me,’ she whispers fretfully, ‘only be subtle. Is Mrs Guppy looking at me?’
They glance over Fanny’s shoulder to the corner where Mr and Mrs Guppy had been standing.
‘Mrs—? Oh. Oh, dear,’ says Messy with a nervous laugh. ‘…Oh, dear…’
‘Christ! Don’t say “Oh, dear”! “Oh, dear”
what
? What’s going on?’ She searches their faces, frantic for clues.
‘Oh, crikey—’ Jo’s eyes widen in alarm. ‘What have you done to her, Fanny? She’s on her way over, and she doesn’t look too…
Bloody hell
. Hey! Mrs—
HEY
!’
Fanny gasps as an icy blow hits her between the shoulders. She feels the shock working its way down her spine and she has no idea – she wonders if she’s been stabbed. She spins round.
‘Oh, excuse me,’ says Mrs Guppy, yellow teeth glinting. ‘I was only bringing Teacher a nice cup of cola…You shall have to go home an’ change, now. Shan’t you, my lovely?’
Fanny looks up at her. They all do; Messy, Jo, various people nearby have noticed Mrs Guppy move in, and she doesn’t move often. A space has somehow cleared around them, and now a silence, which is quickly spreading across the room.
Fanny smiles. ‘Not to worry, Mrs Guppy,’ she says lightly. ‘It’s a warm evening. And we’re all friends here.’ She drops her cigarette into the pool of Coca-Cola at her feet, undoes the final two buttons of her soaking shirt, and peels it off. The limbo enthusiasts of Fiddleford pause in amazement at their new head teacher, who stands before them all in her uplift plunge-cut black lace magnificence, Marlboro Light packs bulging from her low-slung pockets, an open bottle
of vodka in her hand. She’s stuck there. She’s dying out there. Time stands still…
The silence is broken at last by a wolf-whistle, long and low. Everyone turns towards it. Standing framed at the entrance is a tall, lean, suntanned man in his mid-thirties, with shoulder-length sun-streaked hair, his hands in jeans pockets, his mouth wearing a languid, admiring smile. He has a cigarette hanging from a corner of his lips. He is almost, but not quite, laughing.
‘You’re kinda naked,’ he comments amiably, in his soft Louisiana drawl.
Fanny gives a short, strangulated laugh. ‘LOUIS!’ she chokes. ‘Thank God! Thank God for you!’ She runs through the space and throws herself into his arms. A series of flashes follow as the man from the
Western Weekly Gazette
springs from the melee to snatch pictures of the west of England’s youngest head teacher introducing herself to the villagers. Louis glances up at the photographer, and then at the gawking crowd. He takes off his old suede jacket and drapes it over her shoulders. ‘Come on,’ he murmurs, ‘let’s get outta here.’
The Fiddleford Arms is deserted, except for the bar woman, because everyone’s up at the village hall. Louis and Fanny – carrying the coke-drenched shirt and still in Louis’s jacket – drink a lot, very quickly, and before very long Fanny finds she has forgotten about the dreaded Mrs Guppy and is instead telling Louis in neurotic detail about the telephone call which came through when she was in her office with Robert White.
‘I actually dropped the telephone. It seems so stupid, but Louis,
I recognised his voice
,’ she says, puffing away on her cigarette, slugging back the whisky mac. ‘I knew it was him. I
knew
it was. He sounded so damn familiar…I hung up on him.’
‘Has he called back?’
She hesitates. ‘Not yet, no.’
‘It probably wasn’t him, Fan. It would be a pretty damn weird coincidence. But this kind of crap is going to go on and on – in your head at least – until you deal with it. I keep telling you. Talk to a lawyer. Talk to the police.
Talk
to someone.’
But she won’t do that. She’ll never agree to do that. She always says the same thing: she doesn’t want to stir things up again.
‘Until you find out where the sucker is, if he’s still alive, for Christ’s sake—’
‘Of course he’s still alive. Why shouldn’t he be?’
‘Whatever. Fine. But if you believe it was him on the phone—’
‘But what if it wasn’t?’
He stifles a sigh. He’s said it all so often before; virtually every time they meet. ‘Fanny, it probably wasn’t. Either way. Talk to a lawyer. Talk to the goddam police.’
‘No.’
‘You could clear this whole thing up.’ He snaps a finger. ‘Gone. Like that.’
‘No.’
‘Well – I don’t know what else to say, Fan. Anyhow, I guess this publicity idea isn’t helping. I mean, if he
is
out there, which he
isn’t
, then broadcasting your fabulous successes over the airwaves could probably be rated as “stirring things up”. Don’t you think?’
As he speaks they both remember the series of camera flashes which had followed her in her shirtless streak across the hall.
‘Oh, Christ,’ says Fanny, sinking her head into her hands. She lets out a low moan. ‘Oh, Christ.’
Louis pulls her into a hug. He holds her tight, tighter than
he needs to, and breathes in the sweet smell of her. And she breathes in the sweet smell of him.
They stay like that for a while, the two best mates, until one of them says something, makes some sort of brittle joke, and they both pretend to find it funny and slowly pull apart.
It’s as they’re awkwardly, reluctantly disentangling, that Grey McShane sweeps in. He stops at their table, towers above it. ‘There you are,’ he says, noticing her bloodshot eyes but showing no sign of being affected by them. ‘You’re not giving up on us already, are you?’
‘What? No. No, of course not.’
‘Well, you’d better get back there. They all think you’ve done a runner.’
She looks at him, confused.
‘We’ve got the children talking about you like you’re the bloody Messiah, Fanny.’
‘Really?’
‘We’ve got my stepdaughter, little Chloe, coming home every day, singing your praises. We don’t want to lose you just because some fat cow doesn’t like the look of you in your scanties.’
Louis snorts with laughter. Fanny turns to glare at him, finds it quite difficult to focus, and turns back to Grey.
‘He’s kind of right, though,’ Louis says. ‘You can’t let the fat lady push you around.’
Fanny nods, takes another slug from her drink. ‘Is she still in there? I don’t think I can face it if she’s still there.’
Grey shakes his head. ‘They left pretty much straight after you.’
‘Right then.’ Slowly, and with obvious regret, she pulls herself up from her chair. ‘Let’s—I’d better get on with it then.’ She pauses, sways backwards suddenly, steadies herself, and then with a scowl of concentration, ‘Actually,’ she adds, ‘it turns out I’m quite – very – pissed.’
‘Just don’t try to say too much,’ Grey says.
‘And I think,’ she tries to focus on Louis, ‘I should probably do this on my own, Louis, don’t you? If I just go back with Grey, it might maybe unruffle a few more feathers. I mean ruffle. Less. Fewer. Unruffle fewer feathers.’ She frowns. ‘It might go down better if I leave you behind.’
Louis is not especially disappointed. Fiddleford’s great limbo cotillion did not strike him as much of a party. Besides which it’s a nice evening. He thinks, instead, that he might roll himself a J and take a walk through the village. ‘I’ll meet you back here in an hour,’ he says. ‘OK? Good luck.’ He grins at her. ‘Don’t get any more pissed. Less. Fewer less pissed. Don’t drink any more if you can help it…’