Bed of Roses. Daisy Waugh

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       15

      Robert White’s previous hostility, his fluey colds, are all forgotten now. He turns up to work every day. He follows Fanny around the school like a puppy. She spoke to him only once, on the afternoon following the incident. She made it clear (she thought) that she never wanted anything similar to happen again. But he’d wandered off with the same serene smile stuck on his lips and it’s been stuck there, now, for a week. No matter what she does. No matter how much she snaps and snarls and ignores him. She can’t shift it.

      The little interlude in Fanny’s office has been re-shot in his mind, in softest focus and from all conceivable angles; it’s been given a soundtrack, and a whole lot of dialogue that was never there. He’s taken home the photograph from the Gazette, cut it out and stuck it on to sugar paper stolen from the school stationery cupboard. And this morning he brought pink roses into the staff room.

      He made a tremendous drama of arranging them in a broken coffee mug.

      ‘They’re lovely,’ gushed Linda Tardy; gushed Mrs Haywood. They called in Tracey Guppy from washing the floor next door to have a look.

      ‘Bet you wish you had a young man giving you roses like that!’ said Linda Tardy. ‘I know I do!’

      ‘They’re revolting,’ Tracey said.

      Fanny, face buried in a newspaper, gave a muffled snort.

      ‘Do you like them, Fanny?’ said Robert, jiggling them ineptly about. The stems were too long for the mug, and they wouldn’t balance.

      ‘Hey, Tracey,’ said Fanny (ignoring Robert), ‘I spotted your naughty brother Dane in the post office yesterday. He didn’t look very ill to me. Any chance he might come back to school one of these—’ She looked round from behind her newspaper, but Tracey had left the room. ‘Tracey?’

      ‘Ouch!’ Robert’s mug of pink roses tumbled to the floor. He looked across at Fanny, pale eyes damp with yearning, a spot of red blood sprouting from his finger. ‘I think I’m going to need a plaster.’

      ‘Oh, belt up,’ Fanny snapped.

      ‘Have pity on him!’ giggled glass-eyed Mrs Haywood, as Fanny slapped down her paper and stood up to leave the room. ‘The man’s soft on you, he can’t help it. He can’t concentrate on a thing!’

      Through all this nonsense Fanny continues to work hard at her new job, and already the school is beginning to blossom. At least, there is a clear sense of energy to it now. The walls are covered in the children’s artwork and poetry, and there are nature displays on the tables. She has made a small garden at the side of the school, where the junior class has planted flower and vegetable seeds. Last week her car hit one of the Maxwell McDonald pheasants, so she brought the bird in and dissected it for everyone, which was illegal on Health and Safety grounds, but popular with the children. Next week she wants to take them all out collecting wool. Together (the plan is) they will learn how to wash it, spin it, dye it, and weave it into scarves.

      Fanny thinks of her school all day and most of the night. In the three weeks since term started she’s had dinner a couple of times with Grey and Messy McShane. She’s met Charlie, Jo, the twins and the General in the Fiddleford Arms for a weekend lunch. (They’d been unable to invite her to the Manor; one of their more troubled celebrity guests being so afraid of spies he’d demanded that even the post be left at the bottom of the drive.) Fanny’s spent a couple of evenings on her own in the pub, chatting with Tracey and anyone else around (although she tries to avoid drinking with Kitty). And she gossips with Mrs Hooper for at least twenty minutes every morning, when she buys her milk and newspaper. But that, excepting the weekend Louis came, makes up the СКАЧАТЬ