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62Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ33Pq6m9XaG
Natalia’s eyes were wide as flying saucers upon the sight of hundreds of jars, lined on shelves all the way to the ceiling, containing sweets of every kind as she and Neill amassed, within two minutes, a sizeable assortment on the counter that included fruit jellies, coconut mushrooms, liquorice comfits, strawberry bon bons and sherbet lemons.
‘Chocolate limes, good Lord, got to get some of those,’ pointed Neill to another jar, just as his phone rang, and he stepped out of the shop with ‘pick a few more, pick a few more, I’ll be right back…’ Returning to brandish two crisp twenty-pound notes a few moments later, their haul was scooped up into a paper carrier and into Neill’s hand, as they walked out beaming with cheer.
‘That was Miss Barnes calling,’ as they set off up the hill. ‘Wants to know if I’m back in the office this afternoon for some papers I already gave her on Friday. She's either going senile in her early thirties or she wants a piece of me.’
‘The world’s most anti-smoking woman likes Richard Neill?’ Natalia laughed.
‘Is she?’
‘She smelt smoke on Stacey's coat the other day and was giving us a lecture in Yoga on why it’s such an awful habit!’
‘And there’s me thinking it was Harrison’s bull-piss aftershave that kept her a mile away from our fag breaks. Cripes that reminds me, I’d better have one now before we get on the coach.’ He stopped.
Natalia stood and waited as he lit up.
‘So what do you reckon to her?’ as he made the first puff.
‘You want my opinion on Miss Barnes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, very fit of course,’ she smiled as they commenced walking. ‘Posh. Smiley. Upbeat. Lovely. I mean, thighs of a nutcracker, who needs Teacher Tinder?’
‘Gosh, Miss Molova’s seal of approval.’
They continued up the hill at its steeper point, she keeping up with a burst of nimble jogging for every couple of his large strides up the hill.
‘Stop for a minute,’ he began to pant as they arrived at a bench, the top of the coach just visible ahead over the half-bare trees. ‘I can’t be appearing like I’ve just done my first workout in six years with a sack of sugar in one hand and a stick of nicotine in the other.’
He sat down, his legs and arms exaggeratedly outstretched, brandishing the branded bag aloft. ‘Can’t they put this stuff into plain packaging for dignity’s sake?’
Natalia, giggling, perched next to him reaching her hand up. ‘I’ll take it then—’
‘Oh no you won’t,’ as he drew it away.
‘Give me some then. Or is the generosity just your own act?’
‘I’ll look like a paedo sitting here breathless on a bench, doling out the candies to you in your school uniform.’
‘Especially with you sitting like that,’ she retorted.
‘Especially with you in pigtails.’
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
‘Well, I’ll need most of them, for an hour sitting bored to death next to Laura again,’ sighed Natalia.
‘You’ll need another spliff for that. Does that mean all my efforts of putting a smile on your face are going to be singularly lost to Lestat?’
She shrugged. ‘I'd rather sit alone.’ Her eyes lingered on him and blinked shyly. ‘Can you... can you do something so I don’t have to sit next to her?’
He met her gaze and faintly smiled. ‘Of course.’
She bit her lip as he handed her the sweet bag. ‘Take them.’
‘Don't you want—’
‘Oh I’ll have some. Come on.’
They proceeded onward to the coach where everyone was amassing to board. Neill disappeared ahead, the bustle parting for him as if admitting their awaited Captain, and soon the pupils were clambering up. Natalia was certain she’d triggered some action plan for Neill to get rid of Laura and could only guess how or what, just as Laura spotted Natalia and came to her mid-queue, whispering excitedly:
‘You went for lunch in the pub? You missed it all kicking off here!’
‘What happened?’
‘Mrs Coleman wanted to go to the pub and Miss Doris said no, they had to take care of everyone, but most of them were walking off to the cafés anyway, stupid teachers thought we’d find them too pricey, but jacket potatoes were only like four quid! Then it proper kicked off between Mikey and Gazza, started lamping him on the green right in front of an old granny! Mrs Coleman went mad—’
‘Glad to have avoided that boring headache.’
‘Oh, sweets! I went there too. What did you get? Let’s swap on the coach.’
‘Er, I got mine as gifts,’ as Natalia stepped back to let her board first.
Up on deck there was Neill at the second row, holding back to one side to let the pupils pass, chit-chatting with the driver and a now washed-out looking Coleman slumped in her seat, managing a weak smile back to Neill about needing that stiff drink right now.
Laura passed by Neill, but as Natalia stepped forward, Neill’s body shifted to obstruct her - as her insides hurrahed - and his palm beckoned straight into the seats he was blocking:
‘In there, you—’
It was a barely perceptible, almost supernatural chirrup that Natalia wondered if she’d heard at all - as she plopped thankfully into the window seat, and he continued his prattle with absolute indifference - his back turned like an oak door on what was now her first-class ticket cabin, or a naughty nook for the intolerably recalcitrant remedial, sealed off by the barrier of his crocked up knee and protected from a hundred loser-Laura-Lestats better than if you'd hung a string of garlic over the armrest.
Miss Doris boarded and the coach was full, with Neill helping stow bags and coats overhead, and as his beefy winter-jumpered body slid down into the seat next to Natalia centimetres from her arm on the middle rest, his warmth; his essence, now suddenly made this precarious moment more impertinently perfect, and she murmured:
‘So I’m sitting here with you?’
‘Intelligence clearly restored.’
Her face fought a smirk. ‘Oh right... I’m your... remedial,’ as Coleman and Doris stood up doing the head count.
‘Remedi—ill. Play along now.’
‘We’re missing one!’ Doris turned.
‘Did you count Natalia?’ Neill looked up.
‘Oh, I didn't see her there. What’s she doing up h— ’
‘She’s not feeling so good.’
‘Are you ok Natalia?’ asked Doris.
‘No miss. Bad tummy ache,’ as Natalia fell into an act imagining she had one, curling up her legs in the seat and pushing her cheek up the upholstery - the musty smell of which, combined with a jolt of nerves - sent a twinge to her stomach for real.
‘Do you need a sick bag?’
‘It’s ok, I’ve... got one.’
‘Yes,’ Neill’s eyes went cynically to the huge bag of sweets in her footwell.
‘Ok. Well, let me know if you need anything,’ as Doris went back to her seat.
‘So you are good at acting,’ Neill murmured at Natalia, who had unplaited her pigtails and her hair, now in waves, hung down as she reached for her book purchases from the footwell.
‘Nat-alia,’ he whispered. ‘Your hair looks like the mermaid’s from the front of that very book.’
She ran her hand down her hair, trying not to smile too much, then turned to peer through the seat gap to see who was behind them. One pupil with closed eyes and earphones; another staring open-mouthed into a phone game, also on earphones. In front was Dinkey typing on his laptop, earphones attached, but not yet inserted.
She stretched her coat over the gap to lay her chin as close to whisper-channelling distance to Neill’s ear as she could:
‘I got practice on it two Thursdays ago. Because of Marcia. My mum fell right for it.’
There was a confused flicker of his eyes. ‘You convinced your mum you’re a mermaid?’
She giggled softly. ‘Bunking off for fake illness.’
‘You just admitted to your Head you skived,’ came back as fairy-light a whisper a man like him could make.
‘It was self defence,’ she tittered.
‘Well, next it will be elf offence,’ he tilted his face more to her, his voice raising as the coach engine revved up. ‘I have a friend who’s a great actor. He’s going to be your Santa in the last week of term. You heard it here first.’
‘Why don’t you do it?’
‘No chance. I can’t be seen doing that. Besides I have a big meeting that day.’ He peered down and nudged the sweet bag with his shoe. ‘Get that sick bag open, girl, so we can really get a bad stomach ache going.’
She reached down for it, glancing quickly to the teachers: the seats opposite, where Coleman and Doris sat, were not in direct line of sight of theirs, and it was almost like their VIP nook - Very Important Pupil - had optimal positioning for the most discretion they could hope for.
‘What do you want?’ she whispered.
‘A bit of everything. Let’s try it all.’
Neill’s palm appeared in anticipation just under the arm rest, as Natalia pulled and laid various sweets onto it, then onto the seat for herself; she would rasp a soft ‘hey!’ at him taking hers, and attempt to guard them as she pulled out more. And as his fingers crept under hers to filch a flying saucer or bon bon, she fought to suppress a volley of smirks, for this was as far away from a bad stomach ache as she could imagine - possibly around a hundred, thousand, gazillion times better than sitting with Laura; in fact, she would happily suffer the shits for this every day to sit like the Headteacher’s Pet chowing on sweets he’d forced her to agree to her buying for her, after already spoiling her with museum, lunch and books in the most beautiful town she’d ever seen.
She curled up foetally against the backrest, as they continued making their way through the sweets pooled on the seat, popping them like secret pills and sucking, crunching and foraging with their hands for what had rolled into the middle crack where her knees were. ‘Give me one of those chocolate limes, those were my idea,’ he husked as she unwrapped and hot-thrust it up into his hovering fingertips, relishing the momentary surreptitious linger of finger skins as a necessary part of the important, Headmaster-commanded operation.
‘Sick yet?’
‘Almost,’ she grinned. ‘You?’
‘To be sure of it, we could stop for a YFC. Or a PFC. Goodness, is that legal?’
Neill peered out at the fried chicken shops as the coach left Bradford and joined a traffic queue on the dual carriageway. This was finger-licking good as it was, Natalia thought, as Neill grunted back onto the headrest, moaning: ’Guess we'll be stuck in this for a while,’ whilst Natalia felt positively giddy, to be sitting with Neill and now dosed on sugar, hitting her adrenalin so high she had to cradle her head in her folded arms.
She closed her eyes when she saw Mrs Coleman standing up looking through the windscreen at the traffic jam, and then looming toward their seat to lean and chat with Neill, whom she likely noticed had been uncharacteristically silent since taking his seat.
‘Well, sorry that I couldn’t join you in the pub in the end.’
‘Oh that’s ok.’
‘Is er, Natalia ok?’
‘She has Miss Beighton's Sweet Shop Stomach.’
‘Oh, does she want to come sit over— ’
‘She’s fine here.’
‘There’s a double seat she can lay d— ’
‘So I heard there was a fight that broke out on the green?’
‘Oh, thankfully it blew over quick.’
‘Seemed to have the kids pretty fired up?’ Neill frowned.
‘Well, excitement over nothing.’
‘You didn’t think to call me?’
‘Oh, I didn't want to disturb you. Don’t worry, we had it all under control, Neill. I heard something about Adam Letchworth at lunch?’
‘He was insulting and rude when I was treating him to lunch so I sent him on his way. No biggie.’
‘Ah, ok. Well it’s been a positive day overall. No casualties.’
‘Indeed. Fine weather too.’
Natalia’s eyes slit open to check Coleman was gone, before she stretched with an exaggerated, girlish exhale and restored her resting face back in line to Neill’s ear again.
‘I want to say thanks too,’ she whispered lightly. She saw his eyelashes incline toward her; the corner of his mouth twitch, his head nod a little.
‘Best day ever,’ she continued. She watched his mouth curl more, the lines by the corners of his smile appear. ‘Thank you. Thang-you, thang-you-thang-you,' came her soft, rapid-fire fairy flutter of giddy gratitude, watching his eyes blink along with her rhythm, his face incline more to her, showing the teeth of his smile that she’d struck to the canine.
‘It’s quite ok,’ now came the man-fairy back at her.
‘No I wanna say it more. Thang-you-so-so-much…’
From his arms folded across his chest, his right fingers hung down into the gap that met unexpectedly now with her fingers on her arm that was on the armrest. Just as their fingertips brushed against each other, they pulled away on contact as though they’d touched a hot stove; but then she held a fingertip against a spot of his flesh, not moving it, just holding it - as if it wouldn't be noticed - for moving it would be suggestive, inappropriate, what lovers do. The parking of one spot of flesh feels like friends… safe, acceptable enough, almost numb.
‘You’re my fucking hero,’ she couldn’t stop now, in this little sweet-drugged reverie of adoration, as if she were a slow hissing gas leak of all the audacity he’d fired onto her earlier. ‘I mean, where did you fucking come from?’
His face creased into pronounced amusement, tilting more toward her, and his finger, hidden down with hers inside that arcane little cave they’d formed at the armrest, tapped hers three times in amicability.
‘It’s... it’s ok.’
‘Lost for words?’ she uttered.
Now his face was laughing silently, first the other way, and then back to her, with another tap in the cave:
‘Never.’
A few seconds of silence.
‘What am I going to tell my mum about all these gifts?’
‘Easy. Your Headmaster bought them to cheer you up and help your grades,’ his voice raising slightly out of the whisper.
‘She might want a piece of you.’
‘She can have a piece of my mind. At the next Parents’ Evening.’
‘She won’t come.’
‘She will when I gift her with a Wuthering Heights tea towel and show her where she can hang it.’
She laughed again softly. ‘Isn’t that for Miss Barnes? Don’t show her how many sweets you bought.’
‘Oh she’ll get some of that sack down there.’
Dinkey now arose from his seat in front, as Natalia quickly restored the look of illness on her face: hanging her head and closing her eyes. Her and Neill’s fingertips withdrew simultaneously; the cave was no more, as Neill cleared his throat and shifted his arms.
‘Tired, Neill? It’s so quiet on the coach I thought they’d left you on the moors!’ Steve cackled.
‘Well, I’d happily be kipping on Charlotte’s Chair up on the moors than stuck here on the M621,’ murmured back Neill.
‘Oh, aye, the chair! I’ve been there. Bit of a hike like, but well worth it.’
‘And were you duly inspired by parking your derrière upon her prized seat?’
‘Oh, I had many an idea come out.’
‘Is that what you call piles?’
‘Ba ha!’ Steve slipped off to talk to the driver whilst Natalia stretched and gazed at the passing traffic, and Neill produced a newspaper from somewhere, which he folded onto the crossword page, hiked up onto his knee and clicked a pen.
‘You any good at these?’
Natalia settled her face just behind his shoulder. ‘To be honest, I’m not. I can help you cock it up though.’
‘The ‘Just Do It’ sloganeer—’
‘Nike, obviously.’
‘Easy. No cock up. Now, Indian language. Eight letters.’
‘Punjabi?’
‘Nope. Doesn’t fit.’
‘See. That's where I cock up and give up.’
‘Well, there’s Kashmiri, or Gujarati — ’
‘Then I’d not know which to put in,’ she sighed. ‘Thus, cock it up.’
‘I’ll make a note, then see what letters form in it. So let’s look at 4 down…’ He looked confused for a moment, then chuckled. ‘Oh wait, no, I cocked it up. Indian language is 4 down, not 4 across. So it is 7 letters.’
‘Punjabi then?’
‘Well we could try it, but to make sure we don’t, well, cock it up, it would mean 16 across would need to begin with U. And that clue reads... ‘Undertake, or undertaking.’’
‘Well try either.’
‘What?’
‘Undertake, or undertaking?’
He sighed.
‘Well they both begin with U.’
‘No, I think the cock-up did.’
‘Every cock-up starts with you,’ she whispered back, ‘why not just write what it is.’ She swiped the pen from his fingers, and lingering her writing knuckles by the warmth of his resting hand, wrote C, O, C, K, up three random verticals. ‘There you go, a cock up.’
He sighed. ‘So for the clue: ‘What your nan might knit you for Christmas,’ you've written... cock.’
Her face was in hushed hysteria.
‘Well, what a nan.’
‘Technically I've written KCOC.’
‘Well if FCUK can get big with the same idea—’
‘Then kcoc can get big with my nan.’
Now his face creased into a wheeze. ‘Well this is some crassword.’
She watched him open out the paper and fold it back again onto the back Sports page.
Natalia took the pen from his hand and drew a wobbly, jocund penis on a head of a footballer.
‘There you go. Made your paper as crass as my notepad.’
‘What a fiend. Except it’s not my paper,’ gesturing forward to Dinkey’s seat.
‘Shit. Got any Tippex?’
‘I somehow think painting a white fluid onto a rather bulbous cartoon cock is far from remedying it.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t think its cartoon owner would agree.’
He smiled wryly as he leaned to plop the paper back on Steve’s seat. ‘Sorry, Steve!’ he called. ‘My pen slipped from the crossword, to a crass-turd, on the sight of Gareth Bale.’ Then in a low mutter to Natalia: ‘That’s three Bales-out today; Christian, Gareth and you.’
Steve’s hoot of laughter was heard over the headrest. ‘Oh, well placed man! Quite well-endowed despite being in the wrong place like!’
‘Sorry, it’s just a reference point I’m used to.’
‘They do say Welshmen have the biggest, you know!’
‘My best friend has a holiday home in Snowdonia, does that count as a blood connection?’ Neill remarked.
‘Ba ha! We probably could be in Wales by now if we drove the other way from that traffic! Clearing up now, we’re almost there!’
‘Just past three and almost dark,’ Neill glanced through the window.
Natalia groaned. ‘I’ll be lucky to make it for the next bus.’
As the coach shunted as fast as it could through the school's neighbourhood, Neill yawning ‘ah, we’re almost school-sweet-school,’ and Natalia sighing, ‘oh bugger, there it is,’ as the lights of a double-decker glinted past the opposite way.
Neill turned to her. ‘Well, I am sorry you’ve still got such a bad stomach ache.’
‘Wha—?’
The coach finally reached its stop outside the school and Neill heaved up to help fetch down bags and coats for the mass-hustle of impatient bodies wrestling into the aisle.
Natalia stayed seated, looking up to Neill waiting to catch the twitch of his face, as if to say ‘what? What are you planning?’
His lips mimed the ‘W’ pout of ‘wait,’ his hand motioning low to stay where she was till the last tramples on the steps were heard, when he ushered her up to the front just as the last teacher hopped off.
‘Well mate, you endured that motorway clog well,’ Neill patted Mark’s shoulder. ‘Big thanks for today.’
‘It were a pleasure sir!’
‘Which way’s your station back?’
‘I’m going back into t’centre.’
‘I need you to take a detour via Gipton to take this young lady Natalia home. She’s not very well, been really quite sick this past hour, and she can't be waiting forty minutes in the dark for the next bus—’
‘Wait wait—’ Natalia stared, suddenly embarrassed imagining a conspicuous coach squeezing into her downtrodden streets. ‘Don't have to go into Gipton. Just York Road is good enough.’
‘York Road. Near the fire station,’ added Neill.
‘Fire station on York Road you say? Aye, that's en-route so I can do that easy. Just the one? Or any more?’
‘Just this girl.’
‘No problem!’
‘Thanks a million.’
Natalia quickly stifled her smile to qualify as ‘really quite sick,’ croaking: ‘Thanks, I really appreciate that.’ Blinking back to Neill who gave her shoulder a squeeze, something she would feel there for the next hour, he slung his bag over his shoulder and disappeared down the steps, calling:
‘Hope you feel better soooon!’
‘Right young lady,’ spoke Mark. ‘Natalie is it?’
‘Natalia.’ The doors flapped closed and the coach heaved off.
‘Fancy some music? 80s?’
The grunt of a Yorkshire man never sounded so good to her.
‘Sure.’
A video came onto a screen up top. ‘I never turn it on for the kids usually, they always end up either arguing over it or ignoring it! Either way I never hear it!’ he chortled.
‘You listen to what you want, mate,’ she grinned. ‘I’m basically the mouse of the Year so I won’t be disturbing you.’
He guffawed.
Natalia's heart beat along with the prancing synth-pop of Just Can’t Get Enough , staring through the black window, thinking when she is with him, she goes out of her head! All the things he does! Everything he said! She was with him, today, together, walking down the street! And she just can’t get enough?
When it rained, he was shining down for her. Like a rainbow, he set her free. And she couldn’t get enough. He’s like an angel and he gives her his... love? Love, that’s funny!
‘You like a bit of Depeche Mode?’
‘I do now.’
‘Just here ok love? Feeling better?’
‘Yeah! Thanks a million!’
Read new chapters first on www.headmastersflame.com. Free, slick reading experience, tailored for mobile phones, where you can subscribe your email for a free Kindle book. - LS x62Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ5F7Fa5Xy7
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