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 x47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzkLWe7UFkV
‘Lick my bowls clean,’ he’d said. Balls. A man’s balls. And lick. She’d always felt grossed out by both words and she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about Neill saying either of them, let alone together.
Natalia stared at her ceiling with a crumpled frown. Well he was talking about bowls really, of moist cake served to the woman he’d pounded - another two gross words - with warm custard Natalia actually thought was mixed in with his semen. Oh god, another one for the list, and she was gross for adding it. Worse mind than his, he’d said. Was he impressed that she’d shocked the unshockable Head? He smiled that she’s vile. Oh but he called her honey to her hip, and my darling in her ear. Whilst Emma-Gemma-Barnes got an insincere yes dah-ling, I’ll have a look at your coconuts before I quit you.
The next day at break Natalia heard murmurings in the playground.
‘Neill’s in trouble—’
‘I saw an officer…’
‘What’s he getting done for?’
Her heart began pumping. Her legs went weak. Oh no. Oh God no. Should she, could she, text him?
The worry got the better of her. She nipped into the loo to type:
‘Is all ok..? Heard some things?’
- ‘Come up to my office.’
She gulped. She hoped he wasn’t packing from a sacking.
Neill was just stubbing out a fag when she arrived at his office. He pushed his window open wider.
‘Hello, Natalia.’
‘You… you got into trouble? For seeing Miss…?’
‘I got into trouble for my nuts but not like that,’ as he stepped up by his desk with his hands in his pockets. ‘That cake you baked went against allergy policy. The school’s no nuts, despite being made up completely of them—’
‘Oh no! The walnuts!’ Her hands flew up to her mouth.
‘It’s all my fault of course. I should have checked.’
‘So what happened? No one had a reaction at the table?’
‘Oh no, no, I instinctively attracted nice normal people,’ as he pulled up his chair and motioned her to sit. ‘The local Health and Safety Officer only found out because Coleman mentioned the cake to Williams, who has a hazelnut allergy, and went sniffing round in the kitchen like a nut herself. Dear old Cathy’s now under disciplinary action for serving it. I’ll have to buy both of them Ferrero Rochers to make it up.’
‘Umm, funny,’ as she settled into the chair. ‘Well, I’m just glad they didn’t get you for cavorting with a teacher.’
‘No-one knows about that except you. And Mrs Tracey too,’ he sighed. ‘Emma made me a green tea in the staff room earlier. I put milk into it unknowingly and almost vomited. Mrs Tracey was watching, rather amused, and when I got talking to her about Emma’s clean-living, she whispered: ‘Well, Emma’s got the dirty thing she wanted. To bed the Richmond Headmaster by Christmas!’’
‘Oh?!’
‘I said, you make it sound like you had a bet on. She said they did, and I was had. In return she has to pay for some geriatric-girly spa weekend and wanted to cadge cash off me for it because apparently I was all over Emma and made it a piece of cake for her. How apt!’
‘Oh god, will she leak it?’
‘She said don’t worry, she met her husband at her first teacher interview, and her lips are sealed. I said, not like they were at the interview then. She laughed like a kookaburra.’
‘Humph! But we can go one better.’
‘Oh, really?’ he smiled.
‘Well, do you like Mrs Tracey?’
He blinked. ’Are you suggesting I pork this married mother of three to make things equal?’
‘Well she likes cigarettes and desserts doesn’t she?’
‘Seen her sharing Miss Francis’s fag once,’ he shrugged. ‘Glimpsed her eating full-fat fromage frais in the staff room. But that hardly makes her a vamp, Natalia. She looks like Lorraine Kelly. But I do have the actor coming next week for the Grotto, an—’
‘And he’ll what, jump Lorraine like a Rottweiler?’
‘No, Natalia,’ he smirked, leaning forward on his elbows, ‘although I am both impressed and perturbed in equal amounts by your rather violently venereal incitations that are thoroughly inappropriate for a fifteen-year-old girl, although doubtlessly rubbed off from your rather Rabelaisian Headmaster with whom you’ve spent an above average number of minutes sharing company in this room, due to the fact you are more entertaining than Camden Comedy Club—’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. No, what would be helpful if we had something on Lisa Tracey that she doesn’t expect Santa to know.’
‘Like her super size Tena Ladies?’ she enthused.
He paused. ‘Her what ladies?’
‘Incontinence pads. Saw them in her handbag. And she has one false front tooth. Saw her nervously sticking it back in in the girls’ toilet.’
‘Perfect!’ he purred. ‘That’s the only way Lisa’ll leak.’
His phone rang and he snapped up the receiver. ‘Yep? Yep. Right,’ he plonked it down. ‘And I’ll be keeping mum - or mums, rather - time to cut my teeth on my first school tour. I have a bunch of parents waiting downstairs.’
‘To be rounded up by their Rabelaisian Richmond Rottweiler?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Good luck!’
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWm5YZrofhD
*
Over the next couple of days, prospective parents were taken on viewings around the school. Natalia was used to seeing these at this time of year, but never delivered like Neill did. He would sweep the huddle in and out of classrooms with a flurry of entertaining gabbling that had the winter-jacketed, prospective parents’ eyes glued to him in a kind of semi-confused awe. ‘Trickle through, trickle through!’ as he invited them into Natalia’s Geography class, her eyes going from Neill’s glinting face to the oblivious Mrs Tracey in smirking disbelief.
At Friday’s Assembly came Neill’s official announcement of the Grotto that would be set up in the hall the following week. He explained that unfortunately he would be away for the day at an important conference.
‘The Santa I’ve arranged for you, Year 11s, is a special friend of mine who has come up from London - sorry, down from Lapland’ - cue titters - ‘and will have a gift for every one of you, to wish you well on your last Christmas at Thornwood and your eventual journey onwards.’
And leaked, no doubt, with a panoply of embarrassing facts on Neill’s least favourite teachers and pupils?
Baking brownies in Food Tech that afternoon, she longed to deliver one to Neill before the lonely weekend ahead. Wrapping a piece in foil, about to go upstairs, she spied him outside by his car, rifling through what appeared to be a small jumble sale in his boot.
Nimbly stepping up, she tossed the brownie just as he pressed the button for his boot to close. It landed inside and he turned surprised as though an ingot of silver had narrowly missed him.
‘Have it later,’ she smiled, and feeling audacious, threw him a wink, strutting off feeling like she’d out-brazened him yet again.
Two hours later, sitting on her bed, she got a text:
‘Hope I haven’t just eaten a beetroot brownie?’
- ‘Haha no… hope you liked it!’
‘Thank you. Best yet.’
Her foot wagged like a dog’s tail. She wondered that he hadn’t told her much more about what kind of friend he was bringing in as Santa. Was it his ‘wanker, techie’ friend Ed? She mused upon it all rainy weekend whilst the bongos of I’m A Celebrity repeated ad nauseam on the telly.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvyBbOaEMYn
*
The lessons of the following week slackened day by day, and Neill was seen downstairs with, indeed, an unfamiliar friend in tow that she took to be the actor - a lanky man in his 30s, greasy dark hair - being acquainted with the school layout by a garrulous Neill. An unlikely Santa, Natalia thought, curious for his transformation, as she peered in at the hall to see the red tent being pitched up, teachers and helper pupils scurrying to and fro, Neill giving sporadic barks whilst his friend wandered and Natalia slunk back unseen.
Grotto day came. For non-uniform day she put on a close-fitting red dress she’d picked up in a charity shop and adored for how it was nothing like she’d glimpsed even in high street shops. A vintage 60s appeal perhaps, made of thick lycra that clung to her body from mid thigh, steering up her slender body and down her arms, right up to the base of her neck in a subtle polo rise. She liked it for its coverage at the same time as its suggestion, drawing out the subtle curves of her gamine body that was always redundantly hibernating beneath shapeless uniform.
Her satisfaction was swiftly punctured by an unflattering stare from the boys at morning form.
‘She looks like one of those strawberry lances from the sweetshop,’ was a comment heard from Bernard, sandwiched like some evil gnome between Tom and Luke. ‘She’s so skinny! She needs a good Christmas alright!’
Then from the strawberry-blonde head of Ryan behind them came a louder defence than usual.
‘Leave her alone!’ - this time without going quite as red as her dress, and actually rendering them quiet, or that may have been due to Williams walking in.
When form was done, Ryan loitered outside.
‘You alright?’
‘Yeah thanks,’ as she stepped to the side.
‘You look nice.’
Bloody hell, this really was taking a turn.
‘Thanks. You… too,’ she blinked down at his Adidas bottoms.
‘Ignore Bernard and them lot. They’re dickheads.’
‘You like hanging round with them, though?’
His freckle-flecked cheeks creased into a laugh. Ah, some self-awareness then. His pale green eyes looked merry for a moment and she thought there was even a vague look of intelligence in his scrunched temples, till his mouth spoke:
‘Known ‘em since primary, so… dunno. We always hang out together but I don’t always like stuff they say.’
‘I heard Bernard say your mum’s really ill?’
‘She’s got cancer. Going to hospital every week.’
‘Oh. Whereabouts?’
‘St James.’
‘I mean, the cancer…’
‘Breast cancer.’
‘Oh. Sorry to hear.’
‘S’alright.’ Her eyes flew to him fidgeting in his pocket, where she glimpsed the top of a packet.
‘So,’ she coughed politely. ‘Do you smoke?’
‘Yea-ah. Why, do you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Really?’
The awe in his eyes made her feel as momentarily swarve as Sandy from Grease till Mrs Williams yanked open the door with a shrill cry.
‘Pu-pils! On to lessons! It might be a relaxed day but we’re not milling in corridors!’
‘I’ll see ya round for one then,’ Ryan murmured.
Lessons that day were replaced with games, music and films, and it soon became established that the sixty pupils of Year 11 were being summoned one by one, by a boy with a list, through the whole day; and within the hour, stories about the encounters with Neill’s Santa friend became the centre of gossip.
‘I just went to see Santa. Oh my god! He’s fucking crazy,’ Adam Dobson yakked outside Maths. ‘He asked me how much I smoke a day. I was like, what? I don’t smoke. Then he said he can tell by my yellow fingers,’ as his friends choked with laughter. ‘What did he look like?’ - ‘A total legit Santa, man. He was huge and fat, with this wrinkly face and massive fuck-off beard’ - ‘It’s got to be Neill dressed up!’ - ‘No way. This is some other old gross guy’ - ‘Neill’s got some weird friends!’
Alana was whispering to Gemma, ‘I’ve just paid my visit to Father Christmas, and look what I got’ - ‘What was he like?’ - ‘Really weird. Really realistic. He asked me in this creepy voice, have I been a good girl? He made me pull a cracker and a balloon fell out, he blew it up and it was a condom, I couldn’t stop laughing’ - ‘So were the Mock results in there?’ - ‘Yep, got seven Cs and 3 Ds.’ More gossip built through the day from huddled crowds of laughter, and berating from passing teachers to move on, get into lesson, get out of lesson.
‘That Neill has created a school full of traffic jams bringing up his Santa friend,’ Coleman lamented as she batted her way through a roadblock of boys’ armpits, jostling each other over how Santa pulled him up on his acne, or his trainer laces, or his mouth-breathing.
‘Acne? Mouth breathing?’ frowned Coleman. ‘I’m not sure Santa is very appropriate giving out the Mock results like this? Natalia, have you been?’
‘No, Miss.’
‘Honestly, it’s been chaos today. No wonder Anne’s gone home.’
Lunchtime arrived with still no calling to Santa’s Grotto. Natalia began to wonder if she could just collect her present discreetly at the end, and whisk herself out of there just like Neill? Did she even have a choice whether she wanted to be critiqued by some festively-garbed actor with a ‘fuck-off beard’ just for her Mock results and some chocolate? And surely Neill wouldn’t have told him about their own secrets -Cohen, Luxton, Marcia, weed in his car, their stint in Haworth? Even if it was his best friend with the holiday home in Wales?
In her last lesson, IT, pupils lounged around doing online puzzles when the Year 7 boy Derek, who’d been going round all day now and looked ready to drop from exhaustion (a boy whom Natalia now remembered she’d seen Neill sharply reprimanding in the corridor a few weeks ago) now came to call:
‘Last one. We need Natalia Molova.’
Mr Clarke nodded to Natalia, as she scraped her chair and scooped up her things to pad downstairs. Ryan was just coming out from the hall.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey. So… is it Neill in there?’ she smiled.
‘No, it’s not him. It’s a proper fucking weirdo,’ he frowned into his hands, turning over an egg carton.
‘Half a dozen eggs? What is it, Easter?’
‘There’s nothing even in it.’ He tossed it into the corner.
‘Well at least they’re organic,’ she chortled.
He huffed and skulked away. Natalia took a breath to stave off her growing nervousness and marched to the tent. Pushing her way through the gold-lined gap in the thick velvet fabric, and blinking like a mole in the darkness, lit by strings of flashing fairy lights, she spied the dark shape of Santa slumped on a festive throne about five feet away. What sounded like a Dubstep version of Jingle Bells was softly playing - almost hauntingly - and the backlit figure was silent. Oh dear. Was she supposed to speak first?
‘He-llo?’
‘Aha! We have another. And who is this?’
His deep voice, scratchy and piratical, came from a mouth she could barely see. The lights flashed more frantically and she suddenly felt like she was the final girl in a horror film.
‘Well, you’re Santa, aren’t you supposed to know?’
He coughed. ‘Thanks to the lad with the A4 sheet, you’re Natalia Me-Lover.’
‘Molova.’
‘That’s not what he said,’ he grunted. ‘Ha, ha, ho!’
‘Ha har,’ she rejoined sarcastically. ‘So where’s my present?’
He coughed deep again. ‘That’s no way to speak to Santa, is it?’
‘You’re hardly set the bar.’
‘My, we have a plucky bonnie lass!’
‘Sorry, are you trying to do a Scottish or Cornish accent, because I can’t tell? And yet you’re from London?’
‘I’ll have you know, I came all the way from Lapland to deliver you roustabouts your end-of-sentence - I mean - school, gifts.’
She chuckled. ‘Lapland. I’m sure. You got the jail sentence part right though.’
‘Well your gift is over here. Come closer because I can barely see you.’
She made one step.
‘What are you, a chess piece? You can move forward more than one pace.’
She drew a breath and walked forward. She gasped as she took in the appearance of this man. Sagging flesh rolls from cheek to neck, from which came a grand overflow of white-grey beard hair, lips hidden somewhere within it, crudely-shaped nose like a turnip, small round wire spectacles over brown eyes, under shocked looking eyebrows held up high, and a mass of white-grey hair on his head as grand as his beard.
His body was how you’d imagine a real Santa: huge belly, thighs clad in red, lined in white fur with brown belt, and shoes like canoes. Upon his hands were red gloves, one holding a glass of what looked like whisky. By his side was a sack with what appeared to be one remaining item: hers.
For a moment he looked like a waxwork in a museum, and she stared impressed. Then the waxwork twitched and spoke.
‘Arh!’
She jumped and grimaced at his small dark teeth.
‘How clever,’ he murmured. He was gazing directly at her body.
‘What?’
‘Why hang your Christmas stocking on your bed when you can wear it?’
‘And why wait till Christmas to get pissed when you can do it on school grounds?’ she nodded at his glass.
There was a creeping pulsation of his face like a slug when you leave it alone for a few seconds.
‘What a big beard you have,’ she remarked. ‘How much of your face is real?’
‘Well, Little Red Riding Hood, you’re certainly dressed for the occasion to have a Merry Christmas.’
‘To get eaten by a wolf?’
‘Not by a wolf, and not by me, but if that’s what came in my stocking then I’d come in it too!’
She blinked. ’Sorry, did Neill instruct you to talk to the female pupils this lubriciously?’
He chuckled, shuddering his rolls of flesh that looked real at the start and now seemed more and more synthetic under the flashing neon lights.
‘Your Headteacher asked me to give Year 11 a showdown. So I am. How do you feel about him reuniting you 16-year olds with your childhood hero?’ His eyes wandered back down her body.
‘I think you’re possibly as hair-brained as he is.’
‘Really. Do you not like him?’
‘I didn’t say that. School was dull before it had men in make-up turning up with a festive feast of slurs to sour even the unsourable face of Mrs Coleman.’
‘Lubricious was good, but unsourable? So you do like him then?’
‘As I said. He’s managed to gain the largest fanbase of any Head or teacher and yet at the same time practically uprise an insurrection.’
‘Well I bet he likes you. You’ve used more characters in the words of that sentence than all the boys combined who entered this tent today. You should have seen the look on Ryan Welsh, whom I told I have a Xbox for and then produced an empty cardboard dozen of the hen’s vaginal variety. Ho, ho… hopeless!’
She suppressed a snort.
His eyes were fixed back on her. ‘But you, my little hen, can come lay in Lapland alright,’ as he rubbed his thighs suggestively and she stared, ‘and I’ll have you clucking, oh for a one hundred percent organic, serious fowl basting.’
‘Oh, Jesus…’
‘It’s a grotto, not the stable. But if you want to worship the Son of God right here, I’ll have a virgin seeing stars when I ride her like a donkey with my ding-dong merrily up high!’
Her mouth fell open, then she frowned, peering closer.
’There’s something weird about you. You’re too much like him. Where did you say you’re from? You’re an actor?’
‘Yee-es? Unless you really still believed in Father Christmas, young lady.’ His head leaned back conceitedly and more of the glow hit it.
‘Young lady. Hmm.’ She scratched her chin. ‘Is Neill…’ She looked into his eyes. Would he really go the mile to change them to brown? They looked piggy, like they had too much make-up around them. He was perfectly still, like a waxwork again, looking right into her eyes.
‘You can bend over there and take it,’ he said low and gruffly, as she caught sight of his lip within the beard.
Oh yes, that top lip.
‘Well your make-up’s pretty good. But I can see your philtrum.’
‘I’m Phil who?’
‘Well done Neill. You almost had me.’
‘Almost? I did,’ came the smooth voice of Neill, smiling more normally beneath the mass of beard.
‘Did anyone else?!’
‘No!’ He leant forward, swigged from his glass and cackled. ‘Well actually, Miss Barnes knows. Only because I grabbed and thrusted her over a gymkhana earlier and she screamed so loud, I had to stuff her mouth with my beard and tell her I know about her Chinese symbol tattooed on her groin to convince her. Took a good minute. I was just about to expose my own to reassure her it was me—’
‘Oh, my god.’
‘I’ve never seen her look so terrified,’ he chuckled, sipping again. ‘Looked just like Arnold on the cover of Jingle all the Way - I should know, it’s been sitting in my mum’s video cabinet for twenty years - funny, she’s so muscular but still no match for my strength. Or maybe this 20-pound fat suit on top of her helped.’
‘On top of your mum?’
He grunted in amusement.
‘So I’m the only one who guessed it’s you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does that mean I get a bigger present?’
He necked the last drop of his tipple, made a huge ‘ahh’ and growled, ’you’d have to come to Lapland for it!’
‘Shut up, Santa. Or Satan. With your… folds of flab and…’ she leaned closer into his grinning face, ‘very realistic beard and, what, fake teeth? Those eyebrows! How many hours did this take?’
‘A fair amount. Prosthetics,’ as he rose now from the chair with a groan. ‘All this body suit makes it necessary to sit down.’
‘You probably have DVT by now. You really devoted a whole day to sitting sweating in latex taking the piss out of each and every Year 11 pupil?’
‘Yep.’
‘Is that real whisky?’
‘Yep.’
‘Was this all your idea?’
‘Yep, and I’m exhausted. Natalia, help me get this bloody thing off.’
He gave an almighty shake and half of the Santa bodysuit fell down, as she helped haul it away from him, to see beneath the familiar stature of Neill, in T-shirt and shorts, exposing his hairy legs; just his huge beard, hair and face remaining, as she stepped back and cawed with laughter.
‘Oh my god, you look so weird!’
‘You want a hug now?’
‘Fuck right off.’
‘Truth is I got this idea from that Jane Eyre book of yours. I thought if the main guy can dress up and trick a whole dinner party with a raft of prying nonsense, then good old Neill can do it to a year of spotty pubescents, even if I blow half the term’s event budget.’
‘Oh! Better than a gypsy!’
‘Get these teeth out of me,’ pulling them out like a pensioner. ‘God I need a fag.’
‘You haven’t had one all day?’
‘Managed to sneak out the back at lunch. Almost melted my face off.’
She chortled. ‘When did you see the teachers?’
‘This morning, just a couple. I got a wry smile from Mrs Tracey when Santa asked for the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth, about how she has a denture at the age of forty…’
She squealed in laughter.
‘But when I told her I’d give her a wee bit of my drink so she can get bladdered and laugh with me till tears ran down her leg, she had tears in her eyes instead.’
‘Oh.’
‘Started ranting about her traumatic childbirths. Gave her a chocolate to change the subject. Bit awkward popping a Terry’s Chocolate Orange out of the stocking here - but got it out with four-sips… of whisky, that is.’
Natalia looked blank.
‘Well, childbirth jokes go straight over your head, so to speak!’
‘So what are you gonna do now, sir? Reveal yourself to everyone?’
‘No, because even they didn’t recognise me. It’s hilarious. And fucking tragic. Turn those fairy lights onto constant would you, they’ve given me a migraine ten times over.’
As she fiddled with the switch she felt a soft swipe against her bum. ‘And here, take this,’ as she turned surprised, looking at the rolled-up papers in his hand, ‘your Mock results to tell you how much of a clever cunt you already know you are, and some cheapskate chocolate,’ as he kicked it over with his clown-sized foot. ‘I couldn’t afford to get any more after I’d paid the effects guy for this.’
‘That’s the guy you were showing round the school?’
‘Liam. Yep. I’m leaving now and I’ll return as Neill to clear up the rest tomorrow.’
‘And leave everyone with the impression you were out all day?’
‘Precisely. Besides, if word gets round that this whisky isn’t apple juice after all I can blame it on the actor. Bung all these bits in the stockroom by the changing rooms, would you,’ handing her an armful. ‘Then I can make a swift getaway. Liam’s picking me up.’
‘Er, of course… Santa.’
‘Thank you honey. I mean, my child,’ he added gruffly, tousling her hair with his gloved hand as he whisked out of the curtain, the surreal sight of his oversized grey gargoyle head disappearing through the fabric.
Ryan was right. It was a proper fucking weirdo! Rottweiler became Grottweiler. Lewdest Santa of nightmares. Oh, but why were her legs walking faster to the bus to get home to her bed, to think over everything that Bad Santa said?
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyBy2hKymNX
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 x47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpATLqUTULT
Follow The Headmaster's Flame on Instagram at @headmastersflame
