She had dribbled right through her knickers to her tights. What was that string of obscenities the Grotto Grotbag had uttered again? My little hen, come to Lapland for a free-range clucking? I’ll ride you like a virgin donkey till you see stars? She needed to write them up like French exam flashcards and rearrange them till she got the sentence right; pin them up on her wall and herself down on the bed to revise, revise…
Lubricious. She’d learnt that word when she looked up a better word for pervy, when she was once writing about the lascivious characters in her mum’s soaps. Lascivious, she could have said. But today, ‘lubricious was good.’ She was lube-ricious, for it was unsourably good. She kept thinking back to Santa’s piggy eyes, really Neill’s, trained unapologetically on her dress-clung body, salivating over what the boys had earlier jibed. Was that part of his act just to make her laugh? Or was her ‘strawberry lance’ of a body, what he himself called the ‘daintiest sack on the market,’ ‘a dinky thing like you,’ a rump worth padding rolled papers against?
Did people, did Neill, understand how big a thing this was for a virgin-donkey of a schoolgirl? He might have lauded her as brainbox amongst backfische, clever clogs, confident git and future CEO, but she had to confess, just to her journal, that the best result of her Mocks were his own mocks - the biggest grading was his - his ogling stare firing a flurry of feckless puns popping little explosions deep in her stomach to trickle through, trickle through!… like Mrs Tracey, like nine ladies dancing, Ten’a ladies leaking! After grimacing at balls and licking and pounding, all she cared for now was that he looked at her body, hers!
But it can’t have just been hers. Calling Alana a good girl and blowing her up a condom. Bet he snarled at her about pulling a cracker, gobbling that turkey under the cameltoe. Well, at least she was perved on equally. Wouldn’t the teachers frown at it all? Coleman said Williams had gone home, turning the blind eye to the ‘extroverted chap’ whose ignobility Noble had defended, for ‘bringing many positive things to the school’ including, yesterday, an actor to excoriate sixty teenagers, insult a bladder-injured Geography teacher and sexually assault Miss Barnes by the way he recounted it. Oh, but he must be impressed that she busted him! Another furtive feather in her cap. It made the prospect of Christmas already feel less lonely, for all she’d have to do at any moment in the upcoming Neill-less holidays was to think of his ridiculous face saying ‘help me get this bloody thing off, Natalia’ as his normal, lovely familiar form slipped out of the comical bodysuit, and remarked so irreverently, ‘what a clever cunt you are.’ Good god, Bad Santa.
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*
She was going to wear that dress again tomorrow. She was saving it from sweat stink by alternating a top underneath it each day. Last school day, last Assembly of 2017! The whole school in non-uniform, it would be a wonder if Neill would even see her amongst the mass of garish jumpers and tinselled necks.
There he was, in mauve pinstripe suit and cravat, his face devoid of yesterday’s gargoyled nightmare, clearing his throat to silence everyone.
‘Buffet today in the canteen for everyone! Get there before I devour the mince pies, all three of them - with what was left of the Christmas budget after our friend Liam, sorry, Santa - came down our chimney yesterday…’
There were titters from even the teachers, seeming relieved the comical event was over, and even those with hangdog expressions seemed to accept it was just Neill’s way.
‘Some of you have reported he was quite a risqué old one, but he only comes once a year!’
A saucy joke lost on enough people for him to get away with nothing but a frown from Mrs Williams, frostier than a snowman. Oh Natalia would be down at the buffet alright. She wanted to see normal Neill, seeing her.
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*
Last lesson before lunch, Physics with Allsebrook, was informal games. Happily ignoring the ‘stickwoman’ heckle from Luke - the leering eyes of God himself endorsed me, mere sub! - at end of lesson, Ryan loitered like a bumblebee at a red flower.
‘You look nice, again.’
Sardonic humour now from Ryan, what was this! He’ll be reciting Shakespeare better than Neill by the New Year… 2050. She turned to him just as Bernard and Luke passed by jeering ‘he proper fancies her!’ turning Ryan’s temples pink to his ginger hairline. Alas, undeterred, not shuffling away like a frightened spider - he really was on a roll! - she was stepping over with him by the Combustion wall display, waiting for the noisy corridor to filter out.
There was just one woman left, whom Natalia didn’t recognise, wearing a visitor’s lanyard, looking through Allsebrook’s door glass.
Natalia stared at her waves of salon-blonde hair framing khol-lined green eyes; smooth foundation covering gentle lines at her temples and mouth. Shiny red nails, pursed red lips, silk red blouse beneath a crisp grey suit jacket that she quickly adjusted at the collar, before she yanked the handle and clicked her high heels inside with a waft of fine perfume. Allsebrook was heard exclaiming as the door rattled shut.
‘Wonder who she is,’ murmured Natalia.
‘Looks like Mikey’s mum,’ said Ryan. ‘She’s a lawyer.’
‘That is not her.’
‘Anyway, dya wanna go for a fag?’
‘Well I’d rather go to the buffet. It’s lunchtime,’ replied Natalia, realising she was turning down a notch of her snail-pace love life for the clutched hope of being glimpsed at in the canteen by her 37-year old Headmaster.
‘Do you… wanna go together?’ she asked, suddenly regretting the question in case it meant missing the last boat of possible conversation with said Headmaster before the vast, empty Christmas break of wanking over him beckoned.
‘Err, nah,’ Ryan backed away. ‘I’ll see you round yeah.’
Somewhat thankfully, she went on to check her hair, bum and her cheap Rimmel mascara in the toilet mirror, and then, about to pull a door toward the corridor leading to the canteen, she suddenly spotted through the mesh glass pane, the blonde lady coming down the stairs.
Natalia held back, piqued again with intrigue in the stranger’s wistful face - she was on her way out, it seemed - so she couldn’t be here for a job interview. But then, as the lady bumped right into Mrs Tracey at the foot of the stairs, her furrowed brow softened into a bleached-tooth smile as a double feminine caw infiltrated through the door, and possibly the walls of the entire building:
‘Ohh! It’s yooou!’
‘Lisa! How funny to find you here!’ the visitor laughed.
‘I work here now!’ was heard back, followed by lower volume chit-chat with the staring, inane eyes and avid nods that adult women do, showering the other with yesses before they’d finished a sentence, and then the volume raised again with - ‘Thanks to this new kid on the block! Mr Neill!’ And now Natalia’s chest thumped to glimpse Neill himself suddenly behind Mrs Tracey, ensuing a clamorous introduction between the three.
Natalia caught the words: ‘Headmistress,’ ‘Harrogate,’ ‘I used to work…’ then Neill’s reverberant ‘pleased to meet you!’ Some girly-woman murmurs followed by ‘yes, I came up from Landan’ from Neill, and Mrs Tracey high-pitching: ‘You should have seen the Grotto Neill arranged for us yesterday! Like something from a movie, as good as your school!’
‘Oh I bet he could give us some tips!’
‘We have a buffet on if you wish to join us,’ rejoined Neill, radiantly beckoning the women, as Natalia manoeuvred herself to try see the whole of his smile, just as a voice came behind her:
‘What are you staring at?’
It was Laura.
‘Oh nothing. Are you going to the buffet?’
‘Yeah.’
As they pushed through the doors, the voices ahead could now be heard unfiltered.
‘So how come you’re visiting Thornwood?’ from Neill, to the lady’s response in a smooth, strong Lancashire tone:
‘Well, I only just found out Catherine works here! I’d best see what the attraction is! I can stay for a quickie!’
‘You’ve dropped in for a quickie?’ chortled Neill, and the women cackled as though they’d each drunk a bowl of Pimms already. Natalia could make out the blonde woman’s stout but well-proportioned, suited bottom strutting on ahead, staying back as she didn’t want to be embarrassingly accosted by Neill flanked like a gameshow host by his two women accomplices. Even if one was an incontinent Lorraine Kelly, the other one’s beauty more than made up for it, just as Laura - as if telepathically affected by Natalia’s thought of Tracey’s bladder - scurried off to relieve her own, with:
‘Gotta run to the Art block after! I’ll catch you up!’
Natalia was now alone but maybe that was for the best. Laura had the stupidest Christmas jumper on. This way, Natalia could sexily sidle her arse along the breadsticks and custard creams like a 1960s Little Red Riding Hood without NPCs in tow, for she, the happily sad loner, had a pulse thoroughly awakened by being entertaining as Camden Comedy Club, ready to wonky-wank over his wanky-wink she’s sure to win from him, stinky fingers crossed!
In the canteen Neill was occupied with a gaggle of staff and pupils, innocently questioning their rip-roaring tales about Santa’s Grotto.
’And what did he…?’ - ‘And who did he…?’ - ‘Oh, apple juice! Good trick!’
Oblivion that was hilarious and fucking tragic, in his own words. A coquettish smugness etched into her face as she listened, trusting their Secret-Santa connection would draw him over - and if not, her tantalising tomato of a bottom would, as she stuck it out whilst she poured a juice.
Deputy Dinkey stepped up instead, blocking her view.
‘Alright Natalia?’
‘Good thanks sir.’
‘Let’s see what desserts Neill’s got today! Hopefully no nuts this time!’
‘Now that would be an Epi-Christmas,’ came Neill’s voice right behind him, as Dinkey guffawed and Natalia now caught the glint of his eye from over Dinkey’s shoulder.
She knew that glint.
‘Riiing out that booze tonight… Bethlehem, Bethlehem!’ Neill sang softly as he poured apple juice, the ode to his Deputy Little Donkey wafting past the oblivious Steve like a fart that reached the flared nostrils of Natalia’s responding smirk. ‘Ah, I’m feeling all Christmassy,’ enthused Neill. ‘How about you, Steve?’
‘Aye, I must say, I think my reluctance for festivity is breaking now, like,’ Steve laughed. ‘Just taking this drink back to Claire,’ as he stepped away, and that familiar scent and breathy grunt was at Natalia’s right ear where the corner of a smile had already reached:
‘All-reet pet, how are you like?’
She smiled as she double-blinked up at his face. ‘Wey-aye man, I’m champion,’ trying not to stare too much at his fresh shaven jaw, his eyes that had returned to their vibrant blue, his wide smile now wheezing:
‘You little Geordie-ist.’
The contrast from yesterday’s Bad Santa seemed to make Neill’s usual cheeky presence seem tame, even reverent by comparison. His gaze that had thoroughly gawked at her red-dressed body from behind contact lenses and latex yesterday, was now in gentlemanly aversion above her neckline.
‘Good to see you looking normal again,’ she whispered.
‘Shhhh!’ He looked back over the room with comical wide eyes. ‘Santa is real as long as the children believe in him.’
‘I don’t think they’d believe you even if you told them.’
‘Good thing this is apple juice, or I might just do that,’ as he raised his beaker. ‘I may have got a little bit merry yesterday,’ as he looked almost abashed, to Natalia’s surprise, ‘or rather, deep into character.’
‘Think you missed your actor calling,’ she smiled. ‘A real-life Bad Santa, now that’s the hero that 16-year olds really want to meet.’
He placed back the beaker and stood by her with his hands in his pockets, his thick suited thighs in the corner of her eye… as in a flash she remembered: Come lay in Lapland - his lap - for a serious basting, he’d said - oh god, from the penis within those trousers - she blinked away, just as she sensed now, his infinitesimal glance down her body; the kind of glance that girls from a young age learn to notice a man give, and whether or not the man is aware of her awareness, seems of little matter to him.
She carried on slow-picking food onto her plate, quite happy to let him continue glancing if he wanted, as a couple more pupils passed on by. He spoke:
‘You’ll never guess what.’ He perched his bottom onto the table edge, inclining his chin to her: ‘I’ve got a date.’
‘Oh? Santa got lucky?’
‘Nope, but Neill did. I’ve been hooked up with the Headmistress of Harrogate Grammar. Piss-pants introduced us. Majorly bigged me up actually, like a car salesman selling you a right banger, so to speak…’
Natalia looked over, pretending to have just noticed her. The most beautiful woman she’d ever seen enter the school, becomes Neill’s within minutes. Of course.
‘Mrs Tracey is still talking to you after making her cry yesterday?’ her eyebrow raised.
‘Don’t think she knows it was me. Emma can’t have said anything.’
‘Why, is her mouth still stuffed with your beard?’
‘Not since last weekend.’
‘And I thought you were in love with her?’ she smirked.
‘Not since last weekend. But that,’ he motioned his eyes back to the stout leggy blonde as if to direct Natalia to ogle with him, ‘is a fine bit of ‘Arrogate meat! Crackin’! Smashin’! That’s how you say it up here, isn’t it? Not Harrow-gate, but Arra-gut!’
‘Well people who live in Harrogate do pronounce it Harrow-gate,’ she grinned.
‘And how do you say it?’
She paused. ‘Harrah-gate.’
‘I’ll stick with that then.’
‘So… you finally found some meat in the canteen,’ she presented a cocktail sausage on the end of her fork, ‘with this as a starter?’
‘That’s how it starts alright.’
Natalia couldn’t resist retorting: ‘Even my lunchbox is better.’
His eyes widened, and she realised the comment was ruder than she intended.
‘I mean, the banana in my lunchbox,’ she frowned. ‘Oh god, no… forget that one…’
He chortled, watching her shuffle pink-faced to the crisp bowls. ‘Well, it’s nice to see everyone in their own clothes,’ he sighed now, which sparked another flashback: if that’s what came in my stocking, I’d come in it too! …ashe continued: ‘Though I feel like I’m walking through an airport with the amount of designer logos in my face.’ He glanced at her dress. ‘You can stay in yours though. Makes you easier to spot. What are you putting in my pigeonhole today, a whole Yule log?’
‘Nope. That’s your job,’ she nodded toward the woman.
‘You fiend! I can’t be hanging around with you.’
A noisy crowd of Year 7s was now sweeping in, as Neill grunted at Natalia with a low-raised hand as if to stall her, hollering: ‘Help yourself!’ and gesturing with his other hand to the plates: ‘Come and get stuffed!’ Filling another drink, he and Natalia edged off to the side like the Brontë buddies in the museum again.
‘What I don’t get,’ Natalia began as she bit into a sausage roll, ‘is why would Mrs Tracey big you up after being annoyed at you? Losing her bet with Miss Barnes and all that?’
‘It’s because, Natalia,’ as he leaned to her, biting a breadstick, ‘she’s ashamed to be seen working at Thornwood when her high-flying Harrogate friend turns up. I’m merely a device used to impress her. That’s how the brown-nosing world of adults operates. You’ll learn when you’re one yourself.’
‘No thanks, I’ll never be one.’
‘An adult? Not with those crumbs round your mouth—’
‘A brown-noser,’ she whispered, wiping her mouth quickly. ‘Using you as a device, what the fuck? What are you, something to plug into her USB socket?’
‘Nope, that’s for the Headmistress. Ultra Sexy Bitch socket. And Mrs Tracey is…’
‘…Gluetooth.’
He guffawed. Several heads turned briefly.
‘What’s a Headmistress of another school doing here anyway,’ she continued, ‘on the last day of term?’
‘Coming to check me out obviously. Who knows, maybe Gluetooth has inadvertently match-made me into true lurve. What do you reckon?’
‘I can only really see her backside from here.’
‘That’s usually enough. So do I get your blessing?’
‘Of course,’ she smiled. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Christmas Pork.’
She sighed and rolled her eyes.
‘You’re right. I don’t know if I’ll get hold of it that quick,’ as he swiped an olive off her plate.
‘So what is her name?’
‘Er…’
‘Here we go,’ she rolled her eyes.
‘Oh come on! It’s early days. Cocktail sausage stage, like you said.’
‘I did not say— Wait,’ she frowned. ‘Williams is staring at us.’
They stared back, as Williams turned and wandered out.
‘She’s gone. Fuck her.’
‘So, are you done with Miss Barnes?’
‘She’s gone. Fucked her. ’
‘Oh? She or you ended it?’
‘Mutual. Got a last one in last night actually, after doing that Santa voice all day I was hoarse as fuck, for a horse arse fuck—’
‘Oh my god, you’re still being Santa—’
‘That’s exactly what she said. Flicked my fag ash in her matcha tea jar on my way out as a double farewell. Now this one’s a fine fellow smoker—’ he exhaled over at the Headmistress, who was now glancing over their way. ‘Fag breaks aren’t going out of fashion with her. I can see her fidgeting for one now. And she lets them eat cake alright - her school got’s the finest dessert menu in the country. She could get me on the straight and narrow, although not my waistline.’
The bustle of teachers was now moving over in their direction to the food.
‘So are you inviting her round for Christmas?’ Natalia whispered. ‘Or are you going down south?’
‘Oh yes! I love stuffing—’
‘You don’t say…’
‘Neill! There he is,’ as Coleman, Francis, Tracey, Dinkey, the smiling, yet-unnamed Headmistress and a few others, were moving over in a talkative hubbub to replenish their drinks, as Natalia chucked her plate in the bin, and Neill edged away, softly singing back at Natalia:
‘I’m driving south for Christmas! Oh I can’t wait for London’s parking spaces!’ She laughed, watching him continue: ‘Or mum and dad’s sniffling faces!’ as he slipped toward the door and out, and teacher hands reached for bottles and plates, with Coleman’s voice:
‘Has Neill gone?’
‘Oh, he’s always vanishing!’
‘You’re lucky to catch him, Joan!’
‘You’d better have a net strong enough!’
‘Well, she has his number.’
‘He’ll be out having a fag as always.’
‘Any mulled wine left?’
‘No more for me, I’m driving.’
‘Catch up again in the New Year, Lisa!’
Natalia slipped out just as stealthily unseen by Laura, humming Driving Home for Christmas for the rest of the day.
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*
With mostly As in her Mock results, Natalia didn’t feel so guilty about spending most of her time giving herself complete reprieve in the days running up to Christmas. Aping her mum’s posture slouched upon the couch, double-flashed like paparazzi by rapid-fire telly editing and frenetic Christmas tree lights, she let her mind constantly dip in and out of the buffet conversation, and how she’d watched before her eyes, Neill hook up with another woman.
Joan. The only way she knew her name was because of catching Coleman saying it. Tall, blonde; high-heeled, high status. It was not so much jealousy or despondency that arose now, perhaps to some surprise it was more a happiness for Neill, that he might revive his ailing love life after two failed marriages, that upon having told her about in the car that time, brought down his usual majesty - he’d look sad in that moment, dejected almost - it had made her pity him, gun for him. Maybe even more so this feckless fling with Miss Barnes, over which he’d been ‘had’ by a stalwart woman wanting her own wild oats with the Richmond Head.
She wondered at the fortitude of Joan to land such a swift pairing with such a man as Neill. ‘Catch’ him in her strong-enough-net, and if she knew how lucky she was? Because although he spewed lewd jokes like rocket ship fuel, she was on the right track, in the right league, of the right age, at the correct status of ‘woman’ to experience the full, sagaciously intelligent Richard Neill.
Oh dear, Neill and sex she could barely get her spinning teenage head around. All Santa’s sex jokes he looked sheepish at today, till he rattled off a load more whilst drooling over his new ‘bit of Harrogate meat,’ but into the ear of his headteacher’s-pet - ‘well you are, aren’t you?’ - seeking her ‘blessing’ like some pint-sized priestess before creeping away from the congregation he’d spent a fraction of the time with.
Would he be as candid, as open to Joan as he was to her? Or was it through rebellion that aided the cheeky side of him to come out its fullest to the loner schoolgirl? Would he be like the men in the soaps she endured with her mum: all pomp and pretentiousness, wooing her with a brandished stick of flowers and the hollow patter of a magician intent on hypnotising her supine to be split in two by his wand? Modelled on characters in her mum’s soaps, relationships had never appealed to Natalia as anything more than tiresome pantomime. Yet in the literature that she would escape into, upstairs in her room, was something more captivating: Jane drawn to Rochester like a homing bird, ‘you are my equal’! Plain sallow Jane who pips glamorous Blanche Ingram to the post, to claim Rochester through heart, not head. Cinderella without the dress, but in its place is a young girl’s wisdom - or sorcery - ‘the witch’ casting a spell that ultimately blinds him; renders him incapable of gazing at another Blanche again, instead stumbling round in desperation for the guiding hand of his bewitcher.
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*
The day before Christmas Eve, she walked up to Moortown to scour the charity shops, in her family’s habitual way of picking up clothes and items for pounds or pennies. Buses passed through here for Harrogate, and several road signs detailing the distance to places like Harrogate and Wetherby and Alwoodley, the ‘posh’ places, that had long indicated to Natalia all through childhood, the middle-class echelon that she was not part of.
Not far at all to visit, but far enough when her mum didn’t own a car, accessible only by strange buses, or an always-too-expensive taxi. Harrogate, hot Harrogate; so close and yet so far in status from Leeds - at least to Natalia - with a name that evoked the classy, elite… boutique shops, high tea, royal baths, luscious countryside.
How apt that Neill had come up from London to be aligned with exactly his ilk: villages and cottages and Waitrose, and not deigning to live or spend time in the likes of Gipton or Seacroft or Chapeltown - other than, of course - to briefly drop off his pet pupil that time he smoked contraband with her.
In Oxfam, there was Harrogate again, upon a bright red spine on the shelf. She pulled it down to possess it in her hand. Harrogate, Ripon, York, and the Yorkshire Dales, ‘An Illustrated Guide Book,’ quaint but pristine, containing vintage ads for Kershaw’s Binoculars and Bumsted’s Royal British Table Salt. It cuddled up to her hand like a smooth, slim brick, as she flicked through all the ‘motor routes’ (oh for a car!) and notable history of Yorkshire, something she’d never thought much of until Neill took them to Haworth. Bolton Abbey, Skipton Castle and York Cathedral in shiny monochrome; fold-out maps detailed with tiny and meticulous font. Harrogate, the town noted for springs. The Sulphur Well, the Royal Pump Room. She wondered which part the esteemed Headmistress lived in: ‘High’ or ‘Low’ Harrogate?
She bought the book, so she could own and feast on ideas of the world she might be admitted to, one day she gets her own car to whisk herself off to Fountains Abbey and Swinsty Hall with her own boyfriend in tow, a boyfriend she would select from those upper echelons just like Neill did. And this book, after years of running like a buffoon in the belting rain for blasted buses, would live all warm, dry and safe in her car.
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Walking home, she saw a poster for a carol service tomorrow at St Augustine’s. She wouldn’t go to that unless she wanted to cry on the next person’s shoulder. Home from the dark now, nose and cheeks wet from the drizzle (oh for a car and those ‘motor routes!’) she heard her mum call from the kitchen:
‘Parcel for ya. In some Sykes Farm butcher’s box! Thought it were some posh meat for Christmas but your mate just re-used the box.’
With a frown of surprise Natalia lifted the box from the bottom of the stairs. Addressed to her, handwritten in a lavish curling font that she recognised. She didn’t dare to assume…could it? It couldn’t be..?
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