NATHANIEL AND THE MAJORETTES
We malefactors have no power to do good, nor evil – though our actions often make people happy, and probably rather more often render them downright miserable. But we live as we live: I have been around for a very long time, and I fully expect to remain around virtually forever. From time to time I move house, or possibly change countries, when people grow curious – I speak all known languages with equal fluency. However I generally prefer to live in the English-speaking world, particularly now that computers are so much in vogue, with South-East England top of my list. The Net speaks English, and I like the British sense of humour.
You might think of me as a kind of gypsy. I certainly tend to lead a gypsy love life. I like to have fairly brief relationships, lasting no more than a summer, or perhaps two at the very most. I always make sure that my loves travel on comfortably, I would not like anyone to think of me as mean, and generally they hold me in very fond memory. Sometimes, of course, I make mistakes, because even a malefactor can err. But my loves know my powers, and I can always turn nasty. Heart attacks seem an unpleasant way to end romances - though sometimes they are necessary.
My current house-guest is a divorcee in her early thirties with a fourteen year old daughter. Both are very attractive, and I sometimes think one should follow the other. But Sarah, the fourteen year-old, is rather too energetic for my tastes. She plays hockey, and rides a pony at the local livery stable. Her intellectual skills are rather limited, and I am mad about 18th Century music – I have fond memories of playing musical games with the girls in a Venetian convent choir, in between admiring operas penned by their redhaired choirmaster, and dallying with Marie-Antoinette at Versailles. We used to sing the prettiest duets.
Sarah is currently lobbying hard for her school to form a team of majorettes: girls who will wear tall, shako-like helmets, the very briefest of costumes, and long boots and twirl sticks bearing great fluffy pompoms at each end. But her headmistress is a dowdy sort of creature, and openly disapproves, and matters are complicated by classroom in-fighting – another girl called Veronica is competing with Sarah for team captaincy.
Carol, Sarah’s mother, has been working on me. ‘You might have a word with Miss Armstrong, Nathaniel,’ she murmured in bed the other night, after caressing me most tenderly fore and aft - Carol knows all my powers, and values them greatly. The mothers of other girls at Brook House Private School take considerable care not to cross her.
I demurred. I have met Miss Armstrong on a couple of occasions, and we have not taken to each other. I think she views me as a fox seeking to raid her henhouse.
‘You could charm, her, Nathaniel. You’d be good at that.’ Carol had then kissed me a great deal, but I kept myself under control.
‘She’s not my type.’
‘But all women are your type.’ I must say this for Carol. She is nothing if not persistent.
‘No,’ I said very firmly, and thought that the end of the matter.
However Sarah came home in floods of tears this afternoon, just as her mother and I were settling down for a nice siesta. Malefactors like to have sex several times a day: it is a way of keeping trim.
‘Miss Armstrong confiscated my sweets, and said she would call the police.’ Sarah wept some more: she seemed most distressed. ‘She said she’d tell the social as well. One of the other girls in my class said they’d take me away and lock me up in a home.’
Carol swept her daughter away for a consoling hug and a nice cup of tea. It took her some time to bed Sarah down in front of the television, but then she came back, holding a small blue plastic tube.
I stared at it blankly, and she took a small cap off one end, shaking the contents into the palm of her hand. I could see half a dozen small blue heart-shaped pills or lozenges. I took the tube from her, but there was no label. I looked at one of the pills, and it was stamped with the words ‘heart sweets’. I tasted it. It was a sherbety confection – the kind that can strip the enamel straight from your teeth in three easy sucks. I shrugged. Teenage girls have strange tastes, but the sweets hardly seemed much reason for tears, let alone policemen and the social. I wondered whether Miss Armstrong had taken leave of her senses.
However Carol looked grim. ‘Sarah had some loose ones tied up in her hanky, and she ate one in class. Veronica told Miss Rawson, her teacher, and Miss Rawson made her spit it out.’
I was baffled.
‘She accused Sarah of taking drugs.’
‘She what?’ Now I began to understand. The pills bore a passing resemblance to Ecstasy, though I could hardly see one conferring much of a thrill.
‘She then ran her up to Miss Armstrong by the scruff of her neck, and they locked her in a classroom.’
‘How did she get home?’
‘Out of the window, the classroom was on the ground floor.’
A blue flashing light put paid to further conversation. I could see a police car parked just beyond my bridge – a stream runs between my drive and the road – with a white minibus parked just behind it. Two policemen, a sergeant and a constable, and a couple of tough looking women came marching across my gravel towards my front door. I knew one of the women by sight: Miss Rawson, a poisonous creature. I imagined the other must be something to do with the social services.
I thought of giving them all bad migraines, but desisted. My gifts are valuable assets, and should never be frittered or wasted. I opened the door instead.
‘We understand Miss Sarah Varney lives here.’ The police sergeant held up a sheet of paper. I did not look at it closely, but I imagined it to be a warrant, or an Order of some kind from a judge in chambers, something of that ilk. The police are fond of such things.
‘Why?’ I always believe in being monosyllabic at difficult times.
‘We want to question her.’
‘Why?’
The police sergeant looked irritable. ‘We have evidence that she has been taking Class A drugs, and selling them to fellow school pupils.’
‘Little blue heart-shaped sweets?’
Both policemen and the two waiting women tensed.
‘You know about them, sir?’ The police sergeant plainly wanted to pounce.
‘They’re sweets.’ I held up the little blue plastic tube.
The police sergeant took it, holding it very gingerly. It was plain he could hardly believe his good luck. He popped the tube into a resealable plastic bag emblazoned with the word ‘Police Evidence’ in the largest of red letters, and his face was triumphant.
‘I must ask both you and Sarah Varney’s mother to accompany us for questioning.’ His voice was very official. ‘This lady from the County Social Services will look after Sarah.’ He paused. ‘It will help you a great deal if you answer our questions as fully as you can.’
He went on to caution both of us. I was not quite sure whether we were being arrested as drug traffickers, but it sounded very much like it. He plainly thought he had stumbled on something really very serious.
I smiled thinly. ‘May I call my solicitor?’
The police sergeant hesitated, and then nodded his assent. The second policeman cleared his throat – he obviously wanted to have a speaking role in our small drama.
‘Do you have any more, sir?’ He was plainly unsure what to term the blue things. The police would be on to a winner if they proved to be drugs. But they would look pretty silly if they were not.
I smiled again. ‘Sweets or drugs?’
Both policemen glowered. I left the front door open and took out my mobile. Carol was already waiting with Sarah, who was now sniffling bravely. But Carol was glowering at Miss Rawson as though wishing herself a malefactor. The woman from the social services looked a little bewildered. I think she spent most of her time dealing with the unshaven and the unwashed. My house dates back to the reign of Queen Anne and is plainly worth a packet.
I managed a quick word with Sarah as she prepared to leave – she told me the sweets had come from the shop in the village – and briefed Malcolm, my solicitor, as the two women escorted Carol and Sarah to the minibus. I travelled in the back of the police car, and felt rather grand, really; it was like being chauffered.
The police wanted to speak to each of us separately, but Carol knew Malcolm was on his way, and insisted on waiting. We sat there in silence, and Miss Rawson looked fierce. But the woman from the social services seemed rather embarrassed.
Malcolm looked like a cat covered with cream as he came into the interview room. He held up five little blue tubes, and laid them out neatly in a row on the interview room table. The two policemen looked a little sick as they stared at them.
Malcolm was brisk. ‘Have you arrested my client?’
The police sergeant shook his head sourly.
‘You better apologise to him.’
The police sergeant reddened a little. ‘We were acting on a complaint.’
‘Complaint? Fiddlesticks.’ Malcolm is always masterly when he knows he has an easy victory in hand. ‘These sweets come from the newsagent in the village. Apparently they’re the latest thing. Children have tried winding up teachers at several local schools. The teachers told the newsagent they taste quite revolting.’
The second policeman scowled. ‘Nobody told us.’
‘Why should they?’ Malcolm paused before delivering his thrust. ‘It’s no crime to buy sweets.’
The police sergeant left the room, and the second policeman stared holes in the air. Both Miss Rawson and the woman from the social services melted away. Malcolm mused out loud on the case he envisaged making for damages.
We did not have to wait for long. A new policeman arrived, a very senior figure, beaming most apologetically. He was dreadfully sorry, really most dreadfully sorry, everything had been been a most awful misunderstanding.
Malcolm bared his teeth. ‘Arresting a fourteen year old girl?’ He made it sound like a crime not far removed from murder.
‘We’ll send Sarah and her mother an official letter of apology.’ The senior policeman noticed me, and bobbed me into his climbdown. ‘It was really a dreadful mistake.’ He paused. ‘But you must understand, we take drugs very seriously.’
Malcolm’s riposte was masterly. ‘Sweets as well?’
The senior policeman, to give him his due, reddened visibly.
Malcolm spoke briefly. ‘I shall be writing to you on behalf of my clients. I think they will expect Miss Armstrong to call a general school assembly, and I think both she, and Miss Rawson, will want to apologise publicly, using a form of words agreed with the school and its legal representatives. We shall expect you to be there as well.’
The senior policeman swallowed. ‘I think that’s a bit drastic.’
‘Would you prefer to meet us in Court?’
He sighed, and shook his head. It was an abject surrender.
The assembly came ten days later. Miss Armstrong read her apology, but pursed her lips in her reading, as though she were speaking with her mouth full of vinegar. Miss Rawson spoke in a flat, deadpan voice, not lifting her eyes from the sheet of paper in her hands. I hear she left the school shortly afterwards for a position in the North. However the senior policeman looked most impressive in uniform. He also carried his apology off well, and waxed lyrical about the duty of the police to listen.
Brook House Private School set up its team of majorettes towards the end of that term. Sarah naturally became captain, I chipped in with an introduction to a kindly showbiz agent, and the school spent generously, both on uniforms and on sending the team off to compete as far afield as France, Italy, and the US. None of the parents paid a sou. Veronica’s parents moved, of course, and I taught Sarah some of the facts of life. Carol found out – mothers often do. But she took it well, and mother and daughter went off to live with a prosperous architect. Sadly I was not invited to the wedding, though I am told it was lavish. But then life moves on, and the future is always filled with promise.