No Talking after Lights Page 4

  Sheila and Charmian were tending their garden, a four-foot-square patch among the chessboard of other girls’ gardens, enclosed within the red brick walls of the former kitchen garden. Charmian’s mother had arranged for a spectacular rosebush to be delivered by Carter Paterson. It would bear dozens of heavy yellow blooms, she had said, with a wonderful fragrance. Sheila’s fingernails were black with earth. She had dug a deep hole and was filling it in around the root-ball of the rose, while Charmian watered and picked at weeds. They’d sprinkled a couple of packets of mixed seeds round the edge of their square, scooped the earth gently over the black and brown specks and watered these, too.

  ‘Suppose we came and did it three times a week,’ said Sheila, ‘then there wouldn’t ever be any weeds and it’d look really nice and we might win.’

  ‘Three times?’ said Charmian. She preferred playing jacks or listening to records and learning the words. If Sheila was so keen on the soppy old gardening prize, let her do it. After all, it wasn’t her mother who’d bought the rose, which was much the best thing they’d got.

  ‘Well, all right, then, why don’t I come twice and you come once? And I’ll help on your evening. That’d be fair.’

  They’re playing Kick the Can up by Pets!’ shouted a passing girl. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Stale buns,’ said Sheila, but Charmian jumped to her feet.

  ‘Wait for me!’ she shouted. ‘Waaaait! I’m coming!’

  ‘But there’s only ten minutes to bedtime…’ pleaded Sheila. Charmian scampered off, kicking up her white-socked ankles, her short blonde bunches bouncing from side to side.

  ‘Half a mo’,’ yelled Sheila, ‘I’ll come!’ But Charmian, evidently already out of earshot, ran on.

  Soppy date, thought Charmian as she accelerated, fusses me all the time. I’m fed up with her. Doing my prep as though I was a baby. She might think she’s cleverer than me, but she’s not half as pretty.

  ‘Coo-ee!’ she called out as she approached, for the counting had reached forty-one. ‘I’m playing too, wait for me, don’t kick yet.’ She crouched down behind a tussock, panting.

  Gosh, there’s Charmie without boring old Sheil, thought Flick. Bet they’ve had a row. Good-oh. ‘Charmie! Here - over here - quick! Anyone can see you there,’ she called.

  The two of them pressed close together behind the broad trunk of an oak at the edge of the wood.

  ‘Sheila’ll be in a bate with me,’ confided Charmian.

  ‘Let her. She can jolly well stew in her own juice,’ said Flick, and they giggled and clutched one another’s slight, hot bodies until they heard the dormitory bell jangle faintly from the main building, calling them in for 7.30 bedtime.

  The ringing of the bell disturbed Constance, who was sitting in the Reading Corner trying to concentrate on The Children’s Newspaper (every Wednesday, 3d.) but was really thinking about her mother. She’d just written to her parents, though you were only supposed to on Sundays after church or before Walk. Thanks awfully for sending me to such a good school and I know I’m frightfully lucky and all that,’ she had put at the end, ‘but honestly it would be much better if you took me away because it would save you oceans of money and I’m not ever going to be happy here in a million years. So come and take me away, Mummy, please.’ Even to her it didn’t sound convincing, but once they’d left for Kenya she would have missed her chance of going too, so the letter was urgent.

  She put down the magazine and walked up the back stairs to her dormitory. The other girls came in, flushed and excited from playing Kick the Can. Their talk was muffled as they pulled frocks and vests over their heads, or stooped to undo their sandals and take off their socks and knickers. Constance felt self-conscious about undressing in front of other people, so she tried to wait until they’d gone down the corridor to the bathroom. She herself was still quite flat-chested, although some of the girls already wore what they called BBs.

  She was the last one back into the dormitory, after cleaning her teeth and washing her face. Fiona stood in the midst of a crowd of girls, looking, as her mother would have said, ‘hot and bothered’.

  ‘Don’t worry, Feeny,’ one was saying reassuringly. ‘You probably forgot to pack it. Bet that’s what happened.’

  ‘But I would have noticed.’

  ‘You might not have. I bet your mother’s sent it on already. You wait: it’ll be in Parcels tomorrow.’

  Constance gathered, although no-one bothered to explain and she dared not ask, that Fiona had lost the silver-framed photograph of her parents; but as nobody was sure whether she’d had it before, or whether they were just remembering it from last term, the loss didn’t seem serious. Nevertheless Fiona continued to make a great fuss, claiming she’d never get to sleep unless she could have a last look at her mother’s picture before closing her eyes. Mothers were sacred, so the dormitory offered lengthy sympathy. But Constance’s desperate, unspoken homesickness went unnoticed. Had she been pretty, or cried, she would have been surrounded by clinging supporters offering to be her friend; but silent, bespectacled new girls suffer alone. The others were a group and she was the outsider.

  After lights out some of the girls read, propping themselves sideways on one elbow so as to catch the light from the window. Sheila got out of her bed next to Constance and walked over towards Charmian’s bed. She was crouching beside it when the door opened and Matron strode in. Small, round and cheerful in her starched white uniform, Peach liked to be thought kind and wanted to be popular, but she was feared because the girls had learned that she could not be trusted. Anyone in charge had power, and those who tried to disguise it were more unpredictable than those who simply used it, with no pretence at equality.

  ‘What’s going on in here? Who’s been talking? Come on now, or everyone will be punished.’

  Books slid softly under pillows and Sheila crouched unseen.

  ‘Who’s dormitory captain in here? Deborah? Who was talking?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Right-ho, then, I shall have to punish all of you. No more sweets till Sunday. For anyone.’

  Sheila stood up.

  ‘Sorry, Miss Peachey, it was me. I had to tell Charmie something important. It was my fault.’

  Miss Peachey looked at her, relented, and smiled forgivingly. ‘All right, then, I’ll let you all off this time, since term’s only just begun. And it can’t have been Sheila making all the noise. Now, hop back into bed, ducky, and not another sound.’

  A sycophantic chorus of ‘Gosh, thanks, Peach!’ followed as she closed the door of Starlings behind her; then a brief silence, in case she waited outside before she walked away. After a safe pause, Fiona leant across from her bed on the other side of Sheila and breathed, Thanks, Sheil. That was jolly dee of you.’

  ‘Shush,’ said Sheila, and rolled herself into a heap facing Constance, with her head jammed into the pillow and her eyes tightly shut.

  The wood-pigeons cooed outside the window. Voices carried on the still air from as far away as the tennis courts. In the senior common-room someone was playing records from King’s Rhapsody, and the wistful notes of ‘Someday My Heart Will Awake’ floated through the gentle Sussex evening. The curtains shifted. An iron bedstead creaked.

  When she was almost certain that everyone was asleep Constance whispered, ‘Sheila?’

  Sheila’s eyes opened at once. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I knew you were still awake. Me too. Is anything wrong?’

  ‘Just a bit mis, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you homesick?’ asked Constance.

  ‘No… well, a bit. It’s not that.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Just… I’m a bit upset ‘cos …’ her voice trailed off in a whisper.

  “Cos what?’

  ‘Charmian. She’s supposed to be my best friend. Sshh. Don’t tell.’

  ‘Promise. Cheer up. Night.’

  ‘Sleep ti
ght, don’t let the bugs bite,’ said Sheila, and smiled at her over the edge of the sheet.

  The early summer days were long and clear. Figures in one-piece bathing-suits walked as though on a tightrope, swaying and balancing as they hobbled along the gravel path leading to the swimming-pool, carrying collapsed rubber bathing-caps and towels. From the pool came the sound of splashing and the games mistress’s shrill, abrupt whistle. After half an hour the same girls would hurry back to the changing-rooms, shivering in wet costumes. The pool was out of bounds after supper, but in spite of this girls would settle along its low surrounding wall like birds on a telegraph wire, staring into the melting ripples or watching stray leaves drift on its surface. When they were happy at school it was the unconscious happiness of times like this, absorbed in their world and its gossip. Living in such close proximity, every shift of favour was observed, as girls wove in and out of friendships.

  ‘Charmie’s gone off Sheila. Flick’s sucking up to her like mad.’

  ‘Mouldy old Flick. More fool her. Charmie’s so stuck-up. All that fiddling with her bunches and looking at herself in the mirror.’

  ‘The way she says, “Oh, my hair’s hopeless: just like Mummy’s” and you’re supposed to say, “Oh you’re so lucky, it’s really smashing.”’

  They giggled spitefully.

  ‘Who’s Sheil friends with now?’

  ‘Don’t know. The new girl - Gogs - asked if she could be her partner for Walk on Sunday.’

  ‘Yes, and it was so funny ‘cos Sheila said no so they both walked by themselves at the back, trying to look as if they were thinking beautiful thoughts.’

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘She’s jolly clever, though,’ said Madeleine. ‘She must be. She got nine out of ten for bilge, even though she’s the youngest in the form.’

  ‘Lucky her, to get on the right side of Parry. Gosh, she was in a bate yesterday.’

  ‘I’m scared of her,’ admitted Fiona, ‘when she’s in a bate. You know the way she looks at you: as if she’d really like to hurt you.’

  ‘Well, she’s not allowed to, so she can’t, so hard cheese her.’

  They looked up as the music monitor scanned her practising list and checked the girls round the pool.

  ‘Fiona Cathcart… Madeleine Low… Anne Hetherington - you’re all five minutes late for piano practice. Down to the music rooms at once.’

  ‘Yes, Barbara - sorry, Barbara. Gosh, my watch’s stopped,’ they exclaimed, and then, sotto voce, ‘Bossy boots.’

  Next day in the Lower Fourth’s art class Miss Emett picked Constance to pose for the rest of the form. She walked round, charcoal stick in hand, correcting the proportions of their drawings, noting the way the light fell across Constance’s shiny hair, the curve of her awkward forearms and the sideways slope of her ankle and foot. Extraordinary, Miss Emett thought, how the young human figure can’t help being graceful. This poor child could hardly be called pretty, but Gwen John would have rejoiced in that clumsy arrangement of her hands in her lap, the droop of those narrow shoulders.

  ‘Girls!’ she suddenly said. ‘Would it be better if Constance took off her glasses? They’re really hard to draw. You all make them round, and they’re not if you look properly.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss Emett,’ they chorused. ‘That’s miles easier.’

  Constance, deprived of vision as well as movement and speech, sat frozen under their stares. She tried to imagine herself as a hooded falcon chained to her master’s wrist, awaiting the imperious moment of freedom; but although she summoned up images from The Sword in the Stone, and the tapestries from Cluny that she had seen on a postcard her godmother had sent, she could not detach herself from the humiliating exposure of the present. I hate this awful school, she thought; hate it, hate it, hate it. It’s no good Mummy saying it’s a beautiful school in the heart of the country. (The sound of her mother’s voice rang in her ears.) I shall die of unhappiness here. I’ll pine away and never grow up. There’s no-one I can talk to and I don’t know how to be popular and anyway they’re all stupid, with their stupid records and babyish books: Dimsie and Enid Blyton.

  And now they’re all doing feeble drawings of me that’ll make me look even worse than I am. I want to go home. I want my own room. I want Felix. But I haven’t got a room any more. I don’t belong anywhere. When I get to Kenya in the hols I won’t know anyone there either, and Stella will have made masses of friends. Everyone fusses her because she’s younger than me and because she’s pretty. Why can’t she tell me how to be popular? It’s not fair… Perhaps I could try talking to Sheila again. No, she’ll only snub me like she did on the walk, with everyone watching. Oh, God, oh, Mummy and Daddy, please take me away from here! I wish I could run away. But who could I go to? No-one’s going to see me cry. I’ll just scrunch myself up tight and clench my teeth and hold my heart in.

  ‘Constance, dear, relax,’ called Miss Emett. ‘Try and keep the pose nice and loose. Only another five minutes. There’s a good girl.’

  The bell rang for break and they all took off their overalls, hung them on hooks and rushed out of the studio shouting, Tains I put the easels away… Fains I! Fains …̱

  Constance clambered down from the stool slowly because she was stiff and had cramp in one leg.

  ‘Shall I help?’ she asked. ‘What do I do? Where do they go?’

  ‘There’s a kind girl,’ said Miss Emett. ‘The pictures of you aren’t very good, I’m afraid. Not very flattering. Put your glasses on again and have a look.’

  The drawings were worse than not very good. Some of them were positively malicious: caricatures to make the other girls snigger. Only Sheila and Deborah had captured any sort of likeness. In Deborah’s drawing she saw her own unhappiness so clearly exposed that she covered it up with the next crude sketch.

  ‘Constance,’ said Miss Emett. ‘Listen, try not to worry. Nearly everyone’s homesick at first. It gets better - and this is a lovely term. They don’t mean to be unkind, you know; they’re just working out where you fit in. Girls are very cliquy at this age - do you know what “cliquy” means?’

  ‘Yes,’ muttered Constance.

  ‘Well, then. Find yourself a friend. Don’t be proud, just ask. Lots of the others are lonely too, I expect. They all crowd round Mick and Flick because they’re twins. Why don’t you try Deborah? She’s an interesting girl, and she must feel out of things too, being American… Look, dear: the box for the charcoal is kept here. That’s right… Why not try talking to her?’

  ‘I must go for break now,’ said Constance, knowing she sounded ungrateful when this little, dishevelled woman with whiskery skin was reaching out to her.

  ‘Righty-ho, then. Off you go. But mind you think about it,’ said Miss Emett.

  * * *

  Constance’s misery was crushing because she felt utterly helpless. She had no say in the adult decisions that governed her life. Do what your parents want, Constance was thinking, and you are a good child; do it willingly, like Stella, and you are a very good child: That one’s no trouble at all,’ her mother would say to friends, taking all the credit. But it was easy for Stella and much harder for her. If she resisted or even tried to tell them what she wanted, Mummy and Daddy just complained and called her ungrateful.

  Constance would have been happy in Kenya, but her parents sent her to boarding-school because that was what people of their class did if they went abroad; why otherwise should the Colonial Office contribute £150 towards the cost? Everyone else’s children were boarding, and being able to talk about Constance’s beautiful English school in the heart of the Sussex countryside, along with rueful comments about how expensive the uniform was, confirmed their own status. A bookish elder daughter, hanging around with African servants, would hamstring their social life and highlight their failure to conform. In the face of these unspoken considerations Constance was powerless. But she couldn’t contemplate the possibility that her parents might be selfish.

  The life of the s
chool ebbed and flowed. It rushed towards great events like Sports Day with communal excitement and preparation, everyone united in practising, running heats, making costumes, painting scenery and ensuring the school did itself justice. The second week of the summer term was not such a time. Parents’ Weekend was still a fortnight away. The end-of-term play - 1066 and All That - was newly cast and not fully into the swing of rehearsals. Yet beneath the tide of school routine the minor dramas of friendship, rivalry and deceit preoccupied each girl. These could stir up intense passions which were usually dismissed by the staff as adolescent hysteria or sulks.

  School friendships were conducted according to a rigid code. Best friends walked in twos, sat next to each other in lessons and at meals, met each other’s parents and from then on always sent their love in letters. At bedtime they said good night to each other last of all. With Charmian avoiding her, Sheila would have liked to respond to Constance’s timid approach, but she was still Charmie’s best friend. Walking with anyone else would have been disloyal. Until the breach had been established by silence, tears, sulks, sympathy and a final row, with every member of the class taking sides and new pairs of friends emerging, it would only have made her unpopular. It was different when Charmie scampered off arm-in-arm with someone else, because everyone knew Charmie was a flirt. Sheila was the solid one, the reliable one, the rock of the relationship. All she could do was stick to the rules.

  Life in the Reynolds’ home had been different during the last Easter holidays. Charmian didn’t say so, because it was something she dared not acknowledge. Her parents had made an effort to behave normally and conceal their estrangement from her. They only had rows at night when Charmian was supposed to be asleep. Charmian had to lie to herself, ignoring what was obviously going on. It was like standing at the edge of the sea when the tide is coming in and the sand trickles away between your toes, throwing you off balance. So she turned on her friend, becoming deceitful because she was being deceived.