by Anne Digby
'Probably. And I expect they do The Times crossword together,' said Sue.
'All the same, I bet her mother wouldn't approve,' said Mara darkly.
Elf handed some more fudge round and they let it melt in their mouths. Mara's smouldering look had gone and a happy, dreamy expression had taken its place. Tish looked at her, full of curiosity.
'Er–how was Curly, then?' she asked.
'Oh, he's nice,' said Mara happily. 'He knows exactly how to cheer somebody up! He said there was nothing to get upset about – in fact he laughed and laughed and somehow that made me laugh, too.'
'There!' said Margot, relieved.
'He's promised to come and visit me here, at weekends!' added Mara. 'Oh, he's so funny!' She smiled, remembering. 'He said, why don't I go on the float anyway, when they've built it, and he'll arrange for a couple of boys to kidnap me! It'd get in the newspapers – the most wonderful publicity stunt for the Concert –'
'Typical Curly!' said Tish.
'I wish I dared!' Mara clapped her hands and laughed excitedly. 'Just imagine Papa scurrying here, there and everywhere, thinking I'd been kidnapped – wouldn't that just serve him right? And my father!'
It was a lovely idea. Ridiculous, but lovely.
They all started to laugh. Nobody heard a creak outside the door. Lucy Hubbard, coming back from cleaning her teeth, had paused to listen. She crept away to her room, shocked.
Later, Rebecca, Tish and Sue went to their room too. They talked in sleepy whispers as they lay in bed.
'Well, Mara seems happy again,' said Rebecca.
'Very,' agreed Sue. 'She didn't even mention the disco! I can't see her wanting to take Papa to that! So that means she can't go. And the travelling float – that's out, too. Papa would never agree to that!'
'Unless he could sit up on the float beside her –' giggled Rebecca.
'Dressed as a sumo wrestler, maybe!' added Tish.
Rebecca's eyelids felt heavier and heavier. It had been a long day. Tomorrow, the term – and lessons – would start in earnest.
The amazing things that happened! Poor Mara, coming back to school with her own personal bodyguard. Forbidden to go anywhere without him! But Mara was happy again because Curly still liked her. He'd promised to come and visit her at Court House. Some boys might have been put off by the whole situation, but not Curly.
Mara was going to miss out, though. It was a shame.
'I hope the boys do raise enough money to build the float,' said Rebecca drowsily. 'I've got something I can wear!' She'd remembered an Arabian costume that her mother had brought back from Saudi Arabia last year. The genuine article! She'd said Rebecca could have it and it was in a cupboard at her grandmother's. She must write and ask Gran to send it. 'I want to go on that float. I think it sounds really good fun.'
'Well, we'd better start selling those disco tickets tomorrow!' said Tish. She yawned loudly. 'Let's shut up and go to sleep now.'
And they did.
The next morning the six friends raced along the footpaths, crunching the overnight frost as they ran. They got to the Dining Hall early. They wanted to bag places at their favourite table – Joss Vining's – before Mrs Hubbard came and plonked Lucy amongst them again!
They made it. Now they would be safe the rest of the term.
Tish watched Lucy's mother bring her into the hall, soon afterwards, rooting around for a table with some III Alpha girls on it. She managed to squeeze her in with Debbie Rickard and the Nathan twins, on the next door table.
'I still think she'd be happier on one of the junior tables,' said Tish, with a shrug. 'She's only their age – even if she is Miss Brain of Britain – so she'd get on with them better.'
'And she's really in Court House?' said Joss, in surprise. 'And our form, too?' As they all nodded, she looked Lucy over. 'Hmmm.'
'No good for the hockey or netball teams?' said Tish. 'Is that what you're thinking?' Joss was a brilliant all-round athlete and Head of Games in the Third Year.
Joss laughed and shook her head.
'I was thinking about the Gymnastics Club that Miss Willis is going to start this term. She could join that. She's exactly the right build.'
'Oh, Joss!' grumbled Elf. 'Is nobody safe when you're around?'
'Gym Club?' asked Rebecca. That sounded interesting!
'Forget it, Rebeck,' said Tish quickly. She poured some milk on her cereal for her. 'Tennis, remember.'
Rebecca didn't really need reminding. If she wanted to make it as a tennis player, when she'd started the game late, she had to be dedicated and she was.
'What I'm waiting to see,' said Mara, 'is whether she's as clever as she's supposed to be.' She was gazing balefully across at Lucy Hubbard's back view. Last summer Mara had worked very hard to get herself put up into the Alpha stream, because she wanted to be with her friends. Getting into III Alpha had been such a triumph! Now this tiny little girl had come along and . . . well! 'Perhaps it's all a big mistake,' she added.
But it wasn't.
Lucy Hubbard, as the friends discovered during the course of the first week, seemed to be good at everything!
'How does she remember all those dates?' pondered Sue, after history lesson. 'It's indecent.'
'She's good at maths, too,' said Tish, wistfully. 'I don't think I'll be top in maths this term!'
In the staffroom, Mrs Hubbard talked incessantly about her daughter.
'It's a very special privilege and responsibility to have given birth to a child like Lucy,' she told Miss Gates, the senior maths mistress.
Miss Gates made no comment, nor was she expected to. Her role was to listen. She carried on marking a pile of maths exercise books. At the same time, by just the correct inclination of the head, she gave all the appearance of listening carefully.
'You won't believe this, Miss Gates, but she was potty trained by the time she was six months old . . .'
For Rebecca and her friends, only one thing alleviated the situation.
Although Lucy Hubbard was a very good pupil, her mother was a very bad teacher. For one thing, she continually singled out her own daughter for special praise, although Lucy was hardly the kind who needed a helping hand. For another thing, she couldn't keep order. The combination of the two made for great hilarity and excitement in geography.
'Well done, Lucy. That is one of the best answers I have been given to that particular question. A model answer in fact. I shall award you a special merit mark.'
'Hurray!' shouted Tish and led a mounting burst of applause and stamping of feet. Even the normally quiet ones joined in.
'Silence, please!' piped Mrs Hubbard. 'Don't be quite so noisy please, girls.'
But the noise continued unabated. Lucy Hubbard was sitting in the front row next to Debbie Rickard and, even from the back row, Rebecca could see her neck slowly turning red, as she pretended to look through her atlas with great concentration.
'Three merit marks for Lucy in one week!' called someone. 'Hip, hip –'
'Please stop it, girls,' said Mrs Hubbard, getting flustered.
Then she produced a ploy.
'I shall leave the room. I shall be outside standing in the corridor. When you have calmed down and feel ready to proceed with the lesson, you may call me in.'
She was gone.
The form room rocked with laughter. Sue was almost hysterical. Rebecca was laughing so much her stomach ached.
'How many spins?' cried Tish, jumping up on to the teacher's dais with her hand poised to spin round the globe. 'Best guess gets a merit mark –'
'Sixteen!'
'Twenty-three –'
'Twenty-seven!'
Tish sent the globe spinning round and round. They all started counting in unison, at the tops of their voices:
'. . . SEVEN . . . EIGHT . . . NINE . . . TEN . . . ELEVEN . . .'
Rebecca caught a glimpse of Lucy's face, turned towards the spinning globe. She was captivated by the game, joining in loudly with the rest of them.
'. . . NINETEEN . . . NINETEEN-AND-A-HALF . . .'
'I've won!' cried Jenny Brook-Hayes.
Mrs Hubbard, standing out in the corridor, was quite forgotten.
In the end there was a loud knock, a clearing of the throat outside the door – 'Ready now, girls?' – and she came back into the room to resume the lesson.
The first Saturday of term turned out to be a full day for the six, in different ways. It didn't leave time to think about Lucy Hubbard, or even to notice her very much. She appeared to spend most of the day in her mother's company.
Mara was as happy as a lark at breakfast, her hair freshly washed and eyes bright. She planned to spend the morning doing extra study in the library, for she was determined to keep her place in III Alpha. Curly was coming in the afternoon. They were going swimming together in the heated pool at the school sports centre.
Sue was excited. She had orchestra practice and apparently Mr Barrington was going to choose some of them for a special Joint Orchestra that would take part in the I C F Concert at Garth College at half-term. 'Imagine mixing with some of the famous stars that are going to be in the concert!' exclaimed Sue. 'Oh, I do hope I'm chosen!'
Elf, to her delight, had suddenly been given a day's exeat because her uncle, who lived in Australia, and was visiting England, had telephoned to ask if he could take her to a theatre matinee in Exonford.
Rebecca, Margot and Tish wanted to go down town and look round the shops at clothes. It was rather cold though, and snowing again. It was Tish who had the marvellous idea.
'What d'you think Papa's doing?' she asked Mara, as she spread marmalade on her toast. 'It must be terribly boring for him. sitting round the Trebizon Bay Hotel every day.'
'I don't care what he's doing!' said Mara happily. 'The more bored he gets, the better! He can telephone my father and tell him there is nothing for him to do here and then perhaps he'll be called back to Athens. Personally I wouldn't be seen dead with him!'
'You know full well he isn't going to be called back to Athens,' said Tish, through a mouthful of toast. She was grinning. 'It seems a shame not to make use of him –'
'I mean, your father's paying him!' said Rebecca, suddenly cottoning on. 'It seems an awful waste –'
'We wouldn't mind being seen with him!' finished Margot. She glanced at some big snowflakes, whirling and tumbling down outside the window of the dining hall. 'Not if that car's cosy and warm!'
'What a fantastically good idea!' exclaimed Mara. She laughed and clapped her hands. 'I shall 'phone him straight after breakfast and tell him to put himself and the car at your disposal. Yes!' She laughed again. 'This will be even better than his being bored. Let us make his life a little irksome!'
The morning must indeed have been a little irksome for the big Greek, driving three of Mara's friends from shop to shop. Parking spaces were few and far between, for Saturday morning was busy, the town full of people from outlying villages. The big unwieldy car was not designed for easy parking.
Papa was baffled that they could never seem to find what they were looking for. They would spend anything up to half an hour in a clothes shop and yet still come out emptyhanded, laughing quite happily.
He never dreamt that they had no money on them, but were simply having a wonderful time trying on clothes. Tish and Margot planned what they'd wear to the disco, if only they'd had the money to buy it, while Rebecca tried on beautiful dresses just for the sheer joy of it.
It was the best fun they'd ever had in town! If Mr Papaconstantopoulos were at all irked, he remained quite unruffled, even when a traffic warden gave him a parking ticket. Finally, he drove them back to school in style, deposited them at the door of Court House and genially shook each of them by the hand in turn.
'Thank you, Papa.'
'My pleasure and thank you.'
At lunch time, Mara laughed about it until the tears ran down her cheeks. 'I shall ring him up whenever you want me to! Surely he will get fed up and tell father! Surely he will want to go home!'
'D'you think he'd drive me to Garth for the rehearsals?' joked Sue. She had been chosen for the Joint Orchestra that morning and was thrilled about it! 'I mean, I like going in the minibus but I hate taking my violin. I never know where to put it.'
'Then you shall go in the minibus and Papa can drive the violin to rehearsals!' said Mara. And the joking continued.
Rebecca enjoyed the afternoon as much as the morning, for the weather cleared up, the staff tennis court dried out and she and Joss Vining managed to get two hours very hard singles play in before dusk. Now that she was in the county 'D' squad she looked forward to travelling to Exonford on alternate Saturdays, again. It was only a week away now. She wondered how she was going to make out!
It wasn't until cocoa time that Lucy Hubbard impinged on Rebecca's thoughts. She found Anne Finch and Ann Ferguson had taken refuge in the kitchen because Lucy had already gone to bed.
'Her mother came and tucked her up with a teddy bear. We teased her afterwards and she started crying.'
'It's awful having to share a room with such a baby. But we feel a bit sorry for her really. I'd just hate Mother Hubbard to be my mother!'
Rebecca said nothing, but she felt a twinge of conscience. She'd started off the term feeling sorry for Mara. Now she wondered if she didn't feel more sorry for Lucy.
FIVE
AFTER THE DISCO
Rebecca asked herself that Saturday night if there were anything she could do to help Lucy Hubbard fit in better. She decided to try.
But in the course of the next seven days her sympathies were to swing right away from Lucy and back to Mara – and what happened after the disco was the last straw.
However on Sunday morning, directly after church, she marched Lucy along to the Sports Centre. The meeting to form a Gymnastics Club was taking place at 11.30. Miss Welbeck had announced it in assembly on Friday.
'I don't want to join a silly club, it's childish,' protested Lucy, who never seemed to think of herself as a child. 'There's a book on 18th century country houses in the library and I want to study it –'
'Just come and find out about it,' said Rebecca firmly.
'I'm very interested in the infrastructure of the Trebizon estate. I think the nobleman who built Trebizon may well have created a grotto somewhere –'
'So what,' said Rebecca. Though, thinking about it later, it seemed quite an interesting idea. 'You can read the book up this afternoon.'
About twenty girls had turned up to find out about the Gym Club, mainly First Years and Second Years. They seemed very excited about it. Rebecca asked Eleanor Keating and Sheila Cummings to look after Lucy and then she left.
'What were you doing with her?' asked Mara as Rebecca joined her on the touchline at North hockey pitch. Even in their warm capes they shivered a little, but there was a team practice match going on between the First and Second Elevens and it was worth watching, especially now Tish was in the Second Eleven. 'Did you see the way Tish got the ball then!'
'I was only taking her over to Gym Club,' said Rebecca, slightly embarrassed. 'If she could get interested in things and make some friends her own age, she mightn't be such a pain in the neck.'
'You are very charitable, Rebecca,' said Mara. Then, characteristically her face lit up and she gave Rebecca a sudden, warm hug. 'Oh, Rebecca, you are much too charitable! I must try and be as charitable as you!'
But it wasn't easy being charitable.
Just before Sunday lunch, Rebecca was pounding a tennis ball against the wall of Norris and thinking about Joss Vining. She knew how lucky she was to have a player like Joss in the school, a fully-fledged 'A' squad county junior who'd even competed at a junior tournament at Wimbledon! She only had to play against her to realize what a lot she had still to learn. She wished they could have played again this morning, but right now Joss was taking part in the hockey practice – the youngest girl ever to be picked for Trebizon's First Eleven. She was a sports prodigy but surely, thought Rebecca,
sooner or later Joss would have to make her choice . . .
She was thinking these thoughts when the two Annes came by.
'Whatever's wrong?' she asked, looking at their faces.
'Lucy sneaked on us!' said Anne Finch.
'Mother Hubbard's just given us a lecture,' explained Ann Ferguson. 'She wasn't meek and mild like she usually is. She was in the most filthy temper –'
'When we got there –' Anne took up the story, '–she was on the 'phone having a terrible quarrel with somebody, we heard her. It was something about the Sunday dinner of all things! Then she slammed the 'phone down when we arrived and vented all her bad temper on us.'
'She's sending us to see Miss Welbeck in the morning. It's not fair. It's the first time we've ever teased Lucy and we weren't going to do it again.'
'Spoilt little baby!'
Rebecca bit her lip and said nothing. Instead, she caught Lucy as soon as she arrived back at Court and pulled her into the common room, which was empty.
'I've decided I shall probably join the Gym Club,' Lucy began importantly. 'If that's what you want to know –'
'Why did you sneak to your mother about the two Annes?'
Lucy looked surprised. She was totally oblivious of Rebecca's anger.
'I always tell Mummy everything. She expects me to.'
The first dinner bell went and Rebecca gave up. What a hopeless case!
Mara had enjoyed her Saturday afternoon with Curly and she began the new week quite cheerfully. But as the days passed and talk began to turn to the disco at the weekend, she gradually grew more despondent.
To make matters worse she was having some problems with her maths and Miss Hort had given her a lot of extra work to do. Rebecca was much too excited about going to Exonford to care about missing the disco herself, but she began to feel sorry for Mara all over again.
They'd sold all their tickets easily and Curly had cycled over with some more on Wednesday. Nearly all the Third and Fourth Years in Court House were going and a lot from the other middle school houses as well. The Fifth Years remained aloof, but then they were working hard for their mock exams.
'Like my brother Edward is,' Sue said, discussing it in bed one night. 'Is Robbie?'