‘How do you mean?’
‘About the letter from your father? I mean, they’re bound to find out sooner or later.’
She shrugged and pushed the gate open.
‘I don’t know. I thought I’d hand it over tomorrow, but then if the letter’s dated inside, it’ll give the game away.’
‘You realize,’ he said, ‘that if you’re caught, you could be expelled, and then…’
He fell silent and they went on walking through the grass.
‘And then my life would be over?’ she muttered. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
‘I was thinking of mine, actually,’ he said bashfully. ‘If they find out that I’ve been meeting you here, I might be expelled, too.’
Rusty stopped. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Look,’ she said, turning around, ‘if I do get caught, I won’t squeal on you. I promise. O.K.?’
He nodded and followed her over a small pile of bricks that lay in front of the hallway.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘you stay here. I want it to be a surprise.’
She stepped into the Cabin with her torch and lit the two lamps.
‘O.K.,’ she yelled. ‘You can come in now.’
The door opened slowly and Lance peered in. He stared around at the walls, his eyes and mouth growing wider and wider.
‘I say,’ he exclaimed.
‘Come in. Come in.’
He closed the door behind him.
‘Whaddaya think?’ she said, doing a James Cagney impersonation.
‘It’s frightfully good!’ he said. He gazed at the designs. ‘How on earth did you do it?’ .
‘They’re stencils. Traditional American. I’m going to paint the panelling in the doors too, and around the windows. That is, unless you have some other ideas. After all, it is your Cabin too.’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’
They stood awkwardly for a moment.
‘Let’s get a fire going,’ she said. ‘I want to begin sawing up those planks.’
‘Oh Lord. I’m hopeless at all that stuff.’
‘It’s O.K. I’ll do it. But if you can hold the planks steady, it’ll make it easier.’
While Lance dealt with the fire, Rusty laid a plank across the two stools. Then, a pencil in her mouth, she went over to one of the alcoves, measured the width of it with a piece of string, laid it across the plank, and made a mark.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Lance over his shoulder.
‘I’m going to make shelves.’
‘Aren’t you taking all this a bit seriously?’
‘Nope. For the first time in months I’m having some fun.’
‘But what on earth do you want shelves for?’
‘It’ll make it more like a real home. You wait and see.’
He frowned and then lit the pile of dry leaves and torn wallpaper under his pyramid of wood.
‘You know,’ said Rusty, noticing, ‘you’ve really got the knack now. When we go back to America, you’ll be able to have your own cookouts.’
He sat on the fireplace step and stared at her. ‘You’re mad,’ he said.
‘If I wasn’t, I think I’d go crazy.’
He shook his head.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘Hold this steady for me.’
He leaned on one end of the plank and Rusty started sawing.
Between pauses to throw branches on the fire, Rusty sawed while Lance talked. Behind them the branches hissed in the fireplace.
Rusty asked Lance about his holiday, but he veered away from the subject. He just said he was glad to be back at school, but there was one good thing that had happened in the vacation. ‘After Christmas, I ran every day,’ he said.
‘You ran?’
‘Yes. It was an excuse to get out of my aunt’s house, and also I wanted to get really fit so that when I came back I’d surprise them all.’
Rusty stopped sawing for a moment. ‘Where’d you run?’
‘Down to the beach and along the pavement beside it.’
‘I’d love to do something like that. Only I’d like to roller-skate or go take a bike out. Did it make you feel good?’
He nodded.
‘Sometimes, I wish I was a boy. I’m not allowed out on my own hardly at all. If I want to mail a letter I practically have to have written permission from the King!’
‘But that’s not the best part,’ he said, butting in. ‘This afternoon we had rugger. Hardly anyone could catch me, once I had the ball. I just ran and ran. One time I almost ran the full length of the field. I was so excited that I just swerved around the other chaps, leapt out of the way, and nearly scored a try.’
‘That’s swell.’ And she began sawing vigorously again.
‘The opposing team started calling me Yank. But it’s completely different now. I quite like being called it.’
‘I’m not called Creeper any more. I’m not called anything. I’m invisible.’
The end of the piece of wood she was sawing fell to the ground with a clatter.
By the time they left the Cabin, Rusty had ten ‘shelves’ sawn.
‘Can you come tomorrow night?’ she asked.
‘Tomorrow’s Friday.’ He looked worried for a moment. ‘You’re not going to stay here for the weekend again, are you? It’s awfully risky.’
‘I don’t know. I might.’
‘Anyway, I can’t come. You see, because I did so well this afternoon, I’ve been asked if I’d like to join in some trials for the reserve team for my House.’
She could see he was overjoyed.
‘That’s terrific. See, I told you you’d make it.’
He grinned.
‘So when we can we meet?’ she said. ‘Saturday?’
‘I’d rather it was after the weekend.’
‘O.K. How about Monday?’
‘All right.’
She pulled some money out of her dressing-gown pocket. ‘Could you buy me some sandpaper when you go into town?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘We have to go in a foursome. The others might get suspicious if they saw me buying it.’
‘Well, take the money anyway. If you can’t buy it, you can give it back to me.’
‘I’d rather you gave it to me afterwards. Our pockets are checked. We have to hand over all our pocket money to Matron at the beginning of term and then have it ticked off as we collect bits of it. Don’t they do that at your school?’
‘Uh-huh. But they don’t know I have it. Remember, they still think I’m a weekly boarder.’
On Friday after prep, Rusty walked – as casually as her beating heart would allow – up to the dormitory to pack her grip. Outside it was pouring with rain. The prefect was waiting for her downstairs, gazing dismally out through the arched doorway.
‘You don’t have to come with me,’ said Rusty. ‘I’ll be all right by myself.’
‘Are you sure?’ said the prefect, brightening.
Rusty nodded and walked out around the corner along the side of the school building to the front. Ahead of her, at the foot of the long drive, stood the large towering gates. The night was as black as black. She wanted desperately to run, just in case somebody suddenly yelled out, ‘Virginia Dickinson, come back here immediately!’ But she went on steadily, her feet splashing forward, opened the gate, and closed it swiftly behind her. She took a backward glance at the four-winged building that she hated so much. Shafts of light seeped out through drawn curtains as the rain swept across it.
She turned quickly and ran alongside the wall, over the ditch, and through the trees.
By the time she had reached the Cabin, the rain seemed to have soaked into her bones, making her fingers shake and her teeth chatter, like someone doing a clog dance inside her mouth.
The rain turned into hail. She watched the tiny icy balls bounce viciously against the windows while she laid the fire.
Once the fire had gathered strength, she picked up the bricks and placed them at each side of one of the alcove
s, laying a cut plank on top. It fit beautifully. On top of the plank, at the sides, she piled up more bricks and laid another plank across them. When she had constructed five shelves on each side, she sat on a stool in the middle of the Cabin and surveyed her work.
‘This is getting to be more like a real home every day,’ she whispered.
She wrapped the blankets around herself and lay down on the camp-bed. Her plaits were still damp. She lifted them up so that they draped over the top of the pillow… anything to avoid them trailing down her neck.
In the morning she hunted through the rubble for any objects she could put on the shelves. She remembered Kathryn saying that what made a stage-set look real were all the little details like ornaments, books on the shelves, pictures on the walls.
She scrabbled around, picking up any book she could find. They were all damp. Upstairs there were three faded paintings of rural scenes. The glass in the frames was cracked and broken, but there was a rusty chain at the back of each, so they could still be hung up.
She was just pulling away some wood from a high mound of rubble when Several of the bricks and lumps of plaster slid aside, revealing a table. She pushed the debris off it and hauled it out. It was split off at one end and two of the legs were missing but, on examining it carefully and finding the legs, she felt hopeful that she could attach them back on.
She dragged it across to the Cabin and after a lot of manoeuvring finally managed to pull it through the doorway.
For the rest of the day she worked away at the table. She rescrewed the legs on, replaced some of the bent nails, and strengthened the top. Then, after measuring it, she sawed off the ends so that they matched up. Even after a good wash, the wood was grey and rather dismal-looking. A good lick of paint would change that, though.
That evening she dried as many books as possible in front of the fire, knocked all the glass out of the pictures, and hung them up on the walls. Occasionally she had the most terrific bouts of hunger and cold, but keeping busy kept both feelings at bay.
That night she slept in a happy exhausted stupor. Inside her Cabin she felt untouched by the world outside. She felt safe and she didn’t hurt any more.
On Sunday she placed the dried books on the shelves, put her carpentry tools and stencil equipment on a special shelf of their own, and under the two bottom shelves stacked as much chopped wood as would fill the space from the floor up. The rest of the wood she put in the wooden tub.
After she had painted vine leaves and birds in the panels of the door, she wrote another letter to her parents. The one from her father still lay propped up on the mantelpiece. She couldn’t bring herself to touch it now.
The following morning she cleaned herself up and headed for the woods. It had started raining again. She just hoped she wouldn’t appear too muddy. She posted her letter and walked back through the school gates. Since she hadn’t eaten since Friday, she felt a little light-headed, but she was beginning to grow used to being hungry. It was when she bent down to remove her galoshes that she felt dizzy. She sat down quickly on the cloakroom bench, and the feeling passed.
In assembly, when she still hadn’t been publicly hauled up by the Headmistress, she felt both relieved and worried. She’d been away two weekends, yet nothing had happened. She was almost disappointed. It meant that nobody cared about her or missed her at all. Still, maybe she was on a winning streak and could go on like this until half-term.
At midnight, she met Lance by the wall. He was beside himself with excitement.
‘I’m in one of the reserve teams for my House,’ he cried.
Rusty immediately began walking into the woods.
‘Did you get the sandpaper?’ she said abruptly.
‘What? Oh. Well, I managed to get hold of a couple of pieces from the woodwork room. I didn’t go into town after all. You see, one of the chaps in my House who’s already in a team had heard how fast I was on Thursday, and he asked if I’d like to go for a run with him and do some practice in passing. So I jumped at the chance.’
Rusty stared ahead. She just wanted to reach the Cabin. Then she’d feel all right.
‘Aren’t you pleased that I’m in the reserves?’
She glanced at him. ‘Sure I am. I guess I’m a little cold. That’s all.’
She was pleased that he had got into the reserves. But it was the way he talked about it that unnerved her, that and his mention of the other boy.
They came to the tall trees by the slope and slid down.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he said, as they walked through the gate, ‘you know the prefect I fag for?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Well, yesterday he actually praised me for the way I lit his fire! I mean, he actually praised me!’
‘Does he ever thank you?’ she said over her shoulder.
‘Pardon?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ And she strode on ahead.
‘He’s really rather decent,’ went on Lance. ‘I think I’m awfully lucky to be his fag, really.’
Rusty felt such a heel. She resented his enthusiasm for school people and school activities, and yet he had been so miserable when they first met. She ought to feel happy for him.
‘I want to surprise you again,’ she said. ‘Wait there.’
As soon as he stepped inside, she could see by his face that he was staggered. She leaned against the chimney breast with an artificial swagger, one leg crooked nonchalantly across the other.
He stared at the alcoves, the pictures on the walls, the neat piles of chopped wood, and then spotted the wooden table.
‘I found it under all that junk outside,’ she said. ‘It was broken but I fixed it. Look at the panels on the door.’
He closed the door and gazed at them admiringly.
‘I wish you could see it all in the daylight. Then you could see the colours right.’
He turned around slowly. He was frowning.
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said.
‘So what’s wrong?’
‘You stayed another weekend.’
‘I told you I might. Look, don’t worry. It’s a cinch.’
He drew out the two pieces of sandpaper. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s not much. What did you want it for?’
‘I was going to sand the edges of the shelves. They look nice like that. Well, never mind. This’ U probably be enough for the table.’ She looked at him. ‘Who’s going to do the fire?’
‘I will.’
‘O.K.’
She started sanding the sawn ends of the table. She was acutely aware that Lance wasn’t talking very much, but she was too scared to ask him why. It was only when he had got the fire going that he came over and watched her.
‘See what a difference it makes?’ she said lightly. ‘It comes up all nice and smooth.’ She began to round off the sharp corners. Eventually she could stand it no longer. ‘O.K.,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’
He leaned on the table and traced his fingernail along the wood.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you know how much I want to do well in rugger?’
‘Yes, though I don’t know why it’s such a big deal.’
‘I told you. It’s the only way I can be noticed. I mean, once I’ve done something for the House or the School, I’m bound to make friends.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, there’s this boy I went running with on Saturday. He came and watched me play in the afternoon, and he was jolly impressed.’
‘So?’
‘So I don’t think I’ll be able to come here so often, because I’ll be joining him for practices, which means I’ll really need to get a good sleep at nights.’
Rusty looked away. She felt choked.
‘I’ll still come on Thursdays.’
She threw a pillow on the floor and sat down in front of the fire. Lance came and sat beside her.
‘I really like it here,’ he said. ‘I think you’ve made it look splendid.’
‘So how come you don’t want to vi
sit any more? I thought we were buddies.’
‘I’ll still be coming.’
‘I guess.’ And she picked up a branch from the wooden tub and threw it on to the fire.
It was a dismal evening. Rusty felt Lance slipping away from her like Janey and Skeet and Beth, and she felt helpless to do anything about it. The two of them sat there quietly, making small talk until the fire had died down.
On Wednesday, Rusty received another letter from her mother. It was all about something funny that Charlie had said, and how pleased she was that Rusty’s schoolwork was progressing well. And she talked about how hard her father was working at the office and how she thought it might be a nice idea for them all to spend the Easter holiday in Devon. It wasn’t until the postscript that she mentioned her father’s letter. It said:
P.S. We still haven’t received a reply from Miss Bembridge. We realize that she must be very busy, and we assume that it’s because you’ve settled in well as a full-time boarder that she perhaps hasn’t felt the need to contact us yet. Could you ask her to get in touch with me, preferably by letter, as I’m never quite sure when your grandmother has taken the phone off the hook. It would just make me feel more at ease. I’d like to call her myself, but your father seems to think I’m making a fuss over nothing.
Rusty folded it up and shoved it into her blazer pocket. She desperately wanted to have a quiet think but, before she knew it, a bell had rung. Thinking was out of the question. From now on her every hour was accounted for.
That night she lay awake until the dawn, and it was a struggle to stay awake in the classes the following day. The teachers, thinking she was stupid, made the usual sarcastic comments about her to the other girls, but she was completely oblivious to them. All she cared about was whether the sky remained clear.
It was the Bull who sent her to Matron. She had asked her to stand up, as it was obvious she hadn’t heard the question she had been asked. Rusty had hardly dragged herself to her feet when she woke up on the floor and found that the side of her forehead was bleeding. The next thing she knew, two extremely strong arms were hauling her up into a sitting position and pushing her head firmly between her knees.
Orders were being snapped out to other girls to help lift her back into the chair.
‘Now, my girl,’ Miss Bullivant roared, ‘you are to go straight to Matron.’
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