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by Michelle Magorian

  ‘I feel O.K. now,’ she mumbled. ‘Guess I must have got up too fast.’

  ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear a certain word,’ the Bull snapped.

  When Rusty looked up, she actually saw a twinkle in her eye. Boy, she looked almost nice.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Bullivant.’

  ‘Right,’ she bellowed. ‘Off you go to the San. And stand up slowly.’

  San? Oh yes, that was the infirmary.

  ‘Yes, Miss Bullivant.’

  ‘Now go on with you, girl!’

  Rusty moved hazily from the classroom and down the corridors towards the San. She had arranged to meet Lance that evening, and it wasn’t raining. She couldn’t be put in the San tonight. She just couldn’t.

  Matron looked as thin and grim as ever. She sat behind a sparse desk in a cold, well-scrubbed room and glared at her.

  ‘And what can I do for you?’ she said accusingly.

  ‘Miss Bullivant sent me. I passed out in class.’

  ‘I assume you mean you fainted.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. And I guess I must have caught my head on the corner of someone’s desk. But it’s only a scratch.’

  Matron rose and took a cursory glance at it.

  ‘So you fainted?’ she said. ‘Sounds like constipation to me.’

  Rusty gulped. That’d be another dose of Number 9! Boy, she hated that stuff; but if she didn’t take it, she might have to stay in the San.

  She watched Matron pull the muddy-coloured bottle out of a cupboard.

  That day she picked up five order marks for running in the corridors en route to the lavatory, plus a sixth for yelling in exasperation, ‘I have the runs!’

  At midnight, even as she climbed down the scaffolding, she had to stop at intervals, every time a pain shot through her empty insides, and wait until it had passed.

  The fact that Lance wasn’t by the wall to meet her only heightened her irritation. After fifteen minutes of waiting she headed on through the woods to the Cabin and set to laying a fire. She felt so cold that she ached.

  While she was warming herself, she heard someone moving through the grass. She stiffened. The door opened and in walked Lance. He closed it hurriedly behind him, and pulled up a stool by the fire.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. I had a bit of trouble getting out.’

  He opened his hands to the flames. He looked awkward, secretive. For a while neither of them spoke.

  ‘How did the rugger go?’ she asked.

  ‘Actually it went splendidly. Vernon-Jones thinks that if I carry on the way I’m going, I’ve a good chance of getting into the team next year.’

  ‘Who’s this Vernon-Jones?’

  ‘He’s the chap I was telling you about. The one I’ve started running with.’

  Rusty stared into the fire. ‘Next year?’ she murmured. ‘So you really won’t be coming back to America with me?’

  ‘I never said I would,’ he remarked quietly.

  She snatched up a couple of pieces of wood from the tub and hurled them into the fire.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you just make the best of things? I’m sure you’ll make friends at your school soon.’

  Rusty whirled around and glared at him. ‘I suppose now that they’ve started getting friendly, you don’t want us to be buddies any more. That it?’

  He blushed. ‘Not exactly. Only it is getting rather dangerous.’

  ‘O.K.,’ she snapped. ‘Are you trying to tell me you don’t want to come here any more?’

  He clasped his hands together tightly and looked down at the floor.

  ‘You’ve done an awful lot to help me,’ he muttered. ‘And I’m really grateful. I mean, what with the fires and cheering me up when I was miserable.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And?’

  ‘It’s just that I’d hate it if any of the other chaps found out about me meeting you here.’

  ‘In case they tell? And you get a beating?’

  ‘No, I could face that. But...’ He hesitated. ‘It’s because you’re a girl.’

  Rusty looked at him quickly. ‘But we’re not doing anything mushy. We’re not dating or…’

  ‘No. It’s not that. You see, if they thought I had a friend who was a girl, they wouldn’t think much of me. They’d laugh at me or think I was stupid or a bit of a namby-pamby. I wouldn’t have a hope of getting in a team then.’

  A namby-pamby? Where had she heard that word before? She had a vague memory of crouching down by some stairs, eavesdropping. And then she remembered. It was what her father had called Charlie.

  ‘So a namby-pamby is a boy who likes girls, is that it?’

  ‘No. It’s being wet, you know, oversensitive. Cowardly. Like a girl. Empty-headed, soppy, that sort of thing.’

  Rusty sprang angrily to her feet. ‘You really take the cake!’

  Lance looked almost alarmed. ‘I don’t think that way about you, but the other chaps will.’

  ‘You make girls sound like creatures from outer space.’

  ‘Well, I don’t mean to. But boys are more adventurous and strong, you know. I mean, that’s what they think.’ He turned and pointed to the walls. ‘I mean, look at all this nice stencilling you’ve done. Boys are no good at that sort of thing. They have to be tough,’ he stammered. ‘I mean, girls are good at making places homey, like…’

  Rusty stared at him. in amazement. ‘What the heck’s happening to you? You get into a reserve team and suddenly everything’s different. Last semester you hated those “chaps”, now they’re “rather decent”. If you want to know something,’ she said, waving at the walls, ‘it was men who used to do stencilling and make houses pretty inside. They had their own stencil cards and equipment, and they used to ride on horseback all over the place, miles and miles, and then stay at someone’s place, paint their walls and furniture, even the floors, and then they’d move on again. So you’re talking through your hat. You can make a place homey and be strong too, and be brainy. Boy,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You are the dumbest thing out. What about the pioneers? They had to make a home in the middle of nowhere, with wild animals around them, stuff like that.’

  ‘Well, there’s no such things as pioneers now,’ he said pompously.

  ‘There certainly is. I’m one.’

  ‘Don’t be an ass. You know it’s all pretend.’

  ‘You sure have changed your tune!’

  He leapt to his feet. ‘It’s all your fault that I can’t come here again. You’ve made it too risky.’

  ‘Well, those “friends” of yours’ d be right about you. You are a pantywaist, or a namby-pamby, or whatever you call it. But not because you’ve been with a girl. It’s because you’re afraid of what they’ll think. You’re afraid to be different. You sound just like the girls at my school, cooing and spilling goo over a game. You just have to do what the darned Romans do. No wonder you like Latin!’

  Lance turned on his heel, flung open the door, and slammed it behind him. Rusty felt devastated. She hadn’t meant to say such hurtful things.

  She sank down on the stool and buried her head in her hands.

  The effects of the Number 9 treatment lingered into the next day. As soon as she had swallowed down some breakfast, she began running for the lavatory again.

  As the lessons dragged slowly on, Rusty kept her eye on the door, waiting once again to be discovered. She had history in the afternoon and found, to her alarm, that the Bull kept staring at her.

  ‘Virginia Dickinson,’ she roared, ‘come up here.’

  Rusty hauled herself forward.

  ‘Stand there in front of me,’ Miss Bullivant said. ‘I want to take a good look at you.’

  She peered at Rusty from her head to her feet and back up again.

  ‘You eating?’ she snapped.

  ‘Yes, Miss Bullivant.’

  ‘Well, you look too thin, if you ask me. Far too thin.’

  ‘Must have been the Number 9 Matron gave me.’

  At that the class giggl
ed. Rusty was amazed. It was the first time she had ever made any girl laugh at a joke of hers.

  She was halfway down the aisle when Miss Bullivant called out to her again. ‘Feed you at home all right, do they?’

  Rusty turned around. She could feel her face growing hot. ‘Yes, Miss Bullivant.’

  The teacher gave a grunt and returned to the Mon-mouth Rebellion.

  The classes were over and Rusty sat in the large room where the fourth-year prep was taken. She propped her head up with her hand. She was still smarting inside from the quarrel with Lance. She felt he had somehow betrayed her.

  Eventually the bell rang and she gathered up her books. When she came out into the corridor, she found the prefect who was normally in charge of her on Friday evenings waiting for her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rusty. ‘Am I late?’

  ‘No. I’m early. Look,’ she said, ‘do you mind if I don’t see you off again?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  As soon as Rusty was around the corner, she leaned against a wall out of sheer relief. Then, as usual, she took her grip up to the dormitory, packed, and walked out of the arched doorway to another weekend of freedom.

  That weekend she did nothing but paint. The only can of paint that was still usable was dark green. She painted the table and the two makeshift stools and, while they were drying, stencilled a design of leaves and flowers in the centre of the main wall. It was a little lopsided, but it was the best she could do.

  She placed a pineapple design on the centre of the table, using the ochre for the pineapple and dark brick red for the leaves at the top of it. Grandma Fitz said that the pineapple was a symbol of hospitality. She could pretend to have visitors for meals. Even as she thought of that, her stomach gave an insistent gurgle.

  On Sunday afternoon she sat by the fire, just gazing around at the colours. She wished she could share it with someone. She boiled some water in the saucepan over the fire and, when it had cooled, drank it.

  The next morning she posted her letter to her parents and went back into school.

  She stood with the others as they recited their way through a series of prayers, sang a hymn about fighting the good fight, and then sat down for the sermon from the Headmistress.

  ‘And now,’ said Miss Bembridge after several announcements had been made, ‘I have some rather good news for you all. Today I will be sending off letters to your respective parents informing them that half-term will be two days longer than planned. The reason for this extension is that a team of workmen will be coming to the school to remove the scaffolding.’

  32

  She knew it was risky running away during the week because by breakfast she would already be missed, but she judged that she didn’t have any choice. She was all right for money, for she still had the pocket money that she should have handed over to Matron, plus her fare back for the return journey at half-term in case her mother couldn’t meet her. She had no idea what time the trains started running. She just hoped that it was before anyone would notice her absence.

  For the last time she laid and lit a fire in the Cabin. As the flames leapt and flickered up the chimney, she gazed at the walls, drinking in all the colourful designs. It wasn’t just her in the Cabin, it was bits of everyone else, too. The stencilling was Grandma Fitz, the colours were Aunt Hannah, the smattering of basic carpentry was Uncle Bruno and Gramps, the books and knick-knacks on the shelves were Kathryn, the chopped-up wood was her and Skeet and Janey and all the gang on Sunday nights in the winter; and in the midst of it all were the carpentry tools that Beatie had left her, and the overalls and headscarf belonging to her mother.

  She changed into her jeans, plaid shirt, school cardigan, Windbreaker and sneakers, lowering the turn-ups of her jeans so that they hid her regulation school socks. She’d have given anything to have had her Beanie and a bag of some sort, but there was no way she could have smuggled them up to the dormitory from the cloakroom without being caught. They weren’t even allowed to take a book upstairs.

  She stuffed her screwdriver, gimlet and pliers into one of her Windbreaker pockets, and her stencil brushes, knife and torch into the other. They were the only tools small enough to fit in. She put on her trapper cap and took a last look at the Cabin. It broke her heart to leave it, together with the rest of the carpentry tools, but once she had got back to the Omsks, she’d work and save up for some others. She closed the door firmly behind her and headed for the woods.

  There was no one at the station but her. The ticket man eyed her suspiciously through the grille as she asked for Exeter and pushed the money through.

  ‘Bit young to be travelling on yer own, aren’t you? ‘Ow old are you?’

  ‘Fourteen,’ she lied. ‘Going on fifteen.’ After all, she was as tall as the Fifth-formers. No reason why she shouldn’t get away with it.

  ‘American, aren’t you?’

  She nodded.

  He frowned. “Aven’t I seen you ‘ere before?’

  ‘No. I’m always being mistaken for other people. I guess it’s ‘cause I have such a regular sort of face.’

  He grunted. ‘You being met at the other end?’

  ‘Sure I am.’

  He shook his head and muttered, ‘I don’t know. Parents nowadays. Ain’t even light yet. Wouldn’t ‘appen in my time. These Americans. Still, s’ pose they know what they’re doi’.’

  Rusty took the ticket and the change as calmly as she was able. Lack of sleep and sheer tension made her rigid with cold. She stood on the windy platform and stamped her feet in an effort to prevent her toes from numbing up, and pulled down the flaps on her cap to protect her ears.

  All the time, as she waited, she was expecting the ticket man to suddenly roar out, ‘Say, I know what you are. You’re a runaway!’

  At long last a train appeared in the distance. As it crawled slowly towards the platform, she willed it to speed up. As soon as it had stopped, she flung open a door. It was as cold inside the train as out. There was no heat on at all. The train was empty. She ran down the corridor and chose a compartment.

  Even when the train started moving, she still didn’t feel safe. If the school had been alerted, they might have already contacted the railway station. It was a slow train. It stopped at every single tiny station, and each time it stopped it seemed to be for ever.

  Eventually she reached the station where she and her mother had had the tea and buns. She hopped out and began waiting for the connection to Exeter. To her horror, it was announced that there was a delay of two hours. The handful of people on the platform took the news with resignation. Rusty grew colder and more anxious as the minutes ticked by.

  When the train had arrived and everyone had piled in, and it finally moved out of the station after waiting there a full quarter of an hour, Rusty began to relax. Again she had a compartment all to herself.

  She stared out of the grubby window at bombed streets and stations and towns, interspersed with stretches of muddy or drenched green fields, and began to think about the Omsks.

  She had loved being called ‘one of them Omsk kids’, but she remembered how Skeet and Kathryn, Alice and Jinkie called Aunt Hannah and Uncle Bruno Mom and Pop, and how, when she accidentally called them that too, they would gently remind her that her real mom and pop were missing her and loved her, and that although they loved her as if she was their own daughter, she had to remember that someone else did too.

  She began to wonder if perhaps they’d want her back after all. Without her they’d be a real family again.

  Although they felt like her real parents, they weren’t, and they never could be. As she swallowed her tears, she saw everyone in Connecticut drifting away from her. Skeet was roller-skating with a girl who was using her roller-skates, and Janey was dating someone and had probably made new friends. As she sat in the cold bumpy train, she felt that no one would want to be friends with her ever again.

  By the time the train had arrived at Exeter and she had stumbled out on
to the platform, she had decided that the Omsks, like her parents, wouldn’t want her living with them.

  She handed in her ticket and wandered out of the station. The next train to Plymouth would be a while yet, so she decided to take a walk.

  As she made her way down a side street, she noticed two W.V.S. vans parked outside a building. She froze.

  Suddenly it was August, and she was sitting beside her mother in the large furniture-van, and it was the first time they had been together in five years; and she knew then that she just had to have a talk with her, explain everything.

  She looked around for a phone booth and saw one standing, dark and solitary, in front of a flat landscape of rubble. She stepped inside and fumbled in her pockets for pennies, reading the instructions about button A and button B. She was trembling so much, she had to keep taking deep breaths so she could think straight. She lifted the receiver and dialled the operator. Eventually a woman answered, and Rusty gave her mother’s last name and address.

  Finally, the operator was speaking to her again. Rusty put her money into the slot.

  ‘You’re through now,’ said the woman.

  Rusty was astounded. ‘What do you mean, I’m through? I can’t be. I haven’t even started talking yet.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ began the woman, but Rusty slammed the phone down.

  ‘Typical English phone,’ she yelled, and she pushed open the door in a rage.

  She had hardly walked a few yards when she heard the sound of money tinkling behind her. She turned in time to see a small, shabbily dressed boy pressing button B in the phone booth and collecting the money she had just put into it. And then it suddenly dawned on her. Of course! With English phones, when they said you were through, it meant that you were connected. The boy looked up quickly and ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction. It was the last straw.

  ‘Right,’ she muttered, and she stalked back towards Exeter station.

  She had just enough for a ticket to Plymouth. This time the train was smaller. She remembered now, it was one of the kind that had no corridor. Instead, the compartments had a door at each end. She found an empty one, sat down, and leaned her head against the window. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass. She’d grown used to being pale, but she wasn’t prepared for the two dark grooves etched below her eyes.