HOLY TERRORS
THEODORA BRAITHWAITE NOVELS CLERICAL ERRORS UNHOLY GHOSTS IDOL BONES
HOLY TERRORS EVERY DEADLY SIN MORTAL SPOILS HEAVENLY VICES A GRAVE DISTURBANCE FOOLISH WAYS
HOLY TERRORS
D. M. Greenwood
Ostara Publishing
Copyright © 1993 D. M. Greenwood The right of Diane Greenwood to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright. Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 1994
by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING PLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which
it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN 9781906288235
Printed and bound in United Kingdom
Published by
Ostara Publishing
13 King Coel Road
Colchester
C03 9AG
www.ostarapublishing.co.uk
For Gwen and Marge Francis
Contents
1 St Veep’s Girls’ School 1
2 South-West London Comprehensive School 9
3 Innocent Subjects 19
4 Innocent Objects 29
5 Parish Life 36
6 Artistic Life 50
7 Night School 57
8 Day School 70
9 Holy Images 80
10 Modern History 90
11 Ancient History 99
12 Messages 109
13 Travels 119
14 Celebrations 138
Epilogue: Holy Terrors 145
CHAPTER ONE
St Veep’s Girls’ School
Members of St Veep’s Girls’ School began to arrive, in their different ways, about eight a.m. A chauffeur-driven Mercedes, the tinted glass of its windows rather thicker than normal, slowed down. Before it had quite stopped a nice mite of fourteen years hopped out and raced down the narrow passage between the senior and junior houses to the pupils’ entrance. Minutes later the second mistress swerved into the gravel carriage sweep of the main entrance in a thirty-year-old grey Riley upholstered in real leather; many of its parts were original and those that weren’t had been skilfully engineered by a garage mechanic at Miss Aldriche’s rural weekend retreat. Ieuan Colt, second in the music department, freewheeled in on a powerful-looking motorbike. It had run out of petrol at the end of the square, but its impetus carried him easily into the staff car park on the opposite side to the pupils’ entrance. Miss Barbara Brighouse would have preferred to have come in by horse but, failing that, strode in as though she had just got down from one, whilst Mrs Gulland indicated her resentment at her newly divorced status (alimony settlement still in the hands of the lawyers) by tottering on high heels from the bus stop. She was forced to pick her way through a group of young Jewish girls of various heights emerging from a Volvo estate driven by a beautifully accoutred mother whose turn it was this Monday morning to convey seven equally smart Veepians from roads bordering the Finchley to the environs of Kensington. Three mathematicians arrived one after the other in rapid succession, dropped by solid-looking young husbands bound for the City, the Treasury and the Financial Times. The school, male and female – but mostly female – was gathering.
In the staff cloakroom, a basement immediately below the staff common room, the Pole who taught German greeted the Russian who taught French by flinging her arms round her shoulders and embracing her on both cheeks. With more restraint, after a separation of merely forty-eight hours, the Swiss who taught Italian, greeted the Argentinian who taught Spanish by shaking her warmly by the hand. The head of classics, Doris King, cringed with an embarrassment which ten years of witnessing such scenes had not diminished, and bolted up the iron staircase to the common room lest she too should be assaulted.
In the common room, Janet John smelt the scent which Oenone Troutbeck was wearing as she stood next to her glaring at the noticeboard, and deplored it. She moved downwind. She’d played cricket for England’s Ladies and thought anything more exotic than the smell of leather and dubbin a betrayal of decent values. Secretly, and indeed without fully acknowledging it to herself, she found Oenone attractive as well as intimidating: she particularly admired the way her colleague had of raising the right eyebrow without raising the left.
The notice at which they were both gazing read: ST VEEP’S GIRLS’ SCHOOL
75, STRACHAN SQUARE
LONDON W4
The Upper School Lent Concert of Sacred Music will take place on Thursday 17 April at 7.45 p.m. Invitations to parents and governors will go out by the end of seventh week. Heads of year please organise. The Senior School Orchestra will have the honour to be conducted by Sir Solomon Piatigorsky, the distinguished conductor. Staff will need to excuse girls from lessons for rehearsals from third week onwards. Mr Colt will arrange rehearsal times. Miss Brighouse will co-ordinate. I know
the occasion will be a memorable one for us all. A.M.P. ‘I wish she wouldn’t tell us how distinguished everyone is,’ said Miss Troutbeck. A tall woman, she stood behind her colleagues and eyed the notice from a distance. ‘And if you were in any doubt about the function of conductors, they conduct.’
‘Piatigorsky’s tempi at Aida last night were eccentric’, said Miss Brighouse, whose interests were wide. She was on her way to gather books and gave it but a passing glance.
‘I hope he’s not going to be too ambitious with our girls’ tempi,’ said Mrs Gulland, who never liked to be left behind in any conversation which combined social with intellectual snobbery.
‘How does she know the occasion will be memorable before it’s happened?’ said Mr Colt in his Welsh innocence, pausing in his effort to move his cello towards the door.
‘Ah, the great Piatigorsky,’ murmured the Russian who taught French. ‘Can one use “co-ordinate” as an intransitive?’ Miss King inquired to no one in particular as the gong sounded for 9.15 a.m. school.
Dante Gabriel Cromwell, head of art, who was on principle late for all engagements, did not spare the notice so much as a glance as he strode through the staffroom to collect his mail.
Having, as it were, cut their teeth on the first mistress’s bone, they scattered in search of hymn books and Bibles, registers and markbooks, the paraphernalia of ordinary academic life, without which even St Veep’s could hardly function.
The Reverend Theodora Braithwaite, a woman aged about thirty, and in deacons’ orders in the church of England, peddled with easy sweeping strokes round the one-way system of Strachan Square, proceeding slowly enough to enjoy each side of the square in turn. Its north and south ends were made up of substantial brown brick villas hung about with bare lilacs and laburnums. At the west end of the square was a church, known at the turn of the century for the strength of its evangelical fervour and the menace of its apocalyptic sermons. Prebendary Webb-Peploe had been a frequent and popular visiting preacher, but now the splendid neoclassical façade proclaimed its new ownership by Greek Orthodoxy. Church of the Resurrection, it said in gold letters and Greek characters, on a red board. Theodora nodded to it as to a friend. She rounded the north side, freewheeled slightly downhill to the east side, then swerved into the carriage sweep of St Veep’s. The school’s chunkier façade in domestic Italianate glittered white and spruce in the thin April sunlight. She leaned her bicycle against the foot of the steps and mounted to the grey painted double doors.
The school’s buildings were worthy of the solid aspirations of its founders. The large, marble-floored entrance hall, the heavy mahogany doors, the waxed oak panelling in every room, the figured glass and polished brass fittings subdued even those few who entered the school not intending to be impressed. Strong materials of the best quality put together to last at a time when labour was cheap and craftsmanship normal had worn well through the century. There were no foxed edges, no scratches on the panelling or smudges on the daily cleaned brass.
The financial arrangements of the founding ladies had been as sound as their architecture. St Veep’s investments had prospered. The endowment, in the hands of prudent fathers and astute liverymen, had expanded decade by decade. Excellent quality they had sought – and mostly got. Early thrifty provisions had afforded the school wealth; even, in due course, grandeur. Those outside the circle were occasionally provoked to envy.
If they had inclined to see their daughters’ education in terms of an investment, the founding fathers had always perceived that that investment must not be in anything ephemeral. Tradition, and piety towards that tradition, had in the school’s early days married worldly success to classical and Christian values of truthfulness and public service. The established Church had quickly been drawn in. Two canons and a bishop sat ex-officio on the governing body. The very site of the school had been donated by the Church. A chapel had been required as part of the original building. A chaplain had been allowed for in the endowment. In this way fathers who might have been suspicious of the unsettling effect of education on their daughters were reassured.
As the twentieth century had progressed, however, relations between the Church and the liverymen on the governing body had become strained. The last two first mistresses had not been appointed for their piety; a first in Greats followed by a senior wrangler had seen to the academic quality of the institution rather than its religious ethos. What in the early days of the school had been a mere handful of young women progressing to Lady Margaret Hall and Girton had, by the retirement of the last head, become a flood of their granddaughters proceeding as of right to Balliol and Trinity, their place in the world as assured as their grandmothers but different, the scope for the exercise of both virtue and vice larger. At first the Church had concurred with the secular governors in taking a pride in the standards and achievements of the young females. Too late it had realised that, all unknowingly, its values had been usurped. Lip service was paid to Anglican teaching but no more than that.
The staff, originally drawn from the same ground as the pupils, had only recently begun to be recruited from a wider field. The first mistressship of St Veep’s was a plum ripe for picking which had, a couple of years ago, fallen into its present holder’s lap only after a great deal of manoeuvring on many parts, not least those of that holder. Dame Alicia Pound was, she prided herself, a very modern woman. The charming, self-deprecating smile disguised for some the heavy lantern jaw and immensely strong teeth. A career begun, after Cambridge, in journalism, had converted itself in its latter reaches into the upper echelons of the civil service. Secondments to various consultative jobs on quangos in Europe had added a patina of almost academic respectability, sufficient to secure a majority from the governors of the school at that crucial moment. They were looking for a more robust leadership and managerial style than had hitherto marked the office. As they thought. The more perceptive had held that the plain Scot who had steered the school through the seventies and eighties had shown more durable qualities: adroitness, a steely strength and a full-blown quiver of diplomatic strategies for dealing with all crises, financial or academic. Miss McGregor, however, had never for an instant flaunted these qualities. Dame Alicia on the other hand had never seen any reason not to show absolutely everything, preferably immediately on meeting for the first time. She made, it was said, a tremendous impact. Certainly she spoke very loudly and said everything twice.
‘Dame Alicia wants a K.’
‘I thought a D was the equivalent of a K for women.’
‘Well, you know what I mean. The next one up.’
‘Life peerage?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Why?’
‘I suppose she has rather vulgar tastes. She’s greedy and she’s a woman
of little imagination. I expect she can’t think of anything else to grab.’ A pretty typical Veepian dialogue, thought Theodora, who had heard it as she strode from the front door across the marble-paved entrance hall toward the first mistress’s rooms. The girls were not surreptitious, nor were they blatant, reaching for a sophistication that they did not possess. Any sophistication they had was their own and genuine.They were matterof-fact, almost judicious in their manner. Their judgement was first hand, based upon a cool observation over two years. The twins Theodora had overheard would never themselves have dreamed of displaying ardour over anything. Jane and Josephine Hapgood sailed like swans towards the music room at the end of the corridor, serene in their excellent manners and identically competent intelligences. Theodora, whose own Cheltonian youth had also required the disguise of ardour, relished their accuracy.
She seated herself on the art nouveau oak bench opposite the first mistress’s door. Her appointment was for ten-fifteen. The door had been disfigured on the advent of Dame Alicia by the addition of two lights: one red, which said ‘engaged’ and the other green. Dame Alicia had been dissuaded from inscribing ‘vacant’ on the green. The broad double staircase running off the hall wound up to the first floor. Theodora became aware of the murmur of young voices above her.
‘Exeter will be full of hairy young men like Victor, in green wellies and Barbours.’ The voice was light, unemphatic.
‘Ginny went there for an interview last term and she said she had quite
a good session. The young man gave her sherry and was quite articulate
about Boccaccio. She thought she might well accept, if the Courtauld
won’t have her.’ The accent was slightly American.
‘Music’s poor, hunting’s superb,’ said the third in authoritative tones.
‘My uncle’s a canon of the cathedral,’ it added.
‘Just give me the ground rules again, could you?’ said the American
voice again. ‘I’m allowed either Oxford or Cambridge but not both. And
then four others, not necessarily in order of preference. Right?’ Theodora glanced upwards to the girls clustered round the life-sized
replica of the Nike of Samothrace which presided in a distant sort of way
over the broad landing at the top of the staircase. One of the girls was
seated on the bench in front of it; one squatted on the floor beside her,
her long black hair swinging forward over the UCCA form spread out in
front of her, a bitten-looking pencil clamped between her teeth. The third,
the fair-haired girl who had depreciated Exeter’s males, stood a little to
one side.
As Theodora looked up, the fair-haired girl looked down and caught
Theodora’s eye. The girl did not smile nor did she stare. But with complete
self-possession she met and held Theodora’s glance. Wit
h equal
composure, in her own time, she withdrew her gaze and returned her
attention to the group.
The light on Dame Alicia’s door changed from red to green. Theodora
gave it a count of three and then rose from the bench to her full height of
six foot one and knocked.
Jessica Stephanopoulos, whose father was something at the Greek embassy, pushed her feet as far forward into her indoor shoes as she could and then snapped each toe in turn against the leather. She did this when she was embarrassed. Scripture lessons embarrassed her dreadfully. Ten-thirty on Mondays was a low time. A heavy, solid day, you had to wade through a lot of facts on Mondays. People were being efficient. They walked about the school swiftly and purposefully, all being competent. Perhaps, thought Jessica dolefully, you had to start off efficient if you had the whole week to get through.
The young chaplain entrusted with teaching divinity, Jessica noticed, had a special vocabulary for his subject.‘Dwell’, ‘exalt’, ‘forsake’, ‘sojourn’, dropped from his lips, words whose very sound were to Jessica’s ear mournful. She supposed the Jews, about whom they appeared to be learning, were a special and mournful people. The Reverend Robert Mere’s voice rose and swelled with the agonised rhetoric of his language as he got the ‘children of Israel’ way out into the desert. Jessica eyed the wiry young man with too little hair. His vowels, she realised, bilingual child of an international marriage, were rather genteel. He seemed well under way. He was pacing up and down across the platform, talking and talking in the peculiar, quasibiblical language. Behind him, a meticulous copy of the Light of the World looked meaningfully out on to the neat rows of desks. On his other side, a sepia Moses in a night-shirt, his eyes rolled up like an Asiatic ecstatic, struck the rock in the desert. Christians and Jews were equally, if badly, served.
The curriculum at St Veep’s was highly developed, constantly reviewed and appropriately revised. The exception was religious education. It was felt irreligious to subject it to the renovation that marked every other academic enterprise in the school. It lingered unscrutinised in a sepulchral Dark Age of Authorised Versions and maps of the Holy Land. The head of religious education had so far successfully fended off any forays on the part of the curriculum development committee to modify his intransigently boring and irrelevant syllabus. Apart from Rabbi Kassman who took Jewish prayers on Fridays, the Reverend Robert Mere taught the subject throughout the school on the minimum allotment of one thirty-five-minute period a week. If more souls were lost than saved by this regimen, Mere had come to feel that it was not his fault.
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