GHOSTLY TERM AT TREBIZON

by Anne Digby

  Aloud, she said:

  'Tish, you wouldn't like to explain vectors to me, would you? I oughtn't to need it but I do.'

  'Me, too!' said Mara eagerly.

  'And I must do some violin practice,' said Sue guiltily.

  'And you promised to test my French vocab, Elf!' said Margot.

  Rebecca and Mara sat with Tish at the big table for almost an hour. She got out pencil and paper and explained the mysteries of vectors to them. She even set some problems for them which they got right.

  'It's obvious now,' laughed Rebecca in relief, when they'd finished. It had been very nearly enjoyable: and at least it had helped her banish those dark thoughts about Robbie to the back of her mind.

  'We should have got Robert the Robot over here,' said Tish suddenly. 'Robert?' asked Mara in horror. 'You are joking, Ishbel Anderson.'

  'Am I?' said Tish thoughtfully. She looked unhappy. 'Poor Robert. Such a pointless expedition. She must have been desperate. Coming over here in the middle of the night like that! I ticked her off earlier, I said: "You could have asked me for some help, couldn't you?" But she did! She kept asking for help. And nobody wanted to know. The Nathan twins. Debbie Rickard, especially not her. Nor Joss, what's the betting. Me. None of us. How unfair it must have looked! Don't you see -we drove her to it in the end?'

  Rebecca and Mara fell silent and exchanged uncomfortable looks.

  There was quite a lot of truth in what Tish was saying.

  But Rebecca forgot about Roberta and soon started thinking about Robbie again. As she washed her face and hands before lunch, awkwardly, trying not to splash the bandage on her bad arm, the little cloud settled over her once more. Could it possibly have been Robbie, spying on her?

  Even as she dismissed the thought, wearily, it reminded her that the barrier between them created by the car accident continued to make mischief. Before that, she wouldn't have listened to Tish's ravings even for a moment. Drat this bandage, now she'd got it wet after all! Oh, it would have been nice to have had a swim this morning!

  And anyway, when was she going to play some tennis matches again – proper matches? And some hockey! The doctor was still telling her she had to be careful. It seemed to be dragging on for years! It was all Robbie's fault!

  They all trooped downstairs to go across to the dining hall for Sunday lunch. When they reached the ground floor, the phone rang. 'It's for you, Rebecca!' shouted Lucy Hubbard.

  Rebecca took the phone and told the others she'd see them in hall 'Save me plenty of roast! Hello – who is it?'

  'Rebecca!'

  'Cliff!' she said, with pleasure. 'Is your brother OK? Did anything happen to him? Is everything all right?'

  'Tell you in a minute!' said Cliff, keeping his voice low. 'But first – how about you? D'you get into trouble for being late?'

  'No!' giggled Rebecca. It was her turn to lower her voice. 'The others covered up for me. But what about Tom? Is he all right?'

  'He's all right now!' Cliff whispered. 'He was fuming last night! Flaming mad with me! You see –'

  'What?'

  'His car wouldn't start – the rain, I suppose. That put him in a bad temper for a start! So he phoned a minicab. Told it to go and pick us up from the High, take you back, then bring me home to our address and he'd settle up.'

  'Oh, no,' groaned Rebecca.

  'So of course the minicab turned up at our house, empty. The driver was stroppy about not being able to find us and charged Tom extra. Tom was left sitting at home worrying what to do, and so he hopped on his bike and pedalled over to Trebizon to see if there was any sign of us. He pedalled round the grounds getting madder and madder in a dripping wet cycle cape –'

  'Cycle cape?' exclaimed Rebecca.

  'Yes, what's so thrilling about that? And then he spotted you! Up on your balcony after I'd gone. A girl cavorting around in disco clothes, he told me, chucking things over the side as though she hadn't a care in the world!'

  Rebecca laughed out loud in sheer relief – and amazement.

  The magisterial figure! Cliff's brother, Tom. Standing there behind the trees in his cycle cape, feeling furious after all the worry he'd been through!

  'Then he saw me and gave me a rocket!' Cliff was saying. 'But at least I got a lift home on his crossbar. What's so funny, Rebecca?'

  'Oh, Cliff, it's not a bit funny,' she said hastily. 'It's awful. Weren't we thoughtless? We should have waited. It was all my fault for panicking. Listen, Cliff, the least I can do is pay for the minicab.'

  'It was my idea to get the lift in the van, wasn't it?' said Cliff cheerfully. 'I've paid Tom, don't worry. You can buy me a coffee some time.'

  He chortled quietly into the phone then.

  'But didn't we have a great time? Wasn't it a great disco, Rebecca?'

  'Just about the best, Cliff!'

  She ran all the way to the dining hall, her feet scuffling joyfully through fallen leaves. The others had already started eating. Sunday lunch – her favourite meal! The roast potatoes looked delicious.

  'You're looking cheerful!' said Mara, as she squeezed into her chair.

  'I'm feeling it,' replied Rebecca. She leaned forward and whispered to them, laughing: 'I've found out who the so-called ghost was last night. The mystery figure by the trees.'

  'Who? Who?' they all cried.

  She turned to Tish.

  'You should have more faith in your brother, Tish! It wasn't your brother at all. It was Cliff's.'

  The same afternoon, searching for her tennis ball round the back of Norris House, Rebecca glanced through a window and espied Tish and Roberta with their heads together at the work table in Roberta's room.

  'I was just helping her a bit!' said Tish defensively, when Rebecca mentioned it later. 'She's not that bad. She's decided to give up the idea of the top papers now. But there's no reason why she shouldn't get a C if she keeps her head and learns a few theorems properly. She's going to ask if she can go back down to Div 3. She's already phoned her father and told him.'

  'Poor Mr Jones must he getting a bit confused,' smiled Rebecca, thinking how much she liked the Anderson family.

  THIRTEEN

  SHADOWS LIFTED

  The ghosts had been laid: the shadows lifted. Thereafter life on the top floor of Court House continued as sweet and sunlit and unghostly as Rebecca had always imagined it would be. The nocturnal visitor which had been driven by hunger into Trebizon school's heartland and then found food so thoughtfully put out at nights, ceased to visit once the supplies dried up. But somebody actually saw the semi-wild cat one day in broad daylight, on the far side of the parkland where the deer grazed, with a small rabbit in its mouth.

  The Fifth Years all handed in their maths coursework, 'the extended set task', on time and over the next fortnight the work was duly marked and each girl tested orally by a member of Trebizon's maths staff.

  When the grades were announced, Roberta had managed to scrape a creditable C, without cheating this time. Mara got a B and so did Rebecca – she narrowly missed getting an A! Debbie Rickard on the other hand, who'd been expected to get an A, had to be given a B – and Miss Gates summonsed her parents to school for the inevitable showdown.

  'We're all very concerned,' the senior mistress told them. 'You're giving Deborah far too much help with her GCSE coursework. Several members of staff have detected it. You're not doing her any favours as must be obvious from her grades this term. She's a capable girl – clever, in fact. You should have more faith in your daughter.'

  Mr and Mrs Rickard looked chastened. Painfully they'd been coming to certain conclusions themselves, prompted by quarrels at home which usually ended with Debbie flouncing upstairs and slamming her bedroom door.

  'We feel we've made a mistake,' said Debbie's father.

  'She's not happy as a day girl. She seems to be missing her friends,' explained her mother. 'We feel that may be why her work's gone downhill. Nothing to do with us, of course,' she added hastily. 'Would it be possible for her t
o start boarding again next term?'

  'Yes, why not?' replied Miss Gates, in relief.

  And decided to leave it at that.

  Robbie Anderson's work wasn't going downhill, far from it. After he'd written his Oxford entrance-exam papers at Garth College, he telephoned Rebecca in a state of euphoria.

  'I know I've done brilliantly in the maths papers – and OK in the physics as well!' he exclaimed. 'All the things I've worked on came up and I've checked some of the tough ones with my tutors and apparently I got them right!'

  'Oh Robbie, that's wonderful,' said Rebecca, admiringly. 'And what about the General Paper?'

  'Oh, I fudged some essays together for that all right,' he said, still sounding carefree.

  'What happens next?'

  'Well, assuming I've passed and I'm sure I have, I'll go up to Oxford in two weeks' time and stay at the college and have interviews! That's the final hurdle – the interviews.'

  Rebecca smiled. It was nice to hear Robbie sounding so confident.

  To her distinct satisfaction, she was forging ahead on all fronts with her own school work. She'd now decided to set her sights on getting all A and B grades in GCSE next summer! If she could achieve that, then even more good would have come of the stupid car accident than she'd vowed at the time! That would please Dad, wouldn't it?

  Her wrist and arm were almost better. Very soon now she'd be playing tennis again. Both Joss Vining and Alison Hissup, who was this year's Head of Games, had promised her singles. And with luck she'd fit in a training session with the county squad at Exonford before the end of term.

  In the meantime, it had been surprisingly pleasant to find herself getting good at table tennis – though not as good as Elf or Margot – and finding time to go to cookery club and even fit in some dancing classes. And she was doing brilliantly at Latin. Mr Pargiter was giving her bits of Tacitus to translate to 'stretch' her (it was really Sixth Form work) and that passage of Nero and Agrippina had been pounced on by Suky Morris for the Trebizon Journal! A really good translation, she'd said, it could go on the new 'merit' pages.

  It was Justin Thomas who struck a slightly sour note about Robbie's Oxford hopes. Both boys were called up for interviews at their respective colleges. They returned to the west country on the Friday and Rebecca and Sue met them in Fenners on the Saturday afternoon.

  Justin was his usual quiet self but Robbie was in a state of great excitement, full of the trip to Oxford, the ancient college he'd stayed at and everything that had taken place there. As Rebecca poured out tea for the four of them, he talked non-stop.

  'The philosophy interview was weird!' he announced with a grin. 'Some really odd questions. Listen to this one. A man went into the desert and he had two enemies. One filled his water bottle with poison and the other shot a hole in it, so that it ran out. He died of thirst, so which one killed him?'

  Rebecca and Sue discussed this problem with great animation.

  'Well, in a way neither of them killed him because he died of thirst – he died of natural causes.'

  'No, that can't be right, Sue, because if there'd been water in his bottle he wouldn't have died. So the one who put the poison in . . .'

  'No, the one who shot the hole in the bottle. He thought there was water in it and so it was he who performed the final, murderous act –'

  'No, he didn't! You could argue that he saved the man's life. If he hadn't shot a hole in that water bottle, the man would have drunk the poison . . .'

  'But the man died anyway.'

  And so on. For several minutes.

  Robbie and Justin listened to the girls in amusement. Finally, when the discussion petered out, Justy turned to Robbie and said:

  'Well, did you say all that at the interview?'

  'No fear,' said Robbie. 'I just said the question was unanswerable.'

  'But didn't you philosophize about it a bit?' asked Justy.

  'Nope,' said Robbie, stabbing a cream cake with a fork. He exuded confidence. 'I prefer questions that have a cut and dried answer. I got on really well with the economics don!'

  Justy looked nonplussed and Rebecca noted that a slight furrow crossed his brow.

  'Hope you've chosen the right course, Rob,' he muttered under his breath. But Robbie had already changed the subject and was asking Rebecca about her tennis. How had her games of singles gone?

  It was December now but the days were still mild. Rebecca's injury had been pronounced completely cured at last. While Robbie had been up in Oxford, she'd played her first hard tennis again. Proper singles matches, first against Joss and then against Alison. She'd been soundly beaten in both cases, which was rather alarming.

  'But only to he expected,' she explained ruefully. 'I'm so rusty! I'm going to Exonford tomorrow – county squad training. Mrs Ericson says I'm certain to be badly in need of it!'

  Robbie was crestfallen at her news.

  'Don't worry, Robbie!' Rebecca exclaimed. She looked very determined. 'I'll come back!'

  By the last week of term, the Oxford results were coming in. On the Monday morning, Miss Welbeck announced in assembly that both Suky Morris and Sujata Seal had been offered places. More girls had applied to Cambridge this year – their results would come later.

  Justin Thomas had got into Oxford! His college admissions tutor had telephoned the school. Three or four other boys had been phoned as well.

  'Has Robbie had any news?' asked Rebecca anxiously.

  'Not yet,' replied Sue. 'I expect he'll hear soon!'

  But by Wednesday night, Robbie still hadn't heard anything.

  'I don't think I've got in, Rebeck,' he said to her on the phone. She'd never heard him so subdued. 'That's what it looks like.'

  'Oh, Robbie, surely not.'

  'They ring, if they want you! They ring pretty quickly. That's what I've heard, anyway. It's looking bad, isn't it? I can't stand the suspense any longer. I'm going to go and see Doctor Simpson in the morning and ask him if he can ring them up! Find out what's happening!'

  'Surely it'll be all right, Robbie,' said Rebecca, feeling upset.

  But it wasn't all right.

  He came to see her after school on Thursday, bringing her Christmas present. All the others had gone carol singing, but Rebecca had stayed back to see Robbie. They sat outside together, half-way down the fire escape. Robbie was fighting back the tears.

  In spite of alphas for his maths and physics papers, he'd failed the General Paper. Following his interviews, the college had decided with great regret that in view of the stiff competition for places on the PPE course, they couldn't offer him one. A letter was in the post.

  'Poor Robbie!' said Rebecca, in dismay. 'After all your hard work. It's not fair!'

  They sat there for a while and then Robbie said:

  'It was perfectly fair. I wasn't interested in politics and philosophy and they saw it straight away. I didn't know what course I wanted to do when I filled up the form – I still don't. I just made something up.'

  Like Roberta! thought Rebecca.

  They walked across to main school together, along the lamplit footpaths. Rebecca badly needed to spend some time in the library if she were to finish her history coursework before they broke up next day for Christmas.

  Outside the eighteenth-century building they stood in a pool of light cast by the great windows of the old library. The figure of Suky Morris drifted past, inside, a pile of books in her arms.

  Robbie stood and gazed at Rebecca, gently lifting her left arm and then letting it drop again. 'Is it really better?' he asked.

  'Yes.'

  'Dull, but useful,' mused Robbie.

  'What is? Who is?'

  'Doctors.'

  Rebecca smiled in surprise, flexed her muscles and clenched her fist in the air. 'Look! Stronger than the other one now!'

  'What a term! The way that deer just appeared from nowhere!' sighed Robbie. 'The whole thing shook you up quite badly, didn't it? Imagining ghosts, even. That's not like you to be nervous,
Rebeck!' He knew all about it now. 'And I blame myself, whatever you say about the seat belt. I was bowling along too fast, wasn't I? Come on, admit it.'

  Rebecca gazed at him. There was a moist patch on one of his cheeks.

  'Maybe,' she said. 'Maybe a teeny bit fast.'

  She dried his moist cheek with a clean handkerchief and kissed it dry as well.

  'Except it doesn't matter any more, Robbie.'

  It was lovely to be able to say that – and mean it. The last shadow had been lifted.

  School broke up and Rebecca sat back in the long distance coach to her grandmother's, feeling luxurious, going through the little presents from her friends and all her Christmas cards.

  There were some extra ones this year. A really nice card from Roberta Jones – and one with a kitten peering out of a Christmas stocking from Lizzy Douglas. Her last glimpse of Lizzy was of her outside Norris with Moggy in her arms. She'd be spending three whole weeks with her parents now, and be able to feed and cuddle her pet to her heart's content. There's no day without night, thought Rebecca. No happiness without suffering!

  Cliff had sent her a scarf. It was such fun to have met up with Cliff Haynes again! Robbie had smiled at her and said: 'I'm not going to ask you not to see Cliff next term, though I'd like to.' And she'd replied firmly: 'Well, that's just as well then, isn't it?'

  Mr Pargiter had given her a Christmas card: all the members of the Latin group had got one. It was a small group and they'd had a lot of fun with Pargie, as they called him. But Rebecca's card included congratulations (in Latin of course!) for what he described as remarkable progress this term.

  Staring at it, she was reminded that her school report would soon be on its way to her parents. What would it say? And come to think of it, what did her last report say, the one that Mum and Dad were so secretive about? When were they going to tell her what was in it? The letters had been coming steadily from Saudi Arabia this term, but still no mention of that.

  Robbie's Christmas present was a box of best, top quality tennis balls. He'd scribbled in felt tip on the outside of the box: Rebecca Mason will be back!

  And you'll be back, too, Robbie, thought Rebecca, a lump coming to her throat as she looked at the message. That's what his headmaster Doctor Simpson had told him. He'd made a bad blunder and chosen the wrong course, against the school's advice, too. They must wait and see exactly what the letter from Oxford had to say. But he'd be back. Once he'd sorted himself out.