by Anne Digby
Then, in the sixth game, came the most punishing rally of all. It was at game point for Rebecca. Backwards and forwards went the ball. Each time Rebecca got one of Eddie’s stolidly walloped shots back, she would see it returned to the opposite side of the court and would have to race to retrieve it, white tennis shoes slithering through the red dust.
Finally on the twentieth stroke, Eddie relaxed – certain that she’d hit a winner: a cunning lob that sailed right over Rebecca’s head and threw up a cloud of chalk on the baseline. Yet somehow Rebecca got there, tipped her racket to it in mid-sprint – sending it skimming back across the net out of Eddie’s reach – before cannoning with some force into the wire netting at the back of the court.
Rebecca clung on to the wire netting, eyes closed, as she heard clapping and rapturous squeals from some of the juniors, somewhere behind her. She’d levelled 3–3! More than that. She was convinced, from the glimpse of despair she’d seen on Eddie’s face just then, that her opponent would be the first to crack.
Gasping for breath, she opened her eyes and found herself staring straight into a familiar face. Pippa was right there, just on the other side of the wire netting.
‘Played, Rebecca!’ she whispered. ‘For heaven’s sake stop playing her game now and start playing your own.’
Rebecca was overjoyed. Pippa wanted her to win! She turned and ran and scooped up some balls to serve. In her mind she could hear Robbie at the end of the phone – She’s a defensive player – attack her, attack her!
She threw a ball up, straight and high. Was it really only last summer that Pippa had first taught her how to do that? She turned her shoulders and racket head down into the ball . . .
Eddie just watched it spurt away through a cloud of chalk. An ace!
Rebecca had the killer instinct now. She won the game to love, then broke Eddie’s service in the next game. She went on to hold her own service – with a series of lightning volleys up at the net – and the set was hers, 6–3.
‘We’ll leave it there,’ Miss Darling said crisply. The girls had come up to the umpire’s chair for a drink, preparing to change ends and start a second set. ‘This sun is quite freakish. I think you’ve both done enough.’
The juniors came thronging round the gate.
‘Shoo!’ said Miss Darling. ‘Off you go. Game’s over.’
‘Who’s going in the team?’ demanded Lucy Hubbard.
‘Tell us.’
‘Rebecca Mason. Now run away all of you. Go and have a swim.’
A swim! It was odd. That was all Rebecca could think about – getting cool.
‘Congratulations,’ said Edwina Burton, holding out a hand, stiffly.
‘Thanks,’ said Rebecca. It hadn’t quite got through to her yet.
‘You’ll go in at third pair with Pippa Fellowes-Walker,’ Miss Darling told Rebecca. ‘Team practice six o’clock this evening. First cup match on Wednesday. Go off and enjoy the rest of the afternoon now.’ For a moment it looked as though Miss Darling were going to smile! ‘Well played, Rebecca.’
Rebecca walked off across the grass, in a daze. She looked round for Pippa, but there was no sign of her. As she drew close to the cedar tree she saw Pippa’s easel beyond. She’d be back at any moment, surely. Rebecca wanted to tell her –
Suddenly she was out of the blistering sun and in deepest shade. Only then did Rebecca realise how hot she was – how hot and triumphantly exhausted!
She threw herself down under the cedar tree, turned on to her back, and placed her hands under her head . . . gazing up into the cool, green darkness above her. Oh, it was so beautiful! The sweeping branches gave such a dense shade, it made her feel as though she were already swimming in the sea.
‘I’m in the team!’ Rebecca told herself, out loud. It was only just beginning to dawn on her. ‘I’m in the team!’
It was a moment of ecstasy.
She closed her eyes, opened them, closed them again. She was longing to see the others and tell them the news. Yet, somehow, she couldn’t move a muscle. It was a reaction. Not to the physical effort, that wasn’t so bad; but to the emotional strain of it all.
After the longest fortnight of her life, the suspense was over.
FOUR
A Perfect Term
The suspense was over! As Rebecca’s mind uncoiled and luxuriated in the thought she opened her eyes again and stared up into the depths of the tree, letting the branches and the dark foliage swim in and out of focus. A little breeze came whispering down, brushing her cheeks. She could hear birds twittering and rustling up there somewhere.
Cool and green, dark and green, to lie below and feel serene . . .
Suddenly, inconsequentially, a poem started to form in her mind. She lay there, building it up, line by line. It was all about the old cedar tree and how generations of girls had lazed beneath it, on hot summer days . . . how they came and went . . . but the tree went on forever.
At last, she stirred.
‘Don’t move, Rebecca!’ called a voice. ‘Just two more minutes.’
Rebecca froze. That was Pippa’s voice! Pippa was back at her easel, painting . . .
‘Okay now. Come and see what you think.’
Rebecca got up slowly, picked up her tennis racket, and then walked out into the light, blinking. She went and joined Pippa, whose hair looked more golden than usual in the sun’s rays. She found herself staring at the finished canvas.
The dark tree – the sunlight – the warm glow of school buildings beyond – everything was there. And something had been added. A tiny figure in white reclining under the tree in an attitude of joy, ecstasy even, her racket lying in the grass beside her. Here the paint was new and glistening.
‘It’s me!’ exclaimed Rebecca.
‘Like it?’ asked Pippa happily.
‘Yes,’ said Rebecca, overwhelmed to see herself in the picture.
‘I just knew there was something missing!’ nodded Pippa. She stood up and took a few paces back, well pleased. ‘It needed a figure in it . . . a mood . . . something elusive . . . and then you gave me the answer, Rebecca. Just like that!’
‘It – it’s a beautiful painting,’ said Rebecca, quite overawed. ‘It’ll make a most stunning cover for the magazine this term.’
‘It sums it up for me now,’ said Pippa. ‘I don’t think it’s great art or anything, but I hope it’ll mean something to other people too. Those who’ve left, I mean, who get the magazine. I think – I hope – it sums up what a happy place Trebizon is. Somehow this . . .’
Her voice began to trail away.
‘. . . the cedar tree . . . the sunshine . . . the tennis term . . . this is how I’ll always remember Trebizon. When I’ve gone.’
There was a long silence.
‘And you got in the team?’ Pippa said at last. ‘As if I need ask!’
Rebecca smiled.
‘I missed the last bit. Annie wanted me. But I could see you were in! We’ll have to get used to playing together, Rebecca. That will be interesting.’ She smiled at her. ‘You’ll be the baby of the team, won’t you!’
‘There’s a team practice after tea!’ Rebecca said.
Then she continued to stare at the picture.
‘I made up a poem just then,’ she volunteered. ‘About the tree.’
‘Write it then!’ said Pippa, lightly. ‘You never know . . . let’s see, I haven’t had Third Year’s in, have I?’
‘Helena keeps reminding us but she hasn’t given us a deadline yet,’ said Rebecca. ‘Not as far as I know!’
‘She’d better get a move on!’ observed Pippa. ‘We go to press soon.’
That galvanised Rebecca. She’d forgo the swim! She’d make do with a shower.
‘I think I’ll go and write it now – before I forget it!’
She sprinted off across the grass, making for the track by the rhododendrons that led through to Court House. Pippa smiled again and packed up her easel and stool, every so often glancing at her finished canva
s.
It was good to have it done and know that it was right at last!
This term, surely, was going to turn out to be everything she hoped for – a perfect term!
It was going to be a perfect term! Those were exactly Rebecca’s sentiments, too, when she went to bed that Sunday evening, exhausted and happy.
She’d scrawled out her poem in rough and finished it just as Tish and the others came rushing into Court House, dripping wet and still in swimsuits, to find her. They’d heard the news from some juniors on the beach.
‘Rebeck!’
‘What are you doing hiding up here?’
‘Whoopieeee!’
‘Let’s phone Robbie –’
‘Let’s have a party tonight!’
After that it had been non-stop activity. Phone calls to Syon, the boys’ boarding house at Garth College. They’d meet them at Fenners for a celebration later on . . . Curly and Chris and Mike and Sue’s brothers David and Edward – and maybe Robbie as well.
Their high spirits overflowed into the big school dining hall at tea time so that three times the duty mistress, Miss Heath, had to tell them all to be quiet. Then they rushed over to south courts to watch Rebecca take part in team practice – even though it only turned out to be some coaching with Miss Darling.
Then – great excitement – Pippa let them all see her painting, over at Parkinson House. It was laid out on a big table ready for a meeting of The Journal editorial committee that night. Rebecca had told them all about it.
The evening consisted of cycling down town to Fenners to meet the boys and laughing and talking and drinking coffee and eating cream cakes – then the whole gang of them came cycling back to Court House to ask Mrs Barrington if they could play some records in the Common Room. A noisy party in the house across the street from Fenners had put them in the mood.
‘Certainly not! It’s about time you girls got some sleep. You’ve been rushing around like giddy goats.’
She shook a finger at the boys, as they crowded round the porch.
‘Shooo!’
Margaret Exton looked down over the banisters as Rebecca and her friends tumbled into the main hall, yelling and laughing and shoving one another.
‘You’d think nobody ever got into a team before,’ she said to Alison Hissup, who’d taken her own selection very calmly.
‘They’re in the most stupid mood I’ve ever seen them in, and that’s saying something.’
‘Well, as long as they don’t try and climb the clock tower or something,’ yawned Alison. ‘Is that the phone ringing?’
It was for Rebecca.
‘Robbie!’ she squealed.
‘Oh, spare us!’ sniffed Margaret, turning to continue her way upstairs.
But that call made Rebecca’s day complete.
‘Sorry I couldn’t get to Fenners,’ said Robbie. He was working hard now for his GCSEs. ‘Clever girl. I’d have given you a big kiss!’
‘Thanks for all you did to help me, Robbie,’ said Rebecca.
‘Rebecca!’ said Mrs Barrington sternly, looking into the hall.
‘Goodnight, Robbie,’ she said hastily. ‘Got to go now!’
Yes, it was going to be a perfect term!
But at midnight that night, the trouble started.
FIVE
Roll Call in the Middle of the Night
‘Whassat?’ asked Sue sleepily. It seemed like the middle of the night and she could hear someone moving around in the room.
‘It’s only me,’ whispered Rebecca. ‘Just going to get a drink of water.’
She felt her way out, past the beds, opened the door and crept into the narrow corridor on the ground floor, where all the Third Year rooms in Court House were located. There was a dim light burning and she tiptoed along to the kitchen. What was the time? It must be at least midnight by now.
The trouble was she couldn’t get to sleep. Too much excitement!
They’d carried on whispering and laughing and running in and out of each other’s rooms after lights out. When Rebecca had finally tumbled into bed she’d found it felt really peculiar. She’d tossed and turned and tried to get some sleep – only to discover that Tish and Aba had collected up some tennis rackets and put them in layers between her blankets!
That had created more hilarity and it had taken the appearance of Mrs Barrington to put a stop to it all.
‘If there’s one more sound from this corridor, you’ll all have a detention tomorrow!’ she’d said wearily.
They’d all gone to sleep after that – except Rebecca. She was too elated!
She kept dozing and then waking up again, with a start, remembering that she was in the tennis team! She would re-live the match she’d played against Eddie Burton, especially that long rally, stroke by stroke . . . and remember the way Pippa had painted her into the picture, afterwards.
The lines of the poem kept going through her mind, too, and she wondered if she’d get it accepted for the magazine. Then she started thinking about their first cup match, on Wednesday. It was against Caxton High. They weren’t bad! They played tennis all the year round there . . .
She must get to sleep! Perhaps a drink of water would help.
In the kitchen, she turned on the light and looked for a cup.
Eerily, in the silence of the night, she heard the distant sound of a telephone ringing in the other part of the house where the Barringtons lived. Then it stopped.
She turned on the tap, rinsed the cup out, then filled it to the brim and drank it down. Her throat had been quite dry. It must have been all the laughing and running about, much earlier. Feeling better, she washed and dried the cup, put it away and came out of the kitchen, switching the light off behind her. As she stepped back into the gloom of the corridor a shocked voice came from the darkness.
‘Rebecca!’
It was Mrs Barrington, in her dressing gown, hurrying through the private door from her own wing of the house. Her face was white!
She came straight up to Rebecca and put an arm round her shoulders.
‘You silly, silly girl!’ she exclaimed, keeping her voice low. ‘What’s all this about running away? Miss Welbeck’s coming right over. Whatever’s the matter?’
‘Running away?’ gasped Rebecca. Her mouth fell open. Running away!
‘Wasn’t that you, then?’
‘What, Mrs Barry? Me, what?’
The House Mistress was staring at the phone in the main hall, just a few feet away. She pointed to it.
‘Who phoned Miss Welbeck then? Someone’s just rung her from here. She’s getting her car and coming over right away – she’ll be here in a minute.’
‘What on earth did they say?’ exclaimed Rebecca.
‘Just –’ Mrs Barrington frowned, adjusting her mind to the idea that it hadn’t been Rebecca. ‘Just that they hated Court House and would be gone by the morning! It – it wasn’t you, then?’
‘No!’
‘But you’re up! You must have seen somebody? Maybe it was you who disturbed them – they rang off in a hurry, it seems.’
Rebecca started to shake her head, baffled, when they heard the sound of a car outside and the glass panel of the front door was briefly illuminated by brilliant headlights. ‘The Principal!’ exclaimed Mrs Barrington.
She put the main lights on in the hall and hurried to let her in.
Miss Welbeck strode in, wearing an old fur coat and a headscarf, bringing some of the cool night air in with her. She looked tense.
‘Rebecca –?’ she began.
‘It wasn’t Rebecca and she didn’t see anybody,’ said the House Mistress quickly.
‘Then the girl’s already gone!’ rapped Miss Welbeck.
She glanced up the staircase.
‘Get everybody out of bed, Joan,’ she said, decisively. ‘There’s nothing else for it. You’d better get everyone up and take a roll call. If a girl’s run away the first thing we have to know is who it is.’
Rebecca just blinked. Eve
ry moment that passed, this began to seem more and more like a dream.
It was chaotic!
Mrs Barrington sounded the rising bell in the middle of the night.
Girls started to emerge pyjama-ed and dressing-gowned in all stages of sleep, blinking and yawning and protesting as lights went on and they were herded out of their rooms, along corridors and down stairs, until they were all together in one large herd in the big Common Room.
‘Right, this won’t take long,’ said Miss Welbeck crisply. She nodded at Mrs Barrington, who had the full house list in her hand.
‘Aba Amori –’
‘Present!’
‘Ishbel Anderson –’
‘Present!’ said Tish, trying not to giggle with nerves.
‘Jane Bowen –’
‘Present!’
The House Mistress ticked the names off one by one.
‘Amanda Hancock –’
‘Present!’
‘Alison Hissup –’
‘Present!’
‘Elizabeth Kendall –’
On she went, working her way down the list. It was unreal, like a fantasy, thought Rebecca. Some tendrils of ivy tapped against the big bay windows of the Common Room and an owl hooted somewhere in the blackness.
A roll call in the middle of the night!
‘Virginia Slade –’
‘Present!’
‘And Sarah Turner –’
‘Present!’
So that was that. Thirty-six girls – all present and correct!
Mrs Barrington and the Principal exchanged looks.
‘Thank you, girls,’ said Miss Welbeck. ‘You may all return to your beds when I say. But somebody spoke to me on the phone a few minutes ago and said she was running away. I must know who it was. Would the girl step forward, please?’
Nobody moved.