Francie: Off to London

by Emily Hahn

  “What’s guiding?” asked Francie.

  “My dear Nelson, what an ignorant barbarian you are!” said Wendy. “Guiding is working with the Girl Guides, of course, as group leader. Jennifer has a group of Guides in her village at home, and takes no end of trouble organizing them and looking after the Brownies—that’s the baby ones—at their summer camp, and taking on all sorts of dreary jobs such as that. Do you mean to tell me there are no Girl Guides in America?”

  “We call them Girl Scouts,” said Francie. “I was a Brownie myself once, years ago.”

  “To give Jennifer her due,” Wendy went on, “she’s a really good influence on these horrid children, usually. Of course she oughtn’t head them off our play, but … Being a prefect isn’t my cup of tea, admittedly. I am one, but I don’t enjoy it. Since we have to have prefects, it’s just as well we’ve got a few Jennifers among us to do the job properly! Heaven help us, Francie, if the world’s work had to be done by people like you and me!”

  Everyone laughed, and Francie was left with something new to think about. She was impressed with the general fair-mindedness of her friends, which Wendy’s opinion summed up. They didn’t like a lot of things about Jennifer, but they gave her credit for the qualities they knew she possessed.

  “Now if it were just me,” Francie reflected, “I would decide to hate Jennifer through and through, forever. In fact, that’s what I’ve already done. They don’t go to extremes the way I do. That’s a good thing.” Besides, they took very seriously the quality of leadership. She could see that. Jennifer had a following among the younger fry, Jennifer was a good leader, and they cheerfully admitted it and respected her accordingly.

  Francie could not quite scoff at the prefect system as she would have done when she first arrived. It had one advantage; it made the girls independent in many ways of their mistresses. They were not watched all the time, as she had expected they would be. They were free to set up their own world, within larger limits … After all, Fair-fields was not a kindergarten, and it wasn’t run like one. Mrs. Tennison, she recalled, had been far worse in her strictures than Miss Maitland was.

  Aunt Lolly went off to Ireland, and Pop, too, suddenly departed, not for Ireland but the Near East. He wrote Francie a hastily dictated letter before he left, explaining that an emergency called him away but that if all was well he’d be back within the month. She ought to have felt forlorn and deserted under these circumstances, but life at school absorbed most of her thoughts and the world outside didn’t seem to matter as much as it had before.

  “After all, we’re practically isolated for the whole term, until the end of July,” as she said to Penelope, “so what’s the difference where my people are?”

  The fine weather deserted them for a fortnight and then came back. Trees put out buds and the early primroses and daffodils died off, giving way to a riot of flowers sweeter and more varied than Francie had ever seen in Jefferson. Then lilacs bloomed. The whole countryside was enchanting. If Glenn didn’t arrive soon, Francie thought, he’d miss the best of it, but Penny laughed at her fears and said there would be flowers well on into August.

  “You needn’t be afraid everything will be burnt up by midsummer,” she said. “This is chilly England. It almost never gets very hot here, you know.”

  “I’ve had to rearrange all my ideas of the seasons,” confessed Francie. “You know, I used to think the poets were simply sappy when they talked so much about spring. Spring in Jefferson isn’t so much, to tell you the truth—here today and gone tomorrow. My favorite season’s always been the fall. Now, after seeing what spring can be like in England, I’m beginning to understand the poets. The lambs and the rabbits and the fruit blossoms—oh, it’s marvelous! And some new delicious smell practically every day. Except, of course, when they put bone fertilizer on the field,” she added as an afterthought.

  “You had better get over any ultra-dainty ideas like that,” said Penny warningly, “before our cycling picnic. No one can guarantee that we won’t go near bone fertilizer somewhere on the way. This is farming country, after all.”

  One of the weekend outings that the girls most looked forward to, as Francie had discovered, was the cycling picnic that the school took every summer when weather permitted. Now that the vexatious affair of her bicycle had been settled she felt inclined to share in the common excitement, but a few months before she would have hesitated to go out with the others.

  The trouble had been typical of all her troubles at Fairfields. It began when Pop discovered that his daughter needed a bicycle at school. He had overlooked this requirement during the busy, hurried shopping days before she left London, and when he was reminded, a fortnight after Francie went to Fairfields, he hurried out remorsefully and bought one, and shipped it down to her immediately. Pop was an impulsive shopper. The task of buying most things bored him, as it does many another busy man; he would not look around before choosing; he was apt to order the most expensive article he could find, and assume that he was thus sure of getting the best.

  There was no argument at school about the superiority of Francie’s bicycle, as a matter of fact. One could see it at a glance. The difficulty lay in the fact that it was not the thing in Francie’s circles to own a new bicycle. Girls at Fairfields School prided themselves rather on their shabby, beat-up machines; the worse-looking they were, the better. Wendy Hardcastle was admired and envied because hers had belonged to two elder sisters in turn before her advent at Fairfields. Thus poor Francie’s magnificent chromium-glittering bicycle made her the butt of many merciless taunts, especially, of course, from Jennifer Tennison.

  It was no use rebuking Pop for having been kind. There had been only one thing for Francie to do, in order to escape the annoyance of jeers whenever she went out on her bike. She set earnestly to work to rub off the pristine shine. Whenever she had a moment’s privacy near the bicycle shed she sandpapered the enamel, hammered at the handle bars, scratched the leather saddle and even managed one whole weekend to leave the bike out in the bushes behind the school, where it was rained on for several hours. After that she did not feel conspicuous any more, and the girls let her alone on that topic. Even Jennifer forgot the original offense.

  “Do you think the rain will hold off?” Francie asked now.

  Penny said, “According to the BBC weather report it’s going to be fine. In spite of that, though, it may not rain. In fact I’m sure it will be fine.”

  Together they solemnly inspected the sky. It looked hopeful; there were only a few harmless-looking cottony clouds in it. Satisfied, they started down to collect their machines and join the others.

  “Only I do wish it wasn’t Cressy in charge of our group,” said Francie as they went.

  “Why? Old Cressy’s not a bad sort. I didn’t know you didn’t like her.”

  “I do like her all right, but some of the kids who have a pash always try to ride next to her when we’re out on our wheels, and with so many of us today, we’re apt to bunch a bit at the curves in the road.”

  “Ah yes,” said Penny equably, “but they’re not really silly with their pashes. Anyway it’s not our affair to keep the crowd in order. It’s up to the prefects to make us string out in proper formation on the high road.”

  “Thank goodness! I don’t envy Tennison and Hardcastle that job today,” said Francie.

  The fourteen who made up their group set out at about eleven o’clock, all in order, with a picnic lunch divided into parcels which they carried in their handle-bar baskets. Each group was permitted to take its own way to the meeting ground where they were to lunch. Miss Cressall had already planned their route, which she knew from former years, with a careful eye on the necessity of avoiding much-frequented roads, and yet with the idea of taking a pretty, roundabout journey. Cycling in England, Francie had learned, was a common but dangerous form of exercise. No matter how careful their riders might be, bicycles were bound to wobble sometimes, and make little unexpected dashes toward the middle of th
e road. This wouldn’t matter if all English roads were straight, but that was just what they were not; they curved and wandered between high banks or thick hedges. Constant watchfulness was necessary when the girls rode out for their picnic. Jennifer and Wendy did a sort of patrol duty along the fringes of the procession, except when the way led along a safe meadow path or through a wood.

  They had been out for half an hour and were just coming out of such a comparative sanctuary onto a wide road which seemed deserted. Miss Cressall at the head held out her arm to indicate that they were supposed to turn sharp left. Then she blew her whistle sharply, and Francie, halfway back in the line, saw the reason. A big delivery truck—what the British call a van—came bowling around the corner which would have been ahead of them if they had all been riding on the road. Fortunately they were still in the pathway. It was just at the moment when most of the girls stopped pedaling and were stepping down to wait for further orders.

  The van’s driver had underestimated his speed. Like many people going around a corner he went wide, and drove over to the wrong side of the road before recovering. On a quiet highway such as this, he probably reasoned, it couldn’t make much difference. Nor would it have mattered, except that Jane Mackay wasn’t paying attention.

  Jane was one of the younger girls and she had a notorious “pash” on Cressy. She was always hanging about the games mistress, working hard to play well on the team so that she would get a word of commendation. Today ever since the start of the expedition she had been riding her bicycle as close to the leader as possible, taking advantage of every opportunity to speak to her.

  Like a sensible woman, Miss Cressall never took notice of Jane’s fondness, though it must sometimes have bored her. Perhaps she felt that as long as Jane worked the harder because of it, it was as well left alone. Jane’s contemporaries sometimes teased her, but Francie had long ago noticed that at Fairfields these emotional phases were usually ignored or taken for granted, which was after all the least painful way of dealing with them, especially as they never seemed to persist beyond a term’s duration anyway.

  Just before the wheeled cavalcade came to a halt, Jane had managed to think of another excuse to speak to Cressy. She turned her bicycle’s front wheel out of line and speeded up, an easy task on the broad smooth pathway. Full of her own intentions she failed to see Cressy’s commanding signal to pause, and for some reason ignored the whistle. When the others stopped, just as the van rocketed along toward them, Jane’s bike went ahead full speed onto the road.

  “Careful, Jane!” cried Miss Cressall, but it was too late to stop the girl.

  With the quick eye and immediate reaction which the games mistress had developed during years of hockey and netball, she rode out between Jane and the oncoming menace. As if she were playing polo she “rode off” the other bicycle, forcing it into the shallow ditch that bordered the road. At the next moment she threw herself off her bicycle and as it clattered down, crushed beneath the van, she hurled herself across the ditch onto the grass beyond. A fencepost stopped her flight in midair. Miss Cressall fell to the ground and lay motionless.

  For a moment there was wild confusion. The van came screeching to a stop some rods beyond them, and the driver climbed out and hurried back, looking angry. In the meantime the girls had crowded around Jane and the unconscious games mistress, all talking at once.

  Jane struggled slowly to her feet, white and shaken. Her knees were grazed and bleeding; so was her cheek. Her particular friends seized on her and examined these wounds, but the others were all concentrated on Cressy, who didn’t move. Shrill excited chatter filled the air.

  “Don’t you know better.…” the van driver was demanding in rough tones above the rest of the noise.

  Francie, appalled, lingered outside the group, unwilling to add to the confusion though she longed to help. The younger girls, she could see, were utterly disorganized, and she didn’t know what she should do about it. It was with relief that she saw Jennifer pushing her way into the middle of the crowd and heard her shouting, “Quiet, everybody!”

  As usual, Jennifer’s personality had an immediate effect on the smaller girls. Slowly the hubbub subsided.

  “Move away from here,” went on Jennifer. “Wendy, you see that they all stand back, will you? We must have room; Cressy won’t be able to breathe.”

  The girls slowly shuffled apart until the games mistress lay completely exposed to Francie’s view. Her face was half-turned toward the ground; her eyes were closed. She looked pale, but was breathing quite loudly. Jennifer knelt down and examined her in an efficient manner, not moving her more than to lift one arm.

  “Here, miss,” said the van driver more politely since his first excitement had ebbed, “let me give you a hand.”

  “What for?” asked Jennifer absently, her eyes bent to Cressy’s face.

  “We’d best put her into the van and get her to the hospital, hadn’t we?”

  “No,” said Jennifer. “She mustn’t be moved.”

  “Oh yes, miss,” he said in shocked tones. “We ought to get her to hospital.”

  “No,” said Jennifer, shaking her head. She stood up and looked over the crowd of frightened girls, and Francie, like the others, felt herself depending on this very young woman who seemed to know exactly what to do. Unwillingly, even now, the American girl felt admiration stir in her mind.

  “One of you had better go with the van to telephone the nearest hospital and ask them to send a doctor,” Jennifer said. “Who’s got enough sense among you? Here, Penny, you go. Ask Enquiries what the nearest hospital is and get on to them. Tell them we haven’t moved her for fear it’s concussion; that she’s breathing all right and as far as I can see there are no external injuries. Tell them her head hit the fencepost. It was an awful crack,” she added, lapsing suddenly into her ordinary schoolgirl’s voice. “I heard it; didn’t you?”

  There was a murmur of agreement. The van driver and Penny went off, and Jennifer said briskly, “Which of you was carrying the bottle of hot tea? Hand it over; we must put that at her feet.”

  “Shouldn’t we make her a pillow out of a coat or something, Jennifer?” asked one girl. Jennifer said, “Definitely not. They taught us in First Aid never to move the patient’s head unless it was absolutely necessary. We mustn’t move her at all. But I nearly forgot one thing; we ought to keep her as warm as possible. Everybody give me your blazers.”

  In a moment Miss Cressall was warmly covered with blazers and sweaters. And that was all they could do, said Jennifer, until somebody older and wiser arrived to take charge. Now she turned her attention to the unfortunate Jane, and with Francie’s help bound up her wounds.

  “I thought you were afraid of blood,” said Jennifer to Francie as they worked.

  “I forgot all about that,” admitted Francie. They were interrupted by a strangled sob from Jane.

  “Do shut up, Jane,” said Jennifer, wrapping a rather grubby handkerchief around the child’s leg. “Whatever’s the use of howling?”

  “It was all my fault!” blubbered Jane.

  “Well, what of it? Everybody knows you didn’t do it on purpose, and it doesn’t help to act like a baby now and set the other kids off.” Jennifer’s tone was kinder than her words, and Jane wailed, “Oh, Jennifer, what if she’s dead? I’ll—I’ll—”

  “She’s not dead, you idiot. I promise you that. Now blow your nose and keep quiet; we’re too busy to keep an eye on you.”

  A few moments later the ambulance arrived, with the van close behind it.

  “Cressy’s suffering from slight concussion,” Penny reported that evening to the dormitory. “I waited in the office because I heard them telephone about her, and afterwards Miss Maitland told me. Cressy ought to be back in a fortnight, as good as new. They said Jennifer did exactly the right thing from beginning to end. The doctor complimented Miss Maitland on her girls and she was awfully pleased; I could see it.”

  “Jennifer’s a surprising girl,” said
Francie thoughtfully. She had been deep in thought all afternoon.

  “Oh, Jennifer’s a solid citizen all right,” said Wendy. “You can always depend on her in that sort of crisis.”

  “Shhh,” said Marcie, as Jennifer came in.

  “Hello,” said Jennifer. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Francie. I wanted to say you weren’t half bad the way you kept young Jane quiet, coming back this afternoon. Very helpful it was; she was nearly in hysterics. Fancy a Yank being useful!”

  The girls all laughed, Francie with the others. The compliment was so exactly like Jennifer!

  CHAPTER 9

  A few of the cast of characters were rehearsing privately out beyond the chapel, in the field. Small daisies starred the grass, but June had brought out a hundred other flowers which Francie could not remember ever having noticed in the States. At the moment she was glad to think about flowers because the rehearsal, as is customary with rehearsals, was boring. She had consented to take a very small part in the play because they were short of actors, but her heart was really in the other branch of stagecraft: scene designing and execution. Only Penelope, she reflected, could have persuaded her to take this on as well. Penny, in the absence of the advisory mistress, was in complete charge of the rehearsal today, and she had asked Francie to try to criticize the general effect.

  “If I were to tell her the truth,” thought Francie, “I’d have to say it’s pretty stinking. But then a play always does stink at this stage.”

  Sheila playing Hermia, with Marcie as Lysander, was running through a love passage. Love passages as played at Fairfields were difficult to a degree that always, ultimately, made Penny tear her hair and declare wildly that she could not, would not go on. She was nearly at the hair-tearing stage right now.

  Marcie gabbled:

  “‘The course of true love never did run smooth But either it was different in blood—’”

  Francie gritted her teeth as she waited without hope for Hermia to interrupt. She knew it all by heart by this time, of course, and she knew as well that Hermia would not interrupt on her cue, because she never did. Sheila was a pretty little girl with pink cheeks and a most forgetful mind. At the moment her eyes were fixed dreamily on the summer sky and her mouth was open. She was a thousand miles away.