It was a small, cosy room and it felt private after the expansive size of the dining room upstairs. So it was a suitable place for John Henry to pronounce judgement on his daughter. Which he did as soon as their meal was completed. The bell was rung and Tom Thistlethwaite sent for and instructed to have the chaise ready by half-past nine. Then when his servant had left the room, John gave his instructions to Caroline.
‘You are to be dressed by twenty past nine,’ he said, ‘and ready to accompany me.’
‘Where are we going, Papa?’
‘To school.’
Her grey eyes widened in shock. ‘To school, Papa?’
‘Yes,’ he said mildly. ‘Your behaviour before Christmas was quite intolerable. But you know that, of course. I can’t imagine what Miss Murphy thought she was teaching you. It certainly wasn’t how to behave in correct society.’
‘Miss Murphy is very kind,’ Caroline said, springing to the defence of her governess. ‘I learn all sorts of things …’
‘Miss Murphy is dismissed,’ her father said. ‘I wrote to her last week. Now things have got to change. You are to go to school and learn how to behave. I have found an establishment here in Bury that promises to inculcate the proper attitudes, so that is where you are going. You may read the first page of their brochure, if you wish.’
Caroline took the paper he was holding out across the table and read the passage he had outlined in firm red ink.
‘MRS FLOWERDEW,’ it said, ‘begs leave respectfully to acquaint her Friends and Public, that her Select Seminary for YOUNG LADIES in BURY ST EDMUNDS, will be opened on Monday the 13th inst.
‘The charges for Board, exclusive of Washing, and for Instruction in English, Reading, Spelling, Grammar and Composition, in Geography, and the Use of the Globes, and in Ancient and Modern History, are, Thirty Guineas per Annum, and Three Guineas for Entrance.
‘The Terms for Instruction in the French Language, Music, Drawing, Dancing and Writing and Arithmetic, and for Washing, are inserted in a printed Paper, which will be delivered to any Persons who will do MRS FLOWERDEW the Honour to ask for it.
‘To Day-Scholars the Annual Charges for the general course of Instruction, will be Eight Guineas.’
And then in large print at the foot of the page were the ominous words, ‘The improvement of the mind is the primary object of all tuition. Learning in the usual sense of the word is by no means necessary. I will seek to impress upon the minds of the female pupil her duties in society and to inculcate the proper attitudes.’
Signed,
Amelia Flowerdew (Mrs)’
I shan’t like her at all, Caroline thought. ‘Duties in society’ sounded as horrid as ‘proper attitudes’. ‘I know how to read and write, Papa,’ she tried to argue, ‘and I can read the globes well enough, Miss Murphy says so. Mrs Flowerdew won’t teach me much, I can tell you. Do I really have to go there?’ And she looked at her grandmother for support.
‘Yes,’ Nan said, ‘you do.’ And the expression on her face brooked no argument.
‘You’ll like it, Carrie,’ Will tried to encourage. ‘Schools are quite fun sometimes. You’ll like it.’
‘I shan’t,’ Caroline said with determination.
‘I liked it.’
‘It’s all very well for you. You’re a boy.’
‘What has that got to do with it?’
‘I’m a girl.’
‘And a very naughty one,’ her father said, adding with chilling firmness, ‘You are not being asked your opinion of the place, miss, nor whether or not you are prepared to attend it. You are simply being required to obey.’
It was the moment when a lesser child would have capitulated. Caroline recognized the power before her and decided to change tack. ‘Very well,’ she said, still defiant, ‘I’ll go, if that’s what you want, but I shan’t learn anything. You’ll see. And I shan’t like it.’
‘Your school cloak and bonnet are in the hall,’ her father replied calmly.
Nan took Caroline off at once to try them on before she could make matters worse by saying anything else. They were made very simply of plain brown wool and had no decoration at all. She didn’t like them a bit.
‘I look absolutely horrid,’ she complained, scowling at her image in the hall glass.
‘Well, of course you do,’ Nan said, ‘pulling such a face. What do you expect, you foolish crittur?’
‘I hate school. And I hate uniforms,’ Caroline said, scowling more ferociously than ever.
‘Here’s your father,’ Nan warned. ‘Now just go along like a good girl and do as you’re told. At least it en’t a boarding school and you can come home to me at the end of the day. You just think of that.’
So she went along and did as she was told, scowling all the way.
Mrs Flowerdew’s Seminary stood just outside the west gate. It was a plain house behind a plain wall, and the parlour into which they were ushered by a sombre butler was a plain room, full of books. But Mrs Flowerdew was a surprise.
She didn’t look a bit like a teacher. She looked like a bed that had been made in a hurry, and a very brightly coloured bed at that, for she wore a gown of bright rose pink, patterned in a trellis of green and gold and set off with a triple collar of elaborate blonde lace, and no stay-maker alive could do justice to the voluptuous curves of her figure. Everything about her was larger than life, from the fat mounds of thick chestnut-coloured hair piled above her forehead to the bulging curves of the odd chestnut-coloured shoes upon her feet. She wore a gentleman’s signet ring on the middle finger of her right hand, and a gentleman’s fob-watch on the grand slope of her left bosom and neither looked out of place on a lady of such proportions. She was plainly not a woman to tolerate disobedience.
‘Mr Easter,’ she said, holding out her plump hand. ‘I am very pleased to meet you, sir.’
‘Mrs Flowerdew,’ John murmured. ‘This is my daughter, as I explained to you in my letter.’
‘That is all entirely understood,’ Mrs Flowerdew said, smiling at Caroline. ‘You may leave her with us, Mr Easter, with every confidence. Every confidence.’
‘I believe I may, ma’am.’
‘We understand one another I believe,’ Mrs Flowerdew said. Then she turned her body, swaying it to one side so that she was facing her new pupil. ‘Welcome to my seminary, Caroline,’ she said. ‘You may kiss your Papa goodbye, my dear, and then I will take you to the schoolroom.’
Caroline looked at her father in amazement. Was she supposed to start school this very morning? Surely not? He hadn’t said anything about starting school straight away. Why, she’d hardly had time to get used to the idea! But he didn’t say anything. He only gave her his distant smile and bent forward so that she could kiss his cheek. Oh, the treachery of it!
‘That’s the way,’ Mrs Flowerdew approved, and she rang the bell, which was one of the new bell-pulls on a long velvet ribbon. ‘Fenning will see you out, Mr Easter. So glad to have made your acquaintance.’
And that was that. The butler arrived, Papa gave a little bow and departed, and Mrs Flowerdew led her new pupil from the room.
I won’t cry, Caroline thought, as she climbed the stairs, and I won’t say anything, at least, not now, because that would be infra dig. But this is no way to treat an Easter.
Three minutes later her school-life began. It was all so quick that there was no time to protest or even think. Despite her bulk, Mrs Flowerdew moved at an extraordinary speed, rustling up the stairs like a clipper with the wind in her sails, and she fairly dashed along the gallery, calling as she went, ‘Come out my dears. Come out. We have a new scholar. Out you come!’
Doors opened as she passed, as though she were flicking them aside with her skirts, and out came a tumble of girls in bright coloured gowns and brown holland pinafores, scampering after her, tossing their ringlets and all talking at once. Little girls no older than Caroline herself, and tall girls quite as old as her cousins, and so many of them all together that she couldn’t co
unt them or even distinguish one from the other, particularly as they were all on the move, their bright cottons swaying and fluttering like a great swarm of butterflies.
The clipper flung open a pair of double doors and sailed into the middle of a long panelled room where there were small chairs set in four rows facing the fireplace, and suddenly order was restored. The butterflies stopped fluttering and became demure young women, who walked quietly into the room and ranged themselves in front of the chairs each with her arms held neatly at her sides.
‘Stand here beside me,’ Mrs Flowerdew said to Caroline.
She’s going to give me a public scolding, Caroline thought, with foreboding. But I won’t cry. No, I won’t.
But, as she was to discover later, Mrs Flowerdew rarely scolded anybody. ‘This is Caroline Easter, my dears,’ she said. ‘You are to look after her and teach her what is to be done and what is not to be done, which I have perfect confidence that you will do because there are so many of you with a talent for caring. And now, Caroline my dear, we must see where to put you. Between Arabella and Betonia, I think. Make a space, my dears.’
Betonia was a rather superior-looking girl who wore her hair in tight braids. But her smile was friendly.
‘Pray sit down,’ Mrs Flowerdew said. And they all rustled into their chairs. ‘The parable of the talents, Mary, if you please. The Gospel according to St Matthew, Chapter 25, verse 14, “For the kingdom of Heaven is as a man travelling in a far country”.’
And the girl called Mary read the parable, in a quiet clear voice, in a room grown so still to listen to her that Caroline could hear the coals clicking in the grate.
‘Talents you see, my dears,’ Mrs Flowerdew said, when the reading was done. ‘We all have a talent of some kind, every single one of us, you may be sure of that. The Good Lord would never send any of His creation into the world with no talents at all. No, no, no. So we can all be perfectly sure that we have at least one talent, and some of us will have more than one, and some will have a great great many. And what is the purpose of having a talent?’ smiling round at her audience, ‘Myfanwy?’
A girl in the second row stood up to answer her. All heads in the front row swivelled round. ‘To use it, Mrs Flowerdew.’
‘Quite right. And to what purpose? Helen?’
Another girl gave the answer. ‘For the benefit of mankind, Mrs Flowerdew, and the greater glory of God.’
‘Quite, quite right,’ Mrs Flowerdew approved. ‘For the benefit of mankind and the greater glory of God. What a splendid thing. Don’t you think so, Caroline Easter?’
Well, of course she thought so. How could she think anything else? So she nodded, as that seemed to be expected of her, and was beamed upon, and felt vaguely aggrieved that everybody in the room seemed to be assuming that she would join in with them, and act as they did and believe the same things. Well, I won’t, she thought. I didn’t want to come here. I’ve no business being here. I won’t.
‘A splendid thing,’ Mrs Flowerdew said, clapping her hands together and shifting all the bright colours in her unmade bed. ‘And now let us return to our lessons and see how many talents we can discover today. First row to remain here with me for reading. Lead on Amy.’
The rest of the day was so full of movement and new faces that when she finally got home again in the evening Caroline could hardly remember any of it. She’d read from the Bible, eaten a stew that had turned out to be more appetizing than it looked, and begun to sew herself a holland pinafore, but the rest of her activities were mere confusion.
Bessie said it all sounded a fine thing and wouldn’t she be a scholar by the time she’d finished, and Nan said her father had gone back to London on the afternoon stage, ‘in fine good humour seein’ the way you settled’.
Will had left her a most loving note before he caught the Cambridge coach, hoping that she’d write and tell him all about the seminary. ‘The next time I come to Bury we will compare notes,’ he suggested hopefully. But Caroline didn’t even mention the school when she wrote back.
I shall never like it, and I shan’t have any talents at all, she thought rebelliously, and if I have I shall take jolly good care Mrs Flowerdew doesn’t see them. I am an Easter. Not just any ordinary girl. And my mother was a saint.
But she had reckoned without Mrs Flowerdew’s talents, which were considerable and subtle.
Mrs Flowerdew knew a headstrong girl when she saw one, and she’d seen one on that first morning, for Caroline’s scowl when she was asked that very first question had revealed her feelings very clearly indeed. Accordingly her new teacher left her alone, watched her and waited. She was praised when she read well, and sewed neatly, and mastered the steps of the polonaise, but there were no more public questions. Time would provide the moment. It always did.
So Caroline lived out her first few weeks in the seminary under cover of its constant activity. She quite liked her new teachers. Miss Butts, who taught arithmetic, grammar and spelling, was dry and papery and predictable, but usually kind provided you did exactly what she asked, while Mr Pepperoni, who taught dancing and French and music, was so dark and quick and volatile you never knew what he was going to do or say next. ‘No, no, no,’ he would howl, when the dancers got into a muddle. ‘Where-a you put-a your feet? I show you?’ And he would leap behind the maladroit dancer and seizing her in his long bony arms pace out the entire measure with her, singing the tune at the top of his voice. It was just the sort of eccentric behaviour Caroline enjoyed.
But Mrs Flowerdew was quite another matter. Mrs Flowerdew was the person who was going to ‘inculcate proper attitudes’ whatever that might mean. So Mrs Flowerdew had to be resisted. Even though it was really rather difficult to resist Mrs Flowerdew. She was so large and overflowing and brightly coloured and full of praise. And her drawing lessons were the easiest times of the week.
The entire school would gather in the schoolroom as soon as their mid-day meal was over, to arrange the chairs and the rostrum, and set up easels, and hand out paper and paint and brushes and sketch books and pencils. The older girls stood at their easels anywhere in the room, but the younger ones always sat in a circle round Mrs Flowerdew’s rocking chair. And by some peculiar magic, Mrs Flowerdew always arrived in the room at the very moment everything was in order, bringing with her the day’s model, which was invariably either a box full of butterflies or a dish full of fruit or a vase full of flowers. But the subject matter was not important. What they were all waiting for was the reading and the conversation.
It was Mrs Flowerdew’s custom on drawing afternoons to arrive with the day’s newspapers or a book of historical or cautionary tales and read an uplifting article to her pupils as they worked. ‘Art is always so much improved by agreeable circumstances, is it not?’ she would say. ‘Let us see what our dear little Princess Victoria is doing.’ Or, ‘Let us read a tale about our good Queen Bess.’ For all the chosen readings were about famous women, so naturally enough, the conversation that followed was all about fame and heroism and the particular and undeniable talents of women. It was very enjoyable, particularly as Mrs Flowerdew’s view of the world seemed very similar to Nan’s. Caroline found it quite hard to sit mum and not join in.
But on the third drawing afternoon they were discussing whether or not it would be possible for a woman to own a factory.
‘A woman could own one, I suppose,’ Betonia said, ‘if her father left it to her, or her husband or somebody, but she couldn’t run it, could she?’
‘Why not?’ one of the older girls asked.
‘She wouldn’t know what to do.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, for heaven’s sake!’ Betonia said. ‘How could she? Women stay at home, don’t they? They learn to run a household. They don’t run factories.’
‘If they can run a household then why can’t they run a factory?’ another girl wondered.
‘Because it ain’t natural,’ Betonia said fiercely. ‘That’s why. Women are meant to sta
y at home and look after the children.’
‘Oh, what a lot of nonsense!’ Caroline said, her vow not to join in quite forgotten in the heat of the moment. ‘My grandmother didn’t stay at home and look after the children. She runs A. Easter and Sons, I’ll have you know.’
Her fellow pupils were impressed. ‘All by herself?’ Helen asked, eyes wide.
‘Of course,’ she said, with great pride, forgetting the regional managers and her father and her uncle Billy. ‘She founded it. Years and years ago when she was young. My grandfather died and she had no money so she sold newspapers from door to door.’
‘Out on the streets?’ Betonia asked. That was rather shocking, surely. No lady would sell things on the streets. Only costers did that. And costers were very low people.
‘Of course,’ Caroline said again. Now that she’d started her story she wasn’t going to allow anybody to be shocked by it. ‘If she hadn’t gone out to work my father would have starved. I think she was very brave.’
‘She was unnatural,’ Betonia said. ‘It ain’t natural for women to run things.’
‘They run households,’ Caroline argued back at once, enraged to hear her dear Nan being abused. ‘You said so yourself.’
‘That’s different.’
‘It’s not.’
‘Anyway,’ Betonia said haughtily, ‘I’ll wager your mother didn’t sell newspapers on the street. Not if she was a saint, the way you keep telling us.’
‘My mother,’ Caroline said furiously, ‘bandaged the wounded after a massacre. She tore up her petticoats to staunch the wounds. And after that she went from town to town all over the country making speeches so that people would look after them and not let them starve. And she was a saint. Everybody says so.’
It was an impressive story and her audience were obviously impressed.
‘My mother,’ Betonia said, annoyed to be losing the advantage, ‘says it ain’t natural for women to work. So there.’
‘Well it is!’
Sixpenny Stalls Page 5