by Alice Castle
Chapter Three
Beth was rather pink as she toiled up the road towards the gates of Wyatt’s, which gleamed even on this dull and wintry day. The porter in his little glass sentry box smiled as Beth waved on her way past, almost jogging now as she heard the big clock on the tower looming over the lawn begin to strike the hour. Eleven o’clock! How had that happened? Now she felt all the more like Cinderella, rushing for her carriage. Though she had at least beaten Cinders to it. It wasn’t twelve yet.
Beth was smiling at the thought as she finally puffed up to her office, in the Geography building. She’d just got the mortice lock undone, slung her bag onto her desk, shrugged out of her coat and flipped open her laptop, when there was a knock at the door. She took a harried glance around. Did it look as though she’d been here for hours? All the shelves were meticulously neat and tidy, her little conference table in the corner was ready and waiting, should the unlikely event of an archives meeting ever occur. True, her in-tray was bulging and there was a lot of filing building up in the corner of the room, but that just made her look busy and important, surely?
She quickly scattered the contents of one of the in-tray folders across her bare desk and picked up a sheet of A4 to gaze at studiously. ‘Come in,’ she called, her voice coming out in such an anxious squeak that she had to cough and repeat herself immediately. Her next ‘come in’ was ridiculously deep.
The door swung open heavily. Tom Seasons stood there, his bulk filling the doorway. An ex-rugby player, now a coach and the Bursar of Wyatt’s, he was solid, beefy – and not Beth’s biggest fan, since Beth’s first investigation had revealed that his wife, Judith, had been having an affair with a murder victim.
‘Ah, you’re here,’ he said, in tones of surprise.
Beth didn’t rise to the implied jibe, merely swallowing once, giving her sheet of A4 – which turned out to be a stationery requisition form – a final, very intense appraisal, and then breaking off with what she hoped was a courteous, yet busy, ‘And what can I do for you, Bursar?’
Luckily, her timetable was nothing to do with Seasons at all. Janice Grover was her line manager. Janice – the former school secretary, now second wife of the Headmaster – was definitely Seasons’ kryptonite. He was powerless against her lethal combination of cosy cashmere loveliness, steely intelligence, and boundless influence over the very smitten Dr Grover, whose baby she was about to bring forth.
Seasons looked at Beth for a few beats, his small blue eyes seeming full of malevolence. Beth had heard rumours that Judith had finally left him. But that wasn’t strictly her fault. ‘Ah. Just checking how you’re getting on with it all. The new exhibition?’ he barked.
‘It’s all done, Tom. You’ve seen the outlines. Well, you should have done, I put them on your desk last week. We’re all ready to start, beginning of next term.’
‘I thought the exhibition was part of the Christmas concerts? Some disgruntled parents, I’ve heard rumblings…’
‘Really? I’m astonished. We decided, in the end, that it wasn’t very, ahem, tasteful to combine the themes of Christmas and slavery, don’t you remember?’
‘Oh, yes…’ said Seasons, tailing off.
Beth could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead. It wasn’t by any means hot in her office. What on earth was up with the man?
‘Was there something else on your mind? Do you want to sit down?’ Beth wasn’t fond of him, but he seemed to be suffering. ‘Is everything all right?’
Her concern seemed to jolt Seasons out of his trance. He wiped his forehead with a large white handkerchief and visibly pulled himself together. ‘Oh, no, it’s all good.’ He stashed the hanky and started slapping one huge fist into the opposite palm, making a sound like a large, dead cod being thwacked down on a fishmonger’s slab. ‘Well, must get on. Glad we’ve had time to catch up,’ he said finally, striding over to the door with a semblance of his usual energy, and closing the door as loudly as he’d opened it.
Beth was left staring at the space he’d so recently, and shiftily, occupied. ‘Now what was all that about?’ she wondered.
There was scarcely time to ponder it, though. For once, Beth really earned her Wyatt’s salary as she churned through an in-tray that had been neglected for weeks and now resembled an alpine range. Once that had been whittled down to manageable proportions, she turned to the filing. Every autumn term produced a rich crop of Christmas concert and play programmes, a bit like a harvest festival just for the archives. Previous incumbents in her post had tended to shove this bounty wholesale onto the shelves, where it had mouldered in peace for many years – centuries, even – until Beth got her hands on it. But now there was no hiding place for duplicate copies. They were ruthlessly ferreted out and recycled.
Sometimes, Beth wondered what would happen if there was a huge fire and her shelves went up in flames. True, she could now digitalise everything – but she decided she was saving posterity by not doing this, as well as avoiding a lot of tedious and pointless work herself. Having cleared the decks today, she found she even had time to work on her cherished, long term project, the outline for a book on Thomas Wyatt’s involvement in slavery.
In many ways, it was going to be difficult reading. Ever since she’d made the heart-stopping discovery some months ago that the much-lauded founder of the Dulwich Endowment Schools had had blood on his hands, she’d been alternately fascinated and repulsed by the knowledge.
It wasn’t clear at what point in the past three hundred years Dulwich had decided that it didn’t want to know about Wyatt’s activities. Wyatt himself had made no secret of the basis of his wealth. The ledgers Beth had first unearthed in the unloved and neglected archives she’d inherited from her predecessor had not exactly been hidden, they had just been lost. Whether that was by accident or design, it was impossible to know. All that was certain was that the silt of time had been allowed to pile up on the truth about Thomas Wyatt and, until Beth’s discovery, no-one had much cared how he had made his money. He was just the rich founder of the Dulwich schools, and good for him and for all who benefitted from that largesse.
It was, without question, a sensitive issue. After an hour or so, Beth had written the opening paragraph of her proposal about twenty times, and she was more than glad to be interrupted by an imperious text from Janice, summoning her to the staff Christmas lunch. A few short months ago, Beth would have found an occasion like this extremely intimidating, involving as it did all the teachers who could be spared from the pupils’ lunches. Now, although she couldn’t say she’d chatted to each and every member of the staff, she certainly knew them all by sight. And besides, she had a place saved for her at Janice’s right hand, so she had nothing to fear, except that Janice might go into labour before they got on to the crackers.
Glancing sideways at Janice’s tummy, which now resembled a beautifully rounded Christmas pudding, she wished she’d picked 25th December in the rather naughty staffroom sweepstake on the birth, instead of a date far off in the New Year. Poor Janice was starting to get that look of occasional blank terror Beth had often seen on expectant mothers’ faces, and which had no doubt been on her own, as the horrible truth dawned that two people couldn’t continue in one body indefinitely, and there was only one possible exit route.
While Wyatt’s sixth formers were notorious for smuggling in booze at the end of term and consuming it on the playing fields, far from the prying eyes of teachers, the teachers themselves got through a jolly, alcohol-free Christmas lunch in high good humour. The only thing that seemed dry was Dr Grover’s speech, where he had everyone – luckily, apart from his wife – in stitches. When Tom Seasons stood to follow up, as was apparently the tradition, Beth felt a flutter of alarm. Was he going to be as odd as he’d been in her room earlier? Or would he have pulled himself together?
Thankfully, the Bursar was on autopilot. Beth had never had a Wyatt’s Christmas lunch before, but those who had been at the school longer would have recognised his spiel as being
well-worn, yet no less effective for all that. A favourite jumper of a talk – maybe not the one with the spectacular novelty light-up Christmas tree, but good and reliable and cosy all the same, like one of those Scandinavian snowflake knits, and a perfect note to end the term on.
Beth was sad when the last of the plates was collected along with the debris of paper hats and rubbishy jokes. The next time she had turkey, it would be one that she had reluctantly cooked herself at home or, more probably, had accidentally incinerated. She’d be pulling off a miracle if the only thing dry that day was the speeches.
Her cuisine, never particularly elevated, felt even more slipshod at Christmas when there were more than two people to cook for and the audience was slightly more demanding than a ten-year-old boy. Not that they ever really had anyone other than her mother, her brother, Josh, and his girlfriend of the moment, always such a fleeting presence in their lives that it scarcely mattered whether Beth impressed her or not. But still. For her, that was high pressure.
This year, though, there was also the rather tingly possibility that Harry might be joining them. This could be wonderful, or it could be the element that made her sprouts go extra soggy.
As they all filed out of the dining room, meeting up with the impossibly over-excited lower school children on the way, Beth wondered whether she’d take the plunge and ask Harry or not. She didn’t even know what he usually did for Christmas. Maybe he was already expected at his parents’ house. Maybe – gulp – he’d ask her and Ben to visit them at some point over Christmas? Or was all this just way too much, too soon? Did she need the stress of involving parents and siblings at such an early stage in their relationship? That’s if it was a relationship at all?
Beth realised she’d better stop thinking about this as quickly as possible, or she’d be talking herself out of even having a boyfriend at all. Sometimes dreams were like water – the more you tried to grab hold of them, the more they trickled away. And she was enjoying there being something between her and the detective. He might drive her mad on a regular basis, but he also made her laugh. And sometimes he even made a half-decent cup of tea.
Beth rather pitied the teachers as they peeled off to take their ridiculously bouncy charges back for the last few desultory lessons of term. Though many of them would be taking refuge in that time-honoured teachers’ get-out, the educational video, there would definitely be questions asked by the parents paying hand over fist for a jot of teaching, if all the kids came home having watched The Polar Express for the billionth time.
Back in the peace and quiet of her office, Beth glanced round fondly at the packed and ordered shelves, standing dust-free and purposeful, perpetually ready for the moment when Dr Grover would demand an urgent run-down on exactly what had happened at the Governors’ meeting in 1923. Her in-tray had been vanquished, however briefly, and her to-do list was mercifully short: just come up with a proposal for the book and get it green-lighted by all the powers-that-be at the school. Peasy. She was just shutting down her laptop for the last time that year when there was a tentative knock on the door.
It was Janice, advancing bump-first and swaying like a heavily-laden camel train as she came into the room. Beth found herself wondering whether her friend was actually having twins. But surely they’d all know by now? Janice had been coy about the sex of the baby, but would almost certainly have said if it was two not one, wouldn’t she? Especially as it would have been so wonderfully appropriate, for someone so into knitwear, to be producing a twinset.
Janice lowered herself slowly into a chair with a deep sigh, while they both ignored the protesting creak from its legs.
‘Everything ok, Janice?’ Beth asked. To her horror, Janice’s pretty face crumpled, and she gave a loud sniff.
‘No! It’s not okay. Not at all. I’m fed up with being this siiize. I’m like a whaaaale,’ said Janice, wailing all too appropriately. Beth grabbed her handbag and started searching for a tissue, but Janice already had one in her hand, and blew her nose noisily.
‘Look, don’t worry, I’ve been exactly where you are, and it’s only temporary,’ Beth said, coming round the desk and putting an awkward arm around Janice’s shoulders. It was hard to hug someone when they were sitting down and you were standing up, but getting Janice out of the chair again was going to take some time, and a face-to-face hug was going to be very badly impeded by the bump. This was probably the best they were going to achieve. Beth carried on patting ineffectually while Janice gradually got her sobs under control.
‘Once the baby’s born, you’ll feel brilliant,’ said Beth, mentally crossing her fingers, and trying not to remember the weeks she’d spent staggering about in her dressing gown, sleepless, sore, and utterly shattered by the demands of a screeching infant. Maybe all that would be completely different for Janice.
‘What if I’m a terrible muuuum?’
‘Look, you won’t be, Janice. You’ll be a fantastic mum. This baby is really lucky to have you as a mother. It’s going to be clever, and beautiful, and funny and capable, just like you and, erm, Dr Grover.’ Beth had never quite got onto first name terms with the Headmaster. He was such an impressive man that she always felt she had just said, was saying, or was about to say, something incredibly stupid when she was in his presence.
‘What if he doesn’t like the baby? He never wanted children before, then this just, well, happened,’ said Janice, mumbling damply into Beth’s shoulder.
Beth thought rapidly. This explained the mystery, much discussed amongst the Dulwich mummies, of why Dr Grover had been childless in his long marriage to the quite successful actress whom Janice had supplanted in a bloodless coup. ‘Well, whenever I’ve seen him, he’s looked really thrilled and proud,’ said Beth reassuringly. It was true, but was he looking at the bump, or at the wonderful Janice? That bit was hard to tell.
‘Look, Janice, no-one is saying this part, or even the next little bit, is easy. But when the baby’s here, you’re going to love it so much that you’ll forget all the heartburn and morning sickness…’
‘And piles, and thrush, and stretch marks…’
‘Exactly,’ said Beth swiftly. Even she didn’t want to think about all that, and for her it had been over long ago. ‘And you’ll just be a really happy family, all together at last.’
‘Do you really think so?’ said Janice tremulously, raising wet eyes to Beth’s face at last.
‘I absolutely know so,’ said Beth. ‘It’ll be wonderful, you’ll see.’
‘I wanted to ask you, Beth, well, that’s why I came in here, though I seem to have got side-tracked… Will you be a godmother to the baby?’
‘Oh!’ It was the last thing Beth had expected. But it was rather lovely. She was always wary of taking on emotional commitments, she seemed to have so little compassion to spare these days, after Ben’s needs and her own were met, but she did love Janice and she was sure the baby would take only seconds to snuggle its way into her heart. ‘I’d love that. Thank you, what an honour.’
‘Then at least one of us will know what we’re doing,’ said Janice confidently. Beth, thinking of her own regular crises on parenting, and much else besides, decided this was definitely the moment to keep her mouth shut.
Chapter Four
It was day three of the Christmas holidays, and already Beth was counting the hours until the New Year. There was no escape from it – Christmas tunes playing in every shop they went into; decorations on everything except Magpie the cat; and endless adverts for gadgets costing hundreds of pounds that Ben vacuumed up every time the telly was on. She yearned to give him everything he wanted for Christmas, of course, but she could see that somebody was doomed to disappointment. Either it would be the bank, waiting in vain for its mortgage payment while she spent the money on ways to kill aliens on a screen, or it would be Ben, finding once again that Father Christmas didn’t have very deep pockets in his beautiful red velvet coat.
And Ben was getting restless, too. Without Charlie to play a
ll his games with, one of the consoles lay forlorn on the sofa, like a keepsake from a long-lost love. Beth occasionally tried to join in just to jolly him along, but she was so useless that Ben usually spent a few minutes laughing helplessly at her efforts, then she got annihilated and he had to carry on without her. So really, she needn’t have bothered. After a morning spent in this less than satisfactory fashion, Beth decided there was nothing else for it. There were definitely times when children, like the worst manifestations of illness, were better out than in.
They were lucky they lived so near central London. If they walked down to Herne Hill station, they could be in Victoria in eight minutes, then it was a short tube ride to the museums at South Ken. She bundled a mildly protesting Ben into his coat, grabbed her own, and they were off.
Out of the door, they headed away from the Village for once, and nipped down the wide cut-through road that connected up with Half Moon Lane. The houses here were banked up on a slight hill, and hidden behind high fences and long drives, as though watching passers-by from a well-defended vantage point. Already the place had a slightly different feel to it. It was much quieter than the main drag past Katie’s yoga studio, Jane’s café, and the other shops, which could be two solid lanes of traffic in either direction at the daily school run pinch points.
They were wandering past the dance school, closed now, but Beth sometimes saw clumps of tiny girls here, dressed in sugar plum fairy pastel shades, clobbering each other with ballet bags decorated with unicorns and cupcakes. Not for the first time, she wondered how different life would have been if Ben had been a Benjamina. Would she have enjoyed that rose-coloured world, or would she have drowned in all the saccharine trappings that seemed to go with girlhood these days? There was no compulsion to dress your daughter as a minor member of a Ruritanian royal family, she could have held out against princessification, but would she have done? The desire to cosset and protect girls seemed a natural one, and reliving her own fascination with fairy stories would have been hard to resist.