The Divines

by Ellie Eaton

  Eventually, running out of steam, we congregated in the orchard. Tired and at a loss as to what to do next, we drifted lethargically about the trees, lacking any real intent. Branches fluttered with tissue paper garlands. There were a few screams in the dark, a paint bomb thrown. After a while we peeled off the stockings from our heads. Dissatisfied, we sat on the grass, smoked, played loud music on a boom box. There was nothing particularly daring about that.

  “How tedious,” Skipper said with a yawn.

  I nodded, wrapped myself in my cloak.

  “What a flop,” someone said.

  It wasn’t even midnight.

  “Well, that’s that then.”

  The Pecks sat side by side on the grass, their knees tucked under their chins, striking identical poses.

  “Wait, who’s that over there?”

  A posse of staff had formed beneath the bridge—deputies and some of the support staff, the French and German assistants who shared an apartment—and began moving towards the orchard, wearing head torches, a meter or so apart from one another. Their arms were spread outwards to give the impression of an unbroken line. This was unnecessarily heavy-handed. The worst of our antics were over. If they’d left us to it, eventually we would have got cold and drifted inside to bed. What came next might have been avoided.

  “Right. Up, everyone!” Skipper shouted.

  We scrambled to our feet, blinking into the light. There was some furtive scurrying as we repositioned our beige tights back down over our heads and linked arms, battle ready. We held our breaths, waiting. A number of eggs were thrown, halfheartedly, intentionally missing their targets. The teachers seemed to jostle marginally in and out of line, as if they were on horseback. There was a discussion going on between some of them. They appeared to hold their positions, waiting for a signal.

  “What’s happening? Can you see?” I asked Henry Peck.

  “Nothing yet. No, wait, look.”

  Fat Fran crossed the road with a megaphone in her hand, a loudspeaker reserved for Sports Day and the annual school photo. She paused in the middle of the street to look up at the bridge where her effigy was hanging, then soldiered on towards the orchard.

  We were circled, corralled into the top corner of the orchard. Fat Fran stepped forward to address us. Her legs were splayed like a Roman, shoulders drawn back; she raised the megaphone to her lips. Something was wrong with it, none of us could hear her.

  “What’s she saying?”

  “Shh.”

  We craned to hear.

  “Something about ladies.”

  In response an egg splattered at Fat Fran’s feet. The megaphone let out an angry whine, then the buzz of her response. Another egg.

  “Disgrace,” we heard, “consequences.”

  “Traitor,” we began to chant, “trai-tor, trai-tor, trai-tor.”

  “Just who do you girls think you are?” Fat Fran demanded.

  That was a mistake. We knew exactly who we were. Divine. From one of the junior houses a girl let out a long, high-pitched howl of support. We heard it and began to cheer. There was another howl from another dorm, then another and another. Some girls threw their heads out of the window and barked; they whined and yowled and yelped.

  The teachers, unnerved, began to break rank, tentatively backing away, covering their heads. We were long past the point of being ordered or bribed or cajoled.

  “One, two, three,” we all counted.

  Skipper took my hand.

  “Charge.”

  We rushed at them, capes flapping. Fat Fran, who stood her ground, was shoved aside; with one shoulder knocked suddenly back, then the other, she spun like a weathervane.

  “Enough,” she yelled into the megaphone.

  There was nothing she could do. We pounded over the bridge and into the main building, smashing and tearing and stamping on anything that was in our way. We were a hurricane. We stormed inside the science lab and piles of green worksheets fluttered out through the window and onto the ground. Then came textbooks, Bunsen burners, lab coats, and test tubes that tinkled to the floor like Christmas baubles. Other years looked on in admiration. Wasn’t this, in their heart of hearts, what they all wanted to do?

  “Come on.” Skipper tugged me towards the main hall where girls were chiseling free the names of former head girls, embossed in gold on a wooden plaque. Memor Amici. Remember Friends. Our building was being sold from underneath us, torn apart, our friends parceled off to another school. Soon we’d switch our old traditions for new ones, the shoe tree would hang empty, no one would care about being Divine. We’d be consumed by another matriarchy. The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.

  “Here, take this.” Someone put a lacrosse stick into my hand.

  We went outside into the rose garden, picked up stones from the path, put them in our nets, and launched them at the refectory. There was a satisfying pop as they sailed through the tall windows. Like squeezing a zit. I thought then of Lauren, who would have delighted in this more than any one of us.

  “What next?” Skipper asked, breathless.

  We strolled to the Egg. There were no teachers in sight; we were totally unchecked. We had never felt so free. It was exhilarating. All around us was the flutter of books falling to the ground like bats from the top of stairs, posters being torn from bedroom walls, uniforms shredded. We launched more stones through internal windows and tore down some curtains. A carnival spirit prevailed. In the refectory, euphoric younger years were throwing food at one another, skidding through puddles of spilt milk, squishing handfuls of tuna salad in each other’s hair. Girls who’d broken the lock on the drama cupboard wardrobe sported elaborate costumes—a donkey head, bodices, towering wigs, tottering on high heels like courtesans.

  We came to the Circle, where the housemistresses and their deputies were cowering under the shoe tree for shelter, and some had locked themselves in their cars. Padre silently stood beside Fat Fran, holding the large school Bible under his arm, bewildered. This was the only time we felt any guilt. Padre was fond of us girls, one of the few champions of the Divine. He smiled when he saw us; then, noticing our lacrosse sticks, his face fell and he looked very glum. Miss Graves stood in shock, dressed in only a white flannel nightgown.

  A number of maintenance men who had been called in for backup stood waiting for instruction.

  “Headmistress?” they asked.

  A look of righteous resignation came over Fat Fran’s face. She had expected this of us all along. Privileged, arrogant, beyond salvation. She crossed her arms.

  “Call the police.”

  42

  We ran, scattering like field mice. Into classrooms, under benches, behind the ha-ha, pressed between the mossy gap between the science block and a maintenance shed. Some of us dashed for the main hall, where we dove behind the curtains or dropped beneath the stage, motionless as corpses inside empty trunks. Skipper and I covered our heads with our cloaks, held hands, and bolted for the boarding house. Gasping for air, dizzy with excitement, we made a charge for my dorm room.

  There we found the window thrust wide open. The curtains were flapping.

  “Well, well,” Skipper said. “Look who it is.”

  Framed in the open window, small, birdlike, dressed in sparkles and feathers. Despite her fear of heights, Gerry was perched on the very edge of the sill. Her hair was gelled and rolled tightly in a perfect bun, her lips were painted a garish red, lashes curled, clumped together in glittered chunks. She was sitting very still except for one finger, which had worked a hole into her flesh-colored tights, worming its way through to skin.

  “Piss off,” Gerry said.

  She barely turned her head. There were, I saw, two long charcoal streaks running down her cheeks, cutting through the thick layer of stage makeup she applied before competitions.

  “What, no medal?” Skipper said, pretending to pout. “Rotten luck.”

  Gerry said nothing. Her finger continued to pick at her tights, nagging at the small
hole till it was as wide as her knee.

  Later the press made much of Gerry’s competition. How, seemingly distracted, Gerry had fumbled a simple combination, spun off axis, toppling to the ground. Instead of continuing the routine she lay on her back for a moment, prostrate on the ice, ignoring a decade of training. Then, watched by her trainer and fellow teammates, she got up and exited the rink. It was the last time she ever wore skates.

  “Poor little Geraldine,” Skipper said, adopting a babyish voice.

  She picked up one of Gerry’s white boots that was resting at the top of a kit bag. She jiggled it by the laces directly in front of Gerry’s nose, as if teasing a cat. Gerry’s gaze drifted towards the chapel spire. She barely blinked.

  We had grown so accustomed to Gerry’s terrible temper—the swearing, the violent explosions, the slamming of doors—that this sudden indifference came as a surprise. Flustered, Skipper dropped the ice skate out of the open window, then picked up the second boot and threw that too.

  “Oops,” she said, smirking at me.

  Gerry leant out to look, not even bothering to secure herself in any way by holding on to the frame, I remember. She considered the white skates down on the grass as one might a painting in a gallery—silent, impassive, head tilted to the side—then curled back into herself, her knees tucked under her chin.

  Skipper, too, seemed lost for words. Her legs were set apart as if she was standing in goal, her jaw clamped together. She scanned the dormitory room, searching for something else she could throw. When her eyes lighted on the three-tiered jewelry box that housed all Gerry’s cheap baubles, one eyebrow arched and her lips curled into a cruel smile. She walked over casually and rested her hip against Gerry’s desk.

  The knot in my stomach tightened.

  Beneath the heavy folds of my cloak I squeezed my arm.

  Skipper drummed the box lid with her fingers.

  “Poor old Gerry,” she said. “Did you have a little fight with your sugar daddy?” She pretended to gasp. “Wait, did he dump you?”

  Gerry’s eyes were oddly glazed; it was hard to tell if she was even listening. She barely blinked. Her pale stage makeup gave her the lifeless complexion of a china doll. I could tell that she really couldn’t care less what we did or said. She stared at the tip of the shoe tree, bending slightly this way and that in the breeze. My throat pulsed with anxiety. The world seemed suddenly a menacing, uncertain place. I had no idea what Gerry was about to do next, what she might say. She could have burst into laughter or pulled a gun from beneath her feathers and I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Skipper seemed oblivious. She covered her mouth as if shocked.

  “Oh no,” she gasped. “Oh my god, your boyfriend didn’t get you pregnant again, did he? Chop, chop, Joe. Time for Gerry to take another trip to Dr. Hadfield.”

  This, finally, was what got Gerry’s attention.

  She blinked as if woken from deep sleep.

  “That’s what you told them, was it?” she said flatly.

  Skipper glanced quizzically in my direction. I pretended not to notice.

  My cheeks burned. I wished Gerry Lake had never been born. I prayed an invisible hand would reach out and shove her through the open window. That some Stymphalian bird would swoop down and pluck her in its claw.

  Skipper let out a large sigh and went to sit on the edge of the desk where she flipped open the lid of Gerry’s jewelry box. She picked up a pair of cheap gold hoops and held them to her ears.

  “Such a shame about that little pin that went missing, of course,” she said.

  “Cunt,” said Gerry.

  “Now, now. No need for foul language.”

  “Why can’t you just leave me alone? Get out of my room,” Gerry said and thrust her chin at the door. “Fuck off.”

  Gerry’s back was to the open window now. Behind her I could see the zigzag of torches as teachers scoured the orchard, flushing girls from the bushes. A whistle blew, a scream, some figures with powdered white hair streaming behind them, cloaks flapping.

  “Tell her to get the fuck out,” Gerry said to me. “Or I’ll . . .”

  “Or you’ll what?” Skipper asked, curious.

  Gerry gave me a dangerous look. Her eyes were two small dark holes. I felt a knot in my chest pull tighter and tighter. I wanted to put my hands around her throat to silence her, squeeze so hard the words couldn’t come out.

  “For god’s sake,” I hissed, unable to bear it any longer.

  I went to my desk and took out the blue pin.

  “Here.”

  Gerry looked at my palm. Her mouth widened. I could see one of her two fangs, stained red with lipstick.

  “You? You cow.”

  She lunged forward from the windowsill to grab the pin but Skipper, faster on her feet, got there first. She snatched the hairpin from my palm and held it high in the air.

  “Give it me,” Gerry hissed.

  She became very still.

  “I said, give it me.”

  Skipper smiled and slid the end of the pin between her teeth, testing the gold.

  “It’s not even real. Look,” Skipper said, and she took it between her fingers and thumbs and began to press.

  “No.”

  There was a snap like a chicken bone.

  “Oh shit,” Skipper said, looking sheepish. She giggled with nerves. “Terribly sorry.”

  Gerry let out a shriek.

  Skipper darted forward and put a hand over Gerry’s mouth to quiet her. Gerry began to flail in all directions, to kick and claw and bite, her lips curled, her teeth stained red. The pin dropped to the floor. I scrambled after it, reaching for the two separate halves, hoping to fix it. But the small blue petals were crooked, the stem itself snapped completely in half. Gerry hissed and thrashed, fighting free from Skipper’s grip. She stood on the side table under the window, then she leant over to my desk and picked up a framed photo of my parents and hurled it like a lightning bolt to the floor near where I crouched. Then a book, then a tennis racket, then a stapler, till the desk was empty. When I stood up, the pin in my fist, Gerry was wielding one of her skating trophies, her arm thrust high above me as if she was about to swipe my head. Skipper bellowed loudly. For a horrific second I saw my face distorted in the chalice—bloodshot eyes, hair glued in knots, a nest of snakes, an ugly, saturnine expression—and, disgusted, I flung Gerry’s broken pin out of the window.

  The trophy fell.

  Skipper lunged towards us. Her arm raised, shielded by her cloak, an aegis protecting her from blows.

  Or was it me who moved first, flinging myself forward, landing heavily against the table—Unintentionally? Intentionally?—causing it to tip?

  Memor amici.

  Remember.

  How the table rocked.

  Gerry’s “oh” of surprise.

  The curtains parting.

  Feathers.

  Sequins.

  How she toppled backwards, curtsied through the open window like it was part of a performance, a final bow.

  43

  I can’t sleep. Two or three hours a night at most, while just next to me Jürgen snores like a bear, turning in his dreams, pawing his chest. Sometimes his arm thrashes out, accidentally hitting my head or chest. I know it is childish but when this happens I kick him hard, heeling him in the thigh with all my strength. I thump him in the shoulder, like a school bully, or circle his upper arm as if I am throttling it.

  “Ow!”

  “You hit me.”

  “Sorry.”

  In the end I give up and get out of bed. I pour some whiskey into a mug, pick up my laptop, and head outside to the garage where I make a desk for myself amongst Jürgen’s wrenches and chain lube and the other surgical-looking bike tools gathering dust on his workbench. I pull out a packet of cigarettes stashed inside my old cash tin. The Pandora’s box. I have started smoking again, just one or two a day, hiding the evidence from my family, brushing my teeth at odd hours, sneaking around like a teen
ager.

  I rub out my fag butt on the garage wall, open my computer, and prowl the web, looking for god knows what anymore. A ghost?

  But as far as the internet is concerned, it’s like Gerry Lake never existed.

  I sip the whiskey, letting it roll around my mouth, light another cigarette.

  There is a Lake Gerry, I discover, in Chenango County, New York, coincidentally nestled between the towns of Guilford, Oxford, and Norwich, population 1,905. I come across a Dr. Geraldine Lake in Sydney, Australia—no relation—a specialist in palliative care and what her website calls end-of-life issues.

  Eventually I return to the Old Girls Facebook group, set up by some well-meaning DOGs to ensure that “the name and the memories live on.” Memor Amici. There are notices about holiday homes in Provence, and private ski instruction in Courcheval, and an obituary for a former math teacher who, despite his treatment by the Divine, lived to be an octogenarian, a shining light in the town production of The Pirates of Penzance.

  Leavers of 97, I write, using a fake profile. Who remembers Gerry Lake?

  I sit on Jürgen’s workshop stool checking the message board, scratching my arm, waiting for a response, even though in England they’re probably just eating their breakfast. I refresh and refresh, but no one except me is thinking about Gerry Lake at 2:07 a.m.

  To pass the time I watch videos of young skaters performing routines. Some of them are five or six years old and wear lipstick, have fuchsia-blushed cheeks, and wiggle their hips to Mariah Carey. By thirteen and fourteen they are nymphs, long-legged shapeshifters flitting over the ice. Even when Gerry brought back medals and trophies we never acknowledged that she had a genuine talent. Her costumes were cheap and sluttish, we bitched, her eye makeup gaudy, her routines obscene.

  From outside, a wary cough.

  Startled, I almost fall off my stool.