Madam

by Phoebe Wynne

  Rose drifted along the first-floor corridor behind a group of Sixths for the Monday morning assembly in Founder’s Hall. Rose couldn’t see either Emma or Frances in the messy midst of the girls, even though at breakfast Frances had welcomed Rose back as spiritedly as the Junior girls now grappled each other.

  In the second-floor corridor Vivien caught Rose by hooking on to her arm, her eyes roving over the Thirds as they filed past.

  ‘Elizabeth, lace up your boots!’

  Rose jumped; she couldn’t help it. A pair of Intermediates laughed as they passed by.

  ‘Didn’t mean to alarm you, my dear.’ The deputy head spoke quickly. ‘I can’t let you into the returning assembly, I’m afraid. Not with the ongoing investigation and the sensitive nature of your probationary period.’

  A small humiliation burned in Rose’s chest.

  ‘Furthermore, an update on your investigation,’ Vivien continued, not looking at Rose. ‘We are in the last phases of evidence assessment. You will have one lesson observed, you will not be warned in advance. We need to get Open Day finished first – which you won’t need to be involved with.’

  ‘An observation?’ Rose asked, alarmed.

  ‘Yes.’

  The common room noticeboard still boasted the offending page – Rose had checked quickly on her way up. She added desperately, ‘And … have you got all the facts?’

  Vivien drew her sharp eyebrows together. ‘To what are you referring?’

  ‘The fact that Bethany came to the door of my flat just before the break, and the Prudence matron had to take her away. The fact that she returned to my class for one lesson, without permission. I have witnesses for all of it. I wrote to the Headmaster regarding both incidents, but there was … little acknowledgement.’

  ‘Of course, Rose, there’s no need to be cross.’ Vivien took a step back. ‘We have all that information.’

  ‘And have the governors and parents been made aware of those facts as well?’

  ‘They will get a report at the conclusion of the investigation.’

  ‘And is it clear on which side the truth is being told?’

  Vivien turned her head towards a little group of Seconds; she narrowed her eyes at them. ‘As I’ve told you before, Rose, we must give the girls the benefit of the doubt. That is our responsibility.’

  Rose’s voice throbbed in her throat. She thought of her mother’s clinic, her thus-far commendable teaching career. She thought of her father’s reputation. ‘Is my job still in jeopardy?’

  Vivien paused, her eyes continuing to follow the Seconds. ‘Not at present. Please return to your office, Rose. And, of course, I must add: welcome back.’

  The Headmaster passed the two of them without so much as a nod. Vivien left Rose to join him, but not before she’d bent to challenge the group of Seconds, demanding that one of them tie the bow at her neck a little tighter.

  Rose hovered miserably long after the trail of girls and staff had disappeared into the hall. She only turned away when a piano sounded as clear as a bell, an accompanying trumpet bursting like ripe fruit behind the closed doors.

  Early the following week, Rose began her meal, just as two English teachers beside her pulled away their trays. She wasn’t surprised; she knew things wouldn’t have changed since half-term, particularly after Vivien’s lukewarm update. At least she hadn’t seen Bethany since that night at her flat.

  It was the latter part of the lunch hour, and Rose looked across the dining hall at the Juniors and Intermediates that remained.

  It was simpler eating alone, anyway. Rose had started worrying that her table manners weren’t as particular as the girls’; last week one teacher had commented on the way she held her fork. This feeling wasn’t unfamiliar; as a child the neighbourhood kids had steered clear of Rose, thanks to her father’s bookish reputation, and tall tales of her mother’s ‘scandalous’ antics. Rose used to sit in her bedroom with her Greek mythology and wonder if she’d ever belong anywhere.

  Still, Rose had a new purpose this week. There’d been a slim letter from her old course supervisor telling Rose that she’d heard of a Jane Farrier within a small boarding school near Dublin. Rose had stared hard at the Dublin school’s address and Jane’s name written out in another hand, her existence somehow fully confirmed. Rose scraped her food around her plate, her thoughts busy with possible queries – should she ask Jane what had really happened for her to leave? Could Jane help with this dire circumstance concerning Bethany, and prevent Rose from losing the position she’d once held?

  Rose took a swig of water from her glass just as a girl in a loose-fitting grey dress approached the table. The girl hesitated, waiting for Rose’s reaction, before slamming her own tray down opposite. She lifted Rose’s glass of half-drunk water to her lips as Rose’s mouth gaped open with dismay.

  ‘No, Bethany!’ she cried. ‘That’s mine.’

  Bethany slammed the empty glass back on Rose’s tray, wiping her wet mouth with her sleeve. ‘I was thirsty.’

  Rose looked around her hastily as a few young faces swivelled towards them. She tried not to panic as Bethany seemed to hang over the table. ‘That was totally inappropriate, Bethany. Put that glass on your own tray now.’

  ‘No.’ Bethany glared at her, her eyes flashing with sick defiance.

  ‘I won’t touch it, Bethany. Put it on your tray.’

  ‘No.’

  Rose stood up awkwardly, moving her legs over the bench as quickly as she could.

  ‘Yes, please go.’ There was a bubble of mirth in Bethany’s voice. ‘Why don’t you just crawl back to the hole you came from? Get Jane back. We don’t need you here.’

  Rose’s fingers were stiff with panic as she lifted her tray, but Bethany was still talking.

  ‘If you go, Jane will come back to save me.’

  ‘Save you from what?’

  Bethany’s features twisted. ‘She has to save me from Compassion.’

  ‘From compassion?’ Rose spluttered, trying to free herself from the bench. ‘What do you mean, Bethany?’

  ‘I need her.’ Bethany’s voice was quietly furious as she leaned forward, her tray jutting out in front of her. ‘Not you.’

  In one movement, Bethany pushed at Rose’s tray with her own, lifting it slightly before a sudden snap of force. Rose’s tray flipped upwards. For a white second she saw her lunch things rise, clatter and fall, before the great crack of glass and ceramic shards against the floor.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ Bethany screamed.

  With a hot face Rose bent down to pick up the food-splattered pieces, careful with the sharp edges, trying not to see the dozens of little faces watching. She piled up the bits in the paddle of her hand, keeping one eye on Bethany’s grey dress moving in front of her.

  ‘Don’t touch me, I said!’

  ‘I’m not touching you, Bethany,’ Rose said as calmly and as loudly as she could.

  ‘Just go away! Don’t you understand?’

  Rose raised one hand in surrender, hoping that her cheeks weren’t aflame, trying not to hear the buzz of gossip echo around the dining hall, the youngest ones even standing to see.

  A new voice came in: ‘Madam hasn’t actually touched you, has she, Bethany?’

  Rose looked around wildly; Bethany’s face darkened as her eyes focused on someone behind Rose.

  ‘You keep saying “don’t touch me” but she hasn’t.’ Frances’s voice was resonant, and Rose could feel the woman’s strength above her. ‘In fact, I believe that the whole basis of this investigation against Madam is your original lie, then some made-up stories and mysterious reappearing bruises. For which Madam has never been the culprit. Am I correct?’

  A nearby Junior turned to her table of friends to repeat Frances’s words. Rose saw, too, that Vivien was standing in the canteen doorway, her slim figure bent with at
tention, her eyes pointed at Bethany.

  ‘You need to think very carefully about what you are doing, Bethany,’ Frances continued as the girl turned her head away, those long straggles of hair rippling with the movement. ‘Remember, there are repercussions both ways. The governors are now involved. It is very important for you to tell the truth – or there will be consequences.’

  Bethany’s head snapped back to Frances. ‘What would Jane say to hear you, her friend, speak to me like that? And where is she?’

  ‘You will refer to all female teachers as Madam, Bethany.’

  Rose remained crouching next to the bench. She saw Bethany’s agonised face flush with anger before she swept out of the hall, dozens of small heads watching her as she went.

  After a moment Vivien stalked over to the edge of the table and gestured for Rose to stand, nodding at Frances too.

  ‘Rose,’ Vivien’s voice was as sharp as the disapproval on her face, ‘I can assure you that the details of this debacle will be included in the investigation.’

  ‘And you won’t get an apology better than that!’ Frances finished as Vivien followed Bethany out of the dining hall. Even though Vivien’s words had been limited, Rose felt a squeeze of triumph as she stood by Frances’s side, her ally, her personal Roman sentry.

  In the following days, nothing could smother the victorious leap in Rose’s chest. She hoped that the girls’ gossip after Bethany’s scene in the dining hall would spread and extinguish any bad things they might have decided about her.

  Rose had gone further and written a stilted letter to Jane at the school’s address in Dublin, before slipping the envelope into the secretaries’ outgoing post. Her desperate curiosity was almost too much to bear as she framed her ill-hidden questions with a polite enquiry.

  Vivien caught Rose in passing and, after another mention of the dining hall incident, she offered her a second chance at running an activity, properly arranged this time.

  And so it was on Wednesday afternoon that Rose found herself striding down the peninsula towards the beach with a dozen girls stringing behind her, for ‘Swimming’. The shape of the bay meant that the school’s private beach was cut off, entrenched within the peninsula’s headland and the school bounds – while the main gate stood further down at the root of the crooked finger.

  The group had crossed the rippling velvet fields towards the cliff edge and down the zigzag of the rickety walkway. Rose felt a salt sting in the air, but there was no wind. They were at the end of October now and she’d been astonished that the girls would willingly embrace the cold seawater, but Frances had insisted that the activity lasted only two more weeks, the girls did it all the time, and it was good for the lungs.

  Rose was delighted to be outside, to breathe and watch the air play with the tops of the girls’ heads as they strode down together. Perhaps her luck was changing. She was even more delighted to reach the mess of the beach and its cliffs. Some parts of the reddish rock were slit and shredded, as if they’d been scored through by Poseidon’s trident. He hadn’t left the beach free, either. The shore’s pink-grey shingle was embedded along threads of dark ragged rock stretching into the water, as if the sea god had reached out from the waves and dragged his wet fingers down the shore, back to his watery tomb.

  The beach was domesticated by a row of connected wooden huts set into the foot of the cliff. From there a long wooden walkway ran along the beach and down a thread of rock, a jetty towards the sea.

  Rose ignored the jetty, preferring to trample on the shingle that scraped under her feet. The grimy rock looked as though it had bubbled up and hardened; half-spheres of pinks and beige nudged up under her feet. It must be volcanic, she thought, like her piece of Vesuvius up in the classroom. She waited as the girls slipped out of the huts in pairs and threes, ticking them off her list. The girls were identical in their pale grey swimming costumes, a few stopping to tighten their white hats underneath their chins. One threw her towel at Rose, the others dropped them on the wooden walkway. She wanted to laugh: they all looked so charming, darting towards the sea, barefoot and careless.

  Fresh screams filled her ears and Rose sprang up. Oh God, if something were to happen – she wasn’t trained for that. But there were only girls’ heads bobbing up and jolly cries of play. Rose let out a sigh and again counted the distant heads. After a splutter of laughter, another shriek and terrible squawking from interrupted seabirds, all the girls were accounted for.

  Rose suddenly remembered the sounds she’d heard last night through her bedroom window. A dark husk of voices – all male – merry, but terrifying. She’d been groggy with half-dreams, but through the thick curtains Rose had spied a shaft of light shining out from the main doors open far below, next to the long bright rectangle of the Headmaster’s study window. Nothing else – no person, no car. The strands of men’s voices had blown away as she’d hurried back to the safety of her bed. Had she imagined them as she’d slept?

  Rose watched one of the girls swim to a broken triangle of rocky outcrop further out to sea, its body and hers buried in the water. The girl squared her arms and raised herself onto some obscure dark ledge.

  ‘Aren’t you coming in, Madam?’ A small girl was standing behind Rose, her toes scrunched around the pinkish shingle. Rose jumped at the button nose and freckled speckles of Nessa’s face, Daisy hanging behind her.

  ‘Oh Nessa, you frightened me.’

  ‘Come on, Madam. Paddle, at least.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  At this distance, and with the cliff so high above, Rose could only see the very top turrets of the school. She bit her lip. ‘Nessa, do you know where the entrance to the tunnel is?’

  ‘Tunnel?’

  Rose tried again. ‘The tunnel to the school?’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean, Madam.’

  ‘Oh.’ Daisy looked over to the beach huts. ‘I’ve heard of it. But actually, I’ve no idea, Madam.’ Rose noticed a damp stream of black hair escaping from Daisy’s swimming hat.

  ‘It definitely exists,’ Rose continued, ‘but it should be here somewhere, if this is where you swim, and the huts are here.’

  ‘You’re always asking so many questions, Madam,’ said Daisy with a shake of her head. ‘Aren’t we the ones who’re supposed to ask the questions of you?’

  ‘What?’ Rose hesitated. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Off you go, then.’

  Rose closed her eyes, trying to hold on to the brief delight of being outside. She listened to the pull of the tide, the dim merriment of the girls, a squawk of a seagull. But as she inhaled deeply, Rose caught the dank reek of seawater. She suddenly thought of that poor girl in some lead-lined room, buried in the bowels of the school, an operation gone wrong.

  Rose knew she needed to watch the girls, but she kept her eyes closed for another moment. Yes, she thought, this would be a horrible place to die.

  As she waited in the common room for Frances later that afternoon, Rose looked over at Anthony, busy with a flurry of papers, his knees folded to support them. Another teacher was gesticulating at Anthony as he listened, his handsome face pointed with concentration. He seemed different to Rose; he was wearing thick tortoiseshell reading glasses, and his stubbled beard was growing thicker. She looked away.

  The common room was better lit than she was used to, and Rose had tucked up her feet, resting her head on the side of her tall armchair, her hair brittle with the salty sea air. She cradled her glass of wine in one hand, feeling the fire’s heat on her other cheek. The afternoon on the beach had been good for her. Sometimes she felt she was watching herself navigate these dark corridors, just like Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs – another favourite she’d seen repeatedly last year. Rose had liked Clarice’s unapologetic, steely face; that scene where she got in the lift with those tall men, or when she slipped under the garage door because she could.

  ‘So, you
found the bar.’ Anthony was looking down at Rose, shifting his pile of papers from one arm to the other. He’d taken off his reading glasses; his hazel eyes were weary, but still vibrant. ‘How’s it going, Rose?’

  Rose was suddenly very aware of herself. The salty bite of her lips, her grimy fingernails, the wine glass stem between her thighs. The other teacher patted Anthony heavily on the back as he moved past.

  ‘Yes. Fine,’ Rose attempted. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine, as always. All the better for seeing you.’ Anthony leaned his arm on the headrest of the chair opposite Rose. ‘Girls behaving for you yet?’

  ‘I think they’re fed up of torturing me now,’ Rose gave a peaky smile, ‘and are moving on to plain disinterest.’

  ‘I’ve heard the odd snippet of your lessons. You’re keeping the girls on their toes. We’re lucky to have you.’

  ‘You’ve said that before,’ Rose tittered. ‘Is it still true?’

  Anthony smiled at her warmly. ‘Well, actually, I—’

  ‘Rose,’ Frances invaded Rose’s line of sight, ‘I thought we were meeting?’

  ‘Oh.’ Rose turned her head. ‘We are.’

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt you.’ Anthony dropped his arm from the chair, his smile fading.

  ‘Don’t worry Anthony, please do join us.’ Frances said, annoyed, and Rose bit her lip with dismay as she glanced across at Anthony.

  ‘No, no. Don’t mind me,’ he shrugged. ‘I’ve got these files to get through.’ Anthony ducked his head and moved away with his usual loping grace. Rose’s eyes followed him as he went.

  ‘So,’ Frances continued crossly, perching on the seat opposite Rose, ‘we haven’t really seen each other.’

  ‘Well,’ Rose tried to sit forward but her limbs felt heavy, ‘apart from when you rescued me in the dining hall on Monday.’

  Frances smiled all the way to her eyes. ‘And how was your half-term?’