by Phoebe Wynne
‘Oh,’ Rose said, ‘so you do read magazines, then?’
‘Only the designated ones. You know,’ one of them shrugged prettily, ‘Vogue, of course, and—’
‘The Lady?’ Rose suggested. ‘Horse and Hound?’
‘Ooh, could you get them for us?’
‘Mummy says we’re really lucky,’ another girl chortled. ‘Back in the day our grandmothers could only read annuals, and they didn’t have a video machine. This place was like a nunnery.’
Rose asked carefully, ‘And what about TV, or pop music?’
‘Madam, it’s frightfully vulgar.’
‘Headmaster says television is the enemy of civilisation.’
‘Oh,’ said Rose.
‘In one of my Discipline activities last year, Madam,’ one girl added, ‘we watched some films and studied female behaviour.’
‘And,’ Rose kept her voice light, ‘these Discipline activities?’
‘Yes, Madam. We’ve already done the basics. Skills. Social etiquette. General deportment – posture, voice and, er … ?’
‘Manners,’ piped up another.
‘The basics?’ repeated Rose. A few girls nodded eagerly. ‘It seems odd you have to learn all these things, when your academic lessons are far more important.’
‘Not at all, Madam. Discipline is important, too. It gets more serious later, anyway.’
‘Okay.’ Rose narrowed her eyes. ‘But those things aren’t normally taught in other schools. Do you do things like typing?’
‘Typing?’ one girl snorted.
‘No, Madam,’ another added helpfully, ‘but there are typewriters you can use in the library.’
‘No,’ Rose urged, ‘that’s not what I meant. Are you learning things like elocution?’
‘No, Madam, there’s no need for that. That’s only for the foreign girls. How funny you are.’
One girl caught her lower lip in her teeth. ‘Clarissa is the most accomplished of all of us, Madam. That’s what we’re aiming for.’
Her neighbour sat forward. ‘Whom do you have, Madam, in your Upper Sixth?’
‘Oh.’ Rose sat back in her chair, frustrated by their flitting comments. ‘I’ve got five girls for Classical Civilisation. Dulcie Hughes—’
‘She has lovely hair.’ Three girls nodded.
‘Alexandra Coryn, Natasha Swire—’
‘Oh, excellent, Madam,’ one girl squealed out. ‘Dulcie and Alexandra are very important. They were prefects in Fifth.’
Rose considered this bit of information; yes, Dulcie would’ve made a formidable prefect.
‘Natasha Swire is a bit –’ The girl on the armrest hesitated.
Rose looked across at the girl. ‘What?
‘Nothing, Madam,’ she answered quickly.
Rose tilted her head. ‘Tash is probably the nicest of all of them.’
‘Yes, but she’s … odd, Madam.’
‘Odd?’
The girl leaned forward conspiratorially, almost whispering. ‘Queer, Madam!’
‘Clarissa,’ the middle girl interrupted loudly. ‘Clarissa is the best of them all. That’s why she’s head girl.’
‘Actually,’ her neighbour raised her nose in the air, ‘I preferred George List as head girl.’
‘She was far before your time.’ The two girls turned to face each other.
‘And yours. I know her, though. My family knows the Lists. We Christmassed together once.’
‘Really? When?’
‘None of your business.’
Rose was frowning deeply, but she asked, ‘As in Freddie List, in Fourths?’
‘Yes, Madam, all of her sisters have been head girl. They come from a long line of Hope girls – four daughters and then their mother before them, their grandmother and so on. They’ve all gone on to excellent things.’
‘What kinds of things?’ Rose was unable to hide her desperate curiosity.
The girl on the armrest swung around to face her friends, bumping them with her knees. ‘Goodness, I’d love to know that family.’
‘Freddie’s wonderful; once she let me brush her hair, such beautiful curls. I wish I was in Verity with her.’
‘We’ve got Nessa, though, and they’re best friends. Hopefully she’ll stay.’
The girl in the middle of the group scowled. ‘She won’t. Nessa’s useless.’
‘Okay, girls. That’s enough.’ Rose didn’t want to listen to any more; the dismay that had lodged itself somewhere in her chest gleamed afresh, for Bethany, for Nessa.
As the evening drew to a close, Rose looked at the array of photographs in the House Prudence lobby. Rows of smiling girls, flanking their housemistress and house staff seated in the first row. The younger ones were dotted along the front, their hands folded and beaming. Rose glanced past each picture, decades’ worth, seeing that not a single Asian face decorated the groups. She mentioned this to the housemistress, treading on her words carefully as the woman searched her desk drawer for the evening duty sign-off form. The housemistress replied that no, the handful of Japanese girls that attended Hope were spread across Verity and Temperance.
‘But why are there so few of them?’ Rose urged. ‘Why isn’t there more diversity in a place like this?’
‘Hope only takes Japanese girls, Rose, no others yet. A few joined us last summer, and several others came in September. They are an innovation.’
‘An innovation? But that sounds –’ Rose spluttered. ‘Are they not students, like all the others?’
‘Of course they are. You do exaggerate,’ the housemistress tutted, casting Rose a disapproving look.
‘They’re not the ones who were kept hidden on Open Day?’ Rose suddenly cried out.
The housemistress shrugged in response. ‘They just weren’t involved, that’s all.’
‘That’s discrimination!’
‘Dear me,’ the housemistress stopped shuffling through her pile of papers and leaned forward, ‘how dramatic you are, Rose. I shall have to note down your comments for my pastoral team.’
Rose was silenced and left staring at a little gold brooch pinned to the housemistress’s dressing gown, the same Caldonbrae grey as the matron’s.
In bed that night, it occurred to Rose that Jane must have tutored in Prudence, below her flat, and perhaps worn one of those dressing gowns. Would Rose, too, one day? Her mind strayed to the letter she’d sent to Dublin – there’d been no answer yet. Did Bethany have that same address, scrawled across those tear-stained pages she’d held that night? She’d said one letter had been returned to her; would Rose’s be returned, too?
It was unnerving, how much time Rose spent thinking of that poor hairless girl, rattling around in her own tortured mind.
At the end of that Thursday morning, Rose dismissed the class. ‘Valētē, puellae.’
‘Valē, magistra.’
‘Disceditē.’ With a sweep of her arm Rose gestured the Fourths out and signalled a reminder for Daisy to stay a moment.
Rose turned to clean the blackboard. She felt momentarily stunned that the lesson had gone so well. It was the first time they had got through a whole translation unscathed, and she had only carried them a little bit. Josie had been quieter too, not as acidly unkind with her comments as she’d been previously.
Agrippina the Younger wasn’t on the curriculum, but Rose was glad to have introduced her. It was a fun translation and the girls had enjoyed the gory bit: Agrippina’s murder by an assassin. Rose smiled at the clean blackboard and turned around.
But it wasn’t just Daisy waiting patiently. Rose saw that Freddie had strayed behind too, with Josie and Nessa slumped on the desk behind her. A long slant of early winter light slid across the room and teased the tops of their heads, touching the rough red of Freddie’s hair, the dirty blonde of Nessa’s and the dark gl
ow across Josie’s forehead. The light was lost in the jet black of Daisy’s hair but shone out a slice of her cheek and the almond-shaped brown of her eye.
Rose faced the scattered group, slightly apprehensive. ‘Girls, I only needed to see Daisy. Can I—’
Freddie sat on a desk. ‘I just wanted to ask you something, Madam.’
‘Okay.’ Rose hesitated. ‘And you two?’
‘We’re just waiting for Fred.’ Josie rolled her eyes at Nessa.
‘Fine. What is it?’
Freddie looked sideways at Daisy. ‘Daisy can go first.’
‘I wanted to give you the other translations I did over half-term, Madam. I know it’s late, but …’ Daisy said in a rush, glancing at the other girls. She threw out an awkward arm. ‘Well, here they are … but don’t worry if it’s too much. My father helped me with most of it. He was a Classicist, Madam.’
‘Oh really?’ Rose took the pages with interest. ‘And what does he do now?’
‘He’s a barrister.’
‘That’s great!’
‘We’re not very—’ Daisy began, but Josie cut in with a sneer: ‘At least he’s not a teacher.’
‘Nothing wrong with teachers, Josie,’ Rose retorted. ‘What do you want him to be, landed gentry?’
Nessa and Daisy glanced at Freddie and Rose realised her mistake. But Daisy piped up again, cheerfully, ‘Daddy always says, we’ve got innate breeding, but no money.’
‘Freddie’s got both,’ Nessa nodded with a smirk. ‘When she writes to her royal godmother she has to put a funny mark on the envelope so they know.’
‘Nessa!’ Freddie was outraged; her cheeks were clashing violently with her hair.
‘Oh, sorry.’ Nessa looked abashed as Josie snorted with laughter.
‘How excellent for you, Daisy,’ Rose said, looking down at the translations again, ‘to have a Classicist for a father. We’ll go through these next week.’
‘Separate to class, though?’ Daisy’s eyes widened with alarm.
‘Yes, of course. We’ll find a time,’ Rose nodded firmly, placing the pages on her bureau. She glanced across at her ceramic owl. Feeling the four pairs of young eyes on her, she didn’t know why she suddenly felt so uneasy.
‘Madam,’ started Freddie, ‘you were saying, about today’s translation …’
‘I enjoyed that translation,’ said Daisy.
‘Yes, me too,’ Nessa added. ‘I liked it better than that Jupiter and Io story.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry about that one,’ Rose nodded with regret, remembering that disaster of a lesson. ‘It was confusing.’
‘Didn’t you feel sorry for Io, though?’ Freddie turned to Nessa. ‘That bit where Jupiter turns her into a cow, and she scrapes her name into the dust with her foot. Bit sad.’
‘Yes,’ Rose nodded again, ‘Jupiter was a bit …’
‘Sex-obsessed?’ suggested Josie.
Rose hesitated. ‘Well, he—’
‘But Agrippina,’ Nessa raised her thin eyebrows, ‘I like her. Jupiter didn’t turn her into a cow. And she had her face on a gold coin.’
‘Good old Agrippina,’ Freddie nodded, smiling. ‘Mother of the emperor. She was feisty, even if she got a sword through her womb.’
Rose looked at Freddie and actually laughed. ‘She was feisty.’
‘How many times did she get married?’ Daisy asked.
‘Three times, I think,’ Rose answered.
‘They got married at around fifteen back then, didn’t they, Madam?’ Daisy frowned. ‘My father was saying. Our age.’
‘Yes.’ Rose bent to her bureau, folding Daisy’s extra translations into her planner. ‘Regrettably. Poor girls had to marry old men. Pliny’s third wife was fourteen, and he was forty.’
The air seemed to break as the girls shared a glance. Rose looked up and said with finality, ‘Well, I’m glad that you all take an interest.’
But Freddie was staring at Rose full in the face. ‘Can we do more of this, Madam?’
‘More of what?’
‘We’re collecting your ancient women.’
‘My ancient women?’
‘You’re repeating yourself, Madam,’ said Josie, pushing herself off her desk. ‘Not an attractive quality.’
Nessa and Freddie tittered in response, stopping when they saw Rose’s bewilderment. Daisy was waiting, too, for Rose’s answer. There was a spark of interest in Daisy’s face, the same spark that had flashed across the class that morning.
‘Girls,’ Rose’s voice was sincere, ‘if you’d like to learn more, I’d be very happy to teach you.’
‘Not now, though, Madam,’ Nessa frowned. ‘It’s breaktime.’
‘Nessa,’ Freddie laughed all the way up to her honey-coloured eyes, ‘you’re such a clot.’
Rose said nothing more as the small crowd of girls left her classroom, Freddie leading the way.
The following week brought December and Rose couldn’t ignore her private disappointment in her first term. So little had been achieved across her classes that a huge chunk of the curriculum awaited her in January, if she ever got there. The investigation hadn’t yet been concluded; she’d hoped for a final note from the secretaries, or a summons to a meeting – the long-delayed welcome from the Headmaster. It didn’t help that Frances was avoiding her, too, after their disagreement on Open Day. And with Bethany in the sanatorium, her hair gone, her dignity with it, Rose felt that somehow she was the villain now.
On Friday afternoon, one week before the release of the holiday, Rose broached the topic in the Classics office.
‘You ought to be pleased,’ said Emma, flatly.
Rose gritted her teeth. ‘I’m not pleased, I feel completely devastated for Bethany.’
‘Careful, Rose.’ Emma shook her head. ‘You don’t want to sound like Jane.’
‘It seems so cruel.’ Rose grew more ardent after Emma’s remark. ‘Abusive, even. What do her parents – no, her mother’s passed away, Vivien said – what does her father say?’
‘He understands that this is Hope’s way of dealing with things.’
‘I know this place has its way,’ Rose felt her temper rise, ‘but it doesn’t ever seem to be one that cares for the girls.’
Emma scoffed at that. ‘I’m shocked to hear you say that – given what you’ve suffered, thanks to her.’
‘She’s a teenager! She doesn’t know any better. She’s full of emotions!’
‘Well,’ Emma turned her face to Rose, ‘I’ll repeat that next time you complain about your classes misbehaving.’
To escape the conversation, Rose took herself up to her classroom to stand at the arched window. It was a gloomy afternoon, dim with early winter. The sea would have been calm, but for the rocky outcrops that gathered white swirls of foam with every movement. Further out, a flock of seagulls were balancing on the slow swell of the water. Rose watched them as her breathing slowed, her heart beating along with the water’s easy tug and pull.
It wasn’t just Bethany’s hairless head that haunted her – Rose knew that something was wrong with her mother. The latest update had been worse than she’d expected: another flare-up, with a numb tingling spreading through her mother’s limbs. Rose couldn’t bear for that part of her life, the one thing that felt sorted, to burst. But soon they’d spend Christmas and New Year together: plenty of opportunity to catch up, give her mother hot baths, play cards, boost her moods, all the while avoiding the conversation Rose wanted to have.
She came away from the growing dark of the arched window. Hearing bursts of Emma’s teaching voice through the classroom wall, Rose returned to the Classics office.
But at the office door, she halted. In the shadow of Rose’s desk chair there was a hunched figure, her shaven head a bare silhouette against the window’s dusk. Rose bent her arm to the wall and flicke
d on the lights.
‘Bethany.’
The girl seemed to look beyond Rose, blinking at the sudden brightness. She wasn’t frantic this time; her voice was gentle and sad. ‘I heard what they did to Jane. I can’t bear it. I want to go and see her. They won’t tell me which hospital she’s in.’
‘But – what do you mean?’ Rose stuttered. ‘She’s teaching in Dublin.’
‘Dublin? No, no. You don’t know? She’s in Inverness. They’ve kept her nearby.’
Rose’s breath caught in her throat. ‘But – how can that be, is she ill? What hospital?’ Bethany’s translucent eyes turned away from Rose, so she added quickly, ‘Look, I am glad to see you, and I was hoping you’d come back to our class. I will absolutely help you catch up—’
‘I’m not glad to see you at all, Madam, whoever you are.’ Bethany spoke quietly. ‘I’m doomed, just like Jane. Well, she can’t save me now. She was the only one that could.’
‘Bethany, listen—’
‘There are things they’re not telling you. You don’t know anything.’
‘I can help,’ Rose insisted. ‘I can help you improve your grades.’
‘No. You’re probably doomed too. Clarissa told me that you and Madam Miss Manders are just like me and Jane.’
‘Frances?’ Rose sputtered out. ‘What?’
‘You two are a disgrace, Madam, just like us.’ Bethany let out a miserable sigh. ‘No. There’s only one way I can see Jane again. I must see her again.’
‘Wait. Stay here, Bethany. Shall I get your housemistress, or that Prudence matron?’
‘No.’ Bethany settled herself deeper into Rose’s seat behind the desk, so frail in her grey dress, and without her usual ribbons of black hair. ‘I’ve made up my mind.’
Rose dashed down the corridors and the many streams of steps. Her first thought was to speak to the secretaries, but on the Great Stairs, she hesitated. The glass eye was dark with the weather and seemed to crack above her head. Rose looked up, and turned back.
Emma met Rose at the door to the Classics office. ‘She’s gone,’ Emma said before Rose could explain.
‘Bethany? How?’ Rose panted. ‘I didn’t see her on the stairs.’