by Phoebe Wynne
‘They’ll figure out that it was us!’ Nessa sobbed. ‘Won’t they?’
But Rose knew the outcome would be far worse than that. She scrabbled at the group of three, trying to get them to walk, run, faster. Time was moving too quickly, and the fire growing. Daisy started to cough, tossing her head as she freed herself from Nessa.
‘Come on, girls!’ Rose said frantically, ‘We’ll go to the boarding houses, we’ll get them out.’
Freddie was pulling Nessa along, tugging at her nightdress while Daisy moved on ahead. ‘Madam! How?’
‘The Junior and Intermediate houses. We can do it – they’re on the south side. Wake as many girls as we can together, and then … to the dining hall.’
Rose flinched at the pain in her arm, but kept moving. The little group dashed across the flagstones of the corridor, the air growing cooler, clearer now, but the corridor was so dark. Turning back, Rose could see the ominous orange of the growing fire at the end of the corridor. She thought of the sanatorium beyond, and Jane, probably drugged and asleep – she couldn’t get to her in time, she knew.
There was another smash, and Nessa screamed again.
‘And House See,’ Rose said. ‘We have to get to House See.’
‘That’s on the other side, Madam!’ Daisy cried. ‘They’ll never get out.’
‘They will, they’ve got windows on the ground floor. We’ll go round the outside, the groundsmen will help. Keep moving, girls.’
‘But, Madam,’ Daisy called out desperately, ‘what’s in the dining hall?’
In her mind’s eye Rose saw the broad map of the school, its blueprint stamped on the forefront of her mind. She saw that wooden door set into the wall. To Postern.
‘Trust me, girls. Keep moving. We’ll do this together.’
Rose checked the ring of brass keys in her hands, hot now from the fire. Daisy dashed ahead and Rose saw the undone sweep of her black hair disappear into the corridor. Nessa pulled away from Freddie and hurried forward, the halo of her shaven head lit briefly as she moved. Freddie tried to stay in line with Rose, but she couldn’t. She bent over, coughing, Rose’s small handbag tight around her shoulder as her gold-red plait fell forward.
‘Madam.’
Rose stopped for her. ‘It’s all right, Freddie, we’re going to be all right.’
‘But Madam, I’m so sorry.’
Rose blinked back at the girl’s upturned face, those animated eyes searching her own. ‘Freddie, it’s not for you to be sorry.’
She reached out her uninjured arm. Freddie straightened up and took Rose’s hand.
The fire raged for thirteen hours, great tongues of flame melting into the salty air. The heat of the red, orange and white fell into the cold black of the night. The firemen struggled to get to the peninsula, past the gated and formidable entrance. By then the enormous building had no choice but to give up its reign to the body of flames – and by morning it was a stone jaw gaping out towards the sky, with holes for windows and jagged slants for roofs. Even the chapel’s great blue stained glass was shattered into hot shards.
In the early hours the younger girls lined the shingled beach and its wooden jetty, safe in the fresh sea air, standing and watching with only the pull of the tide for company. Shaking and sobbing for their termly home, their beloved possessions left behind. The bay swelled with girls from Verity through to Clemency – but no others, because in their haste, nobody had thought to climb higher and wake the matrons or housemistresses in their flats above.
They preceded the small swarm of Japanese girls, who had smashed their own windows and climbed out – to the shock of the groundsmen – dashing across the fields and down the rickety walkway to the beach.
Nobody dared mention Founder’s Hall and what must have been happening inside, at the height of the evening’s joviality. Even with its one door open, the thick fumes filtering through the passageways and the high square windows of the hall would have granted no mercy, and those who had already embarked on their union would have died in their own tight embraces.
From the beach, three girls in white stood still with shock and watched their blazing achievement.
Once every Caldonbrae Junior and Intermediate girl had come through that old door, soaked up to their knees and smelling of dank seawater, a young woman found the three girls in white and clasped each of them tightly in turn. She took a small handbag from a red-haired girl’s shoulder and said:
‘Tell them I went back in. It’s the only way.’
She slipped past the authorities, giving a silent nod to the groundsmen. Walking up to the shoreline’s cliffs, she hurried towards Kennenhaven and The Ship, moving fast to avoid the accumulating open-mouthed local crowds. She clung on to her handbag and her injured arm, and made her way forward, knowing that she must be counted among the dead. The Caldonbrae influence extended further than the people in that hall; and this was the only way her mother could be safe. The only way her three girls would not be blamed. The only way her father’s reputation, too, would remain intact.
Her chest tightened with fear to think of the distressed adults and many teenagers battling in vain for their lives in that very building. Her mind stung to think of Frances trapped along with them. Emma and her husband. Anthony, and young Clarissa who knew no better; Vivien’s sharp face caught off-guard. All the others too, pierced through by fire. But she wouldn’t turn back and look. The shock forced her forwards, faster, trying not to imagine the resentful ghosts chasing behind her. The question was, where would her exile be, and would she have a chance to say a last goodbye to her mother?
The local police soon moved alongside the firemen to count the surviving number on the beach, taking down the girls’ names, ages, their home addresses. The girls had muddled, subdued faces, seeking each other out, hobbling over the boiled rock and greyish stones to avoid the irresistible gaze towards the flaming ruin.
The rest of the parents arrived throughout the late morning hours, once the girls had been taken to the Kennenhaven village hall. They grasped at their daughters and sobbed gratefully into their shoulders. Any furious uproar was snuffed out, thanks to there being no Caldonbrae adults to speak to, none to ask or answer. There was no room for the parents’ pomposity among the kind Scottish villagers who covered the daughters in blankets and comfort, who claimed the postern tunnel as a miracle.
The newspapers followed, photographers with hanging jaws, reporters with eyes wide for a story. The truth of the fire was hard to discern. The groundsmen restricted access beyond the school gate, tight in their man-band, insisting that the inquirers wait for the local police and firemen’s verdict.
Two weeks after the event, the smoke still seeped towards the mainland. Smoke that the newspapers seemed to feed on as they ran story after story that discussed more than the fire’s destruction.
The number of dead had finally been recorded: three hundred and fifty-seven souls. Just over one hundred sixth-form girls had perished in the blaze, along with the departing Upper Sixth girls’ parents. Numerous school governors too, as well as several dozen gentlemen guests. The Caldonbrae staff: teachers, housemistresses and matrons had been dispersed across the building either at the Ball or up in their flats. None had escaped. Due to the antiquity of the building it had burned fast and efficiently, offering very few means of escape, particularly in the north wing, where the bulk of the fatalities were contained. The final number could not be physically counted, but was taken from various accounts and lists from the school’s associates, those that knew who had been present. The newspapers remarked that the loss of certain names among the dead would significantly impact many social and political groups of England.
Morag in the Kennenhaven post office nodded at her customers’ passing comments as each day went by, her curiosity lessening as theirs grew. Still, the sudden influx of visitors was a good thing, her husband had pointed out, even
if they were generally suspicious of outsiders.
‘Terrible tragedy, all those lives lost,’ one newcomer said, having travelled a fair distance just to have a look at the smoking carcass of the peninsula.
‘Aye, yes.’ Morag’s husband pulled a regretful face.
‘Old building like that, no safety. All wood, stone. Fire must’ve torn through the place. Arson, was it?’
Morag’s husband stiffened. ‘Don’t rightly know.’
‘Supposedly started from the Headmaster’s study, I read.’ The customer hesitated. ‘But it was so late at night. The front doors bolted. Could only be an inside job.’
‘Nah,’ Morag’s husband shook his head carefully. ‘Never seen such dedicated staff, never seen such happy girls.’
‘The papers don’t agree. I read the parents are all in uproar, launching their own investigation—’
‘It’s our lads, our firemen, our police,’ Morag’s husband interrupted. ‘No need to question it. They’ve done their job well, and there’s nothing to investigate. After all, it were a strange sort of place.’
‘Do you believe the rumours, then?’
‘Nah, ’course not.’ Morag’s husband cleared his throat. ‘All that nastiness? Just printing to sell copies.’
‘I wonder.’
Morag wondered when the customer would finish his analysis.
‘Aye. Still,’ Morag’s husband tilted his head to one side, ‘at least they found so many of those little ones on the beach.’
‘So that part’s true! Fancy that.’ The customer frowned with interest. ‘They say some of the girls were Japanese … I wonder what they’re doing up here, so far from home.’ He waited for a response, but received none. ‘Where will the remaining girls go? The papers said something about partner schools.’
‘Ach,’ Morag’s husband shrugged, ‘these rich English always land on their feet. They look after each other, don’t they?’
‘Even so,’ the customer nodded, ‘sounds like it might not have been a school like we thought it was.’
Morag opened her mouth as her husband hesitated. ‘Aye, you could be right. But sometimes things happen exactly like they’re supposed to, don’t they? No need to question it. We’re people of honour up here, in Scotland.’
The customer nodded sagely as he paid for his newspaper.
Epilogue
Ten Years Later
Rose squinted at the newspaper. Breakfast at the cafe was usually tolerable under the shade of the awnings, away from the golden blaze of the Italian square. But the sun was unusually bright that morning, her dark hair prickled with the early summer heat.
Rose hadn’t slept well the night before, but she was used to that now. It was her curse to have her dreams forever marred by girls’ faces, tinged by hot tongues of flame. They followed her into the daytime, too, bright ghosts living among her waking hours. She saw Frances’s broad smile in her colleague at the library, the spirit of those startling blue eyes turned to ash. Clarissa, too, could be found in the pretty face of her landlady’s daughter; Dulcie or Lex in the slender movements of the Italian girls on the street. Even the soft brown hair of a precinct policeman regularly caught Rose’s eye and she would stop, thinking that at last the Headmaster had come, had found her after all this time, to avenge his dead.
But no one ever came.
The waiter brought Rose her usual Earl Grey, teabag in, and it grew dark as Rose perused the paper. It was an international newspaper she didn’t usually buy, due to the price and the politics, but today, she’d been advised to via a letter that sat on the table, from Frederica List.
Rose had contacted Freddie as soon as it had been safe to do so, from this self-imposed exile in Rome. Initially she’d expected very little, but soon they’d begun sharing letters as regularly as they could. The fire had freed Freddie of Caldonbrae’s stranglehold, but it had not convinced her family of any alternative path. She was still trying to persuade her father that at twenty-five, his youngest daughter might have a more independent life than that of her sisters, perhaps even one that involved a work placement or an internship. But she’d refused to use her father’s connections, wanting to strike out on her own, and they’d locked horns. From the strict options offered, Freddie had chosen an arts exchange programme in Rome to be near to Rose, insisting to her father in her undaunted way that her old teacher was a surviving peer from Hope.
But Rose was wary of the girl’s intrusion on the quiet apology of her daily life. In her letters Freddie made no mention of the event, and seemed to be entirely unfazed by it, not suffering in the same way as Rose and the other two girls. The bud of feminine courage that had once existed in Rose now bloomed ruthlessly in Freddie. And with that blazing face of hers, Freddie had a resilience that Rose admired but also resisted. If Freddie was a Medea, then Rose was a Medusa: her head separated from her body, her eyes staring out with horror.
Daisy had written about visiting Rome too. Rose imagined showing Daisy around the library and introducing her to her academic friends in the city, but she wondered how Daisy would cope after her nervous breakdown midway through her doctorate in Classics. After all these years of never once betraying a sense of trauma from that night, what prompted her collapse wasn’t something bad, but something ostensibly good. Daisy had met a nice man, a young barrister from her father’s firm, but the closer they became and the more her father approved, the more she realised that he was exactly the sort of man Hope would have chosen for her. It seemed to prove to Daisy that she would never escape, that Caldonbrae Hall really would always live within her; so, she’d broken things off with the man and fallen behind in her studies. This in turn hurled her towards an emotional collapse. But now, after a year of rest, she was looking for a way to make a timid return to her thesis.
Nessa had never once replied to Rose’s letters, but she always hoped, nonetheless. The last the girls had heard, Nessa’s family had tried to put her in a Swiss rehabilitation clinic, but she had broken out. Freddie blamed Nessa’s silence on that escape and her reported non-stop travelling since. But Rose knew that what they had done to free her – to free all of them – would chase Nessa all over the world, her anxieties tempered by foreign winds, her search for any kind of peace her never-ending.
Once Rose thought she might have spotted that small blonde head crossing a piazza; Rose followed, but lost her in the crowd. She would willingly have crossed the world to find Nessa, and bring her to whatever home she needed, but Rose couldn’t leave Italy. The truth of who she really was lay only with those three girls, a few people of Kennenhaven, one former university tutor here in Rome and the dark corner of a drawer where her now-redundant passport lay buried. In England’s eyes, she didn’t exist.
After the fire, her mother had survived another six months. Rose had called the clinic twice soon after the event, but had lost her nerve and hung up before anyone answered, not wanting to arouse suspicion. She only learned of her death through Freddie again, thanks to a very fond letter that directed Rose to the obituaries in The Times. There, her mother’s name was bound up in honour due to her Caldonbrae Hall connection, revered as if she had been one of the long-serving members of staff that perished tragically in the flames. Her feminist legacy lost, her name allied forever with the school – and Rose unable to grieve, her own dead name tied up mournfully next to her mother’s.
Yes, Rose would have liked to draw the three girls together with her in Rome, return to their easy classroom discussions from before, uniting after ten years for a kind of purge, in some oblique, ancient way. But she didn’t have the power to absolve them – all she could do was free herself, choose to live, and encourage them to do the same.
It was Freddie’s most recent letter that birthed a new dash of courage. There was a call to arms within those usual lines of mutual affection, and it directed Rose to the newspaper that now lay in front of her.
Miss Josephine Harrington, aged 25, one of the young survivors of the tragic blaze that destroyed Caldonbrae Hall and left 357 persons dead announces her intention to rebuild the school in a new location. Miss Harrington laments the loss of this world-renowned institution and has plans to reinstall and renew its ethos and traditions for the twenty-first century: ‘I shall be very pleased to revive this cherished heart of British society. With the revered Caldonbrae values as our backbone, we shall usher new generations of girls into the modern age.’ The location is not yet confirmed, but with the mass of patrons supporting her, the task will surely be a glorious one. Josephine’s own aunt and the school’s former deputy head, Ms Vivien Johns, perished in the accident ten years ago, and will be honoured among other names in this new Caldonbrae rebuild.
Rose studied the photograph of Josie: the girl’s newly adult face, her hair shorter and fuller, the set of her jaw, those hard black eyes. Rose couldn’t believe how much Josie as a woman resembled Vivien. She read the article three times before scrunching up the page, staining her hands with its ink.
So there it was, Rose’s past enemy rising up again. She’d by now learned that she was not only her father’s child, but her mother’s too, and this enduring anger could not lie dormant. Freddie had a plan that would end what was beginning again, but it depended on Rose. Were they doomed to fight this many-headed Hydra for as long as it kept reappearing?
Rose glared at the ink stains across her hands. Pushing the newspaper aside, she took a final swig of her black tea. As she did so, her eyes caught on a red halo of curls shining in the sunlight on the other side of the square. Rose gave a rare smile as she slipped the letter in amongst her things and left the table.
Acknowledgements
Firstly I want to thank Nelle Andrew, my agent, who grabbed this book with both hands and didn’t let go, even when I resisted punching it into its finest shape. The passion you showed in welcoming and nurturing this novel to publication has changed my life.