‘Watch the birdie … quite, quite still …’
The magpie settled on the roof of the stables and stood there motionless – quite, quite still. How extraordinary. She watched the birdie …
The searing flare of white light seemed to burst inside her head, blinding her completely, and the smell of burning magnesium filled her nostrils. She couldn’t see a thing – but in that helpless moment knew only that she felt no more pain. Her hair tumbled freely about her shoulders and her soft clothing was warm and comfortable, open at the neck, loosely creased around her knees. The fast ticking of a clock came drifting through the scented silence – a cheerful sound, and a friendly one, familiar to her. In her hands she cradled the present that she had been given, a little metal bowl, and she traced the polished rim of it, so cool and smooth to her fingertips. She felt very peaceful.
‘Thank you, my dear. That will do, I think.’ The photographer’s voice made her jump, and the bells on the red bridle gave a little jingle.
Gradually her vision returned, creeping in around the edges of the dancing white light, and with it came a sense of sadness and bewilderment. Wherever it was she had momentarily been – or whoever it was she had momentarily been – she was back, and she was herself. Once again her boots pinched and her collar itched. Once again her scalp felt as though her hair was slowly being pulled from it, strand by strand.
Celandine could hear the grave wooden tick of the grandmother clock on the wall behind her, the faint creak and whirr of the mechanism. She turned to look at it. Five-and-twenty past ten.
‘Come then, Celandine – we have also some more work to be done.’
‘Yes, Mama.’
‘You will excuse us, please, Mr Tilzey. My daughter is beginning tomorrow at her new school. We have some boxing yet to finish.’
Mr Tilzey looked mildly surprised at this, but said that he quite understood.
Chapter Seven
MOUNT PLEASANT SCHOOL for Girls. Founded 1851. Headmistress; Miss A. Craven. The maroon and grey lettering of the large painted sign more or less matched the colours of her uniform – maroon blazer over a grey tunic. And the pale yellow background of the sign was a similar colour to that of the ludicrous straw hat that lay upon the buckboard seat between her and Robert. The words MISS A. CRAVEN appeared to have been painted more recently than the rest, the raised outline of a previous name just visible in the Saturday morning sunshine.
Celandine had plenty of time to study these things because there was an obstruction up ahead – a motor coach and a carriage had between them blocked the steep curving driveway that led to the school. There was no point in Robert trying to go any further until the way was clear.
It began to look as though they might be stuck there for quite a while, and Robert finally said, ‘P’raps you should walk on up, miss. ’Tain’t very far. I can drop your boxes at porter’s lodge when I gets there.’
‘Yes, all right.’ She waited to be helped down from the pony trap, and then stood awkwardly holding her hat whilst Robert retrieved her large canvas bag from among the other things that were stacked at the back. She patted the horse’s neck and was inevitably reminded of Tobyjug. Her hand still held the memory of him – of how he too had once felt like this: alive and warm against her palm. And then so cold.
‘I’ll say cheerio, miss. And I hope … well, I hope ’ee’ll settle in all right …’ Poor Robert looked very uncomfortable.
‘Yes. Goodbye, Robert. Thank you.’ She wanted to cry. Robert was a kind man.
But she put on her hat and walked along the grass verge of the drive, threading her way past the unhappy entanglement of carriage and motor coach that still blocked all progress in either direction. The problem seemed to be that neither vehicle could reverse – the motor coach because of the steepness of the hill, and the carriage because one of its wheels had caught against the coach.
There was a lot of shouting. Both drivers were offering very lively advice as to what they believed the other should do, and from the queue at either end came further loud suggestions. The carriage was a smart landau, open-topped, and in the back sat a fair-haired girl in school uniform who was also shouting – though not very helpfully, ‘Oh for goodness sake, Stokes! Just go on, why don’t you? I shall be late!’
Silly idiot, thought Celandine. Why doesn’t she walk?
The scene at the top of the drive was no less riotous – there were girls and bags and boxes everywhere – so that Celandine only took in a brief impression of the school building. It was tall and complicated. There was a central clock tower, with several gables to either side, built from the local hamstone, like Mill Farm, but made ugly by the dark grey mortar between the blocks. Celandine noticed that there were metal bars fixed to the upstairs windows. These had presumably been put there for the girls’ safety, but the effect was to make the place look vaguely prison-like.
She had a letter tucked into the inside pocket of her stiff new blazer, and instructions to report to Matron – whoever that might be. Celandine climbed the broad flight of well-worn steps that led up to the high archway of the main entrance and pushed her way into the echoing hall. Here there were more girls than ever and the cavernous space rang with the confusion of voices and clattering feet. A stone staircase rose in a great square spiral right up through the centre of the building, and from high above came the sounds of banging doors and footsteps hurrying along distant corridors. It was all very bewildering.
Near the foot of the staircase a group of girls surrounded a woman in a white uniform. The woman was seated at a small table and the girls peered over her shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of the sheets of paper that lay in front of her.
‘Matron, what about me? Am I in Wyndham too?’
‘Where am I, Matron?’
‘Matron, I’m supposed to be in Dampier, but you’ve got me down as Hardy. That can’t be right, you know.’
Celandine moved closer. At least she had discovered who Matron was.
The woman in white threw up her hands in despair, and shouted, ‘Girls! Will you please be quiet! I can’t hear myself think! Thank you. That’s better. Molly Fletcher – you’re in Hardy. Alexandra Long – Dampier. Kathleen O’Hanlon – Hardy.’
‘But Matron, you’ve got me on the list as an “H”. I should be an “O”.’
Celandine put her bag down on the chequered tile floor, and waited. She hadn’t the least idea of what they could be all be arguing about. More girls came and went – big girls, small girls, pretty girls and plain girls, tearful girls who clung to their mothers and cheerful girls who galloped up the stairs two at a time. Celandine watched them all and wondered how she would ever fit in, wondered whether all this would ever become familiar to her. It was so very different from the world she was used to.
At last the group that had been gathered around Matron dispersed, and Celandine was able to approach the desk. She took the letter from her blazer pocket.
‘Excuse me. I have a letter … I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’
‘Ah. A new girl? Let’s have a look then, shall we?’
Matron took the letter and opened it, holding the single sheet of paper a little distance away from her as she read it. She had a remarkably shiny face, Celandine thought – very clean and neat beneath her wiry silver hair and starched white cap.
‘Celandine Howard,’ said Matron, and transferred her attention to the list on her desk. ‘Celandine Howard. Yes, here we are. Celandine Howard. You’re in … Hardy. Now then … who can I get to …?’ She glanced over Celandine’s shoulder. ‘Ah. Jessop. Just in time to make yourself useful. You can take this young lady up to Hardy for me, if you will. You’re both in the same dorm. Now then, Howard, this is Nina Jessop. Nina will be in the same dormitory as you, and so she can show you the ropes.’
Celandine turned round, and looked at the girl standing behind her – a red-eyed child who looked as though she were either just about to cry, or had recently left off doing so.
Matron continued to address the girl. ‘Did you want to see me, Jessop?’
‘No, Matron. Well, but only to ask you which dorm I was in this year.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘It’s Hardy, is it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Oh.’
‘Off you go, then, the pair of you – and Howard, you’re to go and see Miss Craven in the headmistress’s study at five-thirty. Five-thirty, mind. Supper’s at six-fifteen. Bell goes at six-ten. And don’t forget that there’ll be a locker inspection at seven, so you’ll need to have your bed made and locker packed before you go to supper – there’ll be no time afterwards. Jessop will show you what to do. Run along then. Oh, and Jessop,’ Matron opened her eyes very wide and gave the girl an unnaturally bright smile, ‘do try to buck up a bit, this term. You’re in the third form now.’
‘Yes, Matron.’
‘Yes, Matron. Well, see that you do. Go.’
Celandine had been a Mount Pleasant girl for barely half an hour, but already she sensed that she was in a less lowly position than the unfortunate Nina Jessop. Every question she asked – and she had many – was met with blushing shyness and a response that was as brief as possible. What was Matron like? Oh, she was ‘all right’. What about the teachers – were they very strict? Yes. What was the food like? Oh, pretty foul. Some of it was ‘all right’.
As they hurried along one of the dark upper corridors, three very young girls, minus their hats and blazers, came running towards them. They barged past Nina Jessop as though she had been invisible, although they seemed to acknowledge her existence as an afterthought – ‘Ninky-ninky-noooo!’ they chanted.
‘Who were they?’ said Celandine.
‘Second-formers,’ muttered Nina. She pushed open a heavy wooden door that bore a gold-painted sign in capital letters – HARDY – and Celandine followed.
They were in a room full of beds. It took Celandine a few moments to realize that this was where she would be sleeping. It was not that she had imagined something different, simply that she had given the matter no thought whatsoever. The overwhelming events of the recent weeks – Tobyjug’s death, her attack on Miss Bell, her meeting with Fin and entering the forest – had so filled the present of each day that there had been no time to wonder about the future. In a kind of numb helplessness she had allowed herself to be kitted out and bundled off to this place, for what else could she do in the face of her father’s anger and her mother’s insistence? None of it had seemed real. Her mother had clung to her in parting, and wept, yet she herself had been able to feel nothing. Her father had even given her a half-crown, saying that she should have the other half if she came home at Christmas with a good report of herself – and she had caught her brother Thos’s look of outright astonishment as she had taken the coin without a word. But now she was here, in a cold white room full of beds, with a weepy-eyed girl called Nina Jessop, and this was where she would be sleeping from now on. The reality of it struck her at last. She had left home.
There was a painful lump in her throat and her eyes prickled as she looked about the room. It seemed so cheerless. The iron beds – perhaps a dozen of them, each covered with a brown army blanket – were ranged side by side around the walls. There was just enough space between them for a small wooden locker. Two more beds stood end to end in the centre of the room, with lockers separating the head rails.
‘Hullo, Ninky, don’t tell us you’ve found a chum.’
Celandine looked round. There were three girls sitting in a far corner. They had been partially hidden from view by the open door.
‘Won’t you introduce us?’ The one who spoke looked somehow familiar. She was a big girl, with very dark hair cut into an unflatteringly short bob.
Nina Jessop, who was already kneeling beside a locker, raised her head and peered over the top of her bed. Her face was very flushed.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘This is, um … It’s um …’
‘Oh, it’s Um, is it?’ The big girl spoke again, and her two friends giggled. ‘This is your friend Um, is it, Ninky? Well then, Um, how do you do? Chloe, Daphne, say hallo to Ninky’s chum – Um.’ The two girls giggled again. ‘Hallo, Um.’
Celandine was already feeling as though she wanted to slap the lot of them, but she forced a smile and began to say, ‘Actually, my name’s—’
‘Oh, I already know,’ the big girl interrupted her. ‘It’s Celandine Howard. My dears …’ she leaned forward and spread her arms in a mock curtsey, ‘please allow me to present Miss Celandine Howard!’
‘Hallo, Miss Celandine Howard!’
Celandine frowned and looked at the big girl, trying to remember where she might have seen her before.
‘How did you know my name?’ she said. ‘Have we met, then?’
‘Well, I don’t believe we’ve exactly met, you know. But your people were gracious enough to invite us to a party a few summers ago – on Coronation Day. It was all rather grand, and dear Mama was so grateful. You’ve a brother who’s rather sweet on my sister Emily, so I gather.’
Emily? Emily … Swann? Of course.
‘Oh. So you must be … um …’
‘No, I’m not Um. That’s you, according to Ninky. I’m Mary Swann.’
‘Yes, of course. Mary.’
‘But you may call me Swann.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘We call each other by our surnames here, unless we’re particularly good friends. Don’t we, Jessop?’
Nina Jessop said nothing, but returned to her unpacking.
Celandine had apparently been left to fend for herself. She looked about the room once more, and said, ‘But where am I supposed to go?’
‘I say, Ninky, you’re not much help to your chum, are you?’ said Mary Swann. ‘Over there.’ She pointed to an unmade bed just beyond Nina. ‘That’ll be yours.’
The mattress, a stiff and lumpy object covered in black-and-white striped ticking, was rolled tightly against the bedstead. A bare pillow, also striped, lay perched on top of the rolled-up mattress. On the slatted metal base was a neatly folded pile of bedding, although it seemed a rather meagre pile at that.
Celandine had never made a bed in her life and hardly knew where to start. But she reasoned that the mattress would have to be at the bottom. That much, at least, was obvious. So she put the pile of sheets and blankets on top of her locker and struggled to unroll the mattress – a heavy and awkward object that nevertheless managed to look inadequate as a means of support. Finally she got the thing so that it was lying flat upon the base. The base had no springs and the lattice of metal slats didn’t hold out the promise of much comfort. What next? A sheet?
She was conscious of being watched, and of the whispering that was going on in the far corner of the room. By the time she had managed to spread a sheet over the mattress and had tucked it in as best she could, it was no great surprise to find that her observers had moved in closer.
‘Oh dear, I’m afraid that this will never do,’ said Mary Swann, who now stood at the foot of the bed, hands on hips. ‘If the Bulldog saw this, she’d have fits. Absolute fits, my dear.’ Daphne and Chloe giggled – their unvarying response to all of Mary’s remarks, it would seem. How stupid they looked, with their long pigtails and their identical protruding teeth. Like dim rabbits they were, a pair of silly rabbits … then Celandine realized that the girls were twins. It was so obvious. Why hadn’t she seen it before?
‘Would you like us to help?’ said Mary Swann. ‘Only, the Bulldog’s fearfully hot on bed drill.’
Celandine was inclined to be wary of this offer, but didn’t see how she could refuse. ‘Yes, all right then. Thanks.’
‘It’s the corners, you see,’ said Mary, beginning to undo Celandine’s handiwork. ‘They have to be done the Mount Pleasant way. Everything has to be done the Mount Pleasant way. See – we hold this bit out like this. Then we fold that bit under, and tuck it in like this, and so we end up with … this. Got it? I’ll show you again. Watch.’
/> Mary Swann moved on to the next corner and demonstrated the Mount Pleasant bed-making method once again. Celandine glanced away at one point and caught Nina Jessop staring at the proceedings – the expression on her face telling her that such acts of kindness at the hands of Mary Swann might not be the norm.
‘Now you try,’ said Mary. And so Celandine pulled out one of the remaining corners and made a fair attempt at copying what she had seen, expecting all the while that some blow was about to fall on her or that some trick would be played. But when she had finished, Mary said, ‘There. That was very good, Howard. We’ll make a proper Mount Pleasant girl of you yet, dear. Now have you unpacked your bag? No? Well, Chloe can show you where everything goes, can’t you, Chlo? Not a bit of good relying on Ninky – you’ll get no sense out of her. Come on, Daph, we might as well finish off this bed, now that we’ve started.’
Celandine was more suspicious than ever, but she allowed the sniggering Chloe to show her how the locker was to be arranged – stockings and undergarments in the bottom drawer along with her sponge-bag, clean blouses and spare tunic in the top, toothbrush in this drawer, hairbrush in that. It didn’t seem to be a very logical system. She tried at the same time to keep an eye on Mary and Daphne, sure that they would put something horrible in her bed – a dead bird, or a thistle, or some such idiotic thing. But she noticed nothing unusual, and by the time she had finished her unpacking, the bed looked neat and crisply made up.
‘Have you brought any food with you, or money?’ said Mary. ‘Only you have to keep all that in your locker as well.’
Celandine had an orange, some barley twist, and half a bar of chocolate in her bag – exotic treats supplied by her mother at the last minute – and she put these in the top drawer of her locker on Mary’s advice, along with the half-crown that her father had given her.
Celandine Page 12