by Kate Morton
Ada slipped her fingers into the hidden latch and unhooked the panel, cracking the door open. Miss Radcliffe had already disappeared, nowhere to be seen, and Ada climbed quickly from the hiding place, marvelling once again at how seamlessly the wall panel slid back into place. Unless one knew that it was there, it would be impossible to guess.
Miss Radcliffe had been the one to show her the secret chamber. She had caught Ada hiding behind the thick brocade curtains in the library one afternoon when she should have been in a sewing lesson and bade her come to the office where they would have ‘a little talk’. Ada had prepared herself for a dressing down, but instead Miss Radcliffe had told her to sit wherever she pleased and said, ‘I was not much older than you are now when I first came to this house. My brother and his friends were adults and far too busy with other things to be interested in me. I was given a free run, as they say, and being of a somewhat’ – she hesitated – ‘inquisitive disposition, I engaged in rather more exploration than might have been expected.’
The house was very old, she’d continued, hundreds of years old, and had been built at a time in history when certain people had very good reason to seek concealment. She had invited Ada then to follow her, and while all of the other girls were singing Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ downstairs, Miss Radcliffe had revealed to Ada the secret hideaway. ‘I am not sure about you, Miss Lovegrove,’ she’d said, ‘but there have been times in my life when I have felt a very keen need to disappear.’
Now Ada hurried along the passage to the central stairwell. Rather than heading downstairs to the music appreciation class, though, she went all the way up to the attic and into the bedroom labelled ‘East Loft’ that she shared with another boarder, Margaret Worthington.
She didn’t have much time; music appreciation class would soon be over and the other girls would be released. Ada knelt on the floor, tossing back the linen valance that was draped around her bed. Her suitcase was still there, exactly where she’d left it, and she slid it out carefully.
Ada lifted the lid and the tiny bundle of fur blinked at her, opening his mouth in a silent, emphatic meow!
She cupped the kitten in one hand and drew him into a close cuddle. ‘There, now, little one,’ she whispered against the soft spot between his ears. ‘Don’t worry, I’m here.’
The kitten pawed at her dress with his velvet pads and launched into an indignant tale of hunger and need; Ada smiled and dug inside the deep pocket of the pinafore that Mamma had chosen for her at Harrods, retrieving the jar of sardines she’d pilfered earlier from the kitchen.
While her kitten stretched his legs, stalking the room’s rim as if it were a wide savannah plain, Ada prised the lid off the jar and withdrew a single slippery fish. Holding it out, she called, softly, ‘Here, Bilī; here, little cat.’
Bilī padded towards her, demolishing the dangled sardine, and each one thereafter, until the jar was empty; he then meowed plaintively until Ada set the jar down on its side and let him lick the juice delicately from within. ‘Greedy little fellow,’ she said, with deepest admiration. ‘You’ve gone and got your snout thoroughly wet.’
A week ago, Ada had saved Bilī’s life. She had been avoiding Charlotte and May and had found herself on the far side of the meadow, beyond the house where the river bend turned around the copse and disappeared from sight.
Ada had heard noises coming from the other side of the trees that reminded her of festival time in Bombay and had followed the river westward until she turned a corner and saw a Gypsy camp in the clearing beyond. There were caravans and fires, horses and dogs, and children throwing a floating kite with a long tail of colourful ribbons into the air.
She had noticed one scruffy boy heading towards the river on his own. He had a sack over his shoulder and was whistling a song that she almost recognised. Curious, Ada had followed him. She crouched behind a tree and watched as he started taking things from the sack, one by one, and dunking them in the river. She had thought at first that he was cleaning small items of clothing, just as she had seen people doing in Dhobi Ghat back home. It was only when she heard the first tiny cry that she realised it wasn’t clothing he was drawing from the sack, and that he wasn’t cleaning anything.
‘Hey! You! What do you think you’re doing?’ she had called, pounding over to his side.
The boy looked up at her, his shock as clear as the dirt on his face.
Ada’s voice was quivering. ‘I said, what do you think you’re doing?’
‘Putting them out of their misery. Like I been told to.’
‘You awful, cruel boy! You beastly coward! You great big thug!’
The boy raised his eyebrows and Ada was galled to realise that he looked amused by the force of her rage. Without a word, he reached into the sack and scooped out the last remaining kitten, holding it aloft by the scruff of its neck with the most indelicate grip.
‘Murderer!’ she hissed.
‘My dad’ll murder me if I don’t do what he says.’
‘Give me that little cat at once.’
The boy had shrugged and then thrust the limp kitten into Ada’s waiting hands before tossing the empty sack over his shoulder and slinking back towards camp.
Ada had thought a lot about Bilī’s brothers and sisters since that day. She woke sometimes in the middle of the night, unable to rid her mind of pictures of their submerged faces and lifeless bodies, tossed and tumbled by the river’s current as it carried them out to sea.
Now, Bilī let out a squawk of displeasure as Ada hugged him just a bit too hard.
There was a noise outside on the staircase, footfalls, and Ada fumbled the kitten quickly back into the suitcase, dropping the lid but making sure to leave a crack around the rim for air. It was not an ideal solution but it would do for now. Miss Thornfield, predictably enough, did not tolerate pets.
The door opened just as Ada had climbed to her feet. The valance, she noticed, was still hooked up near her mattress, but there was no time to fix it.
Charlotte Rogers was standing in the doorway.
She smiled at Ada, but Ada knew better than to smile back. She remained en garde.
‘There you are,’ said Charlotte sweetly. ‘Haven’t you been a slippery little fish today!’ For a split second, aware of the empty sardine jar in her pocket, Ada thought that Charlotte Rogers had somehow guessed her secret. But the older girl continued: ‘I’m just here to deliver a message – the bearer of bad tidings, I’m afraid. Miss Thornfield knows that you skipped music class and she has asked me to send you to her to receive your punishment.’ She smiled with mock sympathy. ‘You would get on so much better here if you just learned to follow the rules, Ada. Rule number one is that I always win.’ She turned to leave, hesitated, and then looked back. ‘Better straighten your bed. I wouldn’t like to have to tell Miss Thornfield that you’ve been slovenly.’
Ada’s fists were clenched so tightly as she took the stairs down towards Miss Thornfield’s office that it was hours before the fingernail marks left her palms. It had become clear that she was not going to win a war of attrition with Charlotte Rogers and May Hawkins simply by ignoring or avoiding them. She would never concede, which meant that she was going to have to strike back, and in such a way that it would get them to leave her alone, once and for all.
She hardly even heard Miss Thornfield’s lecture about tardiness, and when the punishment was handed down – a fortnight of extra sewing duties, assisting the costumiers for the end of term concert, instead of attending Natural History Society – Ada was too distracted even to mount a protest.
She turned over the pieces of the puzzle all afternoon, moving them around, trying to force them to make sense, but it was not until much later that night, while Margaret, her roommate, was snoring softly on the other side of the room and Bilī was purring in her arms, that the idea finally came to her.
When it arrived, it was as clear as if someone had entered the room, tiptoed across the floor beside her bed, knelt down low and
whispered the idea into her ear.
Ada grinned to herself in the dark: the plan was perfect and so very simple. Better yet, thanks to Charlotte Rogers, she had been given the perfect means with which to execute it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The end of summer term concert was an institution at Miss Radcliffe’s School for Young Ladies, and, as such, rehearsals had begun in the very first week of term. Miss Byatt, the thin, nervous speech and drama teacher, had held a series of auditions, whittling the show to a select group of fifteen performances comprising musical acts, poetry recitals and dramatic soliloquies.
Ada was to appear in the static, unspeaking role of Mouse Two as part of a scene from the pantomime of Cinderella; Charlotte Rogers, as the second cousin twice removed of Ms Ellen Terry, was regarded (not least by herself) as a formidable Shakespearean actress and was thus performing thrice within the show: a recital of one of the sonnets, a rendition of Lady Macbeth’s ‘Out, damned spot!’ monologue, and a parlour song sung to piano accompaniment provided by her friend, May Hawkins.
Due to the small size of the two halls within the house, it was customary to stage the concert within the long barn that stood at the top of the coach way. In the days leading up to the show, each girl was responsible for carrying chairs across from the house and arranging them in rows; those who had not been fortunate enough to be selected for the cast were automatically assigned to stage management tasks, including the assembly of a raised stage and the suspension of proscenium curtains from the rafters above.
In light of the punishment handed down by Miss Thornfield, Ada was especially busy, corralled into joining the sewing circle whose members were making final touches to the girls’ costumes. The occupation was not a natural fit; Ada was terrible at sewing, certainly not capable of making the rows of strong, neat backstitches necessary to anchor two pieces of fabric together. She had, however, been able to demonstrate that she was adept at trimming loose threads and was thus handed a small pair of silver scissors and tasked with ‘neatening the edges’.
‘She is the first one to arrive at each meeting, whereupon she barely makes a peep, such is her commitment to her work,’ the sewing mistress reported to Miss Thornfield, when asked, to which the deputy headmistress gave a thin smile and said, ‘Very good to hear.’
When dawn broke on the day of the concert, the entire school was abuzz. Afternoon lessons were cancelled in order to accommodate a full-cast rehearsal and the show was scheduled to begin promptly at four.
At two minutes before the hour, Valerie Miller, who had auditioned (unsuccessfully) with a rendition of ‘My Wild Irish Rose’ played on the cowbells, was given a nod by Miss Thornfield and started sounding one of her bells to alert the audience that the show was about to begin. Most of the girls and a smattering of parents and siblings, along with certain Very Important community members, were already assembled; but the ringing brought their chatter to an end, at which point the lamps within the hall were dimmed and the black curtains dropped, casting the audience into darkness and allowing the limelights lining the stage to take over.
One by one, the performers took their places within the glow of centre stage, singing and reciting with all of their might, to the warm appreciation of the audience. The programme was not a short one, however, and as the first hour ticked over, the crowd began to flag. By the time Charlotte Rogers appeared onstage for the third time, the younger children were starting to squirm in their seats and yawn, their stomachs to grumble.
Charlotte, ever the professional, was undaunted. She planted her feet squarely and blinked prettily at her audience. Her golden hair tumbled in curls, one thick ringlet over each shoulder, and from behind the piano, May Hawkins watched for a signal to start playing, deepest admiration writ large upon her face.
Ada’s attention, though, was on Charlotte’s costume: a rather grown-up blouse and skirt ensemble – modelled, of course, on one of the stage outfits worn recently by Ellen Terry – that made her look older than she was.
From her seat in the dark hall, Ada watched the other girl carefully, as if by the power of her gaze alone she might move matter. She was nervous – far more nervous than she had been when she was performing as Mouse Two. Her hands were balled in damp fists upon her lap.
It happened as Charlotte hit the highest note, one that she had been practising to reach for the better part of the month. Perhaps it was the significant intake of breath required to make it to high C, or else the way she thrust her arms out wide to entreat the crowd. Whatever the case, as Charlotte attained her note, she dropped her skirt.
The skirt did not drop sluggishly. It dropped suddenly and completely, in one fell swoop, to land in a puddle of white lace and linen on the floor around her dainty ankles.
It was one thousand times better than anything that Ada had dared to imagine.
As she’d trimmed a few of the stitches on Charlotte’s waistband, she had hoped that the garment might slip enough to cause agitation and distraction, but never in a million years had she envisaged this. The way the skirt fell! The exceptional timing with which it collapsed completely, almost as if an invisible force, controlled by Ada’s very mind, had swept into the hall and, on receiving a silent command, yanked down the skirt …
It was by far and away the funniest thing that Ada had seen in many months. And, judging by the thunderous surge of unrestrained laughter that filled the barn, lifting to roll and echo amongst the rafters, the other girls felt the same way.
As Charlotte, pink-cheeked, sang the last few lines, and the crowd continued their rapturous, hooting applause, Ada realised that for the first time since she had come to Birchwood Manor, she felt almost happy.
According to tradition, the supper after the concert was always a more relaxed affair than regular school dinners, and even Miss Thornfield, who generally considered it deeply improper to approach any school event in the spirit of fun, was induced to conduct the annual presentation of the ‘Good Sport’ awards. These were a series of amusing accolades, nominated and voted for by the students, with the aim of reinforcing the air of celebration and merriment that infused the school body as the academic year drew to a close.
For many of the girls, this would be their last school dinner of term. Only a handful of students – those who did not have homes that could be reached by rail or carriage, or whose parents had travelled to the Continent for the summer and been unable to make other arrangements for their daughters – would be staying on through the holidays. Ada was one of them.
This fact had brought her spirits lower than they might otherwise have been following the spectacular success of the concert, and she was sitting quietly finishing her second serving of blancmange, turning over the ‘Little Miss Threadgood’ award she had been given for ‘Services to Stitching’ (printed prior to the costuming disaster, one assumed), while the other girls chatted happily about the upcoming summer break, when the daily postal delivery arrived.
Ada was so used to being overlooked at mail time that she had to be nudged twice by the girl beside her when her name was called. Up beside the teacher’s table, the senior girl on roster was holding a large box.
Ada jumped to her feet, eager to claim it, almost tripping over in her hurry.
She began untying the twine as soon as she reached her table, slipping out her small silver thread scissors to snip loose the final knots.
Inside was a beautiful découpage box, which Ada identified at once as the perfect new home for Bilī; within the box was a thick envelope promising a letter from Mamma, a new sun hat, two dresses, and a smaller package that made Ada’s heart leap. She recognised Shashi’s handwriting on the gift card at once. ‘Pilla,’ she had written, continuing in Punjabi: ‘A little something to remind you of home while you’re living amongst the monkey bottoms.’
Ada tore open the package to find a small black leather book inside. Between its covers were no words, but instead page after page of pressed flowers: orange hibiscus, mauve queen’s crepe
myrtle, purple passion flower, white spider lilies, red powder puffs. All of them, Ada knew, had come from her very own garden, and in an instant she was back in Bombay. She could feel the sultry air on her face, smell the heady fragrance of summer, hear the songs of prayer as the sun set over the ocean.
So transported was Ada that she was not aware that Charlotte Rogers had made an approach until the older girl was casting a shadow across Ada’s table setting.
Ada looked up, taking in Charlotte’s serious expression. As usual, May Hawkins was serving as aide-de-camp, and the arrival of the two girls at Ada’s table had caused a hush to descend. From instinct, Ada closed Shashi’s flower book and slipped it beneath the wrapping paper.
‘I suppose you saw what happened during the performance,’ said Charlotte.
‘Terrible,’ said Ada. ‘A spot of very bad luck.’
Charlotte smiled grimly. ‘I’ve always believed that a person makes her own luck.’
There was little for Ada to say in reply. Agreement seemed impolitic.
‘I am hoping to have better luck in future.’ She held out a hand. ‘Truce?’
Ada eyed the outstretched hand before meeting it finally with her own. ‘Truce.’
They shook solemnly, and when Charlotte gave a small smile, after a moment’s consideration Ada allowed herself to match it.
And so, although Ada had not expected to be anticipating the end of summer term picnic with enthusiasm, in light of her recent reconciliation with Charlotte Rogers she found herself rather looking forward to the day. There were to be games like battledore and shuttlecock, quoits and skipping, and some of the older girls had even managed to convince Miss Radcliffe to allow them to carry down the small wooden rowing boat that was usually kept stored within the field barn behind the house. The groundsman had looked it over the previous week and, after making a few small repairs, declared the vessel river-worthy.
The day, when it dawned, was warm and clear. An early summer’s haze burned off so that by midday the sky was deep blue and the garden glittered. Down by the river, a series of tablecloths were arranged along a stretch of grassy bank that fell beneath two willows, and the teachers were already lounging on them, enjoying the day. Some had brought large white parasols, while others wore sun hats, and a number of woven hampers containing the lunchtime spread were arranged in the shade around the edges of the group. On Miss Radcliffe’s instructions, the groundsman had carried a single wooden table over from the house, and it now wore a lace cloth, topped with a vase of delicate pink and yellow roses, jugs of cold lemonade and a porcelain teapot with assorted glasses, cups and saucers.