“East Anglia,” her grandmother said. “It’s the one where your Aunt Alice is a nun. Our Lady of Victory—or could it be of Sorrow?—I forget. But Erik and I, we were thinking …”
They were always thinking. That was part of the trouble, perhaps. Thinking always of her, and what would be best—when the best could only be to have Mummy back, and the terrible thing never to have happened. It wasn’t mentioned in the house. No one mentioned it now. Because Mummy is dead. She had to go into the prison hospital the day after the trial. She was very, very ill. It was her kidneys, they said, kidney failure. They don’t have any cure when it’s as bad as that. But oh, J want her alive again.
Aunt Teddy had invited Willow to come and live in Paris with her. But how could she do that? She was frightened. Another strange place, she had thought. Another strange person. I don’t really know Aunt Teddy.
She clung to Lily, as the time drew near for going. “I want to stay with you. I’d much rather be here with you and Uncle Erik.” Grandma and Uncle Erik, with them she was safe. It was safe at The Towers.
Mummy told me about her childhood there. She was happy. And then the something terrible happened that made her marry the man I used to call Daddy. Who … Mummy told me about someone else being my real father, just a little about it. It frightened me. I don’t know who I am, and I don’t want to find out. Something was said at the trial, I think, by Aunt Angela. But she didn’t say who he was. I think he has to have been wonderful for Mummy to have loved him. I know that she loved him—that is the one thing she said when she told me. I didn’t ask her any more then. I didn’t want to know. I don’t want to know now.
Everyone has been so kind to me since she died. They try and say things to make it better, to show that it will be all right. But it can’t be. There’s this great yawning hole where there used to be my love for her. And hers for me.
She didn’t need to die, why did she die? But if she hadn’t, would they have—no, they would never have hanged her. But yes, women are … There was someone called Edith Thompson the year before I was born, and she hadn’t even done the killing. There was to have been an appeal for Mummy, she would have been let off, everyone was absolutely certain. The jury was never meant to say what they did. She would have had that other verdict—manslaying or something. She would have been a little in prison and then come back to us.
All five of us. Lucy, Jessica, Margaret, Beth. We were a family. The little ones cried because they didn’t understand. I cried because I did. Little Beth clinging to me, not wanting to go to Auntie Bar. Canada is so far away. I’ve lost them. Although everyone says I may go and stay there. Not this summer —but perhaps the next, or the next.
It was raining as they turned into the convent drive. The motor car drew up at the door. I shall be too proud to cry here, she thought.
Afterward she could remember little of the first half hour. They had been shown into the parlor and there had learned that they were a day too early. Term began tomorrow. Grandma had gotten it wrong. But it did not matter, they were told, Willow would be taken care of. The whole of her time there, she would be taken care of.
Reverend Mother smiled at Willow, taking her hand in a cold, dry one. “Leave it to us, Mrs. Ahlefeldt-Levetzau. We are quite used to—upsets. For such children the sooner there is a return to normal life, the better.”
She says it as if I were slightly deaf, or not quite present, Willow thought. I wish I weren’t. All the time Reverend Mother spoke, she wore her proudest and “cleverest” expression. It made her feel safer (and in the old and happier days had made her friend Joyce laugh).
But then, after tea in the convent parlor, when she’d kept back her tears, eating the last sandwich to make Grandma happy—in had come Aunt Alice.
Reverend Mother said, “Mother Hilda has not been in the best of health. She is only able to do light work. Sacristy work.”
Aunt Alice was not at all what Willow had imagined. She did not look particularly holy. Nor, except that they were both thin, could she see much family resemblance. But then Aunt Alice was only half Mummy’s sister.
What to say to her? She didn’t seem one for talking. She and Grandma discussed politely a few items of family news (the real news, the bad things, were not mentioned at all). They spoke of Michael going to Romania. Aunt Alice said, “Ah, Romania …” as if she thought it the most boring country. Really, Aunt Alice wasn’t very interested, or interesting. I can’t imagine, Willow thought, what we shall talk about if we have to be together.
Then, suddenly, Alice was gone, and Grandma too. She heard the sound of the motor car turning out of the gates. Willow was alone in the parlor with Reverend Mother.
“I am ringing now for Mother Emmanuel, who will take you to your dormitory.”
“Oh, but just a sec. I forgot to give my aunt the present that—” “Mother Hilda, I think you mean, Willow. Perhaps you would remember while you are here, for the sake of discipline, that Mother Hilda is a nun first, and your aunt second.”
“Whatever is that accent? Honestly, I never heard anyone talk like that unless they were being funny in a music hall or something. Is it Cockney? Are you Cockney?”
“I’m Willow Gilmartin.”
“And I’m Chrissie Leatherley. And no one I know talks like that. Where on earth did you pick it up?”
“What makes you think I got it on earth?”
“Just be careful how you speak to me, new girl You may think you’re the bee’s knees and the camel’s hips, Willow Gilmartin, but I can tell you we don’t.”
There seemed so many of them, although when she did a count it came to far less than at Finsbury Park. It was something to do with the way they’d formed cliques—had already made their friends last September, if not years before. She was the only new girl for the summer term. There were of course older girls, a head girl, three prefects, but they paid little attention to twelve-and thirteen-year-olds. People like Willow got noticed only if they made a scene or broke the rules in ways that couldn’t be ignored.
None of the big girls seemed very interested in being at the convent. When they were overheard talking, it was always about the holidays. Joanna Mays was head girl but spent most of her time with a bay hunter she kept in the stables and which she rode to hounds in the winter and hacked in the summer. When Willow asked one of her own class if Joanna and her friends were taking School Certificate this summer, she’d met an incredulous face.
“Honestly! Whatever’d they want Matric for? They’re not going into some stupid job. They do art and things. At Easter they went to Florence, with Mother Augustine’s brother. Anyway you can’t swot and hunt. There isn’t time.”
She hadn’t expected to be happy, but she hadn’t expected to be quite so unhappy. From the first miserable evening and night alone, on to the dreadful afternoon after, when in a seemingly unending stream the girls had returned from their holidays:
Pauline, Chrissie, Evelyn, Betty, Geraldine, Maureen, Priscilla … They didn’t introduce themselves, or speak to her, but behaved for the first twenty-four hours as if she were not there at all. And she could almost have preferred that.
But of course it had not lasted. “Are you the wallpaper, by any chance?” Maureen had asked. (Or the one she thought was Maureen.) Any answer to that would be wrong, so she kept silent, rather haughtily. That way there was no danger of crying. The worst imaginable would be to cry in front of them.
She shared a large room, almost a dormitory, with Evelyn, Betty, Pauline, and Maureen. They were all Catholics except Priscilla. And even Priscilla knew when to genuflect, stand up, sit down, the words of the hymns, and what all sorts of things meant Willow did not. She hadn’t thought to discuss this with Grandma, and didn’t dare say anything to Aunt Alice (sorry, Mother Hilda), whom she hadn’t seen to speak to since that first day.
They wore summer dresses of blue striped material with navy-blue sash belts and pale blue cardigans. All the uniform was blue, “Our Lady’s color,” exce
pt the brown shiny galoshes which in wet weather were worn over their blue punch-toed sandals. She was Form IV B and so her hair could not be worn loose, it had to be plaited—one or two plaits. Two was easier so she settled for that. The second morning she was struggling when Evelyn, who was nearly as tall as she, and very dark and silent, offered to help. She didn’t speak at all while she was doing it. Then when the second plait was almost finished she tweaked Willow’s head so roughly it brought tears to Willow’s eyes.
Maureen said, her smile like a pussycat’s, “Can’t it do its own hair?”
“Just—it’s, I’ve never had to do plaits on me. I used to plait my little sisters’ hair, though.” Her voice faded away.
They were sitting on their beds staring at her.
“Did anyone speak?” Maureen asked. “I thought I heard an odd sound—”
“Wallpaper can talk, you know,” said Willow.
Angrily, Betty almost shouted, “Chrissie was meant to have that bed. Mother Augustine promised, absolutely promised that Chrissie could move in. It’s a bit muck And she hasn’t just broken her word, she’s put a tree or a bush or something in with us instead. Willow will G.O. Agreed, girls?”
“Yes,” said Pauline. “You go and ask to be moved, Willow. Then Chrissie can come in like she should.” Pauline had thick, short, tangled hair and a large nose. She poked her face now threateningly at Willow. But when Willow the next day did as they’d asked, she was reprimanded.
The days had a pattern. That was perhaps what saved her from despair. The pattern, and then the ticking off of the calendar: only so many more days to half-term. But first there was the Coronation. Several of the girls were taken out for tea by their parents. Grandma and Erik sent Willow a tin of toffees with Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose on the lid. She wasn’t sure about offering the toffees around. In the end she gave them all to the girls in Class III, the class below her.
The lessons weren’t too bad. She thought that probably she would have been able easily to do the work of Class IV A, and possibly Class V too, but because she had never done French or Latin and had studied the wrong period in history, she had been put with girls who were all younger. Not that any of the work was very difficult, but Mother Benedict had made the decision very quickly after asking a few questions. In fact it was this being in IV B instead of A which had caused her to be put in the room with Maureen and the others. She would otherwise have been on the floor below. Perhaps that would have been better? Impossible to tell really—since IV A and V didn’t go out of their way to be friendly.
After the weekend outings for the Coronation she noticed something strange. It began with Betty, who said to her, in a casual voice, almost friendly:
“You never said your grandmother used to be a Lady—” “Didn’t I? Should I? I mean—what of it?”
“Oh, what of it,” said Chrissie, who was standing nearby, “what of it indeed? We know who she is, that’s all.”
“She was very famous, on the stage,” Willow said. “King Edward came to see her.”
“Stale buns for tea, it’s something else we know, about you—”
“Go on then. Say it. Fire ahead.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, new girl?” said Chrissie. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” I might have guessed, she thought. How could I have hoped, without a change of name, that no one would find out? Sooner or later, in spite of what Reverend Mother had said …
Two days later she was sent for during evening prep, and told to go to Aunt Alice in one of the parlors. They sat opposite each other awkwardly. Willow answered questions about her schoolwork, careful not even to hint she was unhappy at Our Lady of Victories.
Suddenly Aunt Alice remarked, her voice very precise, “It was fortunate of course that the newspapers, when gathering their information, didn’t know of my existence, and so did not embarrass the convent. There is something to be said for being buried alive.”
Willow, thinking her serious, bitter even, was surprised then to see a faint smile.
Someone came to fetch her. When she went back into the hall where they did their homework, lots of the girls turned to look. She blushed. It was like the way she’d been stared at when she visited the prison and later when she’d visited Mummy in the hospital there. She wanted to cry, could feel fifty, a hundred, curious eyes on her.
At suppertime Maureen said, “I hope you didn’t go telling your aunt about us eating in the dorm. I bet you’ve been splitting on us.”
Pauline said she was surprised someone with a nun aunt wasn’t a Catholic. “You’ve never told us why you’re not a Catholic.”
“Because my parents weren’t—”
“Oh, your parents,” said Chrissie. “Let’s change the subject, shall we, girls?”
It was Willow’s night for a bath. Mondays and Thursdays. There was a list pinned up outside the washrooms. Just before running the water, she went into one of the lavatories by the communal washbasins. She was just about to pull the chain when she heard her name spoken.
“You know more about her. You sleep with her.”
“We wish we didn’t—”
“Hey. Careful. Sure she’s not—”
“Dead sure. She’s gone for a bath.”
“Right. Honestly, though, wasn’t it just the end, not telling us about a thing like a murder. I mean, if I’d known—crikey. Gosh. When Mummy and Daddy find out … I bet that’s why Reverend Mutt’s kept quiet till now. I mean, if Pauline’s mother hadn’t happened to say …”
“Some of the big girls knew. I’m sure.”
“Honestly, I thought I’d die when Reverend Mutt put on that awful voice—the same one she used for telling us about that funny girl who wet her panties.”
“Didn’t she used to stink?”
“Like someone else I could mention.”
“But Reverend Mutt’s voice. Honestly. ‘Girls, girls, what’s this—’”
“You sound just like her, Maureen—”
“‘What’s this I’ve been hearing, girls? Ugly rumors about little Willow Gilmartin.’ Little, my foot, she’s more like a beanpole. ‘Yes, I’m afraid, girls, something nasty did indeed happen to Willow’s parents. It is all very unsavory and is on no account to be mentioned.’ She’s got a hope! Honestly, we could have guessed a sneaky show-off like that would have something to hide.”
“But her mother’s dead, that’s awfully sad. And—”
“I think you’re a bit soppy, Priscilla, if you want my opinion. How could she love her if she’d killed her father?” “But it’s still sad. I think—”
“Don’t. I must say it’s nice to know she got that showy-off expression because she’s been in the newspapers. Or her family has. I mean that was one of the things Reverend Mutt said, that it might make her a bit proud.”
“I don’t know. Have you read Murder in a Nunnery?”
“One of the big girls is going to lend it me. Don’t spell things by saying who did it, will you?”
Gradually the group broke up. She waited till there was no sound, then crept along to the bathrooms. The bottom of the bath was gritty with scouring powder. After, she cleaned it again, scrubbing with a kind of hopelessness. She said over and over, “Mummy, Mummy …”
When she went back into the room, they were sitting on Evelyn and Maureen’s beds, two on each. It was about fifteen minutes before lights out. Pauline was brushing her hair. No one spoke. Willow hung her towel up on the rail beside her bed.
“Fee fi fo fum, I catch the smell of an unwashed bum,” Maureen said.
“You were a long time in the bath,” Betty said. “I hope you used some soap.”
Suddenly it was summer, and they didn’t need cardigans over the blue striped dresses. For a week or two the sun shone every day. The tennis tournament began, part grass, part asphalt—it was the luck of the draw on which you played. Willow was one of the oldest in the junior section, and although she had never really played before—only banged a ball about—she foun
d she was quite good. When Miss Wedgwood, the games mistress, showed her the superiority of overhand serves, she developed quickly a deadly one with an unpredictable spin. “Forty love, deuce, van in, van out …” For minutes at a time she forgot that she was profoundly, desperately, never-to-be-cured unhappy.
That way the days passed somehow till half-term. (Half-term meant half over, halfway to being back at The Towers for the long summer holidays.) But the few days’ break was gone almost before she knew it. She could not tell Grandma or Uncle Erik anything, not even that the girls knew about her history. “Yes, I’m very happy, honestly,” she said to their anxious inquiries, “thank you.” How could she add to their unhappiness?
She was back again, with another six weeks to face. I can’t do it, she thought.
They lay about on the grass in small groups. There was a Columbia gramophone, a portable that belonged to the convent. Some of the older girls had brought records, and these were played on Saturday afternoons, or weekday evenings while it was still light. When she was back from half-term, and quite despairing, she would hear the music coming over from the lawn. Their craze was Nelson Eddy, paired often with the steely voice of Jeannette Macdonald. “Stout-hearted Men” and “The Indian Love Call” came from behind the rhododendron bushes. Joanna Mays, she of the roan hunter, perhaps she was sorry for Willow, because she invited her to come over and sit with them. Mary Woodruff, a prefect, and several others were there.
Joanna was lying on her stomach reading Agatha Christie.
“Have you guessed?” Mary Woodruff asked. “I bet you haven’t.”
“I think it’s the Colonel, it has to be the Colonel.”
They were kind to her in a way she liked, by just talking among themselves, smiling at her now and then.
“Are we bothering with an end-of-term play? Reverend Mutt hinted that the last offering … Let’s do a murder, something juicy. What about Night Must Fall? That wonderful bit where Danny—”
There was sudden silence. Dorothy, the one who’d been speaking, went very red. Mary said hurriedly:
The Diamond Waterfall Page 50