‘No dear,’ my mother said and she had that steely note in her voice that meant that nothing or no one was going to shift her. Apparently she had already spoken to Miss Philips, who had assured her their being away wasn’t a problem. ‘She said they haven’t yet had a girl having to stay at school for half-term.’
So I would be the first, great.
‘I might not get an invitation,’ I said. ‘You have to be really good friends with someone before they invite you home and I’m not.’ I shut my eyes, waiting for the sky to fall in.
‘Nonsense.’ I opened my eyes to see my mother look at me, a mulish set to her face. ‘You’re always telling us what fun you’re having, you and Eliza and your other friends.’
‘I . . . I exaggerated,’ I said. I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud that even Eliza seemed to tolerate me rather than actually like me.
My mum turned to my dad. ‘Have you heard such a thing. “I exaggerated”?’ She shook her head laughing. ‘Now I expect you’ve had a tiff, don’t you think so, Daddy?’ She turned to him.
‘You make friends wherever you go,’ my father said.
‘I didn’t at Lord Hanbury’s.’
‘You told us yourself that those girls were just jealous.’ My mother had put on her patient voice. ‘That’s one of the reasons we sent you to The Academy, to get away from that kind of thing.’ She pronounced Academy as if each letter was coated in honey. I wanted to tell her that the whole thing, me going off to LAGs, was a mistake, that actually I wasn’t cut out for a place like that and that I wanted to come home. I wouldn’t even complain about going back to my old school. At least it was a day school and I could go home at the end of the afternoon.
‘Mum, Dad . . .’
‘That nice Miss Philips told us herself that you had settled in very well. I’m sure she wouldn’t make that up.’ My mother turned to my father with a little laugh at the absurdity of the suggestion. ‘I expect they’ve got lovely homes, those girls. We must buy some nice chocolates or soaps for you to bring. You can’t come empty-handed.’
‘Soaps would be best, I think,’ Dad said. ‘So many ladies are on a diet these days.’
‘You might be right. Then again . . .’
Why had I lied to them? Why had I written those stupid letters home all about how I was hanging out with the princesses and how great everything was? Actually, it was their fault. I wouldn’t have had to make things up if my parents hadn’t been so needy, waiting like great big puppy dogs for the latest morsel of what they deludedly thought of as their daughter’s glittering social life. My mother imagining that we were gliding around the corridors of LAGs with perfect posture and white gloves; a bunch of wannabe Grace Kellys. Mum was obsessed with Princess Grace, as she insisted on calling her. I would tell her, ‘She’s dead, Mum. Get over it.’ But she still banged on about it. ‘Princess Grace truly was this and Princess Grace truly was that . . . Grace by name and Grace by nature. A person like that never really dies. Did you know she always, without exception, wore white gloves to her auditions?’
As usual she had got all her information from the celebrity magazines. She’d always loved them ever since she was a little girl and they were just about her only indulgence now that every penny went on the fees for LAGs. I hadn’t bothered to think about that side of things when I had first told them I wanted to go there. I suppose I’d been too busy just making sure I got my way.
‘I think it’s too much money,’ I said to my parents now.
‘What is?’
‘Sending me to LAGs. It’s too big a sacrifice.’
‘You let me worry about that,’ my dad said, giving me a pat on the head. ‘And you’re the clever young lady who got yourself a bursary.’
‘That’s like a tenth of the fees, and you had to pay for all that private tutoring first.’
‘It’s only a sacrifice if you don’t make the most of it,’ my mum said.
Then I asked if maybe I could spend half-term with Auntie Gina. You would never believe my mum and she were sisters, let alone twins. I always imagined that while they were still waiting to be born the foetus that became Gina took for herself all the fun and the get-up and go that was meant for two, leaving my mother this sad humble thing wobbling along in her sister’s fizzing wake.
‘I haven’t seen her for ages,’ I said. ‘It’s a really good opportunity to spend some time. You’re always saying she’s lonely.’
My mum said Auntie Gina was away on a cruise and wouldn’t be back in time. ‘Anyway, she’s the last person who would want you to miss out just because of her.’
After that I gave up.
Gillian had told me that all three of the princesses had been called in to Miss Philips’s soon after the incident with the dress. The door had been left ajar and Gillian had heard the whole thing. How they had been told to make a bigger effort with me. Miss Philips had noticed that ‘poor little Sandra’ was spending a lot of time by herself and that it was obvious I was finding it hard to settle in. She had finished off by saying that she would be extremely disappointed if she thought there was something as ugly as snobbism at work. So once I was back at school after the Sunday out I decided to use that to get an invitation. The princesses were going to Portia’s family’s holiday cottage in Cornwall for the half-term and some of her brother’s friends from the boys’ school were coming too. I imagined how excited my mum and dad would be if I were going. So I told them I was.
‘You see,’ my mum said over the phone. ‘We told you, didn’t we? All that nonsense about not having friends.’
I hinted quite a lot about wanting an invitation but either Portia was not as clever as she made out or she was being deliberately obtuse, because every time I said something about how much fun it sounded, them all going away together and how I didn’t have anything organised, she just smiled in a vacant kind of way and changed the subject.
So I decided to just hang around with them as much as I could without being annoying. Eventually they’d get so used to me being there it would just seem completely natural that I come along on the holiday. I was helpful and cheerful and I was a good sport when Portia got my part in the school play. (Bloody Miss Barford said my figure was too ‘womanly’ for Hamlet. And Portia’s DD wasn’t?)
I put up with their patronising too. Rose: We’re not taking the piss, you absolutely eat asparagus with your fingers.
Eliza: Unless they’re in a gratin, obviously.
Rose: Actually Sandra, I mean Cassandra, the Spanish Steps aren’t in Spain at all, they’re in Rome.
Portia: Celia is Lady Celia Hennessey because her father is an earl but Katherine O’Hara’s big sister is Francesca, Lady Turnbull because she married into the title.
Eventually, and with just ten days to go to half-term, I grew desperate. And Mum kept asking for Portia’s mum’s phone number so she could call up and have a ‘chat’ before I went. I had been watching Rose like a cheetah watched an antelope, so at break-time when she separated from the rest of the class and settled herself in the window alcove to read, I pounced.
As usual I just pretended not to notice the irritation flickering in her eyes as she saw me steer towards her and I called out a cheery hello. People talk about other people being thick-skinned as if we didn’t notice stuff. It wasn’t that. We were just people who had to try much harder to get what we wanted.
I asked her what she was reading. With her gaze lingering on a sentence she half looked up. ‘Mary-Anne.’
‘Is it any good?’
‘I don’t really know yet. I haven’t had much of an opportunity to read it. I was hoping to get some time now.’
If one’s soul could blush mine would have done but instead I focused on the main goal and said, ‘I suppose you’ll have plenty of time to read in Cornwall.’
‘I don’t know about that. Portia’s mum and dad are pretty into their activities.’ Here she did in the air quotation marks and her book slipped off her lap and on to the floor. I bent down qu
ick as a flash and picked it up, handing it back to her.
‘Is it a big house they’ve got? I mean, it has to be with all of you staying?’
Rose closed the book round the magnetic Paddington Bear bookmark and looked up with a faux-patient expression. ‘I suppose it is quite big.’
‘How many bedrooms does it have?’
Rose frowned. ‘I haven’t counted them. One doesn’t.’
My scalp began to itch. I hated her. She had a way of making me feel so small that even God couldn’t see me. I hated them all and yet I wanted nothing more than to be their friend. Tears rose in my eyes, tears of anger, nothing else, and I began to walk off. Then I turned back, ignoring her sigh, and swallowing my pride like someone starving swallowing rotting food, I made one more attempt. ‘I’m completely at a loose end this holiday. My parents are away too. They just assumed I would be able to stay with friends.’
Rose picked up her book. ‘That’s good then,’ she said with a smile that showed that she obviously hadn’t listened to a word I’d said.
I looked at her, imagined shoving her pretty face through the windowpane. But Rose remained oblivious, immersed once again in her reading.
Eliza was in her cubicle, sprawled on the floor as usual, sketching away in her notebook. Rose’s grandmother Eva had sent her a tape of fairy tales that she had collected on a trip around Scandinavia and of course she wanted Eliza to do the illustrations. Then, Eliza had told me the other day, they were going to try to get the whole thing published. Her aim was to get a publishing contract by the time she went up to university.
There it was again, that serene certainty that her life was going to be charmed. They all had it. Portia was going to be an ambassador. Not just a diplomat, mind, but an ambassador. Straight to the top for our most regal princess. Rose was going to be a model and then she was going to be ‘in films’. She wouldn’t say film star. That would be vulgar. But she wasn’t going to be a stage actress either because she said that only film and possibly TV was compatible with having a family. There were no question marks. No doubts. Just a wide golden road to the glittering future. If they ever discussed other careers, something normal, something most people end up being, it still always ended up being special. If they thought about teaching, it was in terms of Miss Jean Brodie or Mr Chips. If they thought in terms of retail, it was always floating around some art gallery or interior design shop, never manning the tills at Safeways or picking up after customers in Dorothy Perkins. I didn’t even know if they were that talented, but their self-belief was such you couldn’t help thinking they had to be.
‘New story? Can I see?’ I said. Eliza hated being interrupted and she hated showing her work unless she was ready to but manners maketh princess and she stifled her irritation and looked up with a tight little smile.
‘Hi, Cassandra. I didn’t hear you knock.’
‘C’mon, let me have a peek.’ I moved round so that I was standing at her shoulder. She shifted the notebook towards me. She had drawn a lake, smaller than the one nearby but overhung by branches of the trees in the same way and with a tiny island in the middle.
I pointed at the young man sitting on the island, a violin in his hands. ‘He’s cute.’
‘Oh good. He’s meant to be incredibly attractive.’ She flashed me a quick smile. ‘Enough to drive young girls like us to our ruin.’
I moved on to the subject of half-term. ‘You must be looking forward to going to Cornwall with everyone.’ I paused and then said with a little laugh, ‘Can you believe I’ve never been. Actually, I’ve never been anywhere.’
She had escaped back into her story. Her gaze still fixed on the page she said, ‘It’s OK, travelling. But I like being home. It’s where all my stuff is, like my desk and my notebooks and paints and books.’
I wanted to tell her the astonishing fact that everyone wasn’t like her.
‘I’m always home,’ I said. ‘So a change would be really excellent.’
Eliza peered at her notebook before adding a line to a clump of reeds growing on the shores of the lake. Without looking up she asked, ‘Why don’t you ask your parents to take you somewhere nice? You’ve worked really hard.’
I started to cry. Finally I had her attention. She put her notebook down and got to her feet. She put her hands on my shoulders and bent her knees so we were eyeball to eyeball, only I was looking away.
‘Sand . . . I mean, Cassandra, what’s the matter?’
‘My parents are going away and they won’t let me go with them,’ I said. ‘They want me to stay with my aunt but she’s really horrible to me.’
‘Have you told them, your parents?’
I hiccupped and rubbed at my eyes. ‘They don’t believe me.’
‘But they have to.’
‘Well, they don’t.’
‘I thought your parents were really nice to you. I mean your mum’s always sending you stuff and . . .’
‘That’s easy, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Sending stuff. Beats having to actually spend time with me.’
‘But you’re always saying how clingy they are.’
Was I? ‘Oh well . . . you know I suppose I didn’t want to admit to what it’s really like.’
‘Oh. Gosh. I don’t know what to say. Have you talked to Portia?’
I made my face a question mark.
‘Haven’t you told her you’d like to come?’
‘Oh, she’d just say no.’ I paused for a few seconds then I added, ‘Maybe if you were to ask her?’
Eliza shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. It’s not really done. Asking someone to invite someone else. Anyway, it’s much better to be straightforward. What’s the worst that can happen?’
I looked at her. She was so beautiful, so comfortable in her own skin, so pleased with the world and her place in it. I hated her and I wanted to be her. I wanted to be her more than anything.
Portia was standing in the milk queue. People were chatting but she was standing on her own. Had that been me everyone would have thought it was because no one wanted to speak to me. With Portia you just assumed it was because that’s how she wanted it. My mother in a misguided attempt to be wise had told me that people like that are never as confident as they appear to be. It’s all an act. Inside they’re as scared and unsure as the rest of us. Well, she’d never met Portia Dennis, is all I can say.
Walking up to her, I pushed back my shoulders. The princesses all walked as straight as ballerinas, their shoulder blades practically meeting.
‘I’d like to come with you to Cornwall if that’s OK.’
Portia seemed at first not to have heard me then she turned slowly. ‘Hi, Sandra.’
‘What do you reckon? Can I come?’ I could barely believe I was saying it. Then I spotted a flicker of uncertainty in Portia’s eyes and suddenly I felt sure everything would work out. She couldn’t just say no. Especially since Miss Philips had had that talk with them.
Portia had looked away for a moment, as if she were searching for someone. When she turned her gaze back on me it was clear-blue and steady.
‘Gosh, I’m really sorry but you know, we just don’t have the room.’
‘Yes, you do,’ I blurted out.
A small frown creased Portia’s high forehead. ‘We don’t, actually. Maybe some other time.’ Then she spotted Rose and Eliza and she turned and waved, ‘Over here.’
I left my place in the queue, backing away from Portia, my eyes fixed on her back as if my gaze could rip it open. Then I turned and ran from the room.
‘You are kidding? She actually tried to invite herself?’ It was Rose and there was a giggle at the end of her voice
‘I nearly said yes, I was so amazed. I mean has she no pride?’
‘Poor old Sanders,’ Eliza said. ‘That might have been my fault.’
The princesses were smoking in Miss Philips’s garage. It was where Miss Philips herself went to smoke – she was meant to be a good example to the girls so she had to sneak around just like we
did.
‘Your fault. What did you say to her?’
‘Well, she came in and started on about how she had no one to stay with other than some mean old aunt or something. I felt sorry for her. Then she wanted me to talk to you and I told her that that wasn’t the done thing and that she should ask you herself, straight out.’
‘Thanks,’ Portia said. ‘Thanks a bunch.’
Rose said, ‘She gives me the creeps, actually.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Eliza said.
My friend Eliza.
‘I might be unfair,’ she went on, ‘but I always have this feeling with her that she’s making stuff up. About her family and things. There’s nothing I can put my finger on exactly other than the little inconsistencies, but it makes me uncomfortable.’
‘As I said, she’s creepy.’ It was Rose.
‘I still can’t help feeling sorry for her, though,’ Eliza said. ‘She is what Grandmother Eva might term a most unfortunate girl and I think Miss Philips is right, we should all try harder to be nicer to her.’
‘You would feel sorry for her,’ Portia said. ‘You felt sorry for Miss van Hagen, for heaven’s sake.’ Then they laughed.
‘Anyway, I don’t care how sorry you feel for her but thank God I steeled myself and said no. Can you imagine having her hanging around the place for four whole days? Can you imagine what the boys would say?’
The three princesses stubbed out their three cigarettes and buried the butts in the large bag of compost where Miss Philips hid hers. They pulled up the garage door and having checked that the coast was clear, left for class. Moments later I got up from behind Miss Philips’s ancient Fiat and followed them outside.
Twelve
Eliza
I returned to Sweden the day before the festival of Lucia. Fresh snow had fallen the previous night and the air caught between each crystalline flake trapped sound and held it captive, leaving the world silent.
I had asked the driver to let me off at the bottom of the track leading up to the house. I only had a small overnight bag to carry and I needed some air. The pine trees looked like snow sculptures, some with their frosted limbs stretching towards me, others twisted as if they were trying to turn tail and flee. I thought one of them might be the Huldra in disguise, waiting for her doomed swain. Did she do girls? I wondered. I quite liked the idea of following a Rose-like beauty into the fathomless depth of the woods, unthinking, unquestioning until, exhausted, I lay down to sleep for ever on my mattress of snow.
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