“Okay with me.” Sally nodded violently.
“What happened to your teeth anyhow?” Erna asked.
“I lost ’em in the blitz. We got bombed out the night before Mummy was going to take me to the country.” Gloria rubbed the tip of her tongue over her teeth. “I don’t know how I ever used to put up with my own teeth. These are ever so much more useful.”
“Daddy sent me back to America before the blitz,” Sally said enviously. “I was in Detroit the whole time.”
“Alphabet soup!” Gloria cried as plates were put in front of them. “The last letter left in the soup is the initial of the man you’re going to marry. Mine is always X. Imagine marrying a man whose name begins with an X! At the last school I was at there was a girl who lost an eye in the blitz, and she had a glass eye she used to take out whenever she got in a row. She’d hold it in her hand and the mistress could never go on rowing her properly. But I think she used to carry it too far. One day at dinner the mistress at the table was rowing her about something and she took her eye out and put it in her glass of water. Now I call that too much. She was heaps of fun though. She got kicked out the same time I did.”
“You got expelled!” Jackie exclaimed. “Ooh, what did you do, Glo?”
“Well, Pam—this girl—and I sneaked out of school one Saturday afternoon and went into town to meet Pam’s brothers and of course one of the mistresses saw us and we got bounced. We didn’t care though. It was a beastly school, not half as nice as this one.”
“But weren’t your parents upset?” Jackie asked.
“Who, Mummy and Daddy? They didn’t care. There were only a couple of weeks till the summer hols and they’d have had me on their hands soon enough anyhow and this gave them a good excuse to send me off to stay with some people in Wales for the whole summer. I say, let’s play Truth or Consequences, seeing Balmy Almy isn’t here.”
Erna, Jackie, and Sally agreed vociferously. Flip looked across at Solvei and watched her quietly eating her potatoes. She liked the Norwegian girl, who was the class president and who seemed able to assume responsibility without putting on any airs. Now Solvei said, “Let’s wait till after lunch. Black and Midnight’s been cocking an ear over here and looking disapproving, and you know how she hates games at the table.”
Gloria stuck out her lower lip. “That old arachnid. Always poking her nose in other people’s business. Why can’t she leave us alone?”
“She has a special ‘down’ on our class,” Sally said. “And she says the middle school’s more trouble than the lower and upper schools together. What a dreep. Oh, my golly, will you look! Suet pudding again. You can feel every bite of that stuff hit the soles of your feet five seconds after you’ve swallowed it. I’d like a good American banana split.”
“Here it is dessert”—Gloria wagged a finger at Flip—“and Pill hasn’t said a single word since we sat down. What’s the matter, Pill? Cat got your tongue?”
“No,” Flip answered, blushing.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard Pill say anything.” Sally grinned at Flip, but somehow there seemed to be nothing pleasant about the grin. “Can you talk, Pill?”
“Yes,” Flip said.
“Well, say something then.”
“There isn’t—I don’t—I haven’t anything to say,” Flip stumbled.
“Don’t we inspire conversation?” Sally asked. “A lot you must think of us. Does she ever talk in the room?”
Erna was gobbling her suet pudding. “She sometimes answers if you ask her a question, if you insist. Yes, or no. That’s all.”
“What do you do when you go out on a date, Pill?” Sally asked. “Or don’t you ever go on dates? What kind of a line do you think Pill uses on a boy?”
Flip said nothing.
“Well, what kind of a line do you use, Pill?” Sally persisted. “Maybe you could teach us something. Well, for John’s sake, say something, can’t you!”
“Oh, do leave her alone,” Solvei said impatiently. “If she hasn’t anything to say she hasn’t anything to say.”
“But how can someone not have something to say!” Gloria exclaimed incredulously. “There’s always something to say. Any time I can’t talk I’ll be dead.”
“Well, maybe Pill’s dead,” Sally suggested. “How about it, Pill. Are you dead?”
“No,” Flip said.
Solvei interfered again on her behalf, but Flip felt that it was only from a sense of duty, that privately Solvei considered her just as much of a pill as the rest of the girls did. “Madame Perceval says your father’s an artist, Philippa.”
Flip nodded, then said, “Yes. He is.”
“How’d Percy know? Did you tell her?” Erna asked.
Flip shook her head. “No.”
“Oh, Percy always knows everything about everybody,” Jackie said with admiration. “I don’t know how she does it. And you can’t ever get away with anything with Percy but you never mind how strict she is. Sometimes I think I love Percy almost as much as my mother.”
“You have a crush on her,” Sally said.
Jackie looked at the grey lump of suet pudding remaining on her plate and turned up her nose in disgust. “I merely have a great admiration for her.”
“Oh, for John’s sake, Jackie, I was just kidding. Can’t you take a joke? Let’s change the subject. Tell us a story, Glo. Have you heard any good ones lately?”
“Well, Esmée told me one yesterday,” Gloria started.
Solvei broke in, “Not at the table. Save it for the common room if you feel you have to tell it.”
Flip looked at Solvei in gratitude. Mlle Dragonet at the head table stood up before Gloria could reply. All the chairs in the dining room were scraped back and the girls filed out.
On Sunday afternoons all the girls were supposed to spend a rest period in their rooms, but after the rest period there would be two hours when Flip could try to escape and go back to the deserted château. She sat curled up on her bed with the dog-eared calendar she carried around with her in her blazer pocket and looked at the small block of days that was marked off and then at all the days and days that stretched out to be lived through somehow before the Christmas holidays and her father would finally come. Sometimes she was afraid that the Christmas holidays would never be reached. She knew already that the one certain thing in an uncertain world was that time always passed; but as day followed day, each one exactly like the other, she felt that nothing, not even time, could put an end to their unbearable monotony.
Oh, please, God, please, God, make Christmas come quickly, Flip prayed, her hand still moving softly over her dog-eared calendar. And because time did not wheel faster in its vast circle for her she became filled with despair and homesickness and bitterness at her misery and she shoved the book she had brought up with her off her bed so that it fell on the floor with a thud. Across the room Gloria yawned noisily over her required weekly letter to her mother; Erna and Jackie, as usual, were whispering and giggling together. “They’re so childish,” Esmée was always saying to Gloria, but she was careful to keep on good terms with Jackie because Jackie’s father was a movie director.
Flip leaned over and picked up her book, smoothing out its pages in swift apology, and waited for the bell.
She hurried out of the room after quiet hour, got her coat from the cloak room, and started up the mountain. She knew that the others would think she had gone to chapel. She ran almost until she stood at the edge of the forest where the trees thinned out and mingled with the underbrush that surrounded the château, and there was the château as it had been the day before, cold and beautiful and deserted. She stood looking at the grey stones and at the birds, her heart thumping, but no Ariel came rushing toward her to knock her down with his greeting, and after a moment she began pushing her way to the château, jumping like a startled forest animal each time a twig snapped or the wind moved in the high grasses. Just as she had almost neared the decaying walls of the building she heard a low whine and there
was Ariel standing in the shadow of a shutter that hung drunkenly. The shadow seemed to move and she saw that Paul was there, too, holding Ariel by the collar.
“Paul!” she called softly.
For a moment she thought Paul was going to go back into the château; then he stepped out of the shadow of the shutter and held out his hand in greeting.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”
She took his hand. “Who else would it be?”
“There are a great many girls in your school, aren’t there? And you might be any of them.”
“I’m not any of them,” she said. “I’m me.”
“How did you get here?” he asked, still holding back Ariel, who was trying to leap at Flip. “How did you find me?”
Flip retreated a little because it did not seem to her that he really was glad that she had come. “I didn’t find you,” she said. “Ariel found me. I went for a walk yesterday afternoon and he found me and made me come to the château.”
“And you came back today,” Paul said.
There was neither welcome nor rebuff in his voice, but Flip felt that she had been rejected and she said haughtily, “I’m sorry I’m not welcome. I’ll leave at once.”
“No, please!” Paul cried. “I said I was glad it was you. I was afraid it was someone I didn’t know. I came here to be alone and I didn’t want just anybody coming around.”
Flip said swiftly, “If you wanted to be alone, I won’t stay then. I know how it is to need to be alone. I need to be alone too.”
Paul reached out for her hand again. “No, don’t go, it’s good to see you. I know I sounded inhospitable, but come and sit down.” Still holding her firmly by the hand, he led her across the terrace to a marble bench half hidden by weeds. “Now,” he said, sitting down beside her. “Do you like your school?”
She shook her head. “No. I hate it.”
“And you really have to stay? You can’t ask your father to take you away?”
“No.” She looked down at Paul’s hand beside her on the bench. It still held a warm tan from summer, and his fingers were very long and thin and at the same time gave an appearance of great strength. They were blunt at the tips, the nails square and clean. “I couldn’t be with Father while he’s traveling around,” she said, “and I had to be somewhere and Eunice suggested this school. Father always seems to do what Eunice suggests about me . . .”
“Is she still lusting after your father?” Paul asked.
“Well, she manages to let me know that they talk on the phone all the time, and she flies to meet him whenever she can. She condescends to write me once a week.”
“But she’s not like your mother,” Paul stated.
Flip shook her head vehemently.
“Tell me about your mother,” Paul suggested, “or would that hurt?”
Flip shook her head again. “I like to talk about her. Father and I talk about her. Except when Eunice is around.”
“What was she like? Was she beautiful?”
“Yes. Not like Eunice, the kind of beautiful that hits you in the teeth so you can’t escape it. Subtle. And it was inside beauty, too. And she saw inside people, saw all the good parts of you. If I was feeling sorry for myself because the kids at school made me feel dumb, she made me know I could paint pictures, and that being able to draw well was a good thing, and so I’d stop being sorry for myself. She made me glad I was who I was, not someone else.”
“But Eunice makes you feel not glad to be yourself?” Paul asked.
“Eunice expects me to be busy and popular and not notice when she”—now Flip smiled—“lusts after Father.”
Paul smiled, too. “My mother makes me feel glad to be me, too, and that isn’t always easy.” Again the dark look moved across his face, and he looked down.
Flip looked down, too, at Paul’s feet in their heavy hiking boots. He was silent, and she continued to stare at his right foot until it twitched slightly, the way she had noticed some-one’s foot would do if you stared at it long enough in a subway or bus or even the classroom at school. Then he reached down and patted Ariel.
“Ariel is a beautiful dog,” she said politely. “Where did you get him?”
“I found him in the street. He had been hit by a car and left there and his leg was broken. I set it myself and took care of him and now he is fine. He doesn’t even limp, and when I showed him to Dr. Bejart—a friend of mine—he said he was a very fine dog.”
“But that’s wonderful!” Flip cried, gazing admiringly at Ariel. “How did you know about setting a leg?”
Paul looked pleased at her praise. “I intend to be a doctor. A surgeon. Of course I must go to college and medical school and everything first. Right now I don’t go to school at all. I am trying to study by myself and my father is helping me, but of course I know I must go back to school sooner or later. I think that it will be later.” A shadow swept over his face and it seemed to Flip as though the day had suddenly darkened.
She looked up, startled, and indeed the sun had dropped behind the mountain. She rose. “I have to go. I didn’t realize it was so late. If I don’t get back quickly they’ll miss me.”
Paul stood up too. “Do go then,” he said. “If you’re caught they wouldn’t let you come back, would they? Will you come back?”
“Do you want me to?” Flip asked.
“Yes. When will you come?”
“I could come next Sunday. But are you sure you want me to? You don’t want to be alone?”
“I can be alone all week,” Paul said. “Come Sunday, then, Philippa.”
She started away but turned back and said tentatively, “At home I’m called Flip . . .” and waited.
But Paul did not laugh as the girls at school had done. Instead he said, “Good-bye, Flip.”
“Good-bye,” she said, and started down the mountain.
When she got back to school they had noticed her long absence. Gloria turned from the group by the phonograph and demanded, “Where’ve you been, Pill?”
“Oh, out for a walk,” Flip answered vaguely.
“Out for a walk, my aunt Fanny,” Esmée Bodet said. “You’ve probably been mooning down in that chapel again. I think it’s sacrilegious.”
“Or maybe she was out on a date,” Sally suggested. “I bet she was. That would be just like our Pill, wouldn’t it, kids? Were you out on a date, Pill?”
“I have to wash my hands before dinner,” Flip said, and as she started up the stairs she thought, Maybe you’d call it a date at that, Sally!
And she grinned as she turned down the corridor.
By the next Saturday all of the five other new girls in Flip’s class had done deeds. Two of them had short-sheeted all the seniors’ beds. One had wangled a big box of chocolates into the common room with the help of a cousin who lived in Montreux. Only Flip had done nothing.
Gloria tried to help her. “Maybe you could put salt in Balmy Almy’s tea. I have it! You could fill all the sugar bowls with salt!”
Flip shook her head. “Where would I get the salt?”
“Well, let’s think of something else then,” Gloria said. “You don’t know, Pill! That initiation’s going to be something terrific! Maybe you could trip the Dragon up when she comes into assembly. You’re on the end of the line.”
Flip shook her head again.
“Well, whatever you do,” Gloria warned, “don’t do anything like short-sheeting a bed or making a booby trap for anyone in our class. They wouldn’t like that.”
“I won’t,” Flip assured her. “But I can’t think of a deed, Gloria. I’ve tried and tried, but I just can’t seem to think of anything.” If only I could produce Paul and Ariel, she thought. That would bowl them over all right.
“I thought you were supposed to have such a good imagination,” Gloria said. “I’ve done everything I can to help you, ducky, so there’s nothing else for it. You’ll just have to be initiated.”
“I expect I’ll have to,” Flip agreed mournfully and wi
th trepidation.
“I’ll do what I can to keep it from being too awful,” Gloria promised her magnanimously.
But she was, as Flip had known she would be, one of the most violent of the initiators.
The entire class met after lunch behind the playing fields. It was almost out of sight of the school there; only the highest turrets could be seen rising out of the trees. Erna, Jackie, and Gloria had Flip in tow.
“Don’t be scared,” Jackie whispered comfortingly. “It’s only fun.”
“I’m not scared.” Flip was vehement. Even if she knew she was a coward she did not want anyone else to know.
It was a grey day with little tendrils of fog curled here and there about the trees. The tips of the mountains were obscured in clouds that looked heavy and soft and like snow clouds. Erna said it was too early for snow as far down the mountain as Jaman, though there might possibly be some in Gstaad, a town farther up, where the annual ski meet was held. Behind the playing fields was the most desolate spot around the school. It was rocky ground with little life; the grass was neither long nor short; just ragged and untidy and a dull rust brown in color. The only tree was dead, with one lone branch left sticking out so that it looked like a gibbet. Most of the girls clustered about the tree. Flip heard one of them asking, “What do we do?”
“Well, we put Pill through the mill first,” Erna said. “Come on, peoples. Line up.” She shoved and pushed at the girls until they got into line, their legs apart, then she gave Flip a not unfriendly shove. “Through the mill.”
Flip bent down, held her breath, and started. With her long legs she practically had to crawl on her hands and knees as she pushed through the tunnel of legs, and her progress was slow and her bottom smarting from the slaps. She gritted her teeth and pressed on until she passed between Erna’s legs at the head of the line. Erna gave her a resounding smack.
“Good for Philippa,” Solvei said. “She didn’t yell once.”
“She has tears in her eyes,” Gloria shouted.
“I have not,” Flip denied.
“What are they if they aren’t tears?” Esmée Bodet asked.
And Both Were Young Page 6