"Right, girls!" said Verily. "I'm sorry you had to witness these punishments but Jennings, Middleton and Thomas have now paid for their foolishness and the matter is behind us. I wish you all a very happy Founder's Day. Good luck to all of you in the Form Groups Performance Competition and remember: the school is very much on show today, so please don't let us, or yourselves, down with any foolishness. A special breakfast now awaits you with extra sausages, and you will all report to your form rooms at nine o'clock to receive your programmes for the day." She turned to Edith. "Miss Bainbridge?"
As Edith stepped forward to supervise the exit from the Hall, Margaret stood and caught Verily's eye. She informed her of what had happened and they stood together gazing down in pensive sorrow at their departed alumna.
"I shall inform Sir Wilfred immediately, Margaret," said Verily after a respectful pause, "if you would be so kind as to telephone Dr Locke."
"Yes, Headmistress."
Word spread quickly among the staff and, as they filed past glancing sadly at her seated corpse, Lady Althorp was the unwitting hostess of a final receiving line at her beloved Cropton Hall.
And unseen above her on the school crest, from the eye of the kneeling girl there appeared a single tear which hovered on the brim of the crudely depicted eyelashes before trickling down slowly to rest upon her cheek, where it remains to this day, frozen in time.
36. Founder's Day
While the Countess and Mrs Palmer stood before the seated body of the recently deceased Lady Althorp, shielding her from the view of the girls whose exit from the Hall was being supervised by Miss Bainbridge, Monica Gibson guided Rachel, Grace and Alice down from the stage.
"This way," she said kindly, noting the extremely pained, stiff steps they took, each girl wincing at every footfall. Their brown-striped gym shorts bore witness to the fresh, raw cane-marks beneath. Rachel shook with the occasional sob, whilst Alice's face bore testimony to the torment that still stalked her bottom.
Once they had hobblingly regained the sanctuary of the changing-room and relief from prying, pitying eyes, Miss Gibson shut the door and took gentle charge. She led them over to the shower-room straight away, jollying them along with a brisk banter.
"Come along girls, let's have you out of those gym clothes. Just leave them on the floor here. Don't worry, I'll send them to the laundry for you. Even if you did earn it, you've had a very nasty experience and we need to wash away the memory, don't we?"
Whilst Grace immediately began to lift her T-shirt over her head, Rachel stood stunned, her face still wet with tears and haggard with the effects of the bulbous throbbing in her rear. Alice wiped her own face on the upper-arm of her sleeve and placed a hand on Rachel's shoulder.
"Rache?"
Rachel turned to her slowly, her eyes red, her brown hair dishevelled, and gazed, dazed for a moment, before she shook her head slightly and seemed to come to herself again.
"Yes," she murmured, "yes ..."
Miss Gibson returned with their towels. "Now then, let's get you freshened up." She moved over to the row of five showers and quickly turned on the taps of the first three, returning to feel the temperature of the water spouting from the first before adjusting it. "I'll get these to a nice luke warm which won't hurt so much but won't freeze your nipples either, girls."
Grace, who'd had more time to recover, stood naked now with her hands over her pubic triangle and her upper arms pressing her breasts together slightly. Despite the pain in her bottom, she managed half a giggle at the mention of nipples. Alice tossed her plimsolls away and took her socks off. Rachel, having removed her T-shirt, winced as she started to peel her shorts down. They were stuck to her bottom.
"Oooow!" she complained as she fed her fingers under the material to try and prise the cotton shorts away from the sweaty rawness of her buttocks. Miss Gibson gave her a sympathetic glance as she tested the water in the third shower. Her booming voice echoed in the tiled room.
"That was quite the most fearsome caning I think I've ever witnessed, Rachel Thomas. You're a very brave girl indeed."
"Thank you, Miss," muttered Rachel, still grimacing at the stubborn adhesion of her shorts as she reached the lower curves. She cleared her throat and, more strongly but with a hint of self-pity, added "I've got such a busy day, Miss. I'm Romeo, you know, in our class' performance. Miss Waring made me, Miss."
"Really? Well, I'm sure it was an excellent bit of casting. But once you've finished romancing Juliet, Thomas, I need you fit and ready for the match as well, you know. You're the heart of our defence. The Old Croptonians can be a pretty wily lot - just as much of a challenge as Pickering High." She looked over at Rachel in concern. "Do you think you'll be up to it?"
Rachel let out a sigh of relief as she finally managed to liberate her buttocks from the gym shorts. "Yes, Miss. I think so, Miss ... but Miss?"
Miss Gibson turned from her testing of the temperature of the third shower. "Yes?"
"Please promise you won't smack me at half time? Even if we're losing?"
The mistress smiled. "Yes, I promise. Anyway, today's is just an exhibition match really. But you know I always like to win." She came back to the entrance. "Now then, a quick shower and then I have something for those sore bottoms of yours."
The three girls stepped tentatively over to the showers, feeling the water with their hands before stepping up and under the spray.
"Who needs shampoo?" asked Miss Gibson.
"Yes please, Miss," said Alice.
While Miss Gibson went in search, Alice exclaimed,
"Gosh, Rache, you should see your bum!"
"I can imagine," said Rachel, "quite easily thank you." She leaned round to examine Alice's. "You're not exactly Snow White yourself."
"What about mine?" asked Grace, turning her backside to the others.
"Um ... stripey," said Alice.
"That's the spirit, girls," said Miss Gibson, handing a bottle of shampoo to Alice. "Nothing like admiring your marks for feeling better about it!"
"After you with that," said Rachel to Alice, before turning to face the tiles and immersing her head under the shower-water.
Miss Gibson whistled. "Rachel, I hope you won't mind me saying this," she said, "but your bottom reminds me of a map I once saw of the railway junction at Crewe."
"Where's that, Miss?" asked Grace.
"It's in the Midlands, where lots of different lines meet."
Grace giggled. "Hear that, Rache?"
"Choo-Choo! Choo-Choo!" sang Alice, lathering suds into her hair. Some of the soapiness trickled into her open mouth, making her splutter. "Yeuuch!" she exclaimed.
"Huh! Serves you right," said Rachel, smiling for the first time since the ordeal.
"Right, now hurry along girls. Margaret's given me something to help you heal more quickly, but it must be applied as soon as possible."
"Who's Margaret, Miss?" called Rachel, lathering her own hair.
"Er ... never you mind, Thomas," said the hockey mistress. "Quick as you can now."
Once the girls had towelled themselves dry, attending with understandable trepidation to the round hillocks at their rears which had borne the brunt of Miss Markham's attentions, Miss Gibson handed Rachel a pot of arnica cream with instructions to use it all up between them, and be gentle.
"When you're ready, get dressed and wait for me here," she instructed. "I shall be back in about five minutes."
In the mistress' absence the girls took it in turns to apply the cream as carefully as they could. Unsurprisingly, the exercise did not pass off without several loud protestations and much groaning and wiggling. They were just adjusting ties and climbing into shoes when the door was kicked gently open and Miss Gibson appeared with a large tray, which she placed on the top of the chest of drawers.
"Breakfast for the wounded!" she announced. "Extra sausages, bacon, egg, baked beans and fried bread, with three cups of tea. Gather round, girls. I suggest you eat standing up." She lifted plates, cups and
cutlery off the tray and arranged them on the chest. She picked up the pot of arnica cream, peering inside. "All gone? Good!" She took it and put it in a waste paper bin over by the door.
"Oooh! Miss, thank you," said Alice, for whom food was always a delight.
Miss Gibson stood by the door and crossed her arms, watching happily as the three girls began to tuck in, Alice with relish, the others at first hesitantly but before long with increasing enthusiasm. All that could be heard was the clinking of Sheffield steel on china, the sound of munching and the occasional murmur of satisfaction.
Oh, the young! thought Monica, How quickly they heal!
---oOo---
Sir Wilfred Althorp cried when he was given the news of his wife's death, a reaction that brought tears to Verily's eyes too. They hugged. He then sat on the sofa before the window, his Times discarded at his side, staring forlornly at the carpet.
Dr Locke came from the Hall and explained that her Ladyship's heart had given out in an excess of excitation. "I like to say, in these cases," he told them, "that the heart 'burst smilingly'. King Lear, you know. Anyway, though I know it's scant consolation when it's so sudden, it was a good death."
Sir Wilfred recovered himself with remarkable fortitude and insisted that everything should go ahead as planned - nothing should spoil the day for the girls. "It's how she would have wanted it," he kept repeating. And besides, he mused after a while, there were the parents of prospective pupils to think about too: it wouldn't do to let them down, or give a morbid impression. Verily could see how he'd made his fortune in business.
Sir Wilfred had been due to accompany Lady Althorp and Verily in judging the Form Group Performances for the competition - a lengthy, arduous and sometimes tedious duty. Three large hampers for the winners had been unloaded from his Bentley and brought into the study in readiness. Verily, concerned that the old gentleman's shock made the task unfeasible, offered to cancel the competition out of respect to her Ladyship but Sir Wilfred wouldn't hear of it.
"No, no! We shall do it, Verily, you and I, and we shall determine between us which group of girls Laetitia would have chosen. It's how she would have wanted it."
"Very well, Sir Wilfred, then that is how it shall be," said the Headmistress, solemnly.
The excitement as they entered each classroom was palpable. The dozen pairs of curious young eyes, overseen by a nervous Form Mistress, followed the elderly Chair of Governors and the Headmistress as they processed to the seats prepared for them on the dais of each form room. With desks cleared to the sides, each performance was observed with tolerant half-smiles by the two judges, laughs or frowns tactfully inserted at the appropriate moments. Sir Wilfred lent all of his rapt attention to the efforts of the young thespians, welcoming the distraction of youth's eager innocence at such a time.
In 4A, they were party to The Witches delivering their prophecies to Macbeth (with a rather excessively repeated, croaking chorus of 'Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble ...' in a multitude of excitedly high-pitched voices), followed by a melodramatic rendering by Lower Sixth B of the final scene from Romeo and Juliet, with an anxious Miss Waring mouthing many of the lines herself as the drama somewhat falteringly unfolded.
Romeo, played by Rachel Thomas, having dispatched Paris with deft aplomb, poured out his heart with wrenching sadness to the recumbent Juliet (Susan French) before reaching the culmination of his part, and his life, with the immortal lines (at which Verily couldn't help thinking, with a silent chuckle given the speaker, of Ponds Cold Cream):
"O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die."
And the kiss itself was administered with an admirably realistic lack of inhibition.
After rapturous applause, much blushing by the performers and the attentions of twelve hope-filled faces, the two judges regained the less dramatic surroundings of the corridor. Sir Wilfred turned to the Headmistress.
"I say, Verily, that girl playing Romeo managed a marvellously ... pained expression on her face in that final speech, didn't she? Rather talented that one, I think."
"Indeed, Sir Wilfred," said Verily with a wry smile. "Her mother will be here later. You should tell her."
A joint Upper Sixth presentation of Othello Act 5 Scene 2 featured the Head Girl as the eponymous hero (a superbly controlled and sonorous performance) with Julia Bennett as Desdemona and, much to Verily's surprise - and initially some concern - Shirley Barton as Iago. However, it passed off very well, and was clearly the most polished performance they had seen thus far.
As they made their way to their next port of call, they agreed that they should bear in mind the older girls' advantages in terms of age and maturity, and exercise a form of handicapping in their considerations. The best three performances were to go forward to the Final in the Hall before an audience of parents and dignitaries in the afternoon.
Their last visit (Verily having already glanced anxiously at Sir Wilfred several times to check for signs of exhaustion, the whole process having taken nearly two hours by now) was to 4B. And here, their hearts were quite stolen.
The Form mistress, Miss Stokes, had helped the girls create a most affecting tableau for their rendition of Coleridge's The Nightingale. This happened to have been one of Lady Althorp's favourite poems, for a recital of which, before the whole school, she'd won a prize when herself a fifth-former. There were so many imaginative touches involving every girl in the form - clever vocal effects, and subtle movements that enhanced the delicate beauty of the verse - that Sir Wilfred was moved to tears. The highlight of many wonderful moments was when Jenny Simpson stepped forward and, in a voice as sweet as the nightingale itself, almost sang,
Farewell, O Warbler! till to-morrow eve,
And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!
We have been loitering long and pleasantly,
And now for our dear homes. -- That strain again!
Full fain it would delay me!
Sir Wilfred hid his emotion behind a feigned sneeze delivered into a voluminous white handkerchief but his voice choked slightly as he clapped with hands raised and called 'Bravo! Bravo!'
With no further forms to visit, the two judges lingered to express their admiration. While Verily congratulated Emily Stokes, Sir Wilfred approached Jenny Simpson.
"Beautiful, my dear," he said, patting her shoulder and dabbing at the corner of his right eye with his handkerchief. "Thank you, and well done."
Jenny smiled excitedly. "Thank you, sir," she said.
Sir Wilfred leaned close, conspiratorially. "I shouldn't really give this away, but I rather think you'll be repeating your recital later today in the Final. Will your parents be here?"
She looked down. "I don't know if my Dad's coming or not."
"Oh ... well ... it would be a great shame if he missed this, my dear." He ruffled her hair and whispered, "See you at the Final."
Jenny looked up and nodded gratefully.
Upon their return to Verily's study, Edith greeted them with a reviving cup of tea and a plate of ginger nuts. Margaret Dawson was also in attendance, standing by the window.
"Gosh," she called. "Look at this! It's quite extraordinary."
Verily and Edith were followed to the window by Sir Wilfred and the four of them stood, gazing in astonishment at the sight on the lawn outside.
"There must be what? Fifty ... sixty of them?" said Margaret.
"Heavens!" exclaimed Edith. "I've never seen so many magpies. One for sorrow, two for joy and all that ... but fifty? What on earth does that many mean?"
He's close, thought Verily. Very close.
---oOo---
Visitors, distinguished and otherwise (the Pills always managed somehow to wangle an invitation) were invited from noon this Founder's Day, in time for the grand buffet lunch in the dining-hall scheduled for between one and two. Given Cook's shortcomings, outside catering support had also been arranged to help lay on as generous and varied a spread as possible.
> By half past twelve the gravelled parking area at the front of the school was almost full. Girls in their blue uniforms greeted parents or waited in excited groups at the top of the drive keeping a look-out. Verily, Edith and the senior staff circulated, shaking hands and smiling a lot, assigning parents of prospective pupils to Upper Sixth-formers who would escort them on a tour of the school. Margaret guided Governors and dignitaries to Verily's study where Sir Wilfred and his fellow governors awaited with white wine and sherry.
Without particularly intending to - certainly nothing had been planned - the six members of SWACK found themselves gathered in a group at the west end of the car park.
At first, it was just Rachel and Susan, who had found a good vantage point spot slightly away from the crowd but from which they could keep an eye on the drive. Charlotte and Jenny had soon joined them, Charlotte approaching in some trepidation, eyeing Rachel with awe. Eventually she'd plucked up the courage to ask,
"Are you all right, Rachel?"
Rachel had offered a rueful smile and nodded. And she was all right. Miss Gibson's kindness, and the hearty breakfast, had lifted all their spirits no end, and the arnica cream had worked almost like magic - the throbbing wasn't as intense as Rachel remembered it being after the time she'd had six with Molly, despite getting twice that many this time.
"Are your parents coming?" Charlotte had asked her.
"Just my Mum. How about you?"
"Yes, they should be here any minute. Typical of my Dad to be late though. I bet they don't get here till after lunch has started and we'll miss the best food. Oh look - there's Alice ... HEY! ... ALICE! Grace!"
And the last two members had come over to make the impromptu meeting complete.
The Girls of Cropton Hall Page 54