The Daring Game

by Kit Pearson

  ON SATURDAY MORNING Eliza sat on the stairs, watching the stream of people arrive to sign out the other boarders. It felt queer not to be going out herself. When she said hello to Carrie’s parents they repeated their invitation and she almost gave in. But after everyone had left she tramped all over the main floor of the residence with relish. She’d never been so alone in it before; the old building creaked in welcome. Snuggling into a chair in the Blue Sitting Room, she began to make up a story about a family who had lived in the house before it became a school. The misty rain outside made the room seem even cosier. Eliza sighed contentedly: it was so peaceful to sit still and do absolutely nothing.

  Only six other boarders were staying in this week: three grade nines, two grade tens, and one grade twelve. Mrs. Renfrew found Eliza and said she was taking them all up to Oakridge to shop.

  “I think I’d rather stay here,” said Eliza.

  “Well, you can’t,” said the Pouncer gruffly. “Miss Tavistock is out for the morning and there’s no one else in the residence.”

  “But Margaret’s staying.” Eliza had seen the older girl go over to the school with her books.

  “Margaret is seventeen. You are only twelve. Now get your coat, Eliza, and stop arguing.”

  THE MATRON LET THEM loose in Woodward’s while she did her own shopping, with instructions to meet her in an hour at the White Spot. “Be sure to stay together—Judith and Gail, you’re in charge.”

  First they looked at records. While Frances was buying one, Eliza managed to escape into the stationery department nearby. She pecked experimentally on a demonstration typewriter:

  Eliza Chapman

  Elizabeth Chapman

  Elizabeth Norah Chapman

  Elizabeth N. Chapman

  E. Norah Chapman

  E.N. Chapman

  E.N.C.

  Gail found her there and made her come back. Then they pushed into a cubicle while Patti tried on a new bra—all except Eliza, who refused to go in. She wondered if they knew she didn’t wear one yet.

  For the last fifteen minutes the six of them stood at the cosmetics counter, spraying perfume samples on their wrists and trying on make-up. Eliza got bored with this very quickly. She wanted to go to the library in the mall, but the others wouldn’t let her. “Come on, Eliza, let’s put some blusher on you,” said Patti.

  “Stop it!” Eliza squirmed out of the way of the advancing brush loaded with red powder. She examined some lipsticks sullenly. They were all acting so silly; she would never be like this.

  WHEN THEY GOT BACK to school, Barbara asked Eliza if she wanted to listen to their new record with them in the Rose Sitting Room. “We’ll teach you the Jerk,” she offered.

  “No, thanks,” said Eliza. “I’m going for a walk.”

  It was still drizzling, but she changed into her jeans and ski jacket, put her hood up and went out. Wandering slowly through the grounds, she felt the same affection for the physical beauty of Ashdown that she had in the first term. It wasn’t the school that was the problem; it was her. If her family lived in Vancouver she’d still want to come here.

  The air smelled like clean dirt. Even though it was only the end of February, yellow forsythia blossoms were already brightening the woods by the playing field, and jewel-coloured crocuses were poking their heads up by the swings. Eliza rubbed a shiny green bud between her fingers. In Edmonton and Toronto there would still be snow on the ground.

  Up in her favourite tree, she sat on a branch and swung her legs, humming an odd little song they’d learned in choir that week: “I care for nobody, no! not I / If nobody cares for me.” At the moment the words seemed true; she didn’t want to be with anyone but herself.

  AN HOUR LATER, however, she began to get restless. She was back in the Blue Sitting Room with a book, but she’d read it twice already. If only she’d been able to get to the public library—now she couldn’t go until the walk on Wednesday. And she had gone through all the interesting-looking books in the school library.

  Beatles music blared cheerfully through the wall of the Rose Sitting Room next door. Eliza liked the Beatles, but not when she was trying to read. And Mrs. Renfrew, who seemed to think Eliza was about three, had forbidden her to go into the dorm: “You’ll just mess it up in there.”

  The music became shriller, overpowering the ticking hall clock. What could she do for the rest of the afternoon? Turn on the TV, but there wouldn’t be anything good on at this time of day. Practise or study, but she’d done both this morning; and, after all, it was Saturday, not a school day. Eliza sighed. She wondered what Carrie and Helen were doing.

  Then she heard Miss Tavistock’s voice in the hall. “Yes, I know you need it loud for dancing, but it’s too loud … no, lower still … that’s better.” The headmistress put her head in at the door of the Blue Sitting Room. “Are you busy, Elizabeth?”

  Eliza stood up hastily, her book sliding to the floor. “Um … no, not exactly, Miss Tavistock.”

  “I’m going to visit my aunt—would you like to come?”

  “Do you mean Miss Peck?” Eliza had never seen the school founder, a very old lady who came to the school only once a year, to the School Birthday in April.

  “Yes … I visit her every Saturday. She enjoys meeting the younger students.”

  “Oh, yes please,” said Eliza, glad of a novelty.

  “Very well, go up and put on a skirt and I’ll meet you in the hall in five minutes.”

  Miss Tavistock drove a neat little grey Austin, which she zipped efficiently through the Saturday traffic as Eliza sat tongue-tied beside her.

  “You seem to be having a rather gloomy term, Elizabeth,” said Miss Tavistock, continuing down Forty-first Avenue after she’d manoeuvred the bottleneck of cars in Kerrisdale.

  Why did everyone have to notice that? Eliza didn’t answer. It was unfair of Miss Tavistock to pin her down when she was in a car and couldn’t get away; and it hadn’t been a question anyway. There was a long, uncomfortable silence. The car’s tires hissed on the wet pavement.

  “I hope you would come and tell me if something was really bothering you,” said the headmistress finally. “Would you?”

  This did require an answer. “Yes, Miss Tavistock,” murmured Eliza, relieved that they’d turned into a driveway leading to a low white building. The sign in front read “Crestwood Retirement Home.”

  The hall was suffocatingly warm. White-haired heads bent over cards or stared pensively at a large television, but they looked alertly at Eliza as she and Miss Tavistock passed them. “Look—a child!” she heard one woman whisper to her neighbour. Many of them nodded and said hello. Eliza was embarrassed to cause such a fuss, and she was relieved when they reached Miss Peck’s door.

  “Come in,” a fluty voice called in answer to their knock. An upright, brittle-looking figure sat in an armchair by the window. Miss Peck had a red tartan blanket draped over her knees and was beating time to a stirring march on the radio. The room was much too small for all the heavy furniture crammed into it.

  “I’ve brought someone to see you, Aunt Dora. This is Elizabeth Chapman, one of our grade seven boarders. Elizabeth, this is Miss Peck.”

  “How delightful!” said the old lady, leaning forward to turn down the radio. She had a precise English accent. “Come closer, my dear, and let me touch you.”

  Miss Tavistock had said her aunt was nearly blind, but Eliza hadn’t been prepared for this. She walked over and shook a hand that felt like a few sticks in a soft skin bag. She whispered a “How do you do.”

  Miss Peck was much like her portrait in Miss Tavistock’s study, but the real woman was older, thinner and friendlier. Eliza remembered trying to make the mouth in the painting turn upwards. This face was all wrinkly smiles.

  “How cold your hands are! Sit down here beside me and we’ll get some hot tea inside you. What does she look like, Charlotte?”

  “She’s tall for her age and has short, light brown hair and greyish-blue eyes. Although
your hair is beginning to fall into your eyes, Elizabeth. We’ll have to get it cut soon.”

  Miss Tavistock plugged in an electric kettle she’d filled in the bathroom and got teacups from a corner cupboard. How strange to hear her called Charlotte! The aunt and niece looked remarkably alike, except for the older woman’s fuzzy white halo of hair with pink patches showing through it.

  “Where do you come from, Elizabeth? How do you like boarding?” Miss Peck listened intently to Eliza’s answers as Miss Tavistock handed their tea to them and opened a package of Jaffa Cakes she had brought.

  It was difficult to look at someone you were speaking to when that person couldn’t see you back. It seemed rude. Eliza forgot to be shy, however, as she described her family and the school, and she forgot to be homesick as she tried to make both subjects interesting for her listener. It was hard to believe that this frail person had started Ashdown. “What was it like when it first opened?” Eliza asked.

  Miss Peck’s wavering voice strengthened as she told Eliza how the school had begun with only six students coming to lessons in a house downtown, about the long black skirts they had worn and about the move to the present property. “It’s called Ashdown after Ashdown Forest in England, where I lived as a child. That’s where Winnie-the-Pooh is from, you know,” she added with a twinkle. “You look at the illustrations in the books—that’s Ashdown Forest.” Eliza promised she would, although she felt much too old for Winnie-the-Pooh.

  “Of course I was a child long before Pooh came into existence. I’m a Victorian, my dear—what do you think of that?”

  “Don’t be absurd, Aunt Dora,” said Miss Tavistock fondly. “You’re much more modern than I am.”

  The two of them showed Eliza a scrapbook about the school through the years. For the first time since December, Eliza felt proud to be an Ashdown student. She watched Miss Peck as she and her niece discussed members of their family. It must have taken a lot of courage to start your own school.

  “How old is she?” she asked Miss Tavistock on their way back in the car.

  “Ninety-three. Isn’t she amazing? She was my model when I was a young girl in Victoria. I wanted to be exactly like her.” Eliza asked the headmistress about her early teaching days, relieved the two of them could talk comfortably again.

  “I SAW MISS PECK,” said Eliza casually that night.

  Helen’s head popped out of her pyjama jacket; she never unbuttoned it and was always getting stuck. “Poor you. Were you dragged to tea? I’ve been three times. Now I make sure I’m out of sight on Saturday afternoons.”

  “I liked her. She’s really interesting. She told me all about starting the school.”

  Pam yawned. “She tells us that every year on the School Birthday. She’s sweet, but kind of boring.”

  “She’s not boring at all,” said Eliza in a low voice, but only to John under the covers.

  “I wish you’d been with us today, Eliza,” said Carrie. “We went to Capilano Canyon and walked on the suspension bridge. It was scary!”

  “I liked staying in.” Eliza knew she was being unfriendly, but she didn’t care. She rolled over and pretended she was an early Ashdown student. She would wear a black dress and a white pinafore, with long black stockings and buttoned boots—or did they wear shoes then? They would all sit in a circle, learning lessons around the fire …

  12

  In the Sickroom

  A s soon as the bell rang on March 1, Pam shouted “Rabbits!” For good luck, you were supposed to say “Hares!” last thing at night at the end of the month and “Rabbits!” first thing the next morning. Eliza hadn’t remembered once; Pam or Carrie always did. Every time she forgot she wondered if she would be unlucky that day.

  But this morning began with a good omen. Carrie picked a thread off Eliza’s blazer. “You’re going to get a letter,” she said, stretching it out between her hands. “A long one!” And sure enough, after lunch Eliza snatched a fat envelope out of the “C” pigeonhole.

  It was from her mother. Alone in the dorm, she started reading it, then wished she hadn’t.

  She was not to go to Toronto for Easter because her parents were going to a conference in Halifax for most of the April holiday. “The twins are staying with your grandparents,” wrote her mother, “but you can come with us if you really want to. It’s a long and expensive trip, however, and I really think you’d have more fun at Harrison Hot Springs with Susan and Adrian. You’ve never been there and you’d love it.”

  I’ve never been to Halifax either, thought Eliza furiously, although Halifax had nothing to do with it. It was not seeing them in a month that was the blow. She knew she was being unfair. It was very expensive to send her away to school in the first place, and plane fares all the way to the other coast of Canada made it much worse.

  “If you weren’t so happy there we wouldn’t even suggest you not coming, sweetheart,” continued the letter. “But June isn’t very far away. Please let us know what you think.”

  Eliza stopped reading the rest of her mother’s usual lengthy news. June was years away. She’d never last that long. She wished she could explode in loud wails, but she was too hurt and angry to even cry. They seemed to think she was exactly the same person she’d been at Christmas, excited and happy about being at Ashdown.

  But of course she’d given them no reason to think otherwise. She couldn’t change that now and make them fly her to Halifax like a spoiled child. It wasn’t the way she liked to think of herself.

  That night she wrote back and said of course she didn’t mind. The person who wrote the letter seemed like someone else. And the heaviness inside her, which had just begun to lighten lately, increased until she felt immobilized by misery.

  THE NEXT MORNING she opened her eyes and remembered: she wasn’t going home for Easter. Then she didn’t want to get out of bed.

  “What’s the matter with you, Eliza?” asked Carrie at lunch. “You’re so quiet.”

  Eliza just shrugged. She couldn’t speak to anyone; it was too much of a struggle just to get through the day. The feeling of not being able to cope was terrifying.

  In art, the last period of the afternoon, Eliza took her ball of clay over to a corner by herself and tried to model a horse. It would be the Black Stallion; she wished she could ride him out of here. But as soon as she stood the horse up on its spindly legs, it collapsed into a grey heap and its head fell off.

  She began again by throwing the clay down hard on her board to get rid of the air bubbles. Thwack! Thwack! That made her feel a tiny bit better. THWACK! Miss Macdonald frowned at her from across the room: “I think you’ve done enough of that, Elizabeth.”

  As Eliza bent over the flattened lump of clay she suddenly felt dizzy, and a terrible trickle welling up in her mouth warned her she was about to be sick. Pressing her lips tightly together, she rushed from the Art Room into the bathroom outside the door.

  When it was over, she turned helplessly to Miss Macdonald, who had followed her out. “All right, Elizabeth?” The teacher handed Eliza a paper cup of water to rinse out her mouth and a piece of toilet paper to blow her nose. “Can you make it over to the sickroom now? Are you finished?”

  “I think so,” whispered Eliza, hoping it was true.

  Thea was delegated to take her over. She put her arms around Eliza’s shoulders as they walked across the driveway. “You poor thing—it’s awful to barf,” she said cheerfully. “But I bet it will be fun, being in the sickroom.”

  It didn’t feel like fun at all. Eliza watched her body being bundled into one of the hard narrow beds by Miss Monaghan. The nurse put a basin and a towel by the bed and then left her alone. Eliza closed her eyes and sank at once into sleep. The last sound she heard was the juniors playing outside the window:

  Red Rover, Red Rover

  We call Janie over.

  Their high voices turned into a dream. Her parents were on one side of a field, lined up with the Demons, her Toronto grandparents and her friends from Ed
monton. She was on the other side, among a group of shadowy Ashdown students.

  Red Rover, Red Rover

  We call Eliza over

  called her mother and father.

  She couldn’t move. “Let me go!” she sobbed, struggling with the strong hands that gripped each of her arms. “Let me go!” They relaxed their hold and she was free. She looked across to her family and friends.

  Red Rover, Red Rover

  We call Eliza over

  they chanted again. But now their faces looked greedy, as if, when she reached them, they would hold her just as tightly as the students had.

  “No!” shouted Eliza, and she ran away between the two lines—away from them all.

  SHE WOKE UP SHIVERING. There was no more chanting outside the window. The curtains had been drawn and the room was dim.

  “Are you feeling better, Eliza?” asked a small, friendly voice. Eliza turned her head and realized there were three other people in the sickroom.

  The voice belonged to Holly, the youngest boarder, who was only nine. Her bright eyes examined Eliza with interest from the next bed. In the other two beds were Maureen, in grade eight, and Beth, in grade eleven.

  “Eliza might not feel like talking, Holly,” said Beth softly, “and Maureen’s asleep. Why don’t you read your comic?”

  Holly opened it up obediently, but she kept staring at Eliza over the top of it.

  You can’t even be sick in peace here, thought Eliza. She had never wanted to go home so much. She longed for her own blue-and-white room in Edmonton, with her mother there to take care of her. All at once she sat up and vomited again into the basin. Then she lay back weakly against the pillow, tears sliding over her hot cheeks.

  Miss Monaghan was at her side in an instant. “Poor Eliza,” she clucked, as she cleaned her up. “Are you feeling terrible, then? It’s a bad bug, this flu, but you’ll be rid of it in a few days. Now don’t cry, pet! Don’t cry …” She held Eliza’s shaking shoulders, smoothed back her hair and tucked the blankets firmly around her. Eliza drifted off again, pretending the cool hand on her forehead was her mother’s. This time she dreamed she was being rocked; and then the gentle rocking transported her into a bottomless sleep with no dreams at all.