The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  ‘So, your other name?’

  ‘Kentish Glory,’ said Amy shyly.

  Few outside the Moth Club had even heard the handle. No one who’d seen her in her costume immediately identified the markings.

  ‘That’s the one. A Kentish Glory is a kind of moth. I looked it up. That’s your theme, isn’t it? Moths. Territorial. Colourful display. The name has glory in it. You don’t merely flutter, you soar. You are the flying girl. Aspirational and inspirational. Amy, do you see yourself as – what do they say in the Girls’ Paper – a paladin?’

  Amy didn’t answer.

  ‘You don’t immediately say yes. Good. Don’t be too quick to take up a heavy shield. Or accept definitions foisted on you by others. That can get you into hot water. Do you remember me as a girl? When I was on your side of the desk.’

  Amy wasn’t sure whether to answer.

  ‘You won’t get in trouble for speaking up,’ said Miss Kratides. ‘In this cabin, there are no infractions. So, me as a Drearcliff girl? You could hardly forget. It only seems five minutes ago. I’ve had adventures in the months since I passed out. Perils, exploits and misdemeanours. As predicted, I’ve been up to no good. Possibly, as was not predicted, I’ve learned my lesson. Dr Swan thinks so and even at my worst I knew not to argue with Headmistress. The whole school knew me as Arch-Infractor. I cultivated the reputation. If I had to be bad, I’d be the worst. The most terrible. It did me little good. Oh, I had a few victories… but there was usually a whipping at the end of it.’

  Her hand slipped to her wonky hip.

  ‘Do you enjoy my Game of Secrets?’ asked Miss Kratides. ‘Here’s a secret of mine. I’m not intractable, though I made the school think I was. I’m flexible. Slippery, even. Any other impression I give is a distraction. From what I’m playing at.’

  Amy couldn’t help looking at Miss Kratides rubbing her – aching? – hip. She didn’t see her other hand coming.

  Deft as Light Fingers, Miss Kratides brushed Amy’s lapel.

  She opened her fist and Amy saw her own house pin.

  ‘See,’ said Miss Kratides.

  Amy took her pin and put it back.

  ‘I don’t limp, by the way,’ Miss Kratides said. ‘The lollop is for Hjordis Bok’s benefit. She needs someone she can talk to about being surrounded by flukes she thinks have a head start on her. Me being hobbled too is a hook into her heart. I can use that. Gryce’s whippings hurt, but she knew better than to do permanent damage. I told her I’d take one of her eyes if she lamed me. I still might. Dr Swan talked me into being a beak, so I can’t hate Drearcliff Grange as much as I thought I did… but I hate Sidonie Gryce more than you do. I’m not just saying that to use a hook in your heart. You’re not like Bok. You merit plain talking-to, not nudges and winks. Even in the Remove, you shine. Don’t puff up. I’m not flattering. I’m telling you what you already know but don’t want to admit you know. Like Miss Call of the Wild. She had to be let off her lead. Aconita needs to run true to her bloodlines, not see-saw between Lady of the Laird and She-Wolf of the Glens.’

  On cue, a howling sounded. The frozen side of Miss Kratides’ mouth twitched – trying hard for a full smile.

  ‘Drearcliff Grange has its Apostle Spoons, Amy,’ she continued. ‘Head Girl. Captain of the First Eleven. And other notables – School Clown, School Saint, School Slut. Stock figures, like Chaucer’s Pilgrims or commedia dell’arte characters. In slots in a display case. All schools have a full set. Imagine the Draycott’s Bully! Or the Humble College Dunce. I was School Wrong ’Un. You’re School Paladin. You showed that during the businesses with the Ant Queen and Mrs Rinaldo… and the cad who tried to elope with Isabella Fortune…’

  Amy’s mouth opened.

  ‘Hobart Gunt, alias Rex Rowland, Hiram Q. Hollardollar, or the Belted Earl of Buckfastleigh,’ said Miss Kratides. ‘You’re surprised I know the story, but remember what I said. I snoop. I listen. I find out. Gunt was a wretched excuse for a man. You served him right. If with too much restraint for some tastes. After you dropped the bounder into the sea – not too far from shore for even a weak swimmer – he got over Fortune and pitched woo at the dumpy daughter of a manganese magnate. Called himself Roger Manley then. Got to Gretna Green with the nitwit before someone with a heavier touch caught up. So, Mrs Manley is a widow at seventeen.’

  Amy was shocked.

  ‘No, I wasn’t the kindly soul who stuffed stones in Gunt’s sporran before his midnight dip in the Esk. It wasn’t my mother either. Miss Memory’s told you about her. Mitéra would happily take a shy at a bad egg, but in these enlightened days she has competition. A Drearcliff Old Girl to boot. Sister of my next appointment. Since she passed out, Angela De’Ath has collected five purses on the likes of Barty Gunt. The widow’s family paid up with some grumpiness. The girl won’t thank them, but it’s the principle, isn’t it? If a forty-two-year-old roué in a wig dupes their porky princess into marriage, any decent family would hire the Angel of Death before paying him off.’

  Amy remembered De’Ath’s sister as a serious girl – top in languages, merciless bowler. Now, mercenary assassin. Dr Swan was probably proud.

  ‘Didn’t think to send a bill to Bella Fortuna’s old man?’ Miss Kratides went on. ‘Remiss of you. Then again, you’re not in it for the spondulicks. What are you in it for? Not the larks. Those are the worst of ’em. You should hear the Blue Streak laugh. It’d give you the chills. You’ve not been knocked about enough – not even in the Great Game – to be in it for dark vengeance, like that Shade fellow. No, you’re in it for the… what, the goodness? Because it’s the thing to do? Know what terrors like the Slink or Sally Nikola’s dad call treasures like you? Right ’Uns. You don’t tend to hear it properly. It’s Right Ones, as in “she looks a right one in that get-up with the feathers and sparkles”. Which, though it pains me to bring it up, you certainly do.’

  Amy was brought up short, as if slapped.

  ‘Your second secret…’

  ‘Ah…’

  ‘Yes, I know. You’ve no clue.’

  ‘I thought maybe…’

  ‘As I said, no clue. Amy, Amy… you have advantages. With your Abilities, all sorts of underhand ways and means of finding things out at are your disposal. Light and De’Ath use the occult to pry and peep. Staring into bowls of water and chanting. They read your card yesterday. They didn’t even need to. Their cards have each other’s secrets. Acting on their own initiative, they’re learning what they can accomplish if they set aside their mutual dislike, which for them was the point of the exercise. Your fast friend could have picked pockets and read everybody’s cards on the way to supper. You can float silently outside windows and open locked boxes with your mind fingers. Yet you and Naisbitt have failed to solve your second secrets. Why is that?’

  ‘Mine isn’t a secret – it’s a guess.’

  ‘Do I strike you as someone who guesses?’

  ‘You strike me as someone who’ll try anything.’

  Miss Kratides sat back a moment. Then she laughed.

  ‘See, you could do it if you just piped up more often. Didn’t think so much. You think a lot. You all do, bless you. But you especially, Amy. Knowles knows, but you think.’

  Amy remembered wondering if thinking too much was her leaf.

  But it was hard to think your way out of thinking.

  Maybe more than hard. Maybe impossible.

  She could lift a stove by thinking. Her whole Talent was thinking. Kali’s lamas might witter on about chi energy or soul, but her mentacles were her mind – not a nebulous ectoplasm shroud she had to not think of to let loose… If she thought, she could fly… if she let her mind go blank, she fell.

  ‘You’ll have gone through the whole register, ticking off the girls whose secrets you know… wondering about all the rest. Too distracted by your first secret – your own secret which is no secret at all – to get the answer.’

  ‘So, what? Do I fail? Am I booted from the Remove?’

&nb
sp; ‘Not so fast, not so easy. The Remove is like Devil’s Island. Once here, it’s for life. Not even passing out of school will get you out of the Remove. I was Removed for a term. Here I am, back again. All these months later. If I can pick up the chalk, then you can peel off the mask. Why haven’t you found out who will blame you for not telling what you know about Laurence?’

  Miss Kratides leaned forward. Her face was close to Amy’s.

  The dead side of her mouth twitched tinily. If she could fake a limp for a few days, could she fake her half-fixed smile for a whole lifetime?

  ‘It’s not a secret anyone has yet,’ Amy replied. ‘She will blame, not does blame… that’s not like guessing who shaves – which obviously isn’t the girl with gills.’

  ‘Little’s second secret.’

  ‘The easy one!’

  ‘And why not? You look at Little and see a grown-up woman with the mind of an eleven-year-old girl. You know that’s a mistake.’

  ‘She’s an eleven-year-old girl the size of a grown-up woman.’

  ‘Remember that. Don’t think of her as simple. Think of her as young. Her friend with the hands sees that and she’s only a Second. You can do better.’

  Amy realised she looked at Miss Kratides and saw a girl. Not a beak. When she listened, she heard someone else.

  ‘You know you’re one of Dr Swan’s cygnets?’

  Amy nodded.

  ‘So was I. School Wrong ’Un. Did everything I could to get booted. I half expected to go the way of Primmy Quell and get sentenced to the House of Reform. Or skip that entirely and wind up in the Mausoleum. But Dr Swan wanted me at Drearcliff and kept me at Drearcliff. She won’t be missing a spoon from the set. Dr Swan keeps track of us all. Wrong ’Uns. Right ’Uns. Not just at this school. If you think you hate these lessons now, wait till the exchange students join in. One’s already here and others are on their way. I’d say more, but don’t want to spoil the surprise. There will be controversy. There will be excitement. There will be upset.’

  Amy’s stomach turned over.

  ‘Do you know what being School Wrong ’Un was? A distraction. Think back to last year when I spent all that time scrubbing the heel or getting slippered. Remember what I did to deserve it. All the rules I broke. All the infractions. They issued me a new Time-Table Book when my old one ran out of room for Black Notches. A Wrong ’Un I was. But what does that mean? Amy, what’s the worst you can do? Not specifically… in general. What’s bad?’

  Amy thought. ‘Hurting people?’

  Miss Kratides snapped her fingers. ‘Hurting people! Good answer. Yes, that’s the bad thing. I was School Wrong ’Un. Worst record since Founding Day. But can you think of a single time when I hurt someone?’

  ‘You picked a fight with Stheno Stonecastle.’

  ‘Which I lost.’

  ‘Deliberately. Stoney was a foot and a half taller, but Duchess of the Dims. You’re small, but you’re not weak. I’ll bet your mother taught you how to trounce a bigger opponent.’

  Miss Kratides nodded.

  Amy thought of Stephen Swift – and the taste of her blood when Amy bit her hand.

  She’d not told anybody how she won that fight. After losing the Game, no one was interested in the preliminary bouts anyway.

  ‘Well observed, Amy. Yes, I could have put Stonecastle down. I got hurt more than I hurt her. That wasn’t the only ruck I had at Drearcliff Grange. The others started when girls picked on me. I won those, but no one noticed. I got infracted for the barney. Why?’

  ‘Because fighting is against School Rules?’

  ‘Nonsense. Fighting is a school sport. Dr Swan likes us to fight each other. We learn from that. It distracts us from fighting her. No, fighting in certain circumstances – on the Quad at Break, with a circle of braying girls and Nellie taking bets – is against School Rules. I needed to tick that one off.’

  So it was true. Miss Kratides had set out to break all the rules. In public, flagrantly. Not interested in getting away with it. Making a point.

  ‘A good thing there’s no School Rule against murder,’ said Amy.

  ‘I think that’s assumed. Dr Swan is a famous assumer.’

  ‘Did you really go through the whole book?’

  Miss Kratides laughed again. ‘I gave up. There are so many rules. It’s such a bother to break them all. One Saturday, I walked around the whole school making sure to wear my boater where I shouldn’t and not wear it where I should. It took ages to get noticed. I knew the rules better than any whip. At the height of my campaign I was as ruled by the rules as the goody-goodiest of goody-goodies. How clever was that?’

  ‘Not very.’

  ‘I spoke when I should be quiet and shut up when I should talk. I smoked cigarettes and drank cider. I ventured out of bounds and was always out of uniform. I spooned with Shoshone Brown’s brother at a dance. I stole things I didn’t want – chalk from classrooms, sweets from the tuck shop. I got caught and infracted, over and over. I didn’t enjoy the sins – except Brown’s brother, a teensy bit – but I burned with righteous delight when I got my Black Notches. I loved hating it all. I was a perfect idiot. I more than earned my bad reputation. I hurt people. People who tried to hurt me or who I saw hurting other people… but, still, not a paladin thing to do. Dr Shade would understand though. The worst thing you can do is hurt people who don’t deserve it – smaller, weaker, more innocent. But is hurting wicked people so wrong? I doubt Barty Gunt enjoyed his swim to shore. It was February. You did that to him. If a whip knew you were out of your cell – wearing a non-uniform cape, to boot – and flying a gigolo out to sea for a dunking, you’d get infracted for it. If you get caught on any of your After Lights Out jaunts in the name of a just cause, you’ll be Black Notched for the rest of your days at Drearcliff.’

  That was true.

  ‘Here’s a strange thing – something you might want to think on. I read the rule book cover to cover. There’s a rule against fighting… but no rule against hurting. If a whip slaps your face, it’s not an infraction. If you slap back, it is. All punishments the School dishes out are for things done against the School – and I’ve had the lot of ’em. Break a window and it’s penal servitude with lashes. Break a smaller girl and it’s best settled between the two of you while staff look the other way. You know what – that’s fair enough. Life outside School is like that. School prepares you for it. You’re here with terrible girls, the worst. They’re not punished, but you are. Never forget that, Amy. Dr Swan watches and lets it happen. No preferential treatment for her cygnets. If they can be broken they’re no use, so the Remove takes all the lumps going and then some.’

  Amy was jaded about School Rules, but Miss Kratides – a teacher – sounded more revolutionary than Absalom of Ariel, whose slot in the spoon case was School Anarchist.

  ‘Did you enjoy the Great Game?’ Miss Kratides asked. ‘I didn’t. I was surprised to be picked for the team. After not being in anyone’s club for so long – I kept throwing away my house pin but it always got handed in and given back – the invitation to participate was so shocking I paid attention. I had to be a fool and rally to Lamarcroft’s standard. She said I’d showed grit and determination. I couldn’t argue with that. I told her Draycott’s would cheat so we should cheat first. She regarded me with pity, but kindness. She said we’d play the game. Our cause was just and we would prevail. She convinced me. I was wrong and Mitéra was wrong. School Spirit. Then I waded through muck in the dark and made it back to the light to have buckets of more filth emptied on me. Gossage was a pitiable booby and Lungs a tragic martyr, but I’d run true to my form. A Wrong ’Un.’

  Amy understood Miss Kratides’ still-burning indignation.

  She knew some girls muttered about the team not trying hard enough or deliberately slacking off. Larry Laurence suffered the most from those rumours. After all, she’d handed the winning tobies to Humble College.

  ‘I was obviously in cahoots with Draycott’s and threw the game,’ Miss Kr
atides went on. ‘My last term at Drearcliff was more an ordeal than all the others rolled together. No girl got infracted for doing anything to me. Ever been beaten with a cake of soap in the foot of a gym sock? Doreen Stockwell did that. She used to sing with that clear contralto. She sang as she thumped, too. “Nymphs and Shepherds”. Lovely. After we passed out, I found the nice clean church Stockwell goes to in York. Sat at the back several Sundays running. Wearing a veil, just to be on the safe side. Our Doreen’s engaged to a curate. Nice chap. Surprisingly chinny for a clergyman. An idealist. Some slyboots told him his zeal was wasted on endless tea calls on the comfortable wives of Yorkshire burghers and standing weekly in a pulpit to tell his fat flock that Jesus didn’t really mean them when he was talking about the camel and the eye of the needle. No, he’s fit for a more exalted calling. Missionary work overseas. Somewhere challenging, with Lassa fever and leprosy or warlords and witch doctors. I hope he doesn’t tell Doreen her tropical honeymoon will be more exciting – and extended – than she expects until they’re two days out of Southampton.’

  Now Miss Kratides did sound frightening. A Wrong ’Un.

  ‘You don’t approve, Amy? I’m not surprised. When you heard Stockwell sing in Chapel you weren’t being beaten. I’ve kept track of all my chums who’ve passed out. I send postcards as reminders. Sidonie Gryce can’t hold on to a fellow for more than a month or two. She’s on the gin too. Glugs down a bottle a night, at least. Reversals in her family’s fortunes. Bad investments. She might – whisper it – have to go into trade. A tragic case. Something is sad about girls who do jolly well in school but founder when cast adrift in civvy street. Ah, you’re seeing it now.’

  Amy shivered. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The face behind the mask. The skeleton grin behind the sinister smile. The real Moria Kratides. The Wrong ’Un they all say I am. Well, you’ve had a Right ’Un teaching the Remove. Poor old Sausage. I won’t hear a word against her but she did not serve you well. She strove to bring out the best in you when you needed to be at your useful worst. After our Great Game, Gossage went about apologising. Said she’d do better. You know how that turned out. She was no help to me when Stockwell – enacting the will of the whole school – was shoving soap into a sock. Four girls held me down. When you heard Gunt splash into the sea, did you have a little thrill? A private, shameful pleasure. It was nothing beside the glow Stockwell and her pals had when they were feeding me my just desserts. I heard that in their voices. “Nymphs and shepherds, come away, come away…” They called themselves the Good Sports, can you credit it?’