Octavia

by Beryl Kingston

  His next letter was delivered along with ten applications for the post of school secretary. The two new teachers she had asked for had been approved. He suggested an advertisement be put into The Times to ensure a high calibre of applicants and as soon as possible to ensure that the successful candidates would both be free to start work in September.

  Octavia sent the advertisements to the paper that very morning. After being stuck in the doldrums for so many miserable weeks, her life was suddenly moving and at such speed it was making her feel quite dizzy. Now she had more work in a day than she could comfortably do in two, but the pressure was exactly what she needed. It sharpened her perceptions and made her daring. The English Literature syllabuses that she drew up late at night in the quiet of her bedroom were full of inspired cross-references and quirky pairings. Her present third formers would love them. She couldn’t wait to teach them. But in the meantime there were staff to appoint, and the first of them was her secretary.

  She pared the list of applicants down to four, all of them middle-aged and well qualified, with clear handwriting and excellent references, and then almost on a whim, she added a fifth. Her name was Margaret Henry and she hardly seemed qualified for the work at all, because she was only eighteen and had little experience, but there was something about her letter that spoke directly to Octavia’s sharpened senses, and she was curious to see whether the young woman matched her word.

  She was small, pale and skinny, and she sat before Octavia’s desk clutching her handbag in her lap and looking anxiously apprehensive. But her answers were just what Octavia was looking for – honest, open and forthright. No, she didn’t have experience of working in a school, but she was a hard worker and willing to learn. Yes, she would be prepared to work long hours. She knew that staff worked on after the children had gone home and would have to be in school before they arrived. That stood to reason. She thought being part of an experiment would be wonderful. ‘Most of the work in offices is very ordinary. You could do it with your eyes shut.’

  That made Octavia laugh. ‘So you need work that will open your eyes,’ she said. ‘Is that what made you apply for this particular job?’

  ‘Well, ma’am,’ the girl said, ‘to be truthful I didn’t know it was going to be part of an experiment. The thing is, there’s a girl in my office who used to come here. She was in your fifth form last year. Penny Morrison. So I’ve heard a lot about the school. She’s always talking about it. She says it’s the only school she’s ever been in where the girls liked the teachers. She says she was fond of you, ma’am. And I’ve been listening to her and thinking, I wish I could have gone there. So when I saw your advertisement…’

  It was a perfect answer. A clincher, as Tommy would have said. ‘Were I to offer you this job,’ Octavia said, ‘when could you start?’

  She began work a week later and, just as she’d promised, she was a very hard worker and learnt quickly. Within days she was Maggie to all the staff and had befriended all the children who appeared in her office. Within a week she was sending out appointments to all the parents who’d applied for their children to join the school in September and typing and duplicating the new syllabuses, neatly and accurately, as if she’d been dealing with such things all her life. ‘A treasure,’ Elizabeth Fennimore said.

  But it was nearly the end of May and they only had three more months to get everything ready. There were still two new members of staff to appoint and all the stock to order to say nothing of the day to day teaching, which was never easy in the run up to examinations, and was especially difficult that year because they had ten candidates for Lower Schools and all of them were anxious.

  ‘We shall never get it all done,’ Sarah Fletcher said.

  ‘Yes, we will,’ Octavia reassured her. There was no point in worrying now. They were committed. ‘In two weeks’ time we shall have two new members of staff.’

  ‘But when will they join us?’ Sarah said. ‘If it isn’t until September they won’t be much help to us now.’

  Their new Art teacher, Phillida Bertram, started work in the middle of June, on the day a reluctant German delegation finally signed the Treaty of Versailles and the Great War was officially over. She was a considerable help, even though her own syllabuses were, as she was the first to admit, probably the easiest to compile. The teacher of Maths and Biology, an amiable lady called Mabel Ollerington, came in to help Miss Fennimore as often as she could, which wasn’t anywhere near as often as they would both have liked, but was better than nothing, according to Elizabeth. ‘We must work through the summer holidays, I’m afraid,’ she told her new colleague and was relieved when Mabel said, ‘Of course.’

  Octavia worked in every moment she could find, sitting up late at night to get things completed, and staying on after school for several hours every evening, with Maggie to help her. For besides all the new work at school, she also had to make time for Emmeline and Johnnie and the girls. She’d taken them out every weekend since she got back from New York, for trips to the zoo or Madame Tussaud’s or a walk across the heath or a visit to the cinema. She felt it was important to give them things to enjoy, to make their lives as normal as possible, and Emmeline was still grieving so terribly and recovering so very slowly that she simply couldn’t do it.

  There were days when she felt so tired she could have slept where she stood, nights when she was so tired she couldn’t sleep at all, private moments of anxiety when she began to doubt her own judgement in choosing September.

  But September came and they were all more or less ready, with most of the stock in the cupboards and all the work planned for the first half term, if not longer, and the considerably enlarged school were sitting before her at their very first assembly of the new school year, eager to be told what it would be like in this new Dalton school of theirs. And glancing round at them all she felt so proud of them it made her chest ache.

  ‘Today,’ she told them happily, ‘is the start of an adventure. We – you, me, Miss Genevra, Miss Gordon, Miss Fennimore, Miss Fletcher, Miss Bertram, Miss Ollerington and Miss Henry – are pioneers. Not just teachers and a school secretary and school pupils but pioneers. It is a splendid thing to be a pioneer. You must be proud of yourselves and of what we are beginning, for great things will come of it. We are going to be the very first people in this country to use a completely new method of education and there will be people watching us to see how well we shall do it.

  ‘Now I will tell you a little more about it. When you get back to your classrooms you will each be given a folder. Take great care of it, for this is where you will keep the syllabuses of all the work you will be doing in the coming half term. Every girl will get a syllabus for every subject she is going to study and every syllabus is a guide. It will tell you what you are going to learn, which books and equipment you will need and when your written work has to be handed in. You will not be going to lessons all the time, as they do in other schools, so it will be up to you to decide when you do your work and how you will do it. For example you may find some subjects quite easy and, if that is the case, you might like to do all the tasks you have been set in those subjects in the first few days after you get your syllabuses. Other subjects will be more difficult and you will find you need to spend more time on them and take them step by step. Your teachers will be in their rooms to help you and that’s where you will find all the books you need too.

  ‘In the first few days it will probably be a bit puzzling but after a while you will get used to it and begin to see what freedom our new system will give you and what fun it will be. If you are confused, don’t battle on alone. Ask for help and it will be given. We shall expect great things of you and I know you will not disappoint us.’

  She opened her hymn book ready for their first hymn and smiled round at them before she gave Miss Fletcher the nod to start playing the opening bars. ‘Good luck!’ she said.

  Within a week she was recording how easy the transfer had been. ‘Most of the girls have taken
to it like ducks to water,’ she wrote in her journal, ‘and those who are confused have the good sense to ask for help. There has been a certain amount of muddle at the start of the study periods when the first formers weren’t sure where they ought to go, and some study rooms were full, but that was to be expected and it was pleasing to see how quickly the older girls came to their assistance. It is very encouraging.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  John Algernon Withington was heartily sick of being called Podge. Not that there was anything he could do about it. The family habit was too firmly entrenched. He’d had words with Em about it once, but that was a long time ago – four years at least, must be – just after he was invalided out of the army and when he was feeling dicky. Anyway he’d spoken to her – several times actually – and she had promised she would try to remember but it didn’t do the slightest good, even though he’d scowled at her every time she forgot and she’d put her hands over her mouth and made apologetic faces. The name kept slipping out, and usually on embarrassing occasions, like Uncle J-J’s retirement party.

  True to his promise, although somewhat belatedly, Professor Smith retired at Christmas, having agreed to stay on for one more term to ease his successor into the post.

  ‘And not a minute too soon,’ Amy said, brushing invisible dust from the lapels of his dress suit. ‘I was beginning to despair of you.’

  ‘I think your timing is perfect, Pa,’ Octavia laughed. ‘Now we can have a proper retirement party. If you’d done it any earlier I wouldn’t have had the energy for celebrations, even for my father.’

  ‘In that case, I’m glad I didn’t discommode you,’ J-J said, adjusting his bow tie. ‘I would not have wished to have been given an improper party.’

  It was a splendid occasion and a very happy one with all his old colleagues there to salute him and his entire family around him to congratulate him. Even Podge cheered up after a glass of champagne and Dora and Edith, who were allowed half a glass to mark the occasion, were soon giggling with the best.

  Emmeline said it was the first time she’d really enjoyed herself since her babies died. ‘Which is not to say I haven’t been glad of all the outings you’ve arranged,’ she said to Octavia. ‘I wouldn’t want you to think that. It’s just that my heart hasn’t been in them.’

  ‘I know, my darling,’ Octavia said. ‘Nor has mine sometimes.’

  ‘But it is now, isn’t it?’ Emmeline said. ‘For both of us. Because it’s family, I suppose. That makes the difference. Doesn’t your pa look well?’

  He made a sparkling speech, as they all knew he would, thanking his guests for their presence, his family and colleagues for their unfailing, and sometimes incomprehensible, understanding and support. Then he turned to Octavia and told them ‘by way of a closing remark’ that he was handing on the torch of learning to his daughter, ‘confident that whatever fuel she might use to keep it alight, it will burn freely and brightly if – shall we say – occasionally unexpectedly. My advice to you would be, watch for fireworks over Hammersmith.’

  ‘Quite right,’ John Algernon said, grinning at his cousin as the laughter died down and the drinking was resumed. ‘We shall be lucky if the entire place doesn’t go up in flames.’

  J-J’s friends were a little surprised by such a blunt criticism, and showed it.

  ‘Ignore him,’ Octavia advised. ‘He’s my cousin, Podge. He’s renowned for hyperbole.’

  ‘What an unusual name!’ they said, looking at his skinny wrists and his gaunt cheeks, as people always did when they heard it for the first time. ‘How did you come by that?’

  He explained, as he always did, but it was very tedious and he found himself glancing at his watch as soon as he’d finished, wondering when he could make his excuses, thank his aunt and uncle for their hospitality and slip away. The palais de dance was waiting for him and so, with a bit of luck, was Olga. Absolutely top hole place the palais. A life-saver. Saved his life on innumerable evenings in the last year, especially when another God-awful day at the bank had bored him crazy. Couldn’t wait to get there most evenings if the truth be told. Although he had to find excuses for his mother and that could be tricky. Couldn’t let on to her where he was going. That would never have done. She’d have hated the idea. She said dance hall girls were common. Which they probably were. But good fun, common or not.

  They were dancing the quickstep when he arrived that evening and for a few seconds he just stood at the edge of the dance floor and wallowed in the sight of them. They were so young and brightly coloured and alive, a million years from the blood and slime and mud-stiff khaki of the trenches. It did him good just to be with them, listening to the band and letting his feet tap in rhythm, while his eyes adjusted to the yellow half-light from all those art deco wall lamps and his lungs coughed their first protest against the blue fog of the cigarette smoke. It made him cough every time, but what the hell, it was worth it. And there was Olga, waving to him, wearing her red dress with its short skirt showing her lovely long legs and its low neck showing her lovely brown back, and her painted mouth as red as her dress.

  ‘Algy!’ she said as she walked off the floor towards him. ‘You’re late ain’tcher? I thought you wasn’t coming. Where you been?’

  They were playing the next dance and it was a waltz. ‘Dance?’ he hoped.

  She slid into his arms, all artificial silk and cheap perfume and tempting flesh, and he bent his head to kiss her as he walked her backwards onto the floor.

  ‘Now look at the state of you,’ she pretended to scold. ‘Mucky pup. You’re all over lipstick. Stand still.’ And she took a handkerchief from her little bag, spat on it and rubbed his mouth clean where they stood. Oh, she was delectable. She could rub his mouth with her hanky any time.

  ‘There’s ever such a good picture on up the Ritz,’ she told him as they danced.

  He took his cue at once. ‘Would you like to see it?’

  She made eyes at him, her black eyelashes spiky with mascara. ‘I might.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘I never knew a bloke like you,’ she said. ‘You can’t wait five minutes fer nothing.’

  ‘No,’ he admitted happily. ‘I can’t. Tomorrow it is then.’ And he put his hand on the small of her lovely naked back and pulled her body towards him, lusting at the touch of those delicious titties and that luscious curved belly. Tomorrow they would be sitting in the back row at the pictures and he could take even more liberties. I’m twenty-three, he thought, and I’m alive and that lousy war is over and I’m going to live all I can.

  ‘You never said where you was,’ she said languidly as they shifted their feet to the music.

  ‘Only some boring old party,’ he told her, too lost in sensation to remember it.

  The boring old party was still going on, although Emmeline and her children had gone home to bed and some of the academics had retreated too. J-J was sitting on his ancient sofa talking to his brother-in-law, who had just confessed that he was going to retire too, probably in the summer.

  ‘A very good idea,’ J-J said. ‘If this is retirement I can’t recommend it too highly.’

  ‘I thought the end of July,’ Ralph told him. ‘That will make forty-four years I’ve worked for the firm, and forty-four years is enough.’

  ‘I would have said it was more than enough,’ J-J agreed. ‘Have some more brandy?’

  ‘What will you do now that you’re a gentleman of leisure?’ Ralph asked, holding out his brandy glass.

  ‘As little as possible, I daresay,’ J-J said, filling it generously. ‘I’ve promised my womenfolk that we shall have a Sunday breakfast every morning.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Tavy taking a leisurely breakfast,’ her uncle said. ‘She’s always in such a rush.’

  ‘That’s what comes of being a headmistress.’

  ‘Is she happy?’ Ralph asked.

  J-J gave it thought. ‘She’s busy,’ he said, ‘and that’s tantamount to happiness where Tavy is concerned.’


  ‘Is she still working for the suffragettes?’

  ‘Not as often as she used to,’ J-J said, ‘but now and then. She’s more interested in the League of Nations at the moment.’

  Octavia had great hopes of the League of Nations and followed its progress in every newspaper. Buoyed up by her success at Hammersmith Secondary School, and with a new year coming and a new and peaceful decade, she was in the mood to be hopeful, even if she still hadn’t got round to buying a house. This proposed League seemed a sensible organisation since it was restricting its activities to the prevention of war. In fact its sole reason for existence was to prevent them from breaking out in the first place and they intended to do it by dealing with disputes between nations by diplomacy and compromise – although it had to be admitted that there was a war being fought in Russia even while the plans were being formulated.

  ‘Which I am sure they will deal with the moment they are fully organised,’ she told her father. ‘We can’t expect them to start work before they are ready. That would be unwise.’ Didn’t she know it?

  Life at Hammersmith was still burdened with work. The teachers were busy preparing their second and third syllabuses, and learning how to handle a study group by daily trial and error and, what seemed to them, far too many mistakes. And as if that weren’t pressure enough, they also discovered that they were suffering from a troubling shortage of books. Now that their pupils were allowed to read as widely and as often as they liked, they were getting through textbooks and subject libraries much more quickly than their teachers had originally estimated they would.

  ‘We should have ordered three times the number of Science books,’ Miss Fennimore said to Octavia. ‘I’ve never seen such an appetite.’