No Talking after Lights

by Angela Lambert

  NO TALKING AFTER LIGHTS

  Angela Lambert

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Prologue

  Raeburn was, as Constance’s mother said the first time she saw it, and would say again every time it was mentioned, a beautiful school in the heart of the country. Yet for the girls who boarded there the school was embodied above all in the massive Easter Island presence of the Headmistress, the Hon. Mrs Henrietta Birmingham. In the minds of parents the school, like a group photograph, evoked the 120 girls who attended it, in particular their own tidily uniformed daughter. For its dozen teachers the school represented pupils at desks in class-rooms, lessons to be prepared, books to be marked, and staff-room rivalries; for the matrons the school existed in terms of creased counterpanes and feverish girls; to the domestic staff it was little more than a steamy, clanging kitchen and acres of floor to be polished; while to the gardener and his boy it meant grass needing to be mowed and rolled.

  The main school building was a long, three-storeyed, mock-Tudor country house with sixteen bedrooms and a servants’ attic. It had been built in the 1890s for one of that extinct tribe of hostesses whose lives revolved around the rituals of weekend house-parties at which they manipulated their powerful, pleasure-loving men. The outward appearance of the house had hardly changed in six decades.

  In later years, when girls - now grown women -thought of their old school, they saw it more vividly than the distant childhood world of home. Their dreams continued to be set in its undulating landscape long after their schooldays were over, while in nightmares they would find themselves still hemmed in by the school rules, walking - not running - in stiff-legged panic along narrow corridors, and would wake up relieved to find they were adults after all. Whether or not they had been happy at Raeburn, they usually remembered it in high summer. They would hear the bell’s insistent double beat and see the building with its many chimneys riding high over the serene Sussex countryside, its sloping green lawns dotted with girls in summer frocks.

  But all this was obscured in February. It was bitterly cold, the great bulk of the school ploughing like an ocean liner through sheets of freezing rain. Rain lashed the bare trees beside the drive into dripping, creaking life as Constance King and her parents bumped along the uneven surface on the way to their first meeting with the Headmistress.

  Constance peered through the car’s steamed-up windows at girls in ankle-length hooded cloaks buffeted by the wind as they stumbled with bent heads between class-rooms. They looked sinister and faceless.

  ‘Which are those monks who wear the long brown cloaks?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure, darling …’ her mother began; but her father interrupted.

  ‘Don’t be such a twerp, Constance,’ he said irritably. ‘And comb your hair. Try to make a good impression.’

  The rotten old school’s not making a very good impression on me, she thought mutinously. I’d much rather go to Wimbledon High. She doubted if she’d be given the choice. There were seven weeks left until the end of term, but as her parents were being posted to Kenya in May, it was a matter of urgency to find her a suitable boarding-school.

  Her father parked the car carefully and reached down for his Colonial Office briefcase. Mrs King patted her hair, took out a gold compact and pursed her mouth while she dotted lipstick on to it. Then she smiled encouragingly at Constance.

  ‘Isn’t this exciting?’ she said.

  Her father cracked open a black umbrella and the three of them dashed into the shelter of the porch.

  As they sat waiting in the hall, a girl of enchanting loveliness emerged from the Head’s study and came towards them, smiling. She was as light-footed as a flower fairy in one of Constance’s old storybooks. Shining tendrils of hair escaped from her pony-tail and floated round her small, pointed face. Constance’s mother nudged her conspiratorially as her father half rose to his feet.

  ‘Are you Mr and Mrs King?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Yes, indeed. Yes, we are. Not too early, I hope?’ he replied, and Constance winced at his eagerness to please somebody who couldn’t be more than sixteen.

  ‘Not a bit. My name is Hermione, and the Head says, would you like to come in? It’s that door, there …’ She led the way and held it open for them.

  ‘What a pretty girl!’ whispered Mrs King, but Constance disdained to answer.

  Mrs Birmingham received them in a drawing-room furnished with aristocratic randomness. Everything was old and comfortable and good, but nothing matched and nothing was artistically arranged. The curtains were faded chintz, the sofas and armchairs were covered in a different chintz, and the furniture was shabby, sagging at the corners. The mantelpiece displayed a few school cups, some studio portraits in silver frames of Mrs Birmingham’s family (including one of her father in full court dress, wearing breeches and glossy, thigh-length boots), a silver pheasant and a small gilt carriage clock. There was also a rabbit modelled in clay by one of the girls and another even more formless clay lump whose glaze had dripped and blurred as though still wet. On a circular mahogany table just inside the door stood a cut-glass vase of early daffodils whose granular scent tickled Constance’s nostrils. A selection of recent books and magazines was fanned around it: John Betjeman, The Silent Traveller, H. V. Morton on Sussex, and Country Life. The log fire burning in the wide stone fireplace added a warmth and cosiness that the room might otherwise have lacked. It was a pleasant, welcoming room whose lack of any attempt to impress successfully implied that Mrs Birmingham came from a good family.

  Plain, flat-chested and be-spectacled, Constance King (what an unfortunate name, thought the Head: the girls were bound to call her King Kong) was not an engaging sight. But she seemed clever, and the school certainly had vacancies. Due to the austerity of the last years, it had not grown as rapidly as she had planned. In 1946 she had accepted the fact that her husband’s health would never improve, nor would he earn enough to maintain them in comfort and send their brilliant son James to Oxford. But country-house prices were lower than before the war, so she had invested her father’s legacy in this house, which she had seen offered for sale in The Times. It had been requisitioned for use as a hospital during the war and was scruffy and neglected. Few people had money to spare at that time; she had bought it cheaply at auction and sold off some of the land and several cottages on the estate. Leaving only the drawing-room and study untouched, she had had it converted as quickly and cheaply as possible, and honoured her father’s memory by naming the newly founded school after their family home in Scotland. She had counted on the Raeburn School for Girls having nearly 150 pupils by now, and the missing thirty made a difference. Some members of staff had to double up and teach two subjects.

  Mrs Birmingham had already glanced at Constance’s general-knowledge test (they called it an entrance exam, but in practice she didn’t reject any girl, no matter how stupid) and been impressed by its clear, accurate answers. The child was only twelve, but she’d soar above the dimmish Upper Third. Best to try her in the Lower Fourth.

  The Head moved smoothly through her practised recital of the school’s advantages. Experience had taught her when to pause for questions, and she could usually anticipate what parents would ask. The Kings were not the sort to inquire about opportunities for riding or ballet, though Mrs King might ask to be shown a dormitory; nor did they seem academic, so she could avoid the under-stocked library.

  ‘The school was recommended b
y a colleague in the Colonial Office,’ Mr King ventured. ‘I wonder if by any chance Constance would be in the same class as his daughters —?’

  Before he could finish, Mrs Birmingham said, That would be the Simpson twins, I dare say?’

  ‘Michaela and Felicity,’ Mrs King concurred, her face brightening at this evidence that the Head did indeed know every girl personally. ‘Would Connie be in their class? It would be so nice for her. They could be chums.’

  ‘Well, they’re a bit older, of course. Constance is only just twelve, I believe’ - affirmatory smiles - ‘And the Simpson girls are over thirteen. But I’ll see what could be arranged. And now, perhaps you’d like to see one of the dormitories?’

  These dormitories were not inspiring, being the former housemaids’ sleeping quarters in the attic and guest bedrooms on the second floor that had been crudely sliced in half with plasterboard partitions, but she sensed that the Kings were won over already. She opened the door of the drawing-room and looked out into the front hall.

  ‘Ah, Madeleine,’ she said, catching sight of a passing girl, ‘would you show Constance King the Lower Fourth for me, and perhaps the studio, and bring her back here in ten minutes? Thank you, dear.’

  Madeleine smiled winningly at Constance, but as soon as the Head turned away her expression changed.

  ‘Are you going to be a new girl?’ she asked indifferently as they walked along a dark corridor. ‘(That’s the staff-room) … You’ll hate it here.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Constance unexpectedly.

  ‘Everyone has nicknames. Mine’s Madine. They’ll probably call you Con, if you’re lucky. Otherwise …’ her voice trailed away. She couldn’t remember Constance’s surname, and was unable to come up with an instant, cruel invention.

  ‘At my school now I’m called Goggles,’ confided Constance unwisely, in a bid for friendship. Madeleine was slight, dark, intense; she had liked her on sight.

  Madeleine opened a door on to bedlam. ‘Shut up everyone!’ she shouted, and as they turned towards her she pushed Constance ahead of her into the room. ‘This is Goggles. She’s starting next term. Her people have got an Austin Seven.’

  Constance looked numbly at the half-dozen strange faces that turned towards her.

  ‘It’s only hired,’ she muttered to Madeleine.

  ‘But they’ve had to hire it,’ added Madeleine, and to Constance, ‘My people have got a Humber Hawk. It’s the same car as Old Ma B.’

  ‘Who’s Old Ma B?’ asked Constance.

  ‘You’ve just been to see her, stupid. Mrs Birmingham. Who d’you think?’

  How was I supposed to know? thought Constance. I hate this place. I hate them all. How shall I ever learn their names? I don’t want to come here. I wish Mummy and Daddy didn’t have to go away again. I wish I could go with them. Why can’t I go to school in Kenya like Stella? Why do I have to stay behind? Oh God, let them not send me here. But she said out loud, “Course I knew that. Mick and Flick told me.’

  ‘Do you know Mick and Flick?’

  ‘Well, I don’t exactly know them. Their father works with my father.’

  Madeleine swung round. ‘Is it true, Flick? Do you know each other?’

  ‘Shut up Madeleine, don’t be such a bully. What are your people called?’ Felicity asked Constance.

  ‘King. Mr and Mrs King. I mean, hmm’ - her parents’ Christian names sounded funny when she said them -‘George and Paula King.’

  ‘Yes, we do know them,’ Flick said to the room at large, and then, ‘It’s not as bad as all that here. You’ll have a godmother for your first term.’

  Constance’s heart leapt. Was that really possible? Would cosy, snuggly Auntie Meg be allowed to stay with her for the first term? That would be wonderful. She smiled gratefully at Flick as Madeleine led her out.

  Back in the drawing-room she found her parents waiting. The fat, squashy sofas somehow diminished them and made them look almost like children, sitting much lower than the Headmistress who, from a high-backed wing-chair, motioned Constance to sit beside her mother. ‘Every new girl has a godmother for her first term,’ the Head was saying, and Constance smiled in relief. ‘That is, an older girl is assigned to look after her, show her round, and help her till she finds her feet.’

  Mrs King put her hand on Constance’s. There, darling, won’t that be nice?’

  Constance shook her head, bit her lip and stared at the pale-blue carpet.

  Just then there was an urgent knock on the interconnecting door to the study. A tall woman with her hair drawn back severely entered and said, ‘Mrs Birmingham, excuse me for interrupting but I wonder if I might have a word?’

  ‘Miss Roberts, my Deputy,’ said the Head smoothly, to cover her surprise. ‘Yes, of course.’ Then she turned to the Kings. ‘Will you forgive me for a moment?’ She rose to her feet and swept through to the adjoining room.

  ‘Darling, we love it!’ said Constance’s mother in a low voice as the door closed behind Mrs Birmingham. ‘It’s a beautiful school in the heart of the country, and the girls seem charming. Such nice manners.’

  ‘Yes, I must say I’m impressed,’ her father agreed.

  And what about me? thought Constance silently. I’m the one who’s supposed to be coming here. Doesn’t anybody care what I think? But she knew better than to argue here, in this intimidatingly grand, strange room.

  Mrs Birmingham returned, her face a solemn mask.

  ‘Tragic news … tragic news,’ she said. ‘I am afraid it has just been announced on the wireless that his Majesty King George the Sixth died last night in his sleep.’

  Mrs King’s face crumpled with shock, and her husband instinctively straightened his back and sat rigidly as though to attention. Before they could detain her with conventional expressions of grief, the Head went on, ‘I am afraid I shall have to call an immediate assembly and break the news to the school. I don’t know if there was anything more you wanted to ask?’

  ‘No, no. We quite understand. Forgive us for intruding at such a sad moment,’ said Mr King, and the three of them were quietly ushered out.

  The Lower Fourth were sitting in a geography lesson, silent and unresponsive. The old-fashioned radiators made the classroom stuffy and they stared out of the blurred windows at the rain that swept across in slanting sheets and obliterated the view.

  Geography was taught by Ginny Valentine, their form mistress. Small and pretty, with curly black hair, blue eyes and a brilliant smile, Miss Valentine was popular. Unlike most members of staff, she wore makeup every day and not just for Parents’ Weekends. Her nose was always matt with powder, her mouth a bright fuchsia pink, and her ear-rings sparkled as she gesticulated and swung round from the blackboard. This third period on Wednesday morning was usually enjoyable, for Ginny was a good teacher, enthusiastic and spontaneous. But today even her cheerful personality was subdued by the February gloom. She looked up at the sound of a knock on the door of Austen, their form-room.

  ‘Come in!’ she fluted, and Miss Roberts entered.

  The girls automatically rose to their feet until she said tersely, ‘Sit down everyone!’ She walked past the rows of desks to where Miss Valentine stood beside the blackboard. Everyone perked up. A visit from the Deputy Head meant something important must have happened. The Lower Fourth sat unusually still and strained to hear as the two women spoke in low voices for a few moments. Then Miss Roberts hurried out of the room.

  Ginny Valentine waited for the class to compose themselves and give her their full attention. Then she said, There will be a special assembly at 11.15, after a shortened break. The Head will address the whole school. I can tell you nothing more at present. And now’ - she smiled briefly, and the attentive faces lightened - ‘as there are only five minutes left of the lesson, I want you to open your geography books at page 114. Michaela, will you distribute the prep books, please?’

  Michaela, the elder by twenty minutes of the Simpson twins, walked self-importantly to the front of the
class and collected a pile of exercise books. Those that were almost finished were dog-eared and crumpled; the new ones were still crisp, with shiny covers and fresh white edges. On the cover, inside a rectangular box with dotted lines, each girl wrote her name and form number. Plain pages alternated with lined ones in geography and biology books (for drawing maps and diagrams); there was squared paper for maths, algebra and geometry, lined paper with red margins for all the other subjects. Geography exercise books were always green, maths ones brown, history blue, biology red, and so on. Brown was for boredom -nearly everyone was hopeless at maths - red, for blood. They hadn’t yet reached the bloody bits in ‘bilge’, for they tackled the reproductive system just before GCE, when they were sixteen and old enough to handle the facts of life. The Lower Fourth were only doing amoeba and spirogyra. Green signified maps and hills and jolly Miss Valentine. Her brisk voice pattered on about rain-shadow areas and ox-bow rivers. She wrote on the board, the chalk making a precise, crunchy sound, saying as she went along: ‘Read Chapter Fourteen and answer questions one, three and five at the end. Use diagrams or maps where necessary to illustrate your answers. Prep to be handed in before supper on Thursday … that’s tomorrow, Sheila, isn’t it?’

  While the twenty-three girls were copying this into their rough books, Charmian - small and blonde with attractive, foxy features - nudged her best friend. ‘Stop dreaming, soppy date. She means you!’

  Sheila frowned, ruled a line under Miss Valentine’s last comment in her book (’4/10 Sheila: you can do better than this, and why no map?’) and underlined the words ‘geography prep’ twice.

  The Covered Way during break hummed with the sound of 120 voices as the girls speculated on the possible reasons for an unprecedented second assembly. They queued up for milk in squat bottles, pulling a tab to remove the cardboard disc on top and drinking through a straw. The seniors were allowed tea, which a prefect poured out of a huge, dented teapot into thick-rimmed cups. Some girls crowded round the board hoping to see their names on the parcels list. The bell tolled early for the end of break and they lined up automatically in forms to file along the passage and downstairs into hall.