No Talking after Lights

by Angela Lambert

  Sylvia fiddled impatiently with the key and flung the door open. A hot, stale, womanly smell cluttered the still rooms. Armchairs sagged; exam papers were scattered untidily over the table. The rooms were bare of any ornament, except for Sylvia’s overflowing ashtrays. The lino-covered floors needed sweeping. How drab it is, thought Diana, yet surely I have been happy here?

  ‘Shall I make some coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody ingratiating!’ sneered Sylvia. ‘Coffee! What the hell use is coffee at a time like this? I need a drink.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve got anything,’ Diana said.

  ‘There’s a bottle in my locker. Next to the bed. I suggest you go and fetch it.’

  Two hours later the gin bottle was almost empty. Sylvia sprawled across a chair, one arm hanging down; ash had fallen from her drooping cigarette on to the floor. Diana, exhausted by tension and alcohol, watched her through half-closed eyes. The sun was setting and the room had got darker, but neither stood up to put the light on.

  Finally Sylvia said, “S all right, Monkey. I understand. I understand. Your family. Your people,’ she added, mockingly.

  ‘They do depend on me …’

  ‘I damage everything I touch,’ Sylvia began. ‘Don’t deny it, Monks, I’m being serious. And honest, for a change. No, I won’t go and see a trick-cyclist to please Old Ma B, to make me safe. What could anyone do for me? I’m rotten, Monkey, rotten. I am. A bad apple. I’ll go away. Time to start again somewhere else. All I can do is keep moving on. Another school, another Hermione, maybe even another Monkey. Holidays, back home to Mother. Nowhere else to go. She’s senile nowadays, or she pretends to be, so as not to have to talk to me. Deaf as well. She hobbles along to chapel on Sundays, with me the dutiful daughter supporting her, and we pray to God the Father. Heavenly Father. Eternal Father, strong to save.’ She laughed. ‘“Ephemeral father, weak to destroy, if only I had been a boy!” Good, eh? Come on, Monkey, you’ve got to laugh.’

  Diana, sitting rigidly in her chair, eyes fixed on Sylvia, suddenly pitched forward, hands clasped over her head, and buried her face in her lap. She rocked to and fro, choking spasmodically as though about to be sick. Sylvia made no move. She was used to pain.

  Starlings rose and fell like a ship with the breathing of sleeping children. In the light midsummer sky the moon hung white, marbled with grey, above the slate-blue trees. Constance had set her alarm clock for five-thirty and put it under her pillow, but she could not sleep. What if it didn’t go off, or if she woke one of the others? She could see the face of the man in the moon. Was it night in Africa too? She tried to work out the time difference. It was about three hours later there. Say, four o’clock in the morning. Her parents and Stella would be asleep, probably. The dawn would be breaking. It would be evening by the time Auntie Marjie rang them. They’d have to take her away.

  I’m not happy here, she thought. I never could be. I haven’t got any friends. The swimming is fun, OK, I like that. But there won’t be any swimming next term. Hockey. I can’t play hockey. It’d be easier without Charmie, and she’s not coming back. Sheila might, I suppose. I do want to leave. Her eyes drooped, and she struggled to keep them open. She got up and walked to the window.

  The horizontal branches of the cedar made a strong, jagged shape against the sky. The lawn fell away beneath the window towards the rhododendrons. The school cruised over the rolling landscape. It felt familiar and solid and safe. I do want to leave! said Constance to herself. She went back to her bed and took the clock from beneath her pillow. It was hard to read the time, so she put on her glasses and held it up towards the window. One-thirty. Should I turn it off, in case it wakes people? She deliberated, her finger poised above the serrated round knob on top. No. Let it ring. She climbed back into bed and slept.

  In the pearly morning light the clock rang, waking Constance and no-one else. She gathered up her vest and knickers, socks and sandals, and, clutching them inside her dressing-gown, tiptoed to the bathroom. School uniform had been a problem - all the local people knew the Raeburn uniform, and she would have been stopped at the station - so she had decided to wear her flowered cotton dressing-gown. With the belt round her waist it could pass for a summer frock.

  She washed her hands and face, cleaned her teeth, stuffed her nightie inside the sponge-bag and hung it back on its hook. Then, with fast-beating heart, she tiptoed down the back stairs. The school was silent. As Constance walked through the Covered Way for the last time, past the notice-board with the deportment ladder, meals rota and parcels list, she heard a door shutting somewhere behind her. The Scandies must be getting up.

  The great double door at the end of the Covered Way was locked. Constance rattled it, but it wouldn’t open. Ignoring her momentary surge of relief, she thought again, I want to run away! The changing-room door was locked too, and the windows were shut. She went into the lavatories, and found the window of the end one open. Heaving herself up from the lavatory seat on to the windowsill, she climbed awkwardly through, jumped down and stood outside in the warm morning air.

  I’ve got to say goodbye to Flopsy, she thought. That’s not procrastinating. (‘Pro’, for; ‘eras’, tomorrow; ‘tenere’, to hold: holding off until tomorrow, Miss Monk had explained in Latin, and Constance remembered her delight as she suddenly realized how language was made and why Latin mattered.) She put the memory aside and stepped into the dark, rich-smelling shed. The sleeping animals quivered and sat up, ears pricked. Constance walked over to Flopsy’s cage in the corner. She slid her hand inside it to where he cowered against the back and stroked his fur, running her fingertips gently along his flattened ears.

  ‘Bye-bye, Flopsy,’ she said. ‘Be a good bunny. I do love you.’

  As she turned away she worried about who would give him his oats and water. She should have left a note for Rachel or someone. Too late now. On an impulse she turned back, took him out of his cage and set him down gently on the grass under the apple trees.

  ‘There you go, Flopsy,’ she told him. ‘Eat up. You’re free.’

  She climbed through the rough grass behind the shed towards a gap in the high hedge that led down on to the road. Birds were singing in the treetops and the clear, still morning heralded another flawless day.

  Walking along the road that she had travelled so often in the school coach, going to and from church in best straw hats and Sunday dresses - the sprigged Liberty print ones worn for Speech Day and church only — she looked at the flowers in the hedgerows, remembering a biology lesson with Miss Parry. She had led them along this same road and made them write down the names in their exercise books, under the heading Common English Wild Flowers. People had straggled and gossiped, dawdling behind and not paying attention. But Constance, a town girl, had been fascinated, and had written down all the names. Now she recognized them, and took pleasure in being able to identify them. Miss Parry was right. It did make a difference if you knew what they were called.

  There were tiny wild pansies, purple and violet, and golden birdsfoot trefoil and sky-blue periwinkles and veined harebells; foxgloves, and crimson poppies that crumpled and faded the moment you picked them. Fragile things like dandelions, for telling the time, old man’s beard and, poking through the exuberant greenery, the spidery heads of cow parsley. There were stinging nettles just the height of your legs, and plantains or dock to soothe the itching. Much more dangerous, Miss Parry had warned them (’Are you concentrating, there at the back? This is important so listen!’) were the poisonous, shiny berries of deadly nightshade. Most dramatic of all were thrusting spikes crowned with brilliant red and yellow berries that were called wild arum, and which country people nicknamed lords and ladies. It had been fun, that lesson, observing something she’d never looked at properly before.

  I could pick some flowers for Auntie Marjie, she thought, and suddenly it seemed a brilliant idea. She bent down to snap off a thick, engorged stem of wild arum, and then, across the other side of the road, j
ust before it curved round a corner, she caught sight of another. Smiling to herself at the thought of her aunt exclaiming with pleasure as she arranged Constance’s beautiful bunch of flowers in the vase on her drawing-room windowsill, she headed diagonally into the road. She didn’t even hear the car as it turned the corner sharply, braked, swerved, and just failed to avoid her. She heard its tyres slither as they slewed across the road. She felt gravel pressing sharply against the skin of her cheek and her crumpled right arm, and grinding into the leg which was hooked underneath her. Faintly, as though in a trance - not an unpleasant trance - she heard a woman begin to scream. The screams rose like the cries of a bird into the blue, blue sky over her head, and Constance felt vaguely that she ought to get up and see what was wrong, yet somehow she was quite disinclined to move.

  ‘Well you are in a pickle,’ said Mrs Birmingham.

  Constance opened her eyes. Her head felt heavy and her face hurt.

  ‘It’s nearly dark,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. It’s after ten o’clock. I was on my way up the drive, but I thought I’d pop in once more to see if you were awake.’

  ‘Have I been asleep all day?’

  ‘They brought you in - oh, it must have been before eight o’clock this morning. Sister gave you a mild sleeping draught and put you to bed up here, so you wouldn’t be disturbed. The doctor came: you remember that, don’t you? How do you feel? Can you move your legs?’

  The day swam hazily back into focus, assembling itself from a welter of images, some of them dream, some harshly real. Constance recalled lying on the stony surface of the lane, hearing Miss Peachey’s voice in the distance, and someone screaming. She’d been touched and prodded, and then Miss Peachey and some stranger had picked her up and laid her across the back seat of a car. And then what? The doctor had been. She had a vague memory of him feeling her limbs and rearranging her more comfortably in bed. He’d taken away her pillows. She’d been given something to drink. Then the dreams - climbing and diving and flying, weightless and disembodied, flying to Africa, but not in an aeroplane: she’d been flying in the sky, arms outstretched, soaring …

  ‘Mrs Birmingham - oh, please, have you told Mummy and Daddy?’

  ‘I put in a trunk call to your parents this morning, yes. Naturally they were very upset. Never mind all that now - we’ll discuss it tomorrow. Tell me dear, how are you feeling?’

  ‘My head’s all sort of stiff. And my arm aches like billy-o.’

  Constance lifted her arm from under the sheet and looked at it aghast. It was covered with deep scratches which had been painted with yellow stuff.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Oh, no! I remember … I got knocked down, didn’t I? When I was trying to … Oh, gosh. Oh, I am sorry, honestly I am. Oh, goodness.’

  ‘You’ve had a lucky escape. The important thing is that you’re safe now, and no bones broken, the doctor says. Wiggle your toes for me. There, you see? Very lucky.’

  ‘What did they say when you spoke to them?’

  ‘Your parents both send you their love. Now, Constance, I don’t want you to talk any longer. You must get a good night’s rest, and I’ll come and see you again in the morning. Sister’s going to bring you a little snack - you haven’t eaten all day - and before you go to sleep I want you to say a prayer to thank God for having watched over you and kept you safe.’

  Mrs Birmingham took Constance’s arm and laid it under the sheet, then brushed the hair back from her hot forehead, bent down and kissed her. Constance shut her eyes. No-one had given her a kiss since she said goodbye to her mother at the end of Parents’ Weekend. She felt tearful and shaky.

  ‘Sister will bring you something to make you sleep. Night-night, dear. God bless.’

  Moments later, Sister Girdlestone entered, her face grim with disapproval. She placed a tray of bread and butter and a glass of milk on the bedside table. In a tiny white box with pleated edges lay two pills.

  ‘Now do I have to watch you or can you be trusted to take those?’

  Constance sat up gingerly, took the glass and the pills and swallowed them in one gulp.

  ‘You are a very wicked girl, Constance King, and I hope you’re thoroughly ashamed of yourself. If Miss Peachey hadn’t been passing on her way in, what on earth might have happened? You in your dressing-gown - unconscious - nobody would have known who you were! And what about the poor woman who ran you over? Have you stopped to think about how she must feel?’

  Constance stared into Sister Girdlestone’s pinched face and said nothing.

  ‘No shame. No remorse. I wash my hands of you.’

  Constance went on staring, until Sister dropped her eyes and walked out of the room.

  An hour later Constance was drowsy but still awake. She swung her legs stiffly out of bed and hobbled next door to spend an urgent penny. Back in the sick-room, she walked across to the window and drew aside the flimsy curtain, but she couldn’t see the moon. The sick-room was on the wrong side of the house, two floors above the Covered Way. She looked along the drive, and could see lights on in the cottage where Batey Parry lived. It’s all her fault, she thought fiercely; if it hadn’t been for her saying those foul, unfair things to me, I might not have gone. She decided me. Nobody calls me a slut, and a dirty little girl. ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.’ Well that’s wrong, anyway. The stones didn’t break my bones. Her legs, swathed in bandages, were beginning to tremble and her head was swimming. I must go to sleep, thought Constance; those pills are working.

  Next morning Miss Girdlestone brought her breakfast in silence. Constance looked at the tray of congealing porridge and cold toast and left it untouched.

  ‘Can I have my sponge-bag?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s in the bathroom, next door. Wash your hands and face and give your teeth a good clean. Doctor’ll be back to see you this morning so make yourself presentable.’

  The doctor had unwound her bandages and applied clean dressings - ‘I know you’re a brave girl, ducky, but I’d rather you didn’t have a squint just yet. Better to lie back and keep your eyes shut. All right? Jolly good show.’ Then she had heard the school coaches rev up and take everyone to church. Later she heard them come back, and the laughter and chatter of the girls as they scrambled out. She wanted to lean out of the sickroom window and wave but she didn’t dare.

  The door opened and the Head came in. She was wearing a long flowered two-piece and white peep-toe shoes, and she looked as stately and imposing as old Queen Mary. Constance felt nervous. The Head sat on a chair beside the bed and folded her hands in her lap.

  ‘Feeling better this morning?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Good. I remembered you in my prayers in church.’

  Constance didn’t know how to respond to that, so she muttered ‘Thank you.’

  ‘My dear, now that you have had a good night’s sleep, and a bit of time to think about what happened yesterday, I wonder if you can explain to me what you were doing in the lane, in your dressing-gown, at that hour of the morning? It is, to say the least of it, an unusual time to go and pick flowers …’ She smiled, to show that it was meant as a joke.

  For the first time, Constance realized that the Head didn’t know that she had been trying to run away. Suddenly she didn’t want to tell her. It had been a crazy plan, it couldn’t possibly have succeeded. Yet what other excuse had she to offer? She looked down and fiddled with the sheet. She was no good at telling lies, and anyway she couldn’t make one up on the spur of the moment.

  ‘I was going to run away. I planned to get a train to London and then go to my aunt’s. She lives at King’s Lynn. I was on my way to the station to catch a train.’

  She stopped and looked at Mrs Birmingham.

  ‘Why were you going to run away - especially now, when it’s practically the end of term?’

  ‘I kept writing to Mummy and Daddy and saying I wasn’t happy but they never took any notice, so I thought if I ran
away that would convince them.’

  ‘But Constance, why didn’t you talk to someone about it? A friend … you’ve got friends. Your form mistress. You could have come and talked to me.’

  ‘I know. Actually I did try, once. But you were busy,’ said Constance.

  ‘Why were you so unhappy?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ It was true. She couldn’t remember. Her present pain and misery and confusion were much worse than anything she had suffered during the term.

  ‘Well, I am afraid you have succeeded in your intention, although not quite in the way you had planned. I told you that I had spoken to your parents yesterday. First I talked to your mother, and after that your father rang me from his office. They are both understandably very shocked and very angry. Not only with you. I have failed in my duty to care for you, failed in my responsibility for your well-being. They have informed me that you will not be returning to Raeburn.’

  ‘What?’ cried Constance.

  ‘You will leave at the end of term. You will travel to Kenya and your parents will decide what is to become of you. Your father informs me that his decision is final.’

  ‘Oh, no! No, I don’t want to leave! I want to stay! Please let me stay. Talk to him for me, please - persuade him.’

  The Head smiled at her unexpectedly, and laid a hand over hers. ‘Constance, Constance. First you want to leave, and now you want to stay. What are we to make of you? You’ll be home in a few days’ time. Talk to your parents. They know what’s best.’

  ‘They never listen to me! Sorry to be rude, but they don’t.’

  ‘Well, I’m listening to you now. And what I hear is a very muddled little girl. Now, although it was wrong of you to try and run away, you didn’t deserve what happened. Are you feeling any better today?’

  ‘It still hurts a fair bit.’

  ‘Yes, well, I expect it will do for a few days. But it might have been a great deal worse.’

  ‘Can I ask you one more thing?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Is Flopsy all right? My rabbit - I let him go because nobody’d been feeding them.’