Hours later, days later? – with no clocks and no daylight it was hard to gauge the time – angry incredulous voices joined her in her Shakespearean nest: the girl could not possibly have escaped, the door was locked. Then one of the speakers noticed the open window (the Mostyn’s voice this time), refusing to believe that anyone could get through an opening so small. The other voice, O’Brien, gave a doubtful hum, noting that the child was unusually slender.
Baker froze every muscle, hoping they’d wander out into the quad below, looking for evidence: footprints, a scrap of torn blue serge on a rose bush. But the mere act of clenching her muscles unsettled the squeaky equilibrium of her giant hamper.
‘Amanda! Come out of that basket!’ The Snog Monster delivered her instruction in ‘Prism! Where is that baby!’ tones.
The head and her deputy each seized an arm and hauled Baker from her hiding place. She could feel the catastrophic catch of her stockings against the basketwork as she tumbled over the side.
‘Come along. You’ve got some explaining to do.’
Chapter 18
Salt? Vinegar. Narrow? Wide. Rich? Poor. Long? Short. Big? Ugly. Bugger.
Miss Carson liked to begin with the word association wossname. Should have been so easy to fake but, six sessions in, a week after Mrs Mostyn caught her in the organ loft, Baker was still letting herself get tripped up, partly because the Carson woman would start firing words at her faster than she could dredge up a smart answer (or a safe answer, or a silly answer), but chiefly because she couldn’t bloody well think straight.
Funny really, that being caught taking drugs should result in being given lots more: a contradictory cocktail of tranquillisers, anti-depressants and sleeping tablets. Mandies – would have been funny if there had been anyone to share the joke with, but jokes didn’t work if you were on your own, like trees falling silently in empty forests. Julia would have laughed: no Julia, so not funny.
‘One normally waits months for an appointment with Delia Carson,’ O’Brien had gushed to Bob Baker, ‘but I spoke to her yesterday evening and she has agreed to see Amanda out of hours. Miss Carson is an old student of mine, scholarship to St Hilda’s.’ The head’s attention had wandered fondly to her own undergraduate photograph (hanging behind the study door where departing parents would be sure to see it – like having your karate medals in the downstairs loo). ‘And we have Delia to thank for getting us the appointment with Dr Sexton,’ oozed Dr O’Brien in don’t-thank-me mode. ‘Dr Sexton’s list has been closed for quite a while now, but Delia has persuaded him to find you a cancellation. That man can do more good in fifteen minutes than anyone else in his field.’
As it turned out, Dr O’Brien’s pet psychiatrist had had larger, more exciting fish to fry than Baker (a ten-year-old boy due to stand trial for the attempted poisoning of his stepfather – fascinating case) and so the consultation had lasted only eight of his magic minutes, three of which were spent looking for his prescription pad. He had barely glanced at Baker, who sat curled up on the big leather chair with her knees folded inside her gym slip, sucking annoyingly at the knitted cuff of her outsize school cardigan while he ran through his usual check-list: anxiety? any depression at all? problems sleeping? Each response earning a fresh line of inky hieroglyphs on the illegible drug list at his elbow (tab t.d.s. Ut dict.) and a scrawled sentence or two on the pale green notebook on his knee. His writing was not quite as illegible as he liked to think: ‘Bitten fingernails’ said the pad. ‘Sullen little hussy’.
Dr Sexton’s three-way prescription, was supposed to keep Baker’s behaviour tidy: alert but calm until you were ready for bed then 250 mg of methaqualone in lieu of sleep. Dad and Spam had begun handing out the pills at the six-hourly intervals written in neat block capitals on the side of the bottles and within a week the effects all smudged into each other like the backwash on one of Dora Hardcastle’s cloud studies.
There had been no mention of any of the psycho stuff at the first awful meeting after O’Brien and the Mostyn had dragged Baker out of the Drama cupboard.
‘I don’t need to tell you that you are in very, very serious trouble,’ the head had announced when Baker first sat down. ‘Your father will be here to collect you shortly and he and your stepmother are coming back tomorrow morning for an emergency meeting. Do you have anything to say for yourself?’
Baker, still woozy from the last joint, had screwed up her face in an effort to moisten her eyes. Mrs Mostyn had left the evidence on the desk before leaving the room and O’Brien was poking the white cylinder out of its hankie wrapping with the paper knife from her desk set.
‘And where exactly did you get this?’
Mandies never told tales. In fact, bless ’em and all that, none of the fifth form did. You kept your mouth shut, and even the staff played nicely because they’d been girls too (before all this happened) and they appeared to respect your silence so that when they said, ‘Who was it, who stole it, who painted it green, put glue in it, stuffed herring into it?’ you could deny all knowledge, even though you knew they knew you knew . . . But O’Brien wasn’t playing by those rules. This offence was (as Amanda well knew) grounds for immediate expulsion, she said, and any reference supplied to another school would include full disclosure of today’s events. It might easily prevent Baker sitting her O levels that summer.
‘Your entire future as . . .’ O’Brien had tailed off, peering through her glasses at the file in her tray and pulling an exasperated face: Query actress said Miss Batty’s most recent careers note Further meeting arranged. Leaflets given. Query shorthand/typing.
‘And you had always had such a bright future . . .’
Baker frowned harder at this grammatical S-bend. Did they have a special tense for that?
‘Do you want one thoughtless episode to ruin your life?’ persisted O’Brien. ‘Because you are most certainly going the right way about it. Where did you get this?’
And then, quite unexpectedly, O’Brien’s voice had changed its tune, like strings taking over from brass and woodwind. It wasn’t Baker’s fault. A sixth former? she had cooed. It happened sometimes; it wasn’t uncommon. Julia Smith: such a powerful influence on younger girls . . . she could quite see how the glamour of the playing fields might also be a force for evil if the older girl were herself to make a false step . . . Glamour of the playing fields? Could she hear herself?
O’Brien had paused for a few seconds, waiting for Baker to play the joker she had been dealt and say that yes, Dr O’Brien, sir, she had been led astray and yes it was all Julia’s fault, sir.
It shouldn’t take long, thought Dr O’Brien to herself, they usually caved in quite quickly. She refreshed herself with a long-sighted gaze at Salome while she waited for Baker to ask for Julia’s head on a plate, but the girl sat mumchance, pulling the old Fawcettian fifth amendment as if those Philippa of the Fourth luxuries could possibly hold good in a situation as grave as this one.
‘Talk it over with your parents this evening. I’m sure you will come to your senses when you’ve spoken to them. Your father has agreed to collect you at five o’clock. The last time I was required to telephone a father at his place of work it was to break the news of his daughter’s death,’ said O’Brien, remembering how Bob Baker’s voice had stiffened when she gave her name. She had heard him swallow, preparing himself for the worst – drowning? a hideous accident with the Art Room kiln? a fall from the four-inch beam? – although death or dismemberment was possibly only second worst, given the look on the man’s face when his car pulled up at the school gate.
Coventry was no place for talking things over. Dad hadn’t said a word in the car during the ride home. Spam, back early in honour of the crisis, was already in the kitchen when they arrived. Bob Baker joined her once he’d tucked the car in for the night and the pair of them remained holed up in their Formica-lined jury room till suppertime, loud voices intermittently drowned by the sound of one of the minor electrical appliances. Spam (having the extra hour
to play with) was catering to weekend levels: liquidising soup, whipping cream and fumbling together the strange set of cogs and prongs that made up the cooker’s rotisserie attachment.
‘You don’t cook sausages on a rotisserie, woman!’ Bob Baker had screamed above the din of the mixer.
‘Watch me.’
The meal was eaten in silence, just the occasional rueful half-smile from Spam, Dad forking up his food Yankee-style and pretending to be absorbed in the quick crossword in his evening paper.
‘Fruit. Five letters.’
‘Apple?’
‘Second letter e.’
‘Lemon?’ said Spam.
‘Melon?’ suggested Baker ‘Peach? Berry? Pears?’
Ignoring her, Bob Baker plunged the top of his Biro with his thumb and carved lemon in the grid’s bottom left-hand corner in his angry-note-to-the-milkman capitals and turned his attention back to the across clues.
‘Relation. Six letters.’
‘Mother? Father? Sister? Cousin? Auntie? Granny?’
‘Starts with an O.’
‘Oh.’
Baker left most of her dinner. The soup was too spicy, she’d had chips for lunch, she hated whipped cream. She saw Spam controlling the escape of a sigh as she scraped the scraps together.
‘I’ll give you a hand.’
That would make a change, growled her father who had begun overwriting the L of lemon with the P of peach.
You didn’t ‘I’ll-wash-you-wipe’ with Spam. She was too fast to take half the job, using near-boiling water and wearing industrial rubber gauntlets to get the whole Forth Bridge-y business over as fast as she could. The steaming plates dried almost as soon as she slotted them into the rack and Baker had only to put them away.
As they stood at the sink Spam relayed her husband’s thoughts, a UN translator trying to defuse a diplomatic problème. He was very disappointed, he was very upset, he only wanted what was best for her, he’d set his heart on a school-switch at sixth form and now Baker had gone and spoiled everything and it was starting to look like he wouldn’t have the choice . . .
‘Unless . . .’ Spam had hesitated uncomfortably. ‘Unless there was something that would explain it all. Something he could tell your headmistress when we see her tomorrow, something that might have upset you?’
Spam rubbed so hard at the wine glass she was polishing that the bowl snapped from the stem, slicing right through her blue rubber glove. She teased it off with her teeth and, one-handed, fiddled a sticking plaster from the tin on the shelf and looped the plastic strip round her bleeding finger. She tried to sound casual: had Amanda’s mother written lately?
So that was it. Baker felt sorrier still for poor Spam asking Bob Baker’s questions for him, checking to see if Patsy had provided all three of them with an escape hatch.
‘Had a card a couple of weeks ago. She sent me a badge with “Wild Child” on it.’
‘Wild? Last Bob heard she was working as a receptionist for an estate agent.’
Spam jabbed at the electric kettle with her bandaged finger, more cheerful suddenly, and Baker realised that her mother’s last missive – the first since Christmas – would probably be enough for Bob Baker to let himself off the hook. His ex-wife’s raised consciousness, her fruitless search for herself, the unfit motherliness that had earned him custody in the first place would all count in his favour with O’Brien and the goons. They liked all that broken home business. Poor old Spam would take a back seat and he’d present himself as a lone father doing his best. No mother to guide her.
When the three of them set off for school the next morning, Baker saw Spam raise her eyebrows and lower her eyelids in a mime of despair when she registered the back-of-the-wardrobe suit and shirt and the ugly, sale bargain tie her husband had sorted out for his helpless bachelor disguise. Spam, naturally natty for any sort of meeting with strangers, was wearing a dark brown trouser suit with an orangey shirt collar folded neatly over its lapels. She looked smart but not attractive (six out of ten from Brian, probably). Dapper. Like a nancy hairdresser. What would it take to make her fanciable, wondered Baker: lip-gloss? A few more buttons undone? A ‘wild child’ badge?
Baker had come down to breakfast in mufti but Dad had made her change back into gym slip and blazer – they hadn’t chucked her out yet, he said. He didn’t even notice the newly acquired lacrosse colours.
‘Have you washed your face?’
Could he hear himself? How would he like it? Are your socks clean, Bob? Have you flushed?
None of O’Brien’s coloured lights came on when they knocked, so Baker and Spam sat down on the bench while Dad pretended to be interested in the list of school governors (the real ones). The only one of the doctored notices that hadn’t been replaced was the one about what to do in the event of fire (‘Do panic. Remain hysterical until everyone has fried.’) which had its own blonde wood frame over by the sand and water buckets together with the various extinguishers which were for use on some fires but not others. What happened when you sprayed the wrong one on a blazing staff room toaster or a raging fume cupboard? Would it feed the flames or just fail to quench them? Nothing on the label. Didn’t say why, just said don’t. Typical.
There was a muffled drrring from behind one of the doors and the school secretary, a knitted fifty-something woman who seldom surfaced, crept from her cell to say that Dr O’Brien was now free and that the head would be grateful if she could have a few preliminary words with Amanda before the meeting proper. Again? What could she say that she hadn’t said the previous afternoon? Bob Baker gave a sort of house-trained snarl as his daughter rose from the bench and followed the secretary’s moss-stitched backside into the headmistress’s lair. Standing up had made her see stars and she stumbled against the door frame as she entered the room. Three chairs were lined up on the headless side of the desk and Baker collapsed groggily into the middle one.
O’Brien replaced her telephone receiver then began tweaking at the pens and pencils aligned around her blotter. The papery blue and white skin of her hands was foxed unpleasantly with large brown freckles. She began making the familiar combing action with her fingers down the smocked folds of her bachelor’s gown – did French schoolmistresses have bachelors’ gowns? wondered Baker. Or were they spinsters’ gowns?
The original Fawcettians had been in two minds about academic dress. The blessed Mildred’s bluestocking band had rejoiced in their gownlessness, even after the less enlightened universities had caved in, but the sight of her own photograph in the illustrated papers had convinced the founder that subfusc was a sine qua non of academe. Tweeds alone and one looked like a minor lady novelist – not a happy thought.
Dr O’Brien’s gown normally resided on a quilted coat-hanger on the bentwood hat stand. She didn’t generally teach in it but it brought a dash of theatre to the morning assembly and it worked like a charm on the parents: intimidating the self-made sort and acting like a masonic handshake on the doctors and lawyers.
She looked back at Baker, expectant. Was she still waiting for a confession? marvelled Baker. An apology? She’d have a bloody long wait.
‘Now then. This morning’s staff meeting has voted unanimously in favour of immediate expulsion. They all feel – and I have to say they have a point – that you are a flaw in the pattern, Amanda, and that any leniency would set a very dangerous precedent.’
She leaned back in her chair and tested its swivel slightly.
‘In the terms of the Fawcett charter, I, as head, have veto over any vote cast, but it is also my duty to listen to the senior common room’s concerns. If this sort of behaviour is not a matter for expulsion then one would need to condone any number of lesser transgressions. As one member of staff rather pithily put it: are we waiting for grievous bodily harm?’
The laugh was obviously false but Baker did feel her own face brighten slightly at the thought of grievously harming somebody. Mrs Mostyn most probably, tarring and feathering her with the gummy white glue a
nd the tray of new, improved Africas.
‘As I say, I, as head, have that right of veto, but without your full cooperation I will be disinclined to exercise it. Will you please remember, throughout the coming conversation, that I have it in my power to expel you at any moment.’
The head dabbed vaguely at the green button on her traffic light gadget, like a Bond villain launching a missile, and seconds later the Bakers peeped apologetically round the door. Spam’s trouser suit and shiny eye shadow trio looked far too trend-set for the self-consciously brainy room.
What does your decor say about you? O’Brien’s screamed ‘recovering academic’ with its vertical parquet of leather-bound volumes (books laid so tightly into their alphabetical mosaic that the spines tore away if you made the mistake of trying to tweeze one out and read it). Baker saw Spam squinting at the arty gloom of the head’s chosen prints, at the side table with its batch of uninteresting curiosities: an ammonite (acquired during the field trip that had given the Snog Monster her nickname), a flint arrowhead, a beetle-shaped thing carved from a hardstone pebble (sold to Mildred Fawcett as a scarab of the eighth dynasty) and a glass paperweight with a piece of coral trapped inside.
Her father recovered first. Slipping into his make-that-sale persona, he strode across the carpet, hand primed for shaking.
‘Dr O’Brien? Bob Baker. Howjadoo?’
O’Brien sized them both up with a look and stuck out a hand.
‘Mr Baker. Good of you to come so promptly. Mrs Baker? I don’t believe we’ve met. Do sit down.’
Baker hurriedly shoved one place on like the Hatter in Alice so that her father ended up sandwiched in the middle of the threesome.
O’Brien resumed her seat, placed her elbows on the blotter and paired off her wrinkly fingers to form a lobster pot of skin and bone.
The Following Girls Page 18