Visitors for the Chalet School

by Helen McClelland

  And Frieda added, in tones of awe: ‘If I did not know you had gone to bed that night, Joey, I could not believe it. How then is it that you are able to tell the story like this, just as if really you would have been there, and would have seen it all?’

  ‘Oh, that’s just my literary genius,’ Jo assured her complacently. ‘Miss Annersley was telling us in English that it’s part of the writer’s craft to project themselves into other people’s situations — sort of like a periscope,’ she added vaguely.

  Madge pounced on her: ‘Joey Bettany! I don’t know anything about your “literary genius”, but that must be the fourth time recently you’ve said “sort of”, and it isn’t even good English. You really must try not to use the same expressions over and over again; at one time I remember it was “awfully” in every sentence, and now it seems to be “sort of”.’

  ‘And it gets “sort of awfully” boring,’ Joey agreed, not at all abashed. ‘Oh, sorry, Madge! I really will try to remember.’

  ‘Would anyone like more cake?’ Madge looked round the table. ‘Or another cup of coffee?’

  Everyone declined politely, and she suggested they should go and sit quietly in the salon for five minutes before starting their game of Hide-and-Seek. They all set to work to clear the things from the table and take them through to the kitchen to Marie Pfeifen. Patricia and Frieda collected the pretty cups, saucers and plates that had been made in the Tiernkirch pottery. Jo fetched a large tray from the kitchen, and she and Elisaveta stacked the things on to it. Even the Robin helped: she insisted on carrying the large coffee jug, firmly rejecting Joey’s suggestion that the cake plates would be easier to manage.

  ‘Anyway, the tray’s certainly a lot lighter without the jug,’ Jo remarked as she carried the tray from the room. ‘Sort of — I mean, like the camel’s back without the last straw.’

  In the salon they threw themselves into comfortable chairs, and the Robin climbed on to Madge’s knee. For a moment no one spoke. Then Elisaveta gave a sudden gurgle of laughter and hastily apologised: ‘I beg pardon, Madame — I was just remembering something that happened with Evadne in our German lesson last week. It was so very funny.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to listen to any more of Evadne’s misdeeds,’ Madge said repressively.

  ‘Oh, but Madame, this was not anything naughty,’ Elisaveta assured her. ‘It was just a mis — ’ she hesitated.

  ‘Mistake?’ was Joey’s suggestion.

  ‘Well, yes, it was a mistake; but I think I meant misunderstanding. You see, at our lesson we had each in turn to make up and say a short sentence in German, describing what someone was doing. And Margia said: “Evadne isst ein Ei”; and Evvy was cross and said that Margia was ‘real mean’ to call her an egg.’

  Everyone laughed, except for the Robin, contentedly sitting on her Tante Marguérite‘s lap and listening only from time to time, and Patricia, who had not got the point.

  ‘But doesn’t “Ei” mean egg?’ she asked. When told that it did, she looked still more puzzled. ‘But then, I still don’t see — I mean, how could she be an egg?’

  Joey choked back her giggles at the picture this presented.

  ‘You see, “isst” with a double “s” comes from the verb “essen”, which is “to eat”; it’s nothing to do with “is”; it means “eats” or “is eating”. So of course Margia didn’t mean that Evvy was an egg; just that — ’

  ‘ — she was eating an egg.’ Patricia completed the sentence. ‘Yes, I see. It’s funny the words being so alike.’ And she grinned appreciatively.

  ‘Who’s going to be the first to “seek”?’ Jo brought their thoughts back to the game. But Madge had recalled something.

  ‘Gracious, Joey! I nearly forgot altogether — there’s a parcel for you. It arrived here yesterday.’

  Joey looked her surprise.

  ‘It’s probably a birthday present,’ Madge went on, ‘and I think you’d better open it today in case it’s something you don’t want to take back to school; then you could leave it here.’

  Madge went to get the parcel from the next room, and Patricia asked: ‘What day is your birthday, Joey? It isn’t today, is it?’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s not for several days,’ Jo answered. ‘Goodness, Madge, what a monster of a parcel . . . Whatever can it be?’

  Her sister had returned carrying a large brown paper packet tied with much string, and the knots sealed with red sealing wax. Madge handed the parcel to Jo, who all but dropped it in astonishment.

  ‘But Madge, it’s so light. I thought it was going to weigh a ton. What on earth is inside it?’ She peered at the name and address which were written in a large sloping hand, and remarked: ‘I don’t know the writing, do you? Jolly peculiar, I’d say; wouldn’t you?’

  Madge also had thought the writing odd; indeed, had it not seemed so unlikely, she would have thought it a disguised hand.

  ‘I do wish you’d hurry up and open it, and not stand looking at it any longer,’ complained Elisaveta. ‘Shall I help you undo the knots?’

  And the Robin offered her assistance: ‘Me, I will help too, Joey. Miss Durrant has told us at Brownies that we should always keep the string from parcels, so I think you will not want to cut it.’

  Joey had been considering doing just that; but she hastily changed her ideas and accepted their help.

  Frieda collected the string as it came off the parcel and made it into a neat roll. Patricia sat on the sofa watching them all; there was a curious expression on her face, but the others were too occupied to notice.

  At last the three got all the knots undone and Joey impatiently pulled off the paper. ‘Oh, bother it all, there’s more paper inside, and simply yards more string.’

  ‘It must be something very precious.’ Elisaveta began to tackle the inner layer. Two frenzied minutes later yet another layer was revealed.

  ‘I bet anything it’s one of those ghastly trick parcels where you go on and on undoing the wrapping and in the end there’s nothing inside,’ said Jo morosely. She stood for a moment sucking the top of her finger, which she had pinched in a particularly obstinate knot.

  ‘Surely no one would do such an unkind thing,’ said Frieda. ‘See, Joey, if you will take this’ — she handed Jo the rapidly growing ball of string — ‘I will help the others with the untying.’

  ‘Thanks, Frieda; and Robin darling, you and I could fold up the paper.’ Jo had seen that the eight-year-old was becoming a little daunted at the prospect of still more knots.

  ‘Goodness me, Jo, you’re not still undoing that parcel?’ An astonished Madge was standing in the doorway. After giving Joey the packet she had retired next-door to her husband’s study in order to finish off the letter interrupted by the morning’s discussion with Patricia. ‘I thought you would have finished long ago; who can possibly have sent it?’ Madge watched fascinated as yet another piece of brown wrapping was removed, revealing this time, to everyone’s relief, a large cardboard box.

  ‘At least, Joey, there is something in the parcel, after all.’ Elisaveta stood back to let Jo open the box for herself.

  The others crowded round to watch. Even Patricia got up from her corner of the sofa and stood peering over Frieda’s shoulder.

  Joey whipped off the lid and gave a heart-felt groan. The box appeared to be entirely filled with pieces of crumpled newspaper and tissue-paper.

  ‘I’m not sure there is anything here, ’Veta.’ Jo plunged her hands in among the paper. ‘ — Ah, now, wait a moment . . . ’ There was an agonising interval. Then Joey, with a little smile, said: ‘Here, Robin, you come and search. I think perhaps you just might be able to find something.’

  The Robin, her face full of expectation, went forward and rumaged in the box. Her little arms were immersed to the shoulders. Another long moment passed; then the Robin gave an exclamation and withdrew a small narrow rectangular package.

  ‘Well, I don’t care a fig what anybody says, I’m jolly well going to cut the knots on
this one.’ And Joey, disregarding a half-hearted protest from Frieda, snatched a pair of scissors from her sister’s desk and began snipping through the string.

  ‘Wait a minute, Jo!’ Madge called. ‘What does that writing say?’

  Jo stopped in the act of tearing off the last wrapping. There was something written in the same curious hand as the address had been.

  ‘It just says, “Happy Birthday, Joey!” Not a word about who sent it,’ and Jo continued ripping off the paper.

  ‘Oh, Joey . . . but it is so lovely!’ Frieda, standing nearest to Jo, was the first to see the picture emerge. It was a water-colour painting, in a plain wooden frame: to the right of the foreground was the Chalet School, behind it the pine woods and the slopes of the Bärenkopf mountain; while to the left, the waters of the Tiernsee stretched into the far distance.

  ‘Tiens! Mais c’est notre ecole. Regardez-moi ca!’ exclaimed the Robin, wide-eyed. ‘Que c’est joli, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘What a charming picture!’ Madge said, coming forward and taking it in her hand. ‘I wonder who can have painted it? I don’t think it was done by anyone at the school.’ She looked at the back of the picture: ‘The frame comes from Ettersöhn in Innsbruck, I see, but there’s nothing about the name of the painter.’

  ‘I think, Madame, there are some initials in the corner of the painting,’ put in Frieda.

  Jo took it and squinted horribly in an effort to decipher the signature. ‘I think there’s a P and a G

  . . . no, more likely an S,’ she said at last. ‘And there’s another letter between them that I can’t make out.’

  Elisaveta put out her hand. ‘That’s a D, surely, isn’t it?’

  ‘P . . . D . . . S,’ Joey said slowly. ‘Funny, I’m sure that ought to mean something, but I can’t for the life of me . . . Oh, yes! Of course!’ Joey swung round to look accusingly at Patricia, who had returned to her seat on the sofa and was doing her best to appear unconcerned. ‘Priscilla Doughty-Smythe! Of course! — that’s who it is. Oh, Patricia, you really shouldn’t have . . . but it’s utterly gorgeous and I love it . . . Priscilla is clever . . . how on earth did you manage to post it here? and how could you be so jolly mean? That ghastly parcel . . . Oh, but it was worth all the trouble opening it.’

  Jo stopped for want of breath. The others were beginning to look and feel more and more at sea every moment; Joey’s outpourings did nothing to help them, and Patricia, her usually pale face rather pink, continued to say nothing at all.

  Then a small voice was heard: ‘Me, I think it is a lovely present, Joey, and you are very lucky. But Joey — you did promise that we would play Cache-Cache. Please, may we play now our game before it will be my bed-time?’

  Jo looked conscience-stricken. ‘Oh, Robin darling, I’m so sorry. Of course, we were just going to begin playing, and we’ve been simply centuries opening that parcel. Hurry up, you lot, go and hide . . . ’Veta, can you take the Robin? I’ll seek first; I’m going to start counting this very minute — and only to a hundred, mind! So make it snappy.’

  Then, as Patricia, thankful to have been spared public explanations, was slipping out of the room to find a hiding place, Jo called softly after her:

  ‘It’s a most awfully decent present, Patricia. Thanks very much.’

  The rest of the evening passed all too quickly. Madge insisted that all the girls, including Patricia, must go to bed in good time, since they would have to be up to make a very early start next morning.

  On her way to bed Joey heard her sister call from the salon. When she went in, Madge held out two books.

  ‘I promised to lend these to Patricia. Please will you take them to her, Joey-Baba, as I might forget in the morning. Tell her not to bother posting them back to me. She can bring them when she comes at Christmas-time and leave them at the school.’

  As she climbed the stairs, Joey glanced at the titles. One was a Life of Florence Nightingale; the other was called simply, Bernadette.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  TWO LETTERS.

  ‘JOEY, ma petite, veux-tu bien venir un instant?’ Today was Tuesday — the first Tuesday of December, for more than a month had gone by since Joey’s weekend party at the Sonnalpe — and French was the official language of the day. Morning lessons had just ended and Joey, on her way to the splasheries to wash for Mittagessen, had been intercepted by Mademoiselle Lepâttre.

  ‘Mais oui, Mademoiselle.’ Joey answered meekly, as she felt her heart sink; and, suffering the uneasiness associated with any summons to the headmistress’s study, she followed Mademoiselle down the corridor.

  But on this occasion she had no need to worry, or to search her conscience. Mademoiselle merely pointed to a number of letters that were lying on her desk, sorted into six piles. ‘Voila le courier qui vient d’arriver,’ she said to the immensely relieved Joey. ‘Please will you take round the letters for the Senior and Middle forms.’

  ‘Would you not like me to take the staff their letters too, Mademoiselle?’ Joey asked politely.

  ‘But yes, if you please, Jo. And would you also ask Grizel Cochrane to come and see me immediately after Mittagessen and bring her timetable with her. Madame wishes particularly to speak with Grizel when she comes here on Friday; and it will be necessary therefore for Grizel to change the time of her piano lesson with Herr Anserl.’

  ‘Très bien, Mademoiselle.’ And, giving the regulation curtsey, Jo left the room carrying the letters.

  First she went to the Sixth form-room; she dashed in and dropped their letters on to Gertrud Steinbrücke’s desk, which was nearest the door. Grizel, occupied in fitting a new nib into her pen-holder, only nodded absently when Joey gave her Mademoiselle’s message. With a wicked grin Jo turned just as she was leaving the room; raising her arm in a menacing gesture, she croaked out: ‘Beware the gipsy’s message, oh, Griselda! Beware the dark headmistress, who comes a-visiting from the High Mountain Lands!’

  Grizel looked up sharply, about to make some withering comment, but Jo had already vanished. Returning to her struggle with the pen-nib, Grizel did wonder for a moment why Madame should wish to see her; perhaps it had something to do with her Christmas holiday arrangements.

  There were only four letters for Joey’s own form. She kept these to the last, and by the time she reached the Fifth form-room the warning bell for Mittagessen had already sounded. The two letters at the top of the pile came from Paris and Vienna and were for Simone and Marie from their families. The other two had Hungarian stamps. Joey was now in a violent hurry and, since the top envelope was addressed to Paula von Rothenfels, the only Hungarian girl in the Fifth, she dumped both letters unexamined on Paula’s desk, before hastening to the splasheries to do her interrupted tidying.

  After Mittagessen the girls were encouraged to get ready with all possible speed for the afternoon walk. They had already spent half an hour out of doors that morning, enjoying a vigorous game of ‘French and English’ on the snow-covered hockey field. But, now that winter had come in earnest, Mademoiselle was anxious that they should get as much fresh air and exercise as possible, whenever it was fine.

  Today the Fifth Form decided to leave the Chalet by the gate in the fence at the top of the playing field and walk up the path towards the Tiern Valley. Just to make sure, as Joey suggested inanely, that ‘the Tiernjoch mountain was still there’. They would then make their way down to the lake-side and so back to the school’s front entrance.

  Everywhere outside it was intensely still, and the voices and laughter of the girls rang out sharply in the clear air. The pine-woods against the snow looked as though they had been drawn by a charcoal pencil on impossibly white cartridge paper.

  Joey, with the ever-faithful Simone beside her, walked along at the head of the group, chatting animatedly to Miss Maynard about their plans for the Christmas holidays. Miss Maynard was going back to England, and she had invited Joey and the Robin to go with her and spend Christmas at Pretty Maids, the Maynards’ family home near Lyndh
urst in the New Forest.

  At first Jo had been disappointed at the prospect of not being with her sister at Christmas time. But it turned out that Dr Russell would have to leave home the day after Christmas to attend a medical conference in Vienna, and his wife naturally wanted to go with him. So Madge had been delighted that the children should accept Miss Maynard’s invitation, and Joey, once accustomed to the plan, found she was looking forward to it quite happily.

  ‘Grizel will come with us as far as London,’ Miss Maynard said as they left the Chalet School fence behind. ‘She is going down to Devon to spend Christmas at home; then in January she’ll come on and stay for a week at Lyndhurst; so we shall all be able to travel back here together. We’re going to make it a real English Christmas, Joey; plum pudding and mince-pies and all the usual things. And we have huge log fires in all the downstairs rooms; and fires in the bedrooms too, if it’s cold.’

  ‘How jolly!’ Joey said appreciatively. ‘I must say the stoves we have out here do keep the rooms gorgeously warm, but it’ll be fun to see open fires again, just for a change. Will you have a Christmas tree, Miss Maynard?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, and a really big one, I hope. We usually have it standing in the bay-window in the drawing-room; it’s not in a draught there, which is safer for the candles; and then before the curtains are drawn at night, you can see the lights all across the garden. And Joey, I don’t suppose the Robin knows about hanging up a stocking for Father Christmas to fill; you’ll have to tell her all about that.’

  ‘Rather!’ Jo agreed. ‘That’ll certainly be something quite new for the Robin; she’s always put out her shoes on Christmas Eve. I say, Miss Maynard,’ Jo was looking up at the sky above the mountains to the north of them. ‘Don’t you think those clouds look a bit nasty?’

  All three stopped for a moment. The wind was coming from the north, and it had suddenly grown stronger. Simone gave a little shiver and murmured, ‘Tiens, il commence à faire rudement froid maintenant.’