by Anne Digby
Some sixth sense, or was it the slight movement seen out of the corner of the eye, made the boy in the cave turn full face to the island. Somebody was in the cottage there! There was something fluttering at an upstairs window.
Found them! he thought in relief. Found them!
It was Robbie Anderson.
And in less than half an hour he had them taken off the island by motor boat, his arm tightly round Rebecca's shoulders all the way back, much too overjoyed to utter one word of criticism against any of them.
Not so Miss Welbeck. She was in a grim mood when she called the three friends to her study before morning school. They had showered and changed and Mrs Barrington had cooked them a huge breakfast over at Court House, heartily relieved to see them back safe and well. But now came the moment of reckoning.
'You have wasted the police's time. You have had a lot of people up half the night and extremely worried about you. You have let me down and you have let Trebizon down. Only by a hair's breadth have I managed to keep this incident out of the newspapers,' Miss Welbeck added. 'By sheer good fortune you were back at school this morning by the time local press and radio contacted me, and I was able to inform them, perfectly truthfully, that there were no girls missing from Trebizon and that if they wanted a sensational story they had better look elsewhere.'
She surveyed them coldly.
'It's no use pleading extenuating circumstances. Certainly Holly Thomas had no right to break bounds and leave the main gates and follow you but it was also your responsibility to see that didn't happen. Doubly so in view of the quite outrageous things you were planning to do. As for breaking bounds yourselves and going to the island without permission – deliberately deceiving Miss Morgan in order to do so – it leaves me speechless. It was the height of folly and you know it. You are allowed a great deal of freedom here and you are not expected to abuse it. You have betrayed my trust and you have come near to hurting the school.'
She rose to her feet, signalling that the interview was almost at an end. She walked across to the window of her study and gazed out at the rolling parkland that lay to the front of the school, with its old oaks and grassy knolls. A herd of deer grazed in the distance.
'It can take a hundred years to build up a fine reputation for a school,' she said, standing with her back to them. 'It can be destroyed almost overnight. I hope you will remember that in future.'
Very curtly, without even turning round, she said:
'That's all. Except to say, I'm surprised. From you three, I expected better. You are dismissed.'
They walked back to Court House together to get ready for lessons, feeling miserable.
'Phew,' said Tish.
Later that day, when they heard that Holly had been given a detention, Mara said: 'Why, you lucky things, you didn't even get a punishment!'
Tish replied: 'Oh yes we did.'
'I'd rather have had a detention any time,' said Rebecca.
She would have preferred almost anything to Miss Welbeck's cold and quite justifiable anger.
Somebody else was very angry. Justin Thomas.
He wrote Sue a short letter saying that while he appreciated her kindness in taking Holly under her wing, not to bother in future. Also he wouldn't be able to make it at the weekend, after all, as he had a lot of work to catch up on.
The letter arrived on the Saturday morning and Sue took it very badly.
'None of this would have happened if we'd run like mad and beat the tide,' Tish said stubbornly to Rebecca.
'We'll never know, will we?' said Rebecca.
Anyway, that was only one way of looking at things.
SEVEN
EDGING FORWARD
As time passed, Miss Welbeck went out of her way – with a word of praise here, a smile there – to show that she'd forgiven the three friends for their lapse. On this one occasion they'd gone too far, much too far, and there could have been very serious repercussions – but it was all over now, safely behind them.
Before the incident was completely forgotten, she had one anxious moment. Miss Gates brought to her the current edition of the Juniper Journal, a little news sheet that the juniors produced once a week on an old duplicating machine (actually donated by Mara's father when 'the six' had themselves been juniors: in fact the J.J. had been founded by Tish Anderson in Rebecca's first term at Trebizon). It had been sold round the staff room, as usual, and Miss Gates had been slightly alarmed to see that Holly Thomas had written up her adventure as the lead story under the headline My Night on Mulberry Island.
'Three Fourth Years have been letting me do training with them and last Thursday we decided to run to Mulberry Island because the tide was right out. (Nobody must ever try to do this again because it is very dangerous.) Anyway, what happened was this, we got cut off by the tide and we went in the empty house there and . . .''
Glancing at the story, Miss Welbeck pursed her lips.
'Putting rather a gloss on things, isn't she? Giving the impression that she went to the island at the personal invitation of the older girls! I don't believe that for one moment.'
'Quite so,' agreed the senior mistress. 'She tagged along in secret and not wanted. But she's hardly going to put that in the story. In any case, she's probably genuinely forgotten such a small detail in all the excitement of being regarded as a heroine by the rest of the junior school! Well, Madeleine, what do you want me to do about these newsletters?'
'Have them all rounded up and destroyed,' said Miss Welbeck.
'What reason shall we give for the confiscation?'
'That Holly's story sets a very bad example and is nothing to boast about,' retorted the principal. 'And for good measure,' she added, 'tell Miss Morgan to tell the editor that publication of the J.J. is to be suspended for two weeks, as a mark of my displeasure.'
It was done.
But at least one copy of the offending newsletter escaped. Holly had posted a copy to her brother at Garth, hot off the press, with a note scribbled at the bottom saying:
I thought you'd like to read this, Justy. I'm nearly as famous as Della now.
He wrote a disapproving letter back, pointing out that Della would not have done anything so stupid. He noted to himself that Holly's version of events differed slightly from the one Robbie Anderson had given him. He didn't know which to believe but, either way, the newsletter made him feel angry with Sue Murdoch all over again.
He had really liked Murdoch's sister and he'd thought there seemed something trustworthy about her. But her promise to take Holly under her wing had led to his getting the biggest fright of his life!
After Laura, he should have known better. All girls thought about was having fun. You couldn't really depend on them.
Sue was very hurt and upset by Justin's attitude – and after that she kept out of Holly's way. Holly didn't need looking after any more, anyway! As Miss Gates had observed, she'd shot to fame since the Mulberry Island adventure. After a very difficult first year, Holly Thomas was now somebody in her own right and no longer lived in the shadow of the older sister who'd been such an illustrious pupil at Trebizon. In fact it was the pathetic boasting about Della that had prompted the name-calling from Sarah Butters and Co., but that was all in the past now.
By the time Junior Charity Week arrived, in early May, Holly was cheered round the athletics track by quite a large crowd of girls and managed, gasping and determined, to complete four whole laps.
'Didn't I do well, Sue?' said Holly, flushed and shining-eyed when she came over to Court House to collect her sponsorship money. 'I'm afraid that's forty pence you owe me – you as well, Rebecca!'
Mara owed quite a lot more than that.
After the girl had gone, noting Sue's chastened look, Mara said:
'Life is not at all fair! Holly is so happy now and it is all thanks to you, Susan. And Tish and Rebecca, of course. But did you get any thanks from Justin? No!'
'Oh, let's forget about it,' said Sue quickly.
But R
ebecca agreed with Mara. Life was monstrously unfair, Poor Sue. She was still eating her heart out about Justin Thomas, Rebecca could tell. She would just have to try and get over him.
Tish's craze for running continued as strongly as ever but Sue and Rebecca dropped out of the training runs in time. Sue first, saying that she had too much music practice, but probably because the idea had lost its savour for her. Then Rebecca.
As Rebecca's tennis programme for the term got under way she realized that this would be more than enough to keep her fit! There just weren't enough hours in the day to go running as well. Apart from school matches and regular team practices, there were county fixtures, sessions with Mrs Ericson, her professional coach at Exonford, and two major tournaments during May.
And there were the early morning practice sessions, as well. They soon became a regular thing. While Tish was out running, Rebecca would be out on the grass courts with Joss Vining or Trisha Martyn or Miss Darling, the tennis teacher, hitting the ball backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.
'Let's have a proper game,' she would say to Joss occasionally.
But Joss would reply: 'Oh, Rebecca, there isn't time. Let's concentrate on our strokes on grass. My backhand's getting more and more erratic, if you ask me, and you'd better do something about that smash of yours if you want to get to Eastbourne.' Or words to that effect.
And of course that was only sensible.
But frustrating.
All this hectic tennis was a bit much for Rebecca sometimes. She would like to have done more swimming and surfing. The weather was getting sunny and warm. Elf and Margot, particularly, were spending a lot of time in the sea. She was sad not to join Gardening Club this term, but there wasn't any point if she wasn't going to have enough time to do any gardening. Occasionally, when the weather was too wet for tennis practice, she went to Cookery Club with Elf and Sue. That was good fun.
She was falling behind with school work. The long light evenings were to blame; she was always needed out on the tennis courts and she skipped through her prep much faster than she should, except for GCSE coursework assignments.
Towards half-term, the Fifth Year girls in Court became noticeably subdued, revising up on the top floor in their study cubicles for hours on end, their GCSEs almost upon them. Nobody looked more subdued than Margaret Exton. Passing her on the stairs one day, Rebecca felt that same little jolt that she'd experienced on the first day of term.
Mum and Dad are coming to see Miss Welbeck at the end of term, Rebecca remembered. Oh dear, I must do some work soon.
But the very next day, Mr Pargiter said to her, in the Latin lesson:
'No, Rebecca, the word microscope comes from the Greek – mikros, little and skopein, to look at. We'll be doing some Greek together in the Sixth Form.'
Afterwards, Rebecca whispered to Tish:
'Did you hear what he said? About Greek in the Sixth Form?'
'What about it?' asked Tish, puzzled to notice how flushed and pleased Rebecca was looking.
'In the Sixth Form,' said Rebecca.
'I'll be doing all science by then!' grinned Tish.
Tish wanted to be a doctor, like her father, and was learning Latin simply to help her with all the medical terms, later on. But she enjoyed the lessons.
'Still, I expect it'll be good,' added Tish.
'Yes, really good,' murmured Rebecca.
She let the matter drop. She couldn't be bothered to explain that it was not so much the mention of Greek as the mention of the Sixth Form that had excited her. Mr Pargiter just seemed to take it for granted somehow that Rebecca would be staying on after the Fifth next year. A continuing relationship, stretching on happily in to the future, stretching on and on, with no clouds on the horizon . . .
Rebecca sighed happily and stared dreamily out of the window, feeling as though a little weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
Officially athletics ended with Sports Day, at half–term, but Tish was overjoyed when Angela Hessel offered to continue to coach her in the 1500 metres beyond then.
'You're doing very well at the distance,' she told her. 'I want you to get some more competition. There are two meetings you can go to, after half-term, and if you do well there, I think you'll be accepted for the West of England meeting at the end of June.'
Tish broke the school record in the intermediate 800 metres on Sports Day – there was no I500 metres event – and Laura Wilkins and Aba Amori both had a good day, too, breaking records for the 100 metres and 200 metres respectively.
Joss Vining, who would have won the long jump with ease, was absent at a territorial summer hockey tournament for players under 21. She had not been able to attend one Athletics Club meeting this term. On top of all her tennis, the bigwigs in women's hockey were suddenly taking a close interest in her, and had invited her to this tournament. It was a very great honour, but her happiness was clouded somewhat by her father's attitude. The future he had in mind for her lay with tennis, not hockey.
Rebecca was also absent from Sports Day, having been taken to a tennis tournament up north by her county coach, an important one. They stayed in a hotel – a proper hotel! – for Rebecca was now beginning to earn a modest amount of money from her tennis, which just about covered expenses. On this occasion Rebecca won £100 for reaching the semifinals, but it was the result more than the money that Mrs Ericson was pleased about.
'This will look good on your entry!' she said.
She was thinking of course about the British Junior Grass court Championships at Eastbourne. In August. Rebecca had been sent the entry form at the beginning of April – but it didn't have to be in until the second of July. She would have to enter her 12 best wins on the form and 6 other commendable results.
From the tournament Rebecca went straight on down to Gloucestershire to spend half-term with her grandmother. Mrs Ericson drove her most of the way.
'Do you know, I still haven't played a match against Joss Vining since she came home from America?' she confided, during the long drive. In the tournament just past, Rebecca had been beaten in the semifinals by the current 16U number one in Britain – a girl with whom Joss had always been neck and neck.
'Oh, won't Joss play you? What a spoilsport,' laughed Mrs Ericson. She kept her eyes on the road ahead. They were whipping along, very fast. 'Don't you have a school tournament?'
'No. Isn't that odd!' realized Rebecca.
'Well, don't worry,' said the coach. 'It's the county junior closed tournament next month. You'll be in the two opposite halves of the draw so, unless there's some very surprising upset, you and Joss will meet in the final.'
'The county closed?' exclaimed Rebecca.
Of course!
Rebecca's eyes sparkled as she watched the countryside slip by. It was a bright day, with not much cloud around; big patches of blue sky, green fields, trees out in full leaf everywhere. The end of May in England, what a lovely time of year it was! She recalled that the Nathan twins, who were in Four Alpha with her, had their birthday on the thirtieth of May. 'And do you know, Rebecca, it never rains on our birthday; it's always sunny,' Ruth Nathan had once told her. 'That's a fact.' Rebecca loved useless facts.
But she spent most of half-term indoors, working furiously in the peace and quiet of the bungalow, while her grandmother fussed round her with cups of tea and chocolate biscuits. It was a heaven-sent opportunity to catch up on French, German and Latin learning and read through her English set books. The best chance of pleasing her parents, Rebecca had decided, was to shine in her favourite subjects in the end-of-term exams – and hope they'd turn a blind eye to the rest.
And in the meantime, Mrs Ericson seemed certain that she'd get her match with Joss Vining at last. In the final of the county closed!
Rebecca never dreamt how important that match was going to be . . .
And a famous match in every sense of the word.
Because it was during that half-term holiday, while Rebecca was immersed in French verbs
at her grandmother's, that the film company telephoned Miss Welbeck.
EIGHT
THE MYSTERIOUS MISS ANGEL
'A film is going to be made about Trebizon,' Miss Welbeck announced to the school in assembly, one morning.
A ripple of excited whispers at once ran round and round the hall.
It was a Friday morning in the latter half of June.
The film company concerned was a small one called Silent Eye Productions Ltd that specialized in documentary films about contemporary life as it really was – the 'fly on the wall' kind of film – and they had persuaded a television company that life in and around a famous boarding school would be an excellent subject for British viewers. From a shortlist of schools they had made Trebizon their first choice, apparently because of its spectacular setting by the sea and the fact that it was such a well-known school.
'We shall, of course, be even more well known after this,' Miss Welbeck told the assembled girls, with a smile. 'This is quite an honour. The film unit arrives in the town this weekend. They have booked into the Trebizon Bay Hotel and will be filming around school all next week – right up to Commemoration Day next Saturday. It's a small unit, just two cameramen, one technician, the film director and his personal assistant. They assure me that they will be very unobtrusive, for that is the way they work, and disruption to school life will be minimal.'
Since that first phone call at half-term there had been letters exchanged between the film company and the school, the proposals had been cleared by the Governors and agreement reached. But it had been a well kept secret, Miss Welbeck holding back the announcement until the last moment in order not to stir up too much excitement, especially amongst the junior girls. She had selected the coming week because school exams would still be a whole fortnight away, the Fifth and Upper Sixth forms would be far too busily occupied finishing their public examinations to concern themselves with the fact that a film was being made, and the Commem celebrations would, she hoped, make a fitting climax to the week's filming.
'You will notice the cameras around,' she told the assembled school, 'but it is most important that you ignore them completely. Just carry on with your daily round as though they were not there.'