Beswitched (14 page)

“Flora, are you all right?” Virginia Denning gently touched her arm.

“Sorry, I was thinking about—about—” Flora pushed away the memory of the other Flora. “I was miles away.”

“I was just saying, don’t be too downcast about staying at school for half-term. Quite a few of us do, and we have plenty of fun. Last year Cook let us make toffee, and we all crammed into Bradley’s study to listen to the wireless. It was a hoot.”

They were having tea, and all the other girls round the long table seemed to be chattering about their parents. This must be what had thrown her into the other Flora’s mind. She was getting good at fighting off the other Flora, but there were still these eerie moments of being inside her feelings.

She had eaten her white bread and butter, and was now chewing through a slab of the fruitcake from her tuck box. Virginia, sitting beside her, was eating tiny, elegant biscuits with pink icing.

She pushed her plate towards Flora. “Do have one. Mother sends them from Vienna.”

“Thanks.” Flora took a biscuit. It melted deliciously on her tongue. “Oh, that’s wicked—I mean, it’s lovely! Is Vienna where you come from?”

“My mother was born there,” Virginia said. “She’s a Frozel.”

“A—what?”

“Frozel’s is a very well-known department store.”

“Oh, you mean like Harrods, or something?”

Virginia laughed, which made her look younger and much prettier. “Yes, rather like Harrods. You do have the most priceless way of talking—I’m almost sorry you’re starting to lose that accent. I think it’s charming. Have another wicked biscuit.”

“Thanks.” Flora found she didn’t mind when Virginia teased her about her modern accent, she did it so kindly. “You don’t sound at all foreign.”

“My father’s English, and I mostly grew up in Paris, where he was a professor at the university. I came here when they went to live in Vienna, because my governess got married and none of the Viennese schools would have me.”

“Why not? Did you fail all the exams?”

“They don’t admit Jews,” Virginia said. “Not the schools my people liked, at any rate.”

“But—just because you’re Jewish? That’s disgusting!”

Virginia was amused by her indignation. “To be fair, a couple of the schools were run by nuns—just imagine, I might have ended up in a convent. I’m jolly glad I ended up at St. Win’s. I say, may I have the rest of your cake? My mother thinks English fruitcake is an abomination, but I adore it.”

“Go ahead.” Flora was uneasy, and didn’t know why. It was something to do with the Second World War—if only she’d paid more attention in Ms. Stuart’s lessons, but it wasn’t only that—her brain was marbled with someone else’s memories, and it refused to tell her why she was afraid.

On the morning of half-term—a bright, gusty, springlike morning—the entrance hall of the school was a scene of chaos. Girls, teachers and parents milled around the hall, the stairs and the drive outside.

Flora and Pete gazed down on the crowd from the top of the stairs. Flora thought she had never seen so many hats.

“Are you sure this is all right?” she asked again. She had been invited to spend the day with Pete and her parents.

“Of course—I wrote to tell them you were coming. They like me to bring friends. You mustn’t be shy. They’re harmless old things.” She grabbed the sleeve of Flora’s blouse and tugged her down the stairs. “Crikey, that must be Pogo’s brother!”

A noisy motorbike, with a sidecar, came roaring up to the bottom of the front steps.

“Nev!” shrieked Pogo, shooting out of the crowd like a cork from a champagne bottle.

The motorbike spluttered to a halt and Neville dismounted. He was wearing a long, flapping leather coat and a kind of leather helmet. “Pogo, old bean!”

The two of them laughed and slapped each other on the back, and Flora decided she liked Neville. He was small and thin, just like Pogo. He had untidy brown hair, big round glasses, and a face that was even more monkeylike than his sister’s—but with a turned-up nose that made it particularly funny and nice.

Pogo proudly introduced him to her friends. “Nev, please meet Flora, Pete and Dulcie—the gang from the dorm.”

“She’s written me loads about you all,” Neville said
cheerfully. “I know exactly who you are. You’re Flora, the girl from India—you’re Dulcie the cherub—and that means you’re She Who Must Be Obeyed, also known as Pete.”

This made them all laugh so much that nobody noticed the headmistress coming towards them, looking severely at Neville. “Who is this young man?”

Pogo turned bright red and blurted out, “This is my brother, Miss Powers-Prout!”

To Flora’s surprise, the old dragon nearly smiled when she shook hands with Neville. “Mr. Lawrence, you’re surely not taking Cecilia in that contraption?”

“What, the bike? It’s safe as houses! Don’t worry, Miss Powers-Prout—I promise I’ll bring her back in one piece!”

He climbed back onto the saddle, Pogo climbed into the very flimsy-looking sidecar, and the motorbike roared away down the drive.
Lucky her
, Flora thought.
She gets a day of freedom, without spooky 1930s grown-ups. I so hope Pete’s parents are OK
.

There were dozens of cars in the drive now, and dozens of people milling about. The cars were large and boxy, with running boards and big headlamps. Flora watched the headmistress moving in stately fashion, greeting parents. She watched Dulcie hugging a stout old lady so like her that she had to be her grandmother. She had come with another old lady, who was thin and rigid, and wearing a hat like a varnished flowerpot.

“That must be Dorsey,” Flora said, “the one who makes the fudge.”

Pete was no longer beside her. Flora saw her crashing
impatiently through the crowd, and flinging herself at a man and woman with gray hair.

Flora felt very lonely, standing here with nobody to claim her—like the last piece of luggage on the carousel at the airport. But Pete did not forget her for long. She dashed over and grabbed her hand.

“Come on—come and meet my people—I’m just giving them their instructions.”

Mr. Peterson was tall and thin, with a gray mustache. His wife was shorter—hardly taller than Pete—with a plump, kind face under a neat felt hat.

“This is Flora, and we know exactly what we want to do today: lunch in a hotel, you know, with choices; then the old castle, then a slap-up tea with poached eggs on toast—”

“Daphne, do calm down,” Mrs. Peterson said. “You know we’ll do exactly as you say, dear—don’t we always? I’m very glad to meet you, Flora. It’s so nice to meet Daphne’s friends.”

“Mummy! Stop calling me Daphne!”

“No, dear,” Mrs Peterson said calmly, “that is one command I will not obey. It’s a beautiful name.”

“It’s a stupid name.”

“Now then,” said Pete’s father. He smiled down at Flora as he shook her hand. “How do you do, Flora?”

He was a lot like Pete, with his thin face, rather beaky nose and brilliant blue eyes. The corners of his eyes wrinkled up, and Flora drew in her breath sharply—for a moment, he looked just like her dad.

“Hold your horses, old lady,” he told Pete. “Your mother wants to speak to the head before we shoot off.”

Flora swallowed hard. There was a lump in her throat and she had to fight back the tears. Mr. Peterson didn’t really look that much like Dad—but the reminder suddenly made her miss her parents so much that it hurt.

She managed not to break down until the Petersons had joined the group of people around Miss Powers-Prout; then she ducked away into the box room, where the tuck boxes were kept, to cry in private. It was dark and damp, and smelled of moldy jam. Flora sat down on the stone floor, took her cotton hanky from the leg of her knickers (there were no tissues in the 1930s) and let out a storm of sobs.

The door opened.
Pete’s come looking for me
, she thought hopefully.

It was Consuela Carver.

She slowly walked towards Flora, and stood staring down at her blankly. Flora went on crying, too miserable to care what the Carver thought of her.

“You’re crying,” Consuela said. “I expect you’re crying because your mother and father aren’t here.”

“Yes,” Flora said.

Consuela leaned against a shelf of tuck boxes. “Mine aren’t here either.”

Flora had not expected this. “Oh.”

“My father’s in Kenya. My mother’s only in London, but she doesn’t like coming to school things.”

“Oh.”

“They’re divorced. I bet you’ve never met anyone whose parents are divorced.”

Flora blew her nose. “Course I have—my best friend—”
She stopped. Ella was no longer her best friend, and she was far away in the future.

“I suppose you’ll tell Pete,” Consuela said bitterly. “And now she’ll rag me about it.”

It was incredible, but Flora felt sorry for her. Consuela had taken off her sneering mask, and the face underneath was only sad.

“I won’t tell,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone. But you shouldn’t feel bad about it—it’s not your fault.”

There was a silence. Flora couldn’t tell what Consuela was thinking.

In her normal voice, Consuela said, “I’m going out with the Elliots. Are you going out with someone?”

“The Petersons.”

“Have a nice time.” Consuela—her face blank again—walked out of the room.

Flora mopped her face, thinking about this strange encounter. At APS at least half the class had divorced parents, and it was no big deal—certainly not something to be ashamed of. Suddenly, it wasn’t so easy to hate Consuela. It was one thing to have parents who were lost in time or far away in India, but how must it feel to have a mother who hadn’t come because she didn’t care enough?

The Petersons’ car took them along narrow country roads. The 1930s countryside was untidier than the countryside of the twenty-first century, but also prettier. The fields were smaller than the fields you saw beside the motorways of the future, and divided by big, shaggy hedges studded with
spring flowers. There were no electricity pylons, no overhead wires, and hardly any other cars. They had to slow down several times, behind wagons drawn by horses.

Pete was in radiant high spirits, talking a mile a minute and rapping out orders. Flora was a little shocked by the way Mr. and Mrs. Peterson kept giving in to her. Uneasily, she wondered if this was how she sounded when she spoke to her own parents. Yes, she often told Mum and Dad what to do. They liked to be told, because they wanted her to be happy. But she hoped she wasn’t as bossy as Pete.

They stopped for lunch at a hotel in a small country town. Pete fussed over the menu for ages, and told her parents what food to order, so that she could have a taste of it. “If you send me to a school where the food’s putrid, the least you can do is let me eat what I like when I have a day off. Flora, you have the roast lamb. Mummy, you can have the liver and bacon.…”

After lunch, they went to see the ruins of an old castle, and Flora and Pete had a fine time climbing over the stones. When they were tired, Mrs. Peterson took a Thermos flask from her basket, and they all had a cup of tea. Mr. Peterson smoked a pipe. Flora looked at him as hard as she could, without staring rudely. Was he really like her own dad, or did she see it because she missed him so much?

Pete’s mother asked a lot of questions about her family, and Flora had to concentrate on giving the right answers from the life of the other Flora.

“We know some Foxes,” Mrs. Peterson said. “We met
them at Sheringham, a few summers ago. Daphne, do you remember?”

“Nope.”

“Don’t say ‘nope,’ dear, this isn’t a cowboy film. They had that little boy you were always squabbling with.”

Pete rolled her eyes. “Why do you always want to talk about such dull things? I’m starving again. Aren’t you worried that I’m so hungry all the time?”

“You’re a growing girl,” Mr. Peterson said comfortably.

“I mean, doesn’t it speak volumes about the quality of the food at that place? And there’s never enough of it, is there, Flora? I think you should write to Old Peepy about it.”

“Never mind, we’ll get you another box of chocs for the tuck box,” her father said.

“Thanks, Daddy—it’s looking jolly empty and it’s got to last me till the end of term.”

Her mother laughed, and lovingly smoothed Pete’s untidy hair. “I’ll throw in a tin of biscuits, but that’s all you’re getting.”

Flora didn’t believe this for a moment. These two made her own doting parents look strict. They treated their daughter like a goddess; no wonder she always expected to be in charge. A scary thought came to her that perhaps she didn’t like Pete very much.

But she did like Pete. It was impossible not to, when she was lively and brilliant and funny, and blew into a room like fresh air. Today, she was a beacon of happiness, and she generously included Flora in every treat. The two of them
returned to school at bedtime exhausted, and blissfully stuffed with stodgy 1930s food.

When they all lay in bed after lights out, comparing notes in yawny whispers, it turned out that Dulcie had also spent most of the day eating.

“Dorsey’s friend has a tea shop, and we had cream horns, coffee éclairs, the loveliest little sandwiches—”

“I’m amazed you didn’t all explode,” Pogo whispered. “Neville and I were heaps too busy to waste time with unproductive guzzling—though we did have some very decent fish and chips. He let me drive the bike when the roads were quiet. And we had a lot of talking to do, because we like to set the world to rights. I asked Nev about your war, Flora, and he says it’s perfectly possible. I did so wish I could tell him you were from the future!”

Where was she from? On the edge of falling asleep, Flora hardly knew. Did Pete’s dad remind her of her real dad, or Colonel Fox from Poona? And which one of them did she remember talking about Sheringham? The trouble with two lots of memories was that your brain tied itself in knots.

13
Measles