Beswitched (21 page)

T
he shock was like a punch in the stomach. It was a moment or two before Flora could speak. “You mean—by accident?”

“No!” Pete cried passionately. “I pushed her on purpose!” She was sobbing. Flora tried to put her arm round her, but she shrugged it away. “Don’t be nice to me. I don’t deserve it. I could’ve killed her!”

“But Pete—crikey—what got into you?”

“I don’t know—if I’d stopped to think about it—look, Flora, I know how beastly I am. I can’t talk about it any more—I’ll tell you later, but I can’t do it now.” She turned her face away.

“OK.” Flora was worried to the point of being seriously freaked out. It wasn’t just that Pete had done something dreadful. She had never seen the swaggering, superconfident Pete like this—weeping and shaking, shut up inside herself.

It was dark when they arrived back at St. Winifred’s. In the hall, Pete suddenly grabbed Miss Bradley’s sleeve.

“I have to see the headmistress,” she said loudly.

“It’s far too late now, dear.”

“Please, Miss Bradley—I have to see her now! It’s a matter of life and death! Please!”

Miss Bradley was startled by her fierceness. “Surely it can wait until morning?”

“It has to be now—I have something very important to tell her.”

“Very well, if you insist. Flora, you go upstairs.”

Flora tried to catch Pete’s eye, but Pete refused to look at her. Her face was pale and scared, and stiff with determination.

Miss Bradley knocked on the door of Miss Powers-Prout’s study. A distant voice called, “Enter!” and the door swallowed them up.

Was she going to confess everything to the head—even the fact that she had pushed Consuela? What would happen to her? Flora went up to the bedroom, where she found Dulcie and Pogo agog to hear the story.

“Where have you been? Is it true you saved the Carver’s life?” Dulcie bounced on her bed eagerly. “The whole school’s talking about it!”

Flora was very tired, and suddenly aware that she ached all
over. She had tripped a couple of times while climbing out of the quarry, and hadn’t noticed the bruises until now. She sat down on her bed and peeled off her very muddy games shirt. “Pete’s with the head.”

Pogo whistled. “Golly—what’s all that about? Is she in hot water again?”

“I’m not sure. Let’s wait till she comes up.” Flora didn’t want to tell the others what Pete had told her. She changed into the other Flora’s pajamas and went to wash her face and brush her teeth in the deserted cloakroom. Pete was not in the bedroom when she came back, and it was getting near lights out.

Dulcie said, “What’s Pete done now? Can she be expelled in the middle of the night?”

“Steady on,” said Pogo. “We don’t know that anyone’s being expelled.”

The door opened slowly, and they all fell silent as Pete walked in. Her face was swollen with tears. She looked somehow smaller all over. When she spoke, her voice was flat and defeated.

“I suppose Flora’s told you.”

“I haven’t said a thing,” Flora said quickly.

“Thanks.”

“Told us what?” demanded Pogo.

“You might not want to be friends with me anymore,” Pete said. “And—and I wouldn’t blame you.”

Her head bowed, she told them the whole story about Consuela following her into Compton Wood.

“I didn’t want her to catch me, so I hid from her. She was calling to me—‘I know you’re here’—and she went right to the edge of the quarry. I could’ve just run away from her, and I do wish I had now—but I was tired and I didn’t want to run anymore. All I could think was how much I didn’t like Consuela, and how she’d crow when she caught me—so I ran up behind her and gave her a shove. And she fell into the quarry.”

Dulcie’s blue eyes were wide with horror. “Oh, Pete! You didn’t!”

“Crikey!” Pogo said. “That’s pretty good, even for you.”

“If it hadn’t been for Flora,” Pete said, “I would have left Consuela lying there. I meant to mention it to Miss Gatling if she didn’t turn up. I didn’t know she was so badly hurt—not that it’s an excuse. She might have died because of what I did. I saw it all in a flash when we found her and she looked all peculiar and crooked. All the time I was running to Ethel’s, I was seeing myself for the very first time, and it was perfectly horrible. I’m such a selfish beast that I nearly killed someone. That’s why I had to see Old Peepy. I had to own up to the whole thing straight away.”

“I’d never dare!” squeaked Dulcie. “What did she say? Was it hideous?”

The ten-minute bell sounded. Pete went to her bed and began to take off her clothes. “She was pretty decent, actually—but only after I’d told her every single thing. I told her it was all my fault, and I asked her not to be angry with anyone else. And I told her what a trump you were, Flora.
Thanks awfully.” With her blouse half on and half off, she came across the room, holding out her hand. “I don’t deserve a chum like you.”

Solemnly, Pete and Flora shook hands.

Pete then turned to Pogo and Dulcie. “I’m really sorry—about everything, really.” She shook hands with the other two girls.

“Gosh, Pete!” Pogo said. “I’ve never heard you admit to being wrong before. I may faint.”

“We’re still your chums,” Dulcie assured her. “You didn’t mean to do anything bad, and you’ve owned up like a brick.”

“You lot are the bricks,” Pete said gruffly. “I’ve been nothing but a bother to you—I’ve caused no end of trouble by summoning Flora. Is it pax?”

“Of course it’s pax!” Impulsively, Flora flung her arms around Pete’s lanky, dejected figure. “This is what we’d do in my century!”

After a startled second, Pete hugged her back. The two friends clung to each other, and Flora was suddenly incredibly happy, as if an invisible load had been lifted off her back.

“How disgustingly sentimental,” said Pogo.

Life was wonderful. School was wonderful. Her friends were wonderful. “Shut up, Pogo!” yelled Flora. “Now we have to do a GROUP HUG—that means we all hug each other at the same time!”

“You future-girls are crazy—OW!” Flora and Pete both dragged Pogo and Dulcie into a real twenty-first-century group hug—like the group hug her table at APS had done when they won the Christmas quiz.

Pete stumbled, and all four of them toppled to the floor in a mad tangle of limbs, screaming with laughter.

They laughed so much that Virginia came into the bedroom, holding her glasses in one hand and a letter in the other. “Nothing in the world is that funny,” she said, “so pipe down, before you stir the Harbottle from her lair.”

“Sorry, Virginia,” said Dulcie.

When she had gone, and they had managed to stop giggling, Pete hurried into her pajamas. “I didn’t finish telling you about Old Peepy. She said she’d had a call from Consuela’s father, to say thank you. Consuela doesn’t remember anything except shouting for help and then waking up and seeing Flora. Old Peepy said I should leave it there, and not confess to anyone else. She—she said I’d been given a chance to atone for my wicked act, and she trusted me to punish myself.” Her lip quivered, and her red eyes filled with tears. “You’re all being jolly decent about this. I’ll do my best not to be a pig anymore.”

Pogo said, “I think the piggish Pete has taken flight, and we won’t be seeing any more of her. We’re the Four Musketeers again—all for one and one for all—but no more group hugs!”

“You wouldn’t like my century,” Flora said, laughing. “There’s a lot of hugging.”

The bell rang. The girls climbed into their beds and switched off their lamps.

“Pssst!” hissed Pogo. “Did you see? Virginia was reading a letter from Neville—I’d know his writing anywhere.”

They all giggled over this, before settling into silence.

Flora lay awake on her back, with one arm round the other Flora’s bear, staring up at the ceiling. She was very tired, floating on a sea of calm. The whole world was calm. Something important had happened today. She remembered Pete saying, “I’m such a selfish beast that I nearly killed someone … if it hadn’t been for Flora …”

And then it hit her. This was the “task” she had been summoned here to do. What else could explain this strange feeling of rightness, as if a machine part had clicked into place? If she had not followed Pete and Consuela, if she had not insisted on going to look for Consuela, it might have been ages before anyone found her. For all anyone knew, she might have died—it was possible that the summoning spell had prevented the destruction of more than one life.

Did this mean she was about to go home to her own time? Even as she gasped aloud with longing and excitement, Flora seemed to know that it wouldn’t be yet. The task wasn’t quite done. She had a strong sense that there was something else to do first.

“Ah, Daphne—the very girl I wanted to see,” Miss Palmer said. She stopped Pete and Flora in the hall after breakfast. “Speech Day is next week, and I don’t think poor Consuela will be able to perform, so I’d like you to take her place.”

“Gosh—I mean, thanks, Miss Palmer!” Color rushed into Pete’s cheeks. “If you think I’ll be good enough.”

Miss Palmer smiled. “I haven’t forgotten your very amusing recital of ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’ Dorothy will
take Consuela’s part, and I need you to be the Walrus—you won’t mind wearing whiskers, will you?”

“Rather not,” said the new, non-troublemaking Pete. “And thanks awfully!”

“Splendid. Come along to my study after tea.”

“Pete, that’s so cool!” Flora blurted out, as soon as Miss Palmer had gone. “We’ll be onstage together!”

“I can’t believe it!” Pete grabbed Flora’s hand. “I won’t be as good as you—but won’t we have fun?”

It was amazing to hear Pete saying something this modest, but yesterday’s lesson had struck deep, and went on working over the following days. Pete was as lighthearted (and light-headed) as ever, but she was making a real effort to think about other people.

“She Who Must Be Obeyed is a lot nicer to live with nowadays,” Pogo remarked. “She hasn’t given me any orders for ages.”

Flora was impressed by the amount of work Pete put into “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” The old Pete hated practicing anything. Frankly, the old Pete had always felt she was too naturally gifted to need practice. The new Pete, however, wanted to spend every spare minute practicing. She dragged Flora and Dorothy into empty classrooms at all times of day, to go through the poem over and over again until the words were printed in Flora’s dreams.

Speech Day at St. Winifred’s turned out to be a very big deal. There was an atmosphere of excitement, and everyone was on edge.

“Of course, none of you first-formers have seen a Speech Day at St. Winifred’s,” Miss Bradley said, on the morning of the great day. “Well, it’s quite an occasion. The teachers and the head sit on the platform, and we are all simply magnificent in our best academic regalia. Even Miss Harbottle wears a slightly newer gown. Then we all have to sit through the displays and the speeches, before being rewarded with an excellent tea.”

The girls were to wear their “best” dresses of white silk. They found them hanging, freshly ironed, from the curtain rails of their beds, when they came upstairs to get changed.

“Yuck,” said Flora, frowning at herself in the bedroom mirror, “I look like an overgrown four-year-old! Don’t tell me they make the sixth-formers wear these?”

It was time for the girls not in the display to take their places in the assembly hall.

“Jolly good luck, you two,” Pogo said. “We’ll be cheering you from the audience.” She and Dulcie left the room.

“Oh, why did I agree to do this?” groaned Pete. “I’m SO nervous! Suppose I forget my lines?”

Flora’s stomach was fluttering with nerves, but she did her best to sound confident. “Don’t be silly, we must’ve been through them a million times.” She put on her carpenter’s hat and apron. Miss Palmer had wanted them to look like the Tenniel illustrations in the book, and she had made Pete a huge pair of cardboard tusks and a brown wool mustache.

The two girls went downstairs, to wait with Dorothy behind a screen at the side of the platform—they weren’t on
until after the lower-school choir. The assembly hall was filling up now. Flora listened to the hum of talking, and the three girls took turns to peep out at the audience through a crack in the screen.

The girls sat on one side of the hall, in a solid block of white, and the parents sat on the other—Pete had to swallow a squeak of excitement when she saw her own mother and father.

Dorothy spotted her mother and her aunt, and groaned softly. “Aunt Nora’s wearing the silliest hat—I may die of humiliation.”

The school orchestra began to play (not very well) a stately march. Silence fell in the assembly hall, and the procession of teachers entered. As Miss Bradley had said, they looked splendid—they were all wearing new black gowns and square black hats. Miss Palmer and Mademoiselle Dornay wore lipstick, and Flora managed to notice, through her nerves, that they had all made efforts with their hair (yes, even Harbottle, who no longer looked as if she had a white bird’s nest on her head).

The headmistress marched in last, tall and proud. Her chair, in the middle of the platform, was a kind of throne.

Her voice was gracious. “My Lord Bishop, governors and parents, ladies and gentlemen,” she began, with a nod to the bishop in the front row. “It is my great pleasure to welcome you all to St. Winifred’s on our annual Speech Day. This past year has been one of hard work and play, and we have had particular success …”

Flora stopped listening. This sounded just like the sort of thing Mr. Burton said to APS parents in the twenty-first century—head teachers didn’t seem to have changed at all.

After Peepy’s speech, the lower-school choir sang “The Wild Brown Bee” and “Who Is Sylvia?” And then it was their turn. Flora took a deep breath and walked out on to the stage with the others. There was a warm burst of laughter at their costumes, which made her legs feel less wobbly.

Dorothy began, in her high, clear voice: