Beswitched (22 page)

Flora and Pete set off on a stroll across the stage, ready to speak their lines.

They pretended to sob—Pete was particularly good at this—and said together:

It couldn’t have gone better. The girls were word perfect, the audience roared with laughter, and the applause at the end was massive. Grinning with relief and elation, Flora and Pete took off their costumes and went to sit with the other girls.

“You were wizard!” Pogo whispered, from the row behind. “Even Harbottle laughed!”

“Even DORSEY laughed!” whispered Dulcie.

Flora wished Mum and Dad could have been here. They would have been so proud, and she hadn’t given them enough good reasons to be proud of her.

When I get home
, she thought,
if I ever do—it’s going to be so different
.

The upper-school choir sang “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Someone played a solo on the violin, and the head girl read a passage from the Bible about a virtuous woman.

After this, it was time for the awards. A little table was carried on, covered with stiff paper scrolls, and placed beside Miss Powers-Prout.

Virginia won the Classics Prize, and looked very pretty when she went up to accept it, despite the stupid white dress.
Most of the awards went to the older girls, but Pogo won the History Prize, and there was a thrilling moment when Old Peepy said, “For the first time in many years, the Mrs. Carstairs Cup for Sewing goes to a member of the lower school—Dulcie Latimer!”

Nobody had expected Dulcie to win anything, least of all Dulcie herself. She went up to the platform with a bright scarlet face, to accept the tiny silver cup, and the lower school broke into loud cheers that showed how popular she was. On the other side of the hall, Flora spotted Dorsey angrily wiping her eyes.

“Two awards!” Pete yelled to Flora over the din. “Our bedroom’s covered with glory!”

“Lastly,” said Miss Powers-Prout, “I come to the Mildred Beak Award for Excellence. Each year, this very special award goes to a girl who embodies all the fundamental values of St. Winifred’s—truthfulness, bravery and loyal comradeship. This year, I am delighted to give the award to Flora Fox.”

A loud gasp ran through all the schoolgirls. Flora felt as if her stomach had dropped down to her knees. Suddenly everyone was looking at her, and Old Peepy was talking about her.

“A few days ago, as many of you will know, Flora’s quick thinking and determination saved one of her classmates from serious injury. When she arrived at this school, some of us found her independent spirit rather startling.” Several of the teachers behind her smiled at this. “True independence, however, when asserted for the benefit of the whole school, can
only be a good influence. Well done, Flora—you’re a credit to St. Winifred’s!”

Flora’s head swam. The cheers were deafening, and hands were shoving her out of her seat, pushing her towards the platform. She felt awkward and embarrassed and clumsy—and incredibly proud.

Afterwards, when it was over and everyone was milling about in the hall and the dining room, she was hemmed in by girls who wanted to slap her on the back and shake her hand.

“Jolly well done, Flora!”

“Congratulations!”

Pete whispered in her ear, “I’m the only person in the world who knows how much you deserve it!”

Out in the entrance hall, under the great portrait of Dame Mildred, Lady Badger elbowed her way through the crowd, beaming all over her round face, and gave Flora a smacking kiss on the cheek.

“Well done, my dear—and you and Pete made the most hilarious Walrus and Carpenter—we laughed ourselves into fits!”

Dorsey, poker-faced as usual, said, “It was as good as the pictures.”

In the middle of it all, Flora noticed something interesting about Pete. She was sparkling and laughing, bright and quick as mercury, talking her head off—nothing odd there. But she was not crowing, or swaggering, or acting as if she had been the only star of the show.

“Wasn’t Flora wonderful, Mummy?” she demanded, the minute she had grabbed her parents. “I could hardly keep a straight face behind my tusks!”

Mrs. Peterson shook Flora’s hand. “Hello, Flora. Well done.”

“Hear, hear!” Mr. Peterson shook her hand, and once again Flora saw that fleeting look of her own dad in twenty-first-century Wimbledon. “Jolly good to see you again—Daphne’s letters are absolutely full of you.”

“The crowds have died down a bit round the tea tables,” Pete said. “Let’s go in before the cake disappears.”

“Yes, let’s,” said her mother. “The stern gaze of Dame Mildred is making me hungry!”

“Stern?” Mr. Peterson glanced up at the portrait. “I’d say she looks like rather a jolly old buzzard.”

Flora looked at the portrait, and for the very first time, she noticed a glint of something like humor in the painted eyes. The old buzzard was almost smiling.

19
King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid

“H
ave you heard about Ethel?” Bunty Hardwick pounced on the four of them, just as they were going into breakfast next morning. “It’s the most fearful scandal!”

“Ethel?” Flora was anxious. “She’s all right, isn’t she?”

Bunty lowered her voice to a gleeful whisper. “She’s getting married—to Consuela Carver’s father!”

“Wh-what?”

“I swear it’s true! Dimsie Scarborough told me, and she had it from one of the maids. Mr. Carver’s fallen madly in love with Ethel—and her mother’s furious, because he’s divorced and years older than her, and they’re not allowed to get married in a church. But don’t you think it’s romantic?”

Bunty darted away to pounce on someone else with the incredible news, leaving Flora, Pete, Pogo and Dulcie in a state of shock.

“Wow,” Flora said, “I forgot all about that spell—if it was because of our spell.”

Pogo said, “Of course it was. What else could have done it? This thing’s got magic written all over it.”

Dulcie said, “It’s just like
King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid
in my bedroom!”

“And their eyes met over Consuela’s broken leg,” Pete said thoughtfully. “Gosh, it’s like a film!”

“That’ll do,” Miss Bradley said, suddenly swooping down on their group. “If you want to gossip, you can jolly well gossip in French!”

The compulsory French at breakfast quietened them a little, but the whole school seethed with the amazing news. Flora could sense the whispers lapping up and down the long tables like waves.

“I don’t see why everyone has to act like it’s some kind of disaster,” she complained, once they were back upstairs making their beds. “I think it’s wonderful. And it might’ve happened without magic—Ethel’s really pretty.”

Dulcie tugged at her blankets. “Doesn’t she mind that Consuela’s father is so OLD?”

“She’s madly in love,” Pete said. “Details like that don’t matter when you’re madly in love.”

“I should think it jolly well matters to Consuela,” Pogo said. “She’s the most frightful snob, don’t forget. Some of her snobbish friends won’t want to visit her when her father’s
married to a servant—she might be wishing King Cophetua had stayed in Africa.”

“Well, I agree with Flora and Pete,” Dulcie announced. “I think it’s very romantic and exactly like a fairy tale. Wasn’t that a marvelous spell? Who else do we know who needs a rich husband?”

“Harbottle,” suggested Pete.

They all shouted with laughter, and then had fun marrying off all the other teachers.

“Seriously,” Dulcie said, “now that we know how to get rich husbands, don’t we have a sort of duty to help people?”

“We should get nice rich husbands for ourselves,” Pete suggested.

“It wouldn’t work for us, you ass, we’re only twelve,” Pogo said. “And I vote we leave well alone from now on—for all we know, our spell might have ruined Consuela’s life, or Ethel’s. The one thing I’ve learned about real magic is not to mess about with it.”

Had they ruined anyone’s life? Flora was not sure. She couldn’t exactly put it into words, but she felt there was a kind of wisdom in this force they had messed about with. Somehow, she trusted it not to do anything wrong.

And two days later, she got a chance to see the results for herself. She and Pete were running in from the garden at the end of lunch break, and there was Consuela in the hall. She sat in a big chair, one white plaster leg sticking out in front of her. Her little group of friends clustered around her. Wendy Elliot was hopping about, trying Consuela’s crutches.

Consuela looked incredibly different. Flora tried to
pinpoint the change. There was the plaster leg, of course, and the fact that she was wearing a very pretty pale blue dress instead of school uniform. But the main thing she looked was—happy. She was laughing, and her laughter had lost its sneer.

She glanced up at Pete and Flora, and her face reddened.

They couldn’t walk away now, though Flora felt Pete would have loved to. She couldn’t take her eyes off the plaster leg.

“Hello,” Flora said. “How—how are you?”

“Very well, thanks.”

Pete blurted out, “Does it hurt a lot?”

“Not really, if I’m careful. It’s just dull having to sit all the time.”

“When are you coming back to school?”

“I’m not,” Consuela said. “I’m going to live in Switzerland with Daddy and—and—I expect you’ve heard about Ethel.” She looked defiant, and her friends looked embarrassed.

Flora longed to ask what their problem was. So what if Mr. Carver was divorced? And so what if he was marrying a “servant”? In the future, none of this would have mattered.

“I think it’s great,” she said impulsively. “Ethel’s lovely.”

Consuela was surprised, and a little suspicious—was Flora making fun of her?

“We all think it’s incredibly romantic,” she added.

This made Consuela smile. “So do I, and it all happened because of me—Ethel was such a brick when I hurt my leg. She held my hand all the time the bone was being set. Daddy said he couldn’t help falling in love with her. When he told
me he wanted to marry her and take us both to Switzerland, I was jolly pleased. I—I don’t much like living with my mother. She’s always sending me away, even in the holidays.” She looked up at Flora and Pete, and the color in her cheeks deepened. “I haven’t thanked you for saving me when I broke my leg.”

Pete frowned. “That’s all right. I mean, you don’t have to. I mean—it was mostly Flora. And I’m sorry I was beastly to you. Will you shake hands?” She held out her ink-stained hand, and the two former enemies shook hands.

If I had my phone
, Flora thought,
I’d take a photo
.

“I’m glad I had a chance to say goodbye,” Consuela said. “We’re leaving for London tonight.”

“Give our love to Ethel,” Flora said.

Consuela saw that she meant it and was not being snide, and gave her a proper, friendly smile. “Thanks, I will. I know she’ll be pleased. She said if anyone asked, I was to tell them she was as happy as a princess in a fairy tale.”

“Well, it is rather like a fairy tale,” Wendy Elliot said. “As if someone had cast a spell!”

“Spells? Who is casting spells?” Miss Harbottle was upon them—she had a way of appearing suddenly, like a genie. “Kindly get to your classes!”

She stared at Flora, her black eyes like two specks of boiling vinegar. Flora hastily said goodbye to Consuela, and hurried away to her next lesson. When she glanced over her shoulder, Harbottle was still staring at her—staring as if she could see right through her skin to the marrow of her bones.

* * *

“Get up! Get up at once!”

Someone was calling, and light shone into her face. Flora groggily opened her eyes.