Beswitched (9 page)

This was very insulting. Tears rushed to Flora’s eyes.

“You—you mustn’t be horrid to Flora,” Dulcie said, pink with determination. “She can’t help it.”

“You only like her because she’s as stupid as you are.”

Dulcie’s soft lower lip quivered. Her innocent eyes filled with tears.

“That’s enough, Pete,” Pogo said angrily. “If you’re mean to Dulcie, I’ll jolly well punch you—and hang the pony!”

Pete scowled round at them all. Flora guessed that she was already ashamed of being mean to Dulcie. “Look, I’m
sorry—all right? But you must admit how frightful this is—extra homework, extra sewing—when she’s not asking stupid questions, she’s complaining!”

“It just won’t do, that’s all,” Pogo said, folding her arms decisively. “You can huff and puff all you like—but Flora’s still our responsibility, and we gave her our word!”

Pete was cross and uncomfortable, and would not look properly at Flora. “I’m beginning to wonder if she is from the future, anyway—I think she’s just playing tricks on us!”

There was a silence. Pogo looked very thoughtfully at Flora. Her eyes were small and pale, and as shrewd as the bright little eyes of Fritz the monkey in the other Flora’s memories.

“I believe her,” she said. “I can’t put my finger on it. There’s something about her that’s just—different.”

“What about that rubbish about a Second World War?”

“Oh yes,” Pogo said, turning to Flora. “Now you can tell us about this war.”

“She made it up,” snapped Pete.

“I did not!” snapped Flora.

“Who’s the enemy going to be?” Pogo asked.

“Perhaps it’s invaders from another planet!” sneered Pete.

Flora muttered, “Don’t be so stupid—it’s the Germans.”

“Is that the best you can do? Why on earth would we fight the Germans again?”

“The Germans have only just got back on their feet after the Great War,” Pogo said. “The last thing their chancellor wants is another one.” She frowned. “Still, I’ll write to my
brother, Neville, and see what he thinks. He’s at Cambridge, and he’s frightfully interested in politics.”

“Don’t tell me you believe her!” shouted Pete.

“Well, if I believe she’s from the future,” Pogo said reasonably, “I have to believe she’s telling the truth about the war. And I do believe it. You can see she’s not the sort to make up something like this. We should be taking advantage of the situation.”

“How? What advantage?”

Pogo turned back to Flora. “I’m not exactly sure, but we should be finding out everything we can about what’s going to happen to us all.”

Flora sighed. Pogo’s curiosity was almost as awkward as Pete’s refusal to believe her. “I’ll do my best, but as I keep telling you, my memories are all over the place. I know the Second World War started—starts—in 1939, and I’m pretty sure Britain won, but that’s about it. And I haven’t a clue what’s going to happen to you lot.”

Pete looked at her coldly. “Well, you’re a fat lot of use. There’d be some point to you if you knew the names of all the horses that are going to win the Derby, so we could bet all our pocket money and get rich. But all you do is drivel on about things that won’t be invented till we’re old—what’s the point of that?”

“The thing is,” Dulcie said, “we sort of invited Flora, didn’t we? And when you’ve invited someone, you can’t just ignore them, can you? That would be frightfully rude.”

Flora suddenly remembered how she had begged Ella to
come to Italy last summer. When they were there, she had been irritated because Ella seemed to expect so much attention.

I was rather lazy about looking after her
, she thought, with a stab of guilt.
I can’t blame it all on Granny
.

Pete sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “Have it your own way.” She shut the flowered curtains around her bed. Her sulk hung over the cubicle like a black cloud.

Dulcie touched Flora’s arm. “Give me your stocking and I’ll darn it. Sewing’s the only subject I’m good at.”

“And we’ll have another look at the spellbook.” Pogo went to her secret hiding place, and used her ruler to lever up the loose floorboard. She took the book out of the hiding place and brought it over to Flora.

The book didn’t feel magical. It felt dirty and a little damp, and when you turned the pages there was a faint whiff of old trainers. Flora looked through it with a sinking heart. What they needed was a list of spells, like recipes, and this was mostly—as far as Flora could make out from the strange print—stuff about plowing and weather, and curing weird diseases in pigs. The famous chapter about “summonings” contained only the rhyme that had summoned Flora, and nothing at all about sending her home.

“Here.” Pogo held out a crumpled paper bag. “Have a pear drop, and don’t worry about Pete. She’ll come round eventually.”

The atmosphere in the bedroom was subdued this evening. Flora sucked a sweet that tasted of nail polish
remover, and tilted the old book towards the light from the lamp. On the first page, she could make out the outline of a name, written very faintly in pencil—“W. Beak.”

“Hey, look at this.” She showed it to Pogo. “Does that have anything to do with Dame Mildred Beak, d’you think?”

Pogo and Dulcie were both fascinated. Pete stayed stubbornly quiet behind her cubicle curtains, but Flora somehow knew she was listening.

“This house was the home of the Beak family, before Dame Mildred turned it into a school,” Pogo said. “W. Beak must be her father, Sir Wilberforce Beak—there’s a portrait of the old chap above the library fireplace. I wonder if he was the person who collected all those books about magic.”

“Gosh,” Dulcie said. “Do you think Dame Mildred knew?”

“I think she did—and it’s rather obvious why she felt she had to hide them away when she opened a school,” Pogo said ruefully. “She must’ve thought they’d be safe in the secret room. Oh, I wish she’d been right! Well, there’s nothing else for it—we’ll have to go back. It’s all we can do. We’re not going to find any magic anywhere else.”

“Good,” Flora said, “I’d like to take a look at that room. When shall we do it?”

“Well, next time there’s a rainy half holiday—”

“But this is urgent! I can’t wait till then!”

“Terribly sorry and all that, but it looks as if you’ll have to. It doesn’t help anyone if we get ourselves expelled, does it?”

This was perfectly reasonable, and there was no point in arguing. “OK.”

“Look, shut up,” a voice snapped behind the curtain. “Some people are trying to read!”

“I told you,” Pogo said. “Ignore her.”

Flora wished she could ignore Pete. After lights out, lying drowsily in her smooth, warm bed, she wondered what she had to do to make Pete accept her. The trouble was that Pete behaved like royalty. Dad would have called her “the Queen of Entitlement.” She must be monumentally spoiled at home.

“Flora!” Dulcie whispered from the next bed. “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” Flora whispered back.

“I forgot to ask—what’s ‘pollax’?”

“What? Oh, you mean bol—I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“Is it—rude?”

“Yes.”

Dulcie giggled softly. “Goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight.”

Dulcie said she was spoiled by her grandmother. But Dulcie was sweet and considerate, and did not behave like a spoiled person. Not like Pete, who always expected to get her own way.

And not like Flora.

On that terrible holiday in Italy, Flora had complained to Mum about the burden of looking after Ella.

“I thought it would be more fun if she was here too—and all she does is ask silly questions. And she’s always reading!”

Mum had said, “It wouldn’t do you any harm to read a book occasionally.”

“Yes, but Ella reads when I want to talk to her!”

“She’s your guest,” Mum had said, “and it’s not her job to amuse you.”

Flora wished she had listened to this. It was too late to say sorry now, even if she did manage to get home.

8
Sink or Swim

H
arbottle the Horrible began next morning’s lesson with a massive attack on Pete. “Daphne Peterson, this is the absolute LAST STRAW! I ask for a simple exercise, and I get a tattered mess covered with blobs of ink!”

She was in a truly evil mood. Every girl in the class was shaking. Never had Flora missed APS so much. Modern teachers could be nasty, but not like this—Harbottle was going off like the villain in a James Bond film.

“For the whole of last term I endured work that looked like the trail of a DRUNKEN SLUG! This term I will make no more allowances!”

Flora stared down at her hands, clenched on top of her desk.

This is my fault
, she thought uneasily.
Pete’s homework wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t had to do mine as well
.

“Careless! Slovenly!” Miss Harbottle chucked Pete’s exercise book across the classroom like a Frisbee. “You will do it again—and if I don’t see a mighty improvement, you will report to me for detention on Friday afternoon, directly after lunch. Consider yourself on probation.”

“But—” Pete blurted out. She bit her lip, and her face reddened.

“Oh yes, Daphne, I am very well aware that the games captain is conducting trials for the hockey team on Friday. You’d better try not to miss it, hadn’t you? Sit DOWN!”

Flora sneaked a glance at Pete. She was crazy about hockey, and already boasting that she would be chosen for the lower-school team. No wonder she looked gutted.

Books zoomed through the air as Miss Harbottle chucked them back at their owners. “Barbara Hardwick—ATROCIOUS! Cecilia Lawrence—not bad. Dorothy Sykes—not bad. Dulcie Latimer—dreadful as ever, but at least you TRIED!”

At last, only one book was left. “Flora Fox!” This time, she did not throw it. “Come here—right up to the front of the class!”

Flora hadn’t expected this. She was a new girl, and teachers were supposed to make allowances if you were new. She stood up, on legs that were shaking, and went to the front of
the class. Harbottle’s wizened little face reminded her of a horrible shrunken head she had once seen in the British Museum.

“Flora Fox, if you were not a new gel, you would be most severely punished for this DISGRACEFUL piece of work!” She flipped open the exercise book, and showed the whole class the homework Pete was supposed to have done for her—half a page of penciled scribbles.

Flora was furious. She glared at Pete, and the lazy cow didn’t even look sorry.

“I shall be keeping my eye upon you, Flora Fox. It is my mission in life to root out insolent gels of your type. You will of course write out these verbs again. And then you will recite them to me from memory, tomorrow morning. Sit DOWN!”

Flora spent the rest of the lesson burning with embarrassment and anger. Thanks to Pete, the other girls in the class now thought she was completely stupid. She grabbed Pete at morning break, when they all surged into the lower-school common room for milk and biscuits.

“You messed up my homework! Now I’ve got to learn a load of Latin verbs!”

“Sorry, and all that,” Pete said. “I clean forgot about it until this morning, so I had to do it in the cloakroom.”

“Thanks a lot! Try and put a bit more effort into it next time!”

“Next time? Do you think I’m doing any more of your prep for you? I’ve got enough of my own—I’ll die if I miss the tryouts for the team!”

Flora was outraged. She had to keep her voice low, but it quivered with anger. “You promised to help me!”

“Nobody can learn things by heart for you,” Pogo pointed out. “That’s one thing you’ll have to do for yourself.”

“Yes, and that’s going to take me the whole evening! Someone’s just going to have to deal with the rest.”

The other three looked at each other.

Pogo said, “The thing is, one of the teachers is bound to notice if we’re doing your prep. They know our handwriting. It might be easier all round if you did your own. We’ll help, of course.”

“And I’ll still do your darning,” Dulcie added.

“But you have to deal with my work!” Flora hissed. “You promised!”

Pete groaned rudely. “I know—I know—because we brought you here. But even if we hadn’t summoned you, you’d still have to go to school, wouldn’t you? And even schools in the next century must make you do some sort of work.”