Francie (8 page)

She kept saying to herself, “I'm in prison. It's no use trying to cheer up; this is exactly like a prison. Pop couldn't have known it would be as bad as this.”

CHAPTER 5

The girls came out the way the animals went into the Ark, two by two. In the corridor they broke ranks to disperse at a run for class. It was in the corridor that Francie, still in a mood, encountered the person she most disliked in the whole school, the person who, presumably and logically, should have been her best friend—Jennifer Tennison. She caught her breath in annoyance and apprehension. She saw Jennifer repeatedly, every day, all day, first thing in the morning and last thing at night, but she never learned to relax about it.

Sometimes Penny tried to reason with Francie about this difficulty in her new life. “Why let her get you down?” Penny would say. “It's only what she's trying to do, and the more you allow it the worse she'll get, the little drip.”

“I'm not used to it, that's all. Nobody's ever been so mean to me before—anyway not unless I gave them some cause,” added Francie with a sudden memory of Gretta and a few others. “But Jennifer started it and she's been at it ever since the first night here. Why, do you suppose?” She stared with honest pained bewilderment at her friend.

“Suppose we try to figure out why,” said Penelope. “There's a reason for everything … What makes one girl mean to another, usually?”

“Well, usually,” said Francie in thoughtful tones, “it's jealousy. At least, it was always jealousy as far as I was concerned … and I'm not bragging.” She broke off and looked carefully over her shoulder. “You know that, don't you, Penny? It might sound like boasting, but
you
know what I mean. I told you about all that—Jefferson and the parties and being popular. You're the only one in the whole school who would understand.”

She sounded plaintive, but Penny did indeed understand, and said so. “However, that theory doesn't get us anywhere in this case,” continued the English girl, with the reflective air Francie so much liked and admired. “You haven't grabbed any of Jennifer's boy friends—if they exist, which is doubtful—and even if your clothes are nicer than hers she can't possibly resent it as we only wear uniforms here. What do
you
think, yourself? Is there anything you may have said, or done, without thinking?”

“N-no, not that I know of. But I'll tell you what,” Francie lowered her voice and peered through the curtains of her cubicle to make sure they were not overheard. As Jennifer lived in the same dormitory, they got little chance of talking out of her hearing; they got little privacy altogether, and the two newcomers agreed that was one of the aspects of school life that they found most trying. “I'll tell you what,” continued Francie. “Maybe her people did just what Pop did to me, and insisted too much on what friends we were bound to be. Pop gave me Jennifer Tennison for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for weeks before I met her. Of course, not having friends here, it worked all right with me and in the beginning I was ready to like her. But it might have had just the opposite effect with her if the Tennisons did the same thing.”

“That could be how it started,” said Penelope. “As for the rest—oh well, they say there's a bully in every school, and though Jennifer can't very well twist your arm, there are other ways.”

“You're telling me!” said Francie.

Now, in the corridor, she bristled instinctively at the sight of Jennifer. Yet Jennifer's first words were friendly enough. “Hullo, Francie,” she said, pausing.

“Hullo, Jennifer.”

They stood there regarding each other, two girls in gray flannel uniforms, much of an age. It might have surprised a casual onlooker to know that one saw the other as a snake coiling for the strike.

“Finding your maths any easier going?” asked Jennifer. Like Penelope, she was very good at mathematics. Unlike Penelope she was always reminding other people of it.

“I try, but it's awfully hard,” said the incautious Francie.

Jennifer fell back a pace, registering extreme astonishment. “Oh, never. Surely not! Yanks are always frightfully good at sums. They're wonderful at adding up dollars and all that sort of thing, aren't they, Hardcastle?”

Wendy Hardcastle, appealed to in full flight as she swept through the hall, paused a second. She smiled vaguely. “Do stop pulling her leg,” she implored in high sweet tones, and hurried on.

“You Yanks—” continued Jennifer.

“I'm not a Yankee, Jennifer, I've told you so a dozen times! Yankees come from New England. I'm from the Middle West.” Francie was going through the familiar struggle of trying to keep her temper. She always tried, and usually failed.

Jennifer hesitated, searching her mind for some other remark that would be offensive but not crude. But her spite was not alert enough; time was pressing and girls were hurrying past them, reminding them of work. Francie escaped, therefore, without more insults being shot at her for the moment. She made her way to the history class with her nose in the air and her cheeks burning.
Why
should that girl be so nasty? It made everything in this horrid school seem much horrider. There wasn't any sense to it.

“Oh, if I could only take a recording of that female, and play it for Pop!” she thought. “If he only knew half the things she says, he'd probably break off business relations with her father.” She might, of course, write a letter to Pop and tell him about it, but she couldn't consider that. It was the sort of thing one didn't do. Back in America the girls and boys talked about their differences when they came home in the evening; it had seemed natural somehow. But boarding school was different, Francie realized. Here, she was very much a member of her own group, in her own world. It wasn't the world of parents; all that was completely foreign to Fairfields. One was polite to adults or to children, but they belonged to different castes and were kept in their places. One didn't confide in people “outside.”

“These kids are a tight, exclusive little band,” Francie thought ruefully, “just the kind of exclusiveness I don't like, and yet here I am, one of them!”

However, whether she liked it or not she had to obey the moral code, and this was impossible to explain, even to herself. She only knew that she mustn't tell. Neither Pop nor Mr. Tennison must be told that Jennifer was such a thorn in her side. Partly, of course, the reason for her silence was that she didn't want to be laughed at. No parent would be able to see how annoying these pinpricks could be. After all, whatever Jennifer did never sounded as bad as it was. How could one explain the unrelenting persecution of it? Taking each one separately the spiteful remarks were trivial.

The very first morning, for instance, when Francie had innocently said, “I won't wash yet; I'll wait until the water gets warm,” Jennifer had pounced on her words, hooted with scornful mirth, and made the whole dormitory laugh at the American for a luxurious fool who expected warm water. At odd moments Jennifer, for want of other material for annoyance, could always crack down on her for saying “ca-an't” instead of “cahn't,” or put on a high nasal whine as if in imitation of an American accent. She also seemed to hold Francie personally responsible for the history and foreign policy of the United States.

“During the war—” Francie might begin in all innocence, and Jennifer was on her in a moment.

“The war, did you say? Oh, do tell us about it, Francie. We don't know anything about it over here in England, of course. We'd like to hear all about your experiences in Chicago. It must have been absolutely
frightful
. You were killed by a bomb, no doubt. Go on, Francie, you needn't be shy.”

All Francie could retort to an attack like that was a feeble, “I don't live in Chicago.” Afterwards, of course, she had the most violent fits of rage, when Jennifer was gone beyond the range of influence. She could think of good cutting remarks when it was too late. But in Jennifer's presence she couldn't do anything.

“Why don't you stand up to her?” urged Penelope.

“I don't know how to,” said Francie miserably. “I don't see why she
should
be so anti-American. I get so puzzled I can't talk. Doesn't she know her father works with mine in London? Mr. Tennison has an interest in Pop's company; the Americans and the British work their oil wells together in that firm.”

Penny said, “That wouldn't make any difference to Jennifer; she probably thinks her father rather low, you see, because he's in trade.”

Francie blinked. “I don't get it.”

“It's just a silly English idea,” said Penny, “though it's sort of dying out nowadays; after all, anybody who can make a go of trade today is jolly lucky as well as clever. But Tennison's a silly ass; she's taken that attitude and she holds by it. At least that's what I'm beginning to think.”

“Trade,” said Francie thoughtfully. “I thought that meant selling things for other things—swapping, you know.”

“So it does, but the way they use the word here in England, it means shops. Selling groceries or motorcars, or, I suppose, oil, the way your father and Tennison's do.”

“Then
everybody's
in trade, as well as our fathers,” said Francie. “I still don't catch.”

“Everybody is, in America, if you don't count teachers or football players or actors or interior decorators,” said Penny, laughing. “And it's the same here except that rather a lot of men are in the Army or Navy.”

“So are they in the States, but they don't boast about it especially.”

“Well, they're rather proud of it here,” said Penny, jumping to her feet as the class bell rang, “so I suppose that proves you're more modest in America, with better manners. Anyway, don't take Tennison too seriously. She'll get her neck rung one of these days if she doesn't grow less poisonous.”

Books under their arms, they hurried down the hall. “I'll try not to let her get me down,” Francie said. “I haven't any time to worry about her; I'm too busy hating the rest of the setup to concentrate so much on Jennifer.”

Penny glanced at her with concern. “Is it really so bad as all that?”

“It's not so good,” Francie admitted. “I don't tell anybody but you of course, but I'm
cold
. I'm
never
warm or cozy. And everything's so awfully different.… Well, I'll be seeing you.”

Penny must have given the matter serious thought; she sought out Francie later when the lessons for the day were done and the girls were taking their “P.T.,” as they called physical training.

“I say, Nelson, I feel responsible for your misery. I am sorry. After all, if it hadn't been for me you might never have come to Fairfields.”

“Oh no, Penny, Pop had made up his mind I'd have to go to school before we ever talked to you, so you can stop worrying. I guess any English school would offer problems of some sort—to me, anyway. I didn't mean to complain.”

“But Francie, don't you like anything at all about England? Don't you care for the countryside, for out-of-doors?” asked Penelope wistfully. “I'd hate to think you were hating us. I did have such a wizard time in the States.”

“Oh, of course there's a whole lot of England I like. I love the riding more than anything. I exaggerated; I'm just homesick, I guess.” Francie sighed. “To be absolutely frank with you, Penelope, I miss all the boys, that's what's worrying me most. Don't you ever want a date? Why are all these girls so, well, indifferent to dates and men and all that? Why, you know perfectly well that any female back home who didn't have her Saturday night date just wouldn't rate at all.”

Penelope's face took on the uneasy expression that Francie had learned to associate at Fairfields with any mention of dating.

“Yes, I know. But they don't go in for all that until later on, in England,” she said. “Not until school's over, or anyway only during hols. Thinking very much about boys is soppy. That's how the English look at it.”

Francie said in amazement, “But that's absolutely mad! What's wrong with boys? Why, half the world is boys!”

“I
know,” said Penny, “but they don't think of that. It—it's just considered soppy.”

“What's soppy? What's wrong with dates? In Jefferson—”

“It's different here, Francie. It's no use arguing with
me
about it; I didn't make the rules. I'm only trying to explain the difference,” said Penelope reasonably. “I don't mean girls here live in a nunnery, necessarily. We go to parties sometimes; we dance with men. Only, as long as we're at school we're supposed to keep our minds on—shhhh.” The games mistress had blown her whistle shrilly, demanding silence. The girls all stood at attention.

Suddenly there came a break in the austere routine. As a special treat for having got the highest scholastic average, Francie's form was allowed to go up to town, to attend a production of
Richard the Third
. Her classmates were wildly excited at the prospect, and Francie herself was interested, though she would have liked to be blasé. “After all it is something to see a first-class English Shakespeare production,” she admitted to herself.

To her shocked chagrin, she found that the girls were expected to wear their uniforms for the expedition; it nearly spoiled the entire idea for fastidious Miss Nelson. But since none of the others seemed to dread appearing like that in the great metropolis, Francie allowed herself to be comforted. It wasn't as if Glenn or any of the other men in her life would be there to see her, anyway. (She giggled as she thought of their faces if they could witness one of the school outings.) Their traveling aunt for the day was to be Miss West, a rather prim member of the staff. Francie learned the other details from the girls' excited talk. They would catch the ten o'clock train for London, and that meant changing trains once on the way. They would arrive just in time for luncheon before the matinée, and it would be a scramble then to catch the five-forty-five train down to the country and school again.