Miss Carter's War (2 page)

The bus was crowded. A boy sprang to his feet and offered her a seat.

The bus conductor looked at her as he clipped her ticket.

‘All right, duck?’

‘Bit nervous. New job.’

‘Where?’

‘The grammar school.’

‘Oh la-di-da. Tuppence to talk to you then.’

The laughter in the bus was good-natured. Several people wished her good luck. Marguerite looked around at her fellow passengers as the bus rattled along. There were men in overalls, worn housewives with stroppy babies and string bags for shopping, two men in smart suits with bowler hats on their laps, a group of children quietly giggling over a comic, making the most of the last day of the holidays, jam jars and nets on sticks ready for tiddler fishing, three nurses, and a couple of men in RAF uniform. It occurred to her that one of the few benefits of war was the enforced breaking down of class barriers. These people had been evacuated, served in factories or the services, and had lived with and worked alongside those they would normally only have encountered superficially. She herself was destined for an upper-class leisured life until the German invasion of France had derailed that course. She could barely remember the rigid convent school, the piano and dance classes, the trips to the Comédie-Française and the Opéra.

Enthused by the good wishes, she alighted at Dartford Heath. The landscape was just recovering from its use for Army manoeuvres. The tank tracks were grassing over and the sand-filled sacks for bayonet practice, hanging from gallow-like structures, were being used as swings. The mist had lifted now to show a blue sky devoid of swollen barrage balloons. Gone too were the big iron cylinders lining the road in readiness for making a smokescreen. On a patch of waste ground were abandoned three small concrete pyramids, fortunately never called upon to test their effectiveness in stopping an invading army in its tracks.

As she walked along past neglected semi-detached pebble-dashed houses she saw that the gaps made by bombs had been tidied up, the remaining rubble providing a good playground. The blasted walls revealed the wallpapers so carefully chosen from sample books, now flapping in the slight breeze. In one house a staircase remained, leading to a void which had been a bedroom where there had been love and respite. Possibly the owners had sheltered from the bombing in the cupboard beneath, in which case they may have survived, while their world was destroyed around them. Shattered lives everywhere, but now the mending process was underway and she was eager to be part of it. There, in front of her, was the arena for her impending challenge.

Chapter 2

Dartford County Grammar School for Girls had been built in 1912 in a not-quite-Gothic style. There were stone walls and a modest tower in the middle, but there was a regularity about the edifice that undermined the gesture towards the medieval. It was nevertheless imposing and suggested a seriousness of purpose. Marguerite was suddenly scared to death – she with the nerves of steel. There was a double-fronted main door, and as she approached along a path, through the garden which had seen better days, she realised she was holding her breath, and had to stand for a moment gulping in air to calm herself.

On the door was an iron knob which she assumed was a bell. She tried twisting it and pressing it to no avail. Panicking, she pulled it and it sprang back making a loud clanging noise. She forced a polite smile in anticipation as the heavy door creaked open. The smile froze when a huge woman was revealed.

‘You should have gone round the side. We don’t use this door. Miss Fryer, Headmistress.’ The woman proffered a large hand.

Miss Fryer must have been 6ft 2 in her bare feet which no one, it was fair to assume, had ever caught a glimpse of. They were firmly encased in thick lisle stockings and lace-up Cuban-heeled shoes, presumably handmade, because no shop would ever stock that size. She could have bought a man’s shoe, but the slight heel indicated she had womanly aspirations, or just enjoyed towering over people. It was certainly effective. Marguerite was reduced to babbling an apology as she bent her neck to look up at the face above her.

The headmistress had a surprisingly small head, with pepper-and-salt hair held back by a tight bun. Her head did not seem to match the extraordinary body. This was large, very large, but solid rather than fat. It was difficult to detect any shape, encased as it was in a peculiar costume with a jacket, tailored to betray no trace of gender, reaching below her hips, where it paired a matching skirt that stretched, featureless, to her lower calf. Marguerite was profoundly relieved that she was not standing in front of this monument in her New Look frou-frou. The monument now smiled down at her.

‘You weren’t to know. Come to my study. We’ll have what will need to be a quick chat. Rather a busy day, I’m afraid.’

The study was wood-panelled with two walls lined with books. A bay window gave a panoramic view of the playground and playing field beyond. Miss Fryer seated herself behind a large mahogany desk and indicated for Marguerite to sit on a wooden chair placed in front.

After a few pleasantries about the weather and her journey, Miss Fryer said, ‘I see from your records you served in the FANY during the war. I see also that you were awarded a medal. So I suspect that nursing was a cover for something a tad more dangerous.’

Marguerite hesitated, then said, ‘I was in the SOE.’

‘Ah, Special Operations Executive. Bit of a mad lot. We at Bletchley called you the Baker Street Irregulars.’

The sun is shining in Baker Street. Inside Colonel Buckmaster’s office the curtains are drawn. The colonel, a tall man, surprisingly in casual sports jacket and flannels, rises to greet her. ‘Ah, Carter. My minions are impressed with you. You stood up to their grilling. I do not have to tell you of the dangers you face if you join the Firm, your parents’ deaths are evidence enough. We will send you for training but you will be on your own. From this moment on you can confide in no one. Everything you do is to be kept secret. You will be living a lie.’

‘You worked at the code-breaking centre, Headmistress?’

‘Yes.’

‘Miss Fryer, forgive me, but I’d rather—’

‘Miss Carter, there is no need to expand on what you did. Four years after the war is too soon to disclose all our goings-on. Not easy to sum up anyway. It is difficult, isn’t it, to break the habit of secrecy? None of the staff know what I did during the war and there is no reason why they should know about your role either.’

‘Thank you, I’d prefer that.’

‘Understood. But in your new job as a teacher at this school it will be an advantage that you’ll have experienced the horrors of war. You will understand your pupils better. They too have suffered. Ripped from their families, labelled and pushed on a train to be billeted with strangers, some of whom were cruel to them, physically and mentally. They have been bombed and machine-gunned, underfed and deprived of all the usual joys of childhood. Now they are having to adjust to men they scarcely know coming back from heaven knows what nightmares and taking over their homes. I see it as our major task to bring the order and discipline of education into their disrupted lives.’

‘I will do my best, Headmistress.’

Miss Fryer came round the desk and shook Marguerite’s hand.

‘Thank you, and welcome. Now, come and meet the rest of the staff. They are in the tower.’

‘Oh, what have they done?’

The raised eyebrow told her the joke was an old one, so, eschewing frivolity, Marguerite settled for silence as she followed the headmistress’s purposeful stride along a classroom corridor. The smell of floor polish and the head’s faint Parma violet perfume was pleasant as she went up a flight of stairs, through a small wooden door that led to a spiral staircase, and then another door, behind which she could hear chatter and laughter.

Miss Fryer tapped at the door and, giving an alarming wink to Marguerite, waited a moment for the noise to subside. After the faux pas of the tower joke Marguerite was too frightened to react. A wink back would surely be misplaced, so she smiled wanly.

‘Good morning, ladies and gentleman.’ Everyone leapt to their feet, apart from the one man in the room, who rose slowly, with a reluctance bordering on impertinence.

‘Forgive the interruption. Here is our new recruit, Miss Carter. I know you will make her welcome. Will you please do the honours, Miss White? I must be elsewhere. Do please sit down, Mr Stansfield, don’t mind me. Save your obviously waning strength for the term ahead.’

The staff room was a perfect square, as befits a tower, but that was the only regular thing about it. Compared with the impeccable order of the teaching area she had passed through, it was chaotic. There were battered armchairs over which, after the headmistress’s exit, various women draped themselves; some had books, one knitted, another had a copy of
The Times
.

Miss White, Maths, a cheerful woman with Eton cropped iron-grey hair, introduced her to the teachers in the room, pointing out that others were round and about preparing for the start of term tomorrow, when all hell would break loose. Two middle-aged women were marking a pile of books on a small table, throwing the completed ones onto the floor. One, Miss Lewin, History, had brown hair plaited and twisted into earphones either side of her face, the other, Miss Haynes, Domestic Science, had blonde hair but her plaits were looped over the top of her head. Other than that they had few identifying features.

Miss Lewin lifted her reading glasses to squint at Marguerite.

‘Oh God, you’re young.’

‘I’m twenty-four.’

‘Exactly. Promise me you won’t be earnest. I’m exhausted already and term hasn’t even started.’

Miss Haynes, the other plaited one, rapped her hand with her marking pencil.

‘Shut up, you old drear. What kind of welcome is that?’

She stood and shook hands with Marguerite.

‘We are catching up with last term’s exam marking. We give them the results tomorrow, poor things. Should have done them in the hols, but Miss Lewin and I went camping in France and tried to forget that we were teachers for a bit. I believe you’re French, aren’t you?’

Marguerite stiffened.

‘Half French. My father was English. I left France when I was a child.’

‘Oh I see. That accounts for your excellent English.’

‘My accent is not perfect, I’m afraid.’

‘Nonsense. It’s hardly noticeable. It’s charming. We were in the Vaucluse. Do you know it?’

A silence.

‘Yes.’

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

The sky is azure, the distant mountains sepia, the ravine clad in a palette of manifold greens, the verge is ablaze with red poppies, pink valerian, purple orchids, yellow gorse, chaste white daisies. On the road are strewn body parts and pools of crimson blood.

‘But one is aware that there are scars. It is hard for us to imagine what it is like to be occupied.’

‘Yes.’

Miss Lewin snorted.

‘The Vaucluse was Vichy France. I should think they had a pretty cushy time, thank you very much.’

Miss Haynes hit her quite hard with the pencil.

‘Will you shut up.’

Miss White tugged Marguerite towards a handsome woman, sitting on a hard-backed wooden chair and intent on a complicated-looking petit point picture on a wooden frame.

Miss Yates, Latin, gave a cursory nod of greeting.

‘Sorry. Can’t look up. Tricky bit.’

In the corner, an unkempt, wispy-haired woman, Miss Tudor-Craig, Music, was sitting legs akimbo, humming and chuckling to herself as she beat time with her hands.

When she felt Marguerite’s eyes upon her she said, ‘Want to join the choir, whoever you are?’

‘Oh, well, my voice is not good, I’m afraid.’

‘Nonsense. Do this. Doh ray me fah soh lah te doh.’

Marguerite tentatively did as she was bidden.

‘Perfect. A soprano. Tuesday after school in the hall.’

Miss White squeezed her arm and pulled a face just as a youngish woman with lively blue eyes and a fresh complexion rushed into the staff room.

‘Oh good. Marguerite, meet Mrs Conway, Hygiene.’

‘You’re married?’

Mrs Conway laughed.

‘Yes, it’s allowed. Marriage for teachers has been legal for five years now, you know. I don’t think Miss Fryer really approves but she thought it better to have a married woman teaching reproduction.’

‘Too late for me,’ shouted Miss Trevelyan, Geography, who looked about sixty. ‘No one’ll have me now. Too late to procreate, so I make do with other people’s children.’

‘I’d have you any day,’ the man piped up.

‘You! Lawksamercy.’ Miss Trevelyan raised her hands in mock horror. ‘I don’t want any reds under my bed.’

‘Who said I’d be
under
it?’

Mr Stansfield, Sport, was obviously cock of the roost. Sprawled on the sofa, reading, his tie loose and shirt unbuttoned, he was handsome and knew it.

He stared at her with mocking blue eyes and ran a hand through his unruly hair as he said, ‘You’re far too young and pretty to join us sad sacks. Don’t look so scared. We don’t bite. Well, on rare occasions, some of us have been known to have a bit of a nibble.’