No Talking after Lights

Angela Lambert

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Raeburn was, as Constance's mother said the first time she saw it, and would say again every time it was mentioned, a beautiful school in the heart of the country. Yet for the girls who boarded there the school was embodied above all in the massive Easter Island presence of the Headmistress, the Hon. Mrs Henrietta Birmingham. In the minds of parents the school, like a group photograph, evoked the 120 girls who attended it, in particular their own tidily uniformed daughter. For its dozen teachers the school represented pupils at desks in class-rooms, lessons to be prepared, books to be marked, and staff-room rivalries; for the matrons the school existed in terms of creased counterpanes and feverish girls; to the domestic staff it was little more than a steamy, clanging kitchen and acres of floor to be polished; while to the gardener and his boy it meant grass needing to be mowed and rolled.

The main school building was a long, three-storeyed, mock-Tudor country house with sixteen bedrooms and a servants' attic. It had been built in the 1890s for one of that extinct tribe of hostesses whose lives revolved around the rituals of weekend house-parties at which they manipulated their powerful, pleasure-loving men. The outward appearance of the house had hardly changed in six decades.

In later years, when girls - now grown women -thought of their old school, they saw it more vividly
than the distant childhood world of home. Their dreams continued to be set in its undulating landscape long after their schooldays were over, while in nightmares they would find themselves still hemmed in by the school rules,
walking
- not running - in stiff-legged panic along narrow corridors, and would wake up relieved to find they were adults after all. Whether or not they had been happy at Raeburn, they usually remembered it in high summer. They would hear the bell's insistent double beat and see the building with its many chimneys riding high over the serene Sussex countryside, its sloping green lawns dotted with girls in summer frocks.

But all this was obscured in February. It was bitterly cold, the great bulk of the school ploughing like an ocean liner through sheets of freezing rain. Rain lashed the bare trees beside the drive into dripping, creaking life as Constance King and her parents bumped along the uneven surface on the way to their first meeting with the Headmistress.

Constance peered through the car's steamed-up windows at girls in ankle-length hooded cloaks buffeted by the wind as they stumbled with bent heads between class-rooms. They looked sinister and faceless.

‘Which are those monks who wear the long brown cloaks?' she asked.

‘I'm not sure, darling …' her mother began; but her father interrupted.

‘Don't be such a twerp, Constance,' he said irritably. ‘And comb your hair. Try to make a good impression.'

The rotten old school's not making a very good impression on me, she thought mutinously. I'd much rather go to Wimbledon High. She doubted if she'd be given the choice. There were seven weeks left until the end of term, but as her parents were being posted to
Kenya in May, it was a matter of urgency to find her a suitable boarding-school.

Her father parked the car carefully and reached down for his Colonial Office briefcase. Mrs King patted her hair, took out a gold compact and pursed her mouth while she dotted lipstick on to it. Then she smiled encouragingly at Constance.

‘Isn't this
exciting?
' she said.

Her father cracked open a black umbrella and the three of them dashed into the shelter of the porch.

As they sat waiting in the hall, a girl of enchanting loveliness emerged from the Head's study and came towards them, smiling. She was as light-footed as a flower fairy in one of Constance's old storybooks. Shining tendrils of hair escaped from her pony-tail and floated round her small, pointed face. Constance's mother nudged her conspiratorially as her father half rose to his feet.

‘Are you Mr and Mrs King?' the girl asked.

‘Yes, indeed. Yes, we are. Not too early, I hope?' he replied, and Constance winced at his eagerness to please somebody who couldn't be more than sixteen.

‘Not a bit. My name is Hermione, and the Head says, would you like to come in? It's that door, there …' She led the way and held it open for them.

‘
What
a pretty girl!' whispered Mrs King, but Constance disdained to answer.

Mrs Birmingham received them in a drawing-room furnished with aristocratic randomness. Everything was old and comfortable and good, but nothing matched and nothing was artistically arranged. The curtains were faded chintz, the sofas and armchairs were covered in a different chintz, and the furniture was shabby, sagging at the corners. The mantelpiece displayed a few school cups, some studio portraits in silver frames of Mrs Birmingham's family (including
one of her father in full court dress, wearing breeches and glossy, thigh-length boots), a silver pheasant and a small gilt carriage clock. There was also a rabbit modelled in clay by one of the girls and another even more formless clay lump whose glaze had dripped and blurred as though still wet. On a circular mahogany table just inside the door stood a cut-glass vase of early daffodils whose granular scent tickled Constance's nostrils. A selection of recent books and magazines was fanned around it: John Betjeman,
The Silent Traveller
, H. V. Morton on Sussex, and
Country Life
. The log fire burning in the wide stone fireplace added a warmth and cosiness that the room might otherwise have lacked. It was a pleasant, welcoming room whose lack of any attempt to impress successfully implied that Mrs Birmingham came from a good family.

Plain, flat-chested and be-spectacled, Constance King (what an unfortunate name, thought the Head: the girls were bound to call her King Kong) was not an engaging sight. But she seemed clever, and the school certainly had vacancies. Due to the austerity of the last years, it had not grown as rapidly as she had planned. In 1946 she had accepted the fact that her husband's health would never improve, nor would he earn enough to maintain them in comfort and send their brilliant son James to Oxford. But country-house prices were lower than before the war, so she had invested her father's legacy in this house, which she had seen offered for sale in
The Times
. It had been requisitioned for use as a hospital during the war and was scruffy and neglected. Few people had money to spare at that time; she had bought it cheaply at auction and sold off some of the land and several cottages on the estate. Leaving only the drawing-room and study untouched, she had had it converted as quickly and cheaply as possible, and honoured her father's memory by naming
the newly founded school after their family home in Scotland. She had counted on the Raeburn School for Girls having nearly 150 pupils by now, and the missing thirty made a difference. Some members of staff had to double up and teach two subjects.

Mrs Birmingham had already glanced at Constance's general-knowledge test (they called it an entrance exam, but in practice she didn't reject any girl, no matter how stupid) and been impressed by its clear, accurate answers. The child was only twelve, but she'd soar above the dimmish Upper Third. Best to try her in the Lower Fourth.

The Head moved smoothly through her practised recital of the school's advantages. Experience had taught her when to pause for questions, and she could usually anticipate what parents would ask. The Kings were not the sort to inquire about opportunities for riding or ballet, though Mrs King might ask to be shown a dormitory; nor did they seem academic, so she could avoid the under-stocked library.

‘The school was recommended by a colleague in the Colonial Office,' Mr King ventured. ‘I wonder if by any chance Constance would be in the same class as his daughters —?'

Before he could finish, Mrs Birmingham said, That would be the Simpson twins, I dare say?'

‘Michaela and Felicity,' Mrs King concurred, her face brightening at this evidence that the Head did indeed know every girl personally. ‘Would Connie be in their class? It
would
be so nice for her. They could be chums.'

‘Well, they're a bit older, of course. Constance is only just twelve, I believe' - affirmatory smiles - ‘And the Simpson girls are over thirteen. But I'll see what could be arranged. And now, perhaps you'd like to see one of the dormitories?'

These dormitories were not inspiring, being the former housemaids' sleeping quarters in the attic and guest bedrooms on the second floor that had been crudely sliced in half with plasterboard partitions, but she sensed that the Kings were won over already. She opened the door of the drawing-room and looked out into the front hall.

‘Ah, Madeleine,' she said, catching sight of a passing girl, ‘would you show Constance King the Lower Fourth for me, and perhaps the studio, and bring her back here in ten minutes? Thank you, dear.'

Madeleine smiled winningly at Constance, but as soon as the Head turned away her expression changed.

‘Are you going to be a new girl?' she asked indifferently as they walked along a dark corridor. ‘(That's the staff-room) … You'll hate it here.'

‘Yes, I know,' said Constance unexpectedly.

‘Everyone has nicknames. Mine's Madine. They'll probably call you Con, if you're lucky. Otherwise …' her voice trailed away. She couldn't remember Constance's surname, and was unable to come up with an instant, cruel invention.

‘At my school now I'm called Goggles,' confided Constance unwisely, in a bid for friendship. Madeleine was slight, dark, intense; she had liked her on sight.

Madeleine opened a door on to bedlam. ‘Shut up everyone!' she shouted, and as they turned towards her she pushed Constance ahead of her into the room. ‘This is Goggles. She's starting next term. Her people have got an Austin Seven.'

Constance looked numbly at the half-dozen strange faces that turned towards her.

‘It's only hired,' she muttered to Madeleine.

‘But they've had to
hire
it,' added Madeleine, and to Constance, ‘My people have got a Humber Hawk. It's the same car as Old Ma B.'

‘Who's Old Ma B?' asked Constance.

‘You've just been to see her, stupid. Mrs Birmingham. Who d'you think?'

How was I supposed to know? thought Constance. I hate this place. I hate them all. How shall I ever learn their names? I don't want to come here. I wish Mummy and Daddy didn't have to go away again. I wish I could go with them. Why can't I go to school in Kenya like Stella? Why do I have to stay behind? Oh God, let them not send me here. But she said out loud, “Course I knew that. Mick and Flick told me.'

‘Do you know Mick and Flick?'

‘Well, I don't exactly know them. Their father works with my father.'

Madeleine swung round. ‘Is it true, Flick? Do you know each other?'

‘Shut up Madeleine, don't be such a bully. What are your people called?' Felicity asked Constance.

‘King. Mr and Mrs King. I mean, hmm' - her parents' Christian names sounded funny when she said them -‘George and Paula King.'

‘Yes, we do know them,' Flick said to the room at large, and then, ‘It's not as bad as all that here. You'll have a godmother for your first term.'

Constance's heart leapt. Was that really possible? Would cosy, snuggly Auntie Meg be allowed to stay with her for the first term? That would be wonderful. She smiled gratefully at Flick as Madeleine led her out.

Back in the drawing-room she found her parents waiting. The fat, squashy sofas somehow diminished them and made them look almost like children, sitting much lower than the Headmistress who, from a high-backed wing-chair, motioned Constance to sit beside her mother. ‘Every new girl has a godmother for her first term,' the Head was saying, and Constance smiled in relief. ‘That is, an older girl is assigned to look after
her, show her round, and help her till she finds her feet.'