No Talking after Lights (18 page)

The Head stood up slowly and with an effort, the creases deepening around her thick ankles as her feet took the weight of her bulky body. She smoothed her cardigan with one hand and with the other she turned off the table lamp. In near-darkness she inhaled the summer smells - the great round bowl of roses on the book table, the fresh green night air crowding in from the trees outside, and the faintly dusty odour that came from her own body and permeated her clothes. In
the midst of life we are in death. A rose petal or two lay beached on the polished surface of the table, rocking in the draught that breathed through the room when she closed the door behind her.

As Henrietta Birmingham drove her car past the cottage she could see its lights still burning and hoped that timid, gawky Diana Monk was not bearing the brunt of Miss Parry's dangerous anger.

‘Monkey, get the sherry out,
Monkey, get the sherry out,
Monkey, get the sherry out,
We'll both get squiffy!'

Diana heard the sharpness concealed within Sylvia's nonsense words, and closed the book she was marking with a decisive slap, as though she had finished with it.

‘Perfectly timed!' she said. ‘I couldn't half do with a glass myself. Why don't we go one better and broach the gin?'

‘Naughty, naughty Monks! I'm corrupting you. Now I'll educate you. Don't say “couldn't half”. It's common. Mustn't give the game away.'

They drank their pink gins in silence until Diana said, ‘Tell me about Old Ma B. I need to know.'

‘I'm in trouble. She caught me in a rage. She saw my face. I could tell she was shocked.'

‘How did you get out of it?'

‘Ducking and weaving as usual, ducking and weaving. It can't last.'

‘Should you see a doctor?'

‘Christ Al-bloody mighty, you're almost as bad as her.
She
said psychiatrist. Trick cyclist, loony-bin. You both think I'm barmy.'

‘Why today? What made you blow up?' asked Diana, ignoring the gibe.

'Haven't the foggiest,' said Sylvia, and thought, Here's to the gin bottle, drowner of sorrows; here's to my childhood, which killed my tomorrows; here's to my mother, what would people think; here's to the bitters that make my drink pink. Really I'm quite brilliant when I'm pickled.

Time for bed, Monkey. I mean, sorry,
Miss
Monk. I mean, of course, Diana, the huntress with the silver ow and barrow. Who said that?'

One day it'll be Hermione, thought Sylvia Parry in the watches of the night. If it's the last thing I do before I leave this place.

It was Hermione's week to be meals monitor. Graceful in her impartial sweetness, she was marshalling everyone into orderly queues between the first and second gongs. The prefects, as one of their privileges, were allowed to stay in their common-room until the second gong, so she was single-handedly in charge until a member of staff came to lead them into the dining-room. Hermione enjoyed the attention which this duty focused upon her.

She had already decided to be an actress after leaving school, although her parents would disapprove. They just wanted her to come out, be presented and everything, do a Season, perhaps six months at a smart secretarial place, and then marry the first suitable man who came along. She and the rest of the fifth-formers attended regular dancing classes to learn ‘Strip the Willow', ‘The Dashing White Sergeant' and other Scottish reels, as well as steering each other round the gym in a parody of the foxtrot or, to the staccato rhythm of
Jealousy
, the tango. On these occasions Hermione never had to be the man and lead. That was left to the strapping girls with beefy arms who would be greatly handicapped when the time came for their first dances. They would discover that the transition to mirror-image dancing, one hand resting lightly on a partner's shoulder rather than steering firmly behind her back, was never easy. But Hermione,
quintessentially feminine, was never one of these substitute males. Skilled though she was at dancing and small-talk, Hermione felt she deserved a wider audience than that of her social peers.

She stood at the top of the Covered Way subduing the impatient girls by the direction of her eyes and smile. Elaborately ordinary, as only the selfconsciously extraordinary can be, she threw an admonishing frown towards a late-comer, raised one crescent eyebrow at a whisperer, pretended to count heads as a pretext for displaying her long fingers and oval nails, buffed to a sheen with chamois. Her audience hung on each look and gesture and when she finally turned to greet Miss Valentine, a wave of emotion shimmered like silent applause. Hermione, buoyed up by worship, feigned the utmost humility.

‘Everyone's been frightfully good, Miss Valentine,' she said, as though thanking them. ‘I think we're all here.' Her cotton frock moulded her thighs for an instant like marble drapery as she turned to precede them all down the corridor leading to the dining-room.

Before grace was said, the Head called for silence. ‘I am sorry to say,' she announced in slow, authoritative tones, ‘that news has come of another theft, and the most serious yet. Someone has entered a room belonging to a member of staff and removed valuable items of jewellery. This matter is going beyond the bounds of the school and I shall have no alternative but to report it to the police. The staff member concerned believes she saw the culprit leaving her room. I am prepared to give her one final chance if she will come and speak to me in my study before tonight's bedtime. Otherwise outside agencies will have to be called in. Meanwhile I have given instructions that, as well as cancelling all sweet allowances, there will be no more puddings at lunch or supper from now on.'

A groan arose and heads turned as the girls grimaced at one another.

‘And now, may we have grace, please?' said Mrs Birmingham.

The wooden forms rocked and chair-legs scraped as the school sat down to lunch.

‘Whose were the things that got stolen?' said Charmian, her eyes shining, eager for information.

‘How should I know?' said Rachel.

‘Must've been one of the matrons,' said Mick. ‘They're the only ones anywhere near the dorms.'

‘Not necessarily. Could've been Miss Roberts,' Charmian said.

‘Nobody'd dare,' said Rachel.

‘Wouldn't they?' asked Constance. ‘Someone might. Someone's taken awfully big risks already.'

Charmian's mind sang in triumph at her own bravado. She felt vivid and important, and the fact that no-one knew - except Constance, who would now be more stodgy and disapproving than ever – didn't diminish the bright flame that she carried like an Olympic torch. It was so easy! You just needed to be bold and quick. She'd been in and out of Peach's room in moments. It wasn't for the sake of the miserable little string of greyish seed-pearls or the silver cross and chain - she knew perfectly well that they were just cheap necklaces - it was for the thrill of getting away with it. No-one had seen her; she was certain of that. Mrs Birmingham was bluffing. She'd slipped in after seeing the doctor on a pretext, knowing quite well that Miss Peachey would have to stay with him for another twenty minutes. Then she had gone late into class with the truthful excuse that she'd had to see the doctor. It had been brilliantly planned and carried out. She would get Constance to hide the trinkets, so that she herself was ostentatiously accounted for all afternoon.

After Rest Charmian cornered her.

‘Say you've got the curse and you're off games,' she gabbled. The stuff's in the bottom of my pencil-case. In my desk. Hide it - you-know-where …' she would have scampered off, but Constance caught her arm.

‘
No,
' she said fiercely. ‘I can't. I had the curse last week.'

‘Oh, you're so
wet,
' said Charmian. ‘Botheration! You are a flipping nuisance. Now I'll have to think of something else. If I can …'

Later, as Constance sat on the tiled wall surrounding the swimming-pool, her towel on her lap, pulling the tight rubber bathing-cap over her hair, the games mistress blew her whistle shrilly and beckoned her over.

‘I thought you weren't swimming, dear?' she said. ‘I thought you had a tummy-pain and wanted to lie down. I told Charmian to say that would be all right.'

‘No, I… I'm OK now. Honestly. I feel fine.'

‘Well, better not to take any risks. Sit on the side for now and just watch.'

The afternoon clouded over and without the rays of the sun it became quite cool. Constance sat with the towel round her shoulders, shivering.

Mrs Birmingham was in her study, talking on the telephone.

‘I expect that was wise,' she said sympathetically. ‘A funeral is very distressing for a child. It might only upset her further … Do you discuss her mother with her? Not at all? And she doesn't seem to want to ask any questions? … Very well, then. A fresh start. But I don't think you should assume she will forget, you know, Mr Dunsford-Smith … Well, you must be relieved that she seems to be taking it so well. We shall miss her, of course. I'll ask Matron to send her things
on, by Carter Paterson. Do give Sheila our love. Tell her the girls are praying for her …'

She replaced the telephone heavily in its black cradle and looked across at Miss Roberts.

‘I wonder if parents are right to try and hide death from children? I know he means well, but being wrenched away from school and all her friends at a moment's notice, suddenly given a series of expensive treats in London … the poor child must be very confused and unhappy.'

‘
And
it forces her to pretend she's having a wonderful time! I think it's totally misguided,' said Peggy Roberts. ‘Sheer madness. She's lost her mother, poor little soul, and no amount of ice-creams or visits to the circus can alter that. Why didn't you tell him so?'

‘I don't feel as sure about it as you do. He may be right. She's only thirteen. She can't have been close to her mother in the last two years, except in the holidays. I don't know. Perhaps it
is
the best way to help her get over it.'

‘On the contrary. Now she has to make a secret of it. She can only cry when she's by herself. In a year that child will be unrecognizable. Withdrawn. Defensive. Her father will marry again, I suppose. Well, it's none of our business any longer. Does he want a refund for the second half of term?'

‘Half a term's notice must be given,' quoted Mrs Birmingham, ‘though it seems rather mercenary to insist. I'd better talk to Miss Peachey about packing up her things. I'll have Waterman look out her trunk.'

Later Miss Peachey emptied Sheila's drawers, throwing away a few papers hidden under her knickers and the tightly folded notes that had presumably passed between her and Charmian in class. She read one which said, ‘I'll be friends again if you solemly sware to be loyl. Anyhow, I've got something to tell you. So
don't be soppy and suck up to Gogs, OK?' She didn't bother with the rest. She hesitated over a couple of letters from Sheila's mother, finally placing them between the pages of Sheila's Bible. The child would need this evidence, in years to come, that her mother had loved her.

She filled the trunk rapidly; books and shoes and sheets at the bottom, ornaments wrapped carefully inside vests and pants, the photograph of Sheila's mother tenderly folded in tissue paper. She tied the two diagonal straps on top and lugged it down to the back door herself, to wait for collection.

As she did so she wondered whether the Head was right not to involve the police in discovering the identity of the school thief. They could have taken fingerprints, traced the culprit - maybe even got her precious pearl necklace back. On the other hand, from Mrs Birmingham's point of view, one had to consider the scandal. Police turning up and then gossip, local people asking questions; it would be in the paper quick as winking. No, she could see they wouldn't care for that.

The school dragged through the bright days of high summer. At the outset the seniors had treated talk of stealing with dismissive irritation - ‘It's just the blinking squits being tiresome again!' - but now it impugned their own effectiveness as prefects and moral arbiters. Hermione had taken aside one or two juniors with ‘pashes' on her, only to find that, despite the special favours she'd hinted at in return for disclosure, they seemed to know nothing. Once she caught Constance gazing at her with such perturbing intensity that she nearly summoned her too; but Gogs was a new girl: no-one would confide in
her
.

The school limped on, suppurating inwardly. In the
school photograph for that year the staff looked tense, and Mrs Birmingham's normally benevolent expression was equivocal. The straight lines of girls -juniors cross-legged and adorable at the front, seniors buxom and reliable at the back - hid a shared guilt, a mystery unsolved, a culprit whose face and frock were as clean as everyone else's.

At the staff meeting on the first Friday of the month they talked about the need to crack down on incidents of fainting in church, which were clearly hysterical in origin and distracting to the rest of the congregation. Finally the Head raised the subject of theft.

‘I confess myself entirely baffled,' she said. ‘We know - we think we know - that the culprit is in the Lower Fourth, because most of the stealing has taken place within that form, though even that isn't certain, and there was, of course, the matter of Miss Peachey's jewellery. I have spoken to each girl individually. Miss Valentine and I' - she glanced towards the form mistress - ‘have spent many hours discussing it. I am inclined to think we are not dealing with one thief, but at least two, possibly several, all shielding one another; but even that is just a guess. I have not one shred of evidence. Everyone's locker has been searched, and all the desks. Nothing. So, as we're driven to desperate measures, I am going to do something that makes me feel very uneasy. I should like each of you to write down on these scraps of paper the name of the girl
you
think is most likely to be responsible. I will then interrogate, there is no other word for it, those whose names appear most often. It is not fair, but I simply don't know what else to do.' She handed round a neatly torn fan of paper slips.