No Talking after Lights (2 page)

Mrs King put her hand on Constance's. There, darling, won't that be nice?'

Constance shook her head, bit her lip and stared at the pale-blue carpet.

Just then there was an urgent knock on the interconnecting door to the study. A tall woman with her hair drawn back severely entered and said, ‘Mrs Birmingham, excuse me for interrupting but I wonder if I might have a word?'

‘Miss Roberts, my Deputy,' said the Head smoothly, to cover her surprise. ‘Yes, of course.' Then she turned to the Kings. ‘Will you forgive me for a moment?' She rose to her feet and swept through to the adjoining room.

‘Darling, we love it!' said Constance's mother in a low voice as the door closed behind Mrs Birmingham. ‘It's a beautiful school in the heart of the country, and the girls seem charming.
Such
nice manners.'

‘Yes, I must say I'm impressed,' her father agreed.

And what about me? thought Constance silently. I'm the one who's supposed to be coming here. Doesn't anybody care what I think? But she knew better than to argue here, in this intimidatingly grand, strange room.

Mrs Birmingham returned, her face a solemn mask.

‘Tragic news … tragic news,' she said. ‘I am afraid it has just been announced on the wireless that his Majesty King George the Sixth died last night in his sleep.'

Mrs King's face crumpled with shock, and her husband instinctively straightened his back and sat rigidly as though to attention. Before they could detain her with conventional expressions of grief, the Head went on, ‘I am afraid I shall have to call an immediate
assembly and break the news to the school. I don't know if there was anything more you wanted to ask?'

‘No, no. We quite understand. Forgive us for intruding at such a sad moment,' said Mr King, and the three of them were quietly ushered out.

The Lower Fourth were sitting in a geography lesson, silent and unresponsive. The old-fashioned radiators made the classroom stuffy and they stared out of the blurred windows at the rain that swept across in slanting sheets and obliterated the view.

Geography was taught by Ginny Valentine, their form mistress. Small and pretty, with curly black hair, blue eyes and a brilliant smile, Miss Valentine was popular. Unlike most members of staff, she wore makeup every day and not just for Parents' Weekends. Her nose was always matt with powder, her mouth a bright fuchsia pink, and her ear-rings sparkled as she gesticulated and swung round from the blackboard. This third period on Wednesday morning was usually enjoyable, for Ginny was a good teacher, enthusiastic and spontaneous. But today even her cheerful personality was subdued by the February gloom. She looked up at the sound of a knock on the door of Austen, their form-room.

‘Come in!' she fluted, and Miss Roberts entered.

The girls automatically rose to their feet until she said tersely, ‘Sit down everyone!' She walked past the rows of desks to where Miss Valentine stood beside the blackboard. Everyone perked up. A visit from the Deputy Head meant something important must have happened. The Lower Fourth sat unusually still and strained to hear as the two women spoke in low voices for a few moments. Then Miss Roberts hurried out of the room.

Ginny Valentine waited for the class to compose
themselves and give her their full attention. Then she said, There will be a special assembly at 11.15, after a shortened break. The Head will address the whole school. I can tell you nothing more at present. And now' - she smiled briefly, and the attentive faces lightened - ‘as there are only five minutes left of the lesson, I want you to open your geography books at page 114. Michaela, will you distribute the prep books, please?'

Michaela, the elder by twenty minutes of the Simpson twins, walked self-importantly to the front of the class and collected a pile of exercise books. Those that were almost finished were dog-eared and crumpled; the new ones were still crisp, with shiny covers and fresh white edges. On the cover, inside a rectangular box with dotted lines, each girl wrote her name and form number. Plain pages alternated with lined ones in geography and biology books (for drawing maps and diagrams); there was squared paper for maths, algebra and geometry, lined paper with red margins for all the other subjects. Geography exercise books were always green, maths ones brown, history blue, biology red, and so on. Brown was for boredom -nearly everyone was hopeless at maths - red, for blood. They hadn't yet reached the bloody bits in ‘bilge', for they tackled the reproductive system just before GCE, when they were sixteen and old enough to handle the facts of life. The Lower Fourth were only doing amoeba and spirogyra. Green signified maps and hills and jolly Miss Valentine. Her brisk voice pattered on about rain-shadow areas and ox-bow rivers. She wrote on the board, the chalk making a precise, crunchy sound, saying as she went along: ‘Read Chapter Fourteen and answer questions one, three and five at the end. Use diagrams or maps where necessary to illustrate your answers. Prep to be handed in before supper on Thursday … that's tomorrow, Sheila, isn't it?'

While the twenty-three girls were copying this into their rough books, Charmian - small and blonde with attractive, foxy features - nudged her best friend. ‘Stop dreaming, soppy date. She means you!'

Sheila frowned, ruled a line under Miss Valentine's last comment in her book ('4/10 Sheila: you can do better than this, and why no map?') and underlined the words ‘geography prep' twice.

The Covered Way during break hummed with the sound of 120 voices as the girls speculated on the possible reasons for an unprecedented second assembly. They queued up for milk in squat bottles, pulling a tab to remove the cardboard disc on top and drinking through a straw. The seniors were allowed tea, which a prefect poured out of a huge, dented teapot into thick-rimmed cups. Some girls crowded round the board hoping to see their names on the parcels list. The bell tolled early for the end of break and they lined up automatically in forms to file along the passage and downstairs into hall.

The Hon. Henrietta Birmingham was a devout woman. She had fallen to her knees beside her chair in the study to pray as soon as she had despatched Miss Roberts to give the staff news of the King's death.
Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace
, she had intoned mentally.
Comfort the widows and orphans
, and
God save the King
… God
save our new Queen Elizabeth
. Elizabeth the Second, she thought to herself, trying out the sound. And now I suppose our present Queen Elizabeth will become the Queen Dowager. She felt an affinity with the newly widowed queen, having been born in the same year, 1900, into the same sort of Scottish family - though her own was not quite as aristocratic as the Bowes-Lyons. She often reflected that she too had married a man whose character was
less formidable than her own. She did not dwell on that thought, which was disloyal, and besides she didn't care to think too much about her ailing husband, who spent his days at the Lodge peevishly confined to bed.

During break she wondered what to say to the girls. The King had not been well for some time. He had looked terribly frail in recent newspaper photographs as he waved goodbye to Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh on their departure for Kenya. She had heard a rumour that he had had a lung removed, but there was no need to mention that.

When the bell rang for the end of break she composed herself, patted her snow-white hair neatly back into its accustomed waves and waited until the shuffle of feet towards the common-room had subsided. Then she and Miss Roberts began their stately progress down the stairs and on to the dais. The school awaited them in silence.

‘Girls,' said Mrs Birmingham in a low, modulated voice, ‘I'm afraid I have tragic news for you. It has been announced this morning on the BBC that our beloved king, His Majesty King George the Sixth, has died.'

The uplifted faces took on shocked, grave expressions as the girls searched for an appropriate response to the news. The king's death was a historic event, and they wanted to look suitably patriotic. Everyone except the juniors, who were too little to be devious, covertly checked the staff and seniors. Many people glanced towards Hermione Mailing-Smith, the most popular girl in the school, who looked touchingly fragile and dewy-eyed. None of them felt genuinely, personally bereaved - how could they? - but everyone was anxious that they should seem to be. Charmian Reynolds burst into tears. Sheila leant across and patted Charmian's shuddering back.

‘Oh, Charmie,' she muttered, ‘isn't it ghastly? Never mind …'

Before any girl had time to become overwrought - if one did, they'd all start, the Head thought to herself; emotions ran like wildfire through adolescent girls -she continued in a firm voice: ‘And now, it would, I think, be appropriate if the school were to sing the National Anthem: God Save the
Queen.
'

She glanced at Miss Valentine, who left the row of teachers and seated herself at the piano. The school rose to its feet. As the first, sombre notes gave their cue, several more girls began to sob. Strong young voices rose tremulously in acknowledgement of their new sovereign. When they had ended with a rousing ‘Go-od save the Queen!' the Head said, ‘Let us pray.'

Heads bowed, the staff and girls of Raeburn School prayed fervently for the soul of the late King George the Sixth, for the consolation of his widow, and for the reign of his daughter.

‘And now, girls, will you all return to your form-rooms quietly and in single file for your next lesson.'

Mrs Birmingham and Miss Roberts departed in an august diminuendo of powder and the cloying scent of Yardley's lavender brilliantine, which Miss Roberts used to keep her hair under control.

Constance King and her parents were driving back through dank Sussex lanes, under colonnades of dripping branches, past the occasional driveway flanked by heavy gates, through nodding villages with one butcher and two pubs. Constance sat in the back seat of the car and listened to her parents talking about the school fees. When she thought she could speak in a steady voice she leaned forward so that her head was between their shoulders.

‘Please not, Mummy. Please don't make me go there.'

‘Buck up, darling, don't be such a silly billy. Why ever not? It's a beautiful school in the heart of the country. The Simpson girls are getting on very well there. And it's
most
generous of Daddy.'

‘Mummy, honestly, please, not there. They call the Headmistress Old Ma B and they'll call me Goggles and the girls are awful.'

‘Constance, control yourself and stop being so ridiculous,' her father said. ‘And don't let me ever hear
you
using that impertinent, unkind nickname for your new Headmistress. Now listen to me. I'm sick and tired of your grizzling. You're a thoroughly ungrateful little girl. After all the trouble we've been to.' Trying to see her face in the rear view mirror, he went on firmly, ‘I shall have to sit down when we get home and work out whether Mummy and I can afford it. It's going to mean a great many sacrifices. But if we do decide to send you there, I don't want any nonsense.'

‘Daddy,' said Constance evenly. ‘I beg of you, I really and truly beg of you in the name of - everything -don't send me there. I'll go anywhere else. Let me go on to Wimbledon High like everyone else. If not that, I'd much rather come to Kenya with you and save you the sacrifices anyway. Please, please, please,
please
don't make me go to Raeburn.'

Her mother turned and looked into Constance's desperate face. Her National Health glasses were askew and beginning to mist up.

‘Darling, Daddy and I will talk it over this evening between ourselves and I promise we'll bear your wishes in mind. All right? In return, will you trust us, and abide by our decision like a good girl?'

Constance nodded.

‘Is that a promise?'

Another nod.

‘There's a sensible girl. Now, don't get car-sick, we're
going to stop for lunch as soon as we see somewhere nice.'

‘I wish I had my black tie with me,' said her father.

‘You couldn't have known, darling,' her mother said. ‘No-one will mind.'

Although it was nearly eleven o'clock and her usual bedtime was 7.30, Constance's curtains were drawn back and she was still awake. She had been sitting at the top of the stairs, listening through the banisters as her parents talked about the school. They hadn't taken her wishes into account at all. Daddy had said that the Colonial Office would contribute £150 a year towards the fees, and if he cashed some shares and they sold the piano - they couldn't have taken it to Kenya in any case, and it would cost a fortune to store …

Constance heard, understood, and knew herself to be doomed.

Everyone said summer was the best term. There was swimming and tennis instead of hockey, and long, light evenings when all the girls were allowed to stay up half an hour later than in the other two darker terms. Even after lights out, those who were lucky and had a bed under the window could read till almost nine o'clock. They woke soon after sunrise, as soon as it was light, to the sound of wood-pigeons cooing in the high surrounding trees. Everyone wore striped cotton frocks, not the stiff, scratchy, Harris-tweed uniform of the rest of the year; they wore straw hats for Sunday and soft, shapeless, felt hats on ordinary days - the more shapeless the better because it showed they had been there a long time.

Waterloo Station at the beginning of term was crowded with schoolgirls in brand-new or freshly washed frocks, newly name-taped socks and shiny new shoes. Fathers supervised the buying of train and platform tickets while mothers hovered round with last-minute advice, reassurance, or expressions of love.

‘Remember, darling,' Paula King said to Constance, ‘when your Parker 51 needs filling, don't you try and do it. Take it to Mrs Birmingham and ask her politely if she would mind filling it for you.'