No Talking after Lights (26 page)

‘She knows. She found out,' said Charmian flatly.

‘Who?' Constance asked.

‘Old Ma B,' said Charmian. ‘She called me in after Prayers and gave me a terrific telling-off. I couldn't care less, anyway. She gave me a note to give to Mick. The whole form'll be told. There's going to be a form meeting this afternoon. Didn't you know? Miss Valentine'Il take it and everyone's got to go. I don't care. I'll
make
Mummy take me away. I hate this measly, smelly old school.'

‘Charmie! Why didn't you tell me before?'

‘I couldn't. I'm not allowed to talk till after lunch for a week. Plus I've got to go to bed at the same time as the squits. So what? Fat lot I care.'

‘How did Old Ma B find out?'

“Cos the silly ass at Dr Barnardo's wrote her a letter. How on
earth
he knew it was me … Anyway it couldn't matter less. I just want to get away. I feel rotten.'

‘You ought to tell Matron,' said Constance. Charmian
looked unnaturally bright-eyed and her cheeks were hot with colour. ‘If you don't feel well you ought to tell Peach.'

‘I did, last night, and she wouldn't take any notice.'

‘Just like with me and my finger,' said Constance. Charmian showed a spark of interest.

‘Let me see. Oh, go on, show me, be a sport.'

‘The doctor said I mustn't. He did a new bandage today and said I mustn't undo it or it'd get infected. It looks really disgusting.'

Their heads bent over Constance's finger as she unpicked the knot in the end of the bandage. In the light from the doorway the exposed finger was a pulpy mass. The edges of the wound looked white and dead.

‘Ugh!' said Charmian, turning away. ‘It's all squelchy and horrible.'

‘I told you,' said Constance.

In the far distance the flat, rhythmical tolling of the bell signalled the end of games.

‘Quick! I haven't finished watering the pets,' said Constance. ‘Come on, you can help me.'

‘Why on earth are you doing it? That's the gardener's job.'

‘I know, but he said he was feeling groggy or something.'

‘He's probably got polio,' said Charmian. ‘He can do his own watering. As long as Flopsy's got some. Oh, come on, Gogs, I don't want to go by myself. Everyone's going to be foul. Anyhow, I'm not going to come back next term. Sucks to them.'

I shall run away, thought Constance. I've got to start planning. I'm so miserable.

Chairs scraped over the dusty parquet floor as the Lower Fourth rose to their feet. Miss Valentine entered the room.

‘Sit down everyone. Geography revision will start in about ten minutes' time, but first I have something very serious to say to you all. Michaela, will you come up to the front please? Stand here. And Charmian Reynolds, can I have you on the other side of the desk, please? Facing the class. Thank you. Now, as your form mistress, I have decided to talk to you myself, before Mrs Birmingham addresses the whole school in Prayers tomorrow. I expect you can guess what it's about. Yes, Rachel? The stealing.'

Charmian stood limply, avoiding their eyes, while Miss Valentine spelt out what had happened. She caught disjointed phrases … Thanks to the courtesy and vigilance of the director …' and This sad train of events has brought shame upon me, as your form mistress, upon Michaela, as your form captain, and most of all, of course …' but she felt neither defiance nor regret, just a great weakness. Her head was heavy and her legs hardly had the strength to hold her up. She bent first one knee and then the other, shifting her weight. The culmination of her private drama was infinitely remote and unimportant. She looked towards the window, but the sunlight speckling the grass hurt her eyes.

‘Finally,' - the voice seemed to come from a distant room - ‘I want Charmian Reynolds to tell us
why
she stole other people's property, so that we can try to understand and forgive. Charmian?
Charmian!
'

Charmian moved a couple of paces towards the desk, leaned one hand heavily upon it, and looked at Miss Valentine. Then her legs gave way beneath her and, like a statue falling, she sank to the floor in a shimmering cloud of dust.

The common that evening held the suspended heat of the day. The bracken was dry and crackled underfoot.

Larks still sang overhead in the deep blue sky that immediately preceded dusk. A tussock of moss was warm to the touch as Sylvia and Diana, their faces and bare arms reddened by the sun, sank into its springy green cushion.

‘You look awfully, you know,
flushed,
' said Diana. ‘You're not feeling ill? Did we go too fast or anything? You should have said.'

‘I'm not that feeble!' said Sylvia in exasperation. ‘For that matter, you're bright red yourself. Positively ruddy.
Not
wildly becoming, I have to say.'

‘No. Well, never mind. Hasn't it been a day for dramas? First Charmian's unmasked—'

‘What did I tell you? Didn't I say it was her all along?'

‘I remember. That day in the staff-room. How did you know?'

‘Sly little bitch. Always thought so. Sucks up to the staff, gets round everyone, manipulates the girls, forever dashing about sweet as pie. Obvious.'

‘It wasn't obvious to anyone else. You know she's been taken away in an ambulance with suspected polio.'

‘Polio my foot! That'll turn out to be another piece of manipulation, just you wait and see.'

‘Ginny was shattered by what happened. The child crashed to the floor in a dead faint, apparently. She can't have faked that.'

‘Maybe not. But it was fury at being found out that made her faint. That child's not ill, she's pretending.'

Diana lay back with her hands behind her head and gazed up at the clear, cloudless sky. She closed her eyes. After a few moments she opened them again. Sylvia's breathing had quickened and her face was tense and alert.

‘What is it?'

‘Shut up! There's someone over there in the trees. Shush, keep quiet and listen!'

Diana held her breath and after a moment she too heard a distant murmuring of voices, a stifled laugh and a little shriek. A man and a girl, by the sound of it. The two women strained to hear. Diana felt embarrassed.

‘Oughtn't we to go?' she said.

‘Don't be such a fool,' hissed Sylvia. Her colour was even higher, her face sharp with anticipation. Well I'm damned, she thought, bucolic coupling! They have to do it somewhere, I suppose. A girl's high, nervous gasp came from the middle of the coppice. She sounded very young. Lucky sod, thought Sylvia. Suddenly the shrieks and giggles turned to screams of real panic, and footsteps crashed through the trees. The two women sat up as, seconds later, the dishevelled figure of Hermione Mailing-Smith burst into the open, followed by the stumbling, hopping gardener's boy tucking his shirt into his belt with one hand and groping at his fly buttons with the other.

‘Here! Whatsamatter? Come back! I ain't finished …' His indignant yells faded abruptly as he caught sight of Sylvia and Diana.

‘Blimey,' he muttered, suddenly childish, as Sylvia stood up. Her eyes were starting from their sockets and she was shaking with rage. ‘It's the bleeding fiery furnace we've got ‘ere.'

Hermione stumbled towards them, tripping clumsily over the uneven ground.

‘Help!' she cried. ‘That filthy, horrible boy tried to …' But her voice too trailed away as she took in the extent of Miss Parry's fury. She stopped a few feet away.

‘How DARE you?' screamed Sylvia. ‘Dirty-minded, lecherous, mucky little tart! Disgusting, depraved,
squalid slut. Bitch! Cunt!' She yelled the word over and over again, shaking her head wildly from side to side. ‘Cunt cunt cunt cuntcuntCUNT!'

Diana, open-mouthed with horror, took a step towards her but Sylvia rushed forward and struck Hermione hard across the cheek.

There! That's what you deserve! Dirty … little … CUNT.'

Hermione stood as though paralysed, her hair a wild halo around her face, her arms fallen to her sides. The top button of her dress was undone, and her belt hung loose. Behind her, the gardener's boy turned and lumbered away, one hand still clutching his trousers.

‘It wasn't my fault,' Hermione said. ‘I couldn't stop him …'

At the sound of her voice Sylvia lurched forward and hit her a second time. The girl crumpled and lay in the heather, gasping and panting. Already the colour was deepening on her cheek where Sylvia's hand had struck it. Sylvia was about to rush at her again, but Diana held her from behind, pinioning her arms with desperate strength, feeling the stocky body twist and turn in a struggle to loosen her grip. Sylvia's feet lashed out wildly, trying to knock her off balance.

‘Go
away
, Hermione!' Diana gasped. ‘Quick! Run away. He's gone. You're all right. Go!'

The girl scrambled to her feet, glanced at the two women swaying and panting, and ran towards the road.

‘Bitch!' called Sylvia after her. ‘Cunt! Bitch … Let me
go!
'

There, there,' said Diana. ‘Yes, yes, I know. Calm down, it's all right now. All over. There. Good. Yes. There.'

Gradually Sylvia ceased to resist and became still. Her breath dragged up from her lungs in huge,
drowning gasps. Diana turned her round and enfolded the heaving body in her arms. The sunset flared and swept across the sky, running and merging like a glorious watercolour, paintbrush streaks of crimson and orange slashed above the horizon, the sun a reverberating copper disc.

‘I love her,' Sylvia said at last. That vile, filthy boy … I would have been so gentle, Monkey, I would have done it so tenderly, oh, Monkey, you've no idea: so infinitely tenderly.'

‘Yes, yes, I know. ‘Course you would. Poor love.'

Diana stroked Sylvia's wiry hair and sun-tanned shoulder, the acrid smell of sweat in her nostrils.

‘You never said you knew. Poor old Monkey…'

Diana inhaled deeply. The tears trickled down her hot face, drying into shining streaks like the tracks left by a snail.

In Break next day, the morning that end-of-term exams began, Constance received a rare letter from her father. Her hands trembled as she took it away to open it in secret. Perhaps her pleading had persuaded them to change their minds and she needn't run away after all. She went into the communal lavatories and, choosing the end one that had a window, she slid the bolt into its socket and sat down. Someone else was noisily at work in an adjacent cubicle. It sounded horrible, like the plop plop of a horse. She held her nose with one hand and with the other smoothed out the blue air-letter on her lap and began to read.

Dear Constance,

I hope you are reading this with your full attention because I want you to concentrate hard on what I'm going to say.

Ever since you started at Raeburn your mother and I have received weekly letters filled with nothing but complaints. We have tried to be sympathetic, and I know Mummy has written you lots of nice, cheerful letters, although she's been very busy getting us straight and meeting new people. So I have decided to write to you myself.

The crackling of Bronco interrupted her reading. The chain flushed and she heard a door bang as the unseen girl ran off.

We went to a lot of trouble to find a really good school for you. [No, you didn't, Constance thought. You picked the very first one you looked at.] We are both saddened to find you so ungrateful and uncooperative. It's time to buck up, pull yourself together and make a go of it. We don't want to have to put up with you being black-doggish all through the holidays. You will have exams coming up soon, and we expect top marks. You've been blessed with a good brain, and we know you can do well if you put your back into it. Make up your mind
now
that there'll be no more defeatism and self-pity …

It went on like that for several more lines, but Constance only skimmed the rest. She screwed the letter into a ball, threw it into the lavatory and pulled the chain. Then she sat down again with her head in her hands. She wanted to feel tears welling up, but she was quite dry-eyed. She fidgeted with the knot on her bandaged finger and unwound the gauze. The wound had closed up and was beginning to heal. With her fingernail, she picked at the scab delicately and persistently. It hurt, and her eyes began to smart. She went on till the scab had come loose, then tore it off in a fine line of pain. She squeezed at the fingertip and a ribbon of blood oozed out. At last tears prickled and she felt moisture gather in the corners of her eyes, but although she blinked several times she still could not cry.

Now I shall
definitely
run away, she thought. Then they'll have to take notice. I'll start planning today.

The bell rang for the end of Break.

Miss Parry was invigilating a depleted Lower Fourth as they laboured over the maths exam. Half-a-dozen girls had been sent home early at their parents' request, and Anne and Charmian were still in the isolation
ward at St Patrick's. The remaining sixteen sat with bent heads, pen-nibs squeaking across the squared paper.

Constance hadn't written anything. She was staring blindly out of the window. I'll go to Auntie Marjie, she thought; Norfolk can't be all that far. I'll get a train to London and then catch another train from there. The practical difficulties overwhelmed her. How would she pay for her railway tickets? How would she get to the station, let alone slip away from school unobserved? She stared at the patterns of shadow thrown by the cedar across the grass: a deep, dancing pool of shifting greens. I could get up early one morning, stop a car and ask for a lift to the village; then if I went to a shop I might be able to sell my watch …

‘Constance King! Either get on with your work or leave the room. Which is it to be?'

‘Sorry, Miss Parry. I was thinking