No Talking after Lights (31 page)

Sylvia was containing her rage, though the purplish islands of colour on her neck betrayed it. Diana drew a deep breath and spoke in a tense, high voice. ‘I would like your assurance, Headmistress, that this change of accommodation is not in any way a punishment. I think you may not appreciate how lucky it was that we happened to be there. Hermione had already been assaulted, and would undoubtedly have been violated if we had not intervened.'

‘Yes, Miss Monk, I am indeed aware of that. I do not quite follow your reasoning. Why should you regard being moved as any sort of
punishment?
'

A dangerous silence fell. The three women looked at one another, wary and poised in the charged atmosphere. Sylvia thought, good God, she's going to make the supreme sacrifice. She's going to own up like a
loyal little friend protecting her accomplice. I can't let that happen.

‘Of course we are not being punished,' she said icily. ‘We are, however, being inconvenienced. I personally shall be considering whether to offer my resignation. And now, if you will excuse me, I still have a number of reports to write.'

How painful, O Lord, are the workings of the human heart
, thought Henrietta, slumping briefly in her great wing-chair as she gazed at the door that closed abruptly behind them.
Shed Thy light upon these two misguided women, that they may see the infinite blessings Thou dost offer to all who follow Thee
.

The rooks croaked harshly in the woods and from below her window came the sound of giggling. ‘Education! Education!' someone sang, and other voices took it up: ‘You are nothing but vexation!/Stupid pupil, harassed teacher/Each is an unhappy creature…'

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, thought Henrietta Birmingham. She worried briefly about whether she would have to give William Truett a reference. ‘Capable gardener - not to be trusted with young girls.' She could hardly say that. Perhaps (she smiled wryly to herself) it was the fate of young girls to meet untrustworthy men.

Sylvia and Diana walked to the cottage in silence. Diana was afraid - of Sylvia, of losing her, of her own cowardice, of the uncertain future. She could not resign from yet another school. She didn't want to leave Raeburn. She had been happy, and not just because of her love for Sylvia. Her mother and uncles depended on her. She dare not risk the loyal grand gesture. But Sylvia would regard it as a betrayal if she stayed.

Sylvia fiddled impatiently with the key and flung the door open. A hot, stale, womanly smell cluttered the still rooms. Armchairs sagged; exam papers were scattered untidily over the table. The rooms were bare of any ornament, except for Sylvia's overflowing ashtrays. The lino-covered floors needed sweeping. How drab it is, thought Diana, yet surely I have been happy here?

‘Shall I make some coffee?' she asked.

‘Don't be so bloody ingratiating!' sneered Sylvia. ‘Coffee! What the hell use is coffee at a time like this? I need a
drink.
'

‘I don't think we've got anything,' Diana said.

‘There's a bottle in my locker. Next to the bed. I suggest you go and fetch it.'

Two hours later the gin bottle was almost empty. Sylvia sprawled across a chair, one arm hanging down; ash had fallen from her drooping cigarette on to the floor. Diana, exhausted by tension and alcohol, watched her through half-closed eyes. The sun was setting and the room had got darker, but neither stood up to put the light on.

Finally Sylvia said, “S all right, Monkey. I understand. I understand. Your family. Your
people,
' she added, mockingly.

‘They do depend on me …'

‘I damage everything I touch,' Sylvia began. ‘Don't deny it, Monks, I'm being serious. And honest, for a change. No, I won't go and see a trick-cyclist to please Old Ma B, to make me safe. What could anyone do for me? I'm rotten, Monkey, rotten. I am. A bad apple. I'll go away. Time to start again somewhere else. All I can do is keep moving on. Another school, another Hermione, maybe even another Monkey. Holidays, back home to Mother. Nowhere else to go. She's senile nowadays, or she pretends to be, so as not to have to
talk to me. Deaf as well. She hobbles along to chapel on Sundays, with me the dutiful daughter supporting her, and we pray to God the Father. Heavenly Father. Eternal Father, strong to save.' She laughed. ‘“Ephemeral father, weak to destroy, if only I had been a boy!” Good, eh? Come on, Monkey, you've got to laugh.'

Diana, sitting rigidly in her chair, eyes fixed on Sylvia, suddenly pitched forward, hands clasped over her head, and buried her face in her lap. She rocked to and fro, choking spasmodically as though about to be sick. Sylvia made no move. She was used to pain.

Starlings rose and fell like a ship with the breathing of sleeping children. In the light midsummer sky the moon hung white, marbled with grey, above the slate-blue trees. Constance had set her alarm clock for five-thirty and put it under her pillow, but she could not sleep. What if it didn't go off, or if she woke one of the others? She could see the face of the man in the moon. Was it night in Africa too? She tried to work out the time difference. It was about three hours later there. Say, four o'clock in the morning. Her parents and Stella would be asleep, probably. The dawn would be breaking. It would be evening by the time Auntie Marjie rang them. They'd have to take her away.

I'm not happy here, she thought. I never could be. I haven't got any friends. The swimming is fun, OK, I like that. But there won't be any swimming next term. Hockey. I can't play hockey. It'd be easier without Charmie, and she's not coming back. Sheila might, I suppose. I
do
want to leave. Her eyes drooped, and she struggled to keep them open. She got up and walked to the window.

The horizontal branches of the cedar made a strong, jagged shape against the sky. The lawn fell away
beneath the window towards the rhododendrons. The school cruised over the rolling landscape. It felt familiar and solid and safe. I
do
want to leave! said Constance to herself. She went back to her bed and took the clock from beneath her pillow. It was hard to read the time, so she put on her glasses and held it up towards the window. One-thirty. Should I turn it off, in case it wakes people? She deliberated, her finger poised above the serrated round knob on top. No. Let it ring. She climbed back into bed and slept.

In the pearly morning light the clock rang, waking Constance and no-one else. She gathered up her vest and knickers, socks and sandals, and, clutching them inside her dressing-gown, tiptoed to the bathroom. School uniform had been a problem - all the local people knew the Raeburn uniform, and she would have been stopped at the station - so she had decided to wear her flowered cotton dressing-gown. With the belt round her waist it could pass for a summer frock.

She washed her hands and face, cleaned her teeth, stuffed her nightie inside the sponge-bag and hung it back on its hook. Then, with fast-beating heart, she tiptoed down the back stairs. The school was silent. As Constance walked through the Covered Way for the last time, past the notice-board with the deportment ladder, meals rota and parcels list, she heard a door shutting somewhere behind her. The Scandies must be getting up.

The great double door at the end of the Covered Way was locked. Constance rattled it, but it wouldn't open. Ignoring her momentary surge of relief, she thought again, I want to run away! The changing-room door was locked too, and the windows were shut. She went into the lavatories, and found the window of the end one open. Heaving herself up from the lavatory seat on to the windowsill, she climbed awkwardly through,
jumped down and stood outside in the warm morning air.

I've got to say goodbye to Flopsy, she thought. That's not procrastinating. (
‘Pro
', for;
‘eras
', tomorrow; ‘
tenere
', to hold: holding off until tomorrow, Miss Monk had explained in Latin, and Constance remembered her delight as she suddenly realized how language was made and why Latin mattered.) She put the memory aside and stepped into the dark, rich-smelling shed. The sleeping animals quivered and sat up, ears pricked. Constance walked over to Flopsy's cage in the corner. She slid her hand inside it to where he cowered against the back and stroked his fur, running her fingertips gently along his flattened ears.

‘Bye-bye, Flopsy,' she said. ‘Be a good bunny. I do love you.'

As she turned away she worried about who would give him his oats and water. She should have left a note for Rachel or someone. Too late now. On an impulse she turned back, took him out of his cage and set him down gently on the grass under the apple trees.

‘There you go, Flopsy,' she told him. ‘Eat up. You're free.'

She climbed through the rough grass behind the shed towards a gap in the high hedge that led down on to the road. Birds were singing in the treetops and the clear, still morning heralded another flawless day.

Walking along the road that she had travelled so often in the school coach, going to and from church in best straw hats and Sunday dresses - the sprigged Liberty print ones worn for Speech Day and church only — she looked at the flowers in the hedgerows, remembering a biology lesson with Miss Parry. She had led them along this same road and made them write down the names in their exercise books, under the heading Common English Wild Flowers. People
had straggled and gossiped, dawdling behind and not paying attention. But Constance, a town girl, had been fascinated, and had written down all the names. Now she recognized them, and took pleasure in being able to identify them. Miss Parry was right. It
did
make a difference if you knew what they were called.

There were tiny wild pansies, purple and violet, and golden birdsfoot trefoil and sky-blue periwinkles and veined harebells; foxgloves, and crimson poppies that crumpled and faded the moment you picked them. Fragile things like dandelions, for telling the time, old man's beard and, poking through the exuberant greenery, the spidery heads of cow parsley. There were stinging nettles just the height of your legs, and plantains or dock to soothe the itching. Much more dangerous, Miss Parry had warned them ('Are you concentrating, there at the back? This is important so
listen!')
were the poisonous, shiny berries of deadly nightshade. Most dramatic of all were thrusting spikes crowned with brilliant red and yellow berries that were called wild arum, and which country people nicknamed lords and ladies. It had been fun, that lesson, observing something she'd never looked at properly before.

I could pick some flowers for Auntie Marjie, she thought, and suddenly it seemed a brilliant idea. She bent down to snap off a thick, engorged stem of wild arum, and then, across the other side of the road, just before it curved round a corner, she caught sight of another. Smiling to herself at the thought of her aunt exclaiming with pleasure as she arranged Constance's beautiful bunch of flowers in the vase on her drawing-room windowsill, she headed diagonally into the road. She didn't even hear the car as it turned the corner sharply, braked, swerved, and just failed to avoid her. She heard its tyres slither as they slewed across the
road. She felt gravel pressing sharply against the skin of her cheek and her crumpled right arm, and grinding into the leg which was hooked underneath her. Faintly, as though in a trance - not an unpleasant trance - she heard a woman begin to scream. The screams rose like the cries of a bird into the blue, blue sky over her head, and Constance felt vaguely that she ought to get up and see what was wrong, yet somehow she was quite disinclined to move.

‘Well you
are
in a pickle,' said Mrs Birmingham.

Constance opened her eyes. Her head felt heavy and her face hurt.

‘It's nearly dark,' she said.

‘Yes. It's after ten o'clock. I was on my way up the drive, but I thought I'd pop in once more to see if you were awake.'

‘Have I been asleep all day?'

‘They brought you in - oh, it must have been before eight o'clock this morning. Sister gave you a mild sleeping draught and put you to bed up here, so you wouldn't be disturbed. The doctor came: you remember that, don't you? How do you feel? Can you move your legs?'

The day swam hazily back into focus, assembling itself from a welter of images, some of them dream, some harshly real. Constance recalled lying on the stony surface of the lane, hearing Miss Peachey's voice in the distance, and someone screaming. She'd been touched and prodded, and then Miss Peachey and some stranger had picked her up and laid her across the back seat of a car. And then what? The doctor had been. She had a vague memory of him feeling her limbs and rearranging her more comfortably in bed. He'd taken away her pillows. She'd been given something to drink. Then the dreams - climbing and diving and flying, weightless and disembodied, flying to
Africa, but not in an aeroplane: she'd been flying in the sky, arms outstretched, soaring …

‘Mrs Birmingham - oh, please, have you told Mummy and Daddy?'

‘I put in a trunk call to your parents this morning, yes. Naturally they were very upset. Never mind all that now - we'll discuss it tomorrow. Tell me dear, how are you feeling?'

‘My head's all sort of stiff. And my arm aches like billy-o.'

Constance lifted her arm from under the sheet and looked at it aghast. It was covered with deep scratches which had been painted with yellow stuff.

‘Oh!' she said. ‘Oh, no! I remember … I got knocked down, didn't I? When I was trying to … Oh, gosh. Oh, I am sorry, honestly I am. Oh, goodness.'

‘You've had a lucky escape. The important thing is that you're safe now, and no bones broken, the doctor says. Wiggle your toes for me. There, you see?
Very
lucky.'

‘What did they say when you spoke to them?'

‘Your parents both send you their love. Now, Constance, I don't want you to talk any longer. You must get a good night's rest, and I'll come and see you again in the morning. Sister's going to bring you a little snack - you haven't eaten all day - and before you go to sleep I want you to say a prayer to thank God for having watched over you and kept you safe.'