No Talking after Lights (6 page)

‘Constance,' said Miss Emett. ‘Listen, try not to worry. Nearly everyone's homesick at first. It gets better - and this is a lovely term. They don't mean to be unkind, you know; they're just working out where you fit in. Girls are very cliquy at this age - do you know what “cliquy” means?'

‘Yes,' muttered Constance.

‘Well, then. Find yourself a friend. Don't be proud, just ask. Lots of the others are lonely too, I expect. They all crowd round Mick and Flick because they're twins. Why don't you try Deborah? She's an interesting girl, and she must feel out of things too, being American… Look, dear: the box for the charcoal is kept here. That's right… Why not try talking to her?'

‘I must go for break now,' said Constance, knowing she sounded ungrateful when this little, dishevelled woman with whiskery skin was reaching out to her.

‘Righty-ho, then. Off you go. But mind you think about it,' said Miss Emett.

* * *

Constance's misery was crushing because she felt utterly helpless. She had no say in the adult decisions that governed her life. Do what your parents want, Constance was thinking, and you are a good child; do it willingly, like Stella, and you are a very good child: That one's no trouble at all,' her mother would say to friends, taking all the credit. But it was easy for Stella and much harder for her. If she resisted or even tried to tell them what she wanted, Mummy and Daddy just complained and called her ungrateful.

Constance would have been happy in Kenya, but her parents sent her to boarding-school because that was what people of their class did if they went abroad; why otherwise should the Colonial Office contribute £150 towards the cost? Everyone else's children were boarding, and being able to talk about Constance's beautiful English school in the heart of the Sussex countryside, along with rueful comments about how expensive the uniform was, confirmed their own status. A bookish elder daughter, hanging around with African servants, would hamstring their social life and highlight their failure to conform. In the face of these unspoken considerations Constance was powerless. But she couldn't contemplate the possibility that her parents might be selfish.

The life of the school ebbed and flowed. It rushed towards great events like Sports Day with communal excitement and preparation, everyone united in practising, running heats, making costumes, painting scenery and ensuring the school did itself justice. The second week of the summer term was not such a time. Parents' Weekend was still a fortnight away. The end-of-term play -
1066 and All That
- was newly cast and not fully into the swing of rehearsals. Yet beneath the tide of school routine the minor dramas of friendship,
rivalry and deceit preoccupied each girl. These could stir up intense passions which were usually dismissed by the staff as adolescent hysteria or sulks.

School friendships were conducted according to a rigid code. Best friends walked in twos, sat next to each other in lessons and at meals, met each other's parents and from then on always sent their love in letters. At bedtime they said good night to each other last of all. With Charmian avoiding her, Sheila would have liked to respond to Constance's timid approach, but she was still Charmie's best friend. Walking with anyone else would have been disloyal. Until the breach had been established by silence, tears, sulks, sympathy and a final row, with every member of the class taking sides and new pairs of friends emerging, it would only have made her unpopular. It was different when Charmie scampered off arm-in-arm with someone else, because everyone knew Charmie was a flirt. Sheila was the solid one, the reliable one, the rock of the relationship. All she could do was stick to the rules.

Life in the Reynolds' home had been different during the last Easter holidays. Charmian didn't say so, because it was something she dared not acknowledge. Her parents had made an effort to behave normally and conceal their estrangement from her. They only had rows at night when Charmian was supposed to be asleep. Charmian had to lie to herself, ignoring what was obviously going on. It was like standing at the edge of the sea when the tide is coming in and the sand trickles away between your toes, throwing you off balance. So she turned on her friend, becoming deceitful because she was being deceived.

None of the grown-ups took these little melodramas seriously. Childhood, after all, is an innocent, unclouded time. Children are like tumbling puppies
or singing birds. Even the most loving and sensitive parents, grannies or teachers assume that adolescent emotions are undeveloped and fleeting. How
could
they be serious, funny little monkeys? It was a tiresome phase and of course they all exaggerated wildly, but thank goodness it didn't last. Adults have forgotten the agony of growing up, when feelings are vast and incomprehensible, primitive and turbulent. Sheila and Constance suffered stoically and in silence, while Charmian vented her anger and pain on her best friend.

Every day was divided into meals and lessons and Rest; letters and parcels; sport and play; Prayers and mufti; hobbies, pets, bath-time, hair-washing and bed. Each segment of time was signalled by the heavy clanging of the bell.

Every week a different prefect had the job of bell-ringing. She had to walk - the school rules said girls must walk, never run, not even in case of fire - from her form-room or dormitory down to the cupboard in the Covered Way (which the squits, for this reason, innocently called the Cupboard Way) where the bell was kept. She would grasp its smooth wooden handle with both hands and hurl the sound in all directions, deafened by its great double thunderbolts. Its clangour would reach the form-rooms, the lavatories and changing-rooms, where girls were dreaming or conspiring; it would reverberate high up on the top floor and across the lawns, commanding people to return from the swimming-pool and tennis courts. Everyone obeyed, for without the bell's regular, impersonal ringing, the school would have collapsed into chaos. Everyone could chant the school timetable: Nine-oh, nine-forty, ten-twenty, they'd mutter (now comes Break), eleven-twenty-five, twelve-five.

* * *

After the bell for the end of the last period before lunch, Sylvia Parry arrived in the staff-room and searched impatiently in her drawer for a cigarette. The Lower Fifth, revising biology for their imminent O levels, were whipping themselves into melodrama. Many of them were stupid or lazy, with every reason to panic about their chances, and she had lost her temper.

‘For Pete's sake, Marjorie Hilton!' she had snapped at one vacant-faced, pony-loving girl who had been gazing out of the window. (She was dreaming of riding bareback, hair streaming in the wind, towards some ill-defined but glorious encounter.) ‘If you can't understand osmosis by now we might as well all give up. I'd like to take hold of that stupid brain of yours and wring it out to see what, if anything, you have retained from your years of expensive education.'

Shocked out of her fantasy, Marjorie stared at the raging figure beside the blackboard. A hand went up.

‘Well, what is it now, Wendy?'

‘Please, Miss Parry, shall I show Marjorie my notes and explain them to her?'

‘Well, of course, if you feel you may succeed where I have manifestly failed, I shall be happy to hand my job over to you. Meanwhile I suggest we leave Marjorie to wallow in her own stupidity and get on with the next block of revision.'

She knew she'd been unfair to them both but for God's sake … As she took out a Craven A, Ginny Valentine said, ‘I wouldn't if I were, you, Sylvia. There's a note in your pigeon-hole. Looks like a summons from on high.'

Sylvia tore open the pretentious crested envelope. It bore the school emblem, a three-masted sailing ship, and below it the motto
Fortiter, fideliter, feliciter
, bravely, faithfully, happily - Mrs Birmingham's dream
for her school. The note inside said, ‘Would you be good enough to come and see me before lunch? HB'

Sylvia took an urgent drag before stubbing out her precious cigarette and slamming the door.

‘Come in,' called Mrs Birmingham with a rising inflection. ‘Ah, Miss Parry. Thank you. Do sit down. A sherry?'

The Headmistress's study was a serious room, lined with bookshelves and the school group photographs for the last seven years. There were also prints of Dürer's hare and his praying hands, which economically conveyed to parents and other visitors an interest in religion, biology and art. Very few failed to recognize the prints, and only the most confident could refrain from murmuring ‘Ah, Dürer, of course…'

Mrs Birmingham's desk stood in front of tall windows. Light gilded her papers, the wooden IN and OUT trays, and a rectangular blotter with leather corners. Behind the desk stood a substantial chair that had once been her father's, more like a throne than a chair, while facing it was a much smaller chair with a high, hard back. Sylvia, motioned to the small chair, sat down with only the sherry glass to differentiate her from any girl called in for a ticking-off. Miss Roberts's desk in the other corner of the room was tactfully empty.

‘I thought it time we had a chat about how things are going this term,' the Head began neutrally. She waited, her concentration fixed and her face unsmiling.

‘I've just come from the Lower Fifth,' Sylvia said. ‘They seem to be up to scratch with their revision. One or two failures to be expected, of course, but that's unavoidable.'

‘Is it? I thought if we knew a girl was bound to fail we didn't enter her for the examination. It's bad for confidence, and bad for the school's record.'

‘Well, they're not
certain
to fail. I'm being realistic. Pessimistic even.'

‘Have you offered extra coaching? I would have to consult their parents, naturally, but few parents decline.'

Extra coaching, dear God. And when was she supposed to find the time for that, with over a hundred books to mark every week?

‘Well, let's leave that aside for the present,' Mrs Birmingham said. ‘I asked to see you because certain disturbing rumours have reached me, not for the first time, about your demeanour in class. Your handling of the girls. I thought it would be helpful to hear in your own words if there is any cause for concern. Anything I ought to know about.'

‘There's been another outbreak of stealing, mainly in the Lower Fourth. Fountain-pens disappearing, the usual sort of thing.'

‘I was referring to your own conduct, Miss Parry, rather than to that of the girls.'

‘Girls can be very excitable. They can be - how shall I put it? - melodramatic.'

There was no answering smile.

‘I was under the impression that it was you who are excitable, Miss Parry. That you frequently lose your temper. That some of the girls are afraid of you.'

‘No bad thing,' said Sylvia, attempting another conspiratorial smile.

‘On the contrary,' said the Head coldly, ‘it is a very bad thing …'

Does she imagine I don't know what a very bad thing it is? Does she think I was born this caustic, dangerous spinster?

One freezing Gower winter, Mother caught pneumonia. Small wonder, the times she stood out in the cold hanging sheets on the line as they snapped back
into her face, or trudging along, head down against the wind, to and from chapel or the grocer. She continued stumbling through her duties, hacking and wheezing, and I don't remember that my father or I took much notice. Now, as then, I cannot feel guilty about her. Finally one day we came back from school together, me bundled up on the front of his bicycle, feeling his strong body pedalling rhythmically against me, and she wasn't there. He went upstairs and found her lying on their bed, frightened by her collapse, the loss of control. The doctor came and took her off in his own car to the hospital at Swansea. He said she was very ill.

Then we were on our own. We divided up the chores and kept the place spick and span. Mother would have been proud of us. We didn't need the neighbours, though I heard them behind my back saying I was a brave girl and the parson's wife would bring round a cake or a pan of soup, still hot from her own stove. We drank cups of tea together, my father and I, just the two of us, while I listened to
Children's Hour
, and for supper we ate the parson's soup, or bread and meat paste, tinned sardines and hard-boiled eggs — things that didn't need cooking. I'd clear away the table while he marked exercise books and prepared lessons. I never asked for his help with my school work. He was busy, and besides, I could do it easily.

When it was my bedtime he'd tap his watch and go up to draw the curtains and run my bath. I undressed and he folded my clothes in a tidy pile on the chair in my bedroom. I'd sit in the bath - this wasn't every night, of course, only about twice a week - and he would soap the flannel and wash me, making swirls of lather across my skin like the patterns on the matted coats of the white Gower ponies. Then I'd step out of the bath into the towel, and he'd close his arms and
hug me inside it, rubbing my back and legs.

‘Are they done?' he'd say. ‘No, I don't think they're quite done.'

I liked it, and giggled as he dropped the nightdress over my head.

One night when she'd been away about a week, maybe ten days, he read a story, as usual, cuddled me and kissed me good night and after he'd gone downstairs I got out of bed quietly, so as not to hurt his feelings, because he'd forgotten my prayers. I knelt down beside the bed and folded my hands and leant my forehead on them. I shut my eyes and said, ‘God bless Dada and God bless Mummy and make her better, and make me a good girl…' Even though I'd been so quiet I heard his step on the landing. I opened my eyes and saw the wedge of light widening as he came through the door.

‘What are you doing, Sylvy? Naughty Dada, did we forget your prayers?'

I don't know why I felt guilty. I scrambled to my feet and was climbing hastily into bed.