The Quivering Tree (28 page)

‘Pale hands, pink-tipped, like lotus-buds that float
On those cool waters where we used to dwell,
I would have rather felt you round my throat
Crushing out life than waving me farewell.'

Unfortunately, back at school, my fluorescent cheek and stitched wound did not attract the attention I had anticipated, but that was because it was the first day of exams, the prospect of which several of the girls in IIIa used as a pretext for histrionic displays of panic and palpitation that stole my thunder. For myself, arithmetic apart, I relished exams. They were a game that made me feel excited, stretched beyond my natural capacities. I loved the hushed ritual of coming into the classroom to find creamy ruled paper, of much better quality than our everyday stuff, laid out ready on desks which, for all their carved initials and other familiar disfigurements, had taken on a sacramental quality befitting the occasion; the inkwells fresh-filled by some unknown hand; and, face down, the examination paper, a mystery not to be divulged until the big hand on the classroom clock moved to the witching hour and the invigilator, in a voice never heard at other times, intoned, with the inevitability of fate: ‘Now!'

When at last it was permissible to turn the paper over and read the questions cyclostyled on the other side, the blood pounded triumphantly through my veins at the recognition that, thanks to my good memory, none of them was beyond my powers. The delicious uncertainty of deciding which combination would best display my genius – five questions to be answered out of a total of eight – was even better than being offered a box of chocolates from which you were only allowed to select one.

My sole difficulty so far as exams were concerned was in the matter of timing. However much I began with an iron resolve to divide the time available by five and stick to it, go on to the next question once the allotted time was up, even if it meant stopping in the middle of a sentence, middle of a word even, things seldom worked out that way. There was so much I wanted to say! Invariably, for all my resolutions, the last question certainly and often the penultimate as well were scamped, to my teachers' oft-voiced despair. They constantly pointed out that since an agreed number of marks attached to any one answer, gilding the lily in the earlier part of the paper could never compensate for doing poorly in the second half.

‘You'll never get Matric unless you mend your ways!' they admonished me.

The exams settled down to a lovely rhythm that left one disorientated when it stopped, buoyed up only by the thought of results. Become accustomed to my damaged cheek and the necessity of taking extra care whenever I pulled any article of clothing over my head, I almost forgot about the injury and its cause. Almost.

At break on my first day back Miss Malahide accosted me in the north quad outside the Art Room.

‘What on earth have you done to yourself, child?'

By then I was already tired of being asked that question and fudging the reply, and because it was Miss Malahide, her hairy face alight with compassion, I answered that I hadn't done anything. Somebody had done it to me. ‘If you promise not to tell,' I had added, marvelling at my own audacity, ‘I'll tell you who it was.'

The art mistress had looked, not angry, but alarmed. ‘I think I would rather not know,' she said, and hurried away, flinging an end of her black cloak over her shoulder.

All this time, whether in school or at Chandos House, Miss Locke never so much as spoke to me. At breakfast Miss Gosse, whose doggy features had come to wear a look of permanent bewilderment, would say things like: ‘I think Sylvia's face is looking a little better this morning, don't you, Helen?' or ‘I'm sure the swelling's gone down. What do you think?' To which Miss Locke would make rejoinders such as ‘I really couldn't say,' and go on to other matters.

For the history exam, to IIIa's surprise, she acted as invigilator, it being an unwritten law that, to avoid any suspicion of bias, mistresses did not officiate in their own subjects. Waiting for the off, I studied her straight-browed, straight-nosed profile, knowing it was quite safe to do so since she would never turn her face towards me. I came to the conclusion that, whatever writers of romantic novels might maintain, small, shell-like ears were not beautiful. They were mean, unfriendly, signifying people who did not want to listen or did not know how to. I decided, admittedly on insecure grounds, that a trumpeting elephant, charging towards you with trunk upraised, was less frightening by reason of its large ears flapping than a history mistress with her teeny-weeny shells.

And what kind of shells were like ears, when you came down to it? I could not remember a single author ever specifying. Cockles, winkles, mussels, whelks? I still hadn't decided which species they could possibly have had in mind when the big hand of the clock clicked into place and Miss Locke called out: ‘Now!'

Exams over, several days of delicious lethargy followed. The mistresses were all busy marking papers and we were left more or less to our own devices. We were allowed to bring our own books to school and read them sitting outside on the grass under the trees which screened the school buildings from the roads on either side. I had brought
Antic Hay
by Aldous Huxley which I had got out of the library because I had read somewhere that he was a subtle and witty writer.

At twelve years old, the subtlety passed me by and I found precious little to laugh at; which did not entirely displease me as I was most of all in the mood to lie flat on my back, looking up through the canopy of the trees to the sky beyond, thinking of nothing special.

‘Showing off as usual, Sylvia!' said Mrs Crail, smiling her crescent smile.

I scrambled to my feet, blushing and confused as I always was in her presence. The headmistress delicately put the toe of her shoe to
Antic Hay
where it lay open at my place, down-facing on the grass. ‘I'm sure the librarian will be most interested to hear what care you take of the city's books.'

I wanted to shout out, ‘You're doing more harm with that great fat toe of yours than I ever did leaving it open like that!' But of course I didn't say anything, and after she had opened a nasty little crack in the book's spine she sailed majestically on.

That afternoon I went down to the back gate at Chandos House for the first time in ages. Exams had been my excuse, but the unacknowledged truth was that I hadn't wanted to risk running into Robert Kett. I hoped he hadn't given up going to see Bagshaw just because he had given up coming to see me. I hoped his mother hadn't found a recipe for making Victoria sponges that rose.

I also began to feel guilty. Poor old Bagshaw! It wasn't his fault Robert Kett and I were not friends any longer.

Mrs Benyon gave me some stale bread and I went down the garden and out of the gate, both relieved and disappointed to find there was nobody there except the donkey. He was standing at the barbed wire, not looking in the least pleased to see me or my bread which as usual he swallowed as if doing me a favour. The reason was not far to seek. Lying in the middle of the path was a good-sized wedge of failed Victoria sponge, too far from the wire for even Bagshaw's scrawny stretch. Robert Kett must have chucked the cake down and run, frightened I might choose that moment to put in an appearance. A wasp was crawling about the jam filling, having a whale of a time. The sight of it on the ground out of reach must have turned Bagshaw into a raving loony. The look he gave me, and the accompanying snort! ‘About time!' was definitely what he said.

Because of the wasp I didn't care actually to pick up the piece of sponge, so I found a stick in the hedge and poked at it until it was in a position for the donkey to get at unaided. He snuffled it up at a gulp, wasp and all, and still looked so plainly dissatisfied that I said I wouldn't be long, went back through the gate and up the garden as far as the bothy, where I went to the drawer which housed the custard creams. It was the first time I had been in the bothy since – I did not care to specify even to myself since when – and it made me feel peculiar. To keep my mind off the when I reminded myself that Bagshaw, a donkey of small patience, was waiting; pulled open the drawer in which I knew Mr Betts would have put the biscuits, only permitting myself tangentially to admire the workmanship of the inlay and the mitred corners, and took four custard creams out of the paper bag within. I had reemerged into the light of day when second thoughts sent me back into the gloom again to get the whole bag, every last one. I could not see myself eating a custard cream for a long time to come, probably never.

You would have thought that, with half a pound of biscuits inside him, a donkey, not an unintelligent animal whatever people might say, would have given some little intimation of gratitude – a nod, a genteel hee-haw – but not Bagshaw. He saw off the lot, one, two, three, and looked about for more. A creature mean and tricky, totally lacking in grace.

At least he didn't have small, shell-like ears like Miss Locke.

It was really weird how, in IIIa, once they were over, the memory of the examinations which a few days previously had filled our every waking moment, to say nothing of our dreams, faded into insignificance. Perhaps it was because we were still a couple of years away from the dreaded Matric; perhaps because, the term almost at its end, our minds were already on the holidays. Perhaps, most of all, it was because it was ripe and roistering summer, the blackberries already beginning to plump in the hedgerows. Whichever it was, we gave hardly a thought to results.

Consequently, when Miss Gosse came home, very happy, took both my hands into her plump little paws and began to talk about exams, it took me a moment or two to adjust to what she was on about.

‘This is in strictest confidence,' she burbled. ‘You're not supposed to know until marks are given out, but I simply have to tell you, if only to make that poor old cheek of yours feel better. Well! –' A pause for effect: ‘You've got 62% for arithmetic. 62%!' Awaiting my reaction, eyes shining: ‘What do you say to that?'

I said: ‘It ought to be your mark by rights. It was all your doing.'

‘Oh dear!' Miss Gosse broke into laughter in a way I hadn't heard her laugh for some time. Miss Locke seemed to have put a damper on everything and everybody. ‘As the maths mistress, I ought to get 100%, surely?'

We laughed together, which actually did make my cheek feel better, I don't know why. Miss Gosse told me that as a matter of fact she herself had given me 60%, only she had asked Miss Copley, who also taught maths, to go over my paper after her, to nip in the bud any suggestion of favouritism, and Miss Copley had added another 2%. Since the marks for arithmetic, geometry and algebra were always aggregated and then divided by three to obtain the final figure which appeared under the heading of mathematics in our reports, being rotten at arithmetic had always pulled me down in the final placings. With 62% – assuming, that is, my other papers were up to scratch, which I felt pretty sure they were – I must be in the running for the Progress Prize, if not the Form Prize, which was books to the value of 7s 6d as against the Progress Prize's 5s. Not that I had any real hopes of the Form Prize which was practically certain to go to Dorothy Hopper who was not only cleverer than me but never had marks taken off for untidiness, as I always did.

Still, it was amazing how far 5s could be made to go in Jarrold's bookshop, provided you chose something Mrs Crail approved of. If she didn't, being her she never said a word, never suggested you go back to Jarrold's for a second look around. Only, when prize-giving arrived and you were all agog with the lovely anticipation of actually taking possession of the books you had chosen, you could find yourself lumbered with
A Christian Thought for Every Day of the Year
, or something equally dire.

Miss Gosse was frisking around me like Tirri the puppy who had been run over by the tram. I thought, if only I had some dog-biscuits in the nest of drawers in the bothy I could have run quickly down the garden and fetched some back for her, to say thank you for your help. I would have held one up high and told her to sit up and beg.

As it was, I said: ‘It was awfully good of you to give me extra lessons when you had so much other work to do.'

Draining away most of the pleasure, Miss Gosse demurred: ‘The one you really ought to thank is Miss Locke.'

It was on the last afternoon of that lovely, lazy post-examinations week that Miss Reade, the school secretary, came into the cloakroom as I was changing out of my house shoes and told me I was to go to Mrs Crail's study immediately.

From the way she spoke, with a little tremor in her voice, I could tell there was trouble ahead: so, having a little difficulty with the buttons, I changed back into my house shoes. I did not want to risk aggravating the offence, whatever it was, by walking about the school in my outdoor ones. Miss Reade quavered, ‘At once!' Not young, she always wore a narrow ribbon of black velvet fastened tightly round her throat, which made her neck, full of stalky veins, look like a bundle of asparagus which would fall apart without a binding. An old girl herself from the year dot, she was, I think, as frightened of Mrs Crail as the rest of us – more probably, since her job depended on her keeping on the right side of the old battleaxe.

Heart pounding, I followed her tall, stooping figure out of the cloakroom, along the corridor to the headmistress's room, where she knocked at the door so timidly as scarcely to be heard, I would have thought, through its thick mahogany. However – perhaps Mrs Crail had been keeping an ear out in expectation – a loud ‘Come!' sounded from the other side. Miss Reade opened the door just wide enough for me to insert myself before she scuttled back to her office next door.

Everyone else I knew called out ‘Come in!' when they wanted you to enter a room, and that peremptory ‘Come!' froze my blood before I was well inside, where, it appeared, three persons were waiting to receive me: Mrs Crail herself, important in her important-looking chair; Miss Barton, my house-mistress, perched uneasily on the small, uncomfortable chair the headmistress normally reserved for visiting parents, and Miss Locke, who sat looking at me directly for the first time since she had hit me in the bothy. Her usually pale face was as rosy as her shell-like ears and her pale eyes were almost as bright as Miss Gosse's. The corners of her mouth were turned down in familiar, triumphant derision.