First term at fernside, p.10
First Term at Fernside, page 10
‘Let’s sing “Happy Birthday”,’ Mrs Daly said. ‘Don’t tease her, Enid; she’s only a baby.’
‘I’m not a baby!’
‘Then don’t act like one,’ Enid said, and Ellie crossed her arms mulishly across her frilled white chest and stuck out her bottom lip, which was stained with red jelly.
They sang ‘Happy Birthday’, Fred looking sheepish to be singing with so many girls, Ellie refusing to sing at all, and then, when nobody paid her any attention, stomping out of the room.
‘Now the candles, Enid!’ shouted Fred, who had had the job of lighting them. Enid, cheeks flushed from the attention, took a deep breath. ‘Hip hip …’ they all yelled, but before they could shout ‘hooray’ a black-and-white ball of fluff bounded into the room, yipping noisily. It darted from girl to girl, licking hands and faces, then leaped on to the table and began wolfing whatever was in reach as if it hadn’t eaten in months, plunging face first into the sandwiches, then the fairy cakes, feathery tail windmilling.
‘Rudy!’ Enid shrieked. ‘Bad dog!’ She made a grab for the pup, getting cream all over her mauve silk sleeves, but Rudy slithered out of her arms and dashed madly round the room again, his little black-and-white face bearded with pink buttercream. Half the girls shrieked with laughter and tried to catch him; Fran and Linnet looked more serious, and Sadie, whom he almost toppled over, sat down hard on the nearest chair.
‘He’s frightened,’ Linnet said. ‘We should all stay very quiet.’
‘That party food won’t do his tummy any good,’ Fran said. ‘You should make him vomit before he digests it.’
Enid looked horrified.
‘How did the little wretch get in?’ her mother demanded.
‘Ellie let him in,’ Linnet said. Everyone gasped. And then gasped a little more as Rudy squatted down in the middle of the Persian rug and, before anyone could stop him, emptied himself very thoroughly.
The party was over.
Chapter 17
On the Way Home
When Miss Rea had given the girls permission to come home unescorted, she had made it clear they must be back by five, and must ‘conduct themselves in the street in a manner appropriate to Fernside pupils.’ The former would be easy to achieve – it wasn’t even four o’clock when the party broke up, but the latter was impossible. Out in the street, they were all giddy with escape, with sugar, and above all, with the memory of Rudy’s devastation and what he had done on the rug. Even Mabel and Evangeline kept giggling.
‘It’s not funny,’ Fran kept saying. ‘Party food’s bad for dogs. And he was frightened.’
‘It’s lucky he didn’t burn his wee face on the candles,’ Linnet said.
But every few seconds someone else would say ‘the little wretch’ in Mrs Daly’s rather nasal whine, and they would all double up again.
‘Ellie let him in,’ Robin said, imitating Linnet. ‘You’re such a tell-tale, Linnet!’
‘But she did! I saw her!’ Linnet said. ‘And Mrs Daly asked.’
‘Look,’ Mabel said, sobering them all up. ‘We should get back to school. We’re too public here. Everyone knows us.’
‘We aren’t in uniform,’ Babs pointed out.
‘It’s pretty obvious where we’re from!’
‘But who will see us?’ Giulia said.
‘Her for a start,’ Robin said, as a tall woman in a shabby tweed coat with a shopping basket on her arm pushed past them to go into Larkin’s.
‘We aren’t doing any harm,’ Babs said. ‘Just innocent girlish fun before the prison gates close again.’
‘But Miss Rea trusts us,’ Mabel argued.
‘I agree with Mabel,’ Evangeline said.
‘Let’s vote. All who want to stay out until five – hands up.’
Most people’s hands shot up, including Linnet’s. But Robin couldn’t forget what had happened three weeks ago. She had a superstition that if she tempted fate by breaking bounds again, that whole affair might come out after all.
‘Robin!’ Babs sounded surprised, and a little hurt. ‘When did you become a goody-goody?’
‘What if a mistress or a prefect sees us? We’ll only end up with bad conduct marks and never be trusted again.’ And imagine if Miss Rea had to tell Mother! Mother, who often looked anxious, whose frocks were much older and shabbier even than Robin’s, who must be scrimping desperately to keep her at Fernside.
‘We say we’ve just this minute left Enid’s, of course.’
‘It’s not nice,’ Evangeline said. ‘Hanging about the streets like corner boys. My parents wouldn’t like it.’
‘Whereas if we get home early,’ Robin said, ‘Miss Rea will think we’re very trustworthy, and she might let us out again.’
Even Sadie and Giulia, keenest on what Babs called innocent girlish fun agreed this made sense.
They had just settled on returning at once to school when Fran said, ‘I hear hooves.’
Herron’s cart clattered into the road, boxes of apples and cabbages and carrots bouncing on the back.
‘That horse is lame!’ Fran cried and before anyone could stop her she was running across the road. She’ll never catch it, Robin thought: lame or not, the thin grey horse was being whipped along at a fair speed. But Herron was delivering to Larkin’s, and he yanked the horse to a halt.
They all stood watching as Fran, hands on hips, started to harangue Herron as he clambered down from the driver’s seat. ‘Your horse is lame,’ she said. ‘He shouldn’t be working.’ She stroked the horse’s sweating shoulder.
Herron, a round-faced, big-bellied man, looked down at her as if he couldn’t believe it.
‘Get away out of my road,’ he said.
‘But your horse is lame,’ Fran repeated. ‘On his off-hind. He should be resting, not pulling cabbages.’
The horse sighed and drooped its head, shifting in the shafts of the cart.
‘And how would I do my job with no horse, eh?’ Herron snarled.
‘Fran!’ Mabel called. ‘Come back! It’s none of your business.’
‘Animal welfare is everyone’s business,’ Fran shouted back. ‘We should call the police. Or the USPCA.’
‘You can’t make a show of yourself in the street,’ Evangeline said. ‘Miss Rea would be furious.’
‘But she’s right,’ Linnet said, and she actually started across the street herself, looking very determined.
Robin grabbed her arm. ‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘Honestly, Linnet – I know how you feel. But yelling in the street won’t help anyone.’ And to Fran she called, ‘Come on! You can complain to the USPCA if you like.’
Fran gave the horse a last pat. Her shoulders slumped. She didn’t return to the others but marched ahead of them down the road towards school, head bowed. Robin guessed that she was crying and didn’t want anyone to know.
Herron looked over at them. ‘I’m the one’ll be complaining, you nosey wee madams,’ he said. ‘Trying to stop somebody going about their business.’ He reached up into the back of the cart and lifted down some boxes, which he balanced on his belly, and trundled into the shop.
The girls all looked at each other.
‘Come on,’ Mabel said. ‘And just pray nobody saw.’
‘But Mabel, Fran’s right,’ Linnet argued.
‘You can be right but sort of wrong too,’ Mabel said. ‘And if anyone tells Miss Rea we were in a row in the street, she’ll – well, I don’t know what she’ll do, but I wouldn’t expect her to let any of us out in public until we’re in the sixth form.’
Larkin’s door jangled and they all jumped, but it wasn’t Herron; it was the woman with the shopping basket. She took a good look at the horse, and then at the girls, then set off down the road just ahead of them.
‘D’you think she heard?’ Mabel asked.
‘I should think people heard you in Dublin,’ Babs said. ‘Come on – let’s catch up with Fran. If she goes into school on her own there’ll be all kinds of investigations.’
‘She must be housekeeper somewhere nearby,’ Mabel said, as the woman passed by the cottages beside Larkin’s. ‘Oh dear – I hope she doesn’t think we’re following her. It looks strange, marching after her like this.’
‘No, it doesn’t. You’re the one said it was obvious we’re from school,’ Babs argued. ‘She’s bound to turn in soon and then we can run after Fran.’
But the woman kept walking down the road.
‘That’s funny,’ Robin said quietly to Linnet, who was beside her. ‘There’s only two houses left now, school and Rowanbank. She definitely isn’t from school so she must be—’
‘Doctor Flynn’s housekeeper?’
‘I suppose so. I thought he was a recluse.’
‘Even recluses need someone to look after them,’ Linnet said, ‘and men can’t manage on their own.’
‘Maybe she’s his wife,’ suggested Sadie romantically.
Robin thought back to Miss Rea’s announcement about Rowanbank being out of bounds. ‘Miss Rea didn’t mention a wife,’ she said. ‘And she doesn’t look like a doctor’s wife.’
It was true: the woman walking ahead of them was shabby and plain in a way they all associated with the people who looked after their homes – even Robin, darned stockings and old frock notwithstanding.
And when she passed Fernside House and approached the high, wooden gates of Rowanbank, they congratulated each other on being right. Robin, hoping to catch a glimpse inside, couldn’t resist hanging back with Linnet to watch the woman fish in her pocket for a large key and let herself in. As if conscious of being watched, she turned back and gave them a stern look, then slipped through the gate without revealing even one inch of Rowanbank, and closed it firmly. They heard a distinct click as she locked it again from the inside.
‘She didn’t want anyone looking in, did she?’ Mabel said. ‘Now, where’s that idiot Fran? Let’s nab her before she goes in and gives the game away.’
Chapter 18
Linnet’s Secret
The day after Enid’s party was unusually mild, and most people chose to sit outside, which was permitted so long as they read ‘improving’ literature or worked on their crochet or knitting. Which meant that everyone dutifully took one of what Babs called the Holy Horrors – extremely dull, Sunday-reading books, mostly dating from Miss Burn’s girlhood – and pretended to read them while really chatting, and nibbling on the biscuits Giulia’s mother had sent her – cantucci, she called them. Linnet found hers dry so she slipped it into the pocket of her Sunday-best, brown-and-cream checked frock. Her book was equally dry: she had taken Ministering Children, but she was soon yawning. Robin was whispering to Babs while pretending to read a book of bible stories. Fran, who had relapsed into silence after the outburst in the street, was sleeping, or pretending to, and Giulia was flicking through something in Italian which may not have been quite as improving as Miss Rea intended. Sadie seemed to be completely engrossed in Saintly Lives for Little Folks. She grinned; she stretched her eyes in surprise; once she even giggled.
‘I’ll have that one next week,’ Babs said. ‘And you can jolly well have mine. It’s dire.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Sadie said.
Babs narrowed her eyes in suspicion. ‘Let me see.’ She reached for Sadie’s book.
‘Leave me alone; I’m trying to read.’ Sadie held it away from her.
‘I can’t believe saintly lives are so amusing. Could you possibly be hiding something inside it?’ Babs asked. ‘Something – frivolous? Tut tut! Come on, Sadie – shame the devil.’
Sadie picked up her book and her crutches and said, with dignity, ‘I’m going to read in peace.’
She stalked off towards the vegetable beds, which was awkward on crutches, and before long, Linnet saw the pages of Saintly Lives part, and something drop from them, which was indeed the despised School Friend. It fell in the grass, and Sadie clearly hadn’t noticed, because she clumped on without looking back. Linnet decided to follow her and give her back her story paper. The School Friend looked silly – ‘The Fourth-Form Busybodies’ was the main story – but Linnet was not one to judge. Most people thought the things Linnet liked were silly, while they wittered on about netball and who’d quarrelled with whom and what Mademoiselle had said on Tuesday and how handsome Doctor Bell was, with his dark hair and his piercing blue eyes. Today Babs and Giulia had been giggling about Enid’s brother, arguing about whether or not he was as handsome as Doctor Bell. Linnet was about to run after Sadie, but something in her dignified retreat made her pause. Maybe Sadie too longed to be alone sometimes. Maybe she had a special hiding place. Maybe Linnet shouldn’t be a fourth-form busybody herself.
After all, she had her own secret. Her own hiding place. Maybe she would go there instead. It was the perfect opportunity.
Linnet kept promising herself she would stop. Once more, maybe twice. And then never again. She couldn’t get away with it forever, and fear of discovery was almost enough to keep her from doing it.
Almost.
This will be the last time, she promised herself as she pulled back the now-familiar pieces of fence, bent down and stepped into her very own Secret Garden.
Of course it wasn’t her own. And it was no less Strictly Out of Bounds than when Miss Rea had made her pronouncement on the first evening. But for the last couple of weeks, Linnet had been sneaking into Rowanbank every chance she got. The first time, fear of discovery squeezed her heart so hard she almost couldn’t enjoy it, and she vowed never to go again. But as October opened with crisp air and cool blue skies, and a smell of apples and damp leaves outside, and the hurry and hustle of school inside, she found herself making excuses and slipping through the side door quite often.
‘Where d’you go?’ Robin would ask, and Linnet would say, truthfully, ‘The garden.’ If Robin assumed she meant the lower-fourth garden, that wasn’t Linnet’s fault.
Familiarity made her bolder with each visit, though she never ventured far from the fence.
It wasn’t about exploration or adventure; it was about escaping the noise and demands of school; about going somewhere where she could – as she had told Robin all those weeks ago – just be.
The place she chose was a tall oak tree. It had a very comfortable sort of saddle, about eight feet off the ground, easily reached via some smaller branches – though trickier today in her Sunday frock than in tunic or gymslip. She leaned back against the trunk, closed her eyes and let herself feel the tree holding her safe. She breathed in all the damp autumn scents, and listened.
She knew the sounds of Rowanbank well by now: the rustle of leaves in the wind; the chatter and call of birds – only the robin, at this time of year, actually sang; the occasional tiny plock! as a conker hit the ground, and, if you listened closely, and everything else was very still, the splish of the river. But today there was a different sound. Robin frowned and closed her eyes to concentrate better. It was a very occasional sound – high-pitched, irregular and quickly suppressed: the lower fourth at leisure. Linnet guessed the Holy Horrors had been abandoned.
She recognised Robin’s laugh, and the lilt of Giulia’s accent. She smiled. Life in the lower fourth wasn’t easy – she still missed home, and Mummy and Daddy, and the gentle freedom of lessons with Miss Devlin, but she was getting used to Fernside. She was learning to keep out of Matron’s bad books, partly thanks to the efforts of Giulia with her plaits and Robin with general nannying. So school wasn’t as bad as she had expected, but what made it bearable was sneaking out to Rowanbank. Knowing she had that escape, even for ten minutes, allowed her to cope with the bustle and the bells. She hadn’t cried for a week, not even secretly! Which is why every time she promised herself this was the last time, she broke the promise within a day or two.
A sharp peal of laughter broke her reverie – she recognised Babs’s voice, and then Evangeline’s wail. Babs must be teasing her. She was making that horrible noise people made to accuse someone of being cowardly – pretending to be a chicken. It was silly; they never sounded anything like a real chicken. Only she had to admit that this one did. Babs was sharp-tongued, though not nasty like Gillian, but she was funny and clever and sounded exactly like a chicken.
And then Linnet realised that the soft clucks and brrrks were much too realistic to come from any girl. The reason they sounded so chicken-like was that they came from actual chickens. She looked down – one, two, three brown hens pecked at the grass under the trees. And they were easily the most pathetic-looking hens Linnet had ever seen: scraggy and half-bald. You could not imagine any of them having the energy to lay an egg.
Poor things! Linnet had never seen any signs of hens at Rowanbank. Presumably they had some sort of coop near the stableyard behind the house, but she had never ventured that far. They must have broken out – probably starving. She slithered down from the tree and felt in her pocket for the biscuit.
‘Here, ladies,’ she said, and they looked up with bright suspicious eyes. ‘Would you like some cantucci?’ She crumbled the biscuit up and scattered it on the ground near them.
The hens clucked with approval and scuttled for the crumbs like lower fourth had descended on Enid’s birthday tea. Doctor Flynn clearly didn’t look after them very well.
Linnet smiled to watch them, pecking so greedily and happily, and when all the crumbs had gone they bustled up to her in a hopeful way. She squatted down to make their acquaintance.
‘Does nobody feed you?’ she asked. ‘Poor wee things. I’d come back and feed you again if I could, but it wouldn’t be very easy. Your time’s not your own at school. It’s all bells and timetables.’
The hens looked up at her with interest and one of them, with a particularly bald neck with a black speck on it, ventured closer, her head on one side. Linnet rummaged in her pocket and found a few last crumbs, which she held out on her outstretched palm. The hen looked back at her companions, then at Linnet, and took a tentative step nearer. Linnet hardly dared breathe. It was the loveliest feeling in the world when an animal started to trust you.
