First term at fernside, p.3
First Term at Fernside, page 3
Robin was already tired of that look, and it was only the first night.
Chapter 4
The First Night
Though she was expected to do everything and go everywhere at twice the speed she was used to, Linnet’s first night seemed to have lasted weeks already. Getting undressed in front of four other girls was torture. Evangeline had mastered the knack of taking off her frock and putting on her nightie without revealing any flesh, and was sitting up in bed, reading her bible. Fran had marched off to the bathroom carrying her pyjamas. Robin and Babs were unselfconscious, sitting on their beds chatting in their underthings. Robin was holding blue-striped pyjama bottoms but had not got as far as putting them on.
Oh dear, how could she take her clothes off in front of everyone? What if people looked at her? You can’t cry. You can’t cry. Deliverance arrived in the unlikely shape of Matron. She appeared in the doorway, driving Fran in front of her like a pony. Fran wore blue-striped pyjamas like Robin’s, and a mulish expression.
‘A reminder, girls, that you undress in the dormitory and not the bathroom,’ Matron said. ‘If you all decided to undress in the bathroom, how long do you think it would take to get you all to bed? Eh?’
Nobody spoke. Fran busied herself with draping tunic, blouse, stockings and underthings over the chair at the end of her bed.
Linnet said, ‘I suppose it depends on how many bathrooms there are and how quickly people undress?’
Babs spluttered out a giggle which was quenched by a look from Matron.
‘Barbara and Robin, hurry up, please. You old hands should be setting a better example.’ Then she turned to Linnet. ‘Lynette Grey!’ she said. ‘Look at you! You haven’t even started. Get undressed at once. You haven’t even taken out your night-dress. Where is it? And I hope you heard what Miss Rea said about hair?’
Linnet didn’t know which thing she was meant to answer first. She felt like the butterfly Mummy often called her, darting crookedly from one flower to the next. She fixed on the one thing she could manage.
‘M-m-my name’s not Lynette,’ she said.
Matron seemed to roll back on her black-shod feet, so that she was looking down from an even greater height. ‘There are eighty girls in this school,’ she snapped. ‘Fifty boarders. Can I be expected to remember every outlandish name?’
Linnet gulped. ‘It’s Linnet, like the bird,’ she explained. ‘And I’m Robin’s cousin, and she has a bird name too. So that might help?’
‘Are you trying to be cheeky?’ Matron demanded.
Linnet shook her head dumbly. You can’t cry.
‘Well?’
A bell clanged, making Linnet jump.
‘That’s the warning bell,’ Matron said. ‘And only one of you is doing what she should be doing.’ Evangeline did not look up from her bible, but her ears pinked. ‘All right – undressed and into bed all of you.’ Fran straightened out her stockings and jumped into bed. ‘I shall be back in five minutes and I expect this dormitory to be settled and at peace. Bad conduct marks all round if not. All round!’ she added as though anyone might doubt this.
United against Matron, determined not to gain the marks, everyone scrambled to get themselves, and Linnet, into bed. And in all the rush, with Robin taking her garments one by one and setting them neatly over her chair, and Evangeline holding out Linnet’s familiar green-spotted nightie, she found herself surprisingly able to postpone tears, and to get into bed, where the sheets felt colder and stiffer than at home. She kicked them to warm them.
‘That’s a good idea.’ Fran spoke for the first time, and then she was kicking her sheets too. And then Robin joined in, and Evangeline, and finally Babs said, ‘They deliberately put damp sheets on to stop us becoming overheated and emotional.’ And she kicked too, and for a brief minute, before they heard Matron’s heavy tread in the corridor outside, Lilac dormitory was united, all their legs kicking, all their blankets bellied like sails.
She seemed to have kicked away the crying feeling. Nevertheless, Linnet, shifting and fretting, was certain she would never sleep. She heard the landing clock strike ten and then eleven, while she lay between the sheets, listening to the snuffling breaths around her, trying to work out who was who, her eyes becoming used to the dark. Evangeline was rather nasal when she spoke; that intermittent snore must be her. Robin slept with one arm flung over her face. Fran was as silent in sleep as awake. She could not see Babs, at the far side of the room. Her eyes lit on the empty bed, and she wondered when Sadie Hayes would appear and what she would be like. She sighed and closed her eyes. No, she did not need the lavatory; she was imagining it. This was the latest she had ever been awake, and she was torn between the desire to hear midnight strike for the first time ever, and the yearning to be asleep. Sleep won, albeit a fitful one, and somehow, unbelievably, that bell was clanging again, and beside her Robin was sitting up groaning, her normally neat, bobbed hair standing out like a lion’s mane.
Rather to her own surprise, Linnet had survived the first night.
Chapter 5
This Little World
‘I like your nightie,’ Robin said when they were dressing.
Linnet looked down at the green-spotted cotton as she folded it to go under the pillow as instructed. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘My governess made it. I love it because there are no buttons. I hate accidentally lying on a button.’ She wriggled into the heavy blue tunic that made her feel she was wearing a big scratchy box.
‘You had a governess?’ Babs said.
‘Yes.’ It was harder to get dressed while talking, but it saved you feeling so self-conscious. Linnet pulled up her black wool stockings and buttoned them carefully to her suspender belt. She smoothed the skirt of her bulky tunic and pulled helplessly at the scarlet girdle which was meant to go round the waist.
‘Are you rich? Gosh, Matron will kill you if you tie your girdle like that.’
‘Let me help.’ Evangeline bent over and tied it. Her hair tickled Linnet’s cheek.
‘I don’t think so. Daddy’s a professor of zoology. He’s’ – oh dear, she would have to say it now; she took a deep, tear-defying breath –‘gone to America for a year to teach at Harvard University. That’s why I’ve come to school.’
‘You’ve come to Fernside House instead of America?’ Babs paused in the act of brushing her shining fair hair. ‘Bad luck!’
The coldness inside her welled up, and Linnet nodded and picked up her own hairbrush. Vaguely she remembered Matron saying something about her hair, but she couldn’t think what. It was hard to keep tidy, being long and fine, but Miss Devlin hadn’t minded a few tangles, as long as she came to lessons with an enquiring mind and a clean handkerchief. Last week Mummy had asked if she would like to have it bobbed.
‘Easier to keep,’ she said, ‘and fashionable. Most girls seem to be bobbed now. Or even shingled.’
Linnet didn’t dislike short hair, mostly she didn’t care what she or anyone else looked like, but the idea of anyone coming near her with scissors made her shiver, so she said no, she would manage.
She gave her hair the best brushing she could, but her unsettled night had tangled it.
‘Matron will slay you when she sees that mop,’ Robin warned, as they lined up at the door to go down to breakfast. ‘You’d better let me fix it.’
Linnet shook her head. ‘I’ll risk it,’ she said. ‘Matron might not notice. The tangles are mostly underneath.’
On the landing, Giulia, the Italian girl who had been so funny and bold in Prayers last night, gave them a friendly grin as she emerged from Hydrangea, the dorm next door. Her own hair was neatly braided into a beautiful thick plait, and she stopped at the landing mirror to give a final tweak to the velvet ribbon which exactly matched the blue of her tunic. Linnet’s tummy rumbled, which made Robin giggle, and they dashed to breakfast together, Linnet with more enthusiasm than she had felt for anything so far at school. She had been too nervous to eat last night, and she hated greasy food, but breakfast should be safe. Porridge, probably, and maybe toast. With marmalade, hopefully. She was lost in a dream of hot toast, all crunchy outside and soft inside.
‘Linnet Grey!’ The sweet buttery slices of fantasy toast transformed into the figure of Matron, standing guard at the dining hall door. She was on the lookout for wrinkled stockings, loose girdles, dirty shoes and faces, but it seemed to Linnet that she was there only for her. And the thought that she could never take a step here without Matron telling her it was the wrong one chased away her enthusiasm for breakfast, leaving a cold sick feeling of doom.
She skidded to a swallowing, sweaty-palmed halt. ‘Yes, Matron?’
‘Did I or did I not tell you to do something with that hair?’
‘You did tell me. And I – I did do something,’ Linnet said bravely. ‘I’ve brushed it.’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean! And do you call that brushing?’
Robin gave her a little dig which Linnet interpreted as best not answer.
‘The rule is – short or plaited. Here.’ She produced a comb and two pieces of black elastic from her pocket and handed them to Linnet. ‘Junior cloakroom – beside the noticeboard. Two plaits, please. You’ve got three minutes. Where are you going? That way.’
Linnet stumbled off blindly.
‘Should I go and help her, Matron?’ she heard Robin say.
‘And have you late for breakfast too? I think not. And straighten those stockings.’
The junior cloakroom was, mercifully, easy to find, beside a large green baize noticeboard. She was relieved to see it contained a lavatory, which she suddenly needed urgently. That done, feeling wobbly inside, she stood at the mirror with the comb, and looked at herself. She was pale, her eyes shadowed and her lips scabby where she had chewed them. Her hair hung in rough mousey strings. It never looked so bad at home. But she had no idea how to plait! She pulled Matron’s comb through her hair, wincing as it snagged at the tangles, and then looked at the elastics in her hand. She divided the hair in two – two plaits, Matron had said very firmly – and then didn’t know what else to do. Three minutes!
The door opened and in came Giulia. Linnet gasped. Her hair was standing out round her head in wild curls.
‘What happened you?’ Linnet asked.
Giulia’s eyes danced. ‘I was just behind you. I heard Matron. It was the work of a moment to make my own hair – a little untidy.’ She shrugged. ‘So I knew I would be sent in here. Simple.’
‘But why would you want …?’
Giulia was replaiting her hair with deft fingers. She didn’t even need the mirror and was soon tying her velvet ribbon back on the end of her plait. ‘You are not able to plait your own hair?’ Linnet shook her head and then wondered if she should have nodded instead, but Giulia clearly understood. ‘Well then, I will do it for you. Let me see.’ Giulia took up the comb, parted Linnet’s hair again, and began to plait. She was efficient, but not very gentle, and Linnet tried not to stiffen. Giulia was being so kind – even getting herself into trouble – and she couldn’t know how much Linnet hated anyone working with her hair, how her fingers made Linnet’s scalp burn and her eyes feel like they were being pulled sideways. ‘I’ll make them tight,’ Giulia said, ‘because your hair is so fine they might come out otherwise.’
Linnet closed her eyes, bit down hard on her lip, and tried to pretend she was somewhere else – in the garden, smelling the honeysuckle on a June evening. After all, the alternative was Matron, which would be a million times worse.
‘Finished,’ Giulia said, and Linnet snapped open her eyes.
She looked – different. Rather startled about the eyes, and with her hair in two long thin plaits.
‘I think,’ Giulia said, her head cocked professionally, ‘you need bows.’ She looked with distaste at Matron’s black elastics. ‘Blue to match the uniform, or scarlet like the girdle. Black would be elegant, but you have not the complexion. You must send home for ribbons or make friends with a daygirl to get them for you. Now, let us go to breakfast.’
‘Thank you so much, Giulia. I’m sorry you got into trouble because of me.’
‘It’s only Matron. She is an unreasonable woman, but here, in this little world, she has power, so’ – Giulia shrugged – ‘we must do as she says.’
They went to breakfast together, smiling innocently as they passed Matron’s inspection. Robin had kept Linnet a seat, and showed how she had kept her porridge warm by placing a plate on top of it – ‘Practically a scientific invention,’ Babs commented – and there was still plenty of toast – cold and rubbery, as she was to discover school toast always was, but still, she ate two rounds with marmalade and the realisation that she had survived for a little longer in what Giulia called this little world.
Chapter 6
In Miss West’s Form
Robin hoped she might escape Linnet in lessons, but when the form lists were read at morning Prayers, Linnet’s name was just before hers for the lower fourth. She glanced sideways at her cousin, who was listening to Miss Rea with absorption, chewing on her lip. She always seemed to be either raptly focused on something, or off in a dream. At least she looked more ordinary now, with her neat plaits. Robin had some blue ribbon that she used to tie round her hair at night to train her fringe to lie flat. She had grown her fringe out over the summer, so she could cut the ribbon in two and give it to Linnet. That would please Mother.
‘One vexing piece of news before I send you to class,’ Miss Rea said. ‘Miss Mercer, whom I had engaged to teach science, is unable to join us after all. I will of course seek a replacement, but well-qualified science mistresses are not two a penny.’
As they had never studied science, beyond a little botany, nobody was terribly downcast, apart from a few swotty upper fifths, though Robin noticed that Fran frowned. One or two people muttered, as they filed out of the hall, that it was a waste of all that time and money to build the laboratory.
‘And we’ve lost the hockey pitch for nothing,’ Mabel said.
‘We must pray for a new science teacher to be found quickly,’ suggested Evangeline.
‘Really?’ Babs, clutching a shiny new pencil box, sounded surprised. ‘I’d have thought you’d be against science, Evangeline. Don’t you believe in Adam and Eve and all that?’
‘Well – yes, but …’
‘Adam and Eve is an allegory,’ Linnet said. ‘It’s not literally true.’ She sounded unusually confident, and Robin remembered that Uncle Linus had written a book about evolution and dinosaurs and the like.
‘Who swallowed the dictionary?’ Babs said, pushing open the door of their new form room.
It was large and bright, overlooking the driveway. The desks were in three rows of four, with the mistress’s desk on a podium at the front. Walls, floor and desk lids shone with start-of-term cleanliness and the room smelt faintly of polish.
‘Bags these ones,’ Babs said, setting her pencil box on a desk at the back, and nodding to Robin to take the one beside it.
‘Does Miss West let you bags desks?’ Evangeline asked.
‘Miss West does not,’ said a crisp voice, and they turned to find their new form mistress, arms full of books, sweeping into the room. She didn’t teach anyone below the fourth, so they barely knew her, apart from Prayers and meals. She looked, Robin thought, awfully clever with her round glasses and greying hair pulled into a neat low bun, and her university gown sitting snugly on her shoulders.
Evangeline sprang forward to take her books, and Miss West nodded her thanks. She surveyed her new class. Lower fourth straightened their shoulders and attempted to look bright and attentive.
Miss West opened her roll book and ran her eyes down the list. Then she looked up and smiled. ‘Welcome to lower fourth,’ she said, ‘which is where we start expecting a little more.’ One or two people looked nervous. ‘Gillian Moffatt’ – she smiled kindly at a tall, sulky-looking girl Robin vaguely recognised – ‘I know you’ve stayed back because you missed so much school last year. Let’s hope another year in lower fourth will fill in those gaps.’
Gillian looked at her desk.
‘Four new girls, I see – Enid Daly, Frances Elliott, Linnet Grey, and Sadie Hayes. Would you mind putting your hands up so we can see who you are? Jolly good – oh, Sadie hasn’t joined us yet. I believe she’s coming in a day or so.’
Enid was a daygirl; you could tell by her girdle, green instead of scarlet. Did she look the kind of girl who would smuggle in sweets and comics from the shops, or invite you to tea on Special Saturdays? The other daygirls – Rose and Phoebe – stuck together and didn’t join in anything they didn’t have to, rushing home the moment lessons were over. Enid, plump and merry-eyed, looked better value – she grinned and gave a little wave – but you couldn’t tell from first impressions. Gillian was a daygirl too. Robin wondered why she had missed a lot of school: had she been ill? She looked perfectly healthy.
Miss West allocated seats by alphabetical order. Which meant that Robin was the row behind Babs, sandwiched between Linnet and the as-yet-elusive Sadie, with Fran on Linnet’s other side. So, apart from Mabel in front, who would never turn round to share a joke or pass on a message, she was surrounded by new girls.
Miss West acknowledged this. ‘Robin, I’m sure I can trust you to look after your neighbours. I understand you are a sensible girl.’
If Babs had been beside her, she would have made her laugh, but Babs, the very last in the alphabet, was up front with Mabel Stewart who was devoted to both lessons and games. The perfect schoolgirl, Babs called Mabel. How would Babs cope? How would she cope, stuck with Linnet night and day?
