First term at fernside, p.8
First Term at Fernside, page 8
Sadie wasn’t at all shy at being introduced to the whole of the lower fourth, and seemed thrilled with the big pile of textbooks and exercise books waiting on her desk. Gillian made a big show of having to make room for Sadie’s crutches when she laid them on the ground beside her chair, but Sadie said only that she was pleased to meet her too.
On Monday afternoon, Robin was giving half her attention to Miss West and the Flight of the Earls, and half to gazing out at the driveway and wondering what had happened to the black cat. I was meant to come up with a plan to help her, she thought, and I haven’t. But we haven’t seen her since. The crunch of wheels on gravel caught her attention. It was like the noise she had heard when they had just escaped from Rowanbank. To her horror, up the drive, on a big black bicycle, rode a strange man. He wore a grey tweed suit, and there was a leather bag – a doctor’s bag? – clipped to the holder above his rear wheel. Men never came to Fernside House, apart from Connor, the handyman and gardener. Was it – surely it was Doctor Flynn, come to call on Miss Rea, having found Linnet’s hair-ribbons in his garden – hair-ribbons, she remembered with a jolt, clearly marked R. GREY? Were they even now in that black bag, ready to incriminate her?
Distantly she heard the doorbell ring, and waited, stomach somersaulting, for the summons. And when it never came, instead of thinking, well, it must have been someone else, she could only imagine that Miss Rea was biding her time. A sword was poised above her neck, and at teatime it would fall. Or maybe she would be called out of class …
On Monday evening all the junior boarders had Activities, which sounded more fun than it was: you could choose between knitting or crocheting for the less fortunate. Making things for yourself was tolerated but considered uncharitable. Mademoiselle Sudret read aloud in French for the first half hour, and then they were allowed to chat – mais doucement, mes chères filles! she would plead every time the chatter became heated. Only a few people really enjoyed it, but there was competition among even the ham-fisted to produce the most squares for the blankets they would sew together for local old people’s homes and orphanages. Mabel, competent at knitting as at most things, had gathered a little group of second formers around her and was patiently showing them what to do. The little girl Robin had heard stick up for Linnet during the milk fiasco grinned at her above her bright pink wool, and Robin grinned back. Her hair actually was white, she noticed now, and her eyes a very pale blue. Robin wondered what it would feel like to look so strikingly different. She was very glad not to stand out in any way herself.
Babs, arriving late after being sent to Miss Kavanagh’s room for wool, dumped the bag on the table in front of Robin and demanded, ‘Is Sadie your new best friend?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Robin said. Beside her, Sadie was showing Linnet, who had never knitted or crocheted before but who would have been mortified to have to join the babies, how to cast on. Linnet was slow to learn, and fast becoming tearful, and Robin was happy to let Sadie take charge while she carried on with her own knitting, the beginnings of a mauve cardigan for Mother’s birthday.
‘Well, you’re always with her,’ Babs said, digging out her knitting bag and starting to cast on some soft yellow wool. ‘Or Linnet.’
‘She sits beside me! I’m only helping her settle in – and I have to be with Linnet: she’s my cousin, in case you’ve forgotten – not my friend.’ Robin hadn’t meant this to sound so harsh and was glad that Linnet was too tangled up with wool and needles to be paying attention.
‘I’m not deaf,’ Sadie said, leaning over the table, ‘in case you’ve forgotten that too. It’s only my legs that aren’t A1.’ She rummaged through the bag and picked out some balls of wool: brown, navy and black. ‘Ugh,’ she said, ‘I don’t think this is going to make a very jolly blanket for the less fortunate.’
Robin, glad of the distraction, picked up a ball of brown wool. ‘It smells fusty,’ she said. ‘Where on earth did Miss Kavanagh get it?’
‘The wool graveyard,’ Sadie said. It wasn’t that funny, but Robin decided to find it hilarious, partly to annoy Babs.
‘Her mother sent it,’ Babs said. ‘She has arthritis and can’t knit anymore so she’s sent it to us.’
As always, it was strange to think of a teacher having a mother and a life outside Fernside.
‘Lucky us.’ Sadie reached in and pulled out a huge skein of khaki-coloured wool. ‘D’you think this has actually been to the Western Front or does it just smell like it?’
Robin shivered as something – too faint to be called a memory, more of a sensation – scratched at her. Mother knitting socks. That exact colour. For Father in the war. Robin used to have to stand with her arms outstretched, so that Mother could wind the wool into a ball. Her arms would ache, but she mustn’t let them fall because she was a big girl and it was for Father. Then one day Mother stopped knitting. A single unfinished sock sat on top of the workbasket for days, growing a beard of dust, and Mother wouldn’t speak, not even to Robin, and Robin was sent away to stay with Aunt Jane and Linnet. When she came home, the sock was gone. And she understood that she must never talk about Father again. So she didn’t. Even when she wanted to. Even when she longed to know: did Father like school? Was he good at arithmetic? Did he like chocolate? Better not to know than to make Mother send her away again.
She remembered nothing about staying with Aunt Jane and Linnet, except the taste of raw gooseberries from the garden and a toy farm that Linnet had been so attached to that she cried when Aunt Jane told her to share. She looked at Linnet now, frowning over her knitting needles and a tangle of red wool, and wondered if she remembered too. Linnet must only have been five; Robin had been six.
‘Put that wool back,’ she said to Sadie. ‘It’s horrible. I don’t know why old Mrs Kavanagh thought we’d want her rotten wool.’
‘It’s ghastly, isn’t it?’ Sadie said. ‘Enough to send the less fortunate into an early grave.’
Fran said, ‘Could the less fortunate be animals? Because they wouldn’t mind what colour the wool was. I’d happily crochet for horses or dogs.’
Mademoiselle, when appealed to, said that the blankets generally went to the human deserving, but that she saw no reason why Fran could not knit for the four-legged. Fran, who had shown little interest in Activities until now, took one of the dullest balls of wool and had completed several ‘granny’ squares by the time the bell rang.
‘Talking of four-legged unfortunates,’ she said, when it was time to clear up and go to the dining room for supper, ‘I hope that cat and her kittens are all right.’
‘I haven’t seen her,’ Robin said. ‘The milk’s been drunk every day, but probably by Mim.’
‘They can’t be far away.’ Fran frowned. ‘I keep thinking she might have died and the kittens are starving somewhere. Under a hedge or—’
‘Don’t say that!’ Linnet looked at her red knitting with distaste. ‘I don’t think knitting is going to be one of my talents.’
‘And remind us, what are your talents, Linnet?’ Babs said, smiling at the little yellow baby bootee that was taking shape already on her own needles.
Linnet said matter-of-factly, ‘I know a lot about nature. Miss Taylor said my knowledge was remarkable.’
‘You can’t say things like that. Nobody likes a bighead,’ Babs said.
‘I’m not a bighead. It’s a fact,’ Linnet said.
Robin sighed. Why did her cousin have to be so peculiar? So babyish and oversensitive in some ways, so outspoken in others. Things had been simple last year: she and Babs had been new together, and that had made an immediate bond. They quickly found they laughed at the same things, loved doing jigsaws, and found it hard to stay awake in church. Babs didn’t like hockey, Robin found Babs’s tongue a little too sharp occasionally, but on the whole, falling into friendship had been easy. Things were much more complicated in the lower fourth.
She became aware that someone was talking to her.
‘So, we’re agreed then?’
‘Agreed about what?’
Sadie sighed. ‘You’re getting as dreamy as Linnet – no offence meant, Linnet. We’re going to look for the cat after lunch tomorrow.’
‘Good idea,’ Robin said. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t rain.’
It didn’t, and they recruited Evangeline and Enid. If they had to try to feed the cat and her family, it would be helpful to have a daygirl involved. The rest of lower fourth weren’t interested, but that made seven people to check under hedges and shrubs – mulchy and damp, and in the gardener’s shed – dry and spidery. But they found no creature bigger than a tiny curled-up hedgehog. Which was disappointing, but better, Robin felt, than finding either a nest of starving kittens and feeling responsible for them, or, something she dreaded every time she knelt down to peer under a hedge, a corpse. She had heard somewhere that cats crawled off to die, and that poor cat hadn’t looked very healthy. Diseased, Gillian Moffatt had said.
‘We’ve done our best,’ she said, when the bell went for afternoon lessons, and they had to admit defeat.
‘Maybe she’s found someone to take care of her,’ Sadie said. ‘My auntie Iris always says, Cats won’t lose themselves.’
Robin suspected that Sadie’s auntie Iris mightn’t have been so confident if she had seen the oozing infected tail and raggedy ears of the black cat.
‘Maybe she’s been stolen,’ suggested Enid, and Sadie looked thrilled. ‘There’ve been lots of animals going missing round here lately.’ Enid lived closer to school than any other daygirl, in one of the new villas opposite Larkin’s shop, so she was their authority on Local Affairs. ‘Bertie McGeown’s greyhound was stolen.’
‘I don’t think she was the sort of cat anyone would steal, poor thing,’ Linnet said.
‘Neither was Bertie McGeown’s greyhound,’ Enid said. ‘It was a mangy old thing. He said it was a useless article and it saved him the bother of shooting it.’
‘How horrible,’ Fran said. ‘People shouldn’t have animals if they don’t look after them.’
‘Maybe the dog ran away,’ Evangeline suggested romantically, ‘to a better home.’
‘Maybe.’ Enid didn’t sound convinced. Then she grinned. ‘I’m getting a puppy for my birthday.’
‘Well, the cat’s definitely gone,’ Robin said, before everyone could get distracted with the excitement of a puppy, ‘and we’re going to be late for netball if we don’t get a move on.’
‘What will you do for games, Sadie?’ Linnet asked, as they reached the door to the changing rooms.
‘I’m not sure.’ Sadie frowned. ‘I want to join in everything, but I don’t suppose I can play netball.’
‘You most certainly cannot.’ Miss Curran, carrying a large sack of balls, and with a whistle round her neck, had caught up with them. ‘How could you run, and catch and throw a ball?’ She rushed on without waiting for an answer. ‘You need to accept your limitations, young lady.’
Sadie looked hurt. ‘I don’t want to,’ she muttered.
‘Well, that’s very silly,’ Miss Curran said. Silly was her most scornful insult. ‘I understand you overstretched yourself on Saturday. I’m not having you do the same during my lesson. You can sit on the bench and watch.’ She said this as if it were a great treat.
Sadie sighed and looked, for the first time since Robin had met her, sulky. ‘But I need to exercise,’ she said.
‘You’re coming to me on Wednesdays and Saturdays for remedial exercises,’ Miss Curran said. ‘That will build up your muscles.’
‘But what’s the point in watching a game I can never play? Can I at least go for a walk round the garden instead?’
Miss Curran shook her head. ‘You need to be where I can keep an eye on you. I can’t let you walk round the grounds alone.’
Linnet spoke up. ‘Please, Miss Curran, I could walk with her.’
‘You will play netball.’
‘But I’m hopeless,’ Linnet said.
‘All the more reason to get as much practice as you can.’ And Miss Curran would not be moved, except to repeat, ‘Silly girls.’
Robin, warming up on the court, felt a pang to see Sadie alone on the bench. And really, how unfair of Miss Curran: it would be much kinder and more sensible to let Linnet and Sadie walk in the garden. She resolved, as she took her place in a long line of girls to practise shooting, to find a way to keep Sadie involved. Maybe when they started to play an actual game, she could keep score? But when, just after a successful shot at the net, she turned round, expecting Sadie to shout ‘Well done!’ she saw that she was not watching at all, but reading, hunched over her book in a way that was bound to make Miss Curran exclaim about ruining her posture. But Miss Curran, intent on the game – so intent that Robin wondered if she was only just keeping one step ahead of the girls with the rules – didn’t seem to notice Sadie at all. Which was just as well, because the next time she ran past her, Robin noticed that the book she was engrossed in was A Harum-Scarum Schoolgirl by Angela Brazil. Which, though Robin had never read it, looked the very essence of what Miss Curran called silly.
The day, between netball and looking for the cat, had been so busy that Robin had forgotten the sword she imagined was waiting to fall. But after tea, Miss Rea rang the little bell on the mistresses’ table, and said, ‘And now girls, I have something very serious to speak to you about.’
Robin’s tummy, which had been very contentedly digesting her baked beans, fizzed with unease. She set down her fork.
‘I had a visit yesterday,’ Miss Rea went on, ‘from a doctor.’
Robin gulped.
‘Now listen carefully, girls. This is important.’
Robin looked down at her plate. Her heart pounded. She dared not look at Babs, or Sadie, or Linnet.
How stupid to think they had got away with it!
Chapter 14
The New Teacher
Robin gave a strangled gasp which made Linnet wonder if she was sick, but when Miss Rea went on to say that she had just engaged a Doctor Bell to teach science, she seemed to slump – as if she was relieved.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
How strange, Linnet thought: Robin had never seemed bothered that there wasn’t a science teacher. Fran, opposite her, paused with her fork halfway to her mouth, and was looking happier than Linnet had ever seen her.
‘He’s not a medical doctor,’ Miss Rea explained, ‘but a doctor of science.’ Like Daddy, Linnet thought. ‘Of course you’re used to mistresses, not masters, and he is accustomed to teaching boys, but I don’t expect any silliness just because he is a man – remember the high moral tone of Fernside House.’ Babs rolled her eyes. ‘He will not be able to join us full-time – he has other responsibilities at Queen’s University, so it will just be lower fifths and above. Make sure you give a good impression of how seriously you can work. You are ambassadors for female scholars everywhere.’
Fran let out a stifled groan, which made Nell McGreavy, in charge of their table, tut and frown. Ignoring Nell, Fran shouted out, ‘When are we getting a science teacher?’
‘You wouldn’t expect a university lecturer to teach rude little girls who speak out of turn, would you?’ Miss Rea asked.
Fran clearly judged this a rhetorical question, and subsided, but afterwards, on the way to prep, she said, ‘I bet half those big girls don’t even want to learn science. It should go by how interested you are, not what form you’re in.’
‘I’m in no hurry to cut up frogs and do smelly experiments,’ Babs said.
Robin, who seemed extraordinarily light-hearted since Miss Rea’s announcement, said, ‘Maybe we’ll cut up Gillian Moffatt and see what she has instead of a heart.’
Babs giggled. ‘She’s hardly an asset to the lower fourth, is she? I wish she hadn’t been left behind.’
Evangeline said, ‘That’s unkind, when Gillian isn’t here to defend herself.’
‘I don’t think it’s unkind,’ Linnet said. ‘She calls me Baby Bird.’
‘And she doesn’t think I should be at school with “normal” girls,’ Sadie said. ‘She said my crutches were a hazard.’
‘She’s a hazard,’ Robin said. ‘I don’t know why she’s so mean.’
‘Born that way,’ Babs said.
‘But nobody’s born bad,’ Evangeline said. ‘Babies are sweet.’
‘Well, you should hear what she calls you, Evangeline,’ Babs said. ‘I won’t repeat it – I wouldn’t want to offend the High Moral Tone of which our illustrious headmistress is so proud.’ Then her tone changed. ‘D’you think this Doctor Bell is handsome? Is that why she’s worried that the girls will lose the run of themselves? After all, it’s not like we ever see any men here, apart from old Connor.’
‘I expect there’ll be a chaperone at his lessons,’ Evangeline said seriously.
‘I’ve seen him,’ Robin said, and everyone shrieked and clamoured for details. Everyone except Linnet, who thought how silly they were. Every time she thought she knew how to be with the others, they found a new way to be puzzling.
‘Lower fourth! Stop loitering and get ready for prep!’ called Nell McGreavy.
Linnet sighed as she took her books from her locker. Prep. Another stuffy hour in the form room. At least in the evenings there were only eight of them, but even so, she seemed to feel people jostling all around her, all the time. Sometimes she wanted to be away from them so much she could scream. She had been trying hard not to think about the glories of the garden next door, of how she could close her eyes and just feel the trees and space all around. She wanted desperately to return. Looking at it from the dorm window wasn’t enough anymore. That very afternoon, after lessons, she had slipped away from the others and gone all the way down to the shrubbery beyond the vegetable beds, to see if the fence was still broken. It was. She didn’t do more than look, and her heart was thumping all the time, but she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t been tempted to pull the planks aside and creep through.
Nancy, the head girl, was waiting for them at their form room, clutching an armful of books strapped together. ‘I hope you’re all going to do your prep in peace,’ she said, unstrapping the books on the mistress’s desk. ‘I’ve a beast of a Latin translation and I don’t need any interruptions. So please be good.’
