Francie (16 page)

Jane was one of the younger girls and she had a notorious “pash” on Cressy. She was always hanging about the games mistress, working hard to play well on the team so that she would get a word of commendation. Today ever since the start of the expedition she had been riding her bicycle as close to the leader as possible, taking advantage of every opportunity to speak to her.

Like a sensible woman, Miss Cressall never took notice of Jane's fondness, though it must sometimes have bored her. Perhaps she felt that as long as Jane worked the harder because of it, it was as well left alone. Jane's contemporaries sometimes teased her, but Francie had long ago noticed that at Fairfields these emotional phases were usually ignored or taken for granted, which was after all the least painful way of dealing with them, especially as they never seemed to persist beyond a term's duration anyway.

Just before the wheeled cavalcade came to a halt, Jane had managed to think of another excuse to speak to Cressy. She turned her bicycle's front wheel out of line and speeded up, an easy task on the broad smooth pathway. Full of her own intentions she failed to see Cressy's commanding signal to pause, and for some reason ignored the whistle. When the others stopped, just as the van rocketed along toward them, Jane's bike went ahead full speed onto the road.

“Careful, Jane!” cried Miss Cressall, but it was too late to stop the girl.

With the quick eye and immediate reaction which the games mistress had developed during years of hockey and netball, she rode out between Jane and the oncoming menace. As if she were playing polo she “rode off” the other bicycle, forcing it into the shallow ditch that bordered the road. At the next moment she threw herself off her bicycle and as it clattered down, crushed beneath the van, she hurled herself across the ditch onto the grass beyond. A fencepost stopped her flight in midair. Miss Cressall fell to the ground and lay motionless.

For a moment there was wild confusion. The van came screeching to a stop some rods beyond them, and the driver climbed out and hurried back, looking angry. In the meantime the girls had crowded around Jane and the unconscious games mistress, all talking at once.

Jane struggled slowly to her feet, white and shaken. Her knees were grazed and bleeding; so was her cheek. Her particular friends seized on her and examined these wounds, but the others were all concentrated on Cressy, who didn't move. Shrill excited chatter filled the air.

“Don't you know better.…” the van driver was demanding in rough tones above the rest of the noise.

Francie, appalled, lingered outside the group, unwilling to add to the confusion though she longed to help. The younger girls, she could see, were utterly disorganized, and she didn't know what she should do about it. It was with relief that she saw Jennifer pushing her way into the middle of the crowd and heard her shouting, “Quiet, everybody!”

As usual, Jennifer's personality had an immediate effect on the smaller girls. Slowly the hubbub subsided.

“Move away from here,” went on Jennifer. “Wendy, you see that they all stand back, will you? We must have room; Cressy won't be able to breathe.”

The girls slowly shuffled apart until the games mistress lay completely exposed to Francie's view. Her face was half-turned toward the ground; her eyes were closed. She looked pale, but was breathing quite loudly. Jennifer knelt down and examined her in an efficient manner, not moving her more than to lift one arm.

“Here, miss,” said the van driver more politely since his first excitement had ebbed, “let me give you a hand.”

“What for?” asked Jennifer absently, her eyes bent to Cressy's face.

“We'd best put her into the van and get her to the hospital, hadn't we?”

“No,” said Jennifer. “She mustn't be moved.”

“Oh yes, miss,” he said in shocked tones. “We ought to get her to hospital.”

“No,” said Jennifer, shaking her head. She stood up and looked over the crowd of frightened girls, and Francie, like the others, felt herself depending on this very young woman who seemed to know exactly what to do. Unwillingly, even now, the American girl felt admiration stir in her mind.

“One of you had better go with the van to telephone the nearest hospital and ask them to send a doctor,” Jennifer said. “Who's got enough sense among you? Here, Penny, you go. Ask Enquiries what the nearest hospital is and get on to them. Tell them we haven't moved her for fear it's concussion; that she's breathing all right and as far as I can see there are no external injuries. Tell them her head hit the fencepost. It was an awful crack,” she added, lapsing suddenly into her ordinary schoolgirl's voice. “I heard it; didn't you?”

There was a murmur of agreement. The van driver and Penny went off, and Jennifer said briskly, “Which of you was carrying the bottle of hot tea? Hand it over; we must put that at her feet.”

“Shouldn't we make her a pillow out of a coat or something, Jennifer?” asked one girl. Jennifer said, “Definitely not. They taught us in First Aid never to move the patient's head unless it was absolutely necessary. We mustn't move her at all. But I nearly forgot one thing; we ought to keep her as warm as possible. Everybody give me your blazers.”

In a moment Miss Cressall was warmly covered with blazers and sweaters. And that was all they could do, said Jennifer, until somebody older and wiser arrived to take charge. Now she turned her attention to the unfortunate Jane, and with Francie's help bound up her wounds.

“I thought you were afraid of blood,” said Jennifer to Francie as they worked.

“I forgot all about that,” admitted Francie. They were interrupted by a strangled sob from Jane.

“Do shut up, Jane,” said Jennifer, wrapping a rather grubby handkerchief around the child's leg. “Whatever's the use of howling?”

“It was all my fault!” blubbered Jane.

“Well, what of it? Everybody knows you didn't do it on purpose, and it doesn't help to act like a baby now and set the other kids off.” Jennifer's tone was kinder than her words, and Jane wailed, “Oh, Jennifer, what if she's
dead?
I'll—I'll—”

“She's not dead, you idiot. I promise you that. Now blow your nose and keep quiet; we're too busy to keep an eye on you.”

A few moments later the ambulance arrived, with the van close behind it.

“Cressy's suffering from slight concussion,” Penny reported that evening to the dormitory. “I waited in the office because I heard them telephone about her, and afterwards Miss Maitland told me. Cressy ought to be back in a fortnight, as good as new. They said Jennifer did exactly the right thing from beginning to end. The doctor complimented Miss Maitland on her girls and she was awfully pleased; I could see it.”

“Jennifer's a surprising girl,” said Francie thoughtfully. She had been deep in thought all afternoon.

“Oh, Jennifer's a solid citizen all right,” said Wendy. “You can always depend on her in that sort of crisis.”

“Shhh,” said Marcie, as Jennifer came in.

“Hello,” said Jennifer. “I've been looking everywhere for you, Francie. I wanted to say you weren't half bad the way you kept young Jane quiet, coming back this afternoon. Very helpful it was; she was nearly in hysterics. Fancy a Yank being useful!”

The girls all laughed, Francie with the others. The compliment was so exactly like Jennifer!

CHAPTER 9

A few of the cast of characters were rehearsing privately out beyond the chapel, in the field. Small daisies starred the grass, but June had brought out a hundred other flowers which Francie could not remember ever having noticed in the States. At the moment she was glad to think about flowers because the rehearsal, as is customary with rehearsals, was boring. She had consented to take a very small part in the play because they were short of actors, but her heart was really in the other branch of stagecraft: scene designing and execution. Only Penelope, she reflected, could have persuaded her to take this on as well. Penny, in the absence of the advisory mistress, was in complete charge of the rehearsal today, and she had asked Francie to try to criticize the general effect.

“If I were to tell her the truth,” thought Francie, “I'd have to say it's pretty stinking. But then a play always does stink at this stage.”

Sheila playing Hermia, with Marcie as Lysander, was running through a love passage. Love passages as played at Fairfields were difficult to a degree that always, ultimately, made Penny tear her hair and declare wildly that she could not, would not go on. She was nearly at the hair-tearing stage right now.

Marcie gabbled:

“‘The course of true love never did run smooth But either it was different in blood—'”

Francie gritted her teeth as she waited without hope for Hermia to interrupt. She knew it all by heart by this time, of course, and she knew as well that Hermia would not interrupt on her cue, because she never did. Sheila was a pretty little girl with pink cheeks and a most forgetful mind. At the moment her eyes were fixed dreamily on the summer sky and her mouth was open. She was a thousand miles away.

“Hermia!” barked Penny.

Sheila jumped. “Eh? Oh, sorry. Where were we?”

“You're supposed to interrupt here,” said Penny wearily. “It's where you say, ‘O cross!'”

“Oh yes. ‘O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low!'”

“‘Or else,'” said Lysander, “‘misgraffed in respect of years—'”

“‘O spite! too old to be engaged to young!'” Sheila, working up now to her favorite passage, did not again let her attention wander.

Lysander said, “‘Or else it stood upon the choice of friends—'”

“‘O hell!'” began Hermia, and promptly broke down into helpless giggles. The other actors on the stage likewise broke into giggles. They invariably did at this speech. Even the sophisticated Francie giggled at the contagious silliness.

“It's no good,” said Penelope with a dangerous restraint that they all recognized. “I've gone through this ridiculous business for the last time. I've warned you, and this is the end. With every single rehearsal you idiots get worse when we come to this point. It's not safe, so I'm simply going to cut out these speeches.”

“I say, Pen, I'm awfully sorry,” said Hermia, sobering.

Penny ignored her, and grimly marked her prompt-copy with a pencil. She looked up again at the sheepish crowd. “Ready with your next speech, Lysander,” she said.

Francie ceased to listen. Out of the corner of her eye she had seen Jennifer wander onto the scene and an inspiration had come to her. Ever since the accident, she and Jennifer had been enjoying an armed truce. They didn't like each other any better, but a certain mutual respect had come into being between them.

“You know something, Tennison?” Francie said without preliminary greeting.

Jennifer waited, casting a superior eye over the scene Penny was struggling to direct.

“I've just been wondering,” Francie went on guilelessly. “I mean about the terrible morale among the younger girls in the play. You know—the fairies and what-not. You'd think nobody had ever taught them a bit of discipline. Do you suppose all this Girl Guide stuff you go in for does a bit of good?”

Jennifer stared. She knew perfectly well why the fairies were undisciplined: she'd filled them with her own considerable disrespect for the play. But this attack on the Girl Guides had caught her off guard.

Francie went on dreamily. “You'd think with the training you put them through they'd know how to do what they're told. But they haven't the faintest notion of how to follow directions. That's why I wonder if you're doing much of a job.” She turned her back on Jennifer and moved to a place where she would have a better view of the players. Jennifer snorted under her breath and stalked off the field. It was the first time Francie could remember that
she
had had all the words, instead of Jennifer. She smiled wryly.

“My, but I'm a sly one!” she murmured to herself.

The weekend of half-term was marked by an incursion of parents, anxious-faced adults who made gigantic efforts to get to Fairfields for the day. For those girls whose fathers, or mothers, or both had taken this trouble it meant a day out on picnics or in expeditions to Farham and Kingston, the nearest towns, where one could eat strawberries at the local inns and visit the Museum.

Many Fairfields inmates found themselves at loose ends, as their parents had not been able to get there, owing to petrol shortage or other difficulties. These girls were, in fact, in the majority, as since the war it had become quite the normal thing to be left without family plans on half-term day. Francie had known for some time that she would be among their numbers, because Pop had found it impossible to get away from the Near East as quickly as he had hoped. Pop's business always took longer than he originally planned and Aunt Lolly, who might have come over otherwise, was still in Ireland. The American girl did not consider herself at all badly used, so it was with a sense of indignation as well as perplexity that she received a last-minute invitation from Mrs. Tennison, of all people.

“I'm so afraid you'll feel lonely on half-term day with your father away,” wrote that lady. “Won't you come with Jennifer for a nice long walk with us next Saturday?”

“I just
can't,
” said Francie as she showed the card to Penelope. “I don't want to spend the whole day with the Tennisons. How on earth can I get out of it politely?”

“I thought you and Jennifer had buried the hatchet,” said Penny.

“We have, but that doesn't mean I love her mother any better than I did before. Jennifer's all right in her way, but I can't imagine being pals with Mrs. Tennison. Not in this world at any rate.”

“Oh, well, it's simple enough; just say vaguely that you're awfully grateful and all that but you'd unfortunately made other plans before you realized and so forth. She won't check up; she's just trying to be kind. I don't suppose she really likes you much better than you like her.”