No Talking after Lights (3 page)

Constance knew that it was out of the question to go to the Head and ask her to fill a fountain-pen, but she nodded and didn't argue.

‘It cost 31s. 6d.,‘ said her mother. ‘It's a very good one and you must make it last right through your time at school. You look like a little Princess. Everything new. Remember to thank Daddy.'

Constance, who had thanked her father for each handkerchief and games sock, as new items were added to the pile of school uniform, nodded again. She couldn't speak and she would not cry. Around her dozens of unfamiliar schoolgirls, who all looked the same except for the very pretty ones, were greeting each other with rapturous or scornful cries.

‘Did you have t'riffic hols?
I
saw
Call Me Madam.
'

‘So what? I saw
South Pacific
. It was wizard.'

‘Well, who cares? My brother took me to see
The World in His Arms
and
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
‘cos he knows I'm batty about Gregory Peck.'

‘Isn't he smashing? You can't have him, though -he's mine. I've bagged him!' and, turning round, ‘Oh, hello, Feeny. Picking up fag-ends as per usual!'

Constance wouldn't have been allowed to see any of the films they were talking about. She had spent the Easter holidays in a state of numb acquiescence, being measured at Kinch & Lack for dreadfully expensive clothes that looked hideous on her since they were all a size too big to make them do for next year.

Her mother had ticked off the items on the clothes list one by one. Sweet tin, they had finally got down to; 2 face flannels (must be marked); hairbrush and comb (‘Look, darling, Mason-Pearson brush and Addis beauty comb. Mind you make them last. They're the most expensive'); toothbrush with one term's supply of toothpaste; shampoo. Boots was the last shop they visited.

‘What does it mean, “STs (if needed)”?' Connie asked her mother.

‘Shush, darling, not so loud. I'll tell you some other time.'

She hadn't, though; and Constance wondered if she would need STs, and what for.

All around them on Platform Nine at Waterloo parents were left to smile stiffly at other half-recognized parents while their daughters found friends and formed their familiar cliques, abandoning home life for school loyalties. Constance recognized Madeleine, who had shown her round the school, but Madeleine avoided her eye. She didn't know anyone else, so she stood looking into the middle distance, longing for her father to arrive and tell her it wasn't true, longing for her mother to stay, longing to be home in her own comfortable hand-knitted jumper and outgrown kilt.

‘Can you see the Simpson twins?' asked her mother. ‘Their parents don't seem to be here. Perhaps Universal Aunts had to see them off, poor little things.'

Constance wouldn't ask who the universal aunts were, knowing by now that it would be just another grown-up trick like the godmother at school, which had turned out to mean another girl. She saw her father hurrying towards them and could tell he felt guilty about leaving his office in the middle of the afternoon. He kissed her moistly, formally, in the middle of the forehead.

‘There was a little girl and she had a little curl/Right in the middle of her forehead,' Constance's brain chanted idiotically.

‘Now, Constance,' he said, ‘I want you to remember all the things we talked about last night, to work hard and be a good girl and make us both proud of you. It's a wonderful opportunity. You're a very privileged little girl and you mustn't forget that. We're not asking for gratitude; but we do expect you to work hard and play hard.'

Constance felt the wet kiss fading from her skin and thought, ‘And when she was good she was very, very
good/But when she was bad she was horrid.'

‘I'll have to be off now,' he said, after a long, awkward silence. ‘What about you, dear? Are you going to wait till the train goes?'

‘I think I will,' said her mother. ‘I want to wave till the very last minute.'

‘Right-ho, then. Back to the grindstone.'

‘Your father works very hard, Connie,' said her mother, adding in a whisper, ‘Thank him again, darling.'

Settling his hat back on his head and swinging his tidily furled umbrella, her father strode away down the platform. Constance saw her mother's face begin to loosen. Any moment now she would be in tears. The shame of having her mother cry in front of everyone was more than she could bear.

‘Mummy, don't!' she hissed. ‘Please don't cry. I couldn't stand it.'

Touched by this evidence of emotion and concern from her undemonstrative child, Paula King pulled herself together and enveloped her stiff little body, smelling of freshly washed hair and new cotton, in a loving hug. Constance patted her mother's shoulder feebly and let herself be kissed.

‘Might as well go and find a seat then,' she said. She picked up her overnight case (the trunk had been sent ahead) and climbed the two high steps on to the train.

She walked into the compartment and sat down. Looking through the window she saw with horror that her mother was indeed starting to cry. ‘Turn round,' she mouthed through the glass. ‘Turn
round!
' Her mother failed to understand, so Constance twirled her index finger until, obediently, her mother turned away. Constance's last image as the train finally drew out was of her crumpled face peering furtively over her shoulder to catch a last glimpse of her daughter.

* * *

‘You're new, aren't you? What form are you in? You can't sit here. Who's your godmother?'

‘I didn't know,' said Constance. ‘Where am I supposed to sit?'

‘Anywhere except here. This is reserved for the seniors and you're a squit.'

I'm not a squit, am I? thought Constance. What's a squit? Is it anything to do with STs?

‘Are the squits the ones who need STs?' she asked, and a tide of giggles convulsed the girls sitting close enough to hear what she had said. They hunched their backs and spluttered into their chests, then looked slyly at one another and began to titter again.

Constance left the seat and made her way through the rocking compartment as laughter exploded behind her. Head bowed and burning with humiliation, she almost bumped into a woman coming the other way.

‘Hold on, hold on a minute, where are you going?' asked the woman. ‘You're a new girl, aren't you? You shouldn't be here. Do you know which form you're in?'

‘Lower Fourth, I think,' said Constance.

The woman smiled quite kindly at her. ‘Come along, let's see if we can find your godmother.'

‘Excuse me, but am I a squit?' asked Constance.

‘Those wretched girls!' The woman sighed. ‘No, if you're in the Lower Fourth you're not a squit. I'm afraid that's what they call the little ones, in the third form. It's a horrid word. What's your name?'

‘Constance King,' said Constance King.

In the dormitory just before lights out, Constance's godmother, a fifth-former called Sarah, came across to her bed (she'd had to take the worst one, just inside the door) and asked dutifully, ‘Are you all right? Are you sure you're all right? You're supposed to tell me if
you're not. If you want to cry or anything, come and find me. I'm in Blackbirds. Have you got a teddy?'

‘No.'

‘We're allowed teddies. It says on the clothes list: “one teddy bear or other soft toy”.'

‘Must be marked,' guessed Constance. ‘I haven't got a teddy,' she said. ‘I don't like dolls.'

‘Oh. Well. Do you want me to kiss you good night or anything?'

‘No, thank you very much all the same.'

‘Don't anyone be foul to Constance, OK?' said Sarah firmly as she shut the door of Starlings.

On the bed opposite Constance's, fat, sloppy Rachel and square-jawed Jennifer, who were best friends because no-one else would have them, were poring over Rachel's precious album of Royal Family postcards. These were soft-focus black-and-white photographs by Marcus Adams, Cecil Beaton or Dorothy Wilding. Rachel's mother and aunts and godmothers had sent some to build up her collection and Rachel had bought the rest herself out of her pocket-money. The two of them glanced across at Constance, but not in a friendly way, as though challenging her to show interest. I don't care, thought Constance; I don't want to see their silly old pictures. But she wished her mother had packed a book into her overnight case.

The matron, Miss Peachey, came in a few moments later and said, ‘Lights out,' although the summer evening was still pale and airy and the light wasn't switched on. ‘Good night, everyone. Welcome back.'

‘I don't think,' somebody muttered.

Matron twinkled. ‘And
no talking
, do you hear? No talking after lights. Try and be a bit better behaved than last term's Starlings.'

When her crêpe-soled shoes had squeaked away down the corridor the girls started to whisper, then to
giggle, and one or two sat up in bed and pulled out secret packages from under their pillows and began to distribute presents: bags of sweets or glass animals. Each girl had her own bedside locker on which stood a collection of treasures: a pair of capering Chinese horses or a model of a Scottie dog or a fluffy cat. These animals were often named after a pet left at home. Two girls, Anne and Fiona, were whinnying as they pretended to put their ponies to bed for the night. Glass animals - fish with elaborate tails or upright feathery cats with bulging eyes - were favourite ornaments.

On top of each locker lay the modest beige booklet of the Bible Reading Fellowship: a biblical extract for each day, annotated for private meditation. In pride of place was a photograph of the girl's parents. These ranged from home-made passe-partout frames enclosing jolly family snapshots to elaborate silver frames containing a studio portrait by Lenare or Vivienne or Dorothy Wilding, their signatures scrawled diagonally above an embossed Bond Street address. They provided the best indication of each girl's status. Anyone coming into the dormitory - Matron, prefects, other girls - could see at a glance if someone's people were young, glamorous and rich, and deduce whether they lived in town or in the country, whether family pets were low-status ones like cats, rabbits, guinea-pigs, or high-status ones like a large dog or two, a horse or pony. Sometimes the pictures showed a house in the background. Being rich mattered very much indeed, but boasting about being rich was the worst kind of swanking. The locker arrangements allowed a girl to indicate her social standing without seeming to show off.

Constance lay and looked at the double-sided, leather-framed photographs of her parents that stood on top of her locker like an open book: her father stern
yet young in his tropical uniform; her mother soft-focused into ethereal, unlined prettiness. They looked nothing like the two people who'd seen her off from Waterloo Station. She hadn't got a picture of Felix, her black cat, to tuck into a corner, nor any glass animals. She lay rigidly in bed, trapped within the narrow iron frame, ignoring the murmurs around her. I will be a tree, she thought, summoning up the old trick. I will feel my roots growing up into my toes, feel my body stiffen and swell and become eternal, immobile - and solid, reassuring, tree-like. I am a tree. As the sap ran along her limbs making her fingers and tongue thicken and grow numb, Constance fell into tree-ness and deafness and dumbness and sleep.

Every evening Peggy Roberts and Henrietta Birmingham would sit in the drawing-room together for an hour or two. Nobody knew anything about Miss Roberts's family. She was not impoverished, for she had put £5,000 into the school in return for the job of Deputy Head. She too was a stately and imposing woman, as tall as Mrs Birmingham, though it was obvious at first glance that she had never been pretty. Her great shyness manifested itself in a formality that kept everyone - girls and parents - at a distance. She seldom smiled; she had never been given a nickname. Yet she conveyed an underlying kindness and sensitivity which made Old Girls single her out at reunions, feeling that somehow they should try and make amends. On these occasions they would find conversation as difficult as ever.

For both women, the school was the hub and purpose of their lives. Despite this, and the fact that they had been born only a few months apart, their intimacy was mostly silent. Each was content to spend time in the other's company, but they did not gossip and rarely
discussed the school. They watched
What's My Line?
and nature programmes on a flickering black-and-white television; they read; Miss Roberts embroidered tapestry cushions or kneelers and read travel books, especially about Italy. After the news ended at quarter past nine, Miss Roberts would usually go up to her bedroom above the drawing-room, and shortly afterwards Mrs Birmingham would take the car up the long school drive, back to her querulous husband.

That first evening of the summer term Henrietta Birmingham had sat on the window-seat beside the bay windows that overlooked the lawns and the rhododendrons. From this vantage point she could watch the girls who strolled under the cedars, gossiping about their holidays. Under one tree stood the heavy iron roller with wooden handles which the gardener and his lad would drag over the freshly mown grass. Nearby, curving amply like a duck's breast, was the bin into which the grass mowings flew in a twinkling green spray. The Head had watched the sunset streaks against the deep slate-blue of the sky glowing purple as they gradually intensified into darkness like the last embers of a fire, and listened to the seniors chattering and laughing on the bank below the bay window, unaware that their voices drifted up to her in the still evening.

How untrammelled they were by the restrictions that had hedged about her girlhood - the strait-jacket of class and gender, the imminence of war - she thought. Their world was carefree; they picked their self-absorbed way through adolescence, listening only to the beat of their own hearts, careless of death. Even at fourteen she had not been carefree. Her two older brothers, trained in the Eton Officers' Training Corps, had volunteered as soon as war was declared. Her nearest brother, seventeen-year-old Jamie, chafed to be
allowed to join them at the front. ‘Don't you see, Hetta,' he'd said to her, almost crying with the urgency of it, ‘the war'll be over by Christmas and if they don't let me go now, I'll miss it. If they make me wait till I'm eighteen, it's going to be too late. And then how shall I ever face Alistair and Hugo?' The war hadn't been over by Christmas, nor yet by his birthday, but Jamie had worried away at his parents, sworn he wouldn't take up his place at Oxford, until in the end they'd given way.