No Talking after Lights (32 page)

Mrs Birmingham took Constance's arm and laid it under the sheet, then brushed the hair back from her hot forehead, bent down and kissed her. Constance shut her eyes. No-one had given her a kiss since she said goodbye to her mother at the end of Parents' Weekend. She felt tearful and shaky.

‘Sister will bring you something to make you sleep. Night-night, dear. God bless.'

Moments later, Sister Girdlestone entered, her face grim with disapproval. She placed a tray of bread and butter and a glass of milk on the bedside table. In a tiny white box with pleated edges lay two pills.

‘Now do I have to watch you or can you be trusted to take those?'

Constance sat up gingerly, took the glass and the pills and swallowed them in one gulp.

‘You are a very wicked girl, Constance King, and I hope you're thoroughly ashamed of yourself. If Miss Peachey hadn't been passing on her way in, what on earth might have happened? You in your dressing-gown - unconscious - nobody would have known
who
you were! And what about the poor woman who ran you over? Have you stopped to think about how she must feel?'

Constance stared into Sister Girdlestone's pinched face and said nothing.

‘No shame. No remorse. I wash my hands of you.'

Constance went on staring, until Sister dropped her eyes and walked out of the room.

An hour later Constance was drowsy but still awake. She swung her legs stiffly out of bed and hobbled next door to spend an urgent penny. Back in the sick-room, she walked across to the window and drew aside the flimsy curtain, but she couldn't see the moon. The sick-room was on the wrong side of the house, two floors above the Covered Way. She looked along the drive, and could see lights on in the cottage where Batey Parry lived. It's all her fault, she thought fiercely; if it hadn't been for her saying those foul, unfair things to me, I might not have gone. She decided me. Nobody calls me a slut, and a dirty little girl. ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.' Well that's wrong, anyway. The stones didn't break my bones. Her legs, swathed in bandages, were beginning
to tremble and her head was swimming. I must go to sleep, thought Constance; those pills are working.

Next morning Miss Girdlestone brought her breakfast in silence. Constance looked at the tray of congealing porridge and cold toast and left it untouched.

‘Can I have my sponge-bag?' she asked.

‘It's in the bathroom, next door. Wash your hands and face and give your teeth a good clean. Doctor'll be back to see you this morning so make yourself presentable.'

The doctor had unwound her bandages and applied clean dressings - ‘I know you're a brave girl, ducky, but I'd rather you didn't have a squint just yet. Better to lie back and keep your eyes shut. All right? Jolly good show.' Then she had heard the school coaches rev up and take everyone to church. Later she heard them come back, and the laughter and chatter of the girls as they scrambled out. She wanted to lean out of the sickroom window and wave but she didn't dare.

The door opened and the Head came in. She was wearing a long flowered two-piece and white peep-toe shoes, and she looked as stately and imposing as old Queen Mary. Constance felt nervous. The Head sat on a chair beside the bed and folded her hands in her lap.

‘Feeling better this morning?' she asked.

‘Yes, thank you.'

‘Good. I remembered you in my prayers in church.'

Constance didn't know how to respond to that, so she muttered ‘Thank you.'

‘My dear, now that you have had a good night's sleep, and a bit of time to think about what happened yesterday, I wonder if you can explain to me what you were doing in the lane, in your dressing-gown, at that hour of the morning? It is, to say the least of it, an unusual time to go and pick flowers …' She
smiled, to show that it was meant as a joke.

For the first time, Constance realized that the Head didn't know that she had been trying to run away. Suddenly she didn't want to tell her. It had been a crazy plan, it couldn't possibly have succeeded. Yet what other excuse had she to offer? She looked down and fiddled with the sheet. She was no good at telling lies, and anyway she couldn't make one up on the spur of the moment.

‘I was going to run away. I planned to get a train to London and then go to my aunt's. She lives at King's Lynn. I was on my way to the station to catch a train.'

She stopped and looked at Mrs Birmingham.

‘Why
were you going to run away - especially now, when it's practically the end of term?'

‘I kept writing to Mummy and Daddy and saying I wasn't happy but they never took any notice, so I thought if I ran away that would convince them.'

‘But Constance, why didn't you talk to someone about it? A friend … you've got friends. Your form mistress. You could have come and talked to me.'

‘I know. Actually I did try, once. But you were busy,' said Constance.

‘Why were you so unhappy?'

‘I don't know.' It was true. She couldn't remember. Her present pain and misery and confusion were much worse than anything she had suffered during the term.

‘Well, I am afraid you have succeeded in your intention, although not quite in the way you had planned. I told you that I had spoken to your parents yesterday. First I talked to your mother, and after that your father rang me from his office. They are both understandably very shocked and very angry. Not only with you.
I
have failed in my duty to care for you, failed in my responsibility for your well-being. They have informed me that you will not be returning to Raeburn.'

‘What?' cried Constance.

‘You will leave at the end of term. You will travel to Kenya and your parents will decide what is to become of you. Your father informs me that his decision is final.'

‘Oh, no! No, I don't
want
to leave! I want to stay! Please let me stay. Talk to him for me, please - persuade him.'

The Head smiled at her unexpectedly, and laid a hand over hers. ‘Constance, Constance. First you want to leave, and now you want to stay. What are we to make of you? You'll be home in a few days' time. Talk to your parents. They know what's best.'

‘They never
listen
to me! Sorry to be rude, but they don't.'

‘Well, I'm listening to you now. And what I hear is a very muddled little girl. Now, although it was wrong of you to try and run away, you didn't deserve what happened. Are you feeling any better today?'

‘It still hurts a fair bit.'

‘Yes, well, I expect it will do for a few days. But it might have been a great deal worse.'

‘Can I ask you one more thing?'

‘What is it?'

‘Is Flopsy all right? My rabbit - I let him go because nobody'd been feeding them.'

‘I'll find out for you. And now, Constance, since you weren't able to go to church this morning, and you need the love of God particularly at this time, I want you to close your eyes and fold your hands and say a prayer with me.
Dear God, the Father of us all …
'

When Mrs Birmingham had gone, Constance lay back in bed with a great sigh. She thought about Raeburn and the hundreds of details that had arranged themselves into the pattern of her daily life. The clang of the rising bell in the mornings. The squeak and
drumming of sandalled feet hurrying downstairs to line up in the Covered Way for the breakfast gong. Bed-making, with her nightie neatly folded under the pillow and the counterpane smoothed over. Lining up again for Break, wondering if there'd be a letter. Sitting in the Reading Corner, looking through
Punch
or
The Pony Club Magazine
or
The Field
- those remote worlds lived in by other people, so different from her own.

She thought of Rest, when everyone lay on their beds after lunch ‘to digest' and after that, the hurry and excitement as you changed into games things and took your tennis racquet, heavy inside its wooden press, up to the courts for a practice, or the drowsy peace of playing cricket and being a fielder. She thought how funny it always looked, as barefooted girls in bathing-suits zig-zagged delicately over the gravel on their way up to the swimming-pool. Diving - the proud bliss of that swallow dive, as her body did exactly what it was meant to do, quite independently of her mind. The sun beating down on the games field during house-matches, when you cheered and made daisy-chains: sticking a fingernail into one stalk and pushing the next one through, like threading a needle, until finally you had a wilting string of pink and white daisies to drape round your neck. Shouting encouragement to the school team: Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? RAEBURN!'

And then the evenings - the beautiful, light-hearted evenings, grubbing in the earth round Charmie's roses while, just within earshot, people shrieked with the excitement of playing Kick the Can. The soft fur of Flopsy and his tremulous affection as she cuddled him and stroked his twitching nose. Cosy evenings sitting hunched up on the floor of the library reading while next door the common-room was noisy with
gramophones and shouts of laughter or protest. Bath-night, twice a week: four baths in one bathroom, each with a shining, soapy figure giggling and splashing water over those who passed by. And finally bedtime, and the way they'd all listened as she told them the story of Sohrab and Rustum. She'd changed the ending, but no-one had noticed. And at the end of every day, the wood-pigeons cooing, always cooing in the high trees beyond the dormitory.

It had all been strung together in a familiar routine, and one she had learned to take pleasure in. You'll find your niche, Daddy had told her, and it was true after all. Charmie wouldn't be there next term to bully her, but Sheila might - and who would be friends with poor Sheila except her? I don't want to leave, thought Constance in despair;
I don't want to leave!

A week later, the Head sat alone in her silent study. The school had broken up. Trunks had been hauled down from the dormitories and piled by the front and back entrances. Carter Paterson's vans had collected them and driven off. Excited girls, in a cacophony of tears and laughter and cries of ‘Hope you have good hols! Will you write? Promise you won't forget?' had been taken away by their parents, or driven in the school coach to the local station and put on the train up to London.

There had been a final staff meeting. Miss Parry had regretted to announce that she would not be back next term; she had found an excellent post at a school in Wales, where she would be nearer her ailing mother. Mrs Birmingham, knowing that she was lying, had said nothing.

Reports had been completed and sent out. ‘Constance has the potential to be a real asset to the school,' Mrs Birmingham had written. ‘She has an excellent, inquiring mind and a remarkable feel for poetry. We should be very sorry not to see her again.' She hoped her plea would be heard, but suspected that it would not. Mr King's outrage had made itself plain down several thousand miles of telephone line.

Hermione was another whom she would probably not see again. Her parents had been tight-lipped when they came to collect her, though the upper-class
conventions of bland courtesy had held while Hermione was in their midst. Then, just as they were leaving, Mr Mailing-Smith, a heavy, choleric figure, had turned back.

‘Perhaps I might have a final word?' he had asked. She had taken him into the study and closed the door.

‘What am I to say to her future husband?' he had expostulated. That my daughter is
damaged goods?
'

‘Hermione,' she had answered him evenly, ‘is not, as you put it, “damaged goods”. She was the unfortunate victim of an attack, from which she was rescued in good time. She is still
virgo intacta
, Mr Mailing-Smith.'

When will fathers stop thinking they own their daughters? she thought wearily. When will men stop demanding virginity - and taking it, wherever they find it?

Some of the teachers had lingered for a day or two, finishing reports or sorting out next year's timetables and ordering text books, but now only Miss Parry remained. In an awkward, belated gesture of sympathy and (she admitted to herself) curiosity, Henrietta had invited her to dine at the Lodge that evening, but Sylvia had replied brusquely,

‘I am driving to Wales this afternoon. It will not be possible.'

The kitchen staff had gone, the Scandies home to Sweden, the cook back to her house in the village. Yesterday, after finishing the accounts and writing out individual bills to be enclosed with each girl's school report, Peggy too had left for the holidays. Every year she and a woman friend spent a month in Italy visiting the voluptuous masterpieces of another time, another world. The two tall, dry spinsters would go from museum to church to gallery, guidebooks in hand, noting the details of painterly technique and quoting Berenson to one another, while before their eyes
sumptuous amber flesh spilled across the canvases or marble statues intertwined, striving, striving for union.

The great house lay still, bathed in the morning glow of a brilliant July. The roller stood abandoned under the cedar tree. I have to engage a gardener, thought Mrs Birmingham, and someone to help him. I have to advertise for another biology teacher. I have two sets of prospective parents coming this afternoon and please God, let them decide to send their daughters here. After what happened to Hermione and Constance King, and with the polio epidemic as well, it isn't going to be easy. Word gets around.

Finally, she allowed herself to think about Lionel, shrinking daily towards his death under the impassive eyes of the nurse.
Almighty God
, she prayed,
I have sinned. I have failed my husband and failed the girls who were placed in my charge. I am not worthy of Thy love. Yet I pray Thee, of Thy all-forgiving goodness, let my husband live until his son comes home. Do not let me be alone when he dies, I beseech Thee. Amen
.