Portrait of a Disciplinarian (20 page)

He had seen her anyway, and ended his speech with a dramatic gesture somewhat wasted on his audience.
Stephanie
began to walk towards him, already imagining herself upended and squalling across his knee: a grossly undignified fate, and yet her life seemed to consist of a long series of grossly undignified fates, of which this would merely be the latest.

‘Ah, Stephanie,’ he greeted her. ‘I’m glad to have your support. We are only fourteen today, but the potential audience is large.’

‘There are plenty of people here, certainly,’ Stephanie admitted, glancing at the crowds that surrounded the pens, the refreshment tent and the bandstand, although not the Brown Shorts podium.

‘They will come, they will come,’ Claude assured her, clapping his hands together confidently, ‘and remember, even the mightiest oak starts out in life as an acorn.’

‘That’s true,’ Stephanie admitted, and went silent, wondering what she should say, if anything.

‘Once the pigs have been judged,’ he went on, ‘they will no doubt wish to hear what I have to say on the subject of female suffrage. Meanwhile, dare I ask if you have had time to consider my proposal?’

‘Um … yes,’ she managed, only to break off with a sudden twinge of conscience for what she was about to do.

‘Yes?’ he responded, and fell to one knee, taking her hand in his and beginning to kiss it.

‘Um … er …’ Stephanie tried, realising her mistake too late. ‘Um …’

‘No, no,’ he said, ‘do not speak, for there are no words that can do justice to this moment. You have made me the happiest man in the world, Miss Truscott, Stephanie, indeed, the happiest man who has ever lived.’

He went back to kissing her hand, leaving her to throw a nervous glance towards the pens. The crowd around the pigs had begun to break up, moving instead towards the podium where the prizes were to be announced. Hermione was coming towards them, conspicuous in her Brown Shorts uniform, and she could
see
Myrtle, who appeared to be in earnest conversation with one of the stallholders and several men in rough clothes.

Claude Attwater was still kissing Stephanie’s hand, but finally relinquished it as Hermione approached. He was beaming as he stood back to his full height.

‘You must be the first to hear the glad news, young lady,’ he addressed Hermione. ‘Stephanie has kindly consented to accept my hand in marriage. There, is that not good news? You will be my sister-in-law.’

‘Oh, wonderful,’ Hermione answered doubtfully, and cast a worried glance at Stephanie, who managed a shrug as Attwater turned back to the podium.

‘This is an important day,’ he stated, ‘perhaps a turning point, for myself, the organisation and the country. Come, Brown Shorts, stand proud with me.’

He had spoken the last few words in his orator’s voice, loud and exceptionally carrying. The small group of Brown Shorts were already standing at ease in front of the podium, and Stephanie made to join them, only for Claude to offer her his hand once he himself had climbed up.

‘Today,’ he said, ‘and every day from now on, you shall stand beside me.’

Stephanie gingerly accepted his hand and mounted the podium, from which she had a clear view across the field. Claude had a megaphone, and began to call on the crowd to gather round, making her feel extremely conspicuous as curious glances were turned her way. Her aunts Lavinia and Edith had both seen her and looked distinctly disapproving. Myrtle was pointing in her direction and saying something to two extremely shabby-looking men, who were holding large brown paper bags. The bags bulged suspiciously.

‘Er … Claude,’ she said. ‘I think they’re planning to throw eggs again.’

‘Let them,’ he answered. ‘We must stand aloof from such behaviour.’

Stephanie bit her lip as he went back to shouting through the megaphone. A crowd was beginning to gather, and an alarming proportion of those approaching held the brown paper bags, while Myrtle was now passing coins to the stallholder she had been talking to before. Behind her the open field stretched up to a distant hedge, beyond which was a steep, wooded slope and then open moor. Escape would have been easy, but to run was to admit defeat, and she stayed obstinately in place.

‘People of Britain,’ Claude declared, apparently content with the number of people now present, ‘I stand before you today …’

He went into his speech, apparently oblivious to the nature of the crowd, which Stephanie found distinctly worrying. A high proportion of them were carrying bags of eggs, and they weren’t paying much attention to the speech, but seemed to prefer to exchange jokes and whispered comments. Myrtle was approaching too, with her own bag of eggs, while Freddie followed behind her, looking far from comfortable.

‘… furthermore,’ Claude was saying, ‘we intend to introduce a two-year period of domestic service for all women, in order that they may better appreciate their proper role in life, learn obedience and respect …’

Myrtle had leaned close to a man in a flat cap with a noticeably broken nose, not her usual choice of company. She whispered in his ear and he nodded, then grinned as he dipped a hand into his bag of eggs. Stephanie made ready to duck. Myrtle gave a cheerful wave. Stephanie stuck her tongue out in response, and ducked as the man with the broken nose let fly the first egg. It missed her anyway, but exploded against Claude Attwater’s shirt front. He merely raised his voice, continuing his speech with barely a pause as a second egg hit his shoulder, splashing Stephanie’s hat and face. A third caught his hat, knocking it off, and with that he abandoned his attempts to explain the virtues of male-only suffrage.

‘Yes!’ he yelled. ‘That is the sort of behaviour I would expect from the undisciplined, the degenerate, those who disgrace our great nation. You, yes you, you’re ready enough to throw an egg, but what if I was to toss a Mills bomb back? You’d be running, I’ll be bound. And where were you during the war, eh? Eh?’

‘I was thirteen when it ended, mate,’ the man answered, and hurled another egg.

‘Not at him, you idiot, at her!’ Myrtle yelled, pointing at Stephanie, but the man took no notice.

‘Well, er … in any event,’ Claude continued. ‘This sort of behaviour –’

He broke off as an egg came in from the side, catching him on the shoulder to spatter his face and Stephanie’s hat. Myrtle yelled something and an egg exploded at Stephanie’s feet, another against her leg, stinging her badly and soiling her shorts. She ducked down, shielding her face as the eggs began to come thick and fast, the crowd yelling insults and Myrtle screaming encouragement. An egg burst on her shoulder and she felt warm, slippery mess splash her cheek, and more, down her neck and in her hair as she twisted away from what had become a full-blown barrage.

Eggs hit her back and bottom, her hat was knocked off and, as she staggered sideways, her foot skidded in the mess on the slippery wooden boards. She went down, sprawling in the muck as eggs burst against the planking and against her body, soiling her clothes and skin and hair. Her feet and hands were sliding in the mess as she struggled to crawl away, only to glimpse Myrtle in the act of hurling an egg from just feet away. It caught her full in the face, filling her mouth with bits of shell and a revolting, rotten mess of yolk and white, to leave her coughing up filth and blowing eggy bubbles from her nose. Another struck her forehead, splashing into her eyes to leave her blind and frantic.

All around her people were screaming and yelling, with Myrtle’s delighted high-pitched laughter rising
above
it all. Unable to see, with her mouth full of decaying muck and her body bruised and filthy, she struggled to crawl away, only to find the back of the podium instead of the steps. She realised her mistake too late, and toppled over with a despairing scream, to land on her bottom in a puddle of mud and broken eggs. Finally out of the line of fire, she found herself wondering if this was anything like the way her father would have felt in Flanders. Then she thought of Hermione.

Pulling herself to her knees, she wiped the egg from her face as best she could and peered cautiously round the side of the podium. Hermione was well clear and comparatively clean, but Myrtle was coming towards the podium with a purposeful look on her face that Stephanie knew only too well. Panic hit her and she ran, unthinking, up the field and towards the moor. Myrtle gave a delighted whoop from behind her and she knew she was being chased.

Memories flooded into her head as she ran, of similar chases and what had happened to her once she’d been caught, and with every one came the feeling she’d tried so hard to escape, the desire to give in to her persecutor. Again and again that sense of inferiority had betrayed her, sometimes even leaving her apologising to Myrtle for attempting to avoid her fate, and feeling that what was being done to her was just, even as it was meted out. As she ran she knew that this occasion would be no exception, but that only made her push herself harder.

She reached the wall and scrambled over, with Myrtle well behind her, and began to push up through the woods. It was hard going, steep and on ground littered with branches and broken by rocks, but her masculine clothing made it easier, and when she finally reached the top there was no sign of Myrtle. She staggered on, gasping for air, but determined to reach the high, lonely moor, which rose grey and green ahead of her to the summit of High Willhays a thousand feet above.

* * *

At last she rested, high above the woods. The field where the show was being held was just one patch of green among several, distinguished only by the big marquee and the crowd, most of which now seemed to be milling around the Brown Shorts’ podium. There was no sign of Myrtle, provoking an instinctive stab of disappointment which she angrily suppressed. She told herself that it wasn’t going to happen, not this time, but as her tormentor’s yellow dress became visible among the trees the sudden responsive pang was as much of excitement as of fear. In her hand, Myrtle held a large brown paper bag.

‘Oh, no, not more eggs,’ Stephanie sobbed, then yelled out with all the power of her lungs, ‘Beast! I hate you!’

Myrtle had been scanning the slope of the moor, perhaps unable to see Stephanie, but now looked directly towards her and started up the slope. Stephanie moved on, but the egg had begun to dry in her hair and on her skin, while some had gone down her neck and her shorts, making her back, cleavage and bottom crease slippery, all of which was extremely uncomfortable. It was also making her clothes stiff, and she realised that if she didn’t get it out of her heavy silk drawers quickly they would be ruined.

She wondered if Myrtle would prove unable to cope with the rough ground, or perhaps get lost. A sharp valley fell away to one side, where the Redaven Brook tumbled down from the moor in a succession of little pools, each surrounded by reeds and worn granite boulders. Running quickly ahead, she waited until Myrtle was invisible beyond the brow of a rise of land, then changed direction and made quickly for the brook.

The first pool she reached was ideal, broad and deep, with a small waterfall feeding it at one end and several water-worn boulders along one side. Jumping across at the top, she climbed down among the boulders to stand
on
the largest of them. She gave a nervous glance back up the slope. The egg felt utterly revolting, gluing her clothes to her skin, while the bits of broken shell scratched her. She was also streaked with sweat, her face filthy and her hair caked with dried egg and mud. To get clean she would have to strip naked, making her very vulnerable indeed, but nobody was about, except possibly Myrtle.

She sat down on a rock, grimacing as egg squashed up between her bottom cheeks and around her quim. Again she glanced up the slope, then began to pick bits of egg off her face. Her emotions were in turmoil, but she made no move to carry on, even when Myrtle finally appeared, silhouetted against the sky, only to turn away. Stephanie hesitated, biting her lip, but she couldn’t hold herself back.

‘Beast!’ she yelled. ‘Nasty beast!’

Myrtle turned back, gave a single, knowing nod and started down the slope. Stephanie sat as she was, fiddling with a piece of grass, her mouth set in a sulky pout and her gaze directed at her boots. At last Myrtle reached her, still fresh in her pretty summer dress and miraculously free of egg, but breathing quite heavily and with a bead of sweat running down one temple.

‘You’re going to pay for making me come all the way up here, Stephanie,’ she announced. ‘Why couldn’t you stop in the wood?’

‘I didn’t want to,’ Stephanie answered sulkily.

Myrtle gave a dismissive snort and sat down on a rock, placing her eggs by her side. For a moment they watched each other, Stephanie with her lower lip pushed out in a sullen pout, Myrtle calm. At length Myrtle spoke.

‘Whatever is to be done with you, Stiffy?’

‘I don’t know,’ Stephanie answered.

‘Well, let’s not waste these eggs, for a start,’ Myrtle said. ‘Stand up.’

‘I thought it would be the eggs,’ Stephanie answered
miserably
as she obeyed. ‘They really hurt, and you got me right in my mouth, and in my eye.’

‘Good,’ Myrtle said, getting to her feet.

Stephanie shut her eyes, trembling badly as she waited for the first egg, which she expected in her face again. Nothing happened, and she allowed herself a cautious peep from beneath one eyelid, to find Myrtle climbing cautiously around the pool.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘Shut up, and pull out the back of those ridiculous shorts.’

Again Stephanie obeyed, her mouth working in consternation as she stuck her thumbs into the waistband of her shorts and pulled open the pouch. Myrtle peered inside, her face set in fastidious distaste, but one corner of her mouth twitching towards a smile as she admired the mess plastered over Stephanie’s bottom cheeks.

‘What pretty drawers,’ she remarked after a moment. ‘Were they expensive?’

‘Yes,’ Stephanie admitted.

‘What a pity.’ She took an egg from her bag and dropped it down the back of Stephanie’s shorts. It came to rest beneath the tuck of Stephanie’s bottom, nestled between her shorts and her drawers, the less rounded end wedged between her cheeks. Myrtle added a second, which fell on top of the first, cracking the shell to release a trickle of warm, slimy white between Stephanie’s thighs.