GOOD DAUGHTERS Page 3

Miss Blaize smiled; it was a mirthless smile, a stretching of the lips across the gums which produced a reptilian effect. The children preferred Miss Blaize not to smile. She spoke quietly in a voice which had a surprising and deceptive sweetness. They had, she told them, now returned from the school holidays; she hoped they had had a good Christmas and not eaten too much. The little ones, to whom this remark was addressed, tittered obligingly. She hoped that amid all the rejoicing they had remembered what it was that had happened at Christmas, that Our Lord had been born in a poor country into a poor home. She hoped they had remembered those less fortunate than themselves. Perhaps they did not think of themselves as fortunes ate? She herself had spent Christmas in Palestine and she told them about the conditions in which people lived there. Then she reminded them that in their own country there were nearly three million unemployed; and having thus suitably chastened them, she stopped. Miss Blaize never took long to make her points.

  Alice began to breath more easily. Instantly, as though the relief had been communicated to her. Miss Blaize said, ‘There is one other matter about which I must speak to you. Something very unpleasant happened this morning.’ She paused, and in that small space of time Alice saw herself walking along Pratts Farm Road, wondering how she was to tell her parents that they were to take her away from school. Girls were never expelled from the Winifred Clough Day School for Girls; their parents always took them away. Miss Blaize was speaking again. She was saying that a girl had been seen riding her bicycle on the pavement, thus causing a pensioner to step into the road in front of the milkman’s horse. She would like the girl concerned to come and see her in her study.

  As they marched out of the hall. Daphne whispered to Alice, ‘I wonder what happened when the sodding old pensioner and Dobbin collided!’

  Alice did not care. All that mattered was that she had been granted a reprieve. ‘Why did the police come, Daphne?’

  Daphne laughed. ‘It’s all right. I didn’t give you away.’

  ‘But what happened?’

  ‘I’ll tell you at break when you’ve got your doughnut to build up your strength.’

  Miss Lindsay, watching as they came into the classroom together, thought how unlike these two friends were. Alice Fairley was a good, solid child who would grow into a good, solid woman and contribute notably to the dullness of the Anglo-Saxon race. Daphne Drummond was a different matter altogether. At first glance, she seemed a real Girls’ Own Paper type of girl: compact, alert, with crisp chestnut hair and – dear God, yes – mischievous hazel eyes. She had a trim figure and her blouse once tucked into her skirt stayed in place without need for the endless adjustment which so plagued her companion. She was good at games and would have been good at work had she put her mind to it. Of her kind are idols usually made and it puzzled her teacher that she did not run true to form, collecting no gang around her and attempting no domination either in the classroom or on the games field.

  ‘With your gifts you could go a long way,’ Miss Lindsay had once told her.

  ‘But in what direction?’ Daphne had replied with a bored lift of the eyebrows.

  Miss Lindsay, who enjoyed ambiguity, had been taken aback. Her pupils were made ill at ease by her sarcastic manner and it was rare for her to encounter even the mildest cheekiness. The matter of Daphne’s gifts had not been pursued. It was, however, her intention to choose Daphne as one of the form captains and observe what she made of responsibility. Each form had two captains, one chosen by the pupils and one by the form mistress. As soon as they had settled in their desks. Miss Lindsay asked the girls for their nominations.

  Daphne said, ‘I nominate Alice Fairley.’

  Miss Lindsay said, ‘Any other nominations?’

  There were no other nominations; it was not a job which was hotly contested and Alice was popular. Miss Lindsay bent her head and made a note to occupy the time. It would not be a good thing to have two girls who were so friendly as form captains. She said, ‘I nominate Joan Ashbury.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind being form captain,’ Daphne said later when they were queuing for doughnuts during break. ‘I didn’t want to be Our Stella’s choice; I could tell she was brewing up something for me in her nasty mind. Besides, I thought it would be good for you to atone for your sins.’

  ‘Daphne, WHAT HAPPENED?’

  ‘Wait a sec. I must find one with a nice crust. I always think doughnuts are like roast potatoes, don’t you? They should be crisp on the outside and soft inside.’

  Alice waited while Daphne singled out a doughnut to her liking. She knew her friend well enough to realize that the more she protested the longer Daphne would delay the telling. When they had paid for the doughnuts they walked towards the netball courts where several of the senior girls were practising.

  ‘My father is away; so my dear brother is in charge,’ Daphne said. ‘Mother had hysterics. Angus can’t bear to see her upset, though you’d think he’d be used to it by now. So he called the police to reassure her.’

  ‘What did the police do?’

  ‘Oh, poked around and asked questions.’ She watched the senior girls throwing the netball from one to another. ‘We ought to take them on, Alice. I reckon we’re better than any of them.’

  ‘But how did the police think the burglar got in?’

  ‘Through the broken window, silly!’

  Alice stared at her friend. ‘You didn’t . . .’ Daphne was looking very merry and unconcerned, just as she did when she was the only member of her team not out and intended to hit several rounders. It was obvious Daphne had. The situation was becoming worse by the minute, layer upon layer of present guilt and guilt- to-be unfolding. ‘Daphne, suppose they arrest someone? An old tramp, or the milkman?’ Milkmen, Alice knew from her parents’ conversation, were particularly liable to suspicion. ‘What will we do?’

  ‘That’s simple, isn’t it? We either keep quiet or we own up. I know what I shall do.’ Daphne finished her doughnut, rubbed sticky hands briskly together, then darted forward and snatched the netball. She set off running with it, passing it to Alice when her pursuers threatened her. It was some time before the angry seniors regained possession of the ball. When the bell rang, the two girls returned to the building with glowing faces. In the cloakroom, Daphne said, ‘They found fingerprints, of course. It didn’t matter about mine because that can be explained. I don’t think you need worry. They’re not likely to fingerprint everyone in Shepherd’s Bush, are they?’ She grinned at Alice as she said this.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You wiped your fingerprints off everything before you left, did you? The ginger-beer glass and everything?’

  ‘I don’t believe they took fingerprints.’

  Daphne looked astounded. ‘Of course they took fingerprints! Whatever do you think the police do when people have been burgled – pray? Honestly, Alice, sometimes I wonder about you.’ She went out of the cloakroom.

  The double period between break and lunch was taken up with art. The art room was on the top floor of an extension recently added to the west wing; a spacious, lofty room, with big windows in the sloping roof to give north light. A greater degree of freedom was allowed here than elsewhere.

  When the pupils entered the room they seemed at first to drift about languidly, some setting up easels, others looking at the work from the previous term displayed on the walls or studying potato- cuts in one of the side rooms. They were not called to order, but gradually they relaxed in this apparently casual atmosphere and without an effort being made to claim their attention, they settled to sketch one of the objects arranged around the room. The two mistresses moved about watching, occasionally making a suggestion.

  The art mistresses were allowed, in their own domain, a degree of licence not permitted elsewhere, and wore brightly coloured smocks which made the girls think of them as ‘Bohemian’. Miss Bellamy, who was in her early thirties and young by the standards of the school, laid further claims to this description by a vivacity
of manner in no way diminished by her pallor and the pouches beneath her eyes. Among themselves the girls referred to her as Philippa and several of them had crushes on her which she did little to discourage. The older teacher. Miss Rosen, engaged in conversation with the girls on subjects not normally discussed at school; free love had even been known to be touched upon. Miss Blaize, more aware of the need for young creatures to have space in which to breathe and flower than her pupils would have credited, did not interfere with what went on in the art room.

  Alice noticed that the one way in which art differed little from any other subject was that the better you were at it, the more acceptable you were to the teachers. Daphne was good at art and enjoyed long conversations with Miss Bellamy in which Alice had no part. The activities which Daphne related to Miss Bellamy were no more interesting than Alice’s out-of-school activities, but she made them seem so. It was not so much that she embroidered, but rather that, as with sketching, she knew when to stop, whereas Alice did not.

  When Alice came into the art room. Daphne was already talking to Miss Bellamy about the dancing of Anton Dolin. Alice drew up an easel next to Katia Vaseyelin. Katia was a scholarship girl who had only been at the school just over a year. She was also Alice’s next-door neighbour. The two girls were friends, though at school they usually went their separate ways.

  ‘My family knew all the great Russian dancers,’ Katia said, looking contemptuously at Daphne. Katia did not tease, she just told lies. Alice accepted this with equanimity. If there was one factor governing Alice’s choice of friends it was their ability to surprise and delight her; the ‘nice’ and the ‘good’ had little appeal to her. ‘I bet your family didn’t know Anton Dolin,’ she said.

  ‘He is a great friend of my mother.’ The statement carried no conviction. In a sense, nothing about Katia carried conviction because she lacked a context in which to be convincing. She was so foreign. There seemed, for one thing, to be much more of her than was considered fitting for a thirteen-year-old. Yet she was not the tallest in her form. Perhaps it was her untidiness which called attention to her salient features: the constant parting company of blouse and skirt emphasizing well-developed bust and hips; while the straggling hair-ribbon drew the gaze to the mass of dark golden hair which looked so artificial. The English girls found it hard to believe that hair could be that colour and imagined it wanted only a good wash to become wholesome Anglo-Saxon honey. In manner Katia was foreign, too, seemingly unaware of words with such universal application as ‘excuse me’, and unable to master the art of looking without actually seeming to stare. Her eyes, which were large and slightly protruding, were particularly well suited to the practice of staring-one of her specialities was to see how many people she could compel to look at her in the tram on the way to school. Daphne did not like Katia. ‘She comes to school with egg on her mouth.’

  Over the recent holiday Katia had been staying with her grandparents in Germany and this was the first time that Alice had talked to her since her return. The grandparents and their impressive home were authenticated by the camera in whose veracity Alice was a profound believer. Bavaria was known to her by the same medium. She thought it very romantic with its snow-clad forests and buildings with cone-shaped turrets, like those in the Knights Castile advertisements. ‘Did you go skating and was there lots of snow?’ she asked.

  Katia had started to paint a vase. She was clumsy and always managed to get as much paint on herself as on the paper. Now she was working with a desperate concentration not best suited to capturing the delicate lines of the Japanese design, and seemed reluctant to talk about her holiday. Usually she was only too willing to show off about the wealth and importance of her grandparents.

  ‘It wasn’t much fun this time,’ she said, when Alice persisted. ‘There was fighting in the town and they came and threw stones through the windows of our house.’

  ‘Why did they do that?’

  ‘Because my grandparents are Jewish.’

  ‘But you’re Russian.’

  Katia, who was not as a rule afraid of being overheard, lowered her voice. ‘My mother’s family are Jewish.’ For a moment, a shadow lay unmoving across the easels and Alice was aware that Miss Rosen had stopped and was listening. Katia said, ‘My grandfather put the shutters up against all the windows and the house was dark. I hated it; it gave me the creeps.’

  Miss Rosen said, ‘What made you choose to paint the vase, Katia?’

  ‘I liked the colours.’

  Miss Rosen stared at Katia’s painting for so long that Alice thought it must be good, but all Miss Rosen said was, ‘You might have found it easier to start with something less ambitious.’ She looked at Alice’s sketch and passed on without comment.

  Katia said, ‘I’m going to Lyons on the way home. Why don’t you come?’

  She repeated this suggestion during the lunch hour when they were standing at the table reserved for pupils who brought packed lunches. The staff entered and took up their places at the high table. While the deputy headmistress said the grace Alice reflected on the temptation now presented to her by Katia. When Alice had told her mother that Katia would be coming to the school, her mother had said, ‘You’ve got your own friends; you mustn’t neglect them for Katia.’ Daphne’s instant dislike of Katia had proved the wisdom of this remark. But going to Lyons on one’s way home could hardly be counted as neglect of one’s friends.

  ‘They have lovely doughnuts,’ Katia said.

  ‘But I don’t need a doughnut then,’ Alice said unhappily.

  Alice’s parents found it hard enough to meet the school fees without incurring any unnecessary additional expenses. Economics, however, were never represented to the children in terms of money, and as far as Alice was concerned she had a packed lunch because she had a good meal in the evening. There was no reasonable excuse for going to Lyons.

  Reason, however, so important to the adult world, had little dominion over Alice. What Alice badly needed now was a refuge and it was Katia who seemed most likely to offer this.

  To Alice it seemed that in their always dusky house which smelt of candle wax the Vaseyelins engaged in a mysterious masquerade which had something about it of the grotesque. In that alien sphere even the consequences of fingerprints in soot might not be terrible, the arrest of the milkman present no dilemma. From the way Katia talked, and from her own limited observation of their household, Alice was convinced that moral dilemmas, small or great, played little part in the preoccupations of the Vaseyelins. Loyalty to Daphne forbade the telling of the misadventure to Katia. But the thought that, even if presented with it, Katia would have made little sense of the knowledge, was in some way comforting, as though Katia’s incomprehension of rights and wrongs which were so essential an ingredient of the Fairley daily diet, afforded a shelter which Alice needed. Just being with Katia would make it all less important.

  Alice was tempted to accompany Katia to Lyons. But what of Claire? She looked down the table to where Claire was giggling with her companions. Claire’s one concern would be to get home in time to listen to ‘Children’s Hour’. But was there any need to involve Claire in this? Louise would take Claire home, all that was required was an excuse for not accompanying them. As soon as this thought came to her she remembered the conversation at breakfast.

  ‘I can’t come today,’ she said regretfully. ‘We’ve got to wait for Louise. She’s auditioning for the upper school play.’

  ‘They don’t do a play this term. Louise is having you on.’

  Alice said, ‘Louise wouldn’t do that.’

  Katia looked at Alice in a way which suggested that she knew a great deal more about life than did Alice.

  When at the end of the afternoon the middle and upper schools assembled in the hall, Alice looked up to the balcony hoping to receive a reassuring signal from Louise, but she could not see her sister. The light was fading beyond the windows and it was cold in the big hall. The brief service always filled Alice with a sense of a
we and mystery and, undisturbed by thoughts of mortality, she enjoyed the rather melancholy poetry of the prayers without feeling a need to explore their meaning. Today, however, she experienced some slight misgivings as she listened to Miss Blaize saying: ‘ “O God, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels and all just works do proceed; Give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give . . .” ’ (Alice thought this particularly beautiful; it made her think of the pussy-willows on the towpath reflected in the river.) ‘ “. . . that both our hearts may be set to obey Thy commandments, and also that by Thee we being defended from the fear of our enemies may pass our time in rest and quietness; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour.” ’

  As she came out of the lighted entrance hall into the cold, windy street, Alice saw that Claire was waiting for her, jumping from one foot to the other.

  ‘I walked to the end of the road with Marjorie Fowler. Shall we go in and wait for Louise?’

  Alice was saved from replying by one of the seniors who approached them, saying, ‘Louise will meet you at the tram terminus at Shepherd’s Bush Green at five o’clock. You are to come with me. I’m going to the library and afterwards I’ll walk to the Green with you.’

  Alice said, ‘We’ll be all right on our own, thank you. We’ll go to Lyons.’

  The senior hesitated; there were a lot of girls walking down the hill towards Holland Park Avenue and she supposed these two would be all right. She did not want to be lumbered with Louise’s sisters for the next hour.

  ‘We’re going to be awfully late home,’ Claire said as they walked slowly down the hill. ‘We shall miss “Children’s Hour”.’

  There were lights on in the big houses and in one room they could see firelight dancing on a wall. As they watched, a maid came and drew the curtains across the window.

  ‘Marjorie’s parents have a maid and a cook,’ Claire said.

  They passed a postman, his sack over his back, standing in a gateway talking to a man delivering groceries. The man with the groceries was saying, ‘I thought to myself, “I’ll pickle your walnuts, my lady!” But what can you say? A word out of turn and I’d be on the dole.’ Further down the street a woman was getting out of a cab followed by a man carrying big mauve and silver striped hatboxes. Grandmother Fairley had an enchanting collection of hatboxes. One of Alice’s most precious treats was being allowed to open the boxes and take out the hats.