School for Skylarks Page 11

  Since Lyla had a circle around her, she picked out the card from the box and read aloud: ‘Dear Lyla, I decided on rose and silver for you, as those colours are so fresh and delicate. Purple –’ Lyla hesitated, and read on a little quieter – ‘Purple is, of course, quite wrong. Love, Mother.’

  When Lyla looked up, Cat was frowning slightly and staring at the dress, and Faye Peak and Mary were whispering together. Cat stretched out a hand to touch the dress and said quietly, ‘Lucky you, Lyla.’

  Mary said loudly to Faye, ‘It’s not as if anyone would ever ask her to a party anyway, she doesn’t really have any friends. When would she even wear it?’

  But Lyla didn’t care because Mop had finally sent her something and it wasn’t just a letter. Clutching the dress, she rose and ran over to her great aunt and held it out. ‘Look – isn’t it the prettiest thing you ever saw?’ In a tumble, she burbled on, ‘I knew Mop would send something wonderful. And she always has the best taste and chooses the prettiest things and knows all the cleverest places.’

  ‘Of course, dear,’ murmured Ada, before turning away.

  Solomon, however, stuck his chest out and beamed and said how Harrods was a marvellous store with very helpful staff. Lyla was touched that he should be so pleased for her and never wondered at all how Solomon might know about the staff in Harrods.

  Lyla hung that dress from the end of her bed so she’d see it last thing at night and first thing in the morning, and even if she never got another parcel or letter ever, she’d have that dress, which Mop had chosen for her, and which must surely be the prettiest in all of England.

  44

  THE TRUCE

  Once again it was Imelda who knew what was going on. She had a weaselly way of watching and digging things up, titbits of scandal or gossip that she used as currency among her peers. If you are my friend, I will tell you things that other people don’t know.

  ‘The Pinnacle isn’t coming back! I heard Threadgold saying so,’ she whispered.

  The girls sat on the floor of the Painted Hall waiting for assembly. They’d been kept there a while and had grown restive, feverish speculations running from ear to ear.

  After what seemed a very long while, when the girls had become more restless and the speculations even wilder, Great Aunt Ada appeared on the landing, her face grave and drawn.

  ‘The night before last, London suffered what might prove to be one of the worst nights of the Blitz.’ She raised a hand to quieten the ensuing murmurs. ‘There’s no cause for concern. We have made great efforts to contact your families and to ascertain that they are all safe.’ With a visible effort she raised her head higher and said, ‘Miss Pinnacle, however, shall, for a short while, be standing aside as headmistress, for her son, Richard, was among those who lost his life that night.’

  Absolute silence descended upon the hall.

  Richard. Pinnacle had a son. Lyla’s Great Aunt had been right. There was a mystery to Pinnacle after all. An unmarried woman with a son. Lyla glanced at her great aunt, but Ada’s head was deeply bowed.

  ‘I have decided that I will step in to fill the gap.’

  The senior staff shuffled and coughed and the girls raised their heads and gawped, but Lyla’s great aunt drew herself up to her full height as if to dismiss all doubts.

  ‘Night after night, the Luftwaffe have attacked our cities, our ports and our industries. Every day and night for eleven weeks. One third of London has been destroyed, twenty-nine thousand killed, a further twenty-six thousand wounded. But today, all our thoughts are with dear Pinnacle, who has lost her only son.’

  Dear Pinnacle? wondered Lyla. Has there been a sea change in their dealings with one another?

  ‘Poor old Pinnacle. It’s going to be fun, though, with your aunt in charge,’ Cat whispered as they rose. But Lyla pursed her lips in apprehension at what her aunt might have in store.

  45

  AVERAGES AND PERCENTAGES

  Great Aunt Ada stood at Threadgold’s desk and surveyed the class.

  ‘Threadgold’s teeth are decidedly rickety – yes, rickety – so I have arranged for her to visit the dentist in Ladywood each Monday at this hour, as a matter of urgency. So you see, as Threadgold will be in Ladywood every Monday, I shall be taking this class. Moreover, Pinfold is in London, and in her absence I have decided that changes must be made. Yes. Changes. Things must be fair. Reports, results, prizes and so forth – they must go both ways, must they not?’

  Warily, Lyla flipped her pencil between her forefingers, for, judging by the twinkling in her aunt’s eyes, some mischief was afoot.

  ‘Now, averages will be the subject for today. We’ll give them a practical application to demonstrate their usefulness, because that’s only fair. You see, I shall never encumber you with knowledge you shan’t need.’ Ada went about placing a piece of paper on each desk. ‘Down the left-hand side you’ll see the names of your teachers, and across the top a list of indispensable skills. Now, you will each place a mark out of twenty in each of those five boxes and then you’ll add them to produce a total score out of one hundred, a percentage for that particular teacher.’

  The girls raised their heads and caught each other’s eyes, some horrified, some delighted. Lyla read the headings along the top:

  Enthusiasm

  Effort

  Encouragement

  Subject Knowledge

  Ability to Inspire

  ‘You may, of course, decline to participate in the exercise,’ continued Aunt Ada, ‘but that’s not at all in your best interests. This exercise is confidential. Then – and this is the fun part – we will add up all the scores you fifteen girls have given Nodding, for example, and then divide that total by fifteen, and there you have it – the average percentage she has been awarded by her pupils.’

  One or two brave girls took up their pencils.

  Ada grew very fierce. ‘They must be judged too, must they not? They are on trial as much as you are, and who better to assess the quality of their teaching than their pupils, hmm?’

  Cat grinned at Lyla and took up her pencil. Lyla took hers too, and began by giving Nodding a score of five out of twenty for Ability to Inspire because she never said what the point of geography was, nor how estuaries and and deltas and oil wells actually affected the people who lived on them, and that was surely the point of the subject. Lyla glanced around and saw that everyone was grinning and rushing to write numbers in all the boxes.

  ‘Quick, quick, marvellous – now fold them up like ballot papers and pop them into my pockets.’ Aunt Ada went about the room, and the girls tucked their papers into the various pockets that ran up and down her person.

  ‘Let’s start with geography and Miss Nodding: oh dear. Miss Nodding seems not to be doing as well as she might. Let’s see, now write this down: thirty per cent, plus forty-one per cent, dear dear, plus fifteen per cent . . . I see her grades are consistently poor – you are all broadly in agreement. Yes, yes, what fun. Add up all the percentages you have individually awarded Nodding and then divide that by the number of girls in the class, fifteen. Yes, so divided by fifteen, what do we have? Who has the answer?’

  Lyla’s hand shot up and she answered gleefully (on account of Noddy not knowing the whole point of geography and always sounding as though she were half asleep): ‘Thirty-three per cent.’

  ‘Quite right. Oh dear, yes, Could try harder, more enthusiasm required, do we think? Only thirty-three per cent overall for poor Miss Nodding.’

  As Great Aunt Ada proceeded through her table of results, Lyla looked around the class, thinking that it was a pity that all lessons didn’t speed by quite so amusingly as this one and how engaged everyone was by averages and percentages.

  As they rose to leave, all whispering and nudging one another, Great Aunt Ada’s eyes were twinkling as she said, ‘I understand marks are exhibited publicly, are they not, at Garden Hill School for Girls? What fun.’

  46

  RELLIES

  Th
ere was a most unusual aspect to assembly the following morning, for not a single member of staff was present. The prefects looked around, bewildered and unnerved.

  Great Aunt Ada breezed past Lyla at the top of the stairs and murmured, ‘It all makes for most interesting reading. Most interesting.’ She smiled, delighted at her wickedness and at the excited nodding and pointing and whispering that was going on below. ‘D’you see, it is most important that the staff are reminded what it is to be a child.’

  Lyla then saw the dreaded School Examination Board results had been replaced with Great Aunt Ada’s averages and percentages results from yesterday’s class. She turned to her and whispered, deeply shocked, ‘Where’re the staff? Have they seen it?’

  ‘Oh, dear me – I nearly forgot. Solomon! Solomon! Ah, good, Solomon, you may release them now. You see –’ she turned to Lyla – ‘they’re in the Undercroft, locked in, as it happens – in detention, as it were. Yes, it appears the air-raid siren was sounded early this morning – though, somewhat mysteriously, it was only sounded in the Staffroom, and Solomon had temporarily mislaid the key.’ She dug about in her shin pocket and eventually unearthed a large iron key.

  ‘She’s rather marvellous, your aunt,’ Cat said to Lyla as they peered at the staff marks on the noticeboard.

  ‘No, she’s not; she’s just embarrassing,’ hissed Lyla. She looked down at the ground, immediately aware of her disloyalty.

  ‘Oh, all rellies are embarrassing. Mummy does mortifying things like talking to bus drivers. She’ll just stop her motor simply anywhere – say, the middle of Knightsbridge – just because she likes the look of someone.’ Cat mimicked her mother. ‘“Oh – do look at that nice man, such a kind sort of face, do look, darling, shall we ask him what he’s doing for Christmas? He probably doesn’t have anyone at all, you know.” But then of course it turns out the bus driver does in fact have a family, and a Christmas pudding, and doesn’t want Mummy’s ones at all.’

  ‘That’s not embarrassing,’ said Lyla.

  ‘Only because she’s not your mother, but if you were queuing at the post-office counter and she suddenly began to sing the descant part of something – you know, a hymn or something – but with all the words in a muddle—’

  ‘Does she really sing descants in post offices?’

  ‘Oh yes, and if we’re on a beach, she’ll look about and just choose some people she likes the look of: “Do look, darling, the ones with the red sunshade – we’ll just go and join them, shall we?” So off we go to join some perfectly bewildered strangers who don’t want us there at all, while Mother says, “Do – oh, do, just help me rig up this umbrella, and this here’s young Catharine – she’s just the same age as your little person there . . .”’

  Lyla was thinking how sad it was never to have been taken to beaches by her own mother because of the coarsening effect of salt water on the complexion until she remembered they had been been talking first of all about how embarrassing Great Aunt Ada was, so she said, ‘Well, at least your mother doesn’t put the staff in detention and lock them in the Undercroft.’

  47

  ROOF-SPOTTING

  Lyla and Cat sat together on the roof one cold Sunday afternoon, wrapped and muffled in scarves and blankets, glancing very occasionally up to an empty sky. Lyla toyed with the handle of the red air-raid siren that must be sounded should they spot a German aeroplane as she contemplated the scene.

  ‘It’s not as if the Germans would even bother to come here,’ she muttered.

  Cat looked at Lyla for a long while before saying, ‘You’re always so cross. Why?’

  ‘You would be too if the things that happen to me happened to you.’

  ‘What has actually happened to you, Lyla?’

  Lyla turned away and thought back and knew she couldn’t remember everything, only fragments.

  Alone in the drawing room on the night that had turned out to be her last at Lisson Square, Lyla had fingered the scarf Mop had let drop on the centre table. Shocked by the slithery chill of it, she’d replaced it, carefully, trying to achieve Mop’s artful alchemy, the touch she had that could turn tin to silver. As the gramophone had turned to a slow dance and the gloss had slid away into the dusk, Lyla had wandered about Mop’s drawing room, alone, amidst the empty glasses.

  Even now, although it had been so long since she’d last seen or spoken to her mother, the voice that was always clearest in her head, the voice that accompanied her everywhere and shaped her entire world, was always Mop’s.

  Sitting on the rooftop with Cat, Lyla tightened the blanket around her shoulders and glanced up at the sky as she struggled to put what she remembered into words. ‘Father was always unkind. He was cold. Mop says he’d’ve killed her with his coldness,’ she said eventually.

  Lyla remembered how Mop, as she’d absently rearranged the tulips on the centre table, had said to one of her guests, ‘Do you know Lovell’s found some sad little place to live in – grim and sunless and grey as Welsh shingle.’ Mop had giggled and said how there were only books in it – books and upright wooden chairs made specially to be uncomfortable, by Methodists, because they were the chairs you liked if you happened to have Welsh blood.

  Lyla glanced at Cat and said, ‘He made her very unhappy because he thinks with his head not with his heart.’

  ‘Did he leave her?’

  ‘Yes,’ snapped Lyla, somewhat aggressively, because she had discovered it was easier to admit some things (both to herself and to Cat) than it was to admit others. So she answered as best she could. ‘He left her and he left me. He made her unhappy and then he left us.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . three maybe, or four—’

  ‘If you were only four, then you can’t remember anything . . . How do you know he made her unhappy?’

  ‘Because that’s what Mop told me. She said Father ran off with a horrid woman from Brighton called Ethel because he didn’t love us any more.’

  Cat, watching Lyla carefully, hesitated before she asked, ‘But you don’t know for sure, do you, that he doesn’t love you? Nor about Ethel?’

  Lyla frowned. No one understood anything at all. No one understood the things that had happened to Lyla Spence.

  Cat was steady and gentle and persistent. ‘When you were kidnapped, how did he actually steal you without your mother noticing? Wasn’t she in the house?’

  Lyla turned her back on Cat, rounded her shoulders and hissed, ‘Of course she was there . . .’ She broke off, and a frown formed on her brow and eventually she said. ‘. . . It hurts when I remember, it hurts and it aches and I get confused about everything and, anyway, I’m not going to talk about it any more.’

  48

  THE GERMAN SHIPPING

  The following week, Great Aunt Ada embarked with gusto and enthusiasm on some rather eccentric adjustments to the curriculum.

  ‘These are terrible times. You must be on guard. You must not be encumbered by knowledge you don’t need – French, and so on. No, no, you must be prepared for the worst; you must be practical and prepared. When the German shipping comes up the Bristol Channel, we shall be ready for it, shall we not?’ She looked dolefully at the baffled faces of girls who thought they’d been evacuated so as to be out of harm’s way. ‘We shall learn how to use air-raid sirens. We shall continue to patrol the skies for German aircraft. We shall be prepared. Above all, we shall be prepared.

  ‘What’s more, we will think about human rights, Currants, votes for women, history backwards, and first aid. Yes, yes, and argument, that’s the thing, alliteration, and so forth, mayhem, mavericks, mischief – yes. I shall explain it all in due course. We will develop your dreams, increase your curiosity, grow your imagination, and we will do no French, no French at all, for no one of consequence speaks it any longer.’ Great Aunt Ada’s eyes rested on Frou-Frou, against whose entire nation she now nursed an implacable scorn.

  Great Aunt Ada never did explain what ‘Currants’ or �
�history backwards’ were, for her eyes alighted then on the basket of hockey sticks in the lobby, and she continued brightly, ‘We must be cheerful, we must be prepared and we must be ready for the worst, for we shall do whatever is demanded of us, hmmm? Stand, girls, stand, fall into line – form a column of twos, smallest on the right and tallest on the left.’ Great Aunt Ada swept across the hall, gesturing vaguely about. ‘Yes, yes, now follow me. Quick, march!’

  The girls straggled to their feet and the staff shuffled uncomfortably and glanced at one another, but Ada waved an arm briskly in their direction. ‘Yes, yes, you too – we must all be ready, and if the time comes, each and every one of us will do our duty. Hands at your sides. Smartly, right leg – one two, one two, forward march.’ In the lobby she snatched up a hockey stick and steamed out, brandishing it with gusto, on to the forecourt. The girls, each now bearing a hockey stick, followed her outside in a wayward crocodile, the staff trailing hesitantly at the far end of the line.

  Ada marched her troops round and round the fountain till they were coiled about it like a Catherine wheel.

  Keeping the hockey stick smartly under her left arm, she sang a rowdy song, breaking from time to time to bark at those who fell out of step. Then, because she seemed only to know the first verse, she sang that several times over.

  Lyla saw that the Garden Hill girls were smiling and enjoying themselves, and as they fell into a new and tidy formation, she scowled and told herself, They just do what anyone tells them to.