by Anne Digby
'Must be. Hasn't once been to see Virginia Slade,' replied Tish.
Rebecca had been wondering about that.
'Well, you don't need the Fifth Years,' she said lightly. 'It looks like being a sell-out.'
On Friday evening, while the others discussed what they would wear to the disco, Mara sat in the other room and struggled with her maths.
But at cocoa time she came into the kitchen, looking quite pleased with herself.
'Tish, I love you!' she said. Tish had been helping her, earlier. 'At last I see how to do them! Tomorrow night, when you all go off and enjoy yourself at the disco, I shall lock myself in the room and copy everything into my best book.'
They all made a fuss of Mara then, for putting such a brave face on things.
And the situation certainly had its compensations. Papa was taking Rebecca to Exonford, in the big car! Mara insisted on it. It wasn't the first time she'd made the point –
'Myself I'm ashamed of him. I would be the complete laughing stock if I let him take me anywhere. He would follow me around all the time and spy on me!
'But for you, Rebecca, it is quite different. Let us use silly Papa and that silly car!'
Rebecca felt very grand, stepping into the big car on Saturday, straight after lunch. Papa held open the door for her and then took her sports bag and tennis racket and put them in the boot. Windows opened all over Court House and girls stuck their heads out, laughing and waving.
'Have a great time at the disco!' Rebecca called to Tish & Co. 'Tell Mara not to work too hard!'
With a contented sigh she sank into the deep leather upholstery and the car rolled away. This was even more fun than going on the train! Less than an hour later the flags of the big modern sports centre at Exonford came in view.
Rebecca's first afternoon's tennis training with the 'D' squad was a great success. She knew Toby from the reserve squad, as they'd been promoted together at Christmas. The other six members of the squad, three boys and three girls, seemed very friendly and so did the coach, whose name was Mrs Ericson.
They all worked very hard and Rebecca felt she'd done quite well. They were joined at tea-time by various officials and senior tennis players, as well as some local businessmen who sponsored county tennis. A social gathering followed and the day ended with the highlights of the previous year's Wimbledon Championships on video.
Rebecca felt shy amongst so many adults. As Papa drove her back to school along the dark roads, she day-dreamed of playing on the Centre Court one day in the distant future – Rebecca Mason, tennis star!
Papa deposited her at the front door of the boarding house and she thanked him and went inside. For a moment she wondered why it was silent and deserted on a Saturday evening, usually such a noisy time with radio cassettes playing and the television blaring. Then she remembered!
'Of course, everyone's gone to the disco! The coach must have collected them at least an hour ago!'
But Mara would be here.
Rebecca went and threw her sports bag and tennis racket on to her bed and called 'Mara!'
The door of the room opposite opened. Not quite everyone had gone to the disco. Lucy Hubbard stood there. She was putting her finger to her lips.
'Ssssh!'
'What?'
Lucy pointed to Mara's door. It was firmly shut and a sign was hanging from the door handle: DO NOT DISTURB.
'She's got a headache,' whispered Lucy. 'She's only come out of the room once this evening, that was when the 'phone rang – but it was for me. After I came off the 'phone she looked out and told me that I must not disturb her because she was trying to do her maths and her head was aching.'
'Oh, poor thing,' said Rebecca. She thought: 'But I'm not Lucy.'
She took the few steps to Mara's door, opened it and looked inside –
'Hi, Mara –'
Rebecca froze.
The room was empty. A tell-tale breeze from the big sash window fluttered the pages of a maths text book that lay open on the homework table. Open where Mara had left it.
The window wasn't shut properly at the bottom. Rebecca remembered that it was stiff and difficult to close from the inside. From the outside, impossible.
Mara had gone somewhere – via the window.
Mara had gone to the disco!
'Is she all right?' piped Lucy's voice, just a few feet away.
Rebecca's mind worked rapidly.
'Hey, Mara, are you asleep or something?' she said to the empty room.
She paused, to allow time for a reply.
'Okay,' she said then, 'Sure you don't want anything? Right, see you then!'
Rebecca then carefully closed the door, her heart banging hard. She turned to face Lucy in the corridor and now it was her turn to put her finger to her lips.
'She's not asleep, but she's lying down,' she whispered. 'You were right. We mustn't disturb her!'
Lucy nodded solemnly and went back inside her own room.
Rebecca hurried along to the kitchen to make herself some coffee, almost doubled up with the desire to laugh after the sheer tension of the last couple of minutes.
As soon as she'd drunk her coffee, she took a torch and slipped out to the cycle sheds. She flashed her torch along the row.
'My bike!' she realized. 'She's gone to the disco on my bike!'
For a while after that, Rebecca found it impossible to relax.
She lay on top of her bed, reading a book, at the same time keeping her ears attuned to the corridor. Supposing Lucy was suspicious? Supposing she decided to go and look in Mara's room.
But everything was silent in their little corridor and Rebecca's eyelids began to get heavy. She'd enjoyed every minute of the tennis training, but it had been quite exhausting . . .
As for Mara . . . !
She dozed off.
Sometime later she suddenly awoke. What was that noise? A shuffling sound – footsteps shuffling past her open door!
She jumped off the bed and shot into the corridor. Just in time to see a small figure in dressing gown and carpet slippers opening the door of Mara's room –
'Lucy!' she yelled.
'I've made her some cocoa –' whispered Lucy.
Rebecca hurtled up to Lucy and tried to pull her back, but she was already inside the room, staring all around, looking blank, the steaming mug of cocoa in her hand.
'Where is she –?'
'I was trying to tell you,' Rebecca began desperately. 'She – went to have a shower or something, I mean . . .'
Suddenly Lucy screamed.
The window was opening and a ghostly leg came over the sill.
Then a body and head followed and Lucy realized it was Mara, wearing white cord trousers and a white velvet jacket.
'Rebecca!' cried Mara. She was out of breath from her cycle ride but she looked elated. She'd obviously had a marvellous time. 'I've been a very bad girl, haven't I –'
Then, getting used to the bright light indoors, she saw Lucy.
'Oh, no,' she groaned.
They were all immobilized.
Then, hand shaking a little, Lucy put the cocoa down and backed slowly, very slowly, out of the room. She was deeply shocked.
'You could have been kidnapped!' she cried at last.
'Oh, Lucy, look –' began Rebecca. 'For heaven's sake –'
But Lucy had already fled along the corridor and across the main hall. Mara and Rebecca could hear her hammering loudly on Mrs Barrington's door. They didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
'We've had a marvellous time, Mrs Barry!' exclaimed Tish, first off the coach. 'The boys raised £100 tonight and –'
The house mistress was waiting outside the front porch with her coat on and her arms folded. The porch light cast her face in shadow.
'Then you can tell the Principal all about it,' she said. 'At ten tomorrow morning. She wants to see the whole gang of you and she's rather displeased, I can tell you.'
SIX
SEEING MISS WELBECK
'I knew she'd never get away with it!' said Margaret Exton, cleaning her teeth in the Fourth Year washroom upstairs. 'Somebody was bound to grass!'
'I expect it was old Slade,' said Sarah Turner, squeezing a fat splodge of fluoride toothpaste on her brush. 'Must be round the boys' school by now that Mara Leonodis is supposed to go everywhere with her male nurse!'
Mr Slade was Curly's housemaster at Garth College. He'd been in charge of the disco that evening.
'I shouldn't think so,' said Moyra Milton. 'I wonder who did split? I think it's a shame. I loved it when she went up with the band and sang those Greek songs. She's got a marvellous singing voice!'
'She certainly enjoyed herself! Not a care in the world!'
'Did you see Mrs Barry's face when we got back?' asked Margaret Exton, not without some satisfaction. 'It was like a thundercloud!'
'Oh, shove over and let's have the basin, Maggie.'
Court House was agog.
Downstairs, Mara had already been sent to bed in disgrace and soon the other five were in their pyjamas, too looking woebegone as they crowded round her bed.
'I'll tell Miss Welbeck you all had nothing to do with it!' Mara said rebelliously. 'Why should you get into trouble for something you didn't even know anything about?'
'Oh, it's not that –' said Tish.
'It's just a rotten end to the evening,' said Sue. 'Wasn't Chris fantastic on trumpet?'
'We really thought you'd got away with it!' said Elf.
'And I would have done, too!' said Mara, sending dark looks through the wall at Lucy Hubbard's room across the corridor. Then she glanced at Rebecca. 'Sorry about borrowing your bike. It's good, isn't it!'
Suddenly they heard Mrs Barrington's voice calling on the main staircase. Stop all this noise, everybody. Come on, lights out!
They scattered. Margot and Elf jumped to their beds and the other three shot out of the door – 'See you in the morning!' – and into their own room. They didn't put the light on, but scrambled to their beds in the darkness. It was really rather late.
'Isn't Mara a dark horse?' Rebecca said then. 'I can't get over it! Did you guess she was planning to –'
'But she wasn't!' whispered Tish. 'She was sitting doing her maths as good as gold. She told us all about it. All she was counting on was a 'phone call from Curly – he'd promised. Then the 'phone rang –'
'– but the 'phone call was for Lucy Hubbard, not her,' finished Sue. 'This boy back home or whoever it is who keeps ringing her. Mara was livid to think that even little Lucy was having more fun than she was.'
'So – it was spur of the moment!' said Rebecca.
'Completely! It was all Curly's fault for not ringing!'
'He was wearing some new cords and they were so tight, they split!' Sue explained. 'While they were getting the hut ready. By the time he'd got back to Syon and found someone to borrow trousers from – David, in fact – it was too late to ring Mara – he was supposed to be on the drums!'
David was Sue's other brother, and he was almost as short as Curly, although he was a year older.
'What on earth did David wear to the disco then?' whispered Rebecca.
'He didn't!'
'What?'
'I mean he didn't go to the disco, you fool!'
They started to giggle helplessly, until the sound of Mrs Barrington's footsteps outside forced them to be quiet and go to sleep.
There was no giggling next morning when the six of them assembled in front of Miss Welbeck. As it was Sunday, she'd asked them to come to her private house in the school grounds. None of them had ever been sent for on a Sunday before.
'I'm quite prepared to accept that your friends didn't actively encourage you in this, Mara,' the Principal said gently. 'But I want to talk to you and it will do no harm for them to listen to what I have to say. It's most important that they try to help you to keep to the arrangements that I've made with your father for the rest of this term –'
She then went on to repeat what the arrangements were and to point out that Mara was free to go anywhere she wanted to as long as she made sure that Mr Papaconstantopoulos accompanied her at all times.
'I quite understand that you may find this arrangement embarrassing and that it makes you feel self-conscious. But it won't last for ever. I shall do my best to see to that. We must give your father time to get over his anxieties about you and agree to let you have the freedom that as a member of the middle school you have the right to expect.'
'But it's not fair!' protested Rebecca. 'Just because Mara's cousin –'
'Life isn't always fair, Rebecca,' replied Miss Welbeck. 'It would have been even less fair if Mara had been forced to stay behind in Athens this term, but fortunately I was able to talk Mr Leonodis out of that course of action.' She paused. 'Mara's first duty is to her family and to her father, who is the head of that family. I want you all to understand that and to help her to understand it, too. You may go.'
They walked back across the school grounds, very subdued.
'Phew!' said Tish, at last.
Mara said nothing. She looked tearful. She'd enjoyed last night so much – she'd never enjoyed herself more in her life! But now she felt stymied. The trouble with Miss Welbeck was that she was so fair – so reasonable! She made you feel she was on your side and yet, at the same time –
'I've a good mind to run away!' Mara burst out at last. 'I'll run away from Trebizon! That would give him a shock! That would make him sorry!'
'Come off it, Mara.'
'Don't be stupid!'
They all gathered round her protectively.
'I know what!' said Tish. 'Those songs you were singing last night. Let's get them on tape. Sue can accompany you on the violin. Come on, it'll be fun. We can give the cassette to Curly, he'd like that.'
'Yes, please do,' said Rebecca. 'I mean to say, I haven't heard them yet. I didn't even go to the disco.'
'Ah, poor Rebecca,' said Mara, quite forgetting her anger for a moment.
'You missed a lot of fun.'
'She certainly did,' said Tish.
Mara looked at them and made a face.
'You are humouring me,' she said, after a while, 'but –, oh, all right. I shall stop being stupid.' They spent the rest of Sunday morning making the tape. They all enjoyed themselves, Mara included. 'I think she's accepted the situation, don't you?' Sue said at lunch time, talking out of the corner of her mouth.
'That's her third of treacle sponge,' said Rebecca.
'I think,' said Tish, 'that everything's going to be all right.'
Everything might have been all right if Mara hadn't seen the float, or tried on Rebecca's costume. But she did. Even so –
It might still have been all right if Joss hadn't dropped her bombshell.
SEVEN
AT TENNIS TRAINING
For two whole weeks after the interview with Miss Welbeck, Mara was a model of good behaviour. She still refused to have anything to do with Papa or let him take her anywhere. It was bad enough having to put up with jokes about her 'male nurse' as it was.
Keeping rigidly to bounds herself, she derived a certain amount of satisfaction from putting the car at her friends' disposal whenever they needed it. They used it mainly to go over to Garth College.
Sue had to go quite frequently because the Joint Orchestra was now rehearsing hard for the I C F Concert. Chris Earl-Smith had also got into the orchestra. He and Sue were its two youngest members.
The others went as often as they could manage it, because the boys needed help. Building scenery, a bandstand and, of course, the ticket office was a big job. And it all had to be designed to fit on the back of the lorry. It was fun watching everything take shape, helping to paint it all in brilliant colours. They gave Mara a full report each time and made sketches and diagrams, so that she could picture exactly what was happening and what the finished float would look like. Mara herself had designed a fine banner to go on the float, and was allowed to work on it in the art room: BUY Y
OUR TICKETS HERE FOR THE INTERNATIONAL CONCERT!
She felt very left out of things that fortnight, though. Curly couldn't come and see her. He was much too busy. He telephoned when he could.
Secretly, he refused to accept the idea that Mara wouldn't be coming on the float. Rebecca realized that with full force the night they finished the ticket booth, over at the Garth College woodwork centre. The girls had just put the last touches of paint to it. It had smart red and white stripes, with the words BOX OFFICE lettered across it.
'I'm going to have Mara sitting in there, in Greek national costume, selling the tickets!' he said. 'That's been my plan from the beginning.'
'But Curly –' began Rebecca.
He cut her off.
'Where there's a will there's a way,' he said solemnly. 'I've got the will, so you girls had better find the way!'
They weren't sure whether he was serious or not.
On the way back to Court House, in the back of the car, the four of them discussed the costumes they'd wear on the float. Sue wasn't with them. In fact she wouldn't be coming on the float any way because of the Joint Orchestra.
Margot, whose family originated from the West Indies, was making a traditional costume in Mrs Dalzeil's class. Elf was borrowing a Japanese kimono. Tish was going as a Scottish Highlander and having her kilt sent down from home, while Rebecca was waiting for her grandmother to send the Arabian costume.
'It's beautiful,' she said. 'And very old. Of course, I should be dark really, not fair . . . I'm glad I haven't got tennis training on ticket-selling days . . . But I can't get over what Curly said!' Rebecca heaved a sigh. 'Do you know what I think? I think he planned the whole idea round Mara in the first place.'
They all felt sad.
'If only she didn't feel quite so ashamed of Papa,' whispered Tish, nodding towards the hulking back and gleaming bald crown in front of them. 'Even though she lets him take us to Garth, he's not allowed to drive us further than the gates, in case anybody sees him!'
The girls were beginning to get quite fond of the big Greek. He, for his part, had ceased to find Mara's demands on behalf of her friends at all irksome. Sitting around a cold English seaside town at the end of January wasn't his idea of fun and at least it gave him something to do.
