by Nicola Upson
“They opened it in April, but it’s already three times the size it was originally,” Jeannie explained. “You’ll see that uniform everywhere about the town. Blueboys, they call them, although I can’t help feeling that’s a misleadingly romantic name for people whose bodies or nerves have been shot to hell. Still, at least it marks them out from the cowards.”
It was hard to tell if she was being serious or sarcastic. They came to a crossroads, and Jeannie turned right, apparently knowing exactly where she was going. “You’ve obviously been here before,” Josephine said.
“Yes, it’s not the first time I’ve saved those girls’ necks, and I dare say it won’t be the last, although today I feel more like wringing them.” She swerved suddenly onto the grass by the side of the road and pulled up near a motorbike and sidecar. “And there’s the telltale clue. Do you want to wait here? I won’t be long.”
Josephine nodded and watched as she walked off toward the huts. From the chatter of conversation and a smell of frying bacon, the nearest clearly functioned as a canteen. She got out of the van and looked round, realizing suddenly how hungry she was. The day was heading for noon, and its warmth had brought several soldiers outside to make the most of it; they sat around in deckchairs with their eyes closed and faces lifted to the sun, now gloriously high in a clear blue sky, while seagulls whirled overhead. Were it not for the predominance of crutches and bandages, she could almost be fooled into accepting the holiday atmosphere at face value.
The van was an object of curiosity, and she noticed two soldiers in standard khaki uniforms looking at her as they headed toward the canteen. “You look a little lost,” one of them said, breaking off from his friend. “Can I help?”
Josephine couldn’t help smiling. “With an accent like that, I think we’re both a long way from home.”
“An Inverness girl! I’m right, aren’t I?” She nodded. “Ah, the answer to all my prayers.” He laughed and beckoned the other man over to join them. “See, Archie? I told you it was going to be a beautiful day. This young lady and I are practically neighbors.” The news didn’t seem to hold any particular interest for the soldier called Archie, who was considerably less affable than his companion. “I’m Jack Mackenzie,” the Scotsman said, “and my English friend here is Archie Penrose.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Josephine Tey.” She shook hands with them both. “Whereabouts in the Highlands are you from?”
“Daviot, just a few miles down the road from you. You must know it?”
“Know it? I spent every summer there until I was eighteen. My parents are good friends with the Patersons.”
They talked about mutual acquaintances in the small village that Josephine loved so much, and she was surprised by how welcome she found this unexpected connection with home. Conscious that Archie was excluded from the conversation, she gestured toward the book in his hand, a well-read copy of an Edgar Wallace mystery. “I think that’s one of his best,” she said. “Are you enjoying it?”
“It’s not bad, as far as it goes. I don’t really like thrillers, but Jack insisted I give it a go.”
“So what do you like?”
Archie shrugged. “Something with a bit more realism, I suppose.”
Josephine looked round at the wounded men. “Don’t you have enough of that already?”
Her tone was faintly mocking, and she regretted the words as soon as they were out, but Archie didn’t rise to the bait. His aloofness unsettled her, and she was glad when Jack filled the silence. “Are you one of the volunteers here?” he asked, still smiling at her gibe to his friend.
“No, I’m here with a colleague to … well, if I’m honest, I’m not quite sure why we’re here. But I’m training to be a teacher, and I’ve got a summer posting with a girls’ school in town. We’re heading off there now.”
“That’s a pity.”
Josephine felt herself blush. “What about you? You don’t look injured, so …”
“Neither do lots of the men here,” Archie interrupted. “Not all the damage is on the surface.”
He delivered the point politely, but there was a spark of defiance in his eyes that she read as a challenge. “We’re medics,” Jack explained before she could retaliate. “We were studying together in Cambridge when we signed up, and we’ve got a spell of work here before they send us out to the front.”
“When will that be?”
“It could be any time, but I doubt we’ll be here longer than a month. Probably best if we go sooner rather than later—the facilities here are spoiling us, and we won’t have anything like it out there.”
“We’d better go, Jack,” Archie said, looking at his watch. “I’m on duty in half an hour, and I want to get something to eat.”
“All right. You go ahead if you want to.” He turned back to Josephine as Archie nodded to her and headed for the canteen. “Would you like to go out one evening, Miss Tey? When you’ve had a chance to settle in?”
She hesitated, reluctant to make any arrangements before she had even reported for duty, but she was flattered by his interest and attracted to his good humor. “All right,” she agreed, surprised by how at ease she felt in his company. “I’d like that very much.”
“Good. So would I. Where can I contact you?”
“We’re staying at Charleston Farmhouse in Firle, or you can send a note to the school and it will reach me—Moira House, on Carlisle Road.”
“I’ll do that.” He ran to catch up with his friend, and Josephine was struck again by the contrast between the two men. Tall and dark, his lean features tanned by the sun, Archie would have been the more conventionally handsome were it not for Jack’s readiness to laugh, which transformed his pleasant but ordinary face into something much more memorable. She watched as they disappeared into the hut, intrigued by the brief encounter. To Josephine’s surprise, it was Archie who looked back at her and raised his hand.
She wandered back to the van, just in time to see Jeannie marching two sullen-looking girls across the grass. Their uniforms, like their expressions, were identical: pale brown coat and skirt, with matching soft-rimmed felt hat and crisp white shirt. A silk sailor tie in red and blue, together with a corresponding cord around the hat, provided what Josephine assumed were the colors of the college. “Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Tey,” Jeannie said, her face as black as thunder, “but Miss Lomax and Miss Norwood appear to think we’ve got nothing better to do than to chase all over the countryside rounding up lost souls who are old enough to know better.”
“We weren’t lost,” the blonde girl objected, and as she lifted her head, Josephine noticed traces of a vivid red lipstick that had been hurriedly wiped off. She seemed about to develop her argument, but Jeannie raised her hand.
“In that case, Miss Lomax, would you like to explain to Miss Hartford-Wroe and then to your parents exactly what you were doing?” The threat was enough, and Josephine looked forward more than ever to meeting the woman who inspired such respect—or fear. “Good. At the end of term—and believe me, I’m looking forward to it every bit as eagerly as you are—you will be free to decide what you are and what you are not. Until then, you will both defer to me on all subjects, including your own minds. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Miss Sellwood.” One young voice echoed the other, and Josephine stared at them with what she hoped was a mirror image of Jeannie’s authority.
“Excellent. Now this is Miss Tey, who will be with us until the end of our time at Charleston. Introduce yourselves, and then perhaps we can get on with our day.”
Again, it was the blonde girl who spoke first. “Charity Lomax, Miss Tey. Very pleased to meet you.”
She smiled easily—a little too easily for Josephine’s liking—but her face was honest and open, and Josephine found her easier to warm to than her tight-lipped friend. “I’m Betty Norwood,” the dark girl said, barely meeting her eye.
“Right—let’s get you back to school.” Jeannie walked round to the back of
the van and opened the doors. “Get in.”
“What?” Charity cast her eyes over the cramped, dirt-strewn interior, and the mixture of disgust and indignation on her face was a picture. “Surely you don’t expect us to travel in there?” she said, looking to Betty for support. “We’ll get absolutely filthy, and it reeks of cabbages. Peter will bring us back on the motorbike.”
“Peter will do no such thing, and it’s Mr. Whittaker to you. Now get in the van. I won’t tell you again.”
This time they did as they were told, although not without protest. Jeannie slammed the door shut and winked at Josephine. “I shouldn’t be enjoying this, but I am.”
“What are they doing here?”
“Making eyes at Peter bloody Whittaker.”
“Who’s he?”
“Miss Barker’s cousin. I told you about him earlier.”
“Oh yes—the broken hero. I thought you said he was staying at the house, though.”
“He is, but some of his regiment are convalescing here, so he’s back and forth all the time, and it amuses him to lead the girls astray. Charity, especially—she’s a law unto herself, and as you might have guessed from her reaction just now—growing vegetables doesn’t really fit with the future she imagines for herself. Apart from anything else, the soil plays havoc with her nails.” Her grin faded as she glanced back toward the huts, where a young man was lounging in one of the doorways. “Talk of the devil. I swear he only does it to infuriate me.”
The edge in her voice was there again and Josephine looked curiously at the man who had provoked it, but the only sin she could lay at his door was an air of detachment that bordered on arrogance. As she watched, he blew a theatrical kiss to the girls in the back of the van, whose humiliation was obviously increased by his having witnessed it; their faces quickly disappeared from the rear window. “Why would he want to infuriate you?”
“Why do you think? He made me an offer I could refuse, and that didn’t sit well with him.”
She got back into the front seat, and Josephine joined her. “What is he convalescing from?” she asked. Whittaker was wearing the Blueboy uniform, but—as if to give weight to Archie’s reproof—there were no obvious signs of injury, and he was clearly fit enough to ride a motorbike.
The question seemed to irritate Jeannie. “Gas. He was caught up in the attack at Ypres.” She turned the van round, reversing quickly and deliberately over the grass until she was perilously close to the sidecar. “Please don’t tell me you are the broken hero type. You seem to have more sense than to fall for the first attractive man in uniform.”
“Of course I have,” Josephine said, smarting a little from the accusation and omitting to mention that she had already disappointed Jeannie’s expectations. “I’d also have more sense than to give him the satisfaction of damaging his motorbike and having to apologize.”
Jeannie laughed, and the tension between them vanished as quickly as it had arrived. “I’m sorry. I don’t know you well enough yet to give you the third degree. You’ve probably got someone back at home, and anyway it’s none of my business.”
It wasn’t, but Josephine still felt inclined to answer; she liked Jeannie for her humor and frankness, and didn’t want to alienate a potential friend by giving less in return. “There isn’t anyone,” she said, hoping that the students in the back of the van couldn’t hear their conversation over the noise of the engine. “At the moment, I’m just enjoying my freedom, and I have every intention of keeping it that way.”
Summerdown Camp was on the same side of town as Moira House. The school occupied a large corner plot with a distant view of the sea, and Josephine looked admiringly at its imposing redbrick grandeur, surprised by its size. A tall, square turret at one end crowned what was already a lavishly designed building, and a generous number of windows overlooked immaculately kept playing fields and tennis courts. Everything spoke quietly of discipline, stability, and order. “Impressive, isn’t it?” Jeannie said as she drove through the gates and parked close to the entrance. “Miss Ingham’s father was the architect as well as the founder, and no expense was spared.”
Josephine got out and looked round, breathing in the fresh sea air and instantly drawn to the tranquility of the grounds. “I can see why you were happy to come back here,” she said. “It would be hard to imagine a starker contrast to Anstey. Not a factory in sight.”
“No, and I love being so close to the sea.” Jeannie went round to the back of the van and banged on the doors. “Come on, you two. Out you get.” Betty emerged first, sulkily brushing the soil from her uniform, but any complaints she had were instantly overshadowed by her friend’s sense of melodrama. “I honestly thought I was going to die in there,” Charity gasped, inhaling deeply as if she had been holding her breath for the last ten minutes. She rubbed the cramp from her limbs and glared at her captor. “Did you have to drive over quite so many potholes?”
“Sorry about that. Have ten minutes in the front to recover, but I don’t want either of you to leave this spot until we come and fetch you for lunch. Is that clear?” Charity opened her mouth to argue, but Jeannie turned her back and walked away.
“You found them, then?” An older woman, presumably another teacher, had been watching them from the window and she raised an eyebrow as they walked through the entrance hall. “Good luck upstairs. All hell’s broken loose here since someone from the college telephoned to say they were missing. Miss Ingham would have reported them to the police already, I think, but for Lomax’s parents.”
“Well, there’s no need for that now, Miss Frobisher. They’re safe and well, and they’ve been with me all the time.”
“Of course they have.”
Miss Frobisher went about her business, still with a wry smile on her face, and Josephine followed Jeannie up an elegant, open-plan staircase. Like the entrance hall, the first-floor landings were tastefully decorated with rugs and select pieces of good, if unostentatious, furniture; plants or vases of flowers brightened dark corners, and highly polished floors and banisters filled the air with the faint smell of lavender. The overall impression would have been of a graceful, upmarket boarding house rather than a school, were it not for a series of framed photographs that provided visitors with an eloquent history of the school’s beginnings and philosophy: the founder and his family pictured on the lawn and in their private quarters; well-behaved young ladies playing in an orchestra or dressed for the gym. Strangely enough, there was no photographic record of Moira House students playing truant in army camps, and Josephine wondered if this very individual contribution to the war effort would remain their secret. “Why is Miss Ingham concerned about Lomax’s parents?” she asked, as Jeannie stopped in front of a mirror to check her hair and straighten her tie.
“Because they own half the Cotswolds, they’re extremely generous with their donations, and there are three younger daughters who are all set to board here. She has a very pragmatic streak, our principal. And in fairness to her, it’s not the first time that Charity’s done a bunk, but she always turns up again.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
“You’re about to find out. Just back me up.”
She knocked on a door at the end of the landing, and a voice responded immediately, a command rather than an invitation to come in. Gertrude Ingham was a small, neat woman in her thirties, with light brown hair parted in the middle and caught in a bun, and a style of dress that managed to be both feminine and authoritative. The desk she stood up from to greet them was perhaps the most productive that Josephine had ever seen, with the day’s correspondence growing in tidy piles on one side of a vast blotter, and sheaves of paper—efficiently sorted—waiting for attention on the other. No ornaments or personal photographs had been allowed to encroach on the space devoted to work, but she noticed that the walls behind the desk were hung with a number of theatrical production shots—both professional and amateur—which suggested that the principal was a passionate fan of the stage in w
hatever leisure time she allowed herself. At least they would have that in common, she thought, as long as she managed to get beyond her initial interview without being dismissed for her part in the morning’s deception. “Where have you been, Miss Sellwood?” the principal demanded. “We’ve been waiting.”
“I’m so sorry, Miss Ingham, but Miss Tey’s train was nearly an hour late.” Josephine resisted the temptation to glance at Jeannie, and the lie went unchallenged. “I’m afraid I have another apology to make too. I took Lomax and Norwood with me to the station because there were some deliveries to do on the way, and I thought a couple of extra pairs of hands would save time. I assumed they’d told Miss Barker where they were going, but I gather that wasn’t actually the case. I should have checked with them before leaving Firle, and I’m very sorry for all the trouble and worry I’ve caused.”
“So you should be. Miss Tey, it seems to have been your misfortune to arrive on a day when we can show you how things are not to be done—but you’re very welcome here all the same. I hope you will find your time with us both productive and enjoyable.”
“Thank you, Miss Ingham. I’m sure I will.”
The principal turned her attention back to Jeannie. “So Miss Lomax and Miss Norwood have been with you all the time?”
“Yes, Miss Ingham—other than a brief period at the station while I was looking for Miss Tey.”
“I see. And they will tell me the same story if I get them in here now?”
Jeannie’s hesitation was barely perceptible, and Josephine could only admire her nerve. “Of course, Miss Ingham. Shall I go and fetch them?”
“No, there’s no need for that. I’ve wasted quite enough time on them already this morning, but make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now, Miss Tey—let me tell you a little about the Moira House family. As you may know, my father founded the school thirty-five years ago because he was horrified by the education that was offered to my mother and my aunt, and indeed to women in general. He was inspired to do better by his travels in America, and we follow the pioneering ideas he introduced to this day: no arbitrary rules, no marks or prizes, no forced preparation for external exams, no punishment, and no bells to announce the beginning of the day or a change of lesson.” Admirable as they were, the methods sounded like a recipe for chaos to Josephine, but she said nothing. “Such rigid markers are never necessary when intelligent, knowledge-loving children are involved, and we treat our girls like the sensible adults we hope they will become.”
