by Anne Digby
They could retreat to the peace and quiet of their partitioned cubicles when they needed to work, with just the sound of the birds twittering in the eaves above their windows; at other times make tea, play with the copy machine, talk about their coursework – and celebrate the A grades as they came along. Tish and Sue seemed to get one after another! Sue had to compose four little pieces of music and had got all As so far. Margot and Elf were shining in science. Rebecca had got all As and Bs to date – and Mara wasn't doing badly, either. Like Rebecca, she'd managed a B for that first maths task! The second one, the 'extended set task', was looking a bit more daunting.
But the lack of exercise was getting Rebecca down. She wasn't properly tired when she went to bed at night.
And she still wasn't sleeping soundly.
Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night and hear funny little creaks and rattles. It was quite eerie. There was somebody walking about on the roof above her head – she'd swear there was! Perhaps it was the ghost of that Victorian schoolmaster – or else his cat!
Then one night, lying on her back and staring up at the black square of skylight above, she saw two pinpricks of light, luminous in the darkness. There was a pair of eyes up there, staring down at her unblinkingly, boring into her!
The moon suddenly slid out from between two clouds and Rebecca saw it at last – the cat.
It certainly wasn't Mr and Mrs Douglas's Moggy.
It was skeletally thin, ghostly grey in colour and all eyes – wild-looking, luminous green eyes, glaring down at her through the glass of the skylight. It was truly startling. Rebecca shuddered. If the cat could appear, she thought, beset by night imaginings in those scary small hours, might its master not be far behind?
She turned over and hid her face in the pillow, heart beating fast, and told herself fiercely that she didn't believe in ghosts and it was time to get back to sleep.
This time she told all the others about it, she couldn't stop herself. She told them at breakfast. On the next table, a crowd from Norris listened in fascination.
'It must be a stray,' said Elf.
'Action Committee!' said Margot. They always called themselves that when there was a mystery to solve.
'I shall tell Sarah Turner what I think of her!' said Mara, with a slight shiver. 'I shall tell her off for making up such a horrible story last Christmas!'
In fact, the Lower Sixth girl simply laughed in Mara's face.
However, in spite of the fact that the six searched high and low for the next two days, and asked lots of people about it including the domestic staff, there was neither sight nor sound of a stray cat at Trebizon nor ever had been.
SEVEN
TWO DISCOS
At last the day came for Rebecca to have the plaster off. And she'd be seeing Cliff again! Mrs Barrington dropped her off at St Michael's hospital on the Friday afternoon, then rushed off to do some shopping. She'd come back later.
'Well, Rebecca, how does that feel?' smiled the doctor as the hated plaster cast was cut away.
'Lovely!' exclaimed Rebecca, extending her left arm. She gazed at it in wonder and gingerly clenched and unclenched her left fist. It felt rather wobbly and numb from the elbow down to the palm of the hand but that was only to he expected. 'It feels lovely!'
The doctor made a careful examination, gave a satisfied nod and then handed Rebecca over to a nursing sister, who rolled a thick, firm elastic bandage over the heel of Rebecca's hand and half-way up the arm. 'This'll give you support now,' she said. 'It's been a nasty one. A multiple fracture. You're going to need quite a lot of physiotherapy. But you'll be playing games again by Christmas.'
It had been fixed for Rebecca to have these sessions up at school, under Trebizon's own insurance scheme. She'd need them every day at first!
She wandered out into the reception area, keeping her eyes open for Cliff.
'Do you want to sit down and wait for your lift?' asked the sister-in-charge.
'No, it's all right!' Rebecca said suddenly. She'd just seen Cliff! 'I'll wait outside, thanks.'
The main doors were open and she could see Cliff jumping up and down like a jumping bean, waving and grinning, in the street outside.
'Rebecca!'
'Cliff!'
He grabbed her by the hand, laughing:
'Look at us, don't we look fine!'
'You've got your leg back!'
'And you've got your arm back!'
Cliff tugged her along the pavement to the shelter of the striped blind over Brills, the baker's shop. 'Come under here, it's pouring!'
'I hadn't even noticed!' laughed Rebecca. She felt lightheaded and carefree. She'd got rid of that terrible encumbrance at last! She didn't need the sling any more, either! She pressed her nose against the shop window. 'Oh, Cliff. Look at those cakes. I want one of those delicious custard tarts!'
'I'll get one for you, Rebecca! And one for myself at the same time!'
They sheltered under the awning, munched their custard tarts and giggled. Rebecca was keeping her eyes open for Mrs Barry's car. They weren't supposed to eat in the street!
'Well, I've got it all worked out,' said Cliff. He produced a ticket from his pocket and handed it to Rebecca. 'Here you are. I've paid for it. It's the least I owe you. And we'll really rave, babe!'
'What is it?' asked Rebecca, reading the ticket. 'Disco –?'
'School disco!' commanded Cliff. 'Tomorrow fortnight. Saturday night rave-up at Caxton High.'
He jumped up and down and spun round and round on the rainy pavement, laughing. 'Look – I can dance – I've got my leg back!'
Rebecca giggled, feeling excited.
'It's just after half-term! We get back on the Thursday evening. I wonder if Mrs Barry'd let me go?'
'She's got to! Lots of people come. I've paid three quid for the ticket now, so she'll have to let you!'
'Here she is now!' exclaimed Rebecca. They quickly brushed the crumbs off their clothes and looked straight faced.
As the housemistress parked the car by the hospital, Rebecca and Cliff walked back there along the pavement. Mrs Barry got out.
'Hello, Rebecca. Everything go all right?'
She glanced at Cliff.
'It went fine. Mrs Barry, this is Cliff – Clifford Haynes. We've known each other since we were six! He lives down here now and he's at Caxton High and –' the last words came out in a rush – 'please can I go to their school disco tomorrow fortnight?'
The housemistress frisked the boy with her eyes. He looked pleasant, she thought. He gave her a winning smile – half cheeky, half cherubic.
'All right,' she said promptly. 'I can run you to the High School.' She always liked to make quite sure that her girls arrived safely at their claimed destinations. 'But what about getting back?'
'My mother'll run Rebecca back!' Cliff said promptly.
'Right,' said Mrs Barry. She opened the car door for Rebecca. 'And she'd have to be back by eleven o'clock and no later.'
Before driving off, she wound down the window and said lightly: 'Would your mother mind dropping me a note, just to confirm that arrangement? Mrs Joan Barrington, Court House, Trebizon School. I'm sorry to put her to the trouble, but it is a rule.'
'She'll be pleased to, Mrs Barrington,' Cliff responded quickly.
He waved Rebecca out of sight and she waved back. Then, fingering the ticket that was safely in her pocket, she said:
'Thanks, Mrs Barry! Thanks!'
Secretly the housemistress was pleased to see the colour back in Rebecca's cheeks. She'd been pale and listless, cooped up indoors so much, missing her sports. He looked a nice lad and the school disco would be a properly run affair. An evening out would do Rebecca good. But aloud she said:
'Mind you get that big piece of maths coursework done in good time. Doesn't it have to be in on the Monday morning?'
'I'm half-way through it already, Mrs Barry,' responded Rebecca self-righteously. 'And if I haven't finished it by half-term, I'll ta
ke it back to Gran's with me and finish it there.'
Rebecca confided in Mara the same afternoon and showed her the ticket.
'I'll buy something new to wear while I'm at Gran's!' said Rebecca. 'Something disco-ish!'
'Me, too,' said Mara, her brown eyes aglow. 'I shall get Aunty Papademas to buy me something in London. I'm going to a disco that night as well. Curly has asked me!'
'Are they having a disco at Garth then?' Rebecca asked quickly. 'Just a Fifth Year disco, I suppose,' she probed.
Curly Watson, the light of Mara's life, was a month younger than Mara and in the Fifth. Unlike Robbie Anderson, now a lordly Upper Sixth.
'No, all the seniors . . .' began Mara, then broke off, quickly reading the furrow that had crossed Rebecca's brow.
'Well, Robbie hasn't asked me to that!' she was thinking. 'Now I'm twice as glad I agreed to go to Cliff's.'
'Don't look cross with Robbie!' Mara was saying. 'He thinks of nothing but Oxbridge at the moment! All those boys who are doing it are the same! I've heard them talking in Fenners! Curly has promised me he is not going to do it. Where is this Oxbridge? He's not even going to do A levels. He is going to join the navy!'
Rebecca giggled then.
'I could just see Curly in bell-bottomed trousers. They'd suit him!'
At that moment Tish burst on to the scene, wearing her track-suit and looking flustered and bad-tempered. She'd just had First Eleven team practice again.
'I can't find my spikes!' she said. 'I'm in a hurry. I've got to go down to the track before tea and Miss Willis kept us for ages –'
She was sorting through a pile of sports stuff that tended to get flung in the corner by the big table. Not only was she training frenetically for her big race in London at half-term but Trebizon's First Eleven was taking part in a two-day hockey tournament that same week. Thank goodness they didn't clash, she'd said.
'– and to crown it all,' Tish was saying, 'that clot-headed Robert the Robot accosted me and begged me to pop over to Norris and help her with her coursework. Just a few little things she didn't understand! Would only take a few minutes! A few weeks, more like it . . . Ah! Found them!'
Tish's bad temper evaporated as quickly as it had come, as she hauled a pair of running shoes out from the bottom of the pile. She leaned against the big table and started to put them on.
'You look great, Rebecca! They took the plaster off then? How did it go?'
'Fine,' said Rebecca. 'When are you going to do your coursework, Tish?' she inquired.
'After half-term, of course,' said Tish, tightening up her laces. 'The weekend we're back.'
'Not going to the Garth disco, then?' Rebecca asked casually. She'd decided she wasn't going to mention her own invitation to Caxton High. Not just yet, anyway.
'Oh, I'm going to that,' said Tish. 'Edward's asked me. But that's nothing! That doesn't take the whole weekend! Bye, Rebeck. Bye, Mara. See you at tea.'
Edward, thought Rebecca. Sue's brother – in the Upper Sixth like Robbie. Well, he was working hard, too, but that wasn't stopping him going to the disco. And what was the betting that Justy had asked Sue? Oh, well, she didn't care. It would be great to go to Cliff's. But she wouldn't say anything to the others about it, just at the moment. She'd tell Mara not to say anything.
As for Tish's coursework! That was cutting things a bit fine, wasn't it? Even for Tish.
'You going to ring Robbie and let him know how it went at the hospital?' asked Sue.
It was the same evening. Rebecca had been sitting on her bed, propped against the pillows, checking her translation, Chapter 7, Nero and Agrippina, hoping that Mr Pargiter was going to like it. Sue had been practising her violin in her cubie opposite and Tish kept popping in and out of the bathroom, washing her hair or something. They seemed to have the floor to themselves.
'Does it look like it?' asked Rebecca.
Her arm was aching rather badly and she was glad that the physiotherapy exercises, which would help get everything right again, were to start the next day. She'd felt envious as she'd watched Margot and Elf and a whole crowd of them go over to the sports centre to play badminton; listened to Tish as she went off to have a bath, stretching luxuriously and saying: 'I feel totally exhausted and deliciously fit and I'm going to have a bath.'
She'd been sitting there wondering whether to have an early night, feeling listless and yet not properly tired.
'Robbie can ring me if he wants to know how it went at the hospital!' Rebecca added.
'He thinks you're fed up with him,' said Sue. She'd taken her glasses off and was polishing them. 'According to Justy that is. He thinks you're fed up with him and so he's keeping a low profile.'
'That's stupid! And it's still up to him to ring me and not the other way round,' repeated Rebecca stubbornly. 'After all!' she blurted out crossly. 'It was his emergency stop.'
Tish, hoving into view in her dressing-gown, rubbing her damp dark curls with a towel, stopped dead. She and Sue exchanged looks, raised their eyebrows, but said nothing. Did Rebecca after all secretly resent what had happened? Did she, in spite of all her protestations, secretly blame Robbie? It was all quite understandable. What a terrible bore that stupid accident had been!
Rebecca closed her eyes. She was surprised at her own outburst. She would like to have bitten her tongue off. But she was wondering the same thing herself.
EIGHT
A MAGISTERIAL FIGURE
Rebecca enjoyed half-term at her grandmother's. Thank goodness she'd had the plaster off in time. Gran would have fussed horribly to see her arm in a sling like that. As it was she clucked about the elastic bandage being so dirty and wanted to wash it. Finally she took Rebecca to her own doctor and had a new, clean, firm one fitted.
Although the physiotherapy sessions at school had been making the wrist and fingers ache, they seemed to be working; it was all feeling much better now.
'When's that film going to be on?' asked Gran.
The film about Trebizon, with Rebecca playing a 'starring role', had been ready for some weeks but apparently it still awaited the appropriate television slot.
'Looks like the Christmas holidays now,' said Rebecca.
'Good! You'll be home and we can watch it together. You can make sure I work the machine properly,' she added, glancing fearfully at the video recorder. 'I wiped my cookery programme off by accident last week, drat it.'
Rebecca finished off her maths coursework at half term, the 'extended set task'. She managed to complete the whole of the top paper with the exception of two questions on vectors. She also caught up with biology, learnt some German vocabulary – and bought a new outfit for the disco!
After all, Cliff had said it was a good way of celebrating and you couldn't have a proper celebration in some dingy old outfit! The skirt was darkish and the new length; the matching shirt had lovely floppy cuffs which would go a long way to hiding her stupid bandage.
She returned to school in good spirits after tea on the Thursday and found everyone else very cheerful, too. Tish had come fifth in the London race. She'd had her photo in one of the newspapers as the youngest competitor, who apparently 'showed great promise'! The hockey tournament had been exciting too: the Trebizon First Eleven had been runners-up!
'Joss was in the most amazing form,' said Sue, who'd gone along to watch both days.
Mara had managed to get that new outfit out of Mrs Papademas! She was parading up and down the long aisle between the cubicles, showing it off to everyone like a mannequin.
'Only two days till the disco!' she said happily.
'I'll feel like Cinderella in my old denim skirt,' grumbled Tish, who'd been too busy lately to think about clothes. 'But your brother wouldn't notice if I were wearing a sack, would he, Susan?'
'Uh?' said Sue, who was gazing anxiously in her cubie mirror and wondering what to do about a spot on her cheek.
'I've bought something myself over half-term,' began Rebecca, plonking her holdall on the bed, ready to unzip
it. She was longing to show the others her new outfit, and had decided that keeping mum about going to the disco with Cliff had gone on quite long enough. She'd tell them! What was wrong with it?
But at that moment Elf burst in through the double doors at the end, puffing. She'd run all the way up the stairs from the ground floor, where she'd been watching TV with Margot and Jenny.
'Rebecca. Phone for you. It's Robbie.'
Rebecca noticed that Tish and Sue exchanged interested glances.
She went hesitantly downstairs to the phone.
'Hello, Robbie. How's the Oxbridge work going?' she asked him. 'It's only three weeks now, isn't it?'
She'd already questioned Tish about it and been told that Robbie had shut himself in his room for most of half-term with his maths and physics books.
'Terrible. I feel like a zombie. Rebecca, Tish says you've got the plaster off and you're having physio. I did think about the disco on Saturday but then I thought with your arm . . .'
As his voice trailed off lamely, Rebecca gave a little snort. Tish and Sue had put him up to this! He hadn't thought about her arm, he hadn't thought about the disco, he hadn't thought about anything except his stupid Oxbridge . . .
'I don't dance on my hands, Robbie.'
'Oh, Rebeck, I'm sorry,' he said, in a sudden little rush. 'I can't act to save my life. I never even thought about the disco, I'm in such a blur at the moment –'
'Or my arm!' said Rebecca.
'That's not true,' he retorted fiercely. 'I wish it had happened to me, if you really want to know. If only I'd been going a bit slower –'
'Oh, Robbie, don't go through that again,' said Rebecca gently. She was feeling mean now. 'Everything's fine. It really is. The exercises are good – it's almost better.'
'Is it? Is it really? Do you feel like coming to the disco then?'
Rebecca's mouth had gone dry. She licked her lips.
'Robbie, it's so stupid. I haven't been anywhere all term and now two things are happening on the same night . . .'
'What d'you mean?'
