She picked up the dressing-gown and led me back downstairs. In the bathroom I washed my face and hands with cold water and bitter yellow soap, and brushed my teeth. At the next basin Ross did the same, spitting out the toothpaste with gusto. Back upstairs the Elm Room was already dark. The school matron turned off the light at nine-thirty on the dot; only in case of fire or flood were we allowed to turn it on again. I undressed, glad to be shielded from the girls’ scrutiny, and climbed into the narrow, lumpy bed.
Gone were the owls and the wind in the trees, my cousins’ chatter and my aunt’s laughter. The girl in the next bed was already snoring. Someone else was laughing, or perhaps crying. I heard floorboards creaking, and a muffled gasp. The thought that had come to me as I waited for the train in Edinburgh returned even more acutely; not one person in this room, or indeed within a hundred miles, wished me well. But on Monday there would be lessons. I would meet the teachers and the regular girls and start to make friends.
When the only sounds around me were sighs and snores, I climbed out of bed and, carrying my suitcase, tiptoed down the stairs. Locking myself in one of the toilets, I used my penknife to make a slit in the lining of the case and slipped my precious photographs into hiding.
chapter seven
I woke to the clang of a bell and the groans of the other working girls dragged from sleep. Rain was drumming on the roof, and in a bucket beside my bed, water pinged steadily. The uniform, as I had guessed, was a disaster. The buttons of the shirt gaped and the sleeves stopped several inches short of my wrists. Meanwhile the tunic slipped off my shoulders and hung well below my knees. The socks drooped. The tie was absurd. Only the cardigan fitted.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” chortled the sharp-featured Findlayson.
Smith, the stout girl of last night’s washing-up, giggled.
After the sparse breakfast Ross had predicted, the entire school walked to the village church under the supervision of the prefects. The Bryants drove in a sleek black car; the teachers followed in assorted vehicles. The rain was heavy, and before we reached the bend in the drive, my coat was soaked and my hair dripping. Everyone else had a raincoat with a hood. The girl next to me, her name was Gilchrist, hummed tunelessly and ignored my questions—how old are you? how far is it? what’s your favourite subject?—until I fell silent. I soon understood why the older girls marched ahead. The radiators were at the front of the church where the parishioners sat, and the teachers and seniors occupied the pews immediately behind them. Then there were the younger girls. We working girls shivered in the rear. Wedged between Ross and Gilchrist, I was grateful for their warmth.
My uncle had given lively sermons, often drawing on recent events, and led the hymn singing in his pleasant tenor voice. His successor, Mr. Cockburn, had been inferior in every way, but his sermons had been brief, his singing passable. Now, as the organ started to play, a large man, his surplice like a tent, mounted the pulpit. Mr. Waugh did not even pretend to sing the first hymn. As soon as it ended he shouted, “Let us pray,” and proceeded to yell requests at the heavens.
The sermon too was delivered at full volume. The text was the commandment to honour thy mother and father, and Mr. Waugh explained what one should do if they weren’t available, namely, honour one’s minister, one’s teachers, and grown-ups in general. And how should one do this? Why, by working hard, doing as one was told, never speaking out of turn, being clean and neat. On my left Ross dozed; on my right Gilchrist fidgeted; overhead the church clock chimed. Mr. Waugh began his sermon soon after ten-thirty and was still going strong at eleven-fifteen. My feet went from cold to numb. Standing for the closing hymn I stumbled and, save for my companions, would have fallen.
Outside it was still raining. Almost trotting, Ross led us working girls back to the school. We were passing the lodge when the Bryants’ car swept by, spraying us with water. In the kitchen a woman wearing a yellow raincoat, whom I’d spotted near the front of the church, was waiting to address us.
“Girls,” said Mrs. Bryant, with a broad smile, “one of our governors is coming to lunch. Cook has made something delicious, and I want everyone to put her best foot forward. Clean aprons all round.” Clipboard in hand, she continued to issue instructions. “And you, new girl,” she concluded, “get a uniform that fits and stop slamming the plates on the table.”
Mrs. Bryant, I soon learned, had perfected the art of using a single expression—a smile—to convey a whole range of emotions: rage, disapproval, anger, boredom, sarcasm. Only when she was with her sister-in-law did her face relax into a kind of vacancy, which perhaps signalled genuine pleasure.
Lunch passed, mercifully, without incident. For the rest of the day I swept corridors of which I could not see the end, and mopped floors, which looked just as dirty when I finished. My only brief respite was dusting the library. Later I would overhear parents who were being shown around exclaim over this book-lined room with its tall windows, but working girls weren’t allowed to use it. When Ross discovered me reading The Thirty-Nine Steps she moved me to scrubbing bathrooms. Still I clung to the idea that tomorrow lessons would begin, and, thanks to Mrs. Bryant, Matron issued me a new uniform.
The sole adult living among the dormitories, Matron had no eyebrows—she drew them on each morning—and almost no capacity for surprise. Only utter mayhem could make her look up from the romances she read incessantly, and almost nothing could make her finish a sentence. “I don’t see what . . . ,” she said, surveying my drooping tunic. “But if Mrs. Bryant . . .”
She led me to a wardrobe filled with tunics and intimated that I should choose the two that fit me best and were in the best repair. Then she produced two shirts only a little too large. As for the socks, I would have to use garters. Finally she handed me an Alice band.
On Monday morning Ross detailed Findlayson to take me to Primary 7. She led me to a classroom on the lower floor, knocked once, and, with a quick grin, ran off down the corridor. “Come in,” said a voice. I stepped inside to see the teacher at her desk, writing. While I waited for her to acknowledge me I examined the rows of girls. Even beyond the uniform, they looked oddly similar. Each girl’s hair, I realised, irrespective of length, was scraped back, like my own, in an Alice band. Only at weekends were girls allowed to wear their hair as they wished.
At last the teacher raised her head. “Who are you?”
“I’m Gemma Hardy.”
“And what class do you think you’re in?”
“Primary Seven.”
“Two doors down,” she said, and returned to her writing.
Closing the door I saw the label, PRIMARY 6, and understood, yet again, that I must be on my guard at all times. At my knock the door of Primary 7 flew open. Beside the blackboard stood a woman wearing a black gown, holding a pointer. Like Mr. Milne, Mrs. Harris had neither neck nor waist; a small sphere, her head, was balanced on a larger sphere, her body. She asked the same question as the last teacher; once again I introduced myself.
“Hardy, you’re five minutes late.” Her voice was surprisingly high-pitched.
“I went to the wrong classroom.”
“I am not interested in excuses. Bring the late sign, Andrews.”
A girl rose from the front row, went to a box in the corner, and returned carrying a piece of cardboard emblazoned with the word LATE. She slipped the string over my head and I was made to stand at the front of the room for the first period: arithmetic. My cheeks were burning but I did my best to focus on the sums Mrs. Harris was writing on the board. Several times I raised my hand to answer a question; she never looked in my direction. The bell rang for second period and she gestured to an empty desk in the front row.
“Turn to page twenty-seven of your English books.”
I raised my hand again. “I don’t have a book.”
“What a nuisance you are, working girl. Share with Balfour for this period. At break she’ll take you to fetch your books.”
Reluctantly the girl at the next desk
slid over. Mrs. Harris stood at the blackboard parsing sentences, asking questions round the room. At last her head swiveled towards me. “Give the rules for using a semicolon.”
I knew a semicolon was a combination of a comma and a full stop, but I had no idea when to use one. “My old school hadn’t got to that yet,” I said.
“First late, now a dunce.”
“It’s not my fault we did things differently.”
Suddenly Mrs. Harris was standing over me. She bent down so that her large face was inches from mine. Except for a single crease beneath each small dark eye, her skin was very smooth. “What did I say?”
“First late, now a dunce?”
“No.” Her eyes grew still smaller. “When you first arrived what did I tell you?”
“You’re not interested in excuses.”
“Exactly. No one cares about where you went to school before today. You must catch up as quickly as possible. You’re a working girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Harris.”
Her chin sank into her gown and emerged again like that of a tortoise. “Girls, we’ve never had a working girl in Primary Seven before. We must do our best to educate her. Andrews, you know which card to get. Balfour, the rules for using a semicolon, please.”
Balfour reeled them off, or so I gathered from Mrs. Harris’s approving nod. Standing once again at the front of the room, this time with the card DUNCE around my neck, I was too miserable to listen. Most of the girls—I counted fourteen—ignored me, but one girl in the third row gazed at me steadily. Her brown hair stuck out untidily beneath her Alice band and her velvety eyes reminded me of Celeste’s.
Another bell rang, and Balfour led the way down the corridor at breakneck speed. Later I discovered she was a vigilante on the hockey pitch.
“Why is everyone’s hair the same?” I asked as I trotted behind her.
“It’s a school rule, ever since a girl set fire to her hair with a Bunsen burner.”
“Is Balfour your Christian name?”
“Idiot. Miss Bryant thinks that calling us by our surnames is better for discipline. Like in boys’ schools.”
I could have happily spent the day in the book room, with its brimming shelves, but Balfour led me to the section marked PRIMARY 7 and started handing me books pell-mell: English, grammar, scripture, geography, history, arithmetic, nature, writing. Several of the books were tattered; one fell into two parts. As Balfour reached for another copy, the bell rang. “Hurry,” she said. “If we’re late Mrs. Harris will kill us.”
We ran down the corridor, each clutching an armful of books and reached the classroom just as our teacher turned the corner. Everyone stood as she came into the room. The next subject was geography, and to my relief the topic was fiords, which I had studied last year, but the lesson had barely begun when there was a knock at the door and Ross appeared.
As I soon learned, working girls were the lowest form of life at Claypoole. We were constantly being taken out of lessons to prepare meals and then being punished for being late for class, or for not finishing our homework. Mrs. Harris seldom called on me and barely heard when I gave the correct answer. I knew the other working girls experienced the same treatment but, it seemed to me, with greater cause. Several of them could barely read the hymns we sang each morning in assembly.
The regular fee-paying pupils were mostly from middle-class families; many had parents who worked abroad in Hong Kong or Nigeria or Kenya. While I cooked and cleaned and slept in one-twelfth of a bare, leaky room, they lived in a much more comfortable fashion. Their dormitories had radiators, rugs on the floor, and pictures on the walls. Their doors closed. They received parcels of food. On Saturdays they wore their own clothes and were allowed to go to the shops in Denholm. These differences made friendship between a regular pupil and a working girl virtually impossible. A girl who failed to say please or thank you to Cook had to write out a hundred times, “I will be polite to Cook,” but anyone could say anything to us.
Even the regular pupils, however, were carefully monitored. The school grounds were surrounded by a high wall; no one could come in or out without permission. Nor was it easy to communicate with the outside world. The only telephones belonged to Miss Bryant and Matron. Every Sunday evening an hour was given over to letter writing, but the letters had to be put, unsealed, in the mailbox in the hall. Girls who wrote anything critical about Claypoole soon found themselves in Miss Bryant’s office.
Of course a few people knew about the school—Mr. Donaldson, after all, had warned me—but private schools were not subject to inspection, and Miss Bryant was very skillful in managing her educational experiment. The working girls were presented as a stroke of philanthropic genius. Here was a way to give scholarships to a dozen girls. The school would raise us up to be hospital orderlies or maids or, like one star former pupil, work for the post office. The entrance exams I’d prided myself on passing were irrelevant. I could have claimed that Moses gave the Sermon on the Mount and Henry VIII invaded Scotland; once my aunt had determined to send me to Claypoole, my fate was sealed. Pupils were cheaper than maids. The other working girls were the daughters of farmers, factory workers, or disabled soldiers. Several, like Ross, came from homes that made being at the school a relief. Their main recreation was to periodically, for no obvious reason, gang up on one of their number. For several days they would play tricks on the victim, ambush her in the bathroom, sing stupid rhymes, make fun of her bra and a mysterious article of clothing called a sanitary belt. Then, just as suddenly, the attacks would cease. Presently a new victim would be chosen.
The week after I arrived, Drummond was the victim. A stolid girl with beautiful red hair, she was almost as old as Ross but much less forceful. Even the simplest question—is it still raining?—brought her to a standstill. Now I watched, mesmerised, as the girls surrounded her and undid her shirt.
“Look, Hardy,” called Ross, “this is a bra. And this”—I glimpsed pale skin, a nipple—“is what’s under a bra.”
Drummond shrieked and half-a-dozen girls pulled her to the floor and fell on her, tickling and pinching. All I could see were two feet in brown socks, kicking. As quietly as possible I climbed into bed and pulled the covers over my head. At last Matron came to turn out the light.
“Girls,” she said mildly, “ . . . detention.”
If such a thing were to happen to me, I thought, I would die, but the next morning I saw Drummond laughing with another girl as she knotted her tie. I was staring at her in amazement when Ross sidled up. “Got an eyeful last night, didn’t you?” she said.
“Why doesn’t she report you?”
Ross grabbed my wrist and bent my arm behind my back. “What do you think happened to Montrose?” she demanded.
The following day Drummond was in charge of taking me to feed the pigs. We carried the buckets of scraps across the small stream at the back of the school and past the tennis courts. Just beyond was an enclosure with five pigs. They rushed over, grunting, as we emptied the slops into their trough. Drummond jumped back, but I leaned across the fence to scratch their woody skin. They were the nicest beings I had met at Claypoole.
Walking back to the kitchen, I asked Drummond why she didn’t report the girls.
“What for?” she said, eyebrows raised.
“For taking off your clothes, tickling you.”
“It’s all in fun.” She swung the empty bucket. “They didn’t hurt me.”
“But”—I did not know how to voice the shame that must surely accompany such an attack—“they held you down. They took off your bra.”
“Look,” said Drummond, “there’s a rabbit. My foster parents kept rabbits. Did yours keep anything?”
“No,” I said.
The rabbit twitched its nose and hopped away. If only I had a friend, I thought, just one, the school would not be so bad. We would hide in the library and build secret huts and visit the pigs. Among the girls I had met so far there seemed no possibilities, but perha
ps next term another working girl, close to my age, would join the school. Clinging to this prospect, I followed Drummond across the bridge. Only much later did I understand that my arrival at Claypoole had coincided with the great tide of changes sweeping postwar Britain: attitudes to children were shifting; the British Empire was dwindling; working girls were already hard to come by.
chapter eight
Every weekday at Claypoole began with assembly in the library. While the teachers sat along one wall, the girls lined up by class to sing a hymn, listen to a lesson, say the Lord’s Prayer, and hear any announcements. Miss Bryant presided over the occasion from a dais at the front; at the back, beneath a portrait of Lord Minto, the music teacher, or one of her senior pupils, played the piano. The whole affair took less than ten minutes, except for those unfortunate days when Mr. Waugh strode in just as we said amen and delivered an impromptu sermon. Afterwards, if his duties permitted, he would visit a class. I had been at the school for a fortnight when he flung open the door of Primary 7.
Scripture, like arithmetic, was a subject where I felt confident. I knew the Gospels thoroughly and was acquainted with Genesis and Job. On the day of Mr. Waugh’s visit we were studying the parable of the talents. A master, going on a journey, gives ten talents to one servant, five to another, and one to a third. The first two servants invest and multiply their talents; the third buries his single coin for safekeeping. When the master returns he praises the first two and, to my fury, scolds the third and takes away his talent. My uncle had claimed that the parable was not about money but about the gifts we’d each been given—whether for recognising a willow-warbler, or baking a Victoria sponge—and about how not using them was a sin. Still I argued that the third servant was just following instructions, protecting his master’s property; the other servants, with more talents, could afford to take risks. My uncle had quoted me in his sermon.
The Flight of Gemma Hardy Page 6
