Francie: Off to London

by Emily Hahn

  “It’s for less than a year, remember,” said Pop. He lifted the little coffee cup the waitress had put down in front of him when she removed the eclair plate; he took a sip and made a face, in spite of his defense of the English.

  “Isn’t it terrible?” said Francie, who had been watching him, waiting for his reaction. “I tried it already,” she added.

  Pop said ruefully, “I’ve had it several times now, but it’s always a shock.”

  “It’s for less than a year, remember,” said Francie, wagging her finger at him. She huddled her coat around her and shivered. Outside the dining-room windows, in the feeble gleam of the street light, she saw that it had begun to rain again.

  One morning a few days later a letter arrived from Penelope. Francie read it aloud at the breakfast table.

  “‘Dear Francie:

  “‘How are you settling in? Do you absolutely hate England, or haven’t you made up your mind? I’ve thought of you so often and wondered what’s happening to you.

  “‘As for me, I’m on top of the world. I needn’t have been so worried. My stepfather is very nice, though quite strong-minded about things. I do believe he was more afraid of me than I was of him, and it’s quite all right now. Mummy’s much happier than she used to be before she met him, so even if I didn’t like him I would try to, but I do, if that isn’t too involved. We have spent most of our spare time getting used to each other again, Mummy and I. I’m afraid she is scandalized by my manners and ideas, but she comforts herself with the thought that school will put me straight, and transform me into a real English girl again. I may have my own ideas about this, but I’m not talking. Between you and me, I do get most awfully homesick for New Hampshire. But courage! It will be nice to see you again, and hear you talk a familiar language. By the way, Mummy’s putting in a word for you at Fairfields—’

  “That’s two words,” said Francie. “It must be awfully hard to get into the schools around here.”

  “I have the catalog here,” said Pop.

  “Not catalog, Pop, prospectus. Let’s see it.”

  Raptly she studied the booklet, while the fried bread and tomatoes grew cold on her plate. There were handsome photographs of a large building, of tennis courts, and gardens. There were lists of subjects—she noticed that “Art” was included—and mysterious references to “Houses,” and names of equally mysterious “Governors.”

  “A lot of teachers and not many students,” she said finally. “It says here there are only fifty girls. That will seem queer after Jefferson High; we had over two hundred there.”

  “You’ll soon get used to it,” said Mr. Nelson. “I asked Bob Tennison what we do first about this school proposition, and he says we ought to go down a time or two before you make the final move, just to talk to the headmistress and look around. That’s the way they do it over here. So I’d better call these people up and see if it’s all right. If it is, we might as well get you moved in right away.”

  As things turned out, it wasn’t as simple as that. When the Nelsons went lightheartedly to inspect the school, their normal American tempo was slowed down so abruptly that they felt as if they had been brought to a complete standstill. At first sight of the school, which looked at a distance more like a gray stone farmhouse than an institute of learning, Francie felt a throb of interest. It seemed wiser, however, to conceal it; she didn’t want to raise Pop’s hopes too high about her future happiness.

  “It’s awfully different from anything I’ve been used to,” she said, “isn’t it? Prettier in a way. Jefferson High was a red brick barrack-house compared to this.” She kept her tone noncommittal, but she felt excited now.

  “I guess those barn-like things must be extra rooms,” said Pop wisely. “Wonder how they heat the place.”

  “It’s all terribly green outside for this time of year; maybe it’s been a funny season, not cold. Are those tennis courts?”

  The car they had hired at the railway station curved around the driveway and deposited them at the front door. After a long wait for the maid to answer the bell, they were ushered through a bare, high-ceilinged room with an odor familiar to Francie. “School smell,” she said to herself. “The same anywhere in the world, I shouldn’t wonder.” A moment later they were in the imposing presence of Miss Maitland, the headmistress.

  There had been nobody to warn Francie that a headmistress in England is usually an awe-inspiring person; she had come to school as unsuspectingly as a lamb to the slaughter. Now, faced with this gray-haired lady with the high coiffure, she was suddenly overwhelmed with confusion. She forgot to listen to her father. He didn’t seem to be at all awed; in the midst of her unaccustomed embarrassment Francie found time to wonder at him and admire him as he chatted on and asked intelligent questions.

  “Yes, of course,” Pop was saying to something Miss Maitland had pronounced in her full voice about English school requirements. “Probably her Latin’s way behind. But as my little girl won’t attempt to pass any of your examinations.…”

  In a normal mood, Francie would have protested being called a little girl. Even now she opened her mouth. But at the same moment she looked at Miss Maitland’s face and decided to keep quiet. It was not that the headmistress looked terrifying, or even particularly severe, but she was dignified to a degree Francie had never before seen.

  “I’d think twice before I sassed anybody around her,” she told herself. “Oh dear, how can I ever live up to this place?”

  At that moment Miss Maitland smiled at her with a warmth which made her seem for a moment a different person, much less forbidding. “Go and look out the windows if you’d like to, Frances, my dear,” she said. “Wander about, if you’re curious to see the buildings, only don’t go into any room where the door is closed, because that means lessons are going on.”

  Gratefully Francie escaped from the drawing room, though she merely stood uncertainly in the driveway afterwards, not daring to walk about, until Pop reappeared.

  “That’s all right as far as I know,” he said cheerfully as they drove back to the station. “A few formalities about sponsors and inquiries at the bank, and you’re launched at Fairfields, chicken. How do you feel?”

  “Frozen.”

  “It wasn’t too warm indoors,” he admitted, “but I liked the looks of that Miss Maitland.”

  “She’s not bad as prison wardresses go, I suppose,” said Francie in gloomy tones.

  Pop came back to the hotel one evening in cheerful mood, to find his daughter waiting in his room in a state of perturbation.

  “Hello,” he said. “What’s the matter with you? Have you been crying, or laughing too hard, or what?”

  “Both. You sit down, Pop, and don’t move until I come back. I’ve got something to show you.”

  “But what—”

  Francie pushed him backwards, violently, to an armchair. “You just wait and be good,” she said, hurrying to her own bedchamber.

  When she came back, mincing like a mannequin, one hand held out with the wrist elegantly bent, he was appalled. He was really speechless for a moment.

  Francie was attired in a loose gray flannel garment, bulky though sleeveless, of a pattern he had seen in charity hospitals when the patients who wore them were convalescent. Her arms were covered with blue and white striped cloth, and he realized slowly that beneath the gray flannel she was wearing an entire shirt of this material, for her neck was constricted in a collar of it, not unlike his own, held together by a blue necktie. The skirt was very short; in fact it scarcely covered her knees. She wore short socks and heavy walking shoes. On her head was a hard gray hat with a blue-striped ribbon. He could scarcely recognize his pretty daughter.

  “How do I look?” she asked, pirouetting before him.

  “What is this, anyway?” demanded Pop.

  “School uniform. Fairfields uniform. We should have waited to see some of the girls before we signed up. I realize that now.” Francie seemed to be in earnest, but Pop said, “I
don’t believe it. There must be some mistake. They’d never make you kids—”

  “There’s no mistake, Pop, I’m positive. I called up the store to make sure, and they told me they’ve provided Fairfields uniforms for years and years and years, since—oh, I don’t know, since before the Battle of Hastings at least.”

  “Now Francie.”

  “Well, maybe not quite that far back, though this outfit looks like it. Honestly, Pop, isn’t it terrible?”

  Pop rubbed his head. “Well.…” He sucked at his underlip thoughtfully. “It’s for less than a year,” he said at last. It was a feeble remark, but the only one he could think of.

  As the day approached when the gates of Fair-fields would close permanently upon her, Francie found herself clinging more and more to the thought of two girls. There was Penny, of course, since she was already a friend and would be the one person in the place Francie would know. But she found herself thinking of Jennifer Tennison as well, wondering about her, hoping that she would be a friend too, even feeling that, in a way, she knew Jennifer, having heard so much about her from her mother. True, Mrs. Tennison had referred to her daughter sickeningly as “my little girl,” but, even allowing for a doting mother’s prejudice, Jennifer sounded rather a good sort. Besides, Pop had been feeding her Jennifer at every other breath for days now. He was always quoting Bob Tennison on the subject of his daughter and predicting that Francie and Jennifer would be buddies of the heart-to-heart sort.

  At any other time Francie might have resisted such heavy-handed enthusiasm. But now she was lonely for the company of those her own age, and she began to build up Jennifer in her imagination as another Penelope, but even more so. Francie, who was used to more friends than she knew how to count, was ready to reach in the dark for almost anyone who was young and lively and interested in something besides ancient tombs and modern zoos.

  Thus she was fully prepared to like Jennifer when she met her. She was anything but ready for the way Jennifer was so well prepared not to like her.

  Their first encounter came in the dormitory on Francie’s first night at Fairfields. Pop had brought her out in the evening after dinner, so that she could settle in for the night with the other girls and be ready to step right into school routine in the morning.

  Miss Maitland had assigned Penelope the task of helping Francie get settled and Penny had been wonderful. She’d made everything seem quite simple and pleasant, what with introducing her around, showing her her bed in the dormitory, helping her unpack. Apparently Penny herself had fitted in as comfortably as though she’d never left England. Already, Francie noted, some of her Americanisms were being replaced by English terms, and the other girls had accepted her readily enough. But they were holding back a bit, as far as Francie was concerned, stiffly polite, not quite ready to make the American girl one of themselves.

  Their attitude surprised Francie. There’d been an English exchange student at Jefferson once and every girl in school had fallen over herself trying to extend the well-known “hand across the sea.” That these English girls should not welcome her as quickly puzzled Francie and made her a little self-conscious.

  That was probably why she made the remark she did about her bed. The Sixth Form girls didn’t all sleep in one room, exactly; each girl had a little cubicle marked off from the others by an arrangement of curtains. Francie had just been introduced to her special cell, and to show her good will had bounced cheerfully on the bed. To her surprise, there was no responding give of good old American innersprings; just a resisting plop that jarred her to the teeth.

  “My gosh!” cried Francie. “Do you actually sleep on these prison pallets?”

  A hush fell upon the dormitory and Francie, quickly sensitive, knew that it was the hostile silence of those offended. It was then she noticed a girl who had just come into the dormitory and was standing in the aisle a short distance away. She was a stocky, youngish-looking girl with pale blue eyes and sandy hair. But the surprising thing was the scornful way in which she was staring directly at Francie.

  “I’d always heard how soft you Yanks are,” the girl said.

  Francie, not believing her ears, stared back. “Yanks? Who’s a Yank?”

  The other girl tossed her limp hair free of one shoulder. “I shouldn’t wonder if you are, Nelson.”

  “Oh hush, Jennifer!” said Penelope crossly. “Francie’s not a Yankee—she’s from the Middle West. And these beds are hard.”

  Jennifer, Francie thought unhappily. This unappealing-looking girl with the sharp tongue and the resentment against Americans was the “buddy” she was to have taken to her heart. Instead of being wildly angry as she would have been at home, Francie experienced only a weary, letdown feeling. So this was the English reserve she had heard so much about—this frozen silence all around her. Well, let them be that way! She could be reserved too.

  Without glancing in Jennifer’s direction again, even ignoring Penny, who was trying her best to ease the awkwardness, Francie got ready for bed. Not till “lights out” did she relax her stony, vigilant guard. Then she lay stiffly on the hard, unfamiliar bed, hating England and Fairfields and especially Jennifer, aching with longing for home and her own kind.

  Back home in Jefferson a letter had arrived from Francie Nelson, and Ruth could hardly wait to get on the telephone.

  “Gretta?” she cried excitedly into the receiver. “I’ve just got a letter from Francie and it’s going to kill you. The poor thing.”

  “I suppose she’s coming back soon,” said Gretta gloomily, “before Prom.”

  “Oh no, not at all. No such luck for Francie; on the contrary she’s all set at school over there. It’s a boarding school at that.”

  “Boarding school?” Gretta sounded more cheerful now. “Read it to me, why don’t you, if it’s not too long.”

  “Well, I won’t go through all the guff on the first two pages because it’s sort of hysterical. It’s about her uniform.”

  “Uniform?”

  “It’s what they’ve got to wear at these schools, evidently,” explained Ruth. “She says she tried to get by without wearing one of these terrible outfits, pleading that textile shortage they’re always talking about in the English papers. But Miss Maitland, who’s the headmistress—that’s a sort of principal—said she thought it advisable to look like the others, which means she thought it necessary, so poor Francie’s running around looking like a female convict, and playing hockey.”

  “Well, go on,” Gretta said. “What else?”

  “Here’s what she writes,” Ruth said. “‘This Miss Maitland is what I might call a sourpuss, but we haven’t got a lot to do with her, luckily, as she scares me to death. She takes some of the girls for Latin, but I’m so far behind in Latin they’ve given me up in despair. I’m not trying for any of their University examinations so they don’t really care. People don’t graduate here. There’s something about certificates instead, and because everybody knows I’m only here for a while they don’t worry. But they’re way ahead of me in most things; I was surprised to find out how far I’ve had to go back to the younger girls’ forms—that means classes—for maths and French and goodness knows what, and if I can catch up, entrance exams into State won’t bother me a bit. In the meantime, though, it makes me awfully ashamed to seem so dumb.

  “As for social life outside the school, there isn’t any. They think men are but poison, when they admit their existence at all. Even when I write to Glenn—” Ruth paused until Gretta’s exaggerated groans had died out on the telephone, and continued without comment—“when I write to Glenn I feel terribly guilty and hide the address. I don’t think they’d go so far as to censor our letters but I don’t trust Miss Maitland. Sometimes I figure I might as well be in a nunnery. The funny thing is, I’m getting used to it.”

  Ruth paused again as a sound of disbelief came over the phone from Gretta.

  “I don’t think she’ll last the time out,” said Gretta, plunged in stubborn gloom. “I’m
sure I couldn’t. I’m not sure I’d wish this fate even on Francie Nelson. What else does she say?”

  “Not very much more, except that the way she’s feeling right now, the fur coat her father promised her when she gets back has got to be something really snazzy. No mouton or rabbit. Oh yes, and that this girl she met on the boat—Penny her name is—is a great comfort, being half human because she was over here so long. But there’s another girl—”

  A decidedly angry voice broke in. It belonged to Ruth’s mother on the telephone extension. “Now girls, you’ll simply have to hang up. I’ve waited as long as I’m going to; I’ve got to get through to the grocery store.”

  “Call you later, Gretta,” said Ruth resignedly. There were times, she knew, when even a mother must be allowed to assert herself.

  It was the third week of term, and the Fairfields girls were taking their morning run, scattering out on the driveway as they emerged from the school door. It was not yet eight o’clock, and still dark. Under the clouded sky the trees of Fairfields’ famous oak park very slowly took on shape and solidity. The air was cold but not crisp; there was a hint of rain in it.

  Francie lowered her head and ran glumly, sniffling as she went. She wore no makeup and her hair was arranged for simplicity, not chic. She looked several years younger and several degrees less contented. She seemed always to have a cold these days; not a very bad one but nothing very comfortable either. The sniffle waxed and waned and never quite went away. Nobody paid any attention to colds at Fairfields unless a girl ran a temperature and complained of sore throat. Just now, for example, everybody in Francie’s House had a cold, severe or mild. Even Penelope had one, though she was usually adaptable to climates.

  “Hi there.” It was Penny herself trotting along next to Francie. She ran lightly, without noticeable puffing. “How you doing?” she continued, and Francie noted that she was already losing her American accent in spite of an occasional noble effort to keep it.