I recalled the tremulous voice denying to Aiden that she was a thief and recounted that part of the story to Ariel.
“Perhaps when he met her at the Hall last weekend, Ellie, she struck him as the nervy sort, and if he heard that the Loverly Cup had gone missing he might have decided she’d be the sort to pull such a crazy stunt.”
“Mrs. Battle told me she’d informed Carolyn that she was not obliged to keep the matter from Lady Loverly and said the same to Gillian, who having been a guest at the house might feel uncomfortable staying silent if she were to meet her ladyship.”
“Well, I can’t see Gillian feeling honor bound to spill the beans, and Carolyn would hate being the one to upset her godmother.”
I heard myself saying that Philippa Boswell was the sort of girl who was liked and respected because she never stirred up trouble. Ariel eyed me sharply before responding.
“Carolyn thinks Matron is the cause of Gillian’s depression.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because Gillian didn’t want to come to St. Roberta’s. Her parents thought it absolutely wonderful of Great-aunt Wilma to provide the wonderful opportunity. Carolyn says some people just love being saints even if other people get martyred in the process.”
“It’s one point of view.”
“Not that Carolyn believes Matron is anything close to a saint. Quite the reverse! She thinks the woman is positively evil.”
“Why?” I hadn’t been overwhelmingly fond of Matron, particularly after she informed me in a voice dripping acid that I had broken Ms. Chips’s nose in three places, but evil? That was a stretch.
“Her interference in Gillian’s once-happy life … .” Ariel paused to stare up at the tree behind our bench, either to admire the effect of sunlight shimmering through its leaves or to heighten the dramatic impact of her words. “Lady Loverly told Carolyn that it was Matron who wrecked Ms. Chips’s chance of married bliss—the supposed friend who spilled the beans to the groom’s parents about mental health problems in the bride’s family.”
“Surely,” I protested, “she didn’t do so on purpose or Ms. Chips wouldn’t have continued the friendship. Stories repeated at second or third hand get distorted. Or someone has the facts wrong in the first place.”
“I’m not saying Carolyn is right about Matron being evil. Bossy and bustling is the way I would describe her. Likes to think of herself as Florence Nightingale, I expect, but that’s not a crime, is it?”
“Perhaps you could bring Carolyn to talk to me,” I said. “But not a word yet to her or any of the other girls about why I’m really here. I have to proceed cautiously—Mrs. Battle’s instructions. Only the staff is currently in the know.”
“There’s no need to swear me to silence.” Ariel had her nose in the air. “I’m completely trustworthy.”
“I know that.”
“Then why won’t you tell me what makes you hate being back at St. Roberta’s?”
“Whatever put that idea in your head?”
“Ellie, I can see a dark cloud hanging over you.”
I believed her. From our first meeting, Ariel and I had shared an unlikely rapport, given the differences in our ages. Mrs. Malloy, who has also read too many novels steeped in the uncanny, would have said this was because we had known each other in a previous life, making the connection already there, just waiting to be renewed. My reasoning was more prosaic. Ariel reminded me of how I had been at her age: uncertain and inclined to be on the defensive. At times too old, at others too young, in comparison to my contemporaries. Where I had been overly plump, she agonized over being skinny. Confiding in her now would be like speaking out loud to myself. Suddenly I knew there was no putting off the evil hour; this was the time and place to open the book titled Wickedest Girl at St. Roberta’s.
“It all began with my being utterly hopeless at games, especially lacrosse.” I dragged my gaze away from the Chaplain’s House, where I had glimpsed a shadow at one of the downstairs windows. “When I was in the lower fifth, our practice time was on Friday afternoons—which should have made it bearable, I suppose, because there was the weekend just ahead.”
“That would make you fifteen.” Ariel sat glued to her seat.
“That’s right. Lacrosse all afternoon, from after lunch until the final bell. Sometimes I felt I couldn’t bear another minute of pretending I was enjoying myself. It hadn’t been so bad when we first started learning and just ran up and down practicing cradling without the ball in our nets. But dodging around, panicking that I wouldn’t catch it if it came my way or that I’d get clobbered in the face, was close to unbearable. And then came the awful day when Ms. Chips told me it might be helpful if I went off on my own and worked on my toss.”
“What was so bad about that?”
“She didn’t get far enough away fast enough. I raised my lacrosse stick—tentatively, I may add—and my arm must have jerked the wrong way because the ball took off and broke her nose.”
“No!” Ariel opened her eyes wide behind the spectacles. “Was she furious?”
“Not verbally. She couldn’t speak. Rosemary Martin, who always treated me with the utmost scorn, suggested I drop dead while she fetched Matron. And a good many of the other girls were furious. Ms. Chips was extremely popular. Rosemary had a mad crush on her. Even my friend Susan Brodstock was angry with me.”
“Did Susan turn on you?”
“She told me I wasn’t safe to be let out of a cat basket, but no. The incident didn’t ruin our friendship.” I smiled at Ariel, while noticing another watchful shadow, this time at an upstairs window of the Chaplain’s House. “When I went and apologized to Ms. Chips the next day, she had a big pad of gauze strapped on her nose, but she said it wasn’t as bad as Matron had told me. Not broken in three places.”
“Only one?”
“It’s no joking matter, even at this late date.” I pulled a face. “Really, she was awfully nice about it, saying these things happened and it hadn’t been such a great nose to begin with.”
“Well, then, I can’t see why you’ve agonized. It’s not like she dropped dead three days later from a blood clot or went unconscious when driving her car and killed someone else.” Ariel shook her head at me. “Honestly, Ellie, I was expecting you to tell me something that, even though you’ve kept it bravely hidden through the years, ruined your life.”
“Not mine,” I said, feeling my throat tighten.
“Then whose?”
“I’m getting to that. On the day I apologized to Ms. Chips, I asked if I could switch from lacrosse to hockey and she agreed, saying I might be better suited to a game that took place on the ground, not in the air.”
“Why hadn’t you made that choice at the beginning?”
“Because my parents had increased their bank overdraft to buy me a lacrosse stick, and for the first year we practiced cradling without a ball. By the time the horrid object was added, I was stuck. We didn’t get to change our minds midstream, not unless there were special circumstances.”
“As in the case of Ms. Chips’s nose.” Ariel nodded encouragement. “Well, how did you get on with hockey?”
“I didn’t.”
“Now I am perplexed.”
“I was supposed to start the following Friday. But I never went.”
“What?” Her eyes widened dramatically.
“The beginning of my downward spiral into a life of deceit. I suppose Ms. Chips told Mrs. Worthing, who was young and pretty with a permanent spring in her step, to expect me on the hockey field, but I squeezed that thought out of my mind.”
“Now, let me get this straight,” said Ariel. “Are you saying you didn’t show up on that particular Friday”—eyes now the size of a soup plate—“or for the entire term?”
“Actually, I absented myself for the rest of the year.”
“Ellie!”
“Yes, I know! It was a dreadfully underhanded and wicked thing to do.”
“You silly.” Ariel beamed at me
fondly like a proud parent. “I think it was wonderfully brave! I’m so impressed! But how did you get away with it?”
7
“This is a cautionary tale,” I reminded Ariel, “not an encouragement to follow in my faltering footsteps.”
“Sorry. It was just so astonishing to think of you being that naughty.” She folded her hands and assumed a meek expression. “Do go on.”
The setting was wrong for a confession: the sky innocent as a baby’s eyes, the breeze a soothing touch, the ivy greening on the Chaplain’s House a mantle of virtue. There should have been a rebuking rumble of thunder, a massing of dark clouds representing the state of my soul, and lashings of cleansing rain.
“I suppose I got away with it for several reasons. It’s possible that Ms. Chips wasn’t her usual efficient self, on account of the nose, and forgot to tell Mrs. Worthing to expect me. Or Mrs. Worthing forgot. Or neither woman could conceive of any girl wanting to get out of games and the privilege of being picked last by a team leader. I had gone into midday dinner, dreading the looks I would get when I couldn’t remember which hockey side I was on and directed the ball to the enemy. To hover impotently would be the safe course. But some leaping enthusiast was bound to yell at me to do something—anything—and I would stick out a mesmerized arm or a quivering foot at precisely the wrong moment, with the result that I’d find myself surrounded by a mob, drowning in a roar of voices shouting, She’s the one who almost killed Ms. Chips! It was too much. I couldn’t face my rice pudding.”
“Maybe if it had been treacle tart, the whole course of your life would have been different,” mused Ariel.
“There’s no point in dwelling on what might have been.” I leaned wanly back on the bench. “Grabbing up the book I had brought with me, I slid out of the refectory and raced up the stairs to the second floor. I needed a bolt-hole, a place to sit quietly and gather my rattling bones together. My first thought was my dormitory cubicle; I’d pull the curtain and huddle. Then I decided that was out; Rosemary Martin was dorm prefect that year and she enjoyed doing spot checks, hoping to catch someone, preferably me, in the act of eating a bar of chocolate retrieved from under the mattress.”
“It’s still the same. We aren’t allowed to eat in the dorm either. And to think”—Ariel sighed gustily—“that the most exciting thing for me when Dad and Betty won the lottery was the prospect of being able to buy tons of sweets. The girls still hide them, though, just where you did. And there’s always someone with the munchies conducting a search.”
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it swim.”
“That sounds like one of Mrs. Malloy’s sayings.”
“I told you she’s been in my head all day.” My sigh was picked up by the breeze.
“So where did you hide out, Ellie?”
“I remembered the small mending room at the end of the corridor, the one used by the woman who came in twice a week to repair the bed linens, neither day being a Friday. No one was around to see me go in. When I closed the door, it was just me and the sewing machine and a comfy old armchair under the window. I meant to sit down only for five or ten minutes, but I decided that reading a few pages of my book might settle my nerves.”
“I know the room you’re talking about.” Ariel nodded vigorously. “Carolyn showed it to me. She said it’s where Gillian goes when she’s feeling miserable. I guess despairing minds think alike, to quote our Mrs. Malloy.”
“Don’t tell me she’s moved in on you too!” I laughed, then sobered. “I don’t imagine I was the first or that Gillian will be the last to use that mending room as a refuge. Something has to be done to help that poor girl.”
“We’ll put our minds to it.”
“For starters, I should try to ferret out what Aiden Loverly was accusing her of stealing.”
“First, go on with your story.”
“The book did calm me down. Within moments, I was lost in the adventures of a girl escaping East Berlin with her parents in the hope of reaching an aunt in America who had a ballet school, so lost, I never heard the bell for the start of afternoon class. When I finally came to the surface, Tatiana was in New York, and a stunned look at my watch showed it was almost time for hockey to be over. To show up at that point without a decent excuse would surely not have gone down well with Mrs. Worthing, pleasantly skippy as she was! So after some panicky reflection, I decided to stay put until it was time to go to tea.”
“Weren’t you scared stiff of being hunted down and sent to Mrs. Battle?” Ariel searched my face for signs of residual terror.
“Petrified for the rest of that day and the entire weekend! Susan Brodstock and my other friend, Ann Gamble, wanted to know why I looked so queasy, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to them about it. Splendid as they both were in many ways, they were both horribly sporty and would have been immensely shocked. Luckily, they both played lacrosse, and no one else to whom I was close played hockey. By Sunday night I was beginning to breathe easier, until it suddenly occurred to me that the powers that be were taking their time deciding what to do with me.”
“Anything said the following week?” Ariel was perched on the edge of the bench.
“Not a word. When Friday rolled around again I was all set to do my duty for good old St. Roberta’s—until it became time to go and change into my gym clothes. Whereupon I realized that not only had I not come up with an excuse as to why I was presenting myself on this belated date, I simply couldn’t face an afternoon of unmitigated torture. That Tatiana had faced far worse was no incentive, especially when I now had in hand the sequel to her adventures. Budding ballerinas are made from finer molds than clodhoppers. It was back to the mending room for me.”
“How did you feel that time?”
“More nervous than the first, heart pounding every time I thought I heard someone outside the door, but the hours passed and no one came. And afterward, except for a few heart-clutching moments, I didn’t worry so much. The trick was not to think about the awkward side of things. I squeezed my mind shut and went about my everyday life, and the next Friday was easier—better than that, it was fun. There were fourteen books in the Tatiana series, and my great hope was that she would meet up again with the mysterious boy who had also been a stowaway on The Ocean Vessel. The nearing of end of term did bring me back to reality. What would happen when Mrs. Worthing went to mark my report?”
“That has been on the tip of my tongue.”
“On the day the reports were handed out I was sick with fear.”
“And?”
“It was Ms. Chips’s handwriting. She had given me Very Fair instead of the usual Fair and had even added: Tries hard.”
“Yours not to reason why, Ellie!”
“It certainly was a puzzler. And when the next end-of-term report came it was the same, except that she wrote, Keeps trying.”
“How spooky!” Ariel looked around as if expecting Ms. Chips to stroll up and offer a belated explanation. “So, after those lucky escapes, what happened to bring life crashing down around your ears?”
“The window in the mending room doesn’t overlook the exterior of the building,” I heard myself say in a ragged voice. “It gives a view of the San.”
Ariel nodded. “Short for sanitarium, delightfully Victorian. That’s what we still call it. And I know what you mean about that window. The mending room is on the second floor and the San is on the first, but it goes up two stories, so you can look right down to where the beds are lined up on the wall across from the medicine cupboard. All that white on the walls and the sheets and pillows makes it look dreadfully tubercular. Thank goodness I haven’t had so much as a finger ache since coming to St. Roberta’s.”
“It was the chapel of the old building. The arched oak door with the iron strapwork that opens onto the grounds is original. From the beginning I was careful to stay clear of the single window, in case Matron or one of her patients should look up and catch me. Fortunately it wasn’t large or posit
ioned low on the wall, and my reading chair was tucked well into a corner. However”—I took a breath before forging ahead—“sometimes when I reached the end of the chapter or was feeling recklessly nosy I’d duck over to the edge of the window and raise my head just enough to get a peek at who, if anyone, was ill that day. Sometimes all six beds were occupied, along with girls sitting on chairs with thermometers in their mouths or in the process of being bandaged up. On other occasions there was no one there, not even Matron: meetings, perhaps, or the opportunity seized for a chat in the staff common room.”
“Are we getting to the bad bit?” Ariel asked, with frank impatience.
“Sorry,” I said robotically. “One Friday afternoon toward the end of the school year there was only one girl in the San, Philippa Boswell. She came in shortly after the start-of-class bell. I heard afterward that she claimed to have a rotten headache.”
“Claimed?”
“It was decided later, after what followed, that she had pretended illness to get out of going to class.”
“To escape taking a test?”
“To meet her boyfriend in Lilypad Lane, that narrow pathway between the convent ruins and the road. A member of the Board of Governors was driving along when he noticed a girl in a St. Roberta’s uniform talking to a young man at the bottom of the Dribbly Drop. Sensing something furtive in their manner, he parked his car in a lay-by, but by the time he got out they were gone.”
“I’ll bet that was Mr. Bumbleton.” Ariel curled her lips.
“You’re right.”
“He looks likes his mission in life is to catch sinners in the act. It was he who got one of the maids sacked early in the term after he claimed she stuck out her tongue at him when he told her to speed up her dusting. No wonder China is such a snot. I expect Philippa and her boyfriend dodged into the ruins to hide in the crypt, and that’s why he couldn’t find them.”
“Probably. Perhaps he would have pursued them with more tally ho if he hadn’t been afraid of having a heart attack. Or frantic pursuit may have seemed unnecessary when he discovered the dropped note.” I stared into space. “It was to Brian Roberts, who it turned out was taking a weekend break from his medical studies, and signed Your loving Phil.”
Goodbye, Ms. Chips Page 10
