‘Good evening, Miss Hamilton-Gordon,’ said Diana.
‘Good evening, Miss Wynn-Roberts,’ the tall woman responded. She wore a black dress with a white collar. Steel spectacles framed large brown eyes. ‘Were you in a hurry to go somewhere?’ she enquired.
‘No, not really, Miss Hamilton-Gordon,’ Diana said uneasily.
‘Well then, unless there’s some emergency, such as a fire, there’s no need to pelt downstairs like one of the juniors.’
‘No, Miss Hamilton-Gordon.’
‘And who is this?’ the woman said, turning to Elizabeth. ‘It’s quite all right to skip introductions – but again, only if there’s a fire.’
‘This is Elizabeth Armitage,’ said Diana. ‘I was just taking her to the senior sitting room.’
‘I’m going there myself, to start my new bedtime reading.’
‘Oh good,’ Diana said, showing unusual enthusiasm. ‘What is it this time?’
‘The Sign of Four,’ said the teacher.
‘Oh great, Sherlock again.’
‘I’m rather naughty,’ Miss Hamilton-Gordon confided to Elizabeth as they went down yet another long, green-painted corridor. ‘The custom of reading aloud before lights out is an old one at Mountview, but when I took over I began to intersperse the more dignified works, such as Trollope and Jane Austen, with some popular fiction.’
‘King Solomon’s Mines,’ Diana remarked with satisfaction.
‘Yes, that and other things,’ agreed the teacher. ‘My argument is that when you go out into the world it’s useful to be able to converse about what’s being written and read and said and done these days. Therefore, we also have a weekly debate connected with the topics of the day, such as the aesthetic movement, or the benefits of scientific progress, or the role of women. I hope you’ll be able to contribute, Elizabeth.’
‘I shouldn’t think so – I mean, I don’t think I know enough.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Miss Hamilton-Gordon said, opening a door.
The senior sitting room was large, though not nearly large enough for the forty uniformed girls on sofas, in chairs, or lying on the floor by the fire. Three girls sat under the ping-pong table on one side of the room, playing ludo. Curtains covered large windows, looking out on to a view – of what? wondered Elizabeth. All the faces in the room seemed to be looking at her.
Miss Hamilton-Gordon introduced Elizabeth briefly, then sat down in a large chair by the fire, which had been vacated quickly by a stout girl with one huge plait, as fat as a horse’s tail, hanging down her back as far as her waist. Elizabeth, who had flinched under the gaze of all the eyes in the room, was relieved to hear the teacher say, ‘So – all sit down.’ She removed a book from under her arm. ‘The Sign of Four,’ she announced portentously, and there was a buzz of satisfaction. All the eyes moved away from Elizabeth. A voice said, ‘Hooray.’
‘Later in the term,’ said Miss Hamilton-Gordon, ‘I shall be reading a work by John Ruskin, Modern Painters, but to get us gently into the new academic year, we will start with our old friend, Sherlock Holmes.’ And she began to read: ‘Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirt cuff…’
For half an hour, Elizabeth, who had taken a seat on the floor, half hidden by floor-length curtains, was able to sit and listen to the pleasant voice of Miss Hamilton-Gordon. She was so tired, she sometimes dozed and, as the calm voice read on, she began also to hear sounds from outside the window, sounds very strange to her – the baaing of a disturbed sheep, the hooting of an owl. But the now-quiet room, the heads of the girls turned towards the reader, soothed her. She had arrived in this strange place against her will, but already it was less terrifying than her imagination had led her to think it might be: the teachers did not seem too stern, the girls were not pale or starved or fearful. In any case, she reflected, she had no means of leaving and had better make the best of it.
One of Elizabeth’s advantages in this new situation, though she did not see it herself, was that since the death of her father she had been very unhappy, unhappier than she herself even knew. There had been no one, except Mrs Macfarlane, to offer her support, sympathy or understanding, or to give her any sense of her own value to herself or anyone else. There had been, for Elizabeth, only her mother’s weakness, grief and self-pity, her cousins’ antagonism, the indifference of Harriet Warren and the suspicion of Robert, who had always seen her, though again she did not know it, as a potential disrupter of his tyrannical regime. He had prompted the scene in the carriage because he knew that sooner or later Elizabeth would challenge him, and sooner, from his point of view, was better than later. Better that they had their confrontation while she was a child under his control than when she was older, with more confidence and experience. Elizabeth, sitting ignored on the floor in Mountview’s senior sitting room, understood none of the reasons for her years of dull domestic misery, or even that she had been unnaturally miserable. Nor could she guess that this unwilling transfer to Mountview was her chance to throw off her sadness.
At first, Elizabeth was just tired and stunned, racing to catch up with her studies in the subjects she knew about, and learning completely new ones as well. French and German were taught, and she knew no German and only a little French. Domestic science baffled her – she had not realised that sewing, cookery and the keeping of accounts were matters which could be taught in school. Adding to her fatigue was the fact that the regime at Mountview was tough. The girls rose at seven o’clock, breakfasted, had lessons until a short break at eleven for milk and a bun, then more lessons until lunch. In the afternoon came a country walk in a crocodile, or games, hockey and netball, on the playing field. Then came more lessons, tea, a final lesson at five o’clock, supper, then prep. After a short period of recreation, there was cocoa, and bed at half past nine.
Elizabeth was also lonely, for she had no friends. She felt uncomfortable at prep time, when she saw the others sitting in groups, chatting when they thought the teacher in charge was too preoccupied to notice, while she toiled alone at her desk, despairing over some blotted pages of French, or some impossible algebra. At such times she would wonder how she could get through the next three months until the Christmas holidays, seldom speaking to anyone, except to ask for the salt, or exchange some playing-field comment on a pass or a goal.
It was worse at weekends. Half the pupils were day girls, and half the boarders lived within twenty or thirty miles of the school and so went home at weekends. On Saturdays the remaining girls could go to the town a quarter of a mile down the hill, to buy sweets or have tea in the café there, or simply stay in and play games, read, sew, draw, paint or knit. On Sunday mornings they were expected to go to church, the Methodists departing to their chapel, the Church of England girls walking in formation to the village church. The afternoon was free. For a girl without friends, the weekends were long. If the weather was fine, Elizabeth would spend these Sunday afternoons wandering the hills, loitering along the river banks, taking the startlingly beautiful walk around the waterfalls near the school. She came to love the wild countryside, the peaks, the huge skies and the tough grass of the Yorkshire Dales. Like many from the south of England, she had had no idea such a landscape existed, believing it was a convention of poetry and fiction and that the writers were probably exaggerating. At that time of year, a time of early dark gales and fast-descending mists, the countryside was also dangerous, and several times Elizabeth was lost, or stranded on rocks she thought she would never be able to descend.
The girls at Mountview had, in this respect, an unusual degree of physical freedom. Miss Tully, a Yorkshirewoman born and bred, assumed that her pupils, mostly from the region themselves, would know how to deal with the hazards of rock faces, narrow ledges above huge waterfalls, winds high enough to knock you off your feet. Elizabeth did not, but found out the h
ard way. She learned both psychological and physical independence on these lonely walks. She would return, sometimes, laughing, in a high wind, her hat swinging by its ribbons, long skirt and boots muddy. As she became mentally stronger, conquering the unaccustomedly hard schoolwork and facing the rigours of solitary walking in the hills, so she also became physically more resilient. The food at Mountview was plain but good, the exercise was strengthening. To a stranger, this tall, red-headed girl standing alone on a high peak in the mountains might have looked like a painting by Burne Jones or Millais. She was a lovely girl, growing stronger.
Her contacts with home were sparse. Letters from Bella said how much she missed her, but she failed to supply the items a girl on her own at boarding school really needed – jokes, family gossip, a cake in a tin, a slab of toffee. Only Mrs Macfarlane did this.
Nevertheless, the first month at Mountview did Elizabeth some good. There was no nagging, no family tension, no mother to sorrow over, and the Mountview girls’ indifference was a welcome change from Frannie and Cora’s active persecution. She caught up with her schoolwork and began to take part in the common-room debates. Matters went on improving.
One Sunday, it rained on the way to church and on the way back, rained through lunch, and Elizabeth was not looking forward to a long, wet afternoon, and a long, dark evening in the school. It was after lunch that Emily Preston hooked her arm into Elizabeth’s and said, ‘Come on. Come down to the town and we’ll have tea at Thwaite’s. My treat.’
Elizabeth had never had tea in the little café with the oak tables, white cloths and blue china on a dresser against a wall. It was a place you went to when your family visited, which hers so far had not, or with friends, and she had none. She accepted instantly, and the two girls ploughed off through the rain down the hill, past the farm at the bottom, past fields, and into the little village. Emily talked all the way: ‘I wish my family lived in England. It’s worse because I didn’ see my parents this summer. They’re coming at Christmas to make up, but it won’t be for long. I could have a dog if we lived in England, too. Have you got one?’
‘No,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Cat?’
‘No. My uncle doesn’t like pets,’ she said.
‘Have you got any brothers and sisters?’ asked Emily.
‘No. I’m an only child. I’ve got two cousins, Frannie and Cora.’
‘That must be fun,’ Emily said. Glancing sideways, she added, ‘But I can see it isn’t.’
‘Not really,’ Elizabeth said.
‘Where do they go to school?’
‘In London. I’m here to get a good education, as I have to earn my own living in future.’
‘That’s what they say to me,’ Emily replied, ‘but they can’t tell me what. I think I’d like to be a journalist, but Mother says it’s too rough, that I’d become hard and cynical. What do you think?’
They entered the café and sat down.
‘Tea, toasted tea cakes, any éclairs?’ enquired Emily, in a practised way.
‘Can you afford this?’ asked Elizabeth in alarm.
‘Would I have invited you if I couldn’t?’ responded Emily in surprise. She added, ‘It’s common to ask about money like that.’
‘Well, perhaps I’m common,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t seem very common to me,’ Emily told her.
‘Thank you,’ Elizabeth said. ‘That’s nice to know.’
‘What do you think about journalism?’ Emily persisted. ‘They do have women journalists, you know.’
‘Only for dresses and hats,’ Elizabeth said doubtfully, ‘and social gossip. You’d have to keep writing things like: “I was gratified to be one of the select few invited to a soirée at Lady Leinster’s gracious home in Berkeley Square. The Bishop of Bath and Wells was most amusing on the subject of his recent visit to the natives of Bongo Bongo Land. How we laughed.” Stuff like that.’
Her mimicry of the genteel tones of the imaginary lady gossip writer made Emily giggle. ‘That’s not the only job, I’m sure. Women,’ she added with assurance, ‘are on the march.’
The waitress came up with the tea tray. Emily poured. They both took tea cakes. ‘What are you supposed to do?’ asked Emily.
‘I’ll probably become a teacher,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Ooh,’ said Emily in some horror. ‘Do you want to?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Some teachers are awful, but Miss Hamilton-Gordon’s all right.’
‘She’ll probably get like the others when she’s older,’ Emily remarked wisely. ‘No – I wouldn’t want to become a teacher.’
‘There isn’t much else, is there?’ Elizabeth said. ‘Not for girls like us. It’s usually teaching, isn’t it, or becoming a lady secretary. Otherwise there’s nothing else respectable to do.’
‘We aren’t supposed to stick at it, anyway,’ Emily said. ‘Just do it for a little while and then get married.’
‘Oh – marriage,’ said Elizabeth. They both laughed. It was rather an embarrassing subject. Once they’d got over it, they chattered right through tea. On the way back, Emily said, ‘Will you be my best friend from now on?’
Elizabeth suspected some fickleness – cheerful, joky, kind-hearted Emily was one of the most popular girls in the class. She recalled how, when Emily’s best friend Susan had come through the hall on the evening of her arrival, Emily, full of excitement, had abandoned Elizabeth with alacrity. Elizabeth suspected that if she said yes, and she very much wanted a friend, especially one like Emily, Emily would let her down as soon as the others came back, and then she’d be laughed at. She said, cautiously, ‘Susan’s your best friend.’
‘Not any more. I can’t stand her now,’ declared Emily.
‘Well, all right then.’
‘Don’t sound so pleased about it.’
‘I’m not sure you mean it.’
‘Well I do,’ Emily said firmly. ‘What do you think I am – a rotter?’
The sun came out as they advanced arm in arm up the steep hill leading to the school.
Soon Dorothy Hamilton-Gordon began recruiting for the Mountview Play. She had already remarked, during the class desk-to-desk readings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that Elizabeth had a good voice and a way of immersing herself in the drama, of somehow becoming Puck or Titania, or Bottom, or whatever her turn dictated, more deeply than the situation demanded. So when she called the auditions for the school play, which would take place at the end of the summer term, she was pleased to find Elizabeth in the chattering group of girls in the school hall waiting to try for the parts. The play was to be Twelfth Night. Elizabeth, to her disappointment, did not get one of the romantic roles, but was picked to be Malvolio. Two weeks later, she had her part by heart. A month later she was wondering what was wrong with her during rehearsals. She found it hard to act with the other girls.
Worriedly, she told Emily. Emily, who had not been offered a part but went often to rehearsals, said, with certainty, ‘No, Elizabeth. You’re doing nothing wrong. You’re doing everything very well. It’s the others who aren’t. When you move, they’re not with you. When you speak, they’ve forgotten their lines, or can’t say them properly anyway. It looks as if you’re doing a waltz and they’re doing a clog-dance. You have natural talent.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I heard La Hamilton-Gordon telling Tully so. I was hiding behind the arras at the time, as is my wont, practising to be a lady reporter.’
‘Snooping.’
‘If you want to put it that way.’
Elizabeth was dazed. What she did then was start to read plays. A well-equipped school library supplied Shakespeare, Congreve, Ben Jonson, Sheridan, miracle plays, masques, translations of Racine and Corneille, Sophocles, Euripides – plays, plays, plays. Dorothy Hamilton-Gordon, spotting this enthusiasm, more like a passion, kindly lent her printed copies of more contemporary plays.
When Elizabeth returned to London she h
ad some protection against the hostile situation at Linden Grove. Nothing had changed – the bullying of Robert Warren, the sweet selfishness of his wife, the nagging and tormenting of Cora and Frannie began again as if she had never left. Frannie and Cora were only too relieved that Elizabeth’s arrival stopped them from quarrelling with each other, which they had been doing since she left.
In fact, not long after Elizabeth’s return, Cora mooted to her parents the idea that either Elizabeth should not go back to Mountview, or that she and Frannie should join her there. Cora, unaccustomed to brusque refusals, was quite startled by the brisk way in which this idea was knocked on the head. It was, of course, for the usual Warren reason – economy. Robert was not a man to put himself in danger of future legal proceedings over the maladministration of his relatives’ funds, but as long as he could deduct a generous sum for his sister’s keep while paying all Elizabeth’s school fees from the funds and saving the expense of having her at home, he was content. None of this was, of course, explained. Harriet merely told Cora that Elizabeth’s absence had reduced friction in the household, while she wanted her own dear daughters at home with her.
That Christmas Elizabeth desperately wanted to go to the theatre. She had learned that at Linden Grove the way to get what you wanted was not to reveal how much you wanted it. She did, however, manage to drag Bella to see Candida, by the challenging dramatist George Bernard Shaw. And just after Christmas, Robert took the whole family to see Cinderella at the local theatre.
This made up a little for the familiar sadness of seeing Bella so pale and withdrawn. And at least Elizabeth now knew that there was some alternative to the continual nagging pain of life at Linden Grove.
Chapter Sixteen
1900
By the time she was fourteen, Lily Strugnell’s career was in full swing.
Elizabeth and Lily Page 16
