A Royal Match

by Connell O'Tyne

  The queue was already snaking down the corridor, and because everyone was waiting to be jabbed in the arm with a needle, conversation was sparse. It was going to be a long wait. The sadistic Sister Dumpster (real name, Dempster) – who is not a nun at all and quite possibly worked for the Inquisition, she’s so old and nasty – liked to take her time torturing us. Flu jab day was her favourite day of the year.

  I was waiting with Star and we fell back into our familiar line of chat – ripping it out of our teachers and the disgusting lunch we’d just consumed. We both studiously avoided conversations about her giving up fencing, Latin and Ancient Greek, although actually I didn’t really mind about the Latin and Ancient Greek because Portia and Indie seemed really fun. The fencing was another matter entirely, though.

  ‘Sister Constance said the food was going to be more imaginative this term too,’ Star moaned.

  ‘I think she meant more imaginatively evil,’ I told her, thinking that it felt as if nothing had changed between us. So I tried to tell myself that perhaps it hadn’t really.

  ‘What I want to know is how they make all the meat look identical? How can you make beef, pork, chicken and lamb look exactly the same? It’s scary.’

  ‘Well, we do have a salad bar that includes rocket leaves,’ I teased, knowing how much Star loathes green things.

  Finally it was my turn to have my arm jabbed.

  ‘It’s just a prick,’ Sister Dumpster told me menacingly, her eyes dancing with happiness as she shoved in the needle, hard and deep.

  Star told her she’d do it herself, but Sister Dumpster was resolute. ‘It’s my special fun and you’re not going to spoil it,’ she insisted. Well, what she actually said was ‘I’m fully trained,’ but everyone who overheard knew what she really meant.

  Afterwards I headed off to join Portia at the fencing salle. ‘Say hi to Professor Sullivan for me,’ Star called out.

  ‘He’s not our fencing master anymore,’ I informed her, and there it was, back again: the gulf between us. I saw it in Star’s guilty expression and I’d heard it in my tone. I almost blurted out something childish like ‘What’s happened to us?’ but thankfully I stopped myself just in the nick of time. Perhaps Portia’s aloof demeanour was starting to rub off on me….

  ‘Well, have a good one anyway, Calypso,’ Star said as we parted company.

  I was going to miss fencing practise with Star, although she did allow herself to be distracted a bit much. Mostly by her pet rat, Hilda, or her snake, Brian, who by the way are quite possibly the happiest, healthiest pets in the pet shed. In Star’s mind however they are more sensitive than all the other pets. She’s convinced the rabbits and hamsters say mean things to them when she’s not around and give them beady-eyed looks, which really upsets me because Dorothy hasn’t got a mean fibre in her soft little body.

  And although I can’t speak for Honey’s rabbit, Absinthe, in my opinion if any of the pets give beady-eyed looks, it’s Brian himself. I swear, Star’s snake, given half the chance, would eat Dorothy and the others. I’ve seen him eyeing them up – he practically licks his nonexistent lips as we take the rabbits onto the run. Not that I’d say that to Star. I always say things like, ‘Poor Brian,’ or, ‘Poor little darling Hilda.’ I even cuddle Hilda as if cuddling a rat is what I live for. Indie no doubt genuinely adores both Brian and Hilda and doesn’t even have to pretend.

  But I had decided to stop thinking mean, jealous things like that. Just like I have decided to stop being annoyed with Star for dropping fencing. Over that morning, I had worked out that developing an aloof demeanour like Portia could easily be the answer to all my problems. It was sad that Star and I would no longer be the swashbuckling sabreurs of old, but as Portia had put it, now that Mr Wellend only had two senior sabreurs, he’d be able to give us more specialist attention. Yes, an aloof demeanour would be the making of me. I would pay more attention to what I said, drop the whole blurting thingamee and work on floating through life like Portia in a dignified way.

  Perhaps this aloof demeanour, which by the way I could already feel creeping into my character, would even help me with my Freddie/Billy choice.

  TWELVE:

  Mr Bell End

  Portia and I were in the salle d’armes changing into the numerous items of fencing kit and armour when she said, ‘Was it Honey who wet your bed?’

  ‘What do you think?’ I replied as I pulled on my new breeches. Like most girls in my year, I’d had another growth spurt over the summer and had to buy new fencing gear online from Leon Paul. I have just about reached the end of my tether with this growth spurt business. I am now five foot eight, and if I keep going like this I’ll be taller than Freddie and Billy. I was madly taking back all the petitions I had made to Our Lady in Year Seven to make me tall and slim, explaining that when I said tall and slim I had actually meant stunning and leggy, not a stick-like freakish giant.

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything to her, darling?’ Portia asked.

  ‘It’s pointless challenging her. You know what Honey’s like,’ I reminded Portia.

  Star and I could have had a great deal of fun out of the What Honey’s Like? conversation, but Portia was as silent as a throne. She simply went back to changing into her fencing gear as if that were the end of the matter. The next time she spoke was as we were heading out to the piste. ‘Oh, I forgot, I spoke to Mr Wellend.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ I asked, whispering because I could already hear him out there and I didn’t want him listening to our conversation.

  Portia began rearranging her plastic breast guard, which is a horrible nasty piece of armour that is roughly shaped like breasts and is always impossible to get entirely comfortable. ‘He was fine about the extra tuition thing and he said that Emille – you know, she does épée, long, straight blonde hair, year below … ?’

  I shook my head. Almost all the girls at Saint Augustine’s had long, straight blonde hair, and while Portia had once been captain of the épée team, I had barely noted the girls that fenced foil or épée.

  ‘Well anyway, she’s moving on to sabre, so she can make up our team, which is brilliant.’

  ‘Not as brilliant as Star,’ I pointed out.

  ‘No, but at least we can put up a team at interschool matches now, and also he was totally fine about the extra tuition thing. I think he’s as keen as us, really, just a bit …’

  ‘What?’ I asked, starting to worry.

  ‘Well, put it this way, he’s no Professor Sullivan,’ she said.

  ‘You mean he’s not going to speak to us in French?’

  She laughed as she shook her head.

  ‘Is he really old and horrible and wrinkly and mean?’

  ‘I can’t swear to his meanness,’ she replied enigmatically as she retied her breast guard, ‘but he is sort of odd. I mean old,’ she corrected herself quickly. ‘Old for a fencing master, that is.’

  Quite old is a euphemism for ancient, and in my experience most ancient men are pretty odd; but Portia obviously wanted to leave it at that and so I dropped it.

  Mr Wellend was waiting for us on the piste, practicing his theatrical lunges. He looked to be pushing fifty or something woeful like that. And talk about odd, this fellow took the biscuit. He had a beard, and I’ve never understood beards. Even when I was seriously young I was terrified of them. I always think that men with beards smell like soup. And this was one of those really neatly clipped beards that pointed at the end, like one of the Three Musketeers’. Far worse than the beard thing, though, he was actually wearing a silver medal – an Olympic silver medal outside his fencing gear.

  ‘Right, girlies, let’s start with some warm-ups, shall we?’ was his opening gambit. He had a South African accent and spoke to us in a sneering, creepy sort of way. As Portia and I looked at one another, I could tell we were thinking the same thing. We had a madman on our hands.

  I shoved my mask over my head to smother my giggles.

  ‘No masks for warm-ups, girlies,
no one’s going to get hurt.’ His voice was so slimy I couldn’t bear it, and then he rubbed his hands together. Talk about oily.

  I’m sure I must have been mistaken but I was almost certain I heard Portia whisper the word ‘creep’ under her breath.

  I soon decided it was going to be quite good having Portia as my sabre partner. Like me, she was totally focused even in practise sessions. You can always lose yourself in fencing because you have to forget everything else and concentrate on the game.

  Professor Sullivan was always going on about how fencing is a physical game of chess, and incredibly enough for a teacher, he’s actually right! You have to anticipate your opponent’s moves as much as plan your own, all the while staying in the moment, attacking and counterattacking. Mr Wellend put it slightly differently …

  ‘Think with your brain, girlies, move with your body, slam ‘em with your blade.’

  I don’t know whether it was Portia or me who came up with the nickname Bell End, but it wasn’t long into our session before we were whispering asides to one another, doing piss-takes of Bell End’s accent. Which is an achievement in itself because as you can imagine, it’s not easy saying the words ‘bell end’ (which is the name for the tip of a boy’s … well, you know what) while keeping a straight face.

  After fencing, I told Portia I needed to go back to my room for a tampon, as I’d just discovered I’d started my period. I was relieved in a way because I decided that was why I’d been so emotional about everything over the past twenty-four hours.

  ‘Actually, I think I’ll come with you,’ she told me. ‘I have to sort something out myself.’

  We hurried back, anxious not to be late for our next class, which was French. I dashed straight into the en suite. I heard a bit of stomping about going on in the bedroom but thought nothing of it until I came out and discovered Portia struggling with a mattress.

  ‘Can you help me get this onto Honey’s bed?’ she panted.

  ‘Sure, what happened?’ I asked as I supported the other end of the heavy mattress and helped her manoeuvre it into Honey’s bed.

  ‘Just swapping mattresses,’ she explained blithely as she smiled at me. ‘You don’t want to sleep on a wet mattress, do you?’

  I laughed and then hesitated for a moment, imagining what Honey’s retaliation might be. ‘She’ll murder me!’

  ‘Well, we’ll murder her back then,’ Portia shrugged. ‘Besides, she’ll probably blame Miss Bibsmore.’

  This was a very different Portia Herrington Briggs than the girl I thought I knew, that was for sure. She was as serene as ever, but there was a warmth about her as well.

  ‘Good idea,’ I agreed. ‘Besides, I’m sure Miss Bibsmore wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘She might even give us a trophy,’ Portia added.

  ‘Oh my, Sarah and Bob would adore that. They’ve always wanted me to bring home a cup.’

  After we finished our war with the wet mattress and remade the bed, I checked my phone for messages from Billy and Freddie.

  ‘Oh merde!’ I cried, as I saw I’d left my phone on.

  ‘What?’ asked Portia.

  ‘I left my phone on.’

  ‘Ten to one Honey snuck a look,’ Portia said, echoing my own thoughts.

  ‘Now we’ll definitely have to murder her,’ I told her in mock solemnity.

  ‘No other option,’ Portia said, shrugging, and we burst into peals of belly laughter.

  There were no new messages from the boys, but I didn’t mind. I was feeling a million times better about everything right up until we walked into the French classroom and I had a perfect view of Star, Georgina and Indie chatting and giggling together. Normally, Star would have saved me a seat.

  Portia scribbled away, taking notes conscientiously, while I watched my friends enjoy the royal company of their New Best Friend. I gathered myself together and began taking notes because I was working madly at developing my aloof demeanour, and girls with aloof demeanours don’t behave like green-eyed monsters.

  The problem was, though, I was still only a novice at this aloof demeanour business, and I found my eyes and attention constantly drawn to the lineup of Star, Georgina and Indie. They appeared to be passing notes. I was vaguely aware of Miss Devante droning on and on and on about the importance of the article, and I was scribbling away furiously to keep up the pretence of attention, but that’s all it was, really, a pretence. My page was covered in a scrawl of hearts and arrows.

  ‘Mademoiselle Kelly?’ she suddenly snapped.

  ‘Qu’est ce que c’est?’ I asked as I realised I was the focus of her beady-eyed French attention.

  ‘Tell us about your vacation, en Français.’

  ‘Oh bugger,’ I blurted before my aloof demeanour could stop me, which earned me a blasted blue.

  Portia sidled up to me after class and said, ‘My cousin’s in Year Seven, darling, and she’s fluent in French. Give the blue to me and I’ll take care of it.’

  ‘Are you sure? I could speak to Sister Constance. She might be persuaded to transmute it into a chore like floor sweeping.’

  ‘Sister doesn’t transmute punishments for Year Elevens,’ she reminded me. ‘But my cousin’s cool. For a bag of Hershey’s Kisses she’ll do anything.’

  I remembered being in Year Seven fondly now. Apart from being teased about my stupid accent, I’d had hardly any work to occupy me, and that, coupled with an insatiable appetite for sweets and a worship of older, worldly-wise girls, made doing their blues an absolute joy. It was so lovely and innocent back then. We didn’t even know boys existed.

  On top of that, back in Year Seven, Star would always have saved me a seat.

  THIRTEEN:

  The Night of the Soggy Boggies

  Apart from our daily fencing practise with Mr Bell End, I found myself slipping into what Ms Topler referred to as a malaise.

  ‘Miss Kelly, you aren’t yourself,’ she announced to me – and the rest of the class – during English.

  ‘Oh really, who am I?’ I replied, and everyone laughed.

  ‘Don’t be droll, girl. You know what happens to droll girls!’

  ‘Actually, not really,’ I challenged.

  ‘Blues!’ she threatened, before softening slightly. ‘No, dear, I fear you are slipping into a malaise, just like those poor Brontë girls.’

  I hate the wretched Brontë girls, I wanted to tell her, but then I realised it would just prove her point, so instead I replied, ‘Yes, Miss.’

  Because she was right, I was slipping into a malaise. Brought on, I expect, by lack of txt messages from boys – not one since Monday! I know four days isn’t a long time, and there were loads of reasons they might not have had the time to txt me. But I had begun to panic and started a nasty habit of shaking my phone. Of course it didn’t help that every time I so much as looked at my mobile, Honey would pipe up, ‘New message from Freddie or Billy, is it?’

  And then when I’d say, ‘No, they must be busy,’ Honey would smile her Apis Regina smile (that’s Latin for Queen Bee) and say, ‘Yes, that’s a positive way to deal with rejection, darling.’

  Even with Portia around I never felt comfortable in the dorm with Honey there; and so after these exchanges I’d usually wander off to Star’s dorm, where she’d invariably be chatting to Indie and Georgina. Or laughing at some new joke of Tobias’s, who’s always got an amusing story up his sleeve.

  Of course I pretended everything was as it always was, because after all, there’s nothing wrong with discovering new friends. That’s what I kept reminding myself. It’s not as if Star was being mean to me or cutting me out even. It was just that she wasn’t favouring me. Now that she had found someone to share her minor chord compositions with, she was as happy as her rat Hilda. And as much as I was enjoying my unexpected friendship with Portia, and as much as I couldn’t help liking Indie, I still wanted my old spiky Star back – the one who made sarcastic remarks about all the other girls and their conformism. The one who got my odd sense o
f humour. The one who didn’t look at me like a freak when I went on one of my rambling blurts.

  This new, happy, friendly Star was either wandering around the school laughing with everyone or closeted with Indie in the studio, recording their miserable songs about the sorrows of being Rich, Spoilt and Disillusioned. Also there was something even worse than Star’s friendship with Indie playing on my mind. Something I couldn’t admit to anyone (and no, I don’t mean the fact that I’d taken out my navel piercing, because I’d told Star the whole horrible tale of Sarah and Bob marching me into the shop and humiliating me in front of the entire population of Los Angeles. She’d laughed so hard, she was almost sick).

  No, the real problem was that neither Freddie nor Billy had txt-ed me recently, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d finally been rumbled for double txt-flirting. Or maybe they’d found a new girl to txt. Maybe Honey was right; maybe I’d been rejected.

  Maybe they were txt-ing Indie?

  Don’t worry, even I knew I was being irrational. My aloof demeanour practise was definitely starting to pay off. I was feeling much less conflicted (as Bob and Sarah would say) over Star and Indie’s friendship. In fact, one evening in our dorm room, when Honey started winding me up about Freddie and Billy, Indie turned to her and asked, ‘What about you, Honey? We never seem to hear you talk about any particular boy. Have you ever pulled?’ She said it in a pitying way that implied she already knew the answer was no.

  Honey almost imploded with shock at the suggestion that she’d never pulled. Before she could respond though, Indie began admiring my wristband. It was just one of those plastic charity bands that cost less than a pound, like the yellow LIVESTRONG ones, only mine was a blue BEAT BULLYING one.

  ‘They’re the only jewellery she can afford,’ Honey sighed heavily, as if this was of great sadness to her.