School for Skylarks

by Sam Angus

Lyla reddened. Flustered and fumbling, she shook off the dress, letting it fall in a heap on the floor.

  ‘Don’t you go to school?’

  ‘Mop – Mother says school makes you plain and clumpy.’

  ‘Why actually are you here?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to be here,’ said Lyla.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Cat.

  ‘I was stolen by Father and just abandoned here, so Mop is probably very worried and missing me very much.’

  ‘Doesn’t your mother know where you are?’

  ‘No, and that’s why I need to get back to her.’ Lyla was enjoying having someone to talk to, so she added, ‘Mop says life’s unfair on women. And lots of people can be unkind because their feet are made of clay.’

  ‘How can people’s feet be made of clay?’ asked Cat, frowning at all the turns and twists of Lyla’s conversation.

  ‘You’re very literal-minded. If your feet are “made of clay”, it actually means that your head has no poetry or romance in it. And people with feet of clay say unkind things.’ As she spoke, Lyla thought about that, and her face darkened. She looked down and bit her lip.

  ‘Do people say unkind things about your mother?’ Cat asked.

  ‘No, of course not,’ answered Lyla very fast. ‘But sometimes . . .’ She paused, and Cat waited, but then Lyla picked up Bucket, stroked him and furled him about her shoulders because she didn’t want to answer Cat’s question.

  ‘Who is that?’ asked Cat, eyeing Bucket with curiosity.

  ‘Oh, this is Bucket. He is a ferret and he’s sleepy now because he’s not very keen on mornings. He sleeps in a sock drawer and eats pillows.’

  Cat giggled, then said, a little teasingly, ‘I might also tell Faye Peak you put a ferret on her bed.’

  Lyla was put out that Cat didn’t seem at all jealous that she had her very own ferret when no one else did, but she was also wounded that Cat might think of telling tales on her to Faye Peak What a Sneak.

  ‘I don’t care what you tell anyone because I’m going home very soon,’ snapped Lyla, and stomped out.

  19

  BREAKFAST

  Ada, still on the Gallery, was wincing and grimacing at the clash of the breakfast crockery and cutlery below.

  ‘Right then, young lady, you must join the girls, I suppose, since they are your guests.’ Ada’s eyes twinkled and she took Lyla’s hand and led her firmly down the stairs towards the State Dining Room.

  Lyla dragged her feet. ‘I just wish I had a –’ she tugged at her yellow jersey. ‘It’s just that everyone will stare at me.’

  ‘Oh dear, you can’t worry about that sort of thing, you know,’ said Aunt Ada briskly.

  ‘But they will,’ whispered Lyla sullenly.

  ‘Well, there’s a war on, you know – we can’t just get hold of dresses at the drop of a hat.’ She saw Lyla’s face and added encouragingly, ‘Nevertheless, we’ll see what we can do.’

  Lyla saw that the State Dining Room was now filled with long, narrow tables and that behind each chair stood a girl, head dipped, hands clasped. A murmured Amen was followed by a terrific scraping of chairs.

  Ada called out loudly, ‘Solomon? Solomon!’

  The girls fell silent and turned their heads towards them, and Lyla wished that her aunt were not wearing a canary and overalls.

  ‘Ah, good morning, Pinwheel.’

  ‘Pinnacle.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  Lyla, meanwhile, had seen Cat at a nearby table and ventured a smile, but Cat had turned her head aside. Thinking how much she’d like to have a friend like Cat, it occurred to Lyla that she could show Cat how sweet a ferret of your own could be and what fun it was to have one always about you, so she nudged Bucket.

  Bucket stirred in her sleeve. A little black nose appeared at the hem of Lyla’s cuff and twitched as it grew aware of the great quantity of scrambled powdered egg in the room. He slithered out in a great rush and state of nervous excitement and began to make loud dook-dook-dook noises – his tail vibrating and bushy – as he went off in search of powdered egg. But, once on the floor, Bucket discovered an alarming number of feet and chair legs, and his excitement turned to fear. He froze, arched his back and began a sort of war dance. Lyla tensed; things weren’t going according to plan. But when she bent to fetch him, he made himself long and fast and disappeared under a table.

  Then someone yelped and kicked out and Bucket sped about in frantic circles. There was a shriek, then another, and suddenly Cat had jumped up on to a chair and was hopping about and bending to nurse her ankle and Lyla saw that she’d been bitten and that Bucket had drawn blood.

  Aunt Ada, divining the cause of the commotion, turned to Pinnacle and said smoothly, ‘Pinprick, your girls are most disorderly.’

  ‘Pinnacle.’

  Cat glared at Lyla, and Lyla – a little upset about Bucket’s wickedness and that he’d chosen Cat of all people to bite – went off in search of her ferret.

  She found him trembling and hissing at the bottom of a log basket.

  ‘That child must be reformed,’ said Pinnacle.

  ‘Oh no, that won’t be necessary,’ said Aunt Ada brightly. ‘In my opinion, children are quite ruined by adults.’

  Lyla unearthed Bucket and joined Ada, who wrapped an arm around her niece before turning to Pinnacle.

  ‘You must tread lightly with the young, Pinsome. Very lightly.’

  20

  SIR WALTER RALEIGH’S DESK

  ‘And what schools have you attended?’

  Lyla, fascinated by all the changes that had come to pass in Sir Walter Raleigh’s rooms since the Pinnacle had established herself in them, turned her head from the typewriter and the filing cabinets and then back to gaze across the worn leather desk top at the headmistress.

  ‘Oh, I don’t need to go to school at all. I have lessons at home.’

  ‘I see. Well, what English have you done?’

  ‘Oh, lots. I like English,’ answered Lyla. ‘But actually I’ve finished it.’

  ‘Finished it?’

  ‘Yes. Now I only need to read poetry and novels, because everything you ever need to know in life is in them.’

  ‘Is that so? Grammar? Spelling? Are they in novels?’

  Lyla nodded. Of course they were. Anyway, Garden Hill girls must be awfully stupid if they still needed to do spelling. Probably going to classes with them wouldn’t be so bad after all because Lyla would be near the top of the class for spelling, so she answered confidently, ‘Oh yes, I can spell all the things you need to spell. Even difficult words like bombe glacée and syllabub.’

  ‘I see. And do your spelling classes take place at such places as the Connaught and Claridges?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Lyla, her confidence growing as the Pinnacle placed a little cross on a sheet of paper. ‘And any place that has menus. You see, Mop tests me in restaurants, to see if I am coming along all right.’

  ‘I see . . . Comprehension?’

  ‘Comprehension?’ asked Lyla. ‘I’ve never heard of needing to do that.’

  The Pinnacle sighed. ‘I see. And arithmetic – is that something you have heard of needing to do?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, but I don’t need to do any more arithmetic at all, you see; I already know everything you need to know in that too. Winnie says I’ve got the knack of it and I don’t need to do any more at all.’ She paused and said proudly, ‘I am quite good at arithmetic.’

  ‘May I ask what topics you have actually covered?’

  ‘Oh, arithmetic is always just adding. It’s very dull really. Gas bill plus electricity bill plus coal plus carrots, potatoes, milk, and so on. All you do in arithmetic is add one thing to another – it’s only addition, and never any subtraction.’

  The Pinnacle paused and then said, ‘I see. No algebra either, I take it, in the household budget?’

  ‘Oh no – definitely not. You can go through a whole lifetime without ever finding algebra anywhere at all. It never
comes in handy.’

  The Pinnacle bent her head as she marked another cross further down her sheet, and Lyla eyed the tall edifice of her hair and wondered how many pins went into it to make it so high up.

  ‘And your French. What level of French do you have?’

  ‘Oh, my French is quite all right. Winnie doesn’t know any French at all because she doesn’t hold with foreign places, so French has to come out of menus. Mop says the Café de Paris has the best French in it, and even some operas are in French.’ Lyla decided to expand on the matter of opera. ‘I think French opera is just about all right, but French plays are awfully dull – Molière especially. Mop – Mother – says Molière is bad enough in English and no one should ever have to listen to him in French. She says he’s deadly.’

  The Pinnacle marked another cross further down her sheet of paper and looked over the tops of her glasses at Lyla. ‘And who, may I ask, is Winnie?’

  Lyla smiled to think of sweet Winnie who was so certain about everything and could reduce a bewildering and complex world to a set of aphorisms.

  ‘She’s my tutor. But she gets distracted easily from lessons – you know, if the bell rings. Because the bell is always ringing and people are always visiting or sending flowers and Mother is always needing cups of coffee or trays of drinks and Winnie has to press Mother’s dresses and cook and scrub and pick things up off the floor and change the water in the cut flowers and—’

  ‘I see.’ The Pinnacle wrote down a hurried stream of angular letters and dots and dashes on her paper.

  Lyla, growing uncomfortable, squinted at them, but they were as illegible as a doctor’s prescription. She began to think that, actually, perhaps going to lessons wouldn’t be so nice if you had to do things like arithmetic and algebra, so she said, ‘Actually Mother doesn’t believe in school.’

  At this, the Pinnacle put down her pen and said a little wearily, ‘Nevertheless, you do seem to have found yourself in one. Now, over there . . . We have collected some bits and pieces of uniform for you. Hand-me-downs, but that’s the best we can do.’

  Lyla’s heart leaped. Everything would be all right with a uniform. She would be just like all the other girls, and no one would laugh at her. She rushed towards the pile of clothing on the windowsill as the Pinnacle added, ‘And I will endeavour to do the best I can with you. Under the circumstances, that is. You will be in Miss Threadgold’s class with Form IV. She will sort you out.’ She rifled through a buff-coloured folder and pulled out a neatly typed curriculum. ‘Yes, let’s see, they’re doing history now – go straight to the Music Room, where Miss Pigeon is teaching your class. I think you’ll find they’re doing the Celts . . . And please keep your views on Molière to yourself, or you will upset Mademoiselle Fremont.’

  21

  THE MUSIC ROOM

  The shoes were at least a size too big. Lyla clodhopped along, trying to make them move at the same time as her feet and not get left behind. The dress was a little large too, but if she walked carefully the skirt swung and felt quite nice. The problem, however, was Bucket, who did not think highly of a prickly regulation school jersey. Nevertheless, all in all Lyla was feeling quite comfortable about just appearing at the door of a history class because of a) being in uniform, and b) the history class being a doddle probably because the Celts had never really done anything of interest at all, so it would all be over very soon.

  ‘Lyla?’ asked Miss Pigeon.

  Lyla nodded.

  ‘I should like you all to welcome Lyla Spence. Now, Lyla, over here, next to Faye. Faye will look after you.’

  Faye Peak?

  Lyla hunched her shoulders a little as she eyed Faye and wondered if Cat had said anything to her about trying on her clothes. Taking a seat, she looked surreptitiously about the room, eventually catching Cat’s eye. Cat grinned and pointed at Lyla’s dress and then at Faye and raised her eyebrows in amusement. Lyla bowed her head and glowered down at the exercise book on her desk.

  Miss Pigeon had turned to the blackboard propped against the harpsichord.

  ‘Lyla, can I assume you have some knowledge of the Celts?’

  ‘They cut off their enemy’s heads,’ said Lyla promptly, ‘and put them on the doors of their houses. I wouldn’t do that . . . I mean, I wouldn’t want heads on my house —’

  ‘Good,’ interrupted Miss Pigeon. ‘That’s enough, thank you, Lyla . . . Well, you will be able then to join the rest of the class in writing a thirty-minute essay on the diet, customs and houses of the Celts.’

  ‘Thirty minutes?’ asked Lyla.

  She’d been once to the British Museum with Winnie. Winnie had found nothing of interest in any of the Ancient Britain section, and much to cause alarm in the Egyptian, and then she’d announced it was time to go home. ‘Won’t waste time on this lot either,’ she’d remarked as she’d waddled back through the Iron and Bronze Ages, rummaging in her large black bag for a handkerchief and glancing sidelong at tiny, carefully preserved fragments of things. ‘Not much to say for themselves, have they, this lot?’

  Lyla picked up her pencil and began to write.

  The Celts were here a very long time before anyone else, e.g. Jesus and the Romans, but the Celts never actually did anything except to discover iron, which had happened to be here all along so it shouldn’t count as a discovery. I learned about the Celts in the British Museum. You can spend hours in the British Museum and not learn much about the Celts at all because it took them 750 years just to discover how to make weapons out of the iron that they found that was there anyway. They tattooed their bodies ALL OVER and wore their hair in spikes and put horns on their helmets and went into battle with no clothes on. I am not surprised they got overtaken because it’s just silly to fight the Romans when you’re totally naked except for the horns on your head.

  Lyla raised her head to look about and saw that Faye was applying herself with great concentration to drawing a sort of anthill with grass on top of it. Lyla rolled her eyes and wondered who would ever bother to draw a house that was only made of mud and grass. She put down her pencil, determined not to waste any time on that sort of thing.

  Now Faye was drawing something else, a hill perhaps with lots of rings around it. Lyla rolled her eyes. A hill fort. Miss Pigeon would surely find that very boring, especially all the arrows and labels Faye was adding now. Lyla eyed Faye. Faye’s hair was pretty and blonde, the ends of her plaits curling softly around her face.

  ‘Have you finished, Lyla?’ asked Miss Pigeon.

  ‘Yes. It was quick and easy really because there’s nothing interesting to know about the Celts, is there?’

  ‘Well, Miss Spence, we are about to spend an entire term on the Celts and, furthermore, they happen to be my specialist subject,’ snapped Miss Pigeon.

  Lyla leaned back in her chair, open-mouthed and aghast. A whole term on the Celts. How could that ever be necessary?

  ‘And what’s more,’ continued Miss Pigeon, ‘I will not be spoken to like that. Put your hands on your head and remain that way until the rest of the class has finished writing.’

  22

  TO THE NORTH GALLERY

  Lyla absolutely, definitely, needed to escape. She would certainly not spend a whole term sitting next to Faye Peak with her hands on her head learning about the Celts.

  The problem was that Lyla had still not come up with another plan. She’d thought long and hard last night, and everything she’d come up with seemed likely to go wrong. Besides, it was hard to put your mind to anything when there were so many places you were supposed to be at particular times, and you were being given things called tardies for being late or some other thing, or for being naughty, even when you didn’t think you’d done anything wrong at all.

  The worst thing about everything was that because Cat still hadn’t talked to her since being bitten by Bucket it was highly likely she’d tell Faye about Lyla going into her wardrobe. As she dressed, Lyla decided to see if Cat was skiving assembly so she could plead
with her not to tell Faye anything. Once again, Lyla crept along to the North Gallery and down the centre of the room and did, in fact, find Cat there.

  ‘Do you always skive assembly?’

  ‘Haven’t you gone back to London yet?’ retorted Cat.

  Lyla shook her head. ‘Actually, I can’t think of a new Escape Option just at the moment. Anyway, doesn’t Pinnacle notice you’re not at assembly?’

  ‘Pinnacle is transported during prayer –’ Cat gestured heavenwards with arms thrust wide – ‘to HIGHER REALMS, so she doesn’t notice such earthly things. Father says she was going to go to Oxford and then something happened that young ladies aren’t supposed to do or know about and that’s why she prays all the time.’ Cat paused, and then said rather suddenly, ‘Do you know anything? I mean, in lessons, you don’t seem to know anything at all.’

  ‘That’s not true. I know lots of things – it’s only that they’re not quite the same things as you learn in school because most of them are pointless and, so far, I’m not actually impressed by school at all.’

  The break bell went, and Cat sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘We’ve got double geography now with Noddy – that’s Miss Nodding.’

  A stream of girls could be heard on the stairs.

  ‘What will we learn in double geography?’ asked Lyla, hoping for tiny islands and other interesting places and wondering if you learned about things that were more interesting than the Celts.

  Cat turned to her with interest. ‘Haven’t you ever studied geography either?’

  ‘No – you see, Winnie doesn’t want to go anywhere further than Henley.’

  ‘Winnie?’

  ‘My governess. Well, she was supposed to be my governess, but she’s been REQUISITIONED by Mop to do the house because there’re so many things a woman has to do in a house, but one of Mop’s rules is that if a man wouldn’t do a thing, especially a thing about the house, then Mop mustn’t do it either, and neither must I. That means Mop and I walk about past all the socks and things on floors as if we hadn’t seen them because men never notice socks being left about on floors.’