School for Skylarks

by Sam Angus

  Lyla walked back from church with Elspeth that Sunday and listened to Elspeth talking about all the things she would write about to her mother that week. Lyla had less and less heart for letter-writing. Each week she found she had less and less to say, and each week she was increasingly uneasy about the letters she wrote.

  Making her way upstairs to put away her gloves and cloak, two fourth-formers passed Lyla, and as they did, they flattened themselves against the wall as if to put some distance between themselves and her. One nudged the other, tugged her hand and whispered, ‘That’s her,’ and they carried on down the stairs, still whispering. What was the matter with them? Lyla thought scornfully. She sighed and then, remembering how Bucket – not being allowed in sacred places like churches – was alone upstairs, she hurried a little. Further up, she passed more fourth-formers, who did the same as the others. Lyla stopped and stared after them, wondering what on earth was going on.

  On the landing, at a hushed sort of whispering from the North Gallery, she paused by Sir Galahad and strained to listen, but could make nothing out, so she continued down the corridor. At the door of the Yellow Silk Room, she saw a clutch of girls watching her. They caught Lyla’s eye and backed away, whispering among themselves.

  Puzzled, Lyla turned away to enter the room, and then stopped abruptly. Her throat constricted and her stomach lurched: pinned to the door was a newspaper cutting with a large photograph of Mop on it. A big red crayon circle had been hand-drawn around the caption below the picture: Mop’s name, Florence Spence. Terrified, Lyla stared at Mop’s image: the mother whose face she’d not seen for three long years. As she stared, she grew confused, for nothing about Mop’s happy, sparkling eyes and smile conformed to the anxious, lonely image Lyla had so fiercely nurtured.

  Lyla’s eyes moved to the heading of the article.

  THE HON. FLORENCE SPENCE,

  SOCIETY DIVORCEE, DISCOVERED

  WITH GERMAN SPY

  Lyla put a hand to the wall to support herself.

  She snatched the cutting from the door, tearing the corner of it, and went into her room, walking very slowly across to the stool at the foot of her bed, where she sat herself down. Bewildered, Lyla read the heading again and then one more time. DISCOVERED WITH GERMAN SPY. What did it mean? It couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be true. The cutting trembled like a leaf in her hands as she tried to make sense of what she read.

  A short-wave German S88/5 Abwehr transmitter was found on Mr Heinrich Meier when he was apprehended late last night in the company of Florence Spence at an address in London. Large amounts of cash were found on Meier, who has been in this country for a number of months posing as an English gentleman under the name of Henry Mayer. He is reported to have been moving around Britain for some months in the company of Florence Spence and to have been reporting on British troop positions and movements. Florence Spence claims to have been unaware of these activities. Heinrich Meier will be executed next week at Pentonville Prison.

  Lyla, still struggling to make some sense of it, read it once more. Mop with a German spy? No, no, Mop was at home. She was at Lisson Square. She’d be painting, and Winnie would be there, and there’d be tulips on the table, and . . . It was wrong, the newspaper people had made a mistake.

  She clenched her fist, scrumpling the paper into a ball. Who’d done this? Who’d put it in her room? She flung it across the room. A chill ran through her – Who else had seen it? Had every Garden Hill girl seen it? She ran to the door, flung it open and raced along the corridor to the South Gallery. There she found a cluster of girls in front of the washstand and the same newspaper cutting pasted over the glass, with the same hand-drawn red circle around the name ‘Florence Spence’. Lyla paused, then elbowed her way through the crowd, reached the washstand and yanked the newspaper cutting off the glass.

  ‘IT’S NOT TRUE!’ she screamed at them. Then she went pelting along the North Corridor, shoving girls aside as she went, and into the Chinese Room, and then into the North Gallery – and in each dormitory she found the same front page of The Times with Mop’s face splashed across it.

  She ran blindly back to her room and hurled herself face down on to the bed.

  ‘Lyla—’

  ‘Go away, Cat.’ Lyla beat her legs in grief against the mattress.

  Cat was still there.

  Lyla didn’t want to see anyone again. Ever. Cat waited a good long while. When the heaving of Lyla’s chest and the thrashing of her legs subsided, she approached Lyla’s bed and said quietly, ‘Lyla, I think it was Faye that did it. You didn’t see her in church, did you?’

  Lyla paused, then shook her head.

  ‘No, I didn’t either . . .’ Cat paused. ‘You know, Father told me she wanted that art scholarship. He told me her father’s been making a bit of a nuisance of himself, you know – you see, they’re both governors.’

  ‘I don’t care about Faye or governors or—’ Lyla buried her head deep into the pillow again and screamed into it. ‘I don’t CARE what the papers say – none of it’s true. None of it!’

  Cat tried to stroke Lyla’s hair, but Lyla batted her hand away and said, ‘Not one word of it is true.’

  ‘Even if it is true . . .’ Cat began slowly and cautiously. ‘Even if they are right, she would never have known who he was or what he was doing – she was probably just lonely—’

  ‘Lonely . . . ?’ Lyla turned on her friend like a wild thing, and then added in a savage, soul-wrenching screech, ‘She didn’t have to be lonely . . . She could’ve been with me.’

  After a long while, Lyla grew quieter, calmer. She turned to Cat, her eyes wide, almost imploring her friend to believe what she was about to say. ‘We used to have fun. Mother and I used to have fun.’

  ‘Did you, Lyla? Did you really?’

  Lyla, tear-stained and swollen with shame and hurt, retorted, ‘Yes, and anyway, I’m not staying here. I can’t stay here. Everyone will know.’ She bent her head. ‘It will be just like when Father divorced Mother and all the world knew because of the newspapers. All over again.’

  66

  SIREN

  Cat had to leave, and Lyla stayed for the rest of that day alone in her room, her door locked against the world, her feelings lurching from towering rage at Faye, to scorn at newspapermen who didn’t know anything about anything, to fear for Mop, until she grew weak and febrile. Towards eleven that night, the childishness in her came to the fore and she set out to make trouble.

  She didn’t care about anyone or anything, and she would let the world know that was the case.

  Barefoot and in her nightdress, Lyla crept along the corridor. She passed the Staffroom and paused, hearing the murmuring from within, and smelling Primrose’s evening cigarette. She passed the dormitories in the East Wing and stopped outside, thinking angrily of Faye Peak, who was sure to be in there.

  Her eyes narrowed and her fists clenched.

  They’re all cruel and horrid and they don’t know anything about anything.

  Lyla stomped onwards not knowing where she was going nor what she would do. She arrived at the narrow stairs that led to the Attic and climbed up them, thinking to hide herself away up there forever. At the top of the stairs she saw the stars that shone through the open door to the rooftop and they drew her on and up.

  The stars were cold and high, the late frost already freckling the stone. She climbed on to the parapet and walked along it between the statues, looking down.

  Nothing matters. Nothing matters any more. I hate it all. I hate them all.

  She gazed through glimmering eyes at the stars and, as she did so, she lost her footing on a piece of stone worked loose by frost over the years, and slipped. Wincing with pain, she tried to rise, clutching at the wall of the parapet to pull herself up. Her fingers fumbled and found something cold and metallic, and as she clutched at it to haul herself to her feet, she realized that it was the air-raid siren that was bolted to the stone.

  With sudden violent anger, she cl
utched its handle, turned it and heard, through her tears, its slow, eerie wail. Her anger fuelled her arm and she cranked the handle and her eyes watched the radial veins of the siren spin till they became a hypnotic blur. She drove the thing to its maximum pitch and kept it there, the sound rising and rising, suffocating the pain in her heart, the banshee cry haunting the rooftops and towers with a tidal swelling. She let it roll back before cranking it up with redoubled force, filling the air with a spine-chilling drone that rose and fell, rose and fell, like waves on a shore.

  Terrified sheep skittered from one end of the park to the other, like drifts of snow in a storm. Cedric Tawny was running from his cottage and Mabel Rawle was on her new motorbike and all the Home Guard appeared on bicycles, all risen from their beds and converging on Furlongs.

  As Lyla witnessed all this unfold, her hands began to tremble and her anger to wane and she collapsed to the ground, crying and shaking, and she remained there for some time, huddled against the parapet.

  It was Great Aunt Ada who found her and hauled her to her feet.

  ‘Good men and women hauled from their beds?’ she said grimly. ‘Nothing that happens to you in life can ever justify you causing fear to others. You must not think only of yourself. You’ll apologize to Cedric Tawny and Mabel Rawle, to the Home Guard and to the girls and the staff for the fear you’ve caused, child.’

  ‘I’m not a child.’

  Great Aunt Ada bent to Lyla and said, more gently now, ‘You have behaved like a child, Lyla. Don’t you see you have frightened people, really frightened them?’

  Lyla turned from Ada and, clawing at the stone wall, sobbed, ‘I hate everyone. Everyone and everything. There’s no point to anything at all. School. Lessons. Knitting. Wool-gathering, Growing up. Boxes for prisoners. What is the point of it all? Why should I bother with any of it?’

  ‘That is something we also all feel at different stages in our lives, Lyla, and, yes, it might well seem for a long time yet that there is no point to anything. The things that have happened to you will be with you forever; I cannot pretend otherwise. Oh, yes, the joy and the pain will stay with you forever –’ Ada looked away – ‘as bright and searing as if they’d happened yesterday. But in time you will know that the moments that stay with you forever, they are the things that make you what you are: both the moments of bottomless pain and those of unbridled joy. Everything in between will simply fade away.’

  Just then the all-clear sounded from below. Ada took Lyla in her arms and held her, and there on the roof of Furlongs, her bare feet on the stone, Lyla heard the single sustained note of the all-clear and as it went on and on something inside her began to unravel. The note went on and on, unwinding the stony walls that circled the scarred centre of her, stripping her almost to her core, and finally, as it died on the wind, she whispered, broken, ‘I wish anyone else was my mother – anyone but her.’

  Ada drew away and said, ‘The habit of hiding things from yourself has become second nature to you. But step by step, make yourself look at things hard in the face. When you can admit to yourself the way things are, you will be easier with yourself – the way forward will become clear – d’you see – and straight. Don’t turn away from those that love you. Take love where it is given. Mine, Solomon’s, Catherine Lively’s, Lovell’s . . . Oh, my dear, you are so very loved.’

  Ada took Lyla’s hand.

  ‘In spite of everything, Lyla, in spite of my beloved mare spending an entire war in a first-floor bedroom, in spite of every room of my house being overrun with swarms of schoolgirls, in spite of sirens sounding from my rooftops, you are . . . Look at me, Lyla. Look me in the eyes and listen to my words . . . You are the most entirely perfect great niece an old great aunt could stumble upon, and the most entirely lovable daughter a mother or a father could want.’

  67

  PEAK

  In the morning, Lyla dressed and tidied her room and tucked Bucket into his basket. Then she went to the mirror and looked at her reflection.

  ‘I am what I am. I am what I am. They can take me or leave me,’ she said aloud.

  Lyla joined the Lower VI girls that filed along the corridor. In front of her was Imelda, who hurried her pace to increase the space between herself and Lyla.

  Imelda Pole Suburban Soul.

  Lyla lifted her chin and walked down the curling stairs and into the hall. She heard, heard the shifting and shuffling, saw the hostility ripple across the room. The whispering rose, more heads were turning, more fingers pointing. Lyla scanned the room and saw that there was no place for her at all – in the whole hall – no place for her to sit. Ada stood at the lectern, watching. Lyla looked about and still could find no space. Ada rapped her fingers on the lectern, and still no one moved to make room for Lyla. No one wanted her beside them, not a single girl. It was as tribal a closing of ranks as if Lyla had been of a different species. I have known this before. They can move away from me – they can say what they want, think what they want.

  Lyla’s eyes began to blur, but she blinked hard and lifted her head. Somewhere someone was calling to her, but she couldn’t see who, and she lowered her head, for now there were tears on her cheeks.

  Then she heard someone drag back a chair to stand, and make their way across the hall, and she felt someone take her hand.

  Cat.

  Cat had kept a place for her. As everyone watched, she led Lyla across the hall and together they sat in the place she’d saved for Lyla and she put her hand on Lyla’s knee and smiled at her.

  Lyla gave a fleeting, tremulous smile in return, but now that she was finally sitting and her face hidden, she found that she was shaking.

  Cat placed her hand over Lyla’s trembling fingers.

  ‘She didn’t know he was a spy,’ whispered Lyla.

  Great Aunt Ada, a sheaf of papers in her hand, announced the hymn in a most vigorous, uncompromising kind of way. Lyla, watching her warily, prepared herself for the worst.

  After the hymn the girls sat. Ada went to the lectern and read a series of announcements, birthdays, a Staff vs. Girls hockey match for Saturday, a Girls vs. Village rounders match for the following week, and so on. Then she told the girls to rise for the school anthem, for the words were most appropriate that day. As she spoke, a motor screeched importantly to a halt on the gravel outside. Ada lifted her head and waited. The front door was opened.

  Ada raised her hand. ‘Ah Mr . . . Peak, is it?’

  ‘Yes, Faye’s father.’

  ‘Do join us, Mr Peak. We were just about to rise for the school anthem.’

  The girls, a little surprised, shuffled to their feet.

  Primrose played the opening bar and Ada led the singing, in a stirring sort of manner. Mr Peak, pressed against the door, looked about, shifty and increasingly discomfited as the girls sang,

  When our lives have been lived

  And our dreams have been dreamed,

  Memories of this, like the scraps of a song

  The sound of our laughter, the sound of our tears

  Ripple like pebbles through water, back to our childhood

  To the games and the goals when together we stood.

  We will ask, Did I have courage and kindness and truth

  Was I gentle and brave? Was I bold? Was I strong?

  When I stood hand in hand with the friends of my youth?

  When the girls sat once more, Peak looked about uncomfortably, for there was no place for him and he was too ungainly a man to sit cross-legged on a stone floor that already had three hundred schoolgirls on it.

  ‘Faye Peak, come here. Stand at the front before your schoolmates, please,’ Ada commanded. ‘I understand this is your father?’

  Faye, reddening a little, gave a faint nod.

  ‘Your father’s here because he’s concerned about the probity and reputation of the school, as I believe were you. In fact, I believe you were so concerned that you felt it necessary to sneak out of school during school hours and go into Ladywood and pur
chase, what was it – yes – precisely eight copies of The Times so that everyone in the entire school should be aware of the unhappy circumstances of the mother of one of your classmates, and you then decided to pin these up around the walls of a house that does not belong to you. Is that so? And you chose all the most public places, did you not, where everyone would pass and see them? Where you knew you would cause most hurt to the classmate in question?’

  Faye bowed her head.

  ‘Faye, you are to return to, remind me, is it –’ Ada peered at the letter in her hand – ‘Hendon . . . yes. I understand your father would like to return you to Hendon, and you wish to go?’

  Faye, now crimson and staring at the floor, lowered her chin further as if to bury her entire head in her chest.

  ‘You may go, Faye, if you fear that some scandal might attach itself to your own good name by remaining here, but I will tell you this, all of you, Faye Peak, Mr Peak, girls . . . You are all unhealthily interested in the news articles regarding Florence Spence.’ Her voice grew quieter and yet more vehement. ‘So much you all know, but this perhaps you don’t: scandal attaches easily to a woman. Oh yes, much more easily than to a man.’ She paused and took a deep breath and said, fierce and slow, ‘Now, you will – all of you – go out into the world one day and you will make mistakes, and some mistakes will be more public than others because some of us, Faye Peak, are more interesting than others.’

  She looked to the back of the hall, where Peak still stood beside his daughter’s trunk.

  ‘Peak, take your daughter back to Hendon. You are welcome to her. Faye, you may leave. Those of you who do not wish to leave the school may stand.’

  For a moment no one moved. Girls glanced covertly, uncertainly at one another. Then, very slowly, Cat rose to her feet, then Lyla, and for a long moment the two of stood side by side, alone. Then Brenda rose and Flea – then one by one, every girl in the Upper Vth rose, and more were rising, now in clutches of five or six, and they kept on rising till everyone was standing, even Imelda.