School for Skylarks

by Sam Angus

  68

  WORN TO THE BONE

  The school resumed its normal rhythms.

  The Tuesday following Lyla’s night on the roof, she was toasting bread in the Painted Hall and waiting for Cat to join her.

  ‘Tuesday?’ said Cat, settling down beside her. Seeing the letter in Lyla’s hand, she smiled gently and said, ‘No, Lyla, let’s play Rummy or Conflict.’

  Lyla hesitated, the folded letter still in her hand. She had decided not to read it unless Cat asked her to, because reading the letters to Cat had made her feel more and more uneasy with each passing week. Smiling, she handed Cat a piece of National Loaf and was about to place the letter back in her pocket when she saw Imelda approaching. Imelda had been rudderless since Faye had left, always trying to draw Cat’s attention and to insinuate herself into Cat’s favour once more.

  She held a rolled-up newspaper, which she rapped against her palm as she eyed Lyla and the letter on her lap, and there was something in the hard stare Imelda gave Lyla as she drew closer that put Lyla on guard.

  ‘Well, go on, read it out,’ said Imelda.

  Lyla tensed. ‘Oh, it’s not very interesting this week, actually.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Imelda, her lips curling a little upwards, her eyes sharp and challenging, still rapping the rolled-up paper against her palm.

  Growing uncomfortable, Brenda and Elspeth and Flea picked up their mugs of Bovril and shuffled back a little. Lyla’s hand hesitated. Imelda suddenly swooped and lunged at the letter and held it far out so everyone could see.

  Cat leaped up to snatch it from Imelda, but Imelda lifted it out of reach.

  ‘She doesn’t have to read it,’ said Cat.

  ‘I’ll read it, shall I then? Shall I, Lyla?’ taunted Imelda.

  Lyla, paralysed with horror, stared at the floor.

  ‘Stop it,’ commanded Cat.

  ‘Actually, I think I will,’ said Imelda, and began to read aloud:

  ‘My darling Lyla,

  I hope you are well and not at all upset about the things that are written in newspapers. Newspapers are always wrong about everything and of course I had no idea who Henry Mayer was. I might come and see you next week if I can get the petrol but all the hospitals are very crowded just now, with those poor men in the corridors and on the floors and I’m working day and night and worn to the bone . . .’

  Imelda lowered the letter. ‘Day and night and worn to the bone,’ she repeated scornfully.

  Day and night was not right, Lyla was thinking. Probably nurses did not work day and night.

  Cat lunged again at the letter, but Imelda leaped aside and placed herself between Cat and Lyla and sneered, ‘Shall we see what address it says, Lyla?’

  ‘Lisson Square,’ said Lyla, for she was certain, on all counts, of that.

  ‘Not, perhaps, America?’ taunted Imelda triumphantly, glancing over at Cat, for it appeared she really, really wanted Cat’s approval.

  ‘No –’ Lyla looked up, confused – ‘not America.’

  ‘See, Cat!’ said Imelda triumphantly. ‘It’s all lies! Because I –’ Imelda brandished the rolled-up newspaper – ‘happen to know she is in America.’

  Lyla began to tremble. What was Imelda saying? Where was Mop? Where was she?

  ‘Don’t Imelda – don’t you dare!’ said Cat.

  A suffocating panic rose in Lyla and she stammered, ‘Sh-she’s n-not in America . . . she w-wouldn’t go there – she wouldn’t leave—’

  But Imelda interrupted. ‘Don’t you see, Cat, her mother’s not even in Lisson Square, London NW3 – she’s in America. She’s in New York—’

  ‘Don’t say another word, Imelda.’ Cat lunged at Imelda and the newspaper.

  Imelda made a break for the door. When she reached it, she turned back to the room and, still holding the letter above her head, announced loudly so all could hear, ‘I do dare. Because the papers have pictures of her in New York.’

  America? Mop in America? Could that be true?

  ‘You see, Cat, you’re always sticking up for her, but all she tells you is lies. Every week – every single week – you’ve sat and listened to her letters, Cat. And every word of them has been a lie – she wrote them herself, every word. Lyla Spence’s mother isn’t a nurse or an ambulance driver. Don’t you see? Lyla writes them on a Sunday – she actually writes a letter to herself and puts it in the out tray and then – guess what – surprise, surprise, every Tuesday she gets a letter, doesn’t she?’

  Lyla, like a broken thing, stumbled to her feet, her shoulders hunched, her face to the ground, and crept across the room, but Cat was snatching at her sleeve and trying to take her hand.

  ‘I don’t mind, Lyla. That is, it doesn’t matter—’

  Lyla pulled herself free but Cat tugged at her and whispered, ‘I’ve known all along—’

  Lyla stopped and turned to Cat. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, not quite all along, but I’ve known for a long time – I guessed – but I understand – I understand why you might do what you did, Lyla . . . Lyla—’

  ‘Look,’ interrupted Imelda, impatient that she should have lost Cat’s attention. ‘Look at this.’ She unrolled the paper and held it up.

  Everyone turned.

  The room fell silent.

  Cat quickly reached out to take Lyla by the shoulders and turn her away, but Lyla broke free and gestured with her hand.

  ‘Give it to me, Imelda.’

  She walked slowly and carefully towards Imelda, very slowly because her legs were shaking and might give way. Girls drew apart as she came, some holding out a hand to help steady her, for all could see that Lyla’s heart was breaking.

  ‘Give it to me,’ whispered Lyla.

  Imelda took a step back, and holding the paper up above her head in one hand, the letter in the other, she recited, ‘The Hon. Florence Spence, artist and divorcee, flees the scandal in Britain caused by her affair with the German spy Heinrich Meier and begins a new life in America.’

  Lyla leaped forward and lunged for the paper and tore at it and found that she had in her hands only the front page. Frozen, she stared down at the picture of Mop, saw Mop’s smile and curls, the large eyes, now rimmed with kohl, the white fur cape about her shoulders, new pearls about her neck that Lyla’d not seen before, and read again . . . Begins a new life in America.

  Mop was in America. Without ever saying anything to Lyla.

  Lyla made her way towards the stairs, clutched at the newel post and there, wracked by a sudden, violent spasm, she doubled over and vomited.

  69

  A DIFFERENT LIFE

  In the morning Lyla heard hurried footsteps in the corridors, Ada calling for her, various doors being flung open, and finally Aunt Ada came to the door of Violet’s room, where Lyla had gone to hide herself away.

  Lyla, her face grubby with last night’s tears, glanced covertly at her, then, begrudgingly and with apprehension, made space for her on the bed. Her aunt made herself comfortable, swinging her slippered feet up on to the bedspread.

  They sat awhile in silence. Lyla toyed with shaking fingers at the hem of the sheet and, after some time, looked up at her aunt and whispered, ‘I used to sit like this with Mop. Once upon a time, we’d sit together every morning, like this. She’d drink her tea and we’d make plans for the day.’

  ‘Did you make her tea every morning?’

  Lyla, remembering, nodded.

  ‘Lyla . . .’ Ada placed yesterday’s letter from Mop on her lap and drummed her fingers on it.

  ‘Good God, child. How long has this been going on? How long have you been writing to yourself? I never knew – I had no idea . . .’

  She folded Lyla in her arms and hugged and held her close, and in that hug Lyla felt something inside herself shift and soften. Ada whispered, ‘Lyla, my poor child. She’s not been at Lisson Square for months, Lyla, she left . . . Solomon went, you see, to find out where she had gone. Child, the letters you used to write to her, th
ey probably never reached her . . .’

  Ada took a deep breath.

  ‘There’s no right age to tell a child what I am forced by circumstances to tell you now . . . Lyla, the day your father brought you here, that was the day – the day your mother made her choice . . . when she chose . . . she chose a different life, she chose not to be a mother.’

  Lyla began to tremble.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She asked your father to collect you, Lyla. She chose another life. Lovell never stole you from your bed; she’d asked him take you. On the eve of his departure for war, she asked him to take you from her.’

  ‘To take me from her – what do you mean – she never said anything . . . she never told me.’

  ‘I have no children, Lyla, and I’ll never understand the decision she made, but it was just that – a deliberate decision . . . to leave you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? You – she – she never said – you never told—’

  ‘How could I tell you, when you were so young, already so fierce and fragile? Even now, I barely have the strength—’

  The habit of self-protection, so deep in Lyla, reasserted itself, and she turned on her aunt and burst out, ‘It’s because you wouldn’t let me go back – if you’d let me – if you’d stopped a train . . .’

  Aunt Ada was silent.

  Mop will come back, Lyla told herself. She was just escaping scandal, that was all. That was only natural. Anyone would want to do that. But then Lyla glimpsed the cutting from Imelda’s paper on the floor beside the bed and Mop’s white cape and pearls. Where had Mop got such a cape in a war, and who had given her the pearls. A new life? Did Mop want a new life? Did she want a life without Lyla? A life far away across an ocean?

  No. Lyla’s shields and battlements rose and asserted themselves once more. The newspapermen were wrong. They got everything wrong. Mop wouldn’t leave a daughter alone in a country at war.

  Lyla began to hurl things across the room, anything she could lay her hands on, her book, her dressing gown and, to his astonishment and displeasure, Bucket’s basket.

  Ada, watching calmly, said, ‘Tear it up. Tear the world to pieces, Lyla. It won’t help in the long run, but it will be a temporary relief.’

  70

  AFTERWARDS

  In all the free hours of the months that followed, Lyla – as much as she could – kept to herself, to her room, and, for company, to Bucket and Violet.

  Dependable, she would say to herself sometimes. Violet and Bucket are de-pen-da-ble.

  Cat came often to the door of the Yellow Silk Room, and each time Lyla would turn her away. She put a note under Lyla’s door every morning, and others in snatched moments between lessons.

  Lyla, please let me come in. I’ve always known about everything and don’t mind about any of it, and I was only waiting for you to one day be ready to tell me the truth, and the only thing I do mind about is you not talking to me and I do miss you. Please talk to me.

  Cat xxx

  Like a sleepwalker, Lyla went through the motions of a timetable she knew by heart, sang the hymns, did Prep and exams and played in matches. She studied, but only to lose herself in her work, receiving her grades in silence, burying herself in her books, going alone to the Orangery to draw, or sitting and reading by herself in Violet’s room. Life passed over her as if she were a thing far beneath its surface. She heard all the familiar noises – the bells and the rushing footsteps, and all the clatter of a school going about its routine – as though she were underwater.

  The girls kept their distance but smiled tentatively at her from time to time. Lyla turned her back on all of them. She lived on her own – half in the world of the girls, half out of it – missing things, arriving late, trailing things, dragging bags and dropping books, and generally lacking the information she needed to get her to the right place at the right time.

  Sometimes she’d find a note on her desk.

  Don’t forget English Prep. By nine tomorrow.

  Cat wrote again and again, and Lyla tore each missive up, throwing it into Bucket’s basket till it was filled to the brim, and Bucket, resentful that his den had been mistaken for a wastepaper basket, chuck-chucked at her loudly.

  Sometimes Lyla would say to herself as she threw in another scrumpled note, I will keep myself on an even keel. My heart is all battlements and lookout towers and all around it a sea no one can cross. No one will draw near. I cannot bear more pain.

  But Lyla found that blood is thick and the need for a parent’s love is a thing that cannot easily be wiped away, so at other times she would tell herself, She will come – one day, when the war is over and the shipping safe – she’ll come and take me with her to America, perhaps, to a faraway house that no one knows about, and we will live there and no one will separate us.

  71

  THE ORANGERY

  One evening Lyla found a note taped to her easel:

  I SO MUCH WANT TO TALK TO YOU.

  EVERYTHING IS SO MUCH LESS FUN WITHOUT YOU.

  Beside Lyla’s charcoal lay a bar of chocolate.

  That same evening Cat came to find Lyla in the Orangery. She bent to light the paraffin stove and said, ‘You have to talk to me.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  Cat had grown taller and prettier and wiser still, and Lyla turned away, fear creeping by cold clutches up the battlements of her heart.

  No one will love me. I am unlovable.

  ‘I miss you, Lyla,’ said Cat gently.

  Lyla stared at Cat, who was calm and soft with sunlight, and felt she herself was all stone and shadow. ‘No, you don’t; no one does.’

  ‘Your father hasn’t written,’ said Cat. ‘For a long time, there’s been no letter.’

  ‘Why should I care?’

  Cat bent to rake the embers of the stove, pausing for a moment, then turned suddenly with tears in her eyes and shook Lyla violently by the shoulders. ‘You should care. You should!’

  And with that, Cat released Lyla and stormed out, slamming the door and making all the Ancient Greeks tremble in their sandals.

  72

  IN THE KNOT GARDEN

  One day in the spring, Great Aunt Ada led Lyla out into the knot garden where the girls were digging up the earlies. Lyla saw the girls turn to watch as Ada and she walked out into the park. They walked in silence a while till Aunt Ada turned a gaunt, stricken face to Lyla. ‘You’ll grow up very suddenly, I fear.’

  ‘I am grown up,’ retorted Lyla.

  ‘Oh, not yet, you’re not . . .’ Ada stopped and turned and said directly, ‘Lovell is missing, presumed dead. He was in a camp, Lyla, in North Africa, God help him, a German prisoner of war camp . . .’ She watched Lyla’s face. ‘The camp was emptied when the Hun withdrew from Africa. Hitler moved his prisoners backwards with them as he retreated. Many of those at Hasufa were sent to Sforzacosta but Lovell’s name has never reappeared on any list either in Germany nor Italy. We don’t know what happened to him. His name is not on the list of prisoners at Sforzacosta.’

  Lyla kicked at the grass.

  ‘It’s been a while, Lyla, since you received a letter. Did you never wonder about that?’ Lyla stared at the ground and kicked at the grass again. Ada placed her hands on Lyla’s shoulders. ‘For a whole year, no letter from your father? From the man who wrote to you every single week?’ She waited and watched.

  Lyla felt the trembling in Ada’s hands, their frailty, and wondered why it should be that all the strength of indomitable Great Aunt Ada should be running away so fast, like water through fingers.

  ‘Did you not think about the boxes for prisoners? Who were they really for? They were for Lovell, Lyla . . . For all of them, but mostly for Lovell. Let us pray, Lyla, that just one of them, out of all the thousands that we sent, just one of them arrived.’

  Lyla, still staring at the grass, felt her lip begin to tremble as she whispered, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘We don’t know . . . That is . . . it’s
most unlikely . . . There is so much disease in those camps, so much hunger.’

  Lyla shook herself and lifted her face to her aunt’s. ‘I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. I don’t care. I don’t care what’s happened to him.’

  73

  SIXTEEN

  Lyla heard the wake-up bell and rolled over, burying her face in her pillow. Then, slowly, very slowly and cautiously, she rolled back again. There’d been a papery rustling sound at her feet when she’d moved. She wiggled her feet and heard it again, felt the weight of something on the bedspread. Warily she sat up and paused, confused to see a large ribboned package and a card.

  Her birthday. Today was her sixteenth birthday.

  Bucket was all bushy-tailed and most intrigued by the parcel that had appeared on the bed in the night, but Lyla stretched out to pick up the card: a collaged drawing – created by many hands – of Violet and Bucket and Ada, with Dandelions embroidered in pink wool across the sky and signed inside by every Garden Hill girl that was at Furlongs. So much time and care had been lavished on the thing that tears started in Lyla’s eyes. After a while she put the card aside and fingered the parcel. With Bucket’s assistance, she undid the wrapping. Cat, for this was so thoughtful that it was surely Cat’s work, had gathered together a new school uniform, art paper that wasn’t brown, and a sock with a bell on it for Bucket.

  Lyla lay back on her pillows, watching Bucket play with his sock and thinking how, having been so absent and withdrawn, she done so little to deserve such kindness.

  She gazed out of the window, remembering that this was the fourth birthday she had spent at Furlongs. On each of those birthdays she’d waited by Trumpet and the mail tray. A card from Mother had never come. Not once. Today she would not wait for a letter. She had been given a beautiful card and a present and she would not so much as think of anything coming from Mother.

  Lyla thought back over the years she’d spent at Furlongs, remembering how a birthday letter from Father had come, sooner or later one had always come, and always she’d waved it away. But today there’d be nothing from him. Perhaps there’d never be anything from him ever again. Lyla sat up and tensed. Those letters he’d sent, where were they? What had been done with them?