School for Skylarks

by Sam Angus

  ‘I’ll remember it all,’ said Cat. ‘You know, forever, every tiny bit of it. The snowdrifts in a bathroom, a ballroom laid to turf for a horse, chilblains, chestnuts, blackberries and frozen ink . . .’

  Lyla took Cat’s hand. ‘I am told we’ll remember only the joy and the pain,’ she said solemnly. ‘I have been much improved, you know. I have received a rooftop lecture from a great aunt, and I have read letter planes from far-off places . . . I read . . .’ Lyla glanced towards the damson, which was lit in a flickering, fitful red, and in the darkness tears trickled down her cheeks. Turning her face towards Cat and looking her in the eyes, she whispered brokenly, ‘Oh, Cat, I read those letters . . .’

  Cat encircled Lyla in her arms.

  Lyla, her head on Cat’s shoulder, whispered through her tears, ‘I do everything wrong, make all the wrong choices—’

  ‘I hope I’m not one of your wrong choices,’ said Cat, laughing to make light of things. ‘Anyway, sometimes life gives you the chance to undo your mistakes, you know, and you must promise me that if it does, that if life does give you that chance, you will take it.’

  82

  SWINGING ON A STAR

  The girls were led inside, Lyla wheeling Ada in her chair at the head of them all, and Lyla saw that stacks of trunks stood packed and ready around the edges of the Painted Hall. The girls would go, and she – what would she do? Where would she go? She would not stay at Furlongs if there were no Ada here to make sheep red and doves blue and dandelions pink.

  Girls were taking places on their trunks, the youngest on the bottom row, the older girls like Cat and Lyla scrambling to the top, and all the Painted Hall was filled, and Prudence went about with bowls of sausages.

  From her wheelbarrow chair, Ada summoned Cat with a waggle of her fingers. They whispered and nodded, and Lyla saw that since she’d gone they’d formed some new understanding to which she was not privy. A little put out, she asked Cat as Cat clambered back up, ‘What were you saying to her?’

  Cat answered evasively, ‘Oh, I don’t know – timings for our departure tomorrow, that sort of thing. I am leaving early, you know.’

  Great Aunt Ada waggled the fingers of her right hand at the console table. Solomon wheeled her over and Great Aunt Ada again waggled her fingers. ‘Unveil it, Solomon.’

  Solomon, as though he were opening a new church or a museum, pulled aside a dust sheet, and the girls gathered, thrilled to see a gramophone at Furlongs.

  Ada, beaming from ear to ear, croaked, ‘Frightfully up to date, d’you see.’

  The girls smiled at one another, for gramophones had been popular in places other than Furlongs for at least twenty years.

  Solomon put the needle down and from the trumpet speaker came Glenn Miller, and the feet of even the most whiskery-bosom-to-belly staff began to tap, and the girls were delighted.

  Primrose took Cedric’s hand and together they danced the Lindy Hop. And Lyla, sitting with Cat, giggled, for everyone – even The Rector Scott Talks Rot – was tapping their feet, and then Prudence was dancing with Dr Dean Seldom Seen, and there was joy and fight in Ada still, for when she saw Prudence dance she called for Solomon to wheel her out and push and pull her to the beat, and she herself waggled her right arm and right foot to the rhythm of some entirely different dance of some other era while Little Gibson, who knew nothing of wars and victories, shook himself and looked about, resentful at such commotion.

  Bing Crosby sang ‘Swinging on a Star’, and Primrose kicked off her shoes, and then there was Doris Day and ‘Lili Marlene’, and all the girls and all the staff – even Threadgold – danced, and Lyla saw, for the first time, how much the staff had given up to be there at Furlongs all through the war, and how much personal sacrifice was perhaps involved.

  There was rum and Coca-Cola and Tommy Dorsey and Anne Shelton and Vera Lynn and, at the end of it all, when Prudence brought in hot chocolate and the gramophone played ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, Great Aunt Ada waggled her fingers at the Great Stairs and to the ramp constructed out of old blackboards, that now ran from the foot of the Painted Hall to the landing at the top.

  ‘Bedtime. A ramp, d’you see? Practical and most convenient. You might ask Violet if she’d like to come down that ramp – not till I am gone, mind you, it’s comforting to have a horse at hand . . .’

  Lyla scrubbed the tear from her cheek.

  Her great aunt took her hand. ‘One of the many improvements you have bought to the place, Lyla.’

  Lyla smiled, and she and Solomon together, somehow, got Ada and the wheelbarrow chair up the blackboard ramp.

  83

  FOR SHE’S A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW

  Next morning, Dr Dean Seldom Seen came to tell Lyla that Great Aunt Ada had taken a turn for the worse, another stroke. Lyla saw how the girls were scattered all about the house, going through the rooms with Brownie cameras, chattering excitedly to one another, their minds already on their homes and families. Lyla saw through a window how the desks were gathering around the fountain on the forecourt, tables, chairs, lockers, hockey sticks. The girls in burgundy were leaving just as suddenly as they’d once come.

  Where was Cat? Lyla searched the house, asking everyone she passed, but no one knew – they were distracted, their minds already on their homes and families and on the prefabricated school building in Garden Hill. Lyla asked again and again and it was only Brenda who knew anything.

  ‘Oh, I heard your aunt called for her.’

  Lyla would go to Ada, but first she would fetch Violet to bring to her.

  ‘Great Aunt Ada wants you close at hand,’ she whispered to the horse, as she led her into the corridor.

  At Ada’s door, Violet paused and whinnied. Ada turned and her eyes were bright with tears as Lyla led gentle Violet up to the bed.

  ‘Ah, dear Violet.’

  Violet nosed Ada, and Ada happened to find she had a carrot about her person, so Violet stayed at her side and never once went to the window in search of climbing plants.

  Lyla sat beside Ada on her remarkably narrow and uncomfortable bed and asked why she herself had had so grand a room.

  ‘No point having unicorns if you’re too old to ride them. No, no – they had to be for you.’

  ‘You’ve never been old,’ said Lyla.

  ‘No good for anything now – less than half of me’ll do what I want it to.’

  ‘Aunt Ada, have you seen Cat?’

  ‘Gone,’ replied her aunt. ‘Business to attend to. She’s a good friend to you.’

  The sound of singing rose up from outside, and Lyla went over to the window and saw that the entire school and staff had gathered beneath Ada’s window. She pulled up the casement so Great Aunt Ada could hear that she was a ‘jolly good fellow’.

  The girls boarded the buses and took their seats and gazed at the house and began to wave through the windows and then to sing:

  When school days are long gone and friends far apart

  We will carry the debt to these days in our heart

  We will remember the hopes and fears

  The joys and the laughter we shared all these years.

  The rights and the wrongs, the slights and the tears

  The triumphs and songs, the dreams and the fears

  We will ask, Were we gentle and brave? Were we bold? Were we strong?

  Did we have courage and kindness and truth

  When we stood hand in hand with the friends of our youth?

  Lyla waved and Violet whinnied and Ada murmured, ‘Not their strong point, singing.’ With a lopsided but twinkling, triumphant smile, she added, ‘Never mind, brought Pinners into line, didn’t we? Won a war, and so on.’

  84

  OLD ENGLISH ROSES

  Lyla and Violet stayed by Ada’s bedside through all that day.

  Whenever the clock struck one or seven, Solomon appeared with a silver tray. Ada could neither sit up nor eat, but the courtesy that flowed like ancestral blood in her veins prompted her to whisper
from time to time, so that he might feel he was of use, ‘Don’t leave . . . not till I’m gone . . . might be in need of a thing or two at any moment, eh, Solomon?’

  She clasped her hands over the sheets, much in the manner she used to when waiting for dinner in the Smoking Room. Her pulse grew slow and faint . . . but just when it seemed to be fading completely, she’d come violently back to life, and croak and waggle her fingers at Solomon.

  ‘Shipshape . . . get me shipshape – Tawny for my hair.’

  Lyla and Solomon conferred and decided that, on balance, Tawny and his shears were not appropriate to the circumstances, so Lyla went to the dressing table and found a brush, which looked suspiciously like it might once have belonged to Violet.

  Lyla had set about brushing her aunt’s hair when Ada croaked, ‘Pointing this way – must face the old house . . . must have Solomon to hand, keep an eye on you all . . .’

  Through her tears, Lyla glimpsed on Ada’s small, tidy table a photograph of a young man, bespectacled and awkward, beside him a striking girl with a high forehead and laughing eyes. Lyla held it up and mouthed at Solomon, ‘Who?’

  ‘Dr Reginald Gibson,’ Solomon whispered.

  Gibson? Lyla glanced at Little Gibson the canary on the bedhead.

  Solomon smiled and nodded. ‘A keepsake. She told me Reginald once gave her a canary and ever since—’

  ‘I see,’ said Lyla, because, for once, she did suddenly see that her great aunt had once been a young girl herself. Gradually Lyla adjusted herself to such a notion. ‘Did she love him very much?’

  Solomon nodded. ‘I believe so, Miss Lyla.’

  ‘Why didn’t they marry?’

  He shook his head and gestured about to indicate the house and grounds and then to a portrait over the mantel, and by all this gesturing Lyla understood that Ada’s family had thought Reginald Gibson was too ‘below-stairs’ a person for the daughter of an earl, and, Lyla supposed, she’d never married since because she’d only loved Reginald, and perhaps that was why she’d lived so long alone, dining on Welsh rarebit at seven only in the company of her horse.

  The hours passed, and – having the vague notion that such a thing was usually done at such a time – Lyla mouthed to Solomon, ‘Should we call Father Scott?’

  ‘No, I think not, Miss Lyla – she never held much with priests.’

  ‘All right. No priest.’

  Prudence wept and buried her face in her patterned apron, and Tawny came with an armful of Ada’s Old English Roses, all yellows and pinks and apricots, varied and rich and glorious. He laid them at her feet and no one could speak for grief.

  Lyla stayed throughout that night by Ada’s side. Solomon came at eight with toast for Little Gibson, an apple for Violet and a devilled kidney for his mistress. Gently Solomon woke Lyla. She rubbed her eyes and blinked and blinked again, for the sun had bloomed so brightly on the white sheets around Ada that they cast her blossomy light back at Lyla. The sheets were still.

  Ada had gone, the manner of her going more peaceable than anything she’d set her mind to in life.

  85

  SPECK

  Little Gibson refused toast and cuttlebones and all manner of delicacies and was inconsolable. He took himself off to the roses at Ada’s feet, hid his head under his wing and would not hear of moving. Together Lyla and Solomon led poor sad-eyed Violet out of Ada’s room and, with great quantities of apple, coaxed her down the blackboard ramp. Then Lyla, to the best of her ability, set about the funeral arrangements.

  Among the various dubious pieces of advice she’d been given over the years by those that surrounded her, she remembered a favourite of Mop’s: Half of everything is in the preparation. So she began with a list of those who might attend. After much thought, she came up with:

  Solomon

  Tawny

  Prudence

  Dr Gibson (if it is possible to find him)

  The Rector Scott Talks Rot

  Dr Dean Seldom Seen

  Speck

  The people from Ladywood

  Cat (hopefully)

  Dr Gibson would be hard to identify, but Lyla would try her best. She went to Prudence and found her in a high state of indignation in the kitchen. Prudence’s tin hat was now relegated to the shelf above the fireplace, and to and fro amidst the copper pans and the tin hat went poor flustered Henny, who had of course stopped laying just when Prudence was in need of an egg or two for a funeral tea.

  ‘In mourning, that hen. Cleverer than you or I, she be,’ declared Prudence.

  ‘Prudence, who was Reginald Gibson?’

  Prudence put down her rolling pin and eyed Lyla. She plumped herself down on a chair, settled her immense bosom on the surface of the pastry table, took off her shoes to rub her bunions and began:

  ‘Terrible awful time, that were. The old earl, he were a one, her father, he fetched his daughter back – knew all along university for a girl were a mistake – Ada runned away – the old earl, he fetched her back and so on and in the end she stayed, but if she couldn’t ’ave that scientist fellow Dr Gibson, she weren’t going to take no other neither.’ Prudence giggled. ‘Frightened off every man in the county.’

  ‘You never told me any of this before,’ said Lyla.

  ‘You never asked.’ Prudence put her hands on her hips. ‘Aye, we was all skippy and frolicsome in our day – it’s only the young as never stop to think about what we was up to once.’

  Lyla didn’t want to hear just then about Prudence’s skippy, frolicsome times, and thought she might go instead and see Father Scott Talks Rot.

  ‘Ah well,’ concluded Prudence as Lyla turned to leave, ‘she lived in her own way in the end though . . . Invented summat that Dr Gibson did, some special bomb what skips or jumps or summat.’

  Father Scott Talks Rot had suggested Lyla place a notice in The Times and go to see Mr Speck in the office above the chemist’s in Ladywood. Lyla found that Speck’s office had a log fire and a brass drinks trolley and piles and piles of books that were not about the law at all. He told Lyla that Ada’s next of kin was, in fact, Lovell Spence, and after much searching eventually located a folder in which there was nothing but a small note that appeared to have been written on the back of a bill from the hardware store. ‘After Lovell,’ Speck read aloud from the note, ‘Furlongs could go to Miss Lyla Spence, should she care for it. I never had a child of my own till I had her.’

  ‘Father is missing, presumed dead.’

  Speck told her that he himself had been making investigations, that Lovell Spence was known to have escaped from Sforzacosta, that two other prisoners had escaped at the same time, but they had got separated from Lovell in the Adriatic somewhere. Speck was about to say more, but then he seemed to think better of it. After a second or two he looked up and smiled and said, ‘Oh well, your great aunt has had everyone following up every lead everywhere – the Adriatic, Gibraltar, Spain, North Africa.’ He smiled again. ‘She was always most thorough.’

  Lyla, who had spied a telephone inside one of Speck’s desk drawers, asked if she might make a call and if he might help her look up a number.

  When her call was answered, Lyla announced hesitantly, ‘Hello, I’m calling for Cat. This is Lyla Spence.’

  ‘Oh, I know who you are,’ said a bright voice.

  ‘Robin?’ asked Lyla.

  ‘Yes, but I’m not to talk to you,’ he said very promptly.

  ‘Not talk to me?’ echoed Lyla, then she told him, ‘Cat left without saying goodbye.’

  ‘I’m not to talk to you,’ repeated Robin stoutly. ‘There’s a reason,’ he added, ‘but it’s secret, and I’m not to talk to you, so I can’t tell you what it is, but I would if I could.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Lyla. Then, turning away from Mr Speck, she whispered into the receiver, ‘Tell Cat . . . tell her, thank you. For everything. Tell her even if she never says hello or goodbye or anything else to me ever again . . . tell her I will always, always be her friend.’

 
‘I can’t do that because I’m not to talk to you.’

  Robin was very earnest and very literal-minded, and Lyla wasn’t getting anywhere with him, so she ended the call and turned to Speck.

  ‘There is another thing – Aunt Ada had a friend. A Dr Reginald Gibson. He would want to know that she’s gone.’

  Mr Speck raised his brows. ‘Ah yes. Interesting. A good, clever man. My second cousin more or less, as it happens – and actually he might help us. Ah well, very sad all that. He and Ada, you know . . . he never married again either.’

  86

  THE BILLIARD ROOM

  From her wardrobe, Lyla selected a sober jersey and skirt. Soon she must go and walk behind her Great Aunt Ada to the chapel at Heaven’s Gate, but first she would wander through Furlongs one last time.

  She stood in the empty hall, listening to the silence of the house. Growing conscious that someone or something was watching her, she turned to the hall table and to Old Alfred, because it was, of course, Old Alfred who was watching her. There he’d stood, all these years, on his tiptoes, still between the Mail In and the Mail Out trays, watching and knowing.

  Lyla drifted through the empty rooms, wondering if Ada’s spirit might decide to stalk the corridors, gelignite in hand. She smiled, for if Ada returned to haunt her house, she’d be laughing as she went about, for Ada had lived with gusto, with ferocity, with joy and ready laughter.

  Lyla wandered along the first-floor corridors and paused by Sir Galahad and placed her hand on his forearm and nodded to him. ‘Farewell, friend.’

  In the Red Library she saw on the dust of the windowpane the words she’d once thumbed:

  PLEASE, PLEASE, COME FOR ME.