The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  Amy was slapped…

  She instinctively raised her hands, to catch the book, but Gryce caught her wrists. Amy cobra-necked and the book didn’t fall. She made the book light, almost to the point of floating.

  ‘I said, what is this contraband?’

  Amy moved her eyes only. Crowninshield held up Roly Pontoons, invading his ballooning clown suit with her hand, waggling his big-nosed, jug-eared head, jingling the bells on his fool’s cap.

  A tear rolled down Amy’s cheek.

  She remembered her father making exactly the same gesture. Roly was as much puppet as doll.

  ‘Are you a little child? A little child who plays with dollies?’

  ‘No, Head Girl.’

  ‘Then, what is this vile specimen?’

  Amy kept quiet. To speak would be a betrayal.

  ‘Not your poupée, then, Thomsett,’ stated Gryce. ‘You wouldn’t care if it were hurt, then?’

  Crowninshield tore off Roly’s left arm, trailing stuffing, and dropped it.

  Amy felt a sympathetic pain. The book held firm.

  Crowninshield made a scream come out of Roly’s open mouth…

  ‘The whip hurt meeeeee, Ameeeeee,’ said Crowninshield, in a strange doll-voice. ‘You did nothiiiing, you beast. You were supposed to be meee ickle fwend! Meeee not love you any more. Meee hate you, Ameeee.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that to a Drearcliff girl,’ said Crowninshield, in her own voice, rapping Roly on the nose. ‘It’s not your place…’

  ‘Nooooooo….’

  Crowninshield tore off Roly’s right leg and waved the puppet from side to side, screeching from the back of her throat.

  Tears dripped off Amy’s chin now. But she made no sound. And her book held level.

  ‘Give her the wretched thing, Beryl,’ said Gryce.

  Crowninshield held out Roly, then snatched him back as Amy reached for it. Then handed him over. Amy couldn’t help hugging the mutilated plaything to her breast.

  ‘Now, show School Spirit, Thomsett. Drearcliff Spirit. Can you do that pour votre amie Sidonie?’

  ‘Yes… Head Girl.’

  Gryce smiled and sat back in the chair.

  ‘Then tear that horrible thing’s head off.’ Amy froze.

  ‘You heard me, new bug. Tear That Horrible Thing’s Head Off.’

  ‘Nooooo, don’t, Ameeeeee. Don’t kill ’ums. Meeeee soooo saad!’

  ‘Cut that out,’ snarled Buller. ‘It makes my f-f-flesh creep.’

  ‘There’s a lot of it,’ said Crowninshield in her own voice. ‘Isn’t that right, little cripple? Hasn’t Auntie Henry got a vast acreage of flesh to creep.’

  ‘Yessums, sheeeeee’s as fat as a cow!’

  Amy hugged Roly Pontoons close. She remembered Father, in his uniform. His Roly Pontoons voice was deeper, jollier than Crowninshield’s shrill, cracked whine. ‘Hello, Amy, I’m your friend from Belgium. Won’t we have jolly fun!’

  Moths, she thought, getting a good grip on Roly’s neck. Gracillariidae Gracillariinae: cameraria ohridella (Horse Chestnut Leaf-Miner). She found stitches weakened by years of night-time hugs and dug her nails in. Gracillariidae Lithocolletinae: Phyllonorycter coryli (Nut Leaf Blister Moth), Phyllonorycter…

  ‘Off with its head,’ insisted Gryce.

  ‘Pleeese, nooooo…’

  ‘Mind that wobbly book, Thomsett,’ said Crowninshield, seeming to talk over herself.

  Amy thought she was pulling Roly’s head, but it stayed stuck. She willed herself to tear, but orders weren’t reaching her hands.

  From inside her blazer, Gryce produced a pair of man’s white dress gloves. She put them on, slowly, flexing her fingers, making and unmaking fists. There were scuffs and stains on the gloves.

  Amy looked into Roly’s trusting glass eyes.

  Jolly jolly fun.

  ‘Noooooo…’

  ‘Okay, that’s the limit,’ said Kali.

  She stepped into the cell and put her hands round the throat of the nearest Murdering Heathen, Dora Paule.

  ‘Read my mind, sister,’ she said.

  ‘So angry,’ breathed Paule.

  ‘You ain’t talkin’ horse-feathers. You in the chair, up and out, see. Take a powder. Amscray to Ellhay. Make like a tree and fall down. I ain’t just lip-flappin’.’

  Buller lunged across the cell.

  Without letting go of Paule’s neck, Kali angled her body and kicked out – sticking her shoe into the prefect’s wobbling tummy. Buller doubled over.

  ‘Any more want a taste of tootsie-to-the-tum? Head Girl?’

  Gryce stood, head touching the low ceiling. She was a foot taller than Kali.

  ‘Kali Chattopadhyay,’ said Gryce. ‘You are not showing School Spirit.’

  ‘Ain’t I? Balloon juice.’

  ‘I have no idea what that means.’

  Frecks was in the cell, too, now. She stood aggressively close to Crowninshield.

  ‘Prefect Crowninshield, so kind of you to visit. Do call again soon. When you’re better.’

  Crowninshield gave a half-smile and had to contort to get past Frecks. She was first out of the room. Kali let Paule go, and she helped Buller – whose red face was set in pain – out.

  Kali looked up at Gryce. The Head Girl reached out and pinched Kali’s nose-snail lightly.

  ‘Three Minor Infractions, for all girls in this cell… for all girls in this House.’

  Groans from out in the corridor. Someone muttered ‘I’ve only got the bloody Heel now’.

  ‘And a Major for you, Chattopadhyay. Report to the Whips’ Hut first thing after Chapel tomorrow. For Encouragement.’

  ‘I’ll be there, Princess. You can be sure of that.’

  ‘Good night, new bug. We’ll pick this up when you’ve settled in. I fear you’ve made a poor start. Au revoir.’

  The Witches were gone.

  Frecks shut the cell door, barring the rest of the Dorm. Amy stopped shaking and mopped her face. Kali took the book off Amy’s head and put it on a shelf above Amy’s cot.

  ‘Here,’ said Light Fingers.

  Amy looked down. Light Fingers had Roly’s arm and leg in her cupped, open hands.

  ‘I’ll get my sewing things,’ said Light Fingers.

  VI: Broken In

  THREE WEEKS LATER, the whole of Amy’s life before Drearcliff Grange was a fading nursery memory.

  Like many a veteran of the Great War, Roly Pontoons was repaired but not the same. Coffined in a shoebox under her cot, he was out of harm’s way but also set aside. Her mother’s letters, fine copperplate complaints about Lettie’s slackness and the dreadful nouveau riche neighbours, were read once and filed with Roly.

  Amy nestled in the heart of a Chinese doll of institutions, official and otherwise. Frecks’ cell, Dorm Three, Desdemona House and School. At times, she belonged to forms where Thirds of all Houses mixed and House Middle School sides where a lumpage of Thirds and Fourths, along with gargantuan Seconds and titchy Fifths, was acceptable. She stayed away from netball, but was recruited for other sports – cricket and hockey balls were too fast and small to get a mind-grip on, and the games offered few opportunities for unnatural leaps and levitations. Her newness was worn off. Everyone else had forgotten what it was like when she wasn’t at School too.

  Every Monday, in Chapel, Headmistress called the whole register… Abbott, Absalom, Ackland, Acreman, Addey, Aden, Adkins, Ah, Aire… Over three hundred names, called and responded to before breakfast. The first time, Amy was terrified she’d miss herself but piped up a ‘present’ on cue and the register passed on. She was settled in the Ts… Teller, Thaw, Thicke, Thiele, Thomsett, Thompson, Thorn, Thorne, Thorpe…

  A handful of girls were on the register, but not at School. It was customary for their forms to thunder ‘absent’ en masse when they were called. ffolliott-Absent, a fabulously wealthy Ariel Sixth, was famous for her non-presence. She was rumoured to be living high on the Riviera while her guardians assumed she was safe at Dr
earcliff. She paid off Dr Swan to withhold distressing information from the trustees of the ffolliott estate.

  Teachers’ names, handles, enthusiasms and tells had been learned. Amy had most to do with Mrs ‘Wicked’ Wyke, Head of Desdemona Middle, who took Classics, Geography and Gym. Despite her ominous handle, Wicked was a sweet-natured pudding, inclined to fluster and fuss and cluck when liberties were taken – which was, as a consequence, frequently. History, Dance and Deportment were taught by Miss ‘Digger’ Downs, known for utter lack of humour, malapropisms and spoonerisms and protracted, fiendishly devised revenges against pupils and Staff alike. Wyke lessons were lively, wild-spirited affairs, but Digger insisted girls toil in a silence relieved only by the ticking of the classroom clock or the beat of her riding crop. Her conviction was that Dance was best taught without the frivolous distraction of music. French, Russian and Astronomy were down to Miss Bedale, whose favoured teaching tool was the acronymic mnemonic.

  Religious Instruction was the province of the excessively powdered Reverend Mr Pericles Bainter. Some girls fervently believed he was a recruiter for a white slave ring. Several times, Amy was warned in hushed tones that Ponce Bainter made a habit of shipping off Fourths and Fifths to the Orient to become addicted to bhang, importuned by Lascars and sold to seraglios. Opinion was divided on whether this was a fate worse than death or an acceptable way of meeting a nice Lascar who would probably turn out, like Tarzan or the Sheik, to be an English Lord raised in foreign parts. English, Poetry and Drama were entrusted to Miss Kaye, ‘Acting Mrs Edwards’, a sensible flapper – if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms – who was on the Staff temporarily while the regular teacher was off having a baby.

  Sciences were taken by Miss ‘Fossil’ Borrodale, a deceptively fair-faced young woman who was the object of Desdemona’s most notorious crush, the fanatical devotion which burned in the breast of Lydia Inchfawn. Fossil carried a length of rubber tubing and settled Minor Infractions by calmly offering miscreants a choice between ‘the short, sharp shocks’ (three thwacks across the open palm) or ‘the long, tiresome retribution’ (producing a manuscript copy of ten random pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica). Infractors almost always chose the shocks, to the teacher’s evident delight. When she administered ‘three across the hand’, her eyes glittered and she bared her small, pearly teeth. Inchfawn filled up sketchbooks trying to capture Miss Borrodale’s expression, and would willingly take the blame for unattributed malfeasance in order to savour short, sharp shocks on her permanently reddened palm. Fossil also commanded the QMWAACC – the Queen Mary’s Women’s Auxiliary Army Cadet Corps – which spent Thursday afternoons on coast patrol with wooden rifles, looking for spies and smugglers (and ammonites) along the beaches and cliffs. Fossil maintained that Drearcliff was ever ready to defend Somerset from foreign devils, no matter that the most likely invaders of these shores would have to come by coracle from Wales. Smudge Oxenford – Dorm Three’s leading Exaggerator – said that on a route march in the rain last term, Fossil had three girls lashed for desertion under fire.

  Amy had four Minor Infractions in her Time-Table Book, which girls must carry at all times and surrender to a whip or teacher who wished to mark a Black Notch in the tally-page at the back. Not having the Book about you was good for an additional Minor. After Gryce’s welcome-to-school Black Notch, Amy’s next Minors came together. Digger Infractioned her for talking in a lesson, to wit: asking Light Fingers for a lend of a pencil sharpener. Amy admitted her Book was back in Dorm, and was ordered to report with it before Prep. Digger dipped her pen in an inkwell and made two thick, practised flick-marks on the tally-page. Carrying the Book at all times wasn’t in School Rules, but was an Addendum of Usage – unofficial, but enforced. Her other Minor was malice on the part of Crowninshield. The wall-eyed whip singled her out of a gaggle of Thirds crossing the Quad between lessons and Black Notched her for ‘taking the inappropriate diagonal’. A deep voice that seemed to come from the Heel said ‘somebody needs a good bottom-kicking.’ Amy wasn’t sure if Crowninshield’s ventriloquism was an Ability… or just a Trick.

  Encouraged by her cell-mates, Amy experimented. In Gym, she made herself light as a feather and pulled herself up a rope, arm over arm, legs dangling so she didn’t chafe her thighs like others performing this exercise. If she willed a float just as she was taking off for a long-jump, would momentum give her an advantage? She held back from testing the theory. It seemed like cheating, for a start. On manoeuvres with the QMWAACC, she floated herself – Frecks and Kali holding her ankles – to peep over a high wall to see if the Ariel Squad, with whom they were ‘at War’, were creeping into positions. She hoarsely called out the range for the Desdemona potato-mortars, which bombarded their rivals into calling for an armistice. Fossil sent the Ariels off on a punitive march across the shingle to teach them not to surrender so quickly. So far, few knew the nature of Amy’s Abilities. She was keen on keeping it that way. If her floating became common knowledge it would be less of an advantage.

  On Saturday afternoons, Wicked worked a projector in the Gym and showed flickers to the whole School. Miss Dryden accompanied on an upright piano with several missing keys and a tendency to go wildly out of tune when she got excited. The films were mostly ancient one- and two-reelers, often parts of long serials screened out of order and never with the opening or closing chapters to explain the story. Girls might hope for Valentino as the Sheik, Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp or (in Kali’s case) Lon Chaney as a gang boss with no legs (Kali described this film, The Penalty, over and over after Lights Out, with elaborations – she proclaimed it as the Greatest Motion Picture Ever Made). However, they made do with ‘The Coughing Horror’, one of The Mysteries of Dr Fu-Manchu, or ‘The Bruce-Partington Plans’, one of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. These were thought to be ‘proper stories’, held in higher esteem than serials of American origin. In Yank films, soppy heiresses were constantly imperilled by villainous uncles and masked masterminds out to obtain their fortunes. Because they were utterly useless, they often needed to be rescued by handsome fellows. Fossil taught QMWAACC girls how to slip out of even the most elaborate sailors’ knots, but such skills were evidently not part of the education of the average American heiress.

  The flickers drew venomous hisses from the audience whenever it seemed the hero was on the point of planting a passionate smacker on the heroine’s cupid’s bow lips but they chickened out at the last moment and rubbed cheeks instead. Scornful of the breed of ringleted and ribboned Paulines, Elaines and Helens, Kali dared express a preference for the honestly naked crookery of the wicked uncles and clutching hands above the hollow charms of the unmanly youths held up as heroes in the chapterplays. Amy’s favourites among Mrs Wyke’s flickers were not American or British, but French – especially those in which adventuress Irma Vep prowled the rooftops of Paris in a black bodystocking and mask, murdering and robbing at the behest of a secret society called Les Vampires. It occurred to Amy that her Ability might come in handy if she were ever called upon to prowl rooftops. Should she ask Light Fingers how to go about beginning a career in crime?

  In three weeks, she had seen and sketched twelve new moths, including the nationally scarce Discoloxia blomeri (Blomer’s Rivulet), though the Drearcliff grounds were poor moth country. Her enthusiasm was noted by Fossil Borrodale, who – when not thwacking Infractors – was a surprisingly good teacher. She didn’t baby-talk like Wicked Wyke or insist on rote copying like Digger Downs. Called after lessons to see Fossil, Amy dreaded punishment for some unintentional Infraction – only for the teacher to ask politely if she might look at Amy’s Book of Moths. While casting an eye over the sketches, Miss Borrodale admitted she had kept a Book of Fossils when she was Amy’s age. Fossil allowed that Amy could examine the Calloway Collection if she liked. The naturalist Damina Calloway – who had taught at Drearcliff around the turn of the century then disappeared in Patagonia – had donated a great number of specimens to the school, including s
everal trays of mounted lepidoptera. Though against killing for science, Amy thrilled at the prospect. The trays had grown dusty and ignored, awaiting someone who shared the enthusiasm of the long-gone collector.

  Leaving Hypatia Hall – the smelly edifice which contained the Biology and Chemistry Laboratories and the Machinists’ Workshop – Amy spied Inchfawn peeping round a corner, boiling with envy. ‘It’s all right, Inchfawn, I didn’t get the thwacks.’ That didn’t assuage Inchfawn, who darted away, spectacles up in her hair, heels of her hands pressed to her eyes.

  Amy now knew her cell-mates intimately. They were together in lessons, at meals, on QMWAACC exercises, between lessons, at the flickers, doing prep, rambling in the grounds, playing sports and games and in the cell, talking in the dark after Lights Out. To everyone else, they were Frecks’ cell; among themselves, they were the Forus, a contraction of ‘the Four of Us’. If School had a language, the Forus had a dialect – a slang or code comprehensible only by themselves. Frecks was skilled at making up handles and expressions. Each prefect or teacher or girl had a Secret Handle, for use only among the Forus, selected so there was no obvious connection between the handle and the subject’s name or enthusiasm or physical appearance. Miss Borrodale was not ‘Fossil’, but ‘Lilac’ (her first name was Violet). Miss Kaye was not ‘Acting Mrs Edwards’ but ‘Janet’ (J came after K in the alphabet). Dora Paule, known to her relatively few friends as ‘Daffy’, was simply ‘A’ (because she was ‘A-paule-ing’). Inchfawn was ‘Inchworm’ to the School, but ‘Six’ – for Six Eyes, because of her two sets of specs – to the Forus. Only they called whips ‘the Witches’; the rest of School called them ‘the Sisters’. In Forus lingo, Black Notches were ‘Stains’ (fully, ‘Stains on the Escutcheon’), bosoms were ‘beakers’ (Light Fingers had the best-developed beakers), prep was ‘greens’ (as in ‘have you eaten your greens?’), serving in QMWAACC was ‘being ganged’ (derived from press-ganged), custard was ‘splodge’, and someone with a crush was ‘a limpet’.