The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  A rumour went around that Digger was mostly brass. A miniature coke-burning furnace served her for a heart, the remains of her brain floated in a glass jug in her skull and her mechanical hide was coated with special paint that looked like skin. The story was that she had been caught under an aerial incendiary dropped on Stogursey by an off-its-course Zeppelin, then rebuilt in the Hypatia Hall Machinists’ Workshop to combat a shortage of teachers during the Great War. If the leading proponent of the Downs-is-an-automaton theory weren’t Smudge, Amy would have believed it. For a start, the teacher stationed herself in the cold too. When Ponce was Break Master, he shooed the rabble outside, then oversaw them from inside his cosy study. The contrast might have earned Digger respect, except no one raised her possible finer points for fear of being throttled. Even the Sixths who enforced her rule looked miserable about it, though they had the privilege of huddling around a stove in the Whips’ Hut after the forced exodus was effected.

  Everyone had to develop a survival technique. Gonerils practised calisthenics. Tamoras burned Violas’ possessions in braziers – diaries, motion-picture fan magazines and woolly nighties yielded the most warmth, apparently. Ariels sported expensive furs and lied about great white hunter daddies shooting snow leopards or dire wolves when anyone could tell they were shop bought. Desdemonas tried it on with uniform variations more inventive than Rayne’s black skirt and blazer, generally not caring whether innovations were cited as Minor Infractions.

  Under her boater, Amy wore a snug leather flying helmet.

  * * *

  Happily for the Moth Club, Light Fingers scavenged fur-lined flying helmets from the Viola Dramatic Society’s ambitious production of Captain Skylark vs the Demon Ace. Amy considered saving hers to add to the Kentish Glory costume, in case she had to float in this weather. However, an urgent need to keep her ears from falling off persuaded her that the prize headgear was best suited to everyday use. Her helmet had been worn by the departed Marion/Harriet, who played Lieutenant Basil ‘Goosey’ Gander, Skylark’s former fag at Uppingham. Goosey was poignantly shot down on his first mission. Half the school wept as Harriet/Marion expired in Mansfield’s manly arms, prompting the gallant captain to vow vengeance on the Satanic Hun.

  Only Kali – used to walking around with a caste mark/sniper’s target on her forehead – was willing to sport the crest of the fiendish Fokker. Frecks tried her uncle Lance’s chainmail hood, but the cold metal stuck to her ears. The blessed object might protect her from grievous injury, so long as her cause was just and true, but it was little use when it came to keeping out the bally cold. Also, she heard strange music when she wore the thing and developed a faraway look in her eyes.

  Girls huddled on the Quad in knots and cliques, shivering and considering Digger Downs with hostile eyes. At this rate, the teacher would lose a popularity contest even if the other entrants were Hans von Hellhund, Zenobia Aire and Dr Shade’s arch-enemy Achmet the Almost-Human. Kali had an idea what First Prize should be…

  ‘Scorpions. In her bed. So when she gets under the covers at night… sting sting sting! Death death death! I don’t care if she’s brass or bone, a dose of scorp juice’d lay her on the slab. Yeah, scorpions…’

  Kali’s father dealt often with Singapore Charlie’s, a well-established supplier of exotic flora and fauna on a ‘no questions asked’ basis firm. When a crimelord installed an alligator pit under a trapdoor in his office, intent on putting errant employees ‘on the spot’, only one firm sold the requisite hungry reptiles. Mr Chattopadhyay exported Kafiristan’s uniquely venomous camel spiders for Singapore Charlie. Camel spiders were Solifugae, a separate class of arachnid from Araneae – as related to camels as horseflies were to horses.

  Amy had to tell Kali that scorpions wouldn’t survive long in Somerset at this time of year. She couldn’t think of any suitably poisonous species indigenous to Arctic climes.

  So that bright idea got scratched.

  VI: ‘Spend Three and Fourpence…’

  WEDNESDAY. THREE DAYS into the Digger Downs tenure as Break Mistress.

  Amy and her chums shuffled out on to the freezing Quad. The ordeal was almost routine now.

  ‘Lovely weather for polar bears,’ said Peebles, ducking to avoid a thumping. She’d said the same thing two or three times a day since term started.

  ‘Great Aunt Gertie’s garters!’ exclaimed Frecks. ‘Look at Black Hat!’

  Amy followed Frecks’ line of sight.

  In front of the Heel, Rayne was skipping again. She wore her normal abnormal uniform – no scarf, no mittens, no overcoat. As Rayne stepped up and down, her boater didn’t blow away or fall off. Her pleated black skirt rose and fell, showing knees that weren’t blue and legs that weren’t frostbitten.

  Other girls reported that no amount of healthy exercise kept you warm in weather like this. The hollow shell of Roberta Hale limped around to prove it. ‘Work up a sweat and it freezes on you,’ said Big Bren Manders, Captain of the Second Eleven. ‘You could die of it.’

  But Rayne seemed to have conquered the cold.

  ‘What the devil is she saying?’ asked Light Fingers.

  As she skipped, Rayne rattled off a rhyme.

  Skipping was for Firsts and underdone Seconds. Amy hadn’t skipped since infants’ school. It was a babyish thing she had put aside, along with conkers, off-ground touch and spinning tops. Small as Rayne was, it was unsettling to see a Third skipping. Like catching a grown-up sliding down the banister or riding a rocking horse.

  What was skipping? A pastime or a game? Silliness or sport? An innocuous survival of a once bloody pagan ritual? Now Amy thought of it, perhaps Boadicea or the Morrigan skipped a rope made of entrails of fallen foes. Passed down through generations of schoolgirls, along with rhymes whose meanings were long-since obscured, rope-jumping might be a martial tradition… like parade drill, jiu-jitsu or sword display.

  Rayne skipped as if she weren’t simply (or even) enjoying herself.

  Girls got closer to Rayne. Her eyes were open and alert, but her ever-faster and more intricate skips didn’t require inordinate concentration. She went through the moves as if by instinct. Every fifth hop was a reverse, every tenth a twist under her feet that somehow didn’t knot the rope. On every twentieth skip, she let go of one handle – which flailed out like a bullwhip – then caught it again. It was tantalising, knowing she must make a mistake eventually. No one could keep at this without tiring, without missing, without tripping. Rayne sped up and slowed down.

  Maybe she could go on forever?

  She spoke as she skipped. At first, she just moved her mouth, making word shapes but no sound. Then, the odd word of her private rhyme escaped…

  ‘Ants… pants… France… ments… vance…’

  Then, phrases, meaningless but distinct…

  ‘Ants in your pants… take another chance…’

  Girls gathered in a semicircle. Fascination almost made them forget frozen faces and air which frosted inside lungs. This was at least a novelty.

  In the wings as usual, Prompt marked a distance beyond which spectators shouldn’t approach. No one wanted to be beaned with an outflung rope handle.

  Rayne was speaking confidently now.

  ‘Ants in your pants

  All the way from France

  Send reinforcements

  We’re going to advance…’

  Frecks wolf-whistled. Amy came down with the quease whenever that black hat bobbed in view, but Frecks was inclined to take Rayne’s part. Her sneaking admiration for the new bug was blooming like a black rose.

  ‘Ants in your pants

  Take another chance

  Spend three and fourpence

  We’re going to a dance…’

  Repeat… repeat. Two verses, over and over…

  A murmuring hum. Other girls took up the rhyme, which grew louder.

  Rayne was unaffected by her audience. She skipped on and on, just as she had when no one was watching.

 
Amy looked at her face. She showed no pride, no enjoyment, no pain.

  Again, Amy thought of a clockwork toy. One which would not run down like a self-winding watch. Amy knew Digger Downs wasn’t really a brass automaton, but she wasn’t sure Rayne was fully human. Did she have a maggot in her brain like Palgraive? Or was she Mauve Mary taken physical form?

  Amy shuddered. She had a strange, queasy, yet exhilarating sensation – similar to the stomach-shifts and skin-prickles she felt when floating. She got the same thing from Light Fingers, sometimes – and from Paule, always. It was what happened when Amy met someone Unusual. Someone who was like her.

  Being like her wasn’t the same as being her friend. Strength-sapping Jacqueline Harper, ‘Shrimp’ of the Drearcliff Trumpet, was an Unusual, but no one’s friend. Indeed, she showed a particular, quiet, veiled animosity towards Amy. The Trumpet had run mocking, knowing squibs about the Moth Club. Even Gryce wouldn’t have Shrimp as a Murdering Heathen. The Tamora Fifth was reduced to battening on to inexperienced Firsts and Seconds, and they caught on after a few days or weeks and gave her the elbow. Shrimp was in danger of wasting away, which Amy reckoned would be no bad thing.

  After a few minutes, girls lost interest in the skipping. What Rayne was doing was odd, but not more than that. After a while, her proficiency was tedious – like looking at the insectile innards of a watch ticking off the seconds with repetitive cog-turns and spring-bounces. There was the cold to worry about. If Rayne wasn’t going to fall over and break her head, they might as well watch de Vere lay into Captain Freezing with a lacrosse stick.

  ‘Think that’d work for anyone?’ Light Fingers asked.

  Frecks shrugged. ‘Doubt it.’

  Light Fingers took off her mittens and stuck them in her pocket. She flexed her fingers and whizzed her hands through the air several times. The ends of her arms were blurs. She stopped and looked at her hands, which were already blue-ish. She sucked her fingers, another futile endeavour.

  ‘Yup,’ she said afterwards. ‘Still chilly.’

  She stuffed her hands back in her mittens and looked at Rayne’s thinning audience.

  ‘Good luck to her though,’ said Frecks. ‘We’ll just have to shiver it out till next week. Who’s on Break after Digger?’

  ‘Wicked Wyke,’ said Amy.

  Frecks managed a shivering smile. ‘Wicked’s a softie. We’ll be indoors again…’

  ‘…if we survive. Ho, what’s afoot now?’

  Digger Downs stood at her post by the Refectory doors, whistle poised to shrill at any Infraction. What Rayne was doing seemed within the accepted limits of School Rules. No clause forbade inordinate skipping, though Amy wouldn’t put it past the whips to dream one up.

  Garland approached the Break Mistress and tugged the end of Digger’s cardigan as if it were an old-fashioned bell-pull. The Second needed the protection of the whips and teachers for whom she snooped. The school motto applied especially to Snitcher Garland. Everyone she had told on – which, by now, was nearly the whole school – would cheerfully have shoved her over the precipice or left her in the woods for the wolves.

  ‘Someone’s for it,’ observed Amy. ‘Snitching is in process.’

  Downs creakily bent and Garland went up on tiptoes to whisper in her ear.

  ‘There’s ways to deal with squealers,’ said Kali. ‘Some fine day, Garland’s gonna be found wearin’ a South Side necktie. That’s when they cuts your sneakin’ throat across and pulls yer snitchin’ tongue out through the slit. All the best stool pigeons are wearin’ ’em this season.’

  Downs expressed annoyance. She took off her whistle and passed it to a whip who happened to be nearby – Sidonie Gryce! – then tramped off, led by Garland, out of the Quad and off towards the woods.

  What was Gryce doing out here in the cold? She could invoke Head Girl’s privilege and be in the Whips’ Hut, warming herself with fags, gin and a picture of Antonio Moreno with his shirt off. Instead, she was out among the cold and desperate. She twirled the whistle idly around her forefinger. Air rushed through it, making a tiny screech.

  The other Heathens were in the Quad too, not in their usual gaggle, but stationed at strategic points. Crawford, wearing her flared Hans von Hellhund coat, stood in Mauve Mary’s walkway, casually blocking traffic. Though barred from fencing after giving Minty Armadale a Heidelberg duelling stripe, Vanity carried a sabre.

  ‘They’re going to get her,’ Amy said.

  Everyone understood.

  Gryce wore calf-length white leather boots and an elegant number with fur-trim and whips’ frogging. She looked like an Archduchess at the execution of a commoner.

  Amy was tense. She wished she were in her Kentish Glory uniform. But the Moth Club flew by night. Out in the open, they were just… Thirds.

  A ripple of understanding went around. Many found reason to quit the Quad. Crawford stood aside to let them pass, encouraging stragglers with the flat of her sabre. It was a good time to get up a game of scratch cricket or form a posse to help Digger pursue whichever outlaw Garland had peached on. The diversion would be detailed enough to include a sacrificial miscreant, whose infraction would detain the mistress… Gryce wasn’t an amateur.

  Beeke and Pulsipher, Rayne and Prompt’s cell-mates, fled. The cowardly custards didn’t want to get lynched next to their House Sisters. Viola’s reputation for wetness was built on such craven actions.

  Amy stayed. Frecks, Light Fingers and Kali did too. A scattering of Violas still watched Rayne, heads nodding in time with her rhyme. Prompt sucked her lips anxiously. Palgraive and Paule floated in their own bubbles, seeming not to notice anything. Crowninshield II skulked, an outcast among outcasts. Even Firsts knew they could get away with pelting her. Their squeezed missiles were more like ice grenades than snowballs. Inchfawn, another untouchable, huffed into her hands and peered through filmed-over specs. Shrimp peeped from behind the Heel, hungry and fascinated. Rayne could keep her going, keep her warm, for months, years… provided she lived, which was at present doubtful.

  Alexandra Weston Vansittart, Countess of Crouth and Kiloyle, Droning of Skerra, House Captain of Ariel, made a rare appearance among the commonality. Amy noticed Sixths from all Houses, as if they’d been invited to observe. Vansittart was so above-it-all she didn’t even deign to wear whip’s braid – ‘who would want to be a species of policeman?’ she drawled – but knew how School worked. Gryce, apparently, had obtained scented letters she had written as a foolish Second to one of the mistresses. If the Ariel House Captain ever dared to go against the Head Girl, they might become public.

  The other House Captains were present: Matilda Pelham of Desdemona, Helena Mansfield of Viola, Florence Rhode-Eeling of Goneril. With Digger away hunting the wild Infractor, Pelham and Rhode-Eeling risked sneaking crafty cigarettes. Vansittart gulped something eye-wateringly warming from a silver flask which bore one of her family crests.

  Now, everyone watched Rayne.

  She was still skipping, showing no sign of noticing the circling shark-fins.

  ‘Ants in your pants

  All the way from France…’

  Ridiculous words, spoken in solemnity, repeated until all trace of meaning was lost.

  ‘Spend three and fourpence

  We’re going to a dance…’

  With a deft reverse, Rayne turned to face the Heel and skipped on. Her back was to the observers.

  Henry Buller and Euterpe McClure moved closer.

  Buller had her gloves off and was cracking her knuckles. McClure bowed her head and made blades of her hands.

  Amy was fascinated by the back of Rayne’s hair. Cut straight across, showing her hackles.

  Prompt cried soundlessly, tears streaming over her plump cheeks. Amy felt prickles in her own eyes.

  Gryce, a field marshal in scarlet lipstick, was at her ease, twirling the whistle on its thong. She waited for Downs to be well away on her fools’ errand. Smiling sweetly at the Captains and other interested parties, the He
ad Girl made a gesture in the air, as if flicking something away from her face.

  Buller and McClure went in.

  VII: ‘…We’re Going to a Dance’

  RAYNE TURNED AROUND again and skipped with her back to the Heel. She rhymed on, face shining, eyes bright.

  Amy was queasier than ever.

  She glanced aside at Dora Paule. The Sixth had her eyes screwed shut and fingers pressed to her temples. Amy thought she saw ripples of violet in the air around her.

  You didn’t have to have Abilities to know what would happen next…

  Prompt, of all people, stepped in front of Buller and McClure, interposing her quaking body between Rayne and Gryce’s myrmidons.

  McClure tapped Prompt’s breastbone, indicating she should step aside.

  For seconds, it seemed a Viola Third would stand up to a Goneril Fifth. That was, in itself, unprecedented…

  Then Prompt, sobbing silently, got out of the way.

  Rayne didn’t show any sign of noticing.

  McClure considered the situation, big hands flexing. A sly one, she gave victims a moment to think about the coming pain before flicking the lash. Rayne ignored her.

  Buller, less reflective, just ploughed in.

  The whip swung a roundhouse right to the side of Rayne’s head. A great hollow clap sounded as knuckles impacted against skull. It was a wonder the blow didn’t take the skipping machine’s head clear off.

  Rayne staggered towards a snowdrift, but kept her balance… her head kinked unnaturally, but her legs and arms still worked.

  She was still skipping.

  A few girls applauded. Gryce’s narrowed eyes shut them up. Amy thought she detected the ghost of a smirk on Vansittart’s lips.

  Buller couldn’t believe her first punch hadn’t scored a knockout.

  Rayne straightened her neck. A few Violas clapped in time to her rhyme.

  McClure eyed the situation and kicked Rayne’s right knee, hooking her shoe behind the smaller girl’s leg and sweeping her off balance.