‘We could take a little stroll and see the decorations, could we not, J-J?’ Amy said, looking about the square.
Octavia was all for it. ‘Could we, Papa? Oh, do let’s.’
‘If that is what you would like,’ he said and watched as she skipped towards the steps of St Paul’s, bright and happy in her summer pink. ‘There goes our world shaker,’ he said to Amy, half amused and half proud. ‘Just look at her, my dear. I wouldn’t put anything past her.’
Amy smiled. ‘She’s a good little girl,’ she agreed, and added, because it was too apt an opportunity to miss, ‘once she’s at school, we shall see great things of her.’
‘You are still determined upon it,’ he said, and his tone was almost reproachful, for they’d discussed the matter so often and at such length and he knew it was settled, but he wasn’t convinced.
‘Of course,’ Amy said, in her mild way. ‘You know I am, oh ye of little faith. You mustn’t worry so, my dear. Nothing but good will come of it, I promise you.’
‘I am sorry to have so little faith,’ he said wryly, ‘but schools can be cruel places. I would not wish her to suffer there. Or anywhere for that matter.’
‘If it is wrong for her, J-J,’ Amy reassured, ‘we will remove her and find a better place. That is agreed.’
But he was frowning and pulling his beard.
‘On the other hand, it could be just the right place at just the right time,’ Amy said. She was so sure of it, yet nothing she said convinced him. She looked up at the great dome of St Paul’s, strong and secure above her head, and knew in her bones that this precious daughter of theirs would move from success to acclaim, through school to university, to an eminent academic career, just like her father, and that school would be the making of her. Why was he so foolish as to doubt it?
Octavia had reached the top of the cathedral steps and turned to urge them to follow. ‘Come on,’ she called. ‘You can see for miles up here.’
‘If that is the case,’ J-J called back, smiling again, ‘we must join you, for what can be better than a clear view?’ But as he strode towards her, he put one hand behind his back and crossed his fingers.
CHAPTER FOUR
Although her father worried about her all summer and grew more and more concerned as September approached, Octavia slipped into scholarship as easily as a swan into water. Learning was natural to her, for she was an inquisitive child and accustomed to having her questions answered; a classroom held no terrors, because her cousins had taught her how to wait her turn and stand her ground; but above all, she was happy in her skin so naturally she expected to find friends and helpers in this new adventure of hers, and naturally she wasn’t disappointed.
By the end of her first week she had made more than a dozen friends and by the end of the second had established one of them, a small, pale, rather nervous little girl with owl-like glasses, as ‘my best friend, Betty Transom’. By the end of her first term she had decided that Mrs Bryant, their headmistress, was the most wonderful woman she had ever met, not counting Mama, of course. ‘She says we are all capable of great things,’ she reported to her parents when she came home after the final assembly on the last day of term. ‘All of us, every single one. She says times are changing and by the time we are in our twenties there will be all manner of opportunities for us and we are to seize them with both hands. Isn’t that splendid?’ It was so exactly what she wanted to hear that her face was glowing with the delight of it. ‘I think being at school is the best thing ever.’
Her cousin Emmeline found the experience far more difficult and in that first term she spent many of her playtimes weeping on Octavia’s shoulder, complaining that the other girls were beastly and she wished she hadn’t come. ‘It’s all very well for you, Tavy,’ she wept. ‘You’re clever. You know the answers.’
‘Not all of them,’ Octavia admitted honestly. ‘Just say you don’t know, Em. They won’t kill you.’
But Emmeline took a lot of persuading. She’d been the big sister for so long it was hard to be an unimportant newcomer in a class full of larger and more determined girls who all knew their way around. ‘I shall never fit in,’ she mourned.
Cyril was delighted to see her at a disadvantage for once and said she was being silly. He’d found himself a new friend that term and was full of reflected importance, quoting him on every occasion. ‘Meriton Major says school stinks.’ ‘When he grows up, Meriton Major’s going to be a Member of Parliament.’ Now he offered his friend’s philosophy to quell his sister’s fears. ‘I told Meriton Major about you, and he says it’s sissy to be afraid of school.’
‘I’m sick of Meriton Major,’ Emmeline said. ‘He should try being at our school.’
‘It’ll get better, Em. Truly,’ Octavia soothed. ‘It’s just you’re not quite used to it yet. Some of it’s good, you’ve got to admit.’
But Emmeline couldn’t see good in any of it. ‘I think it’s all horrid,’ she said. ‘You can’t speak unless you’re spoken to and you mustn’t call out and you mustn’t run and you have to say “please” all the time and they keep making you sign the Appearing Book – I’ve signed it four times already and I was only talking to Sissie – I don’t see why you can’t talk to your best friend – and Pa says I’ve got to stay there until I’m sixteen. Sixteen! That’s five whole years, Tavy, and I never wanted to go there in the first place. Oh, I know I said I did but that was just to please people. What I really want is just to grow up and get married and have lots of babies.’
‘Fathers are awfully funny,’ Octavia observed. ‘Here’s yours really keen for you to be a scholar and I don’t think mine wanted me to go to school at all.’
That surprised her cousin. ‘How do you know that?’ she asked. ‘Did he say?’
‘No,’ Octavia admitted. ‘He never actually says. That’s how you know it’s important. He goes round and round things, sort of talking at the edges. He was fussing about it all summer and asking me if I was really sure and saying I didn’t have to go there if I didn’t want to. And I love it.’
And loved it more with every new day. Even when the weather grew cold and the sports field was sharp with hoar frost, she couldn’t wait to get out to play, and in the relative warmth of the classroom every lesson brought a new challenge. There were so many books to read and so much to find out. By the end of her second term she had established herself as one of the most intelligent girls in her class. By the time she was eleven and had been elevated to the main school she was being spoken of as ‘university material’ and her father had quite forgotten his anxieties and was happily admitting that he and Amy had made a wise choice in this school.
‘She has a natural aptitude for French,’ he quoted from her latest school report. ‘Her grasp of mathematical principles is commendable. This is all very gratifying, Amy.’
‘She is a natural scholar,’ Amy agreed and smiled at him. ‘Like her father.’
‘She shall go to the pantomime,’ he decided, ‘as a reward for good work. And to the Egyptian Hall to see Mr Maskelyne and his magic.’
Octavia enjoyed the pantomime and was intrigued by the famous magician but she would have worked well without any recompense, for learning was now its own reward. The months passed happily, punctuated by feasts and festivals and successes. Now there was a new century coming and the newspapers said it would be the start of a brave new world and would bring much change and progress, which didn’t surprise Octavia at all for wasn’t that exactly what the redoubtable Mrs Bryant had predicted? They all sat up to welcome it in and Octavia and her two older cousins were allowed to drink watered wine to toast its arrival, which was a first for all of them and made them all giggly.
But once the Christmas holiday was over, life at home continued in its old comfortable way and, as far as Octavia could see, the new century was just like the old one only with a different name. There were wars going on in various parts of the world – but weren’t there always? – the Italian king was shot by anarchis
ts, and in Great Britain a new political party was inaugurated. It called itself the Labour Party and was led by a man called Keir Hardie. Her father grew very animated at the news and said that Mr Hardie was first rate and that this was the start of a bloodless revolution and the masters would have to look to their laurels, but Octavia wasn’t interested. She was more concerned with her Latin declensions.
Her life was changing but the change was so gradual and easy that she barely noticed it. She had grown taller – that was obvious because Mama had let down all her skirts and dresses and last year’s gym slip didn’t fit at all – but the face that looked back at her from her early morning mirror was unaltered, long and serious, the hair still sandy in colour and very frizzy, the eyes still blue under sandy eyebrows, nose long and straight, mouth wide and pale, teeth white and crooked, hands long-fingered and skinny. Out in the garden the cherry tree had doubled in size, but like her, it had grown gradually and in season and nobody remarked on it. Em and Squirrel had grown taller too, and, at fourteen, Em was beginning to round out into a pretty femininity, but they still wore the same childish faces and fought and argued in the same childish way. Only Podge revealed the passage of time. In the three years since she and Em had started school he’d grown from a plump baby in a pram to a roly-poly toddler, staggering about in his baby skirts, and eventually to a little boy in his first sailor suit with all his pretty curls cut off and his hair trimmed to a big boy’s cut, four and a half years old and full of himself. Emmeline cried to see the sudden change in him and said she’d lost her darling baby but Cyril said it was high time he stopped being a duffer and learnt to stand up for himself. ‘You want to be a big boy, don’t you, Podge? Not a soppy baby.’
And Podge, who was standing on Octavia’s knee so that he could admire his new image in the looking glass, said, yes, he did, and sounded defiantly confident even though the expression on his face was anxious and doubtful.
* * *
In the summer of the first year of the new century the North London Collegiate School reached the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation and the entire school went to a special service in St Paul’s Cathedral – no less – to celebrate. It was an impressive occasion and Octavia was duly impressed, thrilled to think that they were in the self-same cathedral that had welcomed the queen, overawed by the imposing clergy, stirred by the wonderful sound the choir made as their voices echoed up and up into the high spaces of the great dome, uplifted by the rousing speeches in praise of the great work already done by the school, encouraged to think that even greater things lay in the future and that she would be part of them.
In the autumn the Conservative party won the general election with four hundred and one seats to everybody else’s two hundred and sixty-eight, and Keir Hardie was elected as Labour MP for Merthyr Tydfil, to whoops of delight from Professor Smith. Then on the second of January in the second year of the new century, the papers were printed with black margins to announce the death of ‘good Queen Victoria’. ‘It is the end of an era,’ The Times said, ‘and we shall never see her like again.’ Special prayers were offered up for her at school and in church, most social functions were cancelled as a mark of respect, and her death and its repercussions were the main topic of conversation wherever the Smith family went. This time Octavia wasn’t impressed at all. It had been exciting to watch the living queen in her carriage by the steps of St Paul’s but it seemed silly to make a fuss about her because she was dead. There was no need to go cancelling parties and staying at home all the time.
‘If it had been someone we knew,’ she said to her cousins when they were all sitting round the drawing room fire on Sunday afternoon, ‘it would have been different. I can’t see the point of making a fuss over someone we don’t know. I don’t see why they’ve got to cancel Betty Transom’s party.’
‘Nor do I,’ Emmeline said. ‘It’s not her fault the queen’s gone and died. What do you think, Squirrel?’
‘Meriton Major’s got one of those new bicycles,’ Cyril said. ‘I’m going to ask Pa if I can have one too. It’s ripping fun.’
‘It’s always Meriton Major with you,’ Emmeline said scornfully. ‘I’m tired of hearing about him. Aren’t you, Tavy? It’s so boring, worse than the queen.’
‘That’s all you know,’ her brother said, tossing his dark hair and picking up the poker to give the coals a good whacking. ‘Actually he’s a dashed good egg. If it hadn’t been for them cancelling Betty’s party you’d have seen him there and then you’d have known.’
But as it was they were denied sight of his hero and on the day of the party they had to content themselves with playing Pit and roasting chestnuts by the fire.
The new century rolled on. A wireless message was sent right across the Atlantic Ocean, which was quite amazing; the coronation was postponed because the new king had appendicitis and had to have an operation, which was very serious; the bell tower in Venice collapsed into a heap of rubble – there were pictures in the paper to prove it – and Emmeline finished her unwanted years at school, failed her final examinations and was allowed to leave. She was pretty with relief. Within a week she had put her hair up and left her childhood behind her. She and her mother visited the dressmaker in Flask Walk, on Amy’s recommendation, studied the catalogues and went for several shopping expeditions to the West End. Soon she was fully kitted out as an adult, with all the clothes necessary to her new status: walking costume, day dresses, gloves, hat, silk stockings, button boots and all. She was totally and glowingly transformed.
‘Pa’s going to take me to a play on Friday,’ she confided to Octavia, ‘and a concert on Saturday. I intend to meet lots and lots of people. That’s the best way if you mean to be married and I mean to be married just as soon as ever I can. Oh, you don’t know how lovely it is not to be at school! It’s going to be such fun. You can’t imagine all the things Ma’s got planned for me. It’s going to be a splendid summer.’
‘Aren’t you coming down to Eastbourne with us?’ Octavia said. The two families always took their summer holidays together, always for four weeks and always in Eastbourne.
But apparently not. She and Aunt Maud were going to stay in Highgate all summer, Cyril was going to France with Meriton Major’s family and only Podge would be playing on the Eastbourne sands that year. It was very disappointing.
‘I shall miss you,’ Octavia said. And did, for the holiday wasn’t anywhere near so much fun on her own. Despite having a brand new swimming costume – and a very pretty one in sky blue cotton with two thick white frills at knee and elbow and another all round her cap – and despite excellent weather and having Podge to look after and with plenty to do and see, she was often lonely. The donkeys stood in patient lines on the beach, or plodded their well-worn hundred yards of sand, the band played its usual medley of cheerful tunes in the bandstand, the Pierrot company entertained as brashly as ever on the pier, the Punch and Judy man set up his customary stall at the top of the beach, but these things only increased her loneliness. What was the good of them, if there wasn’t anyone to discuss them with? True, she had long talks with her mother and father when they all went for their daily promenade, but adult conversation is not at all the same thing as a gossip with your oldest friend, and a postcard isn’t the same thing either, although she wrote one religiously every day. Emmeline did write back, but only now and then, and with diminishing interest, and by the time the four weeks were over, Octavia had begun to accept that her life had changed whether she would or no.
‘It’ll be nice to see Emmeline again,’ her mother said, as they packed their clothes in the trunk on that last busy day.
Octavia agreed that it would, although privately she wasn’t quite so sure and the expression on her face revealed her feelings to the perceptive eyes of her mother.
‘And Cyril too,’ Amy pressed on. ‘I wonder how he got on in France. Don’t stand on the towels, Podge, there’s a good boy. You’ll be glad to see your mama again, won’t you? And your brother
and sister.’
‘Not much,’ Podge said. ‘There’s no fun in them. Squirrel’s off with Meriton Major all the time on his rotten bicycle and Em’s got new clothes. It’s all she ever talks about. She says I’m a pest. I’d rather stay here with Tavy and ride the donkeys.’
Quite right, Octavia thought. He’s got a lot of sense for a little ’un. But the holiday was over and they would all be having tea together on Sunday, the way they usually did, so perhaps…
It was the oddest tea party. Emmeline was now a most superior young lady, wearing a pink tea gown and a knowing expression. She’d joined her father’s tennis club in Brookfield, had been to so many plays and concerts she couldn’t remember them all, had acquired an artless laugh and a new trick of patting her mounded hair, and was going to have what she called ‘a proper party’ at Christmas for all her new friends. ‘You must come too, Tavy. You’ll adore them.’ And Cyril had come back from his holiday with hair as long as Oscar Wilde and the dark shadow of an incipient moustache on his upper lip, boasting that he’d been speaking French like billy-oh and dropping French phrases into the conversation all the time to prove it. Octavia wanted to laugh at him but she knew it would upset everybody if she did, for his parents were gazing at him in admiration and even Emmeline seemed wary of him.
‘I suppose you’ll soon be going back to school,’ Aunt Maud said as they kissed goodbye. ‘I wish you luck.’
‘Thank you,’ Octavia said. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’ Which was true. At school she knew where she was and what was expected of her. At school there were friends to confide in.
‘I just don’t understand my cousin,’ she said to Betty Transom on their first day back. ‘All she ever talks about is what she’s going to wear. And what a lot of young men she’s meeting. It’s really boring.’
Octavia Page 4
