Octavia

by Beryl Kingston

  The next week passed in a muddle of arrangements and grief. There were friends and relations to inform, a funeral to attend, and finally Ralph’s last will and testament to be found and read. It was short and simple. He left all his savings, after the funeral expenses had been paid, to his son John Algernon Withington and his daughter Emmeline Elizabeth Thompson. The house and its contents were to be sold and the monies realised shared between his said son and daughter.

  ‘I don’t want money,’ Emmeline wailed. ‘I want them alive again.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ her husband told her. ‘You don’t have to do anything about it. I will invest it for you.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant at all,’ Emmeline said, anger flaring again.

  But Algernon-Podge was glad of the money. It was an opportunity. Heaven sent. ‘Actually,’ he said. ‘It’s come in the nick of time for me. Sort of thing.’

  They looked at him curiously, wondering what on earth he was talking about. Has he got into debt? Octavia thought. Surely not. Or is he more ill than he’s let us know? He certainly looked ill but that could be because he was wearing his black suit. She was upset to see how thin he looked and noticed that his hair was receding and that there wasn’t a trace of colour in his face.

  ‘I want to go “down under”,’ he explained. ‘To Australia. This is my chance to do it. Heaven sent, sort of thing. It’s not the right time to tell you, I know that, but it’s what I want and I shall do it sooner or later, so it’s better you know now. There’s nothing for me here.’ Olga was never going to marry him. She’d made that clear all along and now that he’d lost his parents, he could see it. He could see a lot of things now he’d lost his parents. That the bank wasn’t the place for him. That Olga wasn’t the right girl for him either. His mother had been right about that, poor old dear. That he needed a different life. No, it was better to go. Make a clean break and start again somewhere else. ‘I’m going to join this government scheme they’ve got going. Try my hand at farming or something. Out in the fresh air. Give the old lungs a chance.’

  So many changes, Octavia thought, catching the sadness on Emmeline’s plump face. But he’s right about the fresh air. It could be just what he needs. If only he hadn’t told us now.

  That evening she sat at her desk in her quiet bedroom and wrote up the events of the last awful week while they were still fresh in her mind.

  ‘It seems to me,’ she wrote, ‘that these deaths are all interlocked, as if one has followed almost inevitably from the causes of the previous one. They all seem to me to be the result of the war. Cyril’s certainly was and in a way so were Eddie’s and Dickie’s, for the flu came at a time when we were all exhausted and hadn’t got the energy or the will to fight against it. And now this last, which wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been an armoured car on the road, and that was only there because the mine owners and the government had decided to wage war against the miners. It is always war and fighting, the illogical and non-proven belief that one human being can prevail over the wishes or needs or beliefs of another by hitting him or bullying him with guns and tanks.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Octavia went back to school after the funeral in her most rigidly determined mood. Changes would have to be made. How well she knew that now. She set about making them at once.

  ‘By next September,’ she told her staff at their next meeting, ‘I should like us all to be in a position to provide syllabuses for the full school year. This will be our third year as a Dalton school, so writing syllabuses should be a great deal easier than it was at the beginning. I’m sure being thoroughly prepared will make things easier for us as the year progresses.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that,’ Elizabeth Fennimore said, surprised by the tone Octavia was taking, ‘but it’s a tall order. We’re well into May now and the state examinations are almost upon us. I doubt whether we could write syllabuses for the entire year in three months. For half a year, maybe, but not a year.’

  The others began to agree but their headmistress was all brisk determination. ‘We have to move forward,’ she said and there was something so implacable about her tone that dissent was quashed – for the time being.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter with her?’ Morag said when she and Elizabeth were alone in the cloakroom afterwards, putting on their straw hats. ‘I’ve never known her ride roughshod over us before. Have we done something wrong?’

  ‘It could be grief,’ Elizabeth said sagely. ‘It takes people in all sorts of odd ways. But we mustn’t let her do it, no matter what the reason might be. It isn’t sensible to put us all under pressure, especially at this time of year.’

  The pressure was maintained. The next morning there was a notice on the staff notice board detailing the dates by which each syllabus should be completed.

  ‘Good heavens!’ Alice Genevra said. ‘She’s given us our marching orders.’

  ‘Then we must subvert them,’ Elizabeth said.

  The orders continued. The next morning it was a list of instructions for the invigilation of the examinations. ‘Totally unnecessary,’ Morag said. ‘They’re exactly the same as they were last year. Nothing’s changed. We can invigilate them in the same way.’

  The next morning it was a list of the senior forms that would be required to take assembly together with the dates on which the assemblies would be.

  ‘We do this by consultation,’ Morag said. ‘Not dictate. It might not be convenient for a form to take assembly at the time she’s specified. Mine certainly couldn’t. They’ve got Geography that day and I want them fresh for it. I shall go and see her.’

  It didn’t get her anywhere. The headmistress was adamant. It was, as Morag reported to the others, as if she’d become a different person.

  ‘What are we to do about it?’ Mabel Ollerington wanted to know. ‘I can’t possibly get a year’s syllabuses ready by September. I’ve only just found out how to write them.’

  ‘We will have a staff meeting without her,’ Elizabeth said, ‘and decide which of her suggestions – we will assume that that is what they are – which of her suggestions we are prepared to agree to.’

  ‘And then?’ Mabel asked.

  ‘Then I will see her again and tell her what we have decided.’

  ‘Would you like company?’ Sarah Fletcher offered.

  ‘No,’ Elizabeth said. ‘It would be better if I were on my own. I’m the oldest member of her staff, so she would expect me to take the lead.’

  Even so she found it daunting to face her transformed headmistress with such a task in hand, and could feel her heart quailing when she admitted that they had called a meeting without her.

  ‘Really?’ Octavia said. ‘That is a little extraordinary surely.’

  ‘We are in an extraordinary situation.’

  Octavia let that pass. ‘So what decisions have you made? Since I assume that was the purpose of the meeting.’

  ‘We are not at all happy about having to prepare a year’s syllabuses by September,’ Elizabeth told her. ‘It’s very short notice and none of us think it can be done, or at least, none of us think it can be done to our satisfaction, which is what we would all like to do. Half a year’s syllabuses would be possible, a year’s no.’

  ‘I see. Is that all?’

  Now that she’d begun, Elizabeth was finding it easier. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We discussed the invigilation timetable too and would prefer to work to the old one, the one we used last year. It worked very well and we’re familiar with it. And we’d like to draw up the rota for assemblies between us, so that we don’t ask too much of our girls at exam time.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No,’ Elizabeth said, adding, rather stiffly, ‘If there were any way we could accede to your requests we would have found it. Unfortunately there is not.’

  Octavia was angry. She couldn’t deny it. And although she did what she could to control it, her anger was clear in the tone of her voice. ‘I would have thought my
requests, as you put it, were perfectly reasonable,’ she said, ‘and well within the bounds of acceptance. I intend to draw up my own syllabuses by September. I’m not asking you to do anything I am not prepared to do myself.’

  They were being so coldly distant with one another that Elizabeth lost her temper too. ‘It’s all very well for you,’ she said. ‘You are superhuman. We are mere flesh and blood with clay feet. We can’t keep up with you and it is, if you will forgive me for saying so, unrealistic of you to expect us to.’

  ‘I have never claimed to be superhuman – as you put it,’ Octavia said. ‘I am merely looking for ways to make our lives easier and that seemed an obvious way.’

  ‘To you perhaps, but not to us.’

  It was a quarrel and they’d reached stalemate. ‘Very well then,’ Octavia said. ‘If that is really your unanimous opinion.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Smith, it is.’

  That ‘Miss Smith’ was just a little too formal not to have been deliberate. It’s as if she’s putting a barrier between us, Octavia thought, and there have never been barriers between us. ‘Then we will consider my suggestion rejected,’ she said. ‘Personally, I think you are being unwise but this is a democratic school and I will abide by the democratic process.’

  Elizabeth pressed on. ‘And your other suggestions?’

  ‘I will abide by the democratic process,’ Octavia said. ‘If you wish to use last year’s invigilation timetable that is up to you. I think that’s unwise too, but it’s your decision. I trust you will inform me as to the matter of the assemblies. And now you must excuse me, I have a telephone call to make.’

  So Elizabeth gathered up her papers and left. She might have won her case, but she was extremely unhappy to have done it in this angrily formal way. It hadn’t been natural to either of them, as she told her colleagues later in the day.

  Once she was on her own, Octavia realised how extremely upset she was. She was glad she’d been able to maintain her dignity and accept their decisions more or less gracefully, but it was profoundly troubling to have found herself in the middle of a quarrel. It wasn’t necessary to call me superhuman, she thought. That was uncalled for. It was almost as if she was baiting me. I can’t understand it at all. I’ll sound Pa out this evening and see what he has to say.

  She chose her moment carefully and asked her question as casually as she could, making a joke of it. ‘One of my staff called me superhuman today,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that ridiculous?’

  J-J gave her a shrewd look, sensing that she’d been hurt. ‘Odd perhaps,’ he said, ‘but not entirely unexpected.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Pa,’ she said. ‘That’s not fair. You’re as bad as Elizabeth. I’ve never claimed to be anything other than ordinary, now have I? I’m an ordinary woman.’

  ‘Ordinary women don’t usually get themselves arrested and go to gaol for their beliefs,’ her father told her, wryly. ‘Nor travel across the Atlantic on their own, come to that. Nor…’

  ‘Ordinary woman do all sorts of things when they’re in extraordinary circumstances,’ Octavia argued. ‘But they don’t lay claim to anything special about their personalities. Not even Mrs Pankhurst does that. Others do it for her but she is modesty itself.’

  ‘You are not going to claim that you are modest, surely to goodness,’ J-J laughed.

  ‘I don’t see any reason why not,’ Octavia said crossly. ‘I never brag. Or lay claim to talents I don’t possess. And I don’t ask my staff to do anything I’m not prepared to do myself. I don’t understand what’s got into them.’ Then she realised that she’d said more than she intended and stopped abruptly, noticing the quick eye messages that were being sent between her parents.

  ‘Maybe,’ Amy said, joining the conversation gently, ‘it is something that has got into you, my dear. It is just possible you should consider that. You’ve been like a bear with a sore head ever since Maud and Ralph were killed.’

  ‘That’s understandable, surely.’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ her mother said. ‘But you must remember that we are your family and understand you better than your teachers might be expected to do.’

  ‘We’ve been working together for four years,’ Octavia said. ‘And working closely. They ought to be able to understand me by now.’

  J-J decided it was time to change the subject. ‘Have you any more of that excellent tart, my love?’ he said. ‘Mrs Wilkins has excelled herself for us this evening.’

  ‘I think I shall go and see Em tonight,’ Octavia said, following his lead. ‘It’s high time I did. She must be wondering what’s got into me to leave her for so long.’ And escaped.

  But she couldn’t escape her thoughts and they kept her awake and unhappy all night. That awful word had burnt itself into her brain. Superhuman, she thought. It was ridiculous. And unkind. I’ve never claimed to be anything other than ordinary, no matter what Pa might say, but from the way she was talking you’d think I’d been acting like a dictator, like that terrible man Mussolini who’s bullying the Italians. You’d think I’d been imposing my will on them instead of working with them. I haven’t done that, have I? Or maybe I have. Maybe she was telling me something I ought to hear. Or at least listen to.

  But it was hateful to call me superhuman. It was diminishing. It made me sound less than human. It was uncalled for. Especially when all I was trying to do was to make their lives a little easier. That was all it was. Why couldn’t they see it? I’d thought it all out, the way I always do, and it was helpful and necessary or I wouldn’t have done it. So why did they have to turn down every single thing I suggested? It doesn’t make sense. Unless they were bad suggestions. But I don’t make bad suggestions. I’ve never made a bad suggestion in all the years I’ve been teaching. At least not as far as I know. But then again that could be because nobody’s ever told me they were bad suggestions. So they could have been bad, if I’m honest, and I simply haven’t known it.

  But why did they call a meeting behind my back? They didn’t have to do that. It’s as if they were afraid of me, as if I were an enemy instead of a friend and ally. Am I an enemy? No surely not. We’ve worked together like friends. Good friends. I can be a bit dictatorial sometimes, I’ll admit that – but not an enemy. What was it Ma said? That I’d been like a bear with a sore head. Was that the sign of someone being dictatorial? Grumpy certainly but surely not dictatorial. Or was it? Have I really lived thirty-three years without knowing myself? It was an appalling thought. But do we ever really know ourselves? Maybe there are corners of our personalities that we shy away from and keep hidden, because we can’t bear to face them. Maybe this is one of them. I don’t want to think I’m a bully. That’s obvious. So maybe I ought to.

  If I were still with Tommy, she thought, he’d tell me straight out. He was always so open. It was one of the best things about him. I only had to look at his face to know what he was thinking. And the memory of him suddenly filled her mind – his tender mouth, those passionate eyes, his strength and good sense, and for a few anguished minutes she missed him as keenly as she’d done when they first parted and ached to be in his arms and comforted. Oh, my dear Tommy, she thought, if only you were here now, you’d know what I ought to do. But she was being foolish. They had parted and she was on her own, for good or ill, and she must make the best of it. If she had been a bully she must come to terms with it and then do something about it.

  But it was all distressingly difficult and when the hall clock struck six, she was no nearer to finding an answer to her questions than she’d been when she went to bed. At that point, she abandoned all hope of sleeping and got up. The house was so quiet it was as if she were all on her own. She put on her dressing gown and walked over to her desk. She was up and wide awake and she might as well make use of her time by writing up her journal. Heaven knows she had enough to write about.

  And there, staring up at her from the last page she’d written were her own peculiarly prophetic words. ‘It is always war and fighting, the illogical and no
n-proven belief that one human being can prevail over the wishes or needs or beliefs of another by hitting him or bullying him…’

  ‘Physician heal thyself,’ she wrote.

  She came down to breakfast obviously tired and with dark shadows under her eyes, which her parents, having talked about her late into the night, were careful not to comment upon.

  ‘Pa,’ she said, as she spread butter on her toast, ‘you wouldn’t say I was a bully, would you?’

  J-J smiled at her. ‘Is that a statement or a question?’ he asked.

  Her heart sank. ‘In other words “yes”.’

  ‘You’ve always wanted to change the world,’ he told her. ‘Ever since you were a little thing. You see a problem, a difficulty, something unfair or unkind and you immediately want to change it. Women’s suffrage, the education system, war, the state of the country. Nothing is safe when you’re on your warhorse.’

  ‘But does that make me a bully?’

  ‘When you have the bit between your teeth, you do tend to gallop.’

  ‘In other words, “yes”,’ she said again. It was very dispiriting.

  ‘On the other hand,’ Amy said, taking a second slice of toast from the rack, ‘there are other aspects of your personality that more than make up for it. For a start, you are loving. Very loving. You would never willingly hurt anyone in any way and we all know it. And secondly, you admit to your mistakes. You always have. Even when you were quite a little thing and you knocked the tea tray over in the hall – do you remember? – you owned up to it straight away and washed the carpet when your father told you to and never complained. These are great strengths, my darling, and very admirable.’