I had backed off the whole shoplifting season for a month or so, opting out of trips or insisting that I had to go to another shop without Bear or Pickle or Snorter, where I wouldn’t find anything I liked enough to steal.
“Oh, Balders, you just don’t get it,” said Pickle, chewing the sides of her already raw fingers. “You don’t have to like it or want it to nick it. You just do it for the thrill, you div.”
I was being edged out of the gang, I could feel the foundations of our dorm starting to tremble beneath my feet. I needed them. I needed to feel that I was part of the team.
So, one Saturday, after the three forty-minute lessons that took up the morning, we all hopped on our bicycles to head off to the Cold Ash village store, Foxgroves. It was about a mile down the road, and we were only allowed to go there on weekends. It was December, a week before the end of term, and we had decided to give each other a special Christmas whacky-bee—a bit like a stocking, only with stuff we actually liked.
I had saved up my pocket money so that I could buy some proper presents for the others. All our money was kept in a safe, and you had to be supervised by the housemistress if you took any of it out, signing in a book to confirm the amount.
I didn’t want to steal stuff, because this was a show of mutual respect and affection—you couldn’t just pass on “hot property.” I was in the far-right corner of the shop, inspecting the furry toys, when Snorter came up behind me.
“Look at these,” she whispered. She had in her hand three sets of tiny plastic mechanical feet. When you twisted the button on the side, like winding up a watch, they marched forward. They looked like brightly colored Doc Marten boots, and Snorter thought Bear and Pickle would love them.
“Cool,” I said, as this was the stock response.
“The thing is,” said Snorter, “I haven’t got any money and I haven’t got the right clothes on to, you know, ‘get’ them . . .”
Her voice trailed off and she looked at me with baleful eyes.
“I can buy them for you,” I said. I pulled out a ten-pound note from my pocket. “Look!”
“Don’t buy them, Balders. Christ, you div. Don’t buy them. Get them for me.” Her voice was urgent.
Snorter left the mechanical feet on the shelf beside me and walked to the cash register to chat to the shopkeeper. I could hear them laughing and realized that she was trying to distract Mr. Fell for me. So I took the three mechanical pairs of feet and slipped them into the enormous square pockets of my very square jacket.
I walked up to the cash register to pay for the other presents I had found, and Mr. Fell looked at me strangely.
“Is that all?” he said.
“Yes,” I smiled. “I think it is for now.”
“Are you sure?” He seemed to look straight into my soul as he asked.
I had been here before, so I knew that I could get away with it. We were invincible. Besides, they were only mechanical feet—it wasn’t a leather jacket.
“Thank you so much.” I smiled at him again as I paid and turned to go. “You have lovely things in here.”
If I had looked back, I would have seen the sadness in Mr. Fell’s face. I would have seen him shaking his head as he picked up the phone.
I gave Snorter the feet as soon as we got back to our dorm, and she hugged me.
“Cheers, Balders. You’re a rock. The others thought you’d lost your nerve, but I knew better.”
She patted me on the back. I sank into a beanbag to read my book, An Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Hornung. It was about a gentleman thief called Raffles. An hour or so later, there was a heavy knock on the door.
“Come in,” I shouted from my beanbag. Raffles was climbing over the rooftops with a diamond necklace in his dinner-jacket pocket. I kept reading. I looked up when I heard a clearing of the throat.
Mrs. Hamilton, the housemistress of Ancren Gate, was standing just inside the door. I had always thought she looked a bit like a rabbit, with buck teeth, fluffy hair and an edgy way about her. She seemed to be hopping from one foot to another.
“Clare, Miss Farr wants to see you.” She sounded terrified. “I really don’t know what it can be about on a Saturday but you are to go to her drawing room. Immediately.”
I closed my book. I really was calm, considering my little world was about to explode in the most unfortunate way. I patted the blanket on top of my bed as I left the room.
My legs carried me downstairs and on to my bicycle, but my brain had gone into neutral. I knew disaster awaited me, and I was flatlining. Don’t look into Medusa’s eyes, I thought. You will turn to stone.
Miss Farr was our headmistress. She was a jolly sort, round-faced, pale-blond hair scraped back into a sort of a do that none of us could work out. It wasn’t a bun, but it all folded in on itself and seemed magically to stay in place, except when she played lacrosse, when it would escape from the pins and stray down her head. Miss Farr had been an England lacrosse player, and she personally coached the first team.
I carefully opened the fragile wood and glass double doors that led to the headmistress’s drawing room and walked up the green-carpeted stairs. I knocked at Miss Farr’s door and sat to wait.
“Enter!” said the voice.
My hands were clammy. This didn’t feel good.
“Ah, Clare. Sit down, would you please?” Miss Farr was behind her desk, writing in a large leather-bound book.
I swallowed hard and sat. I looked out of her windows. There were so many of them. There was glass all down the south side of the room and beyond the windows was a stone-flagged balcony that connected the two sides of Aisholt, the house that was as near to the center of the school as possible. As I stared out of the window, I saw two of my year walk across the balcony. They looked in, and I quickly sank into the chair, hoping they wouldn’t see me.
Miss Farr looked up. She did not smile. Her eyes were kind, but I looked away, not wanting to hold her gaze.
“Now, Clare, you have a chance here. A chance I would like you to take. I had high hopes for you, very high hopes indeed.”
She sighed and her shoulders shuddered with the effort.
“I need you to tell me whether you were acting alone,” she said, and then stopped.
“Sorry?” I replied. “What do you mean?”
“There is a video camera at Foxgroves. They had it installed a few years ago, when we had an unfortunate incident. Mr. Fell informs me that you were in the shop this morning and that you left without paying for certain items.”
She paused, and I felt her gaze upon me. I was looking at my hands, which were gripped together in my lap. The rug, I remember, looked Persian.
“That,” continued Miss Farr, “is beyond dispute. It is captured on film. You will be suspended immediately. I am not going to expel you, although I certainly could. What I would like to know is this—were you acting alone or were you told to steal the items?”
“No,” I said immediately. “No, it was just me. No one else. It was all me.”
I thought this is what Hercules would do. He wouldn’t let his friends go down with him.
“I see,” said Miss Farr. “It just strikes me that you are not the strongest character at Ancren Gate and I fear you may have been led astray by other, more daring girls. Are you telling me that this is the first incident of its kind and that you are the only guilty party?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
They would really love me now. I would come back a hero.
“Right,” said Miss Farr. “Well, that is a shame. I have rung your mother already, and she is on her way here to collect you. You are suspended with immediate effect and, as we are only a week from the end of term, you will not be coming back to Downe House until January. By which time, young lady, I hope you will realize the error of your ways.
“I do not wish you to return to Ancren Gate,”
she continued. “You will come here, to Aisholt, where I can keep an eye on you. I think you will find a more suitable set of friends here. Now go.”
Miss Farr picked up her pen and started writing again in her leather-bound book. She did not look up as I left the room. I felt as if I had been in a boxing match and, although bruised and beaten, I had upheld the honor of the noble sport of pugilism. I just needed someone to pass me a towel and raise my arm above my head.
I cycled back to AG and went up to our dorm. There was no sign of Pickle, Bear or Snorter. I started packing and, as I folded my clothes, a tear trickled down my cheek. I organized the three Christmas whacky-bees for my roommates and hid them in the cupboard where I knew they would eventually find them before the end of term. I left a note on top of the dressing table.
“Have a great Christmas. You guys are the best. Love, Balders. xxxx”
As I dragged my trunk down the stairs, I saw Bear appear in the hallway.
“Hey,” I said. “Looks like I got caught, but don’t worry, I didn’t say a word.”
Bear walked straight past me and went up the stairs, without even looking at me. So much for our special bond, our proper friendship. So much for loyalty. I was more hurt by this than anything that had happened that day.
I sat on my trunk at the bottom of that long tarmac road to AG hoping my mother would arrive before the rest of the house came back from watching and playing in matches. I heard the chugging of the Citroën Dyane before I saw it and saw my mother sitting behind the steering wheel, her hair in a ponytail. She was chewing her lip.
“I don’t know what the hell you’ve been up to,” she said, as she lifted one side of the trunk and we lugged it into the car and across the backseats, which were pushed down. “But you’ve got a bloody decent headmistress there. Why on earth she didn’t expel you, I do not know.
“You’d better have those bloody feet with you as well, because we’re taking them back.”
“I can’t, I don’t,” I stammered. “They’re not mine to take back, you see.”
I stopped. To say anything more would be to give the game away, so I fell back on another solution.
“I have this, though.” I pulled out the change that was left from my pocket money. It was nearly eight pounds.
“Well, why the hell didn’t you pay for the things you wanted if you had the money? Honestly, even now we’ve given you the money you’re still stealing. What is your problem?”
My mother slammed the door and walked to the driver’s side. She stopped at Foxgroves and pointed at the door. I got out, went inside to apologize to Mr. Fell and gave him the money for three pairs of mechanical feet. We drove home in a heavy fog of silence.
My father wanted to know exactly what had happened. He knew I was lying, and he told my mother so. It didn’t stop him from being cross, knowing that I had been part of a gang—he was livid—but it did help explain why I had got into such trouble. My father was a blow-up, blowout kind of man: one big eruption and then he would forget about it. Mum was a stewer, and her anger simmered on for weeks, months, even years.
Mum erased any benefit I may have thought I was getting by being on holiday early by banning me from riding. I wasn’t even allowed down to the stud to see Ellie May or Hattie. I offered to help muck out and groom, but Mum wouldn’t have it. She made me work every day in the dining room, as if I was still at school.
I felt as if the oxygen had been turned off at the valve. I was plodding through each day with no joy, no comfort. Please let me off the hook before Christmas Day, I repeated to myself. Please.
Andrew came back from prep school, and the glow around him shone brighter than ever. Grandma came over for tea to hear his stories and to ask him what he wanted for Christmas. She only looked at me once, and said: “I think you can do without a Christmas present this year, don’t you?”
I told Andrew what had happened to me—he was shocked but defended me whenever he thought I was being unfairly blamed for something else. He was my little brother, and he would fight for me.
Once Andrew was home, it was harder for my mother to keep me locked in the dining room all day, so I was partially freed and allowed to ride. Hattie was having the first part of the winter off so, if I wanted to ride something that jumped, it would have to be Ellie May. In my ridiculous Downe House way, I had been a bit of a snob about the heavy-footed, bushy-tailed Ellie May. She was not as fine as Hattie and I had felt faintly embarrassed as I rode through the yard on her.
I decided to take Ellie over on to the farm to jump the drag-hunt fences, just to give myself a thrill. I was still feeling full of self-loathing and my head was dull, as if I was recovering from a concussion. As I turned down Long Meadow, Ellie took it upon herself to wake me up.
She broke into a canter and then picked up the pace, her stride not altering in length but multiplying at a faster rate. I had her on a line toward the first of the fences, a heavy log over red barrels. As we came toward it, I started to lose my nerve and tried to steer her around it, but Ellie wouldn’t hear of it. She ignored my tugging on the reins and attempts to pull her sideways, and set herself like a large ship on a Channel crossing.
I could only sit tight and try to go with her. We sailed over the barrels and, as the tempo increased, we came to the Tiger Trap, then the tractor tires and the row of straw bales. There were three sizes to this last set—nine jumps in all, the biggest of which were about three feet six. Sizable enough for an eleven-year-old riding an unfamiliar horse. I attempted to angle Ellie toward the smaller option, but it was pretty clear by now that she was in charge, and I was too tired to fight. I sat into the saddle, squeezed my legs round her belly and felt her soar off the ground. Once, twice, three times she flew over the big straw bales, which had a thick black telegraph pole on top of them.
It was the first time I had ever jumped the biggest bales at the end of Long Meadow. Ellie May pulled herself up to a trot after she had jumped the last one, then to a walk, puffing at the effort of it all. We had covered a mile in distance, jumped nine large cross-country fences, and all of it had been at her insistence. She turned her head to the left, looking straight at me with her left eye, and then nodded, as if to say, “That’ll teach you, you stuck-up little rich girl.”
As we walked down the chalk path that ran below Smith’s Bushes back toward the farm, I thought about where I had gone wrong so far at Downe House. I had been sucked into valuing appearance and possessions above all else. I had lost my respect for honesty, for kindness and for hard work. Ellie May was the proof I needed that I should not judge anyone on looks alone.
11.
Lily
A life without a boxer dog is a life without laughter. I know this because, after Candy died at the kennel and age had finally caught up with Flossy, my mother stopped laughing.
She still smiled, she still enjoyed life, but she didn’t laugh the way she used to. She didn’t come home to wagging hips and a slobbering, smiling mouth. We now had two lurcher bitches called Jenny and Polly. Jenny was wild and rough-haired, Polly was timid and smooth. They were graceful and beautiful, like the racehorses, but they weren’t funny, they weren’t cuddly and they wouldn’t jump out of a top-floor window if they thought you were being abducted.
After a period of mourning and due respect for Candy and Flossy, my mother finally felt ready to have another boxer. She took me with her to inspect a litter of puppies in Kent, and I chose the one who sucked my pointy chin with her tiny little mouth. She was dark brindle with a white map of Africa across half her neck and down one side, a tiny line of white in the middle of her face and white around her nose. We called her Lily.
We had to wait a few more weeks before she could have all her injections, but my mother smiled all the way home and kept chuckling to herself. She had Lily to look forward to, while I had the beginning of Lent term to dread.
Going back to Downe House
in January 1983 was singularly the most difficult thing I have ever done. I was terrified. A new house, a new group of girls, a new housemistress and the shame that all the teachers knew I was a thief. The one thing I could rely on was that Bear, Snorter and Pickle would stand by me. I was sure that Bear had ignored me on the stairs only because she was annoyed with me for being caught. Now they knew I hadn’t dobbed them in, I would be a hero.
My mother took me back to school and helped me carry my trunk up to my new room in Aisholt Middle East. It was the closest room to the balcony that ran past Miss Farr’s drawing room. I would have to walk in front of her windows at least twice every day, possibly more often. She was true to her word—she would be keeping an eye on me all right.
The housemistress of Aisholt was called Miss Houghton. She had the biggest bosom I had ever seen in my life, bigger even than Grandma’s. Her breasts sat horizontally out of her chest like a tray. She could have balanced a plate and eaten her lunch off them. Quite often, she was eating her lunch or her supper in her study while she held meetings with her girls. I had been brought up not to talk with my mouth full but I was fascinated by the tactic deployed by Miss Houghton. She stored her food in her cheeks like a hamster, pushing it out of the way while she conducted her half of the conversation and then retrieving bits of food and chewing on them while she listened to the answer or the explanation.
Miss Houghton was a kindly soul, but I found it hard to concentrate on what she was saying while I wondered which stop her food was at in its journey from plate to stomach.
“Sit down, please.” She ushered my mother and me into her tiny ground-floor sitting room, right next to the staff room.
“Now, Mrs. Balding,” she said, “I would like you to rest assured that we will keep a close eye, as it were, on young Clare.”
She nodded toward me as she spoke, in case my mother had forgotten who I was.
My Animals and Other Family Page 15
