No Talking after Lights

by Angela Lambert

  ‘I’ll find out for you. And now, Constance, since you weren’t able to go to church this morning, and you need the love of God particularly at this time, I want you to close your eyes and fold your hands and say a prayer with me. Dear God, the Father of us all …’

  When Mrs Birmingham had gone, Constance lay back in bed with a great sigh. She thought about Raeburn and the hundreds of details that had arranged themselves into the pattern of her daily life. The clang of the rising bell in the mornings. The squeak and drumming of sandalled feet hurrying downstairs to line up in the Covered Way for the breakfast gong. Bed-making, with her nightie neatly folded under the pillow and the counterpane smoothed over. Lining up again for Break, wondering if there’d be a letter. Sitting in the Reading Corner, looking through Punch or The Pony Club Magazine or The Field - those remote worlds lived in by other people, so different from her own.

  She thought of Rest, when everyone lay on their beds after lunch ‘to digest’ and after that, the hurry and excitement as you changed into games things and took your tennis racquet, heavy inside its wooden press, up to the courts for a practice, or the drowsy peace of playing cricket and being a fielder. She thought how funny it always looked, as barefooted girls in bathing-suits zig-zagged delicately over the gravel on their way up to the swimming-pool. Diving - the proud bliss of that swallow dive, as her body did exactly what it was meant to do, quite independently of her mind. The sun beating down on the games field during house-matches, when you cheered and made daisy-chains: sticking a fingernail into one stalk and pushing the next one through, like threading a needle, until finally you had a wilting string of pink and white daisies to drape round your neck. Shouting encouragement to the school team: Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? RAEBURN!’

  And then the evenings - the beautiful, light-hearted evenings, grubbing in the earth round Charmie’s roses while, just within earshot, people shrieked with the excitement of playing Kick the Can. The soft fur of Flopsy and his tremulous affection as she cuddled him and stroked his twitching nose. Cosy evenings sitting hunched up on the floor of the library reading while next door the common-room was noisy with gramophones and shouts of laughter or protest. Bath-night, twice a week: four baths in one bathroom, each with a shining, soapy figure giggling and splashing water over those who passed by. And finally bedtime, and the way they’d all listened as she told them the story of Sohrab and Rustum. She’d changed the ending, but no-one had noticed. And at the end of every day, the wood-pigeons cooing, always cooing in the high trees beyond the dormitory.

  It had all been strung together in a familiar routine, and one she had learned to take pleasure in. You’ll find your niche, Daddy had told her, and it was true after all. Charmie wouldn’t be there next term to bully her, but Sheila might - and who would be friends with poor Sheila except her? I don’t want to leave, thought Constance in despair; I don’t want to leave!

  Thirteen

  A week later, the Head sat alone in her silent study. The school had broken up. Trunks had been hauled down from the dormitories and piled by the front and back entrances. Carter Paterson’s vans had collected them and driven off. Excited girls, in a cacophony of tears and laughter and cries of ‘Hope you have good hols! Will you write? Promise you won’t forget?’ had been taken away by their parents, or driven in the school coach to the local station and put on the train up to London.

  There had been a final staff meeting. Miss Parry had regretted to announce that she would not be back next term; she had found an excellent post at a school in Wales, where she would be nearer her ailing mother. Mrs Birmingham, knowing that she was lying, had said nothing.

  Reports had been completed and sent out. ‘Constance has the potential to be a real asset to the school,’ Mrs Birmingham had written. ‘She has an excellent, inquiring mind and a remarkable feel for poetry. We should be very sorry not to see her again.’ She hoped her plea would be heard, but suspected that it would not. Mr King’s outrage had made itself plain down several thousand miles of telephone line.

  Hermione was another whom she would probably not see again. Her parents had been tight-lipped when they came to collect her, though the upper-class conventions of bland courtesy had held while Hermione was in their midst. Then, just as they were leaving, Mr Mailing-Smith, a heavy, choleric figure, had turned back.

  ‘Perhaps I might have a final word?’ he had asked. She had taken him into the study and closed the door.

  ‘What am I to say to her future husband?’ he had expostulated. That my daughter is damaged goods?’

  ‘Hermione,’ she had answered him evenly, ‘is not, as you put it, “damaged goods”. She was the unfortunate victim of an attack, from which she was rescued in good time. She is still virgo intacta, Mr Mailing-Smith.’

  When will fathers stop thinking they own their daughters? she thought wearily. When will men stop demanding virginity - and taking it, wherever they find it?

  Some of the teachers had lingered for a day or two, finishing reports or sorting out next year’s timetables and ordering text books, but now only Miss Parry remained. In an awkward, belated gesture of sympathy and (she admitted to herself) curiosity, Henrietta had invited her to dine at the Lodge that evening, but Sylvia had replied brusquely,

  ‘I am driving to Wales this afternoon. It will not be possible.’

  The kitchen staff had gone, the Scandies home to Sweden, the cook back to her house in the village. Yesterday, after finishing the accounts and writing out individual bills to be enclosed with each girl’s school report, Peggy too had left for the holidays. Every year she and a woman friend spent a month in Italy visiting the voluptuous masterpieces of another time, another world. The two tall, dry spinsters would go from museum to church to gallery, guidebooks in hand, noting the details of painterly technique and quoting Berenson to one another, while before their eyes sumptuous amber flesh spilled across the canvases or marble statues intertwined, striving, striving for union.

  The great house lay still, bathed in the morning glow of a brilliant July. The roller stood abandoned under the cedar tree. I have to engage a gardener, thought Mrs Birmingham, and someone to help him. I have to advertise for another biology teacher. I have two sets of prospective parents coming this afternoon and please God, let them decide to send their daughters here. After what happened to Hermione and Constance King, and with the polio epidemic as well, it isn’t going to be easy. Word gets around.

  Finally, she allowed herself to think about Lionel, shrinking daily towards his death under the impassive eyes of the nurse. Almighty God, she prayed, I have sinned. I have failed my husband and failed the girls who were placed in my charge. I am not worthy of Thy love. Yet I pray Thee, of Thy all-forgiving goodness, let my husband live until his son comes home. Do not let me be alone when he dies, I beseech Thee. Amen.

  On her desk a bowl of roses flared crimson, orange and yellow, as lush as a funeral bouquet. I am afraid, she thought; I am afraid of death and loneliness and failure. I have to be strong, but I feel helpless.

  The great iron ring on the front door rattled, and she heard the rustle of post falling into the wire basket inside. Henrietta Birmingham stood up, bracing one hand on the desk to help her get to her feet, and fetched the morning’s mail. She picked out the jagged red and blue edging of an aerogram and, reaching for her father’s crested silver paperknife, she slit open her son Jamie’s letter first. Her heartbeat quickened and she muttered under her breath, please God, please God, not knowing what it was she asked for.

  Darling Mater,

  Your news came as a great shock. I had no idea that Father was so gravely ill. I have managed to arrange for my leave to start a week early, and Juniper and I will be flying by BOAC from Hong Kong into London Airport, arriving at 11.15 on the morning of Friday, August 1st.

  Tomorrow! Jamie would be here tomorrow! Her eyes skimmed the paragraphs. There it was, right at the end. The words leapt off the page. ‘Her surname, by the way, is Fung. Juniper F
ung. It’s a beautiful name, I think. Much nicer, poor her, than Juniper Birmingham.’

  Late that same night, Henrietta, having dismissed the nurse, sat alone beside her husband’s bed. The night-light on the bedside table cast deep, contoured shadows across the dry furrows on one side of his face, and the shadows quivered and slid each time he drew a long, subterranean breath. Two cups of untouched tea had grown a stagnant, greyish skin. The clock ticked very loudly. It was almost midnight. Exhausted by prayers so fervent that she had fallen into a trance-like state, disembodied, communing directly with her God, Henrietta dozed.

  Half a mile away, in the cottage at the end of the drive, Sylvia Parry paced up and down the cramped lounge. She had drunk a bottle of sherry, finished the gin which she had found hidden behind the bread-bin in the larder, and now she was on the last of the cider. She swung the bottle up and down, waving her arms as though conducting. ‘Dance for your Daddy-o,’ she sang; and then, ‘Cry, baby bunting/Your Daddy’s gone a-hunting.’ Noticing that drops of cider were flying out of the bottle and blotching the letter she had been trying to write, she put the bottle to her mouth and drained it. Then she stood still, rocking slightly on her feet.

  Now what? she said to herself. Now what?

  A cigarette packet lay on the table, but the matchbox was empty. How did that happen? she thought. Careless. Didn’t notice. She picked up the matchbox and shook it. Definitely empty.

  ‘Blast!’ she shouted. ‘Blast and fucking damnation! No fucking booze and no fucking matches either!’ She went into the kitchen, and there (good old Diana) was a household box of Bryant & May placed neatly on the shelf beside the gas cooker. Time for a fag. Here’s another nail in your coffin. She lit up, inhaled deeply, and walked purposefully back to the lounge.

  ‘Dear old Monkey,’ the letter began. She took a red biro and wrote with firm strokes on a fresh sheet of paper: ‘Dear Diana, I am writing to wish you well in the future and thank you for your patience and understanding

  ‘NO!’ she shouted, smashing the cigarette into the wet ring in a saucer.

  ‘No, damnation, no, no, no, no!’

  She stood up, trembling, and her head and shoulders slumped. ‘No …’ she whimpered. ‘Oh, no, please, no, not again …’ She rolled her head from side to side, hearing the tense bones in her neck crack.

  What’s the matter? she asked herself soothingly. Go on, you can tell me. Tell me your secrets, Sylvie duck. Safe with me. The wheedling voice inside her head fluted its goblin questions. Is it Hermione, then? Pretty, pretty Hermione? But you can’t have her, my lovey, can you now?

  ‘Shut up!’ she shouted aloud. ‘Shut bloody up!’

  Her legs buckled, and she collapsed awkwardly into one of the sagging armchairs, SAFETY MATCHES, said the box on the table next to her. With an effort, for it slipped off the first time, she balanced her foot across one knee and tried to strike a match against the sole of her shoe. There was a rasping sound, but no spark. She tried again, pressing harder. Still nothing. She threw the matches across the room, then lumbered to her feet and retrieved them. She lit another cigarette and leaned against the mantelpiece, flicking ash into the curving reflector of the dusty, one-bar electric fire.

  Filled with inchoate energy and no way to discharge it, she leant forward and slammed her forehead against the wall several times, harder and harder, until it hurt so much that she was forced to stop. She kicked the edge of the lino where it curled against the tiles of the fireplace, then bent down and began to pull off threads of matting where it had frayed along the edge. Stroking her throbbing forehead, she talked to herself, mumbling harshly. ‘Alone again; on my tod, now and for ever, for ever and ever, Amen. Should have gone to supper with Old Ma B. Never seen inside the Lodge. Crumbling to dust, I expect. Like that husband of hers. Who needs husbands? Who needs fucking anyone? I need fucking, that’s for sure.’

  Need to spend a penny. The bladder is a muscular sac which, at its fullest capacity, holds over a pint of liquid. Bottle of sherry, three-quarters; plus maybe a quarter bottle of gin, makes one pint, plus another half pint of cider. Time to piss, Sylvia. Got to go upstairs to the bog.

  She had to hold onto the rickety banister as she lumbered up the stairs. Sitting on the warm wooden seat of the lavatory, she released a hissing stream of urine. The bathroom was garishly lit by one unshaded bulb. On the shelf above the basin was another box of matches, in case the pilot light on the Ascot went out. She stared at them, then lowered her head to look at her feet planted on the checked linoleum floor. There were pools of rust around the claw feet of the bath. She looked back at the matches. ‘Bloody awful life,’ she said, speaking clearly and emphatically. It was quite dark outside. The owl hooted, and in the distance a dog barked. ‘Bloody. Awful. Life.’ She began to chant it, running the words together: ‘Bloodyawfulife, I’ve gottabloodyawfulife, hate my bloodyawfulife.’

  Sylvia rose to her feet. She pulled her knickers up, and smoothed the good Liberty skirt down over her hips. She walked across to the Ascot and blew out the pilot light. She turned the hot tap full on so that water gushed into the bath and, using the handle of her toothbrush, held down the bi-metal strip. She could hear the steady, soft roar of gas below the rush of running water. She began counting out loud, slowly, distinctly, not hurrying, even though after a while the nauseating smell of gas made her feel wobbly. When she had reached fifty she said, ‘Hermione. Goodbye, my love. And bye-bye Monkey.’

  She struck a match. With a thunderous crack, the gas ignited. A tongue of fire shot out and the room exploded with golden light.

  Twenty minutes later, woken by the frantic barking and whining of her dog, the gardener’s wife drew back the curtains of her bedroom window and leaned out to shout it down. Far away, over the other side of the fields, she could see bright sparks of flame spitting and whizzing into the night. She ran downstairs to the telephone. ‘Fire,’ she gasped, before she had even dialled. ‘Fire. Fire. Fire.’

  The bedroom in the Lodge reverberated with the dry sound of two people breathing. Henrietta, fully dressed, slept at last. Her white head had fallen forward on to her chest, her shoulders were slack, her hands lay one across the other in her lap, palms upward. Beside her, Lionel’s wheezing punctuated her quicker, shallower breaths.

  In the drawing-room, the telephone began to ring.

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  The school in this book is based on the girls’ boarding-school which I attended in the 1950s, for after spending seven years there I would find it hard to imagine any other; and the Headmistress described - as my affectionate tribute to her lifelong influence - has the actual appearance of the Headmistress who presided over us. All other characters, staff and girls, their history and families, are wholly fictional, as are the events.

  I am grateful to Jack and Libby Clough for their hospitality in Gower and for their knowledge of the peninsula, which they generously shared with me.

  I would also like to thank my editor, Clare Alexander, for her patience and skill.

  To Dee Bryan-Brown

  my best friend for thirty years

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © Angela Lambert 1990

  The moral right of author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

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  make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means

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  ISBN: 9781448204137

  eISBN
: 9781448203543

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