And so this was what little Fleur Lipscott had picked to share with the poor unfortunate girls. I could hardly believe it. Where was Robinson Crusoe? Where Gulliver? Where Oliver and Pip and Alice and Cathy and all her friends from childhood? For Fleur had spent all day every rainy day – and portions even of fine ones – holed up in a loft with a bag of toffees, and I recalled her emerging with shining eyes and demanding paper and pens and solitude while she began her Great Novel.
‘With islands and pirates and pickpockets and a raging fire and orphans and a stolen inheritance and a wedding,’ she had announced to us all. ‘And a ghost. Don’t disturb me until it’s done.’
I cast my eyes over the seven volumes before me on the desk, doubting whether there was a single pirate amongst the lot of them, and went on a treasure hunt for what I was sure must exist somewhere.
I was right: in the big cupboard built into the corner of the room, where exercise books and bottles of ink were stored (and also, I noticed, a large trunk full of veils and swords and the like to help with the acting out of the plays), there was a bookcase, and upon that bookcase by the mercy of Providence were still ranged the books which had held sway in the English classroom of St Columba’s before the strange Miss Lipscott had swept them away.
A very happy twenty minutes later I had made my selections. The little ones were to have Kidnapped, the second form Rob Roy, the third form (who deserved the most pity of all after The Canterbury Tales) were to be rewarded with Tam o’Shanter. The lower fourth were going to see a side of Donne at which his Holy Sonnets had not hinted, although I would avoid the farthest reaches: they were fifteen, after all, not forty. The fifth had to stick with Piers Plowman for their exam but I would intersperse it with Jane Eyre as a corrective. The lower sixth, I decided, could leave King Lear out on the moor to take his chances and turn to the rather more thrilling adventures of Macbeth instead and, to soothe the troubled brains of the upper sixth, busy cramming Paradise Lost, I would require them to read one each day of Shakespeare’s sonnets starting with ‘O, never say that I was false of heart’, Sonnet 109, which was my favourite. (Already I could tell that the power of being the schoolmistress, with the key to the cupboard where the books were kept, was going to my head and threatening to ruin me.)
At luncheon, where the roast beef fulfilled every bit of its fragrant promise, although one could have played deck quoits with the Yorkshire puddings (for no doubt the cook was a Scotchwoman and it will out somewhere), I slipped the tiniest little border trowel into the palm of my hand and did as minute and discreet a portion of digging as could properly be called digging at all.
‘What of your extra-curricular hours, girls?’ I said. ‘I’m very happy to take over Miss Lipscott’s duties there.’
‘Cramming,’ said Katie.
‘Yes, stuffing Paradise down our gullets like pelicans with herrings,’ said Spring. She had taken the news that it was too late to change the examination paper very badly.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Yes, poor dears. I remember it well.’ This was a lie, of course; I had never sat an examination in my life unless one could count the beady-eyed way I was watched making introductions at finishing-school sherry parties (and in all honesty one could not). ‘But the other forms? Do you happen to know? Did Miss Lipscott have a weekly round?’ Five pairs of eyes gazed back at me, with varying expressions of interest and disdain, but none with comprehension. ‘Sewing Club on a Monday, Rambling Club on a Tuesday, Country Dancing on a Wednesday, that sort of thing…?’ I had put the notion of rambling on a Tuesday into the list with great care.
‘Oh no, the mistresses don’t concern themselves much with our Societies,’ said Sally. ‘Too busy marking.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘And what Societies are there?’
‘Well, not sewing, thank goodness,’ said Stella. ‘And not country dancing – what a thought.’
‘We used to have all sorts of dancing but there’s none now,’ said Sally.
‘Miss Lovage does teach Dance,’ said Eileen. ‘But Dance isn’t dancing, really.’ Spring and Katie began to giggle.
‘Imagine going to a party and doing Miss Lovage’s Dance!’
‘Imagine at our coming-out balls. If we did Dance!’
‘We’d be taken to a sanatorium and tied to our beds with stout rope.’
‘Now, now,’ I said, although my lips were twitching. ‘And what about rambling? One would have thought with these lovely cliff walks and the ruined castles and all…’
‘I think some of the younger girls tramp about a bit,’ said Stella. ‘Especially the Scotch ones.’
‘It’s on Sunday afternoons,’ said Eileen. ‘Quite fun, actually. We – they, I mean – they take nature sheets and try to collect things. Almost like a treasure hunt, you see?’
‘Sunday afternoons,’ I said. ‘Right-ho.’ There was no chance that No. 5 had been in the water six days so, no matter how many girls had been tramping about the cliffs with nature sheets at the last ramblers’ outing, they could not have seen anything useful to me. I tried another tack. ‘I didn’t realise that the art mistress might teach dancing too,’ I said.
‘Not dancing, Miss Gilver,’ said Katie. ‘Daahhhnce!’ The giggles started to break out once more and I did not have to summon any schoolmistressishness to start tutting.
‘You’re all very silly for such great big girls,’ I said. ‘I could excuse it in the little ones. What of Miss Taylor and Miss Bell? Had they other strings to their bow? I’m afraid I shall only be teaching English to you. Although I do have some circus training, I suppose.’ Thus I attempted to ingratiate and glamorise myself with them, and certainly I loosened their tongues.
‘Tinker Bell and The Maid were scholars, Miss Gilver,’ said Spring.
‘The Maid?’ I said.
‘Of Orleans,’ said Katie. ‘History mistress, you see?’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And so Juliet for Miss Lipscott, because of Shakespeare?’
‘Scholars,’ went on Spring without answering my interruption, ‘dry, dusty and devoted. No time for anything else. They and Miss Fielding were all at Somerville together – pioneers of the day – and we always thought – that is, Mummy always told me – that they had to be whiter than white. No high jinks or they’d be out on their ear.’
‘I didn’t mean to suggest high jinks!’ I said. ‘Astronomy, perhaps. Or woodcarving.’
‘Or circus tricks, quite,’ drawled Stella.
‘What kind of circus tricks?’ Sally asked. ‘I’d love to be able to juggle.’
‘Oh, me too,’ said Spring. ‘Or standing up on a horse in a bathing suit. Just to annoy Daddy. He’s still quite keen on side-saddle, Miss Gilver, if you can believe it these days.’
‘Dogs,’ I said, and it was rather difficult to keep mopping up gravy with the last of my Yorkshire pudding while crossing my fingers. ‘I can’t juggle myself but I have a Dalmatian at home who can.’ I warmed to it and uncrossed my fingers. There was a kernel of truth in this. Bunty had never quite forgotten the wonderful things she had learned in her short sojourn at the circus three years before and even my bumbling instead of the expertise of the circus folk could not dislodge it.