‘This is private property.’
‘Oh!’ I wheeled round.
‘Unless you’re Miss…?’
‘Gilver,’ I said. ‘Miss-’ I was going to say ‘missus’ but the woman I found myself addressing was such a very miss-ish miss that it died on my lips and she took it to be my matching curt demand for her name, since I had given mine.
‘Shanks,’ she supplied. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Um,’ I said, only now seeing the foolishness of (practically) climbing in over the back fence if I wanted to make sure of a ready welcome. Miss Shanks waited, regarding me stolidly. She was a high-coloured woman, hair so yellow there was almost an orange tint to it and face ruddy enough to clash with the hair. I thought again of Eliza McManus. Miss Shanks was similarly robust in her construction, with short thick arms, short thick legs and a middle like Humpty Dumpty. And she did not dress her frame well. She was wearing a capacious pleated frock, which made her look like a lamp.
‘I’m the headmistress,’ she said, but thankfully it sounded more like an assurance than a threat. Whatever my business was it was also hers, she seemed to say.
‘I’m here… um… I know Miss Lipscott…’ I said, thinking this was good and neutral.
‘Ah-ha!’ said Miss Shanks. ‘For Mademoiselle Beauclerc?’
‘Ah…’ I said.
‘From the agency?’
‘Yes,’ I said, although surprised at its mention. ‘Yes indeed. Gilver and Osborne.’
‘Bon,’ said Miss Shanks. ‘Très bon. We’ve been expecting you. Well, come in, Miss Gilver, come in. We’re just about to start din-dins.’ She turned and stumped off towards a half-open door leading from the terrace into the school.
For some reason, probably since Pearl and Aurora were not welcome here, I had taken it quite for granted that Fleur’s difficulties – whatever they might prove to be – were secret and I was more than a little nonplussed to be welcomed into the very bosom of the school this way. With one look behind me, I followed her.
Inside the door, which was half-glass, one of many half-glass doors set in pairs along the terrace, I found myself in a long plain dining room, with whitewashed walls and an oak floor washed with soap and left unwaxed so that it was pale and dry-looking. Stretching the length of the room were two narrow tables, set for dinner but with yellow cotton cloths instead of white, jugs of water and cups instead of wine glasses and bottles.
‘Sit here,’ said Miss Shanks, leading me to a seat halfway up one of the tables, facing the glass doors. ‘You can have a nice view of the sea tonight since you’re new. Sehr gut. If only it were German… but there isn’t the appetite for German these days and it’s not as though I haven’t tried.’
I said nothing.
‘Sit! Sit!’ said Miss Shanks, summoning a maid to squeeze in an extra place for me.
Once the maid had returned I sat, noticing that she had brought bone-handled silver where all around was Sheffield plate, and a crystal water glass in place of a cup.
‘Where are your things?’ said Miss Shanks. ‘At the front door? Still at the station?’
‘My things are down in the village at the pub,’ I said. ‘I was planning to sleep there tonight.’
‘In the pub?’ said Miss Shanks, rearing backwards a little. ‘Dearie me no, Miss Gilver, that won’t do. We’re quite ready for you. More than ready. After din-dins I’ll let one of the big-uns off prayers and she can show you to your cell.’ Here she let out a peal of laughter and poked my shoulder. ‘I’m joking,’ she said. ‘I meant your room. Here they come.’
Indeed there was a faint babbling like water just released from a far-off dam. It grew louder and louder and was joined by the tramp of feet, and then two sets of doors burst open at the back of the room and a rabble – there is no other word – of girls, big and small, all dressed in yellow shirts and grey gymslips, spread like a flood through the room and threw themselves into seats at the tables.
‘Up, up, upsie-daisies!’ shouted Miss Shanks, powerfully enough to be heard above the din. ‘If you had a sea view at muncheon you have a wall view tonight. Sort yourselves out, girlsies. Chop-chop. Hurry now.’ None of the girls moved but they did stop talking and many of them sat up straight and clasped their hands together. The crowd around me, amongst the tallest, possibly seventeen or so, went as far as to bow their heads, letting the points of their bobs droop almost to the tablecloth.
‘Grace!’ shouted Miss Shanks. ‘Here we go. With a one and a two and a-’
‘Dear Lord Above!’ Their timing was immaculate but the sound of a hundred girls all droning the words together was not devotional. ‘Some hae meat and canna eat and some wad eat that want it. We hae meat and we can eat, sae let the Lord be thankit. Amen.’ And the babble began again as maids began to hand round plates of thick soup and baskets of rolls.
The girl who served me spoke very slowly and rather loud, welcoming me to St Columba’s, and she called me, to my astonishment, ‘mademoiselle’. I blinked and stared after her, feeling realisation begin to creep up on me from far away.
Of course, the misunderstanding had the usual cause. When I did not understand what Miss Shanks meant – spouting French and lamenting German that way – I assumed she meant nothing, and she took the same view of my mentioning Gilver and Osborne. And then what with us both latching on to the shared notion of Miss Lipscott, and our determination not to challenge one another lest we appear to be fusspots, the whole conversation was a failure from start to end. Or rather, it was a failure as far as communication went; from my point of view it was a rousing success for here I was, in the school, sitting drinking soup with half of the sixth form, and if I had the nerve and could remember enough verb conjugations it appeared I was free to stay.
Of course, I did not have the nerve. Not that ‘going undercover’ was unknown to me, but here at St Columba’s there would be a race between the real new mistress turning up, Miss Shanks deciding she had better ask who Gilver and Osborne were when they were at home, and (most likely of all) the paucity of my French vocabulary and the haphazard mess of my grammar undoing my ruse before the first lesson was hardly begun.
I was going to spin it out through this evening, though, since here was a lucky chance to do some detecting, just when I needed all the luck I could find. I was too late, clearly: Fleur had bolted and gone, long enough ago for Miss Shanks to have rung the agency for her successor, but I surmised that the girls must know something and was pondering how much I could ask them. I wondered too if the mistresses – who were dispersed up and down the tables with a view to discipline – would retire to a common room afterwards for coffee and bluestocking chatter; there were certainly no coffee cups to be seen in the dining room anywhere.
For the present, I decided to plunge in with the girls, who had been shooting me little glances and would be more suspicious, surely, if I did not start talking soon, about something, instead of just sitting here.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘My name is Miss Gilver. I’m the new French mistress. Thank you for not falling on me, but do let’s chat now.’
‘Welcome to St Cucumber’s,’ said one of the nearest girls.