Irma Leopold’s visit as far as Mrs Appleyard was concerned could hardly have been worse timed. Only this morning the headmistress had received a highly disturbing letter from Mr Leopold, written immediately on his arrival in Sydney, and demanding a new and fuller inquiry on events leading up to the picnic. ‘Not only on behalf of my own daughter, miraculously spared, but for those unfortunate parents who have still learned nothing of their children’s fate.’ There was mention of a top-rank detective being brought out from Scotland Yard at Mr Leopold’s expense and other looming horrors impossible to thrust aside.
Somehow, to Irma’s surprise, the study was a good deal smaller than she had remembered. Otherwise nothing had changed. There was the same remembered smell of beeswax and fresh ink. The black marble clock on the mantelpiece ticked as loudly as ever. There was an endless moment of silence as Mrs Appleyard seated herself at her desk and the visitor by sheer force of habit dropped a perfunctory curtsey. The cameo brooch on the silk upholstered bosom rose and fell to the old inexorable rhythm.
‘Be seated, Irma. I hear you are completely restored to health.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Appleyard. I am perfectly well now.’
‘And yet you still recollect nothing of your experiences at the Hanging Rock?’
‘Nothing. Doctor McKenzie told me again only yesterday that I may never remember anything after we had begun to walk towards the upper slopes.’
‘Unfortunate. Very. For everyone concerned.’
‘You need hardly tell me that Mrs Appleyard.’
‘I understand you are leaving for Europe shortly?’
‘In a few days I hope. My parents think it is a good idea to get away from Australia for a time.’
‘I see. To be frank with you, Irma, I regret that your parents didn’t think fit for you to complete your education at Appleyard College before embarking on a purely social life abroad.’
‘I am seventeen Mrs Appleyard. Old enough to learn something of the world.’
‘If I may say so, now that you are no longer under my care, your teachers were continually complaining to me of your lack of application. Even a girl with your expectations should be able to spell.’ The words were hardly out of her mouth before she realized that she had made a strategic blunder. It was above all things necessary not to further antagonize the wealthy Leopolds. Money is power. Money is strength and safety. Even silence has to be paid for. The girl had gone alarmingly white in the face. ‘Spelling? Would spelling have saved me from whatever it was that happened on the day of the Picnic?’ The little gloved hand came down hard on the top of the desk. ‘Let me tell you this, Mrs Appleyard: anything of the slightest importance that I learned here at the College I learned from Miranda.’
‘It is a pity,’ the Headmistress said, ‘that you did not acquire something of Miranda’s admirable self-control.’ With an effort of her own will that contracted every nerve and muscle in her body she managed to rise from her chair and enquire, quite graciously, if Irma would care to spend tonight in her old room, on the way to Melbourne?
‘Thank you, no. Mr Hussey is waiting down there in the drive. But I should like to see the girls and Mademoiselle before I go.’
‘By all means! Mademoiselle and Miss Lumley will be taking the class in the gymnasium. For once I think discipline may be relaxed. It is irregular but you may go in and say good-bye. Tell Mademoiselle you have my permission.’
A glacial handshake was exchanged as Irma left for the last time the room where she had so often stood – long, long ago, as a schoolgirl – awaiting commands and reprimands at the Headmistress’s pleasure. She was no longer afraid of the woman behind the closed door, whose hand, seized with an uncontrollable tremor, reached for the bottle of cognac under the desk.
Minnie ambushed in the shadowy regions behind the green baize door came running towards her with open arms. ‘Miss Irma, dear. Tom told me you was in there. Let me look at you. . . . My! a real grown-up young lady!’
Irma bent and kissed the warm soft neck reeking of cheap scent. ‘Dear Minnie. It’s so good to see you.’
‘And you, Miss. Is it true what we hear that you’re not coming back to us after Easter?’
‘Quite true. I’ve only called in today to say good-bye to you all.’ The housemaid sighed. ‘I don’t blame you, neither. Sorry as we all are to be losing you. You’ve no idea what it’s like here these days.’
‘I believe you,’ Irma said, glancing about her at the gloomy hall which Mr Whitehead’s late crimson dahlias in brass vases failed to lighten. Minnie had lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Talk about rules and regulations! The boarders aren’t hardly let open their mouths out of school hours! Well, thank Heaven me and Tom are out of it in a few days’ time.’
‘Oh, Minnie, I am so glad – you’re going to be married?’
‘Easter Monday. Same day as Mam’selle. I told her I reckoned Saint Valentine had pulled it off for both of us and she says, quite serious: “Minnie, you may be right.” Saint Valentine is the patron saint of lovers.’
The gymnasium, commonly known to the boarders as the Chamber of Horrors, was a long narrow room in the West wing, lit only by a row of barred skylights, and designed by the original owner for Heaven knows what domestic purposes: possibly the storage of extra foodstuffs, or unwanted furniture. Now on its bare limewashed walls various instruments for the promotion of female health and beauty had been set out, as well as a rope ladder suspended from the ceiling, a pair of metal rings and parallel bars. In one corner stood a padded horizontal board fitted with leather straps, on which the child Sara, continually in trouble for stooping, was to pass the gymnasium hour this afternoon. A pair of iron dumb-bells which only Tom had enough muscle to lift, weights for balancing on tender female skulls and piles of heavy Indian clubs, proclaimed Authority’s high-handed disregard of Nature’s basic laws.
At one end of the room, on a platform raised a few feet above floor level, Miss Lumley and Mademoiselle were already on duty; the former engaged on looking out for minor misdemeanours below, the latter seated at the upright piano hammering out the ‘March of the Men of Harlech’. One two, one two, one two. Three rows of girls in black serge bloomers, black cotton stockings and white rubber-soled canvas shoes listlessly dipped and rose in time to the martial strains. For Mademoiselle, the Gymnasium class was a recurring penance. Presently, when it was time for a five-minute break, she would give herself the pleasure of announcing that Irma Leopold was actually here in the building, and would shortly be coming to the gymnasium to say good-bye. One two, one two, one two . . . it was possible, she thought, dreaming and hammering, that they already knew on the College grapevine. One two, one two . . . ‘Fanny,’ she said, taking her hands off the keys for a moment, ‘you are badly out of step. Pay attention to the music, please!’ ‘Take an order mark, Fanny,’ Miss Lumley muttered, scribbling in her little book. The languid physical movements of arms and legs belied the expression of the fourteen pairs of eyes, sliding from side to side. One – two, one – two, alert and sly as the eyes of Normandy hares in their barred wooden cages. One two, one two, one two, one two . . . the monotonous thumping was inhuman, almost unendurable.
The door of the gymnasium was opening, very slowly, as if the person outside were reluctant to enter. Every head in the room turned as the ‘Men of Harlech’ halted in the middle of a bar. Mademoiselle rose smiling beside the piano and Irma Leopold, a radiant little figure in a scarlet cloak, stood on the threshold. ‘Come in Irma! Comme c’est une bonne surprise! Mes enfants, for ten minutes you may talk as you please. Voilà, the class is dismissed!’ Irma, who had taken a few steps towards the centre of the room, now paused uncertainly and smiled back.