The scraggy, big-eyed child who had automatically risen from the desk when the Headmistress entered, was shifting uneasily from one black stockinged spindle-shank to another. ‘Well? Stand up straight when you answer me, please, and put your shoulders back. You are getting a dreadful stoop. Now then. Have you got your lines by heart?’
‘It’s no use, Mrs Appleyard. I can’t learn them.’
‘How do you mean you can’t? Considering you have been alone in here with your Reader ever since luncheon?’
‘I have tried,’ said the child, passing her hand over her eyes. ‘But it’s so silly. I mean if there was any sense in it I could learn it ever so much better.’
‘Sense? You little ignoramus! Evidently you don’t know that Mrs Felicia Hemans is considered one of the finest of our English poets.’
Sara scowled her disbelief of Mrs Hemans’ genius. An obstinate difficult child. ‘I know another bit of poetry by heart. It has ever so many verses. Much more than “The Hesperus”. Would that do?’
‘Hhm . . . What is this poem called?’
‘“An Ode to Saint Valentine”.’ For a moment the little pointed face brightened; looked almost pretty.
‘I am not acquainted with it,’ said the Headmistress, with due caution. (One couldn’t in her position be too careful; so many quotations turned out to be Tennyson or Shakespeare.) ‘Where did you find it, Sara – this, er, Ode?’
‘I didn’t find it. I wrote it.’
‘You wrote it? No, I don’t wish to hear it, thank you. Strange as it may seem, I prefer Mrs Hemans’. Give me your book and proceed to recite to me as far as you have gone.’
‘I tell you, I can’t learn that silly stuff if I sit here for a week.’
‘Then you must go on trying a little longer,’ said the Head, handing over the Reader, outwardly calm and reasonable, and sick to death of the sullen tight-lipped child. ‘I shall leave you now, Sara, and expect you to be word perfect when I send Miss Lumley in half an hour. Otherwise, I am afraid I shall have to send you to bed instead of sitting up until the others return for supper after the picnic.’ The schoolroom door closed, the key turned in the lock, the hateful presence swept from the room.
Out in the gay green garden beyond the schoolroom the bed of dahlias glowed as if they were on fire, caught by the late afternoon sun. At the Hanging Rock, Mademoiselle and Miranda would be pouring out tea under the trees . . . Resting her heavy head on the inkstained lid of the desk the child Sara burst into wild angry sobs. ‘I hate her . . . I hate her . . . Oh, Bertie, Bertie, where are you? Jesus, where are you? If you are really watching the sparrows fall like it says in the Bible, why don’t you come down and take me away? Miranda says I mustn’t hate people even if they are wicked. I can’t help it, darling Miranda . . . I hate her! I hate her!’ There was a scrape of the desk on the floorboards as Mrs Hemans went hurtling towards the locked door.
The sun had gone down in a blaze of theatrical pink and orange behind the College tower. Mrs Appleyard had eaten a substantial supper on a tray in her study: cold chicken, Stilton cheese and chocolate mousse. Meals at the College were unfailingly excellent. Sara had been sent to bed dry-eyed and unrepentant with a plate of cold mutton and a glass of milk. In the lamp-lit kitchen Cook and a couple of the maids were playing cards at the scrubbed wooden table, capped and aproned ready for the imminent return of the picnickers.
The night gradually darkened and thickened. The tall almost empty house for once had fallen silent, filled with shadows, even after Minnie had lighted the lamps on the cedar staircase where Venus, with one hand strategically placed upon her marble belly, gazed through the landing window at her namesake pendant above the dim lawns. It was a few minutes past eight o’clock. Mrs Appleyard, playing patience in her study, with one ear cocked for the sound of the drag coming up the gravel drive, decided to ask Mr Hussey to step inside for a glass of brandy . . . there was still enough left in the decanter since the Bishop of Bendigo had lunched at the College.
Mr Hussey, over several years of experience, had proved himself so punctual and entirely reliable that at half past eight by the grandfather clock on the stairs, the Headmistress rose from the card table and pulled the velvet cord of her private bell, that jangled with authority in the kitchen. It was immediately answered by Minnie, rather red in the face. Mrs Appleyard, from whom the housemaid stood at a respectful distance in the doorway, noted with disapproval the crooked cap. ‘Is Tom about still, Minnie?’
‘I don’t know, Mum, I’ll ask Cook,’ said Minnie, who had last seen her adored Tom half an hour ago, stretched out in his underpants on the truckle bed in her attic room.
‘Well, see if you can find him and send him to me as soon as you do.’
After two or three more rounds of Miss Milligan, Mrs Appleyard, who normally despised the luxury of cheating at patience, deliberately dealt herself a necessary Knave of Hearts and went out on to the gravel sweep before the porch, where a lighted kerosene lantern swung from a metal chain. Against a cloudless dark blue sky the slate roofs of the College glimmered like silver. In one of the upstairs rooms a solitary light was burning behind a drawn blind: Dora Lumley, off duty and reading in bed.
The scent of stocks and sundrenched petunias was overpowering on the windless air. At least the night was fine and Mr Hussey a driver of high renown. All the same she wished young Tom could be found, if only to agree with his Irish commonsense that there was nothing to worry about in the drag being nearly an hour late. She went back to the study and began another game of patience, getting up almost at once to compare her gold watch with the clock in the hall. When it struck for half past nine she rang for Minnie again, and was informed that Tom was taking a hot bath in the coach house and would be there ‘directly’. Another ten minutes dragged by.
At last came the beat of hooves on the highroad, perhaps half a mile away . . . now they were crossing over the culvert . . . she could see lights moving on the dark trees. A chorus of drunken voices as the vehicle gathered speed on the flat road and passed the College gates at a fast trot – a dragload of revellers returning from Woodend. At the same moment Tom, who had heard them too, presented himself in carpet slippers and a clean shirt at the open door. If Mrs Appleyard had a liking for anyone in her immediate orbit it was surely merry-eyed Irish Tom. No matter what was asked of him, from emptying the pig bucket to playing a tune on the mouthorgan for the maids, or driving the drawing mistress to the Woodend Station, it was all the same to Tom. ‘Yes, Ma’am? You were after wanting me, so Minnie was saying?’