‘It is.’
‘Well, I don’t care. Right now it seems like just the ticket.’
Bettina nodded, bringing a lit match towards the cigarette between her lips, aware that Margo was watching her with reserved awe. She inhaled, tilted her head and let out the smoke through her nostrils. ‘Bart is always making me drink spirits. He delights in getting me drunk.’
‘You’d better watch out for him then!’
‘Oh, I do, he’s a perfect scoundrel. Listen – don’t you think we ought to be very careful? Suppose someone smells it on us at supper.’
‘Oh, don’t worry.’ Margo opened the bottle and sniffed, pulling a face, before taking a sip and wincing. ‘Acha vee!’ She handed the bottle to Bettina, who took a huge swallow, fighting the urge to grimace. A man would never grimace. ‘We’ll have our little party,’ said Margo, ‘and then we’ll immediately brush our teeth and take ourselves to bed with hot water bottles. We’ve already a great cover story after all – you’ve got the curse and I’m an asthmatic weakling.’
‘And if I fall over I can always blame it on an iron deficiency.’
Margo took the bottle back. ‘Exactly.’ She pinched her nose with one hand and tilted the bottle into her mouth, draining an inch.
‘Steady on, girl,’ said Bettina, in a voice she didn’t recognise.
‘“Come into the garden, Maud, for the black bat, Night, has flown!”’ Margo had one chubby leg up on the piano stool, her skirt hoiked up to reveal the stays of her stockings, like a bawdy cabaret performer. She was singing in a ridiculous man’s tenor. ‘“Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone.”’
‘Oh God, you’re not going to sing the whole thing, are—’
Margo lifted a finger to shush her. ‘“And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, and the musk of the roses blown.”’ She lifted the hem of her skirt and, flapping it, said, in a shrill cockney accent, ‘How’s the musk of my rose, dear?’
‘Shhh!’ said Bettina, before collapsing over in a fit of giggles.
Margo brought her leg off the stool and attempted to kick it away, but missed, lost her balance and fell onto her hands and knees. She looked up at Bettina, her back arched and her eyes pure carnival. Shrieking with laughter, Bettina rushed over and helped her up. Margo fell against her. She snatched the cigarette out of Bettina’s mouth and, awkwardly tweezering it between her fingers, took a tiny puff. Her other hand lay just above Bettina’s breasts, the hot palm pressing into the bony ridge of her chest. It was unnecessary, that hand, and it lingered.
‘We’re such good friends,’ Margo said, smiling up at her.
‘Of course we are.’
The hand crept higher, finding Bettina’s red-flecked throat. The fingers gently squeezed.
‘They’re all such terrific wasps, the others, such vicious, stinging wasps,’ said Margo. She was looking at Bettina’s mouth. ‘But you’re not. Well, only a smidge, and in the funniest way. I think you’re wonderful actually.’
Bettina smiled foolishly, her eyes focused on Margo’s hairline. ‘I should think so.’ Their bodies were pressed together. She could not meet her friend’s eye, it was bizarre. And she was so terribly drunk – drunker than she’d ever been in her life. And that warm small hand squeezing her throat. Just so.
‘We’re such good friends,’ Margo repeated, in a whisper now, bringing her mouth to Bettina’s ear and softly, so, so softly, kissing the point where jawline meets ear, then a little lower – the neck. Higher – the chin, higher still – moving up with the soft kidskin lips bumping, brushing, rubbing, preceded by little hot breaths – up up up, slowly, clumsily, to her own lips, and beyond that, all reason left her.
Old Roundpenny. Halfway down the stairs. Frozen with one foot on the step below, hands curled in front of her, rodent-like. Such an expression; that of Jesus spying the money-lenders in the temple. Eyes made fantastically huge by her spectacles, and the horror therefore made fantastically huge within.
Margo had her back to the door, and for a long, tormented moment, Bettina’s eyes were locked with Miss Roundpenny’s while Margo’s hand continued its slick see-sawing and her mouth continued its frenzied sucking.
‘Get off, get off,’ said Bettina, pushing Margo’s mouth away from her nipple – dear God it was glossy with spit and sticking up like a peanut – and twisting her hips so as to dislodge her fingers. Margo looked down at Bettina, her mouth slack and her eyes still half glazed, and seeing her expression, turned her head to follow her gaze. A small gasp.
Bettina closed her eyes, wishing for unconsciousness. She didn’t know at that moment what was worse – that they’d been caught, or that they had to stop.
You’re a sick, mad wench, she told herself.
The brandy bottle and the half-smoked packet of cigarettes were placed neatly on the desk in front of Miss Cameron – The Barren One. She was sitting devil-straight with her hands folded on her lap. A mole the size of a sweetcorn kernel was stuck to her jawline and from it grew three curly hairs – a witch, an absolute witch. Her eyes were large and protuberant, the space between brow and eyelid deep and cavernous so that were she to have water tipped onto her face while in a horizontal position, a small moat would form around each eyeball.
Margo wept snottily in the chair next to Bettina. ‘Please don’t tell my father,’ she was saying in a little girl’s voice. ‘Please – anything – but please don’t tell my father. He’ll kill me – literally, he’ll kill me. Please don’t tell my father.’
Miss Cameron picked up the thick leather-bound bible placed in front of her, walked around the desk and brought the book with a slam into the back of Margo’s head. Her face hit the wood. She lifted her head, nose dribbling blood, and stared straight ahead, all emotion wiped away.
‘Have you quite composed yourself?’ said Miss Cameron.
‘I have,’ said Margo, swallowing and nodding calmly.
Miss Cameron placed the bible back in the centre of the desk, poking it until the edges were aligned with the sides of the desk, and re-took her seat.
‘Bettina Wyn Thomas and Margueritte Morgan.’ It was not a question, but both girls nodded.
She picked up her teacup delicately and sipped from it, her eyes never leaving the girls. ‘You understand the severity of your crimes?’
Bettina glanced sideways at Margo. ‘Yes, Miss,’ she said. ‘Yes, Miss,’ echoed Margo.
‘What Miss Roundpenny had to witness…’ She pursed her lips over her teeth. ‘A hideous thing for anyone to look at, but especially someone as tender-hearted as Miss Roundpenny.’
Bettina’s eyes bulged at this. Miss Roundpenny had once cut a girl’s hair off for wearing rouge and she’d smiled while doing it.
‘While I am beyond disgusted – nay, horrified – at this perverted tomfoolery, it is merely the cherry on the proverbial cake.’ She glanced down at the items on the desk. ‘Drinking on school grounds? Smoking? How could you be so stupid?’
Bettina looked down at her clasped hands. Her sinuses were aching with the beginnings of a headache.
‘All I need do is report this incident to the headmaster and that’s it – you’re finished here. Goodbye, bon voyage.’ Miss Cameron took another sip of her tea and returned it to its saucer, causing only the slightest clink. She stared at the girls down her pore-dotted nose, the nostrils like an extra pair of pious eyes. ‘But I shan’t be resorting to this measure today.’
Bettina let out a thin breath through dry lips. Again she side-glanced at Margo, who sat very still.