Mrs. Williams raised her chin slightly, questioningly. “And the composition of hydrochloric acid, someone? Quickly now.” Her glance traveled across the rows of faces, came inevitably to Susan. “Yes, Susan?” she asked.
The girl lowered her hands to her lap gently and straightened her back. If a voice can be said to have color, Susan’s voice was amber like her hair. “Thank you, Susan,” said Mrs. Williams. “Yes.” She paused, right elbow cupped in left hand, finger touching her throat. She was still for a moment, looking at nothing. Then the duster fizzed softly on the blackboard, the chalk scraped again. The lesson continued.
Ten to four, and the class starting to make their notes. Susan wrote methodically, glancing up from time to time to verify a formula that was already in her mind. As she finished the last line the bell shrilled in the corridor.
Nibs continued to scratch for another half minute; Mrs. Williams ran a very firm class. Then the mistress nodded briefly; exercise books scurried into satchels, buckles snapped shut, fountain pens were closed and rammed back into blazer pockets. There was the sort of straining silence that only comes between last bell and dismissal. Mrs. Williams eagled at the girls, compressed her lips. Then she turned and scanned the board with a vaguely resentful air, as if the end of classes had taken her completely by surprise. The corners of Susan’s mouth turned upward the smallest fraction. This was all part of the ritual.
“Very well,” said Mrs. Williams. “Stand.”
A thunder of obedience.
“Stools.”
The stools were thrust hastily beneath the benches.
“Dismiss,” said Mrs. Williams. “Quietly now.”
The class scuttered down the corridor. Susan watched them go. Through the open door came the hurrying, locker-slamming sound of the big school finishing for the day. The batswing flame vanished with a pop.
Mrs. Williams looked up sharply. “Well, Susan? Haven’t we got a home?”
Susan swung her crammed satchel onto her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Williams. I was dreaming.”
Mrs. Williams smiled. The smile looked a little strained. “Time enough for that after next June.”
“Yes, Mrs. Williams. Good night.”
“Good night, Susan.”
The mistress stood in the doorway, books under her arm, hand on the lightswitches. She watched Susan walk away. She stayed still after the tall girl had turned the corner and was out of sight. Then a scuffle of second-formers shot from somewhere, swirled momentarily round her skirt. Mrs. Williams jerked to automatic attention. “You. You, there. Yes, all of you. Come here . . .” She turned off the switches, and left the classroom to the twilight.
Susan washed her hands and face in the end sink of the first-floor cloakroom, pulled a fresh loop of towel out of the dispenser. She dried herself slowly, burying her face in the towel to catch the clean, linen smell of it that went so naturally with the scents of carbolic soap and steam. Cat-cleanliness was part of Susan’s particular mystery. She had been the same as a first-former, although first-formers are notoriously a fusty, inky-pawed crew. On one occasion the school captain of the time, catching a small girl at the un-heard-of rite of washing during break, had taken her persistence for insolence and the whole idea for cheek and attempted to expel her. But a child who buzzes her displeasure like something electric, until your hand tingles and you have to let go, is something too far outside normal experience to cope with. And the child would keep staring with those lilac eyes, and the whole incident had unnerved the prefect so badly she never got around to reporting it. . . .
Susan crossed to the mirror, flicked her corn-colored hair more or less into place, picked up her satchel again and headed for 5Q formroom, deserted now and dark. She turned on one light and packed her books for evening study, checking the subjects against the timetable pinned inside the desk lid. Then she walked back down the corridor toward the stairs.
Miss Hutton sat at her desk in the lower Sixth formroom and watched the girl pass the half-open door. Then she called softly, knowing she would hear.
“Susan?”
Susan slowed automatically and walked back to the room.
“Yes, Madam?”
Miss Hutton moistened her lip very slightly with her tongue and her fingers twined in each other restlessly. For a moment she looked undecided. She said, “You are rather late, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Miss Hutton. I was packing my books.”
Miss Hutton frowned and looked away from Susan’s face and then back quickly as if she had come to a decision. She said, “What time does your bus leave?”
“Four-twenty-five, Madam.”
Miss Hutton set her jaw. “Susan, do you think you could spare me a few minutes?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Come in,” said Miss Hutton. “Close the door. Sit anywhere . . . Don’t worry, you are not in trouble.”
Susan smiled.
She took a seat in front of the mistress, eased her long legs a little awkwardly under the desk. She slid the satchel from her shoulder and waited with her eyes on Miss Hutton’s face. The school was very quiet now, nearly all the pupils gone.
Miss Hutton rose, folded her arms, walked quickly across the dais to the window, looked down into the corner of the quad. She said, “Over the years I have come to have a special feeling about the sound the school makes as it empties. To me it seems that the building becomes a great conduit full of very fresh clear water; and the footsteps and the voices tinkle and splash along the corridors and down stairs until the last one is gone. Do you understand me, Susan?”
“Yes, Madam.”
Miss Hutton smiled awkwardly, fingered her unpainted lip. In class she was very much of a martinet, but there was little to suggest that now. She was a small, neat, elderly woman, just a little bowed, and tiredness had sagged down the corners of her mouth and made fine lines round her eyes. She walked back to her desk, stood leaning her hands on its polished surface and looking down at Susan. She said, “As you know, Susan, I am retiring at the end of the present term. I had hoped to continue to the end of the school year in July but various considerations, among them my health, prompted an earlier decision. So in a fortnight’s time I shall be gone. School life being what it is, one day tends to slip very rapidly into the next, more particularly as one becomes older.” She cleared her throat. “This may very possibly be the last opportunity I have to talk to you like this, privately. And I want very particularly to ask you a question.”
“Yes, Madam.” There was no interrogation in Susan’s voice. She spoke calmly, as if she had always known this conversation would take place and had already guessed its outcome.
Miss Hutton leaned forward a little. She inhaled slowly and held the breath, let it go again with a tiny sound. Her eyes were intent on the girl’s face. “Susan,” she said gently, “Who are you?”
A pause. Then, slowly, “I’m sorry, Madam. I don’t know what you mean.”
Miss Hutton shook her head slightly. She continued to watch Susan and the girl looked back calmly. They both remembered something that had happened just a week ago.
A classroom. Pale sunlight slanting across the desks, the tall windows bright with winter sky. Form 5Q had been reading Romeo and Juliet. Miss Hutton had cast round for a Juliet and her eyes had stopped on Susan and she had asked her to speak the part. And when they had come to the impossible scene where Juliet imagines waking inside a tomb thirty prone-to-giggle fifth formers had been held by words that for the first time seemed to have a great singing meaning. In the quietness Miss Hutton had paced up between the desks and taken Susan’s neglected book and walked back to the front of the form. Susan carried on for half a dozen lines then slowed and stopped, and the enchantment was broken. “I’m sorry, Madam,” Susan said. “I can’t remember any more.”