When the netball practice was over, the girls went off to wash, and then followed half an hour’s reading in the classroom, or the time could be given to a hobby or to sewing, whilst the choir nuns were at Vespers. Mary was no reader; she took out of her locker a pillow-case which she was hemstitching for her stepmother, sat down and got on with the work. As she sewed she thought, for most of the form were reading and the room was comparatively quiet, although there was no rule of silence. She thought about Mrs. Bradley, and wondered why she had come to lunch in the refectory when she might have had more interesting food at the guest-house. She also thought about tea, which would not be served for another two hours and a half. There would be, of course, currant buns. She always looked forward to tea-time. She licked the end of her cotton and re-threaded her needle; the action recalled to her her cousin Ursula. Ursula had been hemstitching pillow-cases, too. Each was to finish a pair for Mrs. Maslin’s birthday. Ursula, Mary remembered, had kept her work cleaner than she had, and had done it a good deal more quickly. She thought, with a shiver, of the night that was to come. For four or five nights now she had dreaded to be left alone in the dark. It was a chance remark overheard on the Wednesday evening succeeding Ursula’s death which had opened, as it were, a chasm in her imagination up which crawled dreadful things, shapeless, black and evil. One of the sixth-form girls had made it to another during the time, which the children spent as they pleased, between tea and preparation.
“She wouldn’t have gone there unless she’d been enticed…”
Who had enticed the mild Ursula? Mary remembered trying to tempt her to eat a sweet in Mother Mary- Joseph’s English hour, whilst the serious young nun read them stories and a surreptitious sucking, so long as it remained inaudible, was indulged in fairly generally by the class. The sweets had come from Mrs. Maslin and were confiscated promptly, as soon as the postman delivered them. Then they were given out to Mary once a week on Saturday afternoons. Mary hoarded them sometimes. They helped a little to stay the pangs on days when prunes and custard were on the menu. But Ursula was firm, and did not appear to fight with temptation at all.
Miss Bonnet cast an approving eye on the Lower Fourth at Kelsorrow High School for Girls. She was proud of the Lower Fourth. Bequeathed to her slack and disorderly, with a tendency to stand, graceful but insolent, with one knee bent, whilst requesting to be allowed to sit out of the physical training lesson because they were not very well, they were now, she felt, a credit to themselves, to her, to the school and to one another. She had worked very hard for this. Once she had boxed a girl’s ears.
Her superior, the full-time instructor in the subject, always handed to her the rottenest classes—got them in a mess and then got rid of them, was Miss Bonnet’s private judgment on this behaviour—and the present Lower Fourth was a case in point. Now, to see them, under their leaders, at practice in the four corners of the big hall, doing group work of an advanced and difficult kind, was to see the fruits of last term’s terrible grind and lengthy warfare.
“Pity somebody from the governing body can’t see them,” she thought, as she kept a watchful eye on running somersaults over a two-foot rope. “But, there! You’d have to see what they were like this time last term to get any idea of what’s happened.”
She blew a whistle, and the four teams formed file and stood still. Briefly and clearly she explained a new game they were to play. The girls ran to their places. The game began, and picked up speed. The girls were laughing and happy; their play was accurate and bold. They took risks, and the risks came off. There was a first-class exhibition of swift, clean, neat-handed passing.
She blew her whistle; breathed the form; dismissed it; sat on the edge of the platform to wait for the next class to come. Her thoughts, as at all times now when she was not completely occupied, turned again to that bathroom in which she had seen the dead child. She flicked her head nervously, as though to flick away the vision. She supposed that in time she would get over the shock, and forget it. She forced her thoughts, as she had been doing for a week, away from the subject and on to something more pleasant. She wished she could afford to give up her job at the convent; ten shillings a day was all they paid her; five shillings for the half-day; charwoman’s wages. She knew they would double the pay if she said the word. They had to have a qualified person to take the physical training. Amateurs at the job were inefficient and dangerous. The Community could not, however tiny their income, afford to lose Miss Bonnet for the sake of a little more pay. But she would not say the word. She liked to think that she could not. It was a fancy of hers, a vanity, she pretended to the Kelsorrow staff, to go to them for half-pay. Besides, she had hoped to get a testimonial out of them later on; one from Kelsorrow, too. That other unlucky business—she flicked that away as well. It seemed as though there was no clear, happy course for her wandering thoughts to take; death, ignominious dismissal—the one had been a shock, the other still rankled. It was not as though they could prove that she had done wrong. The evidence of children ought not to be accepted against adults, she felt, especially in a case of lost property. Their answers had been suggested to them, and by the headmaster, too! Mixed schools were the devilt anyway. She hated giving P.T. lessons to girls who were taught their academic subjects by men. Dismissal or a court case! What a choice!
Naturally, she had chosen to go. They could not have proved her guilt—she knew that perfectly well—but other things might have come up. That was the worst of having no testimonials to show except her college one. Lucky to have got to Kelsorrow, she supposed, even in a temporary capacity. Her appointment had never been confirmed. They could dismiss her without notice, she supposed. She wished she were independent of a job, and could please herself what she did. She supposed she would take up golf. There was good publicity in golf. She had a pretty good handicap, as it was, when she played only during week-ends and at holiday times. With practice and regular coaching, and money to spend, she believed she could be very good. It was a game one could play for years; not like these team games—hockey, lacrosse—not like swimming or rowing —in which, speaking generally, one was not much good after twenty-four or so…
She jumped down to take the next form who were trickling into the gymnasium, dancing up and down to warm up, as she had taught them; long-legged girls in shorts and thin white blouses; nothing on their feet but socks and rubber shoes; nothing in their heads, when first she took them over, but cinemas, boys and dodging compulsory games… She looked them over complacently. Good stuff now. She cracked out an order. Nice to give up the military style of command, out of date, really, nowadays, but until one was certain of these girls… Thank goodness none of them looked in the least like the dead, pink-faced child in the bath. It had been like a tinted waxwork, that still, dead face; like the Little Mermaid, asleep, or the angel, that troubled the waters, drowned in them after all. ( 4 )
Mrs. Maslin sat straight and looked at Mr. Grogan.
“I
“You smoke?” he said. Mrs. Maslin took a cigarette and tapped it exasperatedly upon the enamelled lid of the
