I look out of the window, as if I expect to see someone’s face there. We have been going fast, through a blur of nondescript-looking vil ages, but suddenly it is dark, a landscape with no lights at al . I can see my own reflection in the window, nothing more. My neck and the newspaper are both startlingly white against the blackness outside, the blackness of my coat and dress. I stare at myself; I can’t see the tears; I look like a ghost. In the black and white of the light, I look like Cecily.
Careful y, I tear the obituary out of the paper and fold it. The tearing sound is loud, and the couple at the table next to me look up, curiously. I stand up and smile, backing away towards my room and when I get there, I fal onto the familiar old scratchy blue blanket and the smooth white sheets. I take the pages out of my pocket and sit on the lower bunk, holding them in my hand, gazing at them, at the scrawling black handwriting, my finger and thumb poised to turn the first page. I close my eyes.
And now I can see myself, suddenly, back at Summercove. There are voices I recognise, but they’re different somehow, thinner, higher. Bright sunshine is streaming into the living room, the smel of sea and grass and something else, something dangerous, almost tangible, rushing towards me . . . And Cecily’s face, as it was in the oil sketch. Come with me! Come with me, she is saying. And I do. I take a deep breath and I fol ow her, down to the sea.
The Diary of Cecily Kapoor, aged fifteen. July, 1963.
St Katherine’s School for Girls
Denmouth
Devon
England
If lost please return
Saturday, 20th July 1963
Dear Diary,
First day of holidays. That is – count it, my dears, count it –
SEVEN WEEKS of blissful beautiful no school!! !!
My summer project starts NOW.
I am writing this sitting on my bed at Summercove. On the patchwork quilt Mary sewed me when we first moved here and I was scared at night. One of Mummy’s sketches is on the wall, of our little cove down on the beach. There is a cupboard for our clothes built into the wall with sweet little plastic handles dotted with stars. What else? There are two shelves painted white with all my books on them (I share this room with my sister Miranda. But she only reads Honey magazine). I have everything from My Friend Flicka to Pride & Prejudice & they are all mine.
Today is the first proper day of the holidays. I got home yesterday. I love the luxury of the beginning of the hols, where time seems to stretch out before you, for ages & ages. We go back 8th Sept. It seems a lifetime away.
I have never kept a diary before. Two days ago, the last day of classes, Miss Powell gave everyone in our class ten pages of paper, tied together with string and our names on, and told us to keep a record of our summer holidays: she said to write down what we did, who we saw, and what happens. Everyone groaned when Miss Powell said it, but I was glad. I want to be a writer when I grow up & this is good practice.
No one else was that excited about it, only me really. Annabel Taylor, who can barely write in joined-up writing, looked completely appalled.
I have laid a wager with myself. It is that she will write 2 pages over the summer, and those will be about the boys she knows.
(that is not very nice of me).
Miss Powell says she will not look at our diaries herself, but she wants us to read some sections out to the rest of the class when we come back in the autumn. She says, in years to come, we will find them and read them and remember the summer of 1963. She says it is a year we will want to remember. I thought she meant because of Mr Profumo and the scandal. We’re absolutely not allowed to talk about it at school. Still, I hoped she might mention it. She just said something instead about the wind of change blowing. I like Miss Powell. She is younger than most of the teachers, and she has fantastic cropped hair, and she likes Bonjour Tristesse. Rita dies for Miss Powell, she cries about her at night.
Anyone’s better than Miss Gilchrist, say I. Awful woman with meaty hands, I’m sure she used to be in prison. Miss Powell isn’t like that.
Anyway, enough of silly school. It’s hard sometimes, to get back into the swing of life here after being away at St Kat’s for months on end.
One’s head is full of drear things like plimsolls and kit bags and hymnals. I’m back now. It’s over! (for a while).
So what shall I tell you, diary? I shall start by describing where I am and what’s happening.
It is after tea & the house is quiet, but there are sounds, all dear & familiar to me after months at school. Mary is in the kitchen, cooking supper; I can hear her feet on the floor & the pans clattering.
Dad is humming in his study. It sounds like wasps, buzzing. Dad is a famous sort of writer. He wrote a book people always want to talk about, called The Modern Fortress. I haven’t read it. But lots of people have. It is an IMPORTANT BOOK. Miss Green, our headmistress, said that to me last year. ‘IMPORTANT BOOK CECILY.’ That means she hasn’t read it, I absolutely bet.
(must be kind & what if they do read it even though they said they wouldn’t?)
