The Following Girls Page 10

  Mrs Horst began drawing an outline of the Grecian coast (after eighteen years on the job she could do this blindfold) and sketching edited highlights of the Battle of Salamis with coloured chalks. She then called Bryony to the front to have a stab at labelling the arrows. She tried not to ask Bryony every time, but the lazy fool was always good for a laugh and this morning she excelled herself. Mrs Horst got little enough in the way of amusement but Bryony Cotter insinuating Hannibal into the Athenian high command was definitely one for the album. Did they not listen to a word one said? Then the grisly realisation dawned: in the previous week’s multiple choice the barmy answer (it was fun to include at least one barmy answer, Mrs Horst always felt) had suggested Hannibal as a potential leader of the Allied fleet. Maddening how quickly such tiny seeds of misinformation could flower, infinitely more robust than the real thing – like dandelions (and just as hard to uproot). She waved Bryony back to her seat and began automatically filling in the missing names. Again.

  Mrs Horst hadn’t exactly planned a teaching career but it had seemed a terrible pity to waste her degree. One never admitted as much at parties, at interviews, even in the staff room – it sounded so small-minded said out loud – but the old notes still came in very handy. It would have been perverse not to make use of all that knowledge, all that blotless underlining and labelling. And teaching had looked like an attractive option at the time because she had, foolishly, made the mistake of seeing her chosen career in terms of what the world at large always thought of as perks: the pension; the annual sixth-form trip to Rome or Athens or Crete; those fabled long holidays. In fact the sixth-form trips were growing rowdier and less manageable by the year, and as for the holidays, one forgot that they would need to be taken at a time when the museums and galleries of Europe (as well as the cafés and beaches and camp sites and swimming pools of Europe) were full of schoolchildren, and the guidebook-guzzling parents of schoolchildren doggedly introducing their offspring to each foreign land just as they’d introduced them to chicken pox.

  Mrs Horst looked out at the sullen sea of unresponsive faces. The remaining three Amandas were all together on the back row. They’d retrieved their bags from the heap and one of them was quite obviously hiding a book or magazine of some sort inside her historic atlas: Amanda Baker, already on the brink of suspension or even outright expulsion according to the last staff meeting. Disruptive. Destructive. One more slip and the girl would be suspended. Should she say something? A report would have to be filed. Meetings with O’Brien. Meetings with Mostyn. Meetings with parents, even. Angry, guilty, defensive, customer-is-always-right parents. Ghastly. She struggled to picture Mr Baker. Had he been there on Monday night? Fathers didn’t always come, but it was always unpleasant when they did. They behaved like someone sending something back in a restaurant: this isn’t what I ordered. Finally she took a deep breath, strode down the aisle and twitched Baker’s copy of Ads and Admen from inside her book. She could decide later what action to take.

  For the last five minutes of the lesson the History mistress tried her hand at a pep talk. They must all do their very, very best. Mrs Horst thought of Hannibal sending his men into battle at Cannae – a seamless flow of oratory: inspirational; passionate; hortatory (hortor, hortari, hortatus sum).

  Baker yawned openly. Go through all your notes, droned the Horst, for the millionth time. Learn your dates and spellings, read the question, go through your answers scrupulously. Everyone will die.

  Bunty was already at the head of the tuck shop queue when Baker got there (an adoring first former had let the older girl push in).

  ‘Blimey, that was quick.’

  ‘Want one?’ Bunty took a hungry 100-calorie bite from her chocolate snack. ‘No? Please yourself.’

  ‘Was O’Brien not there?’

  ‘No she was there all right, just couldn’t be bothered. “I’m not interested in this nonsense” – her very words – apologise to old Horst-face, re-do map, go to tuck shop, go directly to tuck shop. Fancy a fag?’

  ‘See you round the sheds in a minute. I’ve changed my mind about getting some chocolate.’ Baker picked up a disgusting great marshmallow biscuit thing and waved it (a funny look from Bunty).

  Baker watched her friend shoulder through the quad door and out of sight before binning her unwanted biscuit and fleeing back through the refectory to the ground floor cloaks.

  The room’s two-tone grey paint job switched from gunmetal to dishwater at about tit height with a black gloss tide mark where the two shades met. The shiny grey ceiling was beaded with chilly white dishes of light, a dozen at least, but the thick glass of the shades and the thrifty wattage meant that they had small impact on the gloom (not a light to read name tapes by). Beneath the coat pegs hundreds of outdoor shoes and plimsolls lay trapped inside the wire-fronted benches like lace-up lab rats.

  Baker slipped into one of the cubicles, delved into her bag and finally unearthed Julia’s scrap of paper. The note had been written on the inside of a chewing gum wrapper, the letters scratched onto the chalky surface of the foil’s white lining, its edge serrated like a blade, a minty smell still clinging to the inside. Just one line in rough capitals – as if written with the wrong hand: ‘meet me. organ loft. tomorrow 1.15’. No signature. No chances taken.

  The school organ had breathed its last before Baker even started. The retirement of the only mistress who could play it and the lack of interest shown by even the more musical Fawcettians meant that the restoration fund was a long way down the head’s list of priorities (above ‘redecorate sick bay’ but some way below ‘re-turf vandalised front lawn’ and ‘query twinning with Dusseldorf’).

  The ‘loft’ (really just a room full of dusty pipes) was secured by latch and padlock – but the Mandies (who habitually checked all doors and routinely hid any key they found) had made short work of that, thanks to the tiny screwdriver on Queenie’s multi-purpose knife. Dry, warm, slightly spooky, it ought to have made the perfect breaktime hidey hole, but the floor was almost all plasterboard and there was only really room for one bum on the joists – last thing you wanted was one of your size fives poking through the assembly hall ceiling. The bike sheds and loos made safer (if chillier) hideouts.

  What did Julia want a meeting for? Why didn’t she just report her to Mrs Mostyn and be done with it? Had she had a change of heart about shopping her to the Drumlin? Or had she decided to dream up her own punishment instead?

  Such a lot of girls left after the fifth form that anyone left standing was automatically made a prefect, whether or not they were Good Prefect Material, and some of them could be downright sadistic. The previous year’s Upper Sixth had ganged up on a scholarship first former they’d all taken a dislike to: Claudia something, very tall, very swotty, played the bass recorder. They had decided that her old man was a dustman and threatened to tell everybody and would sing the special song whenever she walked past, pinching her hard where it wouldn’t show. Made her cry. She left at the end of her first year. Turned out her old man was nothing of the kind, not an actual dustman anyway, no dustman’s hat or anything. Just worked in an office in the cleansing department.

  ‘Did he live in a council flat?’ demanded Bunty at the time.

  ‘Denbigh Avenue? Doubt it.’

  ‘And what are gorblimey trousers?’

  Julia knew that Baker was within an ace of getting thrown out (I’ve got my eye on you), knew she had only to report her for smoking to get her suspended at the very least but what did a meeting in the organ loft have to do with it? What was she after? A pep talk? It could hardly be blackmail? Or could it?

  Chapter 8

  Queenie wasn’t the only girl who’d given up Chemistry. Lured labwards by the promise of a white coat and the mad scientist fun of drawing fantastical Professor Branestawm experiments with their nifty little plastic stencils, the would-be chemists soon became baffled by the alphanumeric soup of the periodic table. Trouble was that it wasn’t especially popular with staff either
– as Dr O’Brien had long ago discovered. Any Chemistry graduate with half a brain got a job pouring test tube contents into beakers in ‘industry’ (if the photos in the ICI leaflets in Miss Batty’s filing cabinet were any guide). The dregs of the university Chemistry faculties assumed teaching would be an option once they graduated, but they had little stamina for the work and even less aptitude and seldom lasted more than a year or two.

  Mildred Fawcett’s last upper school Chemistry mistress had left mid-term under something of a cloud. Her replacement, conjured into being at terrifyingly short notice, was, quite unprecedentedly, a man.

  ‘Male?’ marvelled Queenie.

  ‘Definitely says Mister Mars on the noticeboard. Emergency appointment, apparently. Started Monday but he’s been ducking assembly, jammy bugger’.

  There was no one in the lab, male or female, when they filed in. Stott grabbed the back bench and the three Mandies settled down to chat.

  ‘Have you worked out what you’re going to say at your careers interview?’

  ‘I’m considering Hairdressing.’

  Miss Batty had lent Baker a copy of Modern Careers for Girls to prepare her for that afternoon’s advice session. It was fifteen years out of date.

  ‘“The true hairdresser,”’ read Baker, ‘“must have an innate artistic sense and a creative flair . . . physical fitness is essential for this career.”’

  ‘It always says that,’ said Bunty. ‘What if you had a wooden leg?’

  ‘A one-legged hairdresser? Don’t be daft. Do you know any one-legged hairdressers? I rest my case.’ She continued flicking through. ‘How about Dentistry? “Physical fitness is essential, as is first-class eyesight.” Doesn’t say anything about hairdressers needing perfect eyesight.’

  ‘Aha. Well that’s Tash’s feather cut explained.’

  ‘I might just say Secretary. Got to say something.’

  ‘Secretary? You can do better than that.’ Stottie all peculiar and serious as per usual. ‘You’re so lucky – you could do anything.’

  Brian, Vic and pals had set their hearts on becoming secretaries – bilingual secretaries. Strange the way they all wanted the same job – not like they could all save desks for each other. Baker looked across to the next bench where the gang were sitting.

  ‘Do you think they’re all from another planet? Like that film with all the creepy blonde kids.’

  ‘Village of the Bland.’

  ‘They’re definitely telepathetic. Look at them.’

  All six had pulled their blue science overalls as tight as they would go and secured the ties in the same slipped reef knot on the left side. Crossed legs all coated in an identical mildew of ash grey stretch nylon, lips subtly smeared with a lick of Vaseline from the same slim tin.

  ‘Did you really say Nursing at your last Careers thingy?’

  ‘Yeah,’ laughed Bunty, ‘kept the Batty quiet.’

  ‘And what d’you really want to be?’

  ‘Wanna be a Bunny.’ Bunty rolled her torso, emphasising her cup size.

  ‘You’re a silly moo, you are. You said you didn’t want to be a skivvy and a Bunny’s just a skivvy with ears. And all those old leches. And all that wiping. Bad as nursing.’

  ‘Yeah, but the tips are bigger. Nobody tips nurses, just cheap chocolates, and anything beats typing, whatever Bryony says – even if it is bi-bloody-lingual. What the hell do they do all day, anyway?’ continued Bunty. ‘Cher monsieur, merci pour votre correspondence, wollen sie im Schwartzwald spazieren gehen? Quel est votre sujet préféré?’

  Not that Bryony’s secretarial fantasies went anywhere near the actual typing side. Bryony pictured herself in a maroon pencil skirt and blow-dried page boy, booking plane tickets, travelling to business conferences, buying duty free scent and alien brands of aspirin (in fluent French, obviously). Not messing about filing documents or opening post or reconciling petty cash. There would be people for that (monolingual people). There was usually a boss in Bryony’s picture: young, blue-suited, a man of distinction (big spender).

  Still no sign of Mr Mars who was, as they spoke, panting up the hill to the front gate. The arrival of a male Chemistry teacher had unsettled the senior common room. The only men’s lavatories were the one in the Music block and the brick outhouse used by Mr Dingle the school caretaker. The existing staff agreed that the simplest solution would be to reallocate the headmistress’s private privy. And do you know, actually, yes, Dr O’Brien had in fact given the matter a great deal of thought and no, she concluded, it would set a potentially dangerous precedent to give ground to that extent, dignity of the office and so forth, and Dr O’Brien decided that, on reflection, the walk to the Music block would do their new colleague no harm at all.

  Derek Mars had underestimated the time it would take to get from his designated lavatory (blue paper, most amusing) to the main building. Pins could have been dropped as he finally crossed from the lab door to his bench beneath the wide, green blackboard. The tweed jacket and old whatsits tie were regulation issue but the cut of his cavalry twill Sta-Prest strides was unexpected.

  ‘Ooh,’ whispered Baker. ‘Do clock the trousers.’

  ‘Gorblimey,’ said Bunty. ‘How does he get them on, do you reckon? Do his feet unscrew?’

  Baker, suddenly inspired, got to her feet and began to applaud. The new master’s face quivered suspiciously. Was this normal? No one had said anything about this in the staff room. Other things, yes, but not this. The rest of the class joined Baker (say what you liked about them, they were a game crowd) and he reached the front bench to a respectable ovation. He signalled his puzzlement to a girl whose spectacles and keen-as-mustard front row seat inspired confidence.

  ‘It’s traditional, sir.’

  Was it? And how would he ever find out? The staff room was still falling silent whenever he entered it – he half suspected them of passing notes.

  Derek Mars had had every intention of giving up teaching. His very first job after qualifying had been at a large Church of England school: single sex, selective, absurdly well-equipped. The head of department was a former Rugby Blue and regularly bullied the headmaster and board of governors (not a BSc between them) into buying whatever kit he fancied: infra-red mass spectrometer, electron microscope, you name it.

  The boys assigned to Derek Mars had been loud and large but they weren’t delinquent or idle. They passed exams, moved on to good technical colleges, a few even went to university. Big, brash, hairy, confident, sarcastic boys, boys with a sixth sense for weakness, boys who twigged at once that Mr Mars was not a master to fear or obey.

  The headmaster had called him in for a fireside chat at the end of his first term (said it was ‘routine’ but none of the other new masters was summoned) in which he was told he would soon ‘learn the ropes’. Did he play golf at all? He’d said no but the old fool persisted with his fatuous analogy – yips, forsooth – and bleated on about how it was probably just honeymoon nerves and would all come out in the wash – rather an off-colour metaphor mixture, Derek Mars felt.

  But he never did ‘find his form’, never did lose that feeling of almost weepy panic when faced with twenty pairs of unforgiving adolescent eyes, seasoned critics of the genre who’d seen the whole thing done better and more persuasively elsewhere, who saved their plaudits for virtuoso performers like Harris with his tricksy little packets of gun cotton.

  By his second year even the new intake had been primed to watch for his nervous stammer, his clumsiness with laboratory glassware – ‘C-c-c-careful sir!’ Mars was barely taller than his second form students and was skinny with it. They called him Stinker, apparently. The can’t-be-bothered dullness of the sobriquet was depressing in itself. The department head rejoiced in the name of ‘Flash’ Harris thanks to his meretricious antics with primitive explosives.

  And as Derek Mars inched through the syllabus with his middle school mediocrities (a senior colleague had nabbed the A streams and Flash Harris creamed off the sixth form) he bega
n to feel more and more as if he’d been written into one of those plays his mother took him to, dry as common room sherry, that told of misanthropic schoolmasters who couldn’t understand why it was that boys never teased them or sent them Christmas cards or asked them which girl to ask out or which horse to back. Harris had all of that: faintly louche, avuncular (but not like any uncles Derek Mars had ever had).

  Stinker had only just survived his second year, kept going by the comforting thought that he had given notice. He’d spent both Christmas and Easter holidays applying for jobs but was only offered the humblest bottle-washing lab work with lousy hours, the meagre salary notionally enhanced by promises of early promotion once he ‘knew the ropes’ (more blasted ropes).

  After six miserable months freelancing for a plastics factory the memory of the classroom faded, and fifteen weeks’ holiday, a near-decent salary and a guaranteed pension looked a lot less unattractive. Perhaps if he taught at a prep school? Or tried girls? Girls would be a lot easier, surely? Biddable, underlined neatly, copied nicely, didn’t spill things – or set fire to anything.

  The short stint in plastics made his CV look scrappy but his mother had been unwell and her three-month decline could be twitched back and forth like a skimpy fitting room curtain to cover the awkward gap in his professional life story. The Mildred Fawcett interview panel appeared impressed by his filial devotion and cooed awkwardly like doves in tight shoes when the cancer was mentioned, although the O’Brien woman (no fool) did wonder why he hadn’t asked his old school for a sabbatical of some kind . . .? Derek Mars managed not to stammer over the reply which had been copied out in neat in his memory: how he hadn’t wanted to leave St Christopher’s in the lurch (how considerate) and how he very much wanted a new challenge (if Dr O’Brien had had a pound for every deadbeat job-switcher who’d dredged that one up she could have bought herself an electron microscope). He learned afterwards that they wouldn’t have cared too much what he said, given that the bulk of middle school chemistry was being taught by a physics teacher keeping one chapter ahead.