The Following Girls Read online

  His appointment had alarmed the existing staff but his first few days gave no cause for complaint. He didn’t grumble about his chair or the size of his locker and he didn’t smoke a pipe or monopolise the coin operated phone ringing up his paramours or his bookmaker. Dr O’Brien relaxed: he’d do (just about). At barely twenty-five you might have expected a bit of horseplay with the younger mistresses but he didn’t seem the type and in any case his oddly elderly, mother’s boy wardrobe of turned-up trousers and Terylene ties had beta minus allure, had he but known it.

  ‘Stinker’ had been ragged rather about his new job by the chaps at the bridge club, who assured him that anything in trousers (turned up or otherwise) would be of interest to this closed order of bluestockings and he was almost looking forward to a smattering of feminine attention.

  The chairs in the staff common room were newish and cheap: bony arms, little padding and generally uninviting – very much like their occupants. He’d chuckled inwardly at this happy comparison (one to remember for the chaps). The Fawcett SCR spent most of its free time marking homework, carping about the girls or toiling over the Daily Telegraph crossword – very much a joint effort (although from the few conversations he’d had he wouldn’t put money on any one of them being able to complete a puzzle single-handed: Some insane roman (4) – ‘Oh of course, Edith, how clever of you!’).

  When he arrived for work on his second day he had been part gratified, part terrified to note that one or more of them had taken to wearing large amounts of very strong scent – or so he thought until he spotted a can of air freshener on the windowsill by his armchair. His allotted chair had originally been chummily close to another group but had been moved and now sat in surly splendour in the far corner of the room. Peculiar creatures. Perhaps it would be more prudent not to ask about this applause business.

  The clapping in the chemistry lab had continued for well over a minute but they’d stopped at last and he took his place at the front bench. The blackboard behind him was entirely taken up by a hastily drawn diagram showing the procedure for making distilled water with ‘please leave’ implausibly scrawled in the bottom corner in girlish roundhand. No sign of a board rubber . . .

  ‘So. How was life on Mars?’ asked Queenie, who had joined the three chemists in the cloakroom after her domestic science lesson.

  ‘Absolute Stinker,’ said Bunty.

  ‘In every sense,’ snarled Stott. ‘A whole class given double prep over a missing board rubber? Bit extreme. I mean what has he got in reserve? What’s his nuclear option if we all set fire to the fume cabinet again?’

  ‘“The following girls will report to the staff room for the shag-ging they so richly deserve,”’ said Queenie in her Mostyn voice.

  ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ said Bunty. ‘Imagine that lying on top of you: even his eyebrows have dandruff.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Leave off. Did you see his shirt when he took off his jacket to wipe the board? Only irons collar and cuffs and front. Wives wouldn’t get away with that.’

  ‘Maybe he’s looking for lurve. Can’t have Miss Drumlin, she’s married to Middlesex lacrosse. The Gleet might suit, smarten him up a bit anyway. Bet the Gleet irons sleeves. She’d soon put a crease in his underpants.’

  ‘As the actress said to the bishop.’

  ‘Yeah, but at a price. The Gleet’s neurotic, Mummy says. Do better just having a bit on the side with Mrs Chiffley, fatten him up at least.’

  ‘Only if he likes rollmop herrings,’ said Queenie who was humming ‘Born Free’ as she scraped her fish down the loo. ‘I’m releasing them back into the wild.’

  ‘Where is Rollmop?’ wondered Bunty.

  ‘Sweden somewhere. Just outside Britvik.’

  Everyone laughed and Bunty grinned. Anyone else would want the punchline but Bunty just wanted more jokes to be told.

  Chapter 9

  Baker had arrived early for her careers appointment and was sitting outside the sick bay, trying to think of something that would really get up the Batty woman’s nose (Mountain Rescue? Merchant Banking? Minesweeping?), when her eye was caught by an unfamiliar movement at the far end of the dark narrow corridor. Julia Smith, entirely alone in the lobby outside the staff room, was turning cartwheels. Over and over and over, so fast and smooth that the rubbish didn’t even fall from her pockets – centrifugal? -petal? She came to a halt outside the headmistress’s office and Baker held her breath, waiting for the knock on the door, but Julia merely tossed back her shiny auburn hair, straightened her pervy little skirt and jogged back up the stairs without a glance.

  Miss Batty herself was still finishing up after her last music lesson. The Lower Fourth had evacuated the Music Room at top speed, leaving her to tidy away thirty-two copies of ‘Summer is Icumen In’ and making her late for her session in the Careers cupboard. She was in no hurry, methodically refolding the sheet music and stowing it all neatly in the correct folder in the glazed cabinet by the piano.

  Miss Batty had been at Mildred Fawcett ever since she got her B.Ed. Fionula Batty MA Oxon: Music and Careers said the prospectus. The ad in the TES had only said ‘Music Teacher’, but her predecessor (hired by La Fawcett herself to teach pianoforte and deportment) had drawn the short straw when the need for careers advice became ever more pressing and it had been decreed that the twinning of the roles should continue. Deportment lived on as a badge awarded to anyone with a clean blouse and unladdered tights but the encyclopaedia-balancing days were long gone.

  Miss Batty’s immaculate assumption from Lady Margaret Hall to Fawcett Upper meant that she knew almost nothing about the job market so they sent her on a course: two days of lectures and slides in Leicester somewhere at the height of the Proms season. It was largely common sense and most of the work was done for you by the trusty old ‘Careers Archive’ which consisted of the leaflets contained in three drawers of a four-drawer filing cabinet (the bottom drawer having been requisitioned by Miss Drumlin for the sick bay log, a bottle of Lucozade and half a pint of nail varnish remover).

  Miss Batty had also inherited a long shelf of books called things like A Career for Your Daughter; Challenging Careers in the Library World; Working With Animals; Rosemary Takes to Teaching; Pauline Becomes a Hairdresser and A Career for Women in Industry? (the question mark said it all).

  Miss Batty locked the Music Room’s Steinway and sped along the dingy admin corridor to where Baker was waiting. She saw the silhouetted student take something from her mouth and stick it under the seat of the bench. A rebuke was in order but Miss Batty hadn’t the heart. You couldn’t see the beastly stuff, after all, and fifteen minutes flew by quickly enough as it was.

  ‘Amanda Baker? Go on in. It isn’t locked.’

  The room was hardly wider than a corridor and was almost filled by a narrow steel bedstead made up with knitted cotton blankets and a foam pillow pessimistically draped with blue paper towels in readiness for another projectile nosebleed. There was a canvas chair and one of the rickety folding desks used for public exams wedged between the bed and the wall, under the window, but Miss Batty preferred not to use the diagnostic end of the room – How long have you had this urge to be an articled clerk? – and made do with a clipboard and a pair of tip-up chairs just inside the door.

  Baker sat down on one of them and stared blankly at the ancient WAAF recruitment posters hung either side of the filing cabinet. The uniformed smiles did little to lighten the sickly mood established by the green gloss paint and the small temperature chart with its panicky notes in Biro (Normal, Feverish, Summon Assistance). The walls at the bed end were otherwise bare, apart from a large map of the world placed at eye level to distract first and second formers while the creepy little man from the health authority took their hands and made them squeeze his thin old thigh while he gave the German Measles and BCG injections (even the proles knew what that was about). It was a map of the wrong world, mind you, West Africa was still a big green blob.

  ‘W
hat are the red pins for?’ Baker’s question interrupted Miss Batty’s recitation on the importance of keeping options open.

  ‘What? Oh that: old girls who have worked overseas.’

  There were three pins.

  ‘Had you thought of working abroad? Perhaps in the services?’

  Golly, this was depressing, thought Miss Batty. Always the same jobs. A few girls each year would set their hearts on wireless operation or dental nursing or speech therapy (there was quite a vogue for this among Miss Kopje’s ‘ragged rocks’ contingent). One, sometimes two girls per year settled on a career in medicine (or thereabouts), two or three would plump for teaching. The air hostesses tended to come in pairs, dreaming of staff discounts and poolside pina coladas. Miss Batty’s fiancé had suggested she run a book in the staff room, the distribution of girlish wishes was so predictable, but you’d still need to keep a weather eye on the trends. Fashion Buyer had fallen from favour – it was really only one up from ‘Can I help you, madam?’ the fifth form had decided – but working in an office (surely the dullest life imaginable) was always popular, particularly since the advent of the ‘personal assistant’ and the bi-lingual secretary. Miss Batty occasionally helped out with the French conversation mocks and the idea of one of those tongue-tied eskervoos querying an invoice or a ship’s manifest always made her laugh.

  Received Careers wisdom had it that every subject dropped, every examination flunked, meant another option sealed off. And yet one did meet (or read about) lawyers who hadn’t studied Latin, photographers who had given up Chemistry. The idea that one needed the periodic table to make sense of a dark room had always been one of her predecessor’s trump cards, but no one ever called her on it: did David Bailey have a Chemistry O level? Of course he didn’t. Silly sausage. But Miss Batty was still trotting out the same speech about ‘doors closing’, complete with cautionary tales of old girls whose dreams had been blighted when potential employers spotted their ignorance of South American exports or trigonometry. Woolworth’s would be whispered, as if the future were not Mildred Fawcett’s ‘rosy path of golden possibilities’ but a hostile terrain strung with tripwires.

  Ask the pre-preps in Fawcett Under what they wanted to be when they grew up and their horizons were limitless: film star, lady astronaut, princess, Lassie . . . but it was a career mistress’s duty to rein in such ambitions. Vet? Try kennel maid. Restaurateur? Try catering supervisor. Floristry? Now you’re talking. It was like pick-a-card-any-card. They thought it was random, thought they’d got fifty-two to choose from, but they still took the one they were supposed to take.

  Miss Batty had once thumbed through a copy of Careers for Boys in Smith’s. Such a lot of careers – airline pilot, stonemason, stockbroker – far more than would have fitted into her filing system. Was there a Careers for Dogs? Plenty to choose from: police work, mountain rescue, modelling, drug squad not to mention any number of openings in pharmaceuticals . . .

  Baker’s surprise announcement put an end to Miss Batty’s rueful reverie.

  An actress? Was the girl mad?

  ‘Should be under A,’ said Baker in her only-does-it-to-annoy voice, but Miss Batty was still too taken aback to even register her rudeness and besides it very definitely wasn’t under A. Animals (care of), Army, Air Force, Air Hostess, Au Pair: yes. Astrophysicist, Astronaut, Arms dealer, Artiste: no. Not even Accountant (although Accounts was there). And definitely not Actress. Stupid girl.

  Cold water poured out in an unceasing stream from Miss Batty’s unpainted lips. It wasn’t steady work. Even good actresses could spend a lot of time unemployed – ‘resting’ they called it (she smiled at this point, as if she had just made a joke). Only the very best became really famous. Which couldn’t conceivably be you, ob-viously. Not you. Someone else.

  ‘I didn’t know you even liked acting, Amanda. You weren’t in the school play – the drama schools would almost certainly expect that.’

  As if anyone who enjoyed acting would have wanted to be in the school play, thought Miss Batty: King John (were they out of their minds?). And the whole production dominated by the Remove prefects and the elocution mafia.

  ‘I suppose I could try to get some leaflets from Rada . . . or maybe Lamda would be better . . .’ Miss Batty gazed disconsolately at the bulging A–K drawer, wondering if it would really be worth the bother of yet another pink folder. No one had ever asked about Bookbinding again . . .

  ‘You asked me what I wanted to do. That’s what I want to do.’ Baker was quite pleased with her chosen career. Saying ‘Nursing’ would have made it too easy. Nice to make ’em sweat. What would Miss Batty know about drama?

  The mistress looked sidelong at Baker as her fingers trod across the files in the top drawer, noting the greasy dark blonde rats’ tails, the skinny shape under the ridiculous gym slip, the complete want of grace in that Stanley Spencer slouch. Actress? Talk about aiming high.

  Miss Batty thought of the actresses she sometimes spotted in the reasonable little restaurants wallpapered with signed photographs where she and a theatre-going chum would eat rigatoni and discuss whatever play they’d been to, marking performances out of ten (could do better; this is not what you were asked to do). Sometimes an actress one had just seen in costume looking enraged, seductive, murderous, tormented, would be at a nearby table in a smart silk shirt, snapping tiny bites from bread sticks with her capped white teeth while smarming waiters brought undrinkable complimentary liqueurs smelling of bath essence.

  Had those actresses ever had one of these careers chats? And if they had, had the part-time careers mistress fired back with a yes, gosh yes, definitely Cicely, Dulcie, Maggie, of course you should act. I will never forgive you if you don’t go for that audition. Change your name, dye your hair, straighten your nose, cap your teeth, sleep with whoever you must but don’t, don’t I beg you, deny the stage your genius. Was that what they said? Of course it wasn’t. They said ‘Take a typing course’ just as Miss Batty was about to do.

  If they were really determined on a stage career no amount of discouragement would put them off but was it really just about confidence, about only the strong surviving? Did talent count for nothing? And Miss Batty wondered how many art mistresses and elocution teachers were just the bruised remains of women who wanted to be something else. She never played the piano any more. Not properly.

  Chapter 10

  Most of the Upper Shell had slept badly on Wednesday night because most of them had stayed up till the small hours belatedly revising for Thursday’s mocks, but Baker’s sleepless night had been spent dreading her meeting with Julia Smith.

  Baker had been packed off to bed after the Ten O’Clock News, but a broken thermostat on her bedroom radiator made the room unsleepably hot and she was still awake at midnight, listening to the noises of the house. Spam was already cold creamed and hot water bottled in the master bedroom and Baker could hear the master himself brushing his teeth in that angry haphazard way that left white specks all over the bathroom mirror, followed by a long gargle that echoed hideously in the tiny tiled room. Ablutions completed – his word – he locked and bolted the front door and she heard his slippered feet climbing back up the carpeted stairs, like the sound effects in a radio murder mystery.

  Nothing had been said during dinner about her morning’s detention so no one could have rung Dad with the glad tidings and Baker began to think the Drumlin had had a change of heart about reporting her to O’Brien – until she arrived at Registration next morning.

  ‘Amanda!’ Form mistress Mrs Lorimer, assertive for a change, delivered the news that Baker was wanted in the head’s office PDQ. She felt her shoulders going into spasm. Was this just Drumlin’s little shoe fetish again or had Julia told about the fag on the train?

  Dr O’Brien was on the telephone but Baker got the green light straight away and was signalled into a chair but remained standing, scanning the decor. O’Brien had overhauled the study the first week she took over as head, covering her predec
essor’s green emulsion with a smart silver stripe and replacing the Japanese woodcuts with a selection of really pervy prints: The Wreck of the Medusa, Judith beheading Holofernes and an oleograph of St Agatha holding a silver tray and absently caressing one of her plump white breasts, like a pornographic pastrycook. They were all on the wall facing the headmistress’s chair (where visiting parents tended not to spot them).

  Pride of place on the left wall (which they could see) was given to a pair of schoolgirl still lives. One was a photo-realistic trio of school badges: ‘Squash’, ‘Vice’ and ‘Racquets’ – had she been taking the piss? The other featured two lemons on a blue and white Cornishware plate. It was actually rather good: bold purplish shadows under the fruit and a real sense of the glaze on the china. The rubbishy Art Room paper had bubbled badly against the mount and a fine dust of yellow powder had trickled along the inside edge of the frame. Fine art; cheap paint. The typed label said Dora Hardcastle (who else?) 1965. It wouldn’t last another ten years.

  Dr O’Brien had finished her call and was disinfecting the receiver with a cloth soaked in surgical spirit, a now-have-a-rinse smell that did nothing to ease Baker’s nerves. Nor did the head’s plummy, chummy manner.

  ‘Sit down. Sit down.’ Why did grown-ups always think it was jollier when you said things twice?

  ‘See you’re admiring Dora’s lovely lemons.’ Dr O’Brien turned her head towards the wall on which they were hanging and peered blindly at the yellow blur through heavy duty reading glasses worn on a chain round her neck.

  ‘Such a talent.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Happened?’ The head looked perplexed: a fatal stabbing? a premium bond win she hadn’t been told about? ‘Oh I see, yes, yes, I see: career-wise. Very happy, I believe. Twin boys. He’s a chartered accountant, or so she writes. Pity in a way. She’d have made an excellent art teacher.’ Those who can and those who can’t? Bit greedy.