biskybat

biskybat @ 2009-12-22T20:28:00

2009-12-22T20:28:33Z

I've just started In the Dark by Deborah Moggach. I'm hoping it will be less disquieting than Set In Motion. Reading Deborah Moggach is a return to the familiar although it's a few years since I last read anything by her.

biskybat @ 2009-12-17T12:35:00

2009-12-17T12:35:29Z

My current book is Set in Motion by Valerie Martin. It concerns the risky life of Helene who is involved with three men, two of whom are downright menacing and a third who is a drug addict. It's another short one so I'm well into it. Lots of 'good grief' moments wrapped up in slyly simple prose.

This is a first novel published in 1978. I think I shall want to read more of her books.

One reason why my list will be mainly women writers is because dovegreyreader (and if you are reading this and you like books and have never heard of her I can strongly recommend a visit http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/) put in an exhaustive Orange Prize long and short listed books entry a while ago which is just wonderful for tracking down new writers.

biskybat @ 2009-12-14T16:47:00

2009-12-14T16:49:11Z

Here's what I think is happening in The Beacon.

When Frank writes about the abuse he suffered from every one I think he he doing the opposite of symbolism. He felt neglected, starved, unloved and taunted even though he was none of these things in actual fact. So when he wrote his book he put graphic detail into turning his childhood into a place where horrible things happened to him. Physically he was well cared for but mentally and emotionally things went wrong for him and he turned his emotional unhappiness into a chronicle of physical beatings, abuse and contempt.

May, his sister, tells of him being a strange child whom no-one understood very well. He was a watcher and a listener and he was possibly watching and listening in a bemused, misunderstood suspicious way. Perhaps he was on the autistic spectrum, perhaps he felt an outsider, ignored or avoided by his siblings and parents (although there is evidence that he was his mother's favourite). He might have been storing up resentments. His three siblings all had their own identities, their own place within the family but he seemed not to develop either an identity or a position in his family.

Sibling rivalries and jealousies can run very deep and it looks as if Frank's did.

Then there is May's own story. Why did she become subject to 'the terrors' when away from home? I think you have to dig deep in this story to find out why a seemingly capable, friendly child turns into the sort of person who cannot complete a university degree because of being overcome with psychological problems.

I think I might have ever so slightly scratched the surface of this apparently simple book, probably in entirely the wrong direction. It's not simple.

And it's no good asking Susan Hill herself. I believe that she thinks readers should sort things out for themselves and reach their own conclusions.

biskybat @ 2009-12-12T16:07:00

2009-12-12T16:10:11Z

I don't know what to think about The Beacon. I think I'll have to re-read it because I think I must have missed something vital.

biskybat @ 2009-12-10T20:50:00

2009-12-10T20:50:29Z

The Beacon is very readable. It's slightly creepy, slightly menacing.

biskybat @ 2009-12-09T17:51:00

2009-12-09T17:51:20Z

I picked up The Beacon by Susan Hill today in the Cambridge Oxfam book shop. It's one I've held in the back of my mind to look out for. I don't like all Susan Hill's work, actually I haven't read a great proportion - going down the 'also by' list in the front of The Beacon I see I know nine of them, including In the Springtime of the Year which was one I never finished. I do usually finish books if I get beyond the first pages but not always because there are so many books out there and no way I can possibly read them all.

My favourite is Strange Meeting. Very very good. I liked the Simon Serrailler series, too, until SS and his family became too unbearable and the body count in Lafferton too high for me to suspend the disbelief which is so essential when reading.

I had an English teacher, when I was about twelve, who said we shouldn't give up on a book until we'd read eighty pages. I can remember thinking 'but that's nearly half the book' and perhaps that was her thinking too. It sticks in my mind. I still give a book the eighty pages test on occasion.

biskybat @ 2009-12-07T12:36:00

2009-12-07T12:36:18Z

I'm regretfully coming to the end of The Girl in the Blue Dress. It's been pleasure reading right from page one. Gaynor Arnold has managed the Gibson family very skilfully, I think, so that you know it's a bit like the Dickens family without actually being them.

Being a complete and neurotic pedant about such things I hate to find anachronisms and I only found one very small one which might not be one anyway. Kitty says to her mother (when the mother is fussing about something): "Don't start!" Would Victorians have used this expression, I wonder.

biskybat @ 2009-12-05T15:55:00

2009-12-05T15:55:24Z

The reason some books get on to my 'really liked' list is only to do with one thing. Does the book stay with me in some way? I read The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver nearly a year ago and it remains clear in my mind. It isn't the sort of book I'd usually read and it took a couple of chapters or so to get into it.

I don't normally like 'whacky' characters, small town America settings, crazy situations or cute kids but BK manages to get a gang of oddballs together, including a disturbed baby, to have some adventures that work and are wholly believable. It's laugh out loud funny in some places and poignant in others and is one of the few books that R (my husband) and I both liked. He likes stories about small town America but doesn't always go for the rest of this kind of novel.

There's a sequel but I almost don't want to read it in case it isn't as good.

biskybat @ 2009-12-04T11:07:00

2009-12-04T11:07:41Z

This is my novel reading list. Mostly women writers, mostly domestic.

Books I've really liked (since August 2008 when I first started jotting down what I read)

Ferney by James Long
Maus by Art Spiegelman
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Saturday by Ian McEwan
Giving up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
Monster Love by Carol Topolski
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Kaled Hosseini
Digging to America by Anne Tyler
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
The Mysteries of Glass by Sue Gee
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Slightly less liked but still liked

The Girls by Lori Lorenson
The Outcast by Sadie Jones
Daughters of Jerusalem by Charlotte Mendelson
The Rose of Sebastapol by Rose Mahoney
The Kite Runner by Kaled Hosseini
Case Studies by Kate Atkinson
The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville
Sister Crazy by Emma Richler
Lullabies for Little Criminals by
Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge
The White Robin by Miss Read
The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine
A Small Island by Andrea Levy
The Thursday Kidnapping by Antonia Forest
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Molly Fox's Birhday by Deirdre Maddon
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Mother, Missing by Joyce Carol Oates

Hard going sometimes but worth it in the end

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
The Years by Virginia Woolf
The Gathering by Anne Enright
The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower

Disappointing. (Usually because I'd read others by the same author and liked them)

The Favoured Child by Phillipa Gregory
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier
Sleep With Me by Joanna Briscoe
The Vows of Silence by Susan Hill
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Love All by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Books I didn't much like

Orlando by Virginia Woolf
A Quiet Belief in Angels by RJ Ellory
The Book Thief by Markus Zusack
The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
The Estuary by Tessa Hill
Sorry by Gail Jones

Books I didn't finish

Body Surfing by Anita Shreve
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

Books I can't decide about

Sophie's Choice by William Styron

biskybat @ 2009-12-02T07:14:00

2009-12-02T07:14:03Z

I've always liked Elizabeth Jane Howard, have read all her novels, heard her on the radio and was really excited when she came to read and speak at our local fiction festival a few years ago. For me she could do no wrong so her recently published novel, Love All, was a crashing disappointment.

Apart from the weakness of the plotlines - infuriating in the way characters vaguely arrive, do nothing much to contibute to anything and vaguely dsappear - the characters themselves simply don't come across as anything but superficial. There are various sets of devoted brothers and sisters, two girls, from different generations, brought up by maiden aunts, a few self centred men and a few others (too many) swilling uneasily about on the edges. It could be called something like How I Sacrificed My Entire Life For My Brother Because He Is A God And Once Spoke Nicely To Me or Why Does Nothing Nice Happen To Good Characters or simply, Disappointment. People die, people leave and it was annoying rather than anything deeper.

I kept going because EJH, even at her weakest, is very readable and there are still gems to be found. She hasn't lost her sure touch when writing dialogue between some of her characters or in describing people and places.

Several irritations are minor. The insistence on Percy's Greekness, for instance, when there is nothing Greek about her apart from EJH's insistence. And why didn't her aunt Floy know that her name is pronounced Percy phone - it's not as if she wouldn't ever have heard it pronounced. And if she must carry that nickname, why not at least spell it Persy? Percy is such a self centred tubby little man in a waistcoat name.

And then there's Hatty who is eight for much of the novel but whom EJH suddenly makes rather teenagerish, complete with spots, as if she'd forgotten how old she is.

But that ending! Oh dear!

biskybat @ 2009-11-30T14:58:00

2009-11-30T14:58:49Z

I've just started to read Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold. It looks promising as far as twenty pages can judge.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society wandered into far fetchedness in the last quarter of the book. The authors obviously rather liked Isolda and put her in the middle of two unlikely episodes and it came across as unnecessary padding, especially when she turns detective. Suddenly I found myself in Famous Five land and it really didn't work. (I love the FF and am currently collecting all of them to rebuild my childhood collection so nothing against them personally!)

A recent good book was The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell. I liked this very much for the interweaving stories of Iris and Esme although I wasn't too sure quite how Iris's relationship with her brother contributed to the overall story.

It hardly seems credible that they shut people (and it seems to be mostly women) away in asylums in the 20th century for such crimes as disobeying one's parents, being ambitious or becoming pregnant and although all this has been well documented elsewhere it still comes as a shock. Maggie O'Farrell writes in a nicely understated way - you don't always see what's coming. In different hands Esme's history could have been turned into an overwritten melodrama.

biskybat @ 2009-11-29T11:35:00

2009-11-29T11:35:39Z

What makes a book good must be who's reading it, of course, but I'm always surprised when books that I've enjoyed don't hit the spot for other people. One of my absolute favourites remains Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and I've recommended/given it to various people. The most common reaction is lukewarm to say the least so perhaps it isn't that brilliant but I still think it is.

I'm the same, though. If someone raves about a book I approach it with suspicion thinking it can't be that good. I wonder why.

biskybat @ 2009-11-28T15:13:00

2009-11-28T15:14:46Z

Having changed very definitely to working part time I've got more time to read. I've conscientiously kept a list of everything I've read over the last year or so and I think I'm going to start writing brief reviews so that I can actually remember what the books were about. And lj is a good place to record. By the way if you're reading this anything I write will be full of spoilers.

My current book which I'm on the verge of finishing: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.

My niece sent me this one as we do find our tastes in books coincide sometimes - she sends me things she's really liked and vice versa. She waxed most lyrical over this and it is, as several reviewers have said, a sweet story. Thing is, do I like sweet? Glancing over my recent reads I seem to go for less than happy endings but this is a refreshing change. Yes, now and again I do like sweet. Even if the heroine, Juliet, is deeply annoying and most of the Islanders sound and act identical, even if there is the standard temperamental child, Kit, who I wanted to push off the cliff and even if her mother, Elizabeth, is unreasonably courageous. In spite of all this, and the less than brilliant writing, the authors know how to spin a tale - lots of tales because the individual recollections of the Guernsey Islanders suffering German occupation in the war are what made the book compelling reading.

It's set out in letters. No chapters or anything like that and it's not a form I'd think of as workable (as a child I used to skip people's letters to each other in books as boring and irrelevant) but it works here. I've ended up knowing a little about the German occupation although I have to be careful because apparently the Guernsey in the book is not the one some Islanders would recognise. But I liked it. I'm even starting to like Juliet and had to skip to the last page to check that she was going to end up marrying the right man - yes, it's that kind of book, but it has to be. It has to have a good ending. I'm not there yet but I know it will be.

biskybat @ 2008-12-27T10:40:00

2008-12-27T10:45:09Z

There's something a bit sad about an unused journal, I think. I'm not deleting this time because I know there are some out there who like AF Fanfiction - any AF fanfiction - but I have made it private for the moment because it's not active.

It feels like taking down a note on a notice board!

Anyone who really wants can always read it, just drop a line, but I do feel, like I did before, that anyone who wanted to has already read it so it's served its purpose.

biskybat @ 2008-08-19T22:31:00

2008-08-19T21:36:25Z

HOLIDAY SNAPS
Six

"Nick, Nick, wake up!"

Nicola, fathoms deep, rose to the surface, clutching at the sides of a dream about lying in the bottom of a drifting dinghy. Very briefly, her eyes flicked and then closed tightly in a silent protest against sand in her eyes . . .

"Nick!" Rowan's voice. Urgent, exasperated, on the verge of real impatience . . . but she hadn't done anything . . . all the same that particular tone of Rowan's was never one to argue with. She opened her eyes again and blinked several times realising that somehow the grittiness was both inside and outside her eyelids.
"What?"
"Are you awake?"
"Looks like it - "
"Actually you don't look like it. You look a sight. What on earth have you been doing?"
"Nothing."
"No? Care to take a look at the stairs?"
"What do you mean?"

Awake enough to register disquiet Nicola pushed her duvet back and thrust her feet out to meet the floor. Cold. Very. If she knew where Lawrie's giant furry slippers were . . . muddy trainers but . . .

"Oh, do get a move on. Unless you want Ma and everyone else to see the evidence."
"Evidence? What evidence?" Thoroughly awake now, Nicola trailed Rowan out of her room and looked where she was pointing. Damp and muddy footprints. All the way up the stairs and along the corridor as far as her room.
"Now, that," said Rowan in a brisk whisper, "is a bit of an open and shut case, wouldn't you say? Not there when I went to bed last night. I think I would have noticed. And I rather think Ma would have too."
"I'll clear it up."
"I think so. But where has it come from, d'you think?"
"Off my trainers, I suppose." She thought back to her arrival home and her weary disregard of the no muddy boots in the house rule . . . they hadn't been that bad. Or so she'd thought last night.
"Oh, act your age, do. Out to see Patrick, I suppose. But why when you can see him all day long? Or shouldn't one be so bold as to inquire too deeply?"

No, one blinking well shouldn't, Nicola thought, nettled. None of your ruddy business. She didn't have to tell Rowan anything. And usually Rowan was a great one for not inquiring too deeply but when she got that particular look on her face Nicola knew the game was pretty much up. But she hadn't done anything, she repeated to herself firmly. She didn't have to say a thing.

"We were listening for owls."
"Owls? You mean you were out last night? I thought you'd been out on some early morning jaunt and was about to point out not the best of ideas on a back to school day. But last night? Are you a complete lunatic?"

Rowan shook her head as if for once in her life she was at a loss. Nicola scratched at one of the marks with her toe, aware now that her shoulder, which had taken the brunt of her crash landing the previous evening, was really rather painful. Another couple of hours sleep and a deep deep hot hot bath were still possibilities, she hoped. Rowan with another puzzled shake of her head went on her way pausing only to say that she'd better not waste any time - their mother tended to get up earlier than usual on back to school days.

Nicola tackled her job with less than her usual energy and hoped that she was doing a reasonably efficient one. She supposed she ought to feel grateful to Rowan; her mother was extremely unlikely to take less than a very hard line indeed.

And if she'd had any sense at all she could have been far vaguer about the time she had been out, she thought, as she thankfully returned to her bed, her last regretful thought, before sleep claimed all her senses, being that she could hardly change her story now.

An hour later and a mile or so away, Patrick was pensively eating breakfast, the conversation batting gently between his parents scarcely entering his consciousness until Helena Merrick said:

"Do you know anything about the spare room duvet, Pat?"
"The spare room duvet?" he repeated vaguely.
"Do take that half witted look of your face," his mother said impatiently. "A straw between your teeth and you'd look the complete village idiot."
"Thanks, Ma. A little parental admiration is always - "
"Well, do you?"

Patrick considered the question.

"I borrowed it," he said.
"You borrowed it? What for? Where is it now?"
"In a - sort of tree. I went - owl watching last night and took it with me."
"You went owl watching? You took a duvet with you?"
"If you must drag bedding all over the countryside what was the matter with your own?" Anthony asked mildly.
"I sort of needed two," said Patrick after a pause.

His parents gazed at him in united disbelief.

"Sometimes I really don't understand you," said Anthony folding his newspaper. "But first thing after breakfast you must fetch them back. And you will pay for any cleaning or repair of course."
"Please tell me," said Helena, her eyes closed against inevitable and unwelcome information, "that Nicola Marlow wasn't involved in your needing two duvets?"

Their united gaze became something much sharper.

"Patrick," said Anthony Merrick.
"Yes, Pa?"
"Answer your mother, please. If you have behaved in any way dishonourably towards Nicola then - "

Victorian. Very.

"No, Pa, of course I haven't."
"But she was with you?"
"Well - for some of the time."

Remorselessly, they dragged the finer details from him including the fact that Nicola had taken a tumble from the tree.

"What?" said Anthony incredulously. "Nicola falls out of a tree and you let her walk home and don't tell anyone she might be seriously injured - "
"She was walking! She - "
"Have you never heard of delayed concussion?"
"But she didn't land on her head! She said she was absolutely fine. This is making the most colossal mountain out of the minutest molehill - "
"Clearly," said Helena, taking a last sip from her coffee cup before rising with her usual decisive elegance from the table, "I need to telephone Pam Marlow. Quite what she will think to hear that you have been enticing Nicola into trees in the middle of the night, I can't imagine - although I suppose she is old enough to be partially responsible - "

"Nick! Nick! Breakfast!"

For the second time in the space of an hour and a half, Nicola waded reluctantly out of sleep. Her wakening this time was a little gentler for it was Ann standing in the doorway looking at her with quizzical concern.

"Are you all right?"
"Fine."
"We're all having breakfast."
"Not hungry."
"Not hungry? Are you okay? Do you feel - "

Nicola shied away from Ann's concern with a small twitch of annoyance.

"I'm fine," she repeated. "What I want is a bath."

She would probably get away with it, she thought. It did no harm to test First Day Back leniency and her shoulder would like a hot soak very much. She sat up and looked Ann in the eye.

"Seems like a good time to get at the hot water," she said firmly. "Will you tell Mum I'll be down soon?" she added hoping her politeness would be transferred to their mother.
"She's on the phone to someone at the moment - I suppose she won't mind too much - although - are you sure you're all right?"
"Absolutely tophole, Jeeves," said Nicola with a huge yawn.
"Then I'll put yours in the bottom oven," said Ann. "And I'll start your bath, shall I?"

She didn't argue. Sometimes it saved time to let Ann do her sisterly thing and it was quite pleasant to find the slow running taps had at least made a start on filling the bath. Ann had placed her own bottle of Floral Indulgence where Nicola was obviously expected to help herself if she felt so inclined but she had a memory of something stronger than Peter had had the time he'd done something to his knee. She dug into the over crowded bathroom cabinet, fished out the bottle of Deep Heat and emptied the last of its sticky contents into the water. Much better than Ann's flowery nonsense, she thought ungratefully. A good strong smell - she could feel it doing her shoulder good already.

Nicola forgot time. She idled gently in the bath, pleased to find her shoulder was responding obligingly to hot water and Deep Heat, her thoughts about Patrick and the previous night's events drifting in and out of focus in a partly pleasurable partly embarrassed way. Was she embarrassed? Did she have anything to be embarrassed about? Wasn't it Patrick who ought to feel far more kick the blankets mortified - although he'd seemed more annoyed than upset by the appearance of that little silver packet and more annoyed with her than giving any sign of feeling any real awkwardness. Although he'd said sorry - wanted to see her to say goodbye - later she'd take a trip over there on the Idiot Boy. Thinking of the Idiot Boy led her into thoughts of how she would miss him which led her into wondering how much she would miss Patrick. . .

She was suddenly and splashily startled out of her reverie by a sharp double tap on the door.

"Nicola! Are you in there?"
"Yes, Ma."
"I want a word with you, young lady, the very second you're out!"

Oh, flipperty heck, what now, Nicola muttered to herself. Resignedly, she supposed mud on the stairs, and she removed herself from the bath and reached for the towel - it never did to keep her mother waiting when she used that voice - definitely her shoulder was better although the coming bruise was fairly spectacular.

The door knob rattled and Ginty arrived in a state of unabashed curiosity.

"What's going on? Mum never says 'young lady' like that - hasn't for years. What have you done?"
"Do you mind," growled Nicola. "I was trying to have a private - "
"Must have done something," Ginty went on perching, on the edge of the bath. "Mum's looking all pinched up like she's really angry. And she was on the phone ages."
"Who to?" asked Nicola as disinterestedly as she could whilst tucking ends of towel round herself to avoid meeting Ginty's inquisitive eye.
"Don't know. All we got was long silences this end but you could see the steam coming out of her ears - something's set her off good and proper - Blimey, what have you done to your shoulder - huge bruise, did you know?"
"Nothing," said Nicola dismally. "Now if you don't mind getting out of the
way . . . "

Even if Ginty was to be half believed, her mother sounded disproportionately annoyed if it was something as trivial as mud on the stairs. Perhaps Rowan had said something - but Rowan didn't tell tales and she was usually up and out on the farm in the mornings, often taking her breakfast with her.

And thinking of breakfast she wouldn't mind some. In spite of her uneasiness about coming trouble her appetite was very definitely up and making itself felt.

In the kitchen Mrs Bertie and Doris were banging crockery and cutlery and shouting at each other about how quiet it would be once all the young Marlows had returned to school. They stopped to look at Nicola as she bent to retrieve her plate of scrambled eggs and bacon that kind sister Ann had left in the lower oven of the Aga.

"Very lucky, you are," said Mrs Bertie disapprovingly. "Wouldn't catch me making no special arrangements - last day or no last day. Cold toast you'd get. Mind you wash those up yourself, Doris and me've better things to do than chase round after you all morning."
"Yes, Mrs Bertie," said Nicola obediently, exchanging a wink with Doris who was always on her side, and it was nice to feel someone was, she felt ruefully. Rowan, her mother, Ginty, Mrs Bertie, all giving her a hard time and it was still not even half past eight . . .

Her mother was waiting for her in the dining room, looking very grim indeed. She said nothing at all while Nicola carefully placed her plate on the table and looked down at it wondering if she was actually that hungry after all.

"Now, Nicola. Just exactly where were you last night?"

Oh 'strewth, thought Nicola.

"What did Rowan say?" she asked for a starting point.
"Rowan?" said Mrs Marlow impatiently. "What has Rowan got to do with it?"
"Oh," said Nicola taking a careful tiny mouthful of scrambled egg and wishing she knew just who had been on the phone. "Nothing."

Her mother waited.

"Well?" she said crisply.
"I was out with Patrick," said Nicola because there didn't seem to be much else she could say. "For some of the time," she amended.
"What were you doing?"
"Well . . . "
"Nicola!"
"Owl watching," she said. "We thought we'd watch for owls. That's all, Ma, really."
"That's all? You stay out half the night with Patrick - goodness knows where - in a tree somewhere Helena Merrick says - yes, I've had a long conversation with her on the phone this morning - a very long conversation - "
"The steps' tree house," Nicola put in gently. "We were only watching owls."
"Quite apart from the sheer foolhardiness of clambering up and down trees in the middle of the night - you were very lucky indeed you didn't break your neck! I assume your shoulder is all right?"

Nicola nodded, thinking it expedient to agree with this in spite of uneasy twinges now the effects of the Deep Heat were passing.

"But, Ma, we only - "

Mrs Marlow put up a hand.

"I don't wish to hear yet again that you were only owl watching!" she said scathingly and proceeded to tell Nicola exactly what she thought about the whole episode. Nicola continued to eat her breakfast as tidily and unobtrusively as she could, not wishing to heap any more coals onto the flames of her mother's ire. Mrs Marlow, still distinctly displeased came to an eventual halt leaving Nicola feeling thoroughly battered. She thought it wholly unfair that she should be taken to task for such a relatively innocent affair and rashly said so.
"If you don't know know why you shouldn't be sharing a bed with Patrick all night then I've slipped up badly," said Mrs Marlow. "Really, Nicola, I'm extraordinarily surprised at all this. And particularly annoyed with Patrick. He should have had more sense and so, most certainly should you!"
"But Ma - "
"The Merricks have taken Patrick very much to task over this, Nicola, and if you weren't returning to school today you, young lady, would find yourself under a very strict curfew indeed."

Nicola decided to say no more in her own or in Patrick's defence. She scraped resignedly at her plate and offered an apology. Her mother heaved a deep sigh which combined exasperation and unmollified displeasure and told her next time such an idiotic idea was suggested to her to please consider the consequences. She dismissed her with the suggestion that she wasted no time in finishing her packing and then added, and it seemed like an afterthought to Nicola, that she'd better take a look at her shoulder as, just at present, she didn't feel like taking Nicola's assurances for anything at all.

The house was oddly quiet. No Peter lolling against doorways and getting in the way, no Lawrie to insist that Nicola must have taken her sponge bag by mistake - she knew she'd left it tidily ready to fill with all her last minute bathroom paraphernalia, no Ginty whom Nicola supposed was saying a fond farewell to Jack Connor, not even Ann seemed to be about although of course, Ann's presence never made itself felt particularly. She wondered whether hers did. If she was the one staying away would they miss her or just not notice much that she wasn't there? Was that why only some ghosts ever made an appearance? Just the forceful ones - like Rowan, say, or Giles - although Ann was definitely more wispy already - more of a ghost candidate - she must remember to ask Miranda what she thought about the personalities of ghosts, she decided, with a little grin at herself for her fanciful imaginings.

No-one had actually said she shouldn't see Patrick, she thought as she lugged her overnight case downstairs to sit by the door until the car was ready to be loaded, but it would probably be a touch undiplomatic to ask. She'd take The Idiot Boy for a farewell ride and call - briefly, she thought virtuously - on him to say goodbye. He was bound to be in the hawk garden.

He was. He was clearly waiting for her and he put his finger to his lips and led The Idiot Boy to a spare loose box with the minimum of noise or fuss.

"Am I persona non grata in your house?" he asked when they were safely on the right side of the hawk garden gate and therefore well out of the way.
"Sort of," she said. "Am I? In yours?"
"Not with my father who thinks I ought to be taken out and shot but Ma does seem to be taking the line that it's only what can be expected from those wild Marlow girls - how are you feeling?"
"My shoulder, d'you mean? Okay. Stiff, but walking wounded stuff."
"Look, I'm heartfelt sorry about everything, Nick. My Pa obviously thinks I'm a cad and a bounder and not fit to carry the Merrick name - but - Nick - I didn't mean - you know - "
"It's all right," she said hastily, not in the mood at all to hear what he didn't mean when quite obviously he had meant what he wasn't quite saying, and anyway, it wasn't exactly an apology she was after.

So what was she after, she wondered, as a very short while later she and Patrick released The Idiot Boy from the loose box and he gave her a neat leg up. They stared at each other for a moment, unsmiling, slightly puzzled, as if each might be wishing the other to do or say just the right thing, Patrick with one hand on the pony's mane - she only had to put hers on top of it and perhaps everything would be suddenly perfectly all right between them again.

But she didn't and it was only as she cantered away, one hand raised in farewell, that she brought in the thought hovering like a bee on the edge of her mind. Patrick had never once said he loved her. If he had then all sorts of things would have been perfectly all right between them.

biskybat @ 2008-07-04T12:26:00

2008-07-04T11:40:13Z

HOLIDAY SNAPS
Five

Rowan, in the best of early evening spirits, wandered along the track alongside Pogg's Acre which led into High Field where she could do her farmerly thing of leaning on the gate and assessing the crops. Wheat, in this case, and whether to top dress it this week or leave it a little later. She was inclined to leave it. Jan would be back at the end of the kids' holidays. Jan didn't mind what she did and possessed a positive gift for understanding the tractor's temperamental innards. Who would have thought it, Rowan mused as she gazed at the wheat - definitely next week - no hurry at all - who would have thought that Jan would turn out to be so competent? Although why should it surprise her? Jan's name was a byward for understated competence. It should be no more surprising than her suddenly acting Prospero or singing in the cathedral or being given an unconditional place at Oxford. Jan just could do things. Everyone knew that. If she decided to go ahead with her plan for entering Veterinary College then no doubt she would be just as good there, too.

She caught a glimpse of a blonde head dipping and bobbing on the other side of the hedge. Nick, off to see Patrick, of course. As always the idea that the pair of them had shifted their friendship into deeper and more emotional territory bothered her slightly. She wasn't quite sure why unless it had something to do with the way Ginty had played him along and then discarded him. It made Nick look a touch - what was the word - not eager exactly - vulnerable perhaps. Not a word she usually associated with her capable younger sister. The gap in the hedge revealed more of Nicola who turned her head at the sight of Rowan.

"Oh - Rowan, hello!"
"Hello, yourself, young Nic'la," said Rowan in Ted Coltherd's voice. Nicola wasn't at all sure she didn't find it more annoying than Peter's Mummerset. She went on in her normal voice,"Where are you off to at such a tidy lick?"
"Nowhere much."

Rowan observed the slow blush which mounted Nicola's cheeks.

"Not in a hurry then?"
"Well - not a hurry exactly," said Nicola. "I'm going over to say goodbye to Regina and Patrick - school tomorrow - "

Nicola did her nonchalant best to look as if she had all the time in the world, as if it didn't matter that she was already late, that Patrick would be waiting for her and might just decide she wasn't coming. Rowan was on the edge, the very edge of a major tease, she thought, and she received enough of that from Peter.

"Won't there be time in the morning?" Rowan asked politely. "It'll be dark soon - although perhaps you don't mind that?"
"Not for ages," said Nicola, "and anyway . . . "
"Yes?"
"I'm not going to be very long," Nicola said lamely because she wasn't prepared to tell Rowan that Patrick would walk back with her and she most certainly wasn't going to let on to anyone how she felt about walking along the track in the falling darkness with Patrick close to her . . .

Rowan narrowed her eyes at her.

"Nick - you and Patrick - be careful, won't you?"

Nicola rolled herself up hedgehog like, prickles definitely showing.

"What do you mean?" she said very stiffly.
"Well, you know. First Gin, now you. He's not messing you about, is he?"
"No!"
"Because I'm not sure Ma really realises about you two. I think she thinks it's the riding and hawking that are the main Merrick attractions - "
"So they are!"
"Okay," said Rowan. "Just be a bit careful about shutting the saddle room door next time you're both in there because when I inadvertently stumbled across the pair of you in my innocent quest for a halter rope for ChocBar - "
"We were cleaning tack!"
"So you were," said Rowan placidly. "Well, like I say, be careful - if you can't be good, that is. See you later."

She turned to go, beginning to whistle a tune which Nicola recognised even through Rowan's unmusical rendering as 'Love is the Sweetest Thing'. Nicola didn't know whether to feel deep irritation or deep embarrassment and found she was experiencing both, a wave of each coming at her until embarrassment took over. The saddle room! When? 'Strewth, what had Rowan witnessed? Because they'd heard her coming a mile off with that aggravating whistle of hers - leapt apart like frightened goats - so what did she mean about stumbling across them? Her cheeks burned as she relived the little scene and imagined her sister catching them together, backing off and then returning with a tactful warning of her approach. But if Rowan wanted to be so ruddy diplomatic, she thought resentfully, breaking into a jog again, it might have been better not to say anything,. Except did she want Rowan knowing things and not saying? Lucky lucky Patrick to be an only
child . . .

"Thought you were never coming," Patrick commented looking down at her from where he was perched in Peter's tree house, their halfway and very convenient meeting place.

In spite of her damaged ankle she climbed easily up the system of ladders and ropes which Chas had designed and which Peter had patiently redesigned and built. Patrick leant a chivalrous hand and she landed neatly beside him saying:

"Handy, the steps all going to bed so early."
"Even handier Peter deciding to clear off for a couple of days - I say, Nick, I've had a pretty fantastic idea. Look what I've brought with me!"
"What?" said Nicola doubtfully.
"My camping mats - I've got two. I thought as it's your last evening - sorrow - we could meet very very early tomorrow morning. So early it's still dark."

He looked at her expectantly. She looked back at him with a slight frown.

"How early?"
"Early as you can manage." He slipped a persuasive arm around her. "We can listen out for all sorts of creatures, this is such a good vantage point. You can get away can't you? "
"Depends . . . "
"All sorts of things we might be able to hear," Patrick went on. "Night jars. Nightingales."
"What - round here? In the morning?"
"No harm in listening for them. Not our fault if we don't hear any. And I did say very very early."
"So early it's still night?" said Nicola sarcastically and then saw that he meant it. "Don't be a clot, Patrick - of course I can't stay out here all night! Mum would go spare."
"Only if you told her."

There was a long pause. Patrick's eyes, impossible to tell what he was thinking, she thought, looked into hers.

"Don't be a clot," she repeated rather less emphatically. "It's a bonkers idea. And I haven't even got a sleeping bag."

He looked away from her, appearing to find studying the jerky progress of a small spider making its way along a branch of greater interest than she was.

"If you say so." He put out a finger and the spider stopped, investigated and decided the best way was round rather than over. "I just thought it would be rather fun. And I can provide sleeping bags. But if you don't want to . . . " He shrugged and gave her a sideways grin.

Nicola frowned again.

"Quite early would be all right," she said. "Six, say? Or half past five? We could bring breakfast."

He shrugged again and said:

"We'll be awake, won't we?"

"Well of course we'll be awake - "

She was confused. She had several times found herself confused by Patrick since the first kiss they'd exchanged a few days ago. She thought it had something to do with the way things had escalated. From seeing not a great deal of each other they had spent every waking moment they could spare in each other's company as if the last few days of the holiday needed to have everything possible packed into them to sustain them over their impending separation. With Lawrie safely at Tim's, Peter also away and Ginty on her own mission involving Jack Connor they had enjoyed unusual freedom. And whatever they did, whether it was hawking or riding or simply being together neither could resist the closeness of the other. It wasn't a question of letting Patrick, Nicola told herself firmly. She wanted it too. But spending the night in the tree house was a step too far, she decided regretfully. And Patrick ought to know that.

The silence between them deepened uncomfortably. Was she being a prude? What did he actually expect of her? Did he mean a simple little night fast asleep in the tree house or what? If she agreed to this mad plan what else would she be agreeing to?

"If I agreed to this mad plan what else am I agreeing to?"
"What are you suggesting?" he said, teasing and suddenly much more friendly. "I think I know how to observe the proprieties - if you want me to, that is. Do you want me to run it past you?"
"No harm in running it past me - "
"Midnight," he whispered in her ear. "The witching hour. Mystery, excitement and a gibbous moon. What more could a girl want?"
"A modicum of common sense," she said surprising herself into realising that she did listen to Crommie sometimes.
"That too," he said. "Obviously."

Which could mean anything, she thought.

Several hours later, still against her better judgement but thinking for once judgement could take a back seat, Nicola pulled the back door closed behind her. It had been nerve racking fumbling through the house, not daring to turn on any lights, every floorboard betraying her, every stair offering its own creak or squeak and the creepiest feeling that any moment Rowan was going to appear on some late farming mission and unpleasantly surprise her.

So slipping into the different quality of outside darkness was a massive relief. She'd made it. She did not dare turn on her torch until she was well clear of the house although by that time her eyes were thoroughly accustomed to the light that Patrick's gibbous moon was giving her and she didn't need it. No moon, however bright and this one wasn't particularly, was ever going to make her entirely comfortable on her own in the dark. Because it wasn't the dark, she'd long ago realised, it was the way everything seemed to become loaded with menacing intent - like the branch that she'd just slapped into - it was only a branch, not its fault she'd bashed it but something spiteful there all the same that wasn't there at all in the day time . . . oh, pipe down, you fanciful twerp, she told herself sternly, and then nearly jumped out of her skin as a dark moving shape rose towards her from the other side of the hedge.

"Patrick!" she hissed.
"It's me," the dark shape agreed. "Come to do the gentlemanly thing and escort you to your abode."
"Not gentlemanly to frighten the life out of a person."
"And there's me thinking you'd be grateful. Ah, well, no wonder the age of chivalry is behind us."

He held out a conciliatory hand and she took it, immediately comforted by the warm presence of him. The hand moved to her shoulder, she put her arm round his waist and hooked her fingers into his pocket and very easily they fell into and adjusted their steps to each other until they reached the tree house.

"All mod cons," he said a minute later when they landed on the platform. "Camping stove - provisions - and what does Madam think of the very latest in comfortable beds?"

Nicola turned on her torch so that she could take a better look.

"Duvets," she said doubtfully. "I thought you said you were going to bring sleeping bags."
"Could only find one," he said nonchalantly. "So I brought my duvet and the one from the spare room - which needed an outing - all it does is lie there - chaste boring life it does lead. Oh, come on, Nick! I've lugged the dratted things miles and miles just for you - you might look a bit pleased."

Unconsciously, Nicola zipped up the last three inches of her fleece.

"So what have you brought to cook?"
"Bacon," he said. "And some bread rolls. Peckish?"

She found that she was. And it was rather nice, she found, sitting in their unconventional perch together pointing out identifiable night creatures and arguing idiotically over whether seed eating birds had pleasanter natures than the carnivorous variety. She was reasonably warm, too, she realised, the combination of the duvets beneath them and the nearness of Patrick providing a soporific cosiness.

Nicola's eventual yawns prompted Patrick to produce a camping kettle of water to be heated on the minute stove for two mugs of Navy cocoa and as the cold was beginning to creep into their feet his suggestion that they warm up under the duvets seemed only too sensible. Placing her cocoa carefully next to her, she caterpillared her way between the duvets to encounter a still warm hot water bottle.

"Wow," she said appreciatively. "Patrick, the chambermaid."
"I said all mod cons," he replied smugly. "I want us to be as snug as those bugs in that rug - snugger, in fact. Extra pillow? So Madam can sit up properly to drink her cocoa and not slosh it all over the bed? There - isn't this cosy?"

She made her cocoa last, aware suddenly of the reality of this situation. She was actually in bed with Patrick. Layers of protective clothing notwithstanding, she was in bed with Patrick and just possibly by her being there, by her agreeing to this mad scheme he might think - well, what might he think, she wondered, a little hysterically. A phrase of Miranda's quoting from her father drifted towards her: you must remember that boys believe whatever they think girls are saying to them. They'd giggled over this but now, what did Patrick expect, she wondered. He was lying down next to her, peacefully plucking and folding the soft new oak leaves within his reach, not looking as if he expected anything. She put her mug down and shuffled herself onto her back and Patrick leaned across to kiss her.

"I was beginning to think you were going to be drinking cocoa all night," he said. "Your hair smells simply wonderful - bacon, cocoa, damp trees, night time - simply wonderful. Aren't you glad you came?"

It was no effort to curl towards him, to kiss him in return, nothing her conscience couldn't deal with. This was Patrick, trustworthy and sensible, it would be like the other times, except that no-one was going to burst in on them because nobody at all knew where they were and this was gloriously private.

"You could take your fleece off," he whispered after a while.
"No, I couldn't."
"But your face is like a lobster - "
"How do you know? Too dark to see anything."
"Okay, like a furnace then - and I know because I can - feel . . . "

His fingers were stroking her face and neck sending trickles of pleasure through her.

"I'll take my Guernsey off," he suggested. "Then we'd be even."
"No."

She sensed something different in Patrick. His hand moved to her waist, burrowed gently but insistently under her fleece, under her jumper and thick tee shirt. If she could be sure they both had the same boundaries she wouldn't mind one tiny smidgin of a dot - who would - but doubt was there, planted by that insistence. She pushed his hand away. Better now than when he truly might start believing all sorts of things that simply weren't going to happen.

"What?" He sounded mildly exasperated. "Why the sudden attack of maidenliness?"
"I'm not being maidenly!"
"Looks like it," he murmured. "Oh, come on, Nick, I shan't see you for weeks on end - this is our last chance to be together.
"Earlier you said - " It was going to sound silly. "You said you knew how to observe the proprieties - "

He made an exasperated sound.

"You're not giving me a chance to do much else," he said, unfairly Nicola thought. "And you're so keen usually - "
"It's different up here."
"It's exactly the same up here only more private. I thought you'd like that. No big sisters charging in and catching you in flagrante delicto . . . "

She wished she'd never mentioned what Rowan had said. He was laughing at her, she thought uneasily. And normally she didn't mind. But she didn't like the combination of his jokiness with what his hands were doing. Very firmly she shrugged away from him and sat up.

"Now what?"
"I'm going home."
"You're - oh, Nick for goodness sake, what's the matter with you! Honestly - girls - oh, blast it!" This last was aimed not at her but at the rivulet of cocoa he had created by upsetting his mug in his haste to sit up too. "Hand on heart," he went on doing just this while with the other he fumbled for his handkerchief. "I don't know what you think I had in mind but nothing is going to happen that you don't want."

She might have believed him, she might have settled down again, relieved, except that in his efforts to reach his handkerchief Patrick also pulled out a silver wrapped Boots own brand condom. It lay between them catching and reflecting the little amount of light and they stared at it.

"Oh," said Nicola flatly.
"Oh, for goodness sake! I didn't really expect - it was just in case we - you - well, you know. I was being," he paused, his turn now to feel wrong footed, to know that he was going to sound faintly ridiculous. "I was being careful. Responsible."
"Oh," she said again because she couldn't think of anything else. She pushed the duvet back, got to her feet and looked for her shoes.
"This is silly," he said impatiently. "At least let's talk a bit. Nick, sit down - "

It was unfortunate that Patrick chose the exact moment that Nicola was perched on her sound foot and propping the other one against the edge of a branch to tie her lace to pull at her arm. Nicola resisted, was caught off balance and stumbled, catching wildly at anything she could, one thought uppermost, she must not land yet again on her wobbly ankle . . .

Branches broke her fall which was not so very far although far enough to knock the breath out of her and for her to decide that staying where she was for a few seconds was probably a sensible idea.

"Nick! Nick! Are you okay?" Patrick, slithering down the rope was at her side in a trice, very bothered indeed at the way she was lying so still and consequently extremely relieved when she started to sit up and to say in her matter of fact way.
"I'm fine. Don't breathe over me like that, Patrick."
"Are you sure? Because you landed with a right thump - "
"I'm all right. Honestly." She got to her feet and hitched her rucksack over her shoulder. "And," she added firmly, "I'm still going home."
"Yes, okay," he said with a sigh. "Although I'd much rather you let me make you a cup of tea. With sugar in it. For the shock, you know."

Which shock did Patrick have in mind, Nicola thought wryly to herself.

"I'll make one when I get home."
"And I'll certainly come with you. Can't have you keeling over into the bushes."

Well, she wouldn't turn him down, she thought, her heart quailing at the thought of the long trudge back, her torch pointing out the undesirable shadows and shapes as well as guiding her feet.

"Nick?" His hand on her arm felt uncertain.
"What?"
"Sorry."
"It's okay."

She didn't want to talk. She was tired and she was cold and all she really wanted was to be in her own bed, pioneering spirit tucked away, feet warm, sleep close . . .

"I don't want us to - to part not being friends. Will you come over in the morning to say goodbye?"
"It is the morning."
"You know what I mean."

She gave a jaw cracking yawn.

"I might."

biskybat @ 2008-02-26T14:23:00

2008-02-26T14:24:06Z

HOLIDAY SNAPS
Four

Waking on Saturday morning to a grey light and the steady drumming of rain on the window Nicola wasn't at all sure she had made the right decision: did she really want to go all the way to Kent just to join in with some shindig of Tim's simply and solely to keep Lawrie happy? Wouldn't it be much pleasanter to stay at home because - and it seemed very likely to be true - everyone seemed to think Ginty was much keener on Jack Connor than she was on Patrick and therefore why not take the opportunity of, quite casually and in an unassuming way, just going to see him on the pretext of visiting Regina? It pestered her, this thought that there Patrick was, and there she was and once they'd been good friends - once they'd even spent a night together in a haystack for Pete's sake - and never the outside whisker of an unseemly thought had appeared to cross either of their minds, and now she was in a stupid dither of indecision that in anyone else - Esther, for instance - she would have thought feeble beyond words.

No point mooning about it, anyway: she'd told Lawrie she'd go so go she must. And if she really must then she supposed she might as well decide which of her two party dresses she was going to take. And she might as well do it now. Eying Lawrie's sleeping form she slid open their shared cupboard and stared into its recesses - she couldn't see - she'd have to turn on the light -

'What are you doing, Nick?' Lawrie sat up and blinked at her.
'Looking at dresses. Party.'
'Now?'
'Why not now? Nothing else to do before breakfast.' Nicola pulled out Miranda's cream coloured silk and her Mum's Chest stripy green one and considered.

'Can I have the one you don't want?'
'You've got one.'
'Swap?' suggested Lawrie. 'You can have my black one for either of those - especially Miranda's - '

Nicola put out a defensive hand and then thought, why not? She'd worn it at the Merricks' Twelfth Night party and really, all things considered, much good it had done her. And she liked Lawrie's black. Surprising they'd never thought to swap before, she said aloud - sensible of Lawrie really.

'Because everyone would have thought you were me and I was you,' said Lawrie, out of bed now and holding up the cream dress against herself. 'Isn't it heavy? Bet it cost a bomb and a half.'
'It doesn't feel heavy when it's on,' said Nicola returning to the cupboard to root out Lawrie's dress. Black velvet. Yes, it looked all right . . . Lawrie, meanwhile, had slithered into Miranda's dress and they stood side by side eying themselves and each other in the barely adequate looking glass. Odd, Nicola found, with one of those superstitious shivers that arrived out of nowhere, and she hadn't had one of those for years, that for a moment she hadn’t been entirely sure who was which. Next to her Lawrie said, with unusual irony - must be all those years with Tim - 'so that's what I look like in m'black,' and then gave a more characteristic gurgle of laughter.

'Nick, it would be a stonkingly good joke to play on Tim, wouldn't it? If you went as me and I went as you. Shall we?'
'Oh. Lal, what for?'
'Fun? See if we still can?'
'Shouldn't think I could act like you for more than five seconds,' said Nicola crushingly. 'Couldn't stand the fuss and bother.'

Lawrie gave another chuckle and a last admiring glance at herself before letting Miranda's dress fall in silky folds around her feet.
'Nick, I dare you - let's see if we can fool everyone at breakfast?'

Why did she still give in to Lawrie and her bonkers schemes, Nicola wondered, as ten minutes later, dressed in Lawrie's jeans with the unsuccessfully embroidered back pocket and Gin's cast off scarlet jumper which everyone knew Lawrie had coveted for ages before it had landed in her protective possession, she made her way downstairs, a calculated space behind her twin to allow for Lawrie to set the scene so to speak. Encountering Rowan coming the other way she stopped to peer into the hall mirror for an imagined something in her eye.

'Don't worry, Lawrie, you're still as ravishing as you were last night,' Rowan commented and unknowingly Lawrie like, Nicola glared.

In the dining room a minor sizzle was erupting between Ginty and her mother, so commonplace these days as to be unremarkable. Lawrie was sitting tidily at the table, looking through Ginty with an expression of mild distaste on her face, giving Nicola a slight shock. Did she really look like that? But how supercilious . . .

'Do hurry up, Lawrie.' Mrs Marlow paused in her irritation with one daughter to turn to another. 'And don't slouch like that.'

But she hadn't been. All she'd done was sit down . . . She caught Lawrie's eye and Lawrie looked back at her remotely before saying:
'Ma, is it all right if I go over to Patrick's before lunch?'

What was she talking about?

'Don't forget your train leaves at two twenty five,' said Mrs Marlow. 'Are you both packed and ready?'
'Did you know you've got a whopping great hole in the neck of my jumper?' said Ginty and it took Nicola a moment to realise that Ginty was addressing her.
' 'S not yours. You gave it to me remember?' she managed.
'Lent it,' said Ginty annoyingly. 'I might want it back.'
'But you said - '
'No, you said - '
'Oh, do stop it,' said Mrs Marlow wearily. 'It's a very old, shockingly threadbare jumper you're arguing about, for goodness' sake.'
'They can't stop it,' said Rowan pleasantly. 'Genetically programmed, both of them, to quarrel about anything at any time. A faulty gene slipped in there, I'm afraid, Ma. Nick, I shall be going over to the Merricks' to talk sugar beet at about eleven if you want to save yourself from getting soaked. But you'll have to be ready and waiting. Shan't come looking for you.'
'Thanks, Rowan,' said Lawrie/Nick composedly.
'What are you going over there for?' Nicola couldn't help asking. 'The hawks have gone back, haven't they?'
'There's still Regina,' said Lawrie. 'And if we have to go to this party of Tim's then it'll be my last chance.'
'You're not going to change your mind, are you?' said Nicola feeling all kinds of an idiot. 'Strewth, but this was kiddish and the second breakfast was over . . .
'No, no,' said Lawrie impatiently. 'I've said I'm going and I will.'
'Yes, don't pester, Lawrie,' Mrs Marlow put in.
'I'm not pestering. I only asked.' And this time it was surprisingly easy to feel aggrieved. Even more so when Rowan commented that the pester gene seemed to have bypassed Nick altogether and settled itself deep in Lawrie's psyche.

'All you can talk about are genes this morning,' Nicola said crossly to Rowan.
'Must be because the AI man is calling this afternoon,' said Rowan equably.

Peter glanced up from his concentrated reading of the back of the cereal packet.

'Can I come and watch?'
'Nothing to see but you can come and listen if you like. What is that that's so riveting, Peter?'
'I was just about to say. You know that old oak on the Merricks' boundary up near Kay and Edwin?'
'What, the King Charles sat in my branches one? What about it?'
'It won't hurt to build a tree house in, will it?'
'A tree house?' said not just Rowan but almost everyone else as well. Ginty added, 'A bit juvenile - even for you.'
'Not for me. By me. For the steps to play in. There's a free instruction booklet you can send away for - well, free with a few packet tops. All you need is a handy tree and scrap wood, really.'
'Scrap wood?' said Rowan suspiciously.
'Well, I thought about helping myself to a few of those fencing panels you've got stashed away and don't seem to have a use for - all right - joke. I promise you, scrap wood only. Previously inspected and rubber stamped No Earthly Good To Anyone by R. Marlow. Come on Rowan, there's tons of the stuff lying about begging to be turned into something imaginative.'
'If you're in building mode you might feel like helping to bash in a few of the aforementioned panels.'
'True. I might,' said Peter politely. 'So no objections then.'
'None that spring to mind. It's not ours, anyway. That boundary belongs to the Merricks but I daresay they'll give you planning permission for your boyish scheme.'
'Then Nick can check this morning, can't you, Nick?'

Nicola and Lawrie both nodded and Lawrie said in Nicola's voice:
'Did King Charles really hide in our tree? How super whiz.'

They all, including Nicola, looked at her with varying degrees of surprised scorn.

'Of course not, you soft brained twerp,' said Peter kindly.

Ann added more helpfully, 'It's something they sometimes say about very old oak trees. The real one's in Shropshire. And even that one isn't - '
'Why say it if it isn't true?'
'People like a little local colour to impress the children,' said Rowan. 'But I believe King Charles was en route for France at the time - via Bristol, wasn't it, Ann? - so it would have been a bit of an unnecessary detour for someone in his kind of hurry.'
'And don't you think the Merricks would have mentioned it if it were true?' said Peter. 'Dyed in the wool Royalists like them would have put up at least a tasteful plaque - if the Marlow Roundheads hadn't got there first and chopped the whole thing down, of course.'
'I always thought it was Bonnie Prince Charlie en route for Scotland who hid in the tree,' said Lawrie with Nicola's intelligent candour.
'Blimey, I can't believe you're giving your iggy such a Sunday school outing,' Peter said, staring at her. 'In fact - you didn't, did you? What on earth have you and Nick changed places for?'

It still felt like something she didn't much want to do, Nicola thought, as half an hour later she and Lawrie, restored to their rightful identities and having weathered their family's withering comments, began to pack the things they needed for their trip to Canterbury. But half an hour after that she found she need not have bothered to feel reluctant about it at all. Taking the usual time honoured younger Marlow way of making a flying leap from the fifth back stair onto the rush matting she missed her timing completely to lie in an agonised heap and to realise that her ankle, which had been coming along very nicely in the way of almost completely healing, had let her down good and proper and she wasn't going to be going anywhere very far for the next day or two.

Predictably, Lawrie was outraged first and sympathetic second. She didn't actually accuse her twin of engineering the accident and she was sufficiently civilised to express real concern - she supposed it couldn't actually be much fun being rendered semi-immobile with a fair amount of pain thrown in - but nevertheless she was very put out. She calculated that Ann was the only one of her siblings who might offer the kind of favour she was after and went to stand on one leg at the library door where her sister was putting the finishing touches to her history essay. She jiggled the handle gently and Ann, not the type to be maddened by this repeated action, responded with satisfying promptness.

'Hello, Lawrie. Want something?'
'Yes - no - isn't it awful about Nick's foot?'

Ann, who had attended the accident scene and administered efficient first aid, nodded.

'Yes. Poor Nick. It was a nasty sprain - really agonising, I should think.'
'Mm,' said Lawrie who never liked to dwell too much on other people's injuries as they made her feel funny inside - and anyway, she'd been sympathetic already. 'And she won't be able to get to the party. You know, Tim's party?'

Ann nodded again and Lawrie added with shameless mendacity, 'And she was looking forward to it.'
'It's a real disappointment.'
'Yes, if only it wasn't so far we could still go.'
'Why does the distance make any difference? If you've got a painful ankle like Nick's you're not going to enjoy a party much, I shouldn't have thought.'
'She could sit in a corner. People would come and talk to her. She'd like it, having food brought to her and things and not having to scrum,' said Lawrie very firmly, not wanting to think that it sounded grisly beyond words and she wouldn't want to. 'But it's the train, you see, Ann. She'd never manage the train and the underground and the steps and everything even if I helped and carried all her stuff.'
'Yes, it's a shame,' said Ann a trifle absently as she suddenly remembered that she hadn't numbered her pages and Miss Ferguson, while not necessarily down grading, objected to even tiny lapses in the perfection she expected her A' level pupils to strive for.
'If only someone could drive us there,' said Lawrie with a heavy sigh. 'Then poor Nick could come too.'

Ann opened her folder and embellished her work with a neat numeral at the top of each page.

'Too far, though, isn't it?' she said sympathetically. 'Never mind, Lawrie, you can tell Nick all about it when you see her at school. And there'll be plenty of other parties.'
'It's not that far,' said Lawrie. 'Only round London on the M whatsit and out the other side.'
'I really wouldn't think that Mum or Rowan would want to, though.'
'But Ann, you could, couldn't you?' said Lawrie, wide eyed as if the thought had just occurred to her. She rushed on into Ann's slightly open mouthed astonishment, 'It wouldn't take that long would it? If we left more or less quite soon you could be back before dark.'
'But Lawrie, I haven't passed my test!'
'But it would be practice for you,' urged Lawrie, confident that Ann almost always eventually said yes to her. 'And lots of it is motorway so it would be easy.'
'Lawrie, I haven't passed my test,' said Ann again just as patiently but with slightly more emphasis.
'What's that got to do with it? You've got a licence - you drive all over the place,' said Lawrie. 'Rowan said yesterday you'd pass first time no trouble so what's the problem?'

She came right into the library to perch on the big table and swing her legs gently still confident n her ability to persuade Ann that this was a brilliant idea all round: Ann would get the driving practice, Nick would be able to come to the party and she, Lawrence S Marlow would not need to face the frightening intricacies of London's underground system on her own.

'You can't drive on your own if you haven't passed your test,' said Ann, seeing that Lawrie needed it spelt out. 'You'd get into the most frightful trouble if you did.'
'Only if you were caught,' said Lawrie. 'Don't you remember how Rowan fetched us from school that time and she wasn't even seventeen.'
'Yes, well,' said Ann who hadn't liked it at the time and could not imagine how her mother had ever sanctioned it. It's only the land rover, Rowan had said carelessly, as if it made any difference what vehicle you were actually driving. Dangerous and irresponsible, Ann had said at the time to anyone who would listen which in the end had turned out to be nobody. 'She shouldn't have,' was as far as she was prepared to go now but she went firmly enough for Lawrie's hopes to take a down turn.
'Oh, Ann, please!'
'No, Lawrie. Please don't talk about it any more. It's a silly idea.'
'Well,' said Lawrie preparing to launch Plan B. 'Would you come to London with me? After I've caught the train you could have a lovely afternoon shopping or - or looking round museums or - ' Lawrie cast about for some specially enticing treat that Ann might like. 'Or you could even go to a concert, couldn't you?'
'There's a sort of concert here,' said Ann, unmoved by this, although still automatically sympathetic to Lawrie's cause. 'I'm playing for the Brownies' Maypole dancing practice this afternoon.'
'The Brownies?' said Lawrie on a dying fall. 'Maypole dancing? Wouldn't you much rather come to London with me?'

Lawrie briefly considered asking Karen whether she'd like an afternoon in London but decided against it. Karen, who was rarely asked for transport a second time by anyone who could get from A to B by any other possible means including walking, cheerfully admitted that she didn't much care for venturing off the local roads into more challenging territory. Even if she could be persuaded, Lawrie thought doubtfully, her imagination running from narrow misses to full on collisions, then she couldn't possibly navigate as well and she couldn't. The roads were always in the wrong places on maps.

And there was no point at all in asking Rowan who would simply be sarcastic and say something like, Yes, Lawrie, I'll run you down to Kent in between the AI man coming and the milking, shall I? No trouble at all. Sometimes Lawrie suspected that Rowan overdid the Busy Farmer bit.

Or her mother who had made it crisply clear right at the beginning that no-one was going to any party in Kent unless they got there independently. Lawrie could expect a lift to the station and that was it.

Mournfully, Lawrie went upstairs to accept Ann's kind offer of help with her packing.

Nicola, her foot supported on a low table, was settling very nicely in the small sitting room on the only decently comfortable chair. Kind Anne had brought her a giant piece of Mrs Bertie's parkin to nibble at as she felt so inclined and a glass of orange and then had, after only a very little more fussing, removed herself to the library leaving Nicola in sole possession of the unheard of double luxury of an afternoon fire and the television. Typical, she thought, that there was nothing on yet that she wanted to see but she would have squatters rights later on, she hoped, when they were showing The Four Feathers. She had a pile of books at her elbow and, all things considered, if she'd had to sprain her wretched ankle again then better now, on a rainy day when there wasn't much to do anyway apart from catch up on her holiday reading tasks, than next week when she would be back at school and keen to start sorting out the cricket. She ought to be all right in a few days, oughtn't she, she'd asked her mother who'd told her of course she would, if she could prevent herself from taking unnecessary risks. Unnecessary risks, Nicola had thought up to now, was an umbrella term for such activities as riding without a hard hat or not looking both ways before crossing the road. It seemed as though, for a while at any rate, it would have to include such routine actions as coming down stairs . . . leaping down like a surprised lunatic, more like, Rowan had unfeelingly commented on hearing Nicola complain about her locomotion being reduced to a decorous and elderly amble.

But for the afternoon she must stay put and not amble anywhere, she'd been told, not even to the station to see Lawrie off; not that she'd wanted to - that had been Lawrie's idea, just in case, Nicola thought with a slight grin at how well she knew her, her ankle miraculously healed so that she could suddenly change her
mind and go too.

So she had the rest of today, all of Sunday and Monday morning. By tomorrow she should be able to hobble about a bit although not as far as the Merricks' so there wasn't much point in hoping for a glimpse of Patrick. And he wouldn't come up to Trennels. He'd only come on the day of the picnic because he'd known they were all out and he wouldn't have to put his excruciating inhibitions on show. She mused gently on what it must be like to be so self conscious, especially if you were the sort of person, as Patrick undoubtedly was, who appeared an unlikely candidate for such a handicap. And from there she fell to wondering if he might start writing to her again now that they were sort of more friendly again. Not that he'd stopped writing exactly but there'd been a time when something subtly different had entered his letters, only to cease and become more of the today-we-got-up-and-played-football variety again, as uncomfortable to read as they'd probably been to write . . .

'Nick,' a low murmur at the door which she recognised immediately.
'Patrick - hi - no need to whisper. I'm not an invalid.'

She turned in her chair to greet him.

'Don't get up,' he said with an elaborate grin to hide his awkwardness. 'I saw Rowan outside - she said it was okay to come in. You weren't asleep or anything?'
'Of course not. Like I said I'm not an invalid. One twisted ankle is what I've got, curse my rotten luck.'

Cautiously he sat down opposite her and got something out of the leather bag he was holding.

'I brought my chess set over in case you felt like a game,' he said. 'It's magnetic so the pieces won't roll away if you didn't feel like sitting at a table. Except for the white queen and the black knight - their magnetic bits have come off.'
'There's thoughtful,' she said.
'And this,' he said, pulling out a large, heavy volume, 'Is a rather good book about training young hawks - some of the photographs are quite stunning. There's one here so like Regina.'

Ginty might have offered a cursory glance and asked how on earth he could tell the difference between one goshawk and another when they were identical but Nicola exclaimed:
'Oh, yes, Patrick! That tiny bit of dark fathering just there and her eyes are just like Regina's when she's about to doze off.'

They pored over the book, played a leisurely game of chess, their respective thought patterns bringing little sustained concentration to the game, and talked gently of their plans for the next term.

'I suppose you'll be cricketing like fury,' suggested Patrick. 'Chin on chest, single eyebrow sort of stuff while you mull over your teams.'
'Only if I'm captain,' said Nicola, mentally touching wood while she let a little grin uncurl at the corners of her mouth as she recognised that yes, she probably did come across a tad earnest at times. 'You know, Patrick, I can never understand why you don't like games - you do other outdoory things and you do play cricket.'
'But the me against the elements is so much more of a - a challenge,' said Patrick, hesitating to say what he really thought. 'And I don't mind a little village cricket where it's all reasonably civilised. But - Nick - you would really like rock climbing. I thought - in the next holidays you and me could take a tent and - '

It had come out all wrong as he'd known it would. Furiously fighting down the slow blush that began somewhere in his boots he tried again:
'Not just you and me - there are other chaps and - girls - '

Nicola recalled what she wasn't that interested in but couldn't help knowing about as Ginty never seemed to keep her grievances to herself and this one had been grumbling on since she'd returned from Monica's. Something about wanting to go to Greece in the summer with some of Monica's brother's mates. Nicola could see chance would be a fine thing in this instance and couldn't understand why her bonkers sister couldn't see that Ma would never let that happen in a zillion years. Although, come to think of it Gin had shut up about it since Jack Connor had arrived on the scene.

And she couldn't quite see Ma going overboard about her and Patrick in a tent together - although the very idea did wonderful things to her insides - but she might - because she liked Patrick and knew him and seventeen wasn't much older than fifteen, very nearly sixteen - and she wasn't an idiot - and it would be rock climbing, not cavorting drunk, naked and out of control on a beach somewhere in the Mediterranean -

She listened to what Patrick was saying and thought it sounded not just feasible from a parental point of view but a fairly blissful way of spending a week in late July from her own. Of course, he might just mean as someone to make up the numbers and she'd be stuck with a load of people she didn't know while he went all distant on her. But she didn't think so.

'So do you think they'd let you?' Patrick began to pack his book and chess set away kneeling on the floor to retrieve the unmagnetic black knight which had rolled away.
'Hope so,' she said aiming for nonchalance just in case. 'I'll pick a good moment to ask. Are you going?'
'Yes,' said Patrick frowning. 'But I . . . '

From where he was it was easy to kneel a little closer to her chair where she was looking at him with that disconcerting Ginty-but-not-Ginty attentiveness, easy to move still nearer and touch her mouth with his own, very easy indeed to turn it into a proper kiss . . .

And Nicola thought it was easy, too.

biskybat @ 2008-02-26T14:20:00

2008-02-26T14:21:47Z

HOLIDAY SNAPS
Three

Patrick had spent a quiet and rather anxious day. He had tried three times to ring Ginty. The first time had produced no answer, the second produced Pam Marlow who had clearly dashed in from somewhere to catch the phone and was out of breath and a little irritable. She had advised Patrick to phone back about four and had explained about Ginty feeling unwell. He waited until nearly five by which time Mrs Marlow had left to fetch the others and this time it was Ann at the other end who obligingly said she'd fetch Ginty who, she said, was feeling loads better and had eaten a decent lunch. Ginty, hanging over the banister to eavesdrop made frantic negative signals at her sister including an elaborate charade of being sick, whereupon Ann, who believed most things in front of her eyes in spite of a life time of various contrary evidence from her family, said politely to Patrick: no, sorry, Ginty was feeling ill again, she would tell her to phone as soon as she felt better.

'Why did you have to say that?' said Ginty ungratefully, making a sudden return to health and temper.
'Say what? If you're still ill - although you don't look it - '
'Not that bit. About me phoning back.'
'Next time,' said Ann stiffly, 'I won't say anything.'

And she returned with dignity to the essay she had been wrestling with. Ginty went down to the kitchen to cut herself a crumbly sandwich and wandered into the sitting room to plant herself down in front of the television to watch Neighbours. Tomorrow, she promised herself, tomorrow she would go and see Patrick.

Patrick left it until half past seven. He would go up to Trennels and just inquire. Leave a definite message that he would call for Ginty the next day at ten o'clock because surely she would want to go riding. And she might be up and about. Ann had seemed to think her illness was coming and going. It would be an act of courage because although he was fine with the Marlows individually he still found them a bit intimidating en masse but he would do it because, and he didn't try and kid himself, he was desperate to see her again.

Just before the bend in the drive Patrick stepped back against the hedge as a Champ full of people passed him, the driver raising a hand in polite salute. Patrick wondered briefly who they were before continuing on straight into what seemed like a first class row between Ginty and Lawrie. He was aware that Ginty could be a tad sulky on occasion and he had certainly witnessed Lawrie being a noisy fusspot when she felt hard done by but this was a quarrel of epic proportions.

' . . . never ever get anything . . . '
' . . . not my fault if he . . . '
' . . . first time ever . . . '
' . . . shut up Lawrie, don't be such a complete baby - Oh! - Patrick! How long have you been standing there?'

Lawrie glared at Patrick, turned quite gracefully on her heel and flounced off with a parting shot to Ginty:
'I'm going to tell Mum. I bet she won't think it's fair either!'
'Spoilt baby,' said the obviously maddened Ginty, half to Lawrie's back and half to Patrick.
'What,' asked Patrick, uneasily aware that Ginty didn't look much more pleased to see him than Lawrie
had, 'was all that about?'
'Oh, they all went on the beach today and got themselves tangled up in someone's sand yacht thing. So they came round to ask us all to go on a beach picnic tomorrow to say sorry. And Lawrie thinks I shouldn't go too because I wasn't there in the first place. Honestly! What a hysterical prat she can be!'
'Are you going then?' asked Patrick blankly. 'Tomorrow did you say?'
'Well, yes,' said Ginty looking uncomfortable. 'They asked me - all of us - you see. I expect - if you want to you could come to.'

As invitations went it was definitely lukewarm.

'Oh,' said Patrick . 'I rather thought we might go for a ride or something.'
'Well, I can't not go,' said Ginty not looking at him. 'Not now I've said yes.'
'No, I suppose you can't. Well, what about the day after?'
'Oh, Patrick, I'm really sorry, Ma's made dentist appointments all morning.'
'All morning?'
'Well, you know what I mean,' Ginty began to talk quite quickly. 'By the time we’ve caught the train and got there and done everything and we quite often have lunch in Colebridge too and then . . . '

Her voice petered out.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It's just end of holiday things - you know - '

He tried once more.

'Well, when you get back tomorrow.'
'Yes - yes, I'll phone you if we're back in decent time.'
'Who are they?' he asked abruptly.
'Who?'
'These people who've asked you on the picnic.'
'The Connors. They live near Mulcross Bay. D'you know them? The oldest one's called Jack - can't remember the others - '
'Jack Connor?' Patrick said glumly. 'Yes, I know him. I used to come across him at gymkhanas years ago.'

He looked at Ginty and wished in hell attractive, charming, nineteen year old Jack Connor. He could pretend it wasn't happening but it wouldn't actually do him any good.

'All right,' he said thinking there wasn't any other option now but to leave quietly.
'Patrick - I will phone you if we get back in time,' Ginty said a little conscience stricken by the look on his face.
'Do,' he said courteously.
'And if you wanted to actually come on the picnic I'm sure it would be fine.'
'Thanks.'

He was Rupert Almeida, she thought looking after him a little regretfully as he walked away from her. So tall and good looking especially from the back in a funny sort of way. And there hadn't been an awful fuss which was one good thing. He hadn't got all pathetic like Emma had said her boyfriend, Sam, had been. That would have been so embarrassing. He'd stayed very Patrick, cool and dignified. Almost, she thought, a little indignantly, as if he wasn't actually all that bothered.

She watched him turn into the bend and then in an excess of relief, and pleasure at the thought of the outing tomorrow, trotted briskly across the drive and into the house.

She thought it expedient to avoid the sitting room where she could hear Lawrie's upraised voice and her mother's exasperated one. She would go and have a long soak in the bath. It might be Lawrie's turn but it would pay her back for behaving so very childishly. As if, she thought scornfully, someone like Jack Connor would be remotely interested in anyone as idiotically immature as Lawrie.

Pam Marlow, trying to field both Lawrie's comments (but it isn't fair Ginty coming as well - she'll spoil everything) and Nicola's (well, I don't much want to go. I bet it's their father making them ask us and did you see how cheesed off Rob looked?) was wondering whether more sons than daughters might be less wearing emotionally and where exactly was Ginty in all of this. Peter didn't much care one way or the other. He hadn't taken to the Connors but the sand yacht looked fun. He'd wandered in and then out again to take Esther and Daks for a last saunter round the rose garden and the pond while it was still light enough to admire the results of her earlier handiwork, but he paused to say to the twins:
'Was that Patrick I saw going down the drive? Haven't seen him much lately.'
'Because you're always with Esther. Or looking for her,' said Lawrie sulkily. 'And yes it was him. And I'll tell you what,' she went on, briefly diverted from her own woes. 'Ginty didn't look a bit pleased to see him. Betcha she's going to dump him.'
'Don't use that dreadful expression, Lawrie,' said her mother almost automatically while Nicola pricked up her ears.
'Why do you think that?'
'Just did,' said her twin, the short flare of interest in Ginty/Patrick fading and the more pressing one of Ginty/Jack coming to the fore. 'Peter, don't you think Ginty ought not to come tomorrow? She wasn't there. No-one needs to say sorry to her.'
'Or to you either come to that,' said Peter, half way through the door. 'It's only Esther and Fob if you're going to be purist about it and Esther's going home and Fob's not allowed anyway.' (For Edwin, to Chas's intense disappointment, had put his foot down and said that sand yachts were a menace on the beach - shouldn't be allowed - quite the wrong sort of shore, and had forbidden his children to take up the invitation).
'I must say,' said Mrs Marlow, cutting into Lawrie protests, 'that I would be a lot happier if the sand yacht wasn't involved - '
'Oh, Mum, it really isn't dangerous - '
'You heard what Mr Connor said - it was only Eddie getting the rope caught. They're safe as anything
really - '
'And not Mulcross Bay - Old Shellton - miles of beach and no-one about - '
'And if we didn't have the yacht what would we do all day?'
'And you're coming too, Ma, so you'll be able to watch - '

But even as Nicola united with Lawrie she was thinking p'raps I won't go, p'raps I'll go and see the hawks before they go back - last chance -

It was a perfect day for a picnic but Nicola kept to her decision, resisting Lawrie who put up only a token argument as she realised it was one fewer sister between herself and the object of her interest. Lawrie had managed to persuade herself that Jack had been simply being polite to Ginty the previous evening; it was her who had received the admiring glance, she was sure of it. She spent a long time choosing between her favourite stripy jumper and a discarded scarlet one of Ginty's, in the end dashing back upstairs to purloin Nicola's patchwork jacket which looked great on Nick so would on her too and Nick wouldn't
mind . . .

Patrick had taken his History text books into the walled garden. He had completed all his early morning hawking tasks giving Flip and Flap an extra thorough going over because their owner was coming to pick then both up that evening and Patrick was determined to return them and their kit in excellent health and order. Now he thought about Ginty and drowsed gently over his books which were similar in content, had he but known it, to those which Ann, at that very same moment, was giving her conscientious attention.

The gentle snick of the gate made him glance up. For a fraction of a second he thought it was Ginty not gone on the wretched picnic but come to see him instead. But it only took the fraction of the second to realise that it wasn't - and anyway Ginty had never mastered the art of coming through that gate quietly.

'Hi,' said Nicola because she could not exactly go away without saying anything. Although that was what she felt like doing, would be doing as soon as she could. For the fraction of a second that it had taken for her to register Patrick's disappointment was quite enough for her to finally grasp that if it wasn't Ginty coming towards him then he didn't want anyone. 'I just came to say goodbye to Flip and Flap.'

Patrick gathered himself. It was hardly Nick's fault she wasn't Ginty.

'Hi,' he said politely. 'Of course. I'll be flying them in an hour or - d'you want to stay and help?'
'Sorry, can't,' said Nicola.
'You didn't go on the picnic?'
'No,' said Nicola, frowning. 'I had things I wanted to do. Thought I'd say goodbye to the hawks first then get straight back."

With the bare minimum of any more talking, she started to do just that.

She could, for she had done it often enough, jog the distance between their respective houses in ten minutes. Less on a good day. Today she walked, thinking that there couldn't be a more humiliating feeling than to come further down someone's list than someone who wasn't even present. She bashed at the hedge with a hazel stick and allowed a tide of angry self pity to surface and release itself. And now she had a day ahead of her and nothing to do. Only Ann for company and even she was working like mad on her History essay - she supposed she could do that - take a look at the read-around-the subject book Foxy had pressed on them as a little light holiday reading to give them a head start next year when they would actually have to start knowing something about the Tudors and Stuarts instead of just pretending they did. She would take it into the conservatory - make a huge sandwich - and skerwash to Patrick Merrick - she'd had it up to here with him . . .

She went straight to the kitchen to carry out the sandwich part of her plan and found Ann there making herself a cup of coffee.
'I thought you'd gone with the others,' said Ann, surprised. 'Want some coffee?'

Nicola shook her head ungratefully. She did not intend to give Ann any explanation at all and simply said:
'Come to that why didn't you go?'

Ann nearly said nobody asked me which was completely the truth but not a phrase she liked. On the whole she didn't go in for self pity but she'd been a little hurt to find that none of her siblings had bothered to try and include her all the same.

Instead she smiled slightly and said, 'I'm not very keen on the idea of sand yachts. They sound rather anti-social - like people taking up too much room doing water skiing.'
'Oh, honestly - ' Nicola began, quite in the mood to be fairly rude to Ann who was such a sitting target, but her annoying sister sidestepped her.
'I don't expect you to agree with me. I'm just saying, that's all,' she said calmly. 'Now, s'cuse me, Nick - got to get back to my essay.'

She had long finished her sandwich and was deep in the trials and tribulations of Mary Tudor when Ann's voice reached her:
'She must be in here, then, Patrick - '

Oh, blitherington, she thought. Now what?

Ann retreated. Patrick entered the conservatory. Nicola stood up looking much more unfriendly than she realised.

'Nick - I've just come to say sorry.'
'Sorry?'
'Yes, I was a bit - crass. It's just that - '

On the way over Patrick, who'd suffered huge pangs of conscience since he'd watched Nicola walking away and realised that he'd just delivered the most crashing snub to someone who really didn't deserve one, had thought that he'd explain to her that it was all over with Ginty but they could still be friends, couldn't they? Because it looked as if they might not be any more and he didn't want that. He wanted the old Nick back. He just wanted to be friends. Couldn't they? Surely just because he and Ginty weren't - as they had been - surely it needn't upset their friendship. It had all sounded quite reasonable in his head coming over but now, seeing the frown on her face it dawned on him that he'd put his foot in it rather more than he'd ever intended. It always rather threw him when Nicola looked, as she occasionally did, like Ginty, like she was now, unapproachable -

He tried his best smile which he hoped came across as self deprecating because he indeed felt lowly. He suddenly decided not to mention Ginty, not to even try and sort out the whys and wherefores of Nicola's ups and downs, to pretend nothing much had happened. Because, when all was said and done, it hadn't. Not really. She'd obviously realised he thought she might have been Gin, and he was sorry if his face had shown it but he had a feeling that if he tried to apologise any more he'd get still deeper mired in confusion and hostility.

So he did what he did best and commented on her reading matter.

'Poor, poor Bloody Mary. Didn't she have a hard time of it!'

'A hard time of it?' Nicola responded crossly. 'How? Seemed like she did as she liked - sending people to the stake left right and centre - '
'Not sure she liked doing it, though. Not as in taking pleasure exactly.'
'Then she could've stopped.'
'No, she couldn't,' he returned, pleasantly argumentative. 'She thought she was saving their souls.'
'Did she really think that?' Nicola asked, becoming interested in spite of herself. 'Or is it just the Catholic take on it?'
'Well, we don't call her Bloody Mary like your lot do - like Good Queen Bess is Bad Queen Bess to
us - '
'Really?' exclaimed Nicola. 'How was she bad? Because I really thought she was okay - all the history books say so.'
'Politically, perhaps,' said Patrick, relieved to see Nicola behaving normally again. 'But all that sitting on the fence really annoyed the Catholics, you know. And she wasn't that pleasant to Mary Queen of Scots, was she? Downright nasty, in fact, at the end - '
'But Patrick,' interrupted Nicola, wanting to get back to his earlier statement. 'Surely you don't actually feel sorry for Mary - not Queen of Scots - Tudor? She did such gruesome things to everyone - '
'She'd had such a rough time though, hadn't she? Being a princess, then not being and all that hanging about wondering whether she'd be clapped in the Tower or made Queen of England - must warp you a bit, mustn't it? And having to marry that ghastly Philip - '
'But she wanted to - '
'And then having him clearing off back to Spain. Not what you'd call loyal, was he? '

There was a slightly awkward pause. Nicola fiddled with the worn corner of her book and Patrick glanced at the door and then said:
'I wish you'd come and help me fly theTweeds - last chance - '

She considered.

'I might,' she said at last. 'After lunch. I might.'

Later on, when the picnickers returned, it was very plain indeed that Lawrie was deeply aggrieved about something but for possibly the first time in her life she was refusing to be forthcoming. Her mother was under the impression that her injured state was simply because she had not felt that she had had as many turns in the sand yacht as the others had and had resignedly not pursued it any further when Lawrie had said no, it wasn't that, it didn't matter, leave her alone.

And much later on when she and Nicola were getting ready for bed, she suddenly said:
'Do you remember when we used to make our Liking lists? And we always used to put Giles at the top?'
'Mmm - and I'll have my jacket back now if it's all the same to you - what about it?'

Lawrie, putting the patchwork jacket on her twin's bed quite carefully in case she might want to borrow it again replied, 'Well, I'd put Ginty right down at the bottom - below Ann - '
'You hardly ever put Ann at the bottom - it usually was Ginty,' said Nicola. 'What's Ginty done, anyway?'

The floodgates opened. What hadn't Ginty done? Nick should have seen her flirting with Jack Connor all the time and being silly in the sand yacht, pretending she didn't know what to do so he had to keep showing her so that when it was her turn he didn't notice how brilliantly she'd handled it - first time too -

Nicola listened with an empathy that was as real as it was unusual. She got herself into bed and wrapped her arms thoughtfully round her knees while she listened to Lawrie chunter on about how she'd seen Jack first and it was just plain sneaky of Ginty to muscle in like that. What did Nick think? she suddenly demanded, taking a flying leap onto her own bed and extracting Wol from under the corner of her mattress before tucking him maternally under her pillow. Nicola observed this with a little extra spurt of sympathy - Wol didn't come out much from under the mattress these days - and considered her reply. On the one hand she supposed reluctantly that Ginty couldn't help being so aggravatingly pretty, without doubt the prettiest of all of them, but on the other hand she could help her way of clumping over anyone else's feelings to get what she wanted. And if she wanted Jack Connor then clearly poor old Lal wasn't going to get a look in.

'Whatever we think,' she said finally, 'it's not going to make much difference. Jack's nineteen, isn't he? He's not going to have much time for the likes of us. What about Rob? What's he like?'
'All right,' said Lawrie doubtfully. 'A bit grumpy, but all right. And Peter ended up quite liking him because they both like taking snaps of things. And he goes to the Grammar School, too so they talked about that a bit. But Jack was so nice . . . '

Already her tone had changed to one of resigned acceptance about things that might have happened but weren't going to. She fell silent and Nicola lay on her back and thought over her afternoon with Patrick. It had been all right, in a way. She had gone with him to fly the hawks and he had been friendly in the old way but she couldn't be entirely sure that this might not change if Ginty were to decide she wanted him back. Which made him sound like a piece of someone's property . . .

'Nick . . . '
'Thought you were asleep - what?'
'Will you come to Tim's party?'

She considered. Ahead of her lay several days of Patrick available holiday. Did she want to spend the last couple of days of it traipsing to Canterbury to a party she might not enjoy when she could be riding and hawking? But then she didn't want Patrick to feel she was dependent on him for all her entertainment - he did sort of expect her to be around when he wanted her to be. Like a reserve player. Well, if she couldn't be Centre, she thought cleverly, she wouldn't play at all.

Even though she wanted to.

'Nick . . . ?'
'Okay,' she said. 'I'll come.'

biskybat @ 2008-02-26T14:16:00

2008-02-26T14:17:45Z

HOLIDAY SNAPS

Two

Ginty had spent her train journey in deep thought. Not so deep that she hadn't noticed the close attention being paid her by the boy across the aisle - she'd offered him a cursory glance and then turned very definitely to stare out of the window - nice enough, she'd thought dismissively, but ordinary - but sufficiently deep to make a major conclusive decision.

Her attachment to Patrick was very definitely on the wane. Sad in a way because he was super fab looking, and looked brilliant on a horse but he was only sixteen. And because of taking being a Catholic so seriously and having that ghastly mother who never left him alone for a second it looked like he was going to stay sixteen forever. Compared with James he was so young. And James was so . . . mature. Plus he had a car and loads of interesting friends and somehow somehow she was going to persuade Mum to let her go on that trip to Greece they were all planning for after their finals. If Monica would go too then Mum couldn't raise any objection surely. Safety in numbers and all that . . .

So she must extricate herself from Patrick because it wasn't fair to him, she thought virtuously, to let him go on thinking that their relationship was really going anywhere. Because she didn't much want to be respected and looked after. She wanted to have some fun. With a bit of luck, she thought, with a fairly monumental and slightly guilty U-turn, he and Nick might have got a bit closer because it was fairly clear that she fancied him something rotten and they had loads in common. Hawks, for instance. Ginty herself could see no point at all in hawks or begin to understand Patrick's fascination with them. They hadn't exactly argued about it but she wasn't going to pretend she was interested when she wasn't and she wasn't prepared to hang around waiting for him because Regina had decided to throw a fussy fit and needed calming down for hours on end. And she hadn't appreciated his feeble attempt at a joke about his having two temperamental females in his life, either.

It might have been that particular remark of his which had marked the beginning of the end, she thought as the train neared Westbridge and began to slow down. The boy opposite helped her pull her case down from the rack (for which he was rewarded with thanks and a slightly absent but still ravishing smile) and she went to stand by the door, still not very sure at all about what she was going to say to Patrick but determined to get the message across somehow - perhaps just by being very very busy - essential trips to places - holiday work she must tackle - perhaps she wouldn't have to say anything much, perhaps he'd get the message and just go off and play hawks with Nick . . .

She was delighted to see her mother, as delighted as her mother was to see her. They always got on very well for a time after Ginty had been away. Mrs Marlow was reassured by the animated sweetness of her daughter who was so very satisfactorily and so extremely pretty while Ginty basked in this fairly unusual maternal approval. Mrs Marlow asked the right kind of questions about her three days away and Ginty gave her a diplomatically bowdlerised version of her activities. Each considered the other much improved and each privately resolved to treat the other with greater patience and humour.

This happy state of affairs lasted until they neared Trennels whereupon Mrs Marlow said:
'Darling, Patrick rang up for you just before I left and asked so very politely if you could call and see him this evening that I hadn't the heart to say no. So if you want to run up and get changed - or go as you are, you look very nice - I'll drop you off now. Patrick said that Helena would bring you back later.'
'Oh, Mum!' groaned Ginty - why must parents always interfere - 'I can't! I'm all yucky from the train. I don't want to go tonight - I'm really tired.'

Pam Marlow, who had assumed that Ginty would naturally want to see Patrick as soon as possible and that her daughter would be pleased and possibly grateful that people were putting themselves out for her was a little annoyed.

'But the Merricks are expecting you for supper.'
'Oh, Mum no! Not supper with Mrs Merrick looking witchy at me all the time - she does, Ma, you don't see her like I do - she really doesn't like me.'
'That's quite enough, Ginty,' said Mrs Marlow sharply. 'If you really don't want to go then I suppose you must phone Patrick or, better still, Helena, and explain. But please let's not have this fuss.'
'Oh, Mum, can't you do it? Please? - '
'Don't be ridiculous, Ginty. You're not five years old.'
'But it wasn't actually me who made this arrangement - and you like talking to Mrs Merrick - '
'Do I take it,' said Mrs Marlow, the penny suddenly dropping, 'that you don't specially want to see Patrick?'

Ginty muttered and mumbled that it wasn't that, she was just tired, to which her mother, with the very last of her temper, responded that she had better go upstairs and unpack quietly and then she'd see about getting her some supper. And yes, she would phone Helena because she wasn't at all sure whether Ginty, in her current ungracious mood, could be trusted to do so with sufficient courtesy and respect.

Ginty banged upstairs to her room - and if Lawrie had touched any of her things she'd wring her grubby little neck - and flumped down on her bed. She wished now that she'd thrown herself upon her mother's mercy and told her yes, she and Patrick were finished, over, kaput, it was just that he didn't know it yet and she wasn't at all sure how to tell him. And that whatever she decided she didn't want to do it tonight because she hadn't been entirely fudging, she was tired. Two very late nights in a row, the first, sitting up talking to Monica until the early hours and the second, rather less innocently, disporting herself at James's friend's twenty first birthday party, had left her, now that the excitement was wearing off, feeling drained of energy with a very definite headache beginning to make itself felt.

Listlessly, she opened her case and with a remembering sigh lifted out her party dress. Monica's mother had made a brilliant, if slightly disapproving, job of removing the wine stain but it would need washing or dry cleaning or something before she could wear it again. How fab, thought Ginty, to be super rich and never have to wear the same party dress twice. She went into the corridor to dump it in the laundry basket -

'Ginty! Hello - '

Ann, of course. None of her other sisters or brother had exactly formed a welcoming committee.

'Hi.'
'Mum says to come down for some supper.'
'Oh. All right. Thanks.'

Ann glanced into Ginty's room and said:
'Shall I unpack for you while you're eating - you look tired.'
'Oh, Ann, would you ? That would be . . . no - actually - ' She suddenly remembered certain items that her case contained - definitely not for Ann's eyes. 'I mean, it's really kind but I'd better do it myself.'
'Sure?'
'Mm. Thanks all the same.'

She wandered downstairs to tell her mother that she wasn't really very hungry and not to bother making her anything, and that turned out to be wrong, too, because her mother had cooked her a couple of poached eggs which were not, Mrs Marlow said crossly the sort of things that would keep and next time could Ginty please let her know the state of her appetite in advance. So Ginty, resentfully wondering why everyone else seemed to have nicer homes and mothers than she did, felt she ought to eat it whereupon she was promptly and quite unexpectedly sick.

Captain Scott setting off for the Antarctic couldn't have had many more problems, Peter muttered to himself, than he himself was experiencing in marshalling the others for the trip to Mulcross Bay. It had been agreed that they would walk there and that Mrs Marlow would collect them all again at five o'clock but this, Peter thought exasperatedly was about the only perishing thing that had been agreed upon. Lawrie, at half past ten, and they were supposed to have left by ten, was still not absolutely sure whether she wanted to come; the steps had arrived promptly but almost immediately had found that they had left behind Fob's special pineapple and cranberry juice which meant that Karen had had to be contacted so that she could dash up with it and Daks, in a fit of canine delinquency, had eaten most of the ham sandwiches which Nicola had left for a moment while she went to find something to wrap them in.

'If we don't go soon,' Peter said at intervals, 'It won’t be worth going at all.'
'Well, do something, then,' said Nicola, just as irritated. 'Help turn this bread into sandwiches - '
'What with?'
'Marmite.'
'I hate marmite.'
'Well, jam, then - cheese - '
'Can I have cheese and jam?' said Chas, hovering at her elbow. 'It would be like cheese and
pickle - '
'No,' said Nicola shortly. 'Last thing we want is anyone else being sick - first Ginty, now Daks.'
'I know,' said Chas. 'All over the back step. Bits of it still </>looked</i> like ham sandwiches - '
'Why don't you scoop it up and shove it in this bag for your lunch?' suggested Nicola. 'Save making any for you.'

Peter was buttering bread with rapid efficiency.

'Must we,' he asked, over Chas's delightedly realistic retching, 'keep talking about people throwing up? Quite putting me off. Has anyone seen Esther?'
'Don't worry,' said Nicola. 'She's not far away. Still ticking off that poor dog or apologising to Ma. Rose, can you make sure everyone's got some apples and bananas in their rucksacks - Peter d'you think Ma meant us to take all this cake or cut it in half?'
'All of it.'
'Be a bit heavy - '
'I'll carry it. Now can we get going, d'you think? Ah, here's Lawrie, now all the work's done - are you coming or not?'
'Well, there's nothing much else to do.' said Lawrie. 'Are we swimming? It's a bit cold, I'll just get my jacket.'
'Swimming in your jacket?' said Chas, laughing loudly at his own joke, just as Mrs Marlow came in to see why it was taking so long to make a few sandwiches. She caught the word 'swimming' and said very firmly:
'Far too cold yet for any such thing. Paddling only and only then if it seems warm enough when you get there. Now, Peter, Nicola, Lawrie absolutely no risks, no rock climbing, no splitting up and no taking your eyes off Fob for one second - if it wasn't for Esther being so very sensible and reliable I really don't think I would be allowing this expedition at all - '

Nicola raised mocking eyebrows at Esther who had come through the door in time to overhear this accolade and Esther, who wasn't feeling at all sensible or reliable after the incident with Daks, grinned weakly in reply.

'But Ma,' began Peter aggrieved by what he saw as a vote of no confidence. 'What can possibly go wrong with a simple little walk to Mulcross Bay to play on the sands and back again? Sunday school outing, that's what it will be like.'
'Let's go,' said Nicola impatiently.

It was after eleven by the time they set off for the hour or so walk along the narrow lanes and footpaths. It was a perfect day for it, sunny enough to keep the younger ones' spirits and enthusiasm buoyant and breezy enough to be energising. Nicola stayed at the rear and thought her own thoughts while in front of her the others grouped and re-grouped but always, she noticed, Peter and Esther stayed together. Whatever did they talk about, she wondered, rather enviously. What on earth had they in common?

As all thoughts seemed to lead to Patrick she wondered what he was doing today. One thing was for sure: he wouldn't be spending it with Ginty. Her mother had not been unduly concerned about her being sick the previous evening. This was by no means an unusual occurrence for Ginty, whose emotions occasionally played havoc with her stomach. Mrs Marlow took it (quite accurately) to mean that she had had an action packed few days, had partaken of too much unsuitable party food and drink and had too little sleep, A quiet day was in order for Ginty, who for once in a way did not mind in the least, and was at that moment curled up with what her mother would have called a cheap novel, concerning herself with how long she could spin out the feeling delicate bit and whether perhaps a letter to Patrick might be a way out of what she was beginning to think of as an awkward situation.

The first thing that happened when they reached Mulcross Bay was that Chas, in a state of high excitement, ran right into the waves and got thoroughly splashed and the second thing that happened was that Fob, leaving go of Peter's hand for almost the first time since they had left Trennels, followed her brother and promptly over balanced and sat down in the water.

'Oh, wonderful,' said Peter. 'There goes the first of Mum's don'ts. Who's got dry clothes?'
'It's all right,' said Rose hastily. 'Karen put some in. She knows Chas can't keep dry where there's water. Or Fob. And it was paddling and paddling's all right, isn't it, Nacker?'

Nicola was not properly attending. Her eye had been caught by the sight of three boys, two quite tall ones and a smaller one, some distance away wrestling with what looked like a small boat with a large sail

'What are they trying to do?' she said.

Peter looked up.

'It's a sand yacht,' he said. 'Selby's cousin's got one and I tried it - good fun. Mind you, I really don't think you're supposed to use one on a beach like this, you really need a heck of a lot more space.'
'Are you going to go and tell them?' asked Lawrie. 'Go on - dare you - '
'Not today,' said Peter. 'They might not appreciate it, and they could be bigger than me - no-one wants an ugly scene.'
'Would it be sensible to move right away?' Nicola suggested. 'This breeze is really picking up now - we don't want to be mown down. I think we ought to move further round the bay - '
'Oh, no, Nick!'
'We've walked miles already - do we have to?'
'I'm hungry!'
'What do you think, Esther?' Nicola asked. 'Stay here or walk a bit further?'

Esther glanced at the three boys.
'A bit further, perhaps.' she said. 'I imagine they do need quite a lot of beach - we might be in their way.'

Nicola waited for Peter to back them up. He threw a longing look at the sand yacht and said:
'Oh, we'll be fine here. There's no-one else about - too early in the season. He paused and went on casually, 'I wouldn't mind going to chat them up actually - get a closer look - '
'Ma said to stay together - '
'I'll only be a minute. Why don't you give Fob some of that hot chocolate - she's shivering still.'

His womenfolk watched as he loped the couple of hundred yards towards the group.

'Typical Binks,' said Lawrie. 'Probably won't see him for the rest of the day, now.'
'That's two don'ts now?' asked Chas. 'What was the third one?'
'Never you mind,' said Nicola, delving into her rucksack to find the hot chocolate. 'Here you are, Fob. Have some of this and then we'll go and find a place to camp properly and Peter can jolly well just look for us.'
'Peter saved me!' said Fob reproachfully.
'No, he didn't, you clot,' said Lawrie amiably. 'He was just the nearest to haul you up. Hurry up with that cocoa.'
'He's coming back already,' Esther observed.
'What's up?' Nicola asked her brother as, red faced and panting, he threw himself down on the damp sand next to them. 'Wouldn't they let you play?'

Peter had already decided that he would not repeat the rather surly remarks that one of the older boys had made. Some things you definitely kept to yourself, he thought.

'They weren't that friendly, no,' he said candidly. 'But they won't be coming this way, I asked them. Who's for a game of silly cricket?'

The day wore on in a companionable easy way. They played cricket and they ate their lunch and then they made indulgent sandcastles with Chas (Nicola and Lawrie), fished hopefully in the rock pools with Fob (Peter) and collected shells according to Rose's very particular size, shape and colour specifications (Esther). They organised races and arranged ludicrous handicaps so that Fob could take her share of winning, argued mildly over the last apple and the last banana and eventually most of them dropped down in the shelter of the cliff, because there was no doubt about it the breeze was definitely chilly and decidedly blustery in spite of the late April sun to keep it in check. There they kept a lazy eye on Fob, who was finding and popping seaweed along the high tide line, and Chas who was determined to practise his cartwheels until they were as good as Lawrie's. And they observed, through Peter's field glasses the progress of the sand yacht. The three boys had spent the day alternately trying it out and then spending long periods attending to it. Peter, although he was very interested, had kept his distance, and the others had followed this example.

'They're not very good are they?' commented Lawrie as she handed the glasses to her twin. 'It's weaving about all over the place.'
'Well, it's only a sort of toy,' said Peter a little contemptuously and not quite truthfully. 'And they obviously don't know what they're doing - if they're not careful it'll end up in the sea with an offshore breeze like this. It would be good to have one of our own though. I wonder if I could make one.'
'Now you're going to be at home you could,' said Lawrie for it was now quite definitely arranged. Peter would finish his year at Dartmouth - thinking time, his parents had said, just in case he changed his mind - and then he would start at Colebridge Grammar in the autumn. 'You'll have oodles of time.'
'Not oodles,' said Peter. 'I'll still be at school, you know - working my little socks off for O'Levels - but I know what you mean. It could be a sort of winter project.'
'Are you sure you'll leave Dartmouth?' Nicola murmured.
'Yes,' said Peter briefly. 'Don't start all that again, Nick.'
'Wasn't starting anything,' said Nicola. 'Just seems a pity - '
'Pity I was there so long,' Peter said.

Esther, lying on her back, eyes closed against the sun and wind, half listened to their voices rising and falling, Nicola's, persistent, wanting to know, Peter's, flippant, with an undercurrent of exasperation which he was trying not to show. She wondered why Nick minded so much. If Jacob, her new baby brother, ever wanted to do anything remotely dangerous she was sure she'd never have a moment's peace and she certainly hoped he would never want to do something as mystifying as joining the armed forces. Lawrie's voice chipped in now and then, sometimes seeing Peter's point of view, sometimes siding totally with her twin. Esther stayed firmly out of it. No-one would thank her for her opinion, she was sure, but it was a little uncomfortable being an unwilling audience to what seemed to her to be rather private family things. She only opened her eyes when Peter's voice became suddenly sharper.

'Where's Fob?'
'Down there, look - miles from the sea - '
'One of you go and bring her back - '
'Not me,' said Lawrie. 'She never takes any notice of me.'
'Nor me, then. She might think I'm Lawrie. Go on, Peter.'

Esther sat up thinking it an excellent escape route. Fob was not noticeably friendly towards Esther, obviously seeing her as a rival for Peter's affections, but at least, she thought, she could keep a closer eye.

She had nearly reached Fob, who was still absorbed in honing her seaweed popping skills, and was thinking the wind was fierce now, better get Fob back and into her coat, when she became aware of loud, frantic shouts behind her. She turned to see Peter and the others tearing this way and that in their efforts to warn her and the sand yacht - enormous - rolling and skidding, near enough now to hear the sail flapping, the whole thing horribly out of control . . . Esther's heart stood still with shocked terror. which way was the thing coming? The split second thought hit her mind end up - sea - offshore - In mad, terrified panic she seized Fob, picked her up bodily and ran with her up the beach. Behind her the sand yacht crashed into the waves but by that time she had reached the others and collapsed almost on top of Fob wondering if it was Rose screaming and screaming or whether she herself was making that appalling noise.

'I didn't know which way to go,' she said extremely shakily. 'I didn't know which way to go! I nearly went into the sea and then Fob - Fob - '
'Well, you didn't,' said Peter very firmly. 'Lawrie, make yourself useful and get the last of that cocoa - it ought to be tea - but it'll do. Rose, shut up that racket, for Pete's sake, it really isn't helping - and Chas, get out of the way - let Esther and Fob breathe, will you - Esther drink this.'
'Fob - '
'Rescuers first. Then rescuees,' said Peter who recognised profound shock when he saw it. 'Here, Fob. Nice bit of popping seaweed you've missed - '
'We thought you'd copped it,' said Lawrie frankly. 'Really copped it. It must weigh tons that thing and if - '
'Shut up Lawrie,' said Peter sharply. 'They were miles off.'
'Should we go and help them?' said Nicola finding her voice for the first time since she'd let out the first yell that the sand yacht was on their bit - it was belting down the beach - what was it doing. Like Lawrie, she could only see the most frightful accident about to happen and all they could do was watch and - okay she knew why Peter had said miles off but they'd missed it by a terrifying second and it was something she would never ever forget in a million years. And by the look on Esther's chalk white face she wouldn't either.
'Help them?' said Peter, disgustedly. 'I'd like to throttle them.'

But he went anyway for he had seen what Nicola had seen, that the rider had been the youngest boy who didn't look much older than Chas. The three of them had managed to drag the sand yacht free of the waves and were already walking towards them. The youngest boy, wet through and shivering violently trailed behind, miserably hangdog.

'Are the kids okay?' said one as he reached hailing distance. 'We didn't mean that to happen – didn't expect Eddie to push off like that - are they okay?'
'You nearly killed both of them,' said Peter coldly, remembering, We can do without kids standing around staring and getting in the way 'We could report you. I'm sure you're not meant to run sand yachts on this beach - '
'Oh, come off it,' said the other one who Peter remembered had been the rudest. 'There's no-one about this time of year. 'Course we didn't mean it to take off like that, 'course we're sorry - '
'It's my f-fault,' said the youngest boy, his teeth chattering violently. 'The wind caught it and I was going the wrong way and the rope got c-caught - '

Nobody, thought Nicola, could lay into anyone looking so cold and miserable. He sounded as if he'd never forget it any more than the rest of them would. Peter, still angry with them started to say something but she interrupted him.

'D'you want a towel? You're soaking. And have we got any of that cocoa left?'

She threw him a towel and he wrapped it round himself.

'Only some of Fob's disgusting pineapple and cranberry,' said Lawrie obligingly.
'It's lovely, not disgusting - '
'To civilised people it is. But do you want some? It's better than nothing.'

The boy nodded and grasped the beaker Lawrie passed him gratefully.

'Seriously, though,' said Peter rather more calmly. 'Aren't these things a bit dangerous when it's blustery like this?'

The two older boys glanced at each other.

'They can be. It would have been okay though if Eddie hadn't panicked . They're not that difficult to handle.'
'Coo - aren't they?' burst in Chas. 'D'you think I could have a go?'

His words, probably because of his unsquashable insouciance, served to lessen the tension and the older boys laughed.

'One day,' said the boy who had first spoken, whom Lawrie was privately thinking was not just nicer but better looking than the other. 'On a proper beach and a clean wind - look,' he turned back to Peter. 'You're right. Dad always says only to use this beach if there's no-one about. But at first there wasn't and then you lot arrived. That's why Rob was a bit - off when you came over. We'd just been arguing about whether we ought to move and - well - we didn't. Wish we had. Dad's going to kill us.'
'I suppose,' said the other boy, rather ungraciously. 'I suppose you'll have to tell your parents?'
'Well, yes,' said Peter shortly. He saw no reason why he should make things in the least easy for any of them but particularly not for this unmannerly oaf who didn't seem more than slightly sorry about the fact that a frightening accident had only just been avoided. 'Five year olds aren't that good at keeping secrets - and why on earth should they have to be?'
'If it was just us,' said Nicola more politely, 'then probably. But - '
'It's okay,' said the first boy, quickly. 'Of course, we couldn't expect you not to say anything. I suppose we ought to tell you who we are - I'm Jack Connor and these are my brothers, Rob and Eddie. We live at the old vicarage.'

Slightly awkwardly, Nicola introduced the others and said:
'I expect Mum'll be fine about it. I s'pose she can come and see you if - '
'No need,' said Peter. 'She's here, now, look.'

Naturally, they all played down what had happened. Esther, who had largely recovered, was able to assure Mrs Marlow earnestly if still slightly shakily that she was absolutely fine and that probably if she'd just hung on to Fob and stayed still there wouldn't have been any need for any fuss. Nicola and the others were not having that, however, and somehow they managed to convince their mother that Esther had been the hero of the hour and saved Fob and herself from being totally mangled while also leading her to believe that there had been no real danger - the sand yacht had run right past them into the sea - it had looked much worse than it was. In the ensuing confusion Mrs Marlow said resignedly that only one thing was really clear to her and that was that she had been perfectly correct in her estimation of Esther as both sensible and reliable.

And Lawrie, squeezed into the front of the land rover between her mother and Esther thought happily that it was the first time she'd fully understood the ill wind that blowing nobody any good proverb for in the kafuffle she had managed to exchange phone numbers with Jack Connor on the pretext of holding him to his half promise to take Chas sand yachting. Not that Chas necessarily needed to know anything about that, of course, she thought.

biskybat @ 2008-02-26T13:41:00

2008-02-26T13:42:42Z

HOLIDAY SNAPS

This is set in the Easter holidays after Esther's Term. Most of the characters and all the settings remain the property of Antonia Forest's estate. This is not a profit making enterprise.

One

Nicola could see the Harris' hawks ahead of her as she jogged the long track between Trennels and the Merricks' farm. Patrick might be a little dismissive of them - hawks for beginners, he called them but she still found them heart catching: the sweeping dives and searches, the effortless soaring away to gain greater and greater heights as if they would never come back - why did they always come back, she thought, pausing to give in to her stitch and ponder on this. Patrick had told her enough times that it was a partnership, falconer and falcon. Why should they want to fly away when they got handed their food pretty well on a plate every time they returned to him. And wasn't that exactly why Nicola kept going back home, he'd teased her, to get her nosh doled out to her without her having to do much? Certainly no-one asked her to perform gravity defying swoops and soars before she was allowed to sit down, did they? Naturally she'd retorted that she often had to do the equivalent like helping to clean out the goats' smelly winter bedding or worse, finding herself with the task of peeling enough potatoes for everyone for supper - Patrick, lucky only child that he was, had no idea how much work this represented. She did see why Regina, and Flip and Flap, which were the appallingly undignified nicknames Patrick's friend had called his hawks, did come back but part of her still felt they were too regal, too wild to co-operate with a mere human.

Even if that human was Patrick.

She jogged on again, thinking that the teasing and helping was about to come to a fairly abrupt halt. Ginty was due to arrive home that evening and she supposed with, grim resignation, that she would become persona non grata again. If she did turn up to help, they would probably just politely wait for her to go like they had before and she wasn't ever going to walk into that one again. Patrick could see to all three birds and see how easy he found that.

Forewarned was forearmed, she thought loftily as she reached the edge of the meadow where Patrick was gently swinging the lure, so intent on Flip and Flap that he had not yet realised she was there. She watched him meditatively with the eyes of someone who knew that Patrick became a different person whenever Ginty hove into view, someone she didn't know properly, someone who would probably soon start treating her like a - a piece of furniture . . .

He turned, caught sight of her and grinned. She stayed where she was, enjoying the competent way he called the hawks in, waiting until he'd safely stowed them away before crossing the meadow and greeting him.

'Hi,' he said, cheerfully. 'Enjoy the show?'
'Hire yourself out, you could,' she answered. 'Patrick Merrick and his h'amazing 'arris' 'awks - Flip and Flap - '
'Ah, don't tease them about their names,' he said. 'They get enough of that from Regina. Want to help with a spot of cleaning?'
'If,' she said with heavy emphasis, 'I can have a real go with Flip and Flap later?'
'Of course,' he said civilly. 'Anyone would think I kept all the best jobs for me. Tomorrow would be better, though, looks a bit like rain . . . '
'This afternoon,' she said firmly. 'As from tomorrow I'm spending time being the perfect hostess entertaining Esther . . . '
'Thought Peter was doing that.'
'Peter's not much of a hostess . . . '
'You know what I mean. What shape is this entertainment going to take?'

None of your business thought Nicola smartly. Aloud, she said:

'Peter and Esther and me are going to Mulcross Bay, probably. We might take the steps.'

She did not even ask if he wanted to come. She had introduced him to Esther with some trepidation because if he found her as astoundingly attractive as Peter obviously did - well, she just hoped he wouldn't, that was all. She need not have worried, however. Patrick and Esther had exchanged one petrified glance and a couple of stilted sentences before Patrick had remembered an urgent appointment and had steered clear of Trennels ever since.

'And Lawrie might come as well,' she added, as a further disincentive. Patrick by no means disliked Lawrie, indeed he often found her refreshingly comic, but Nicola knew that his intense shyness increased in direct proportion to the number of people he found himself amongst.

'Oh, okay,' said Patrick. 'Better make the most of you today, then. And I suppose - '

Ginty's name hung in the air. Nicola let it hang and took off on another tack while they walked back to the Merricks' walled garden by saying, curiously:
'What did you think of Esther? When you met her the other day?'
'Well, I hardly met her,' said Patrick. 'She's - quiet, isn't she?' - huh Nicola thought, that's rich coming from you - 'but very - well, beautiful. Like I said before - d'you remember? - when we rode over to Wade Abbas that day - the sort of face people might want to paint - if they could paint, of course.'

Good job, he'd never admitted to any artistic leanings, Nicola thought sourly, and it just wasn't fair the way some people just attracted other people simply because their faces were arranged advantageously. And it didn't matter how much she struggled to deny or disguise it, she hated the idea of Ginty and Patrick together, and she hated the idea of him being attracted to Esther, she was even envious of the hawks because he was a hundred percent committed to them, sensitive to their every whim, whereas she was just a dogsbody . . .

'Do you know what time Gin's getting back?' Patrick asked.

Nicola dropped the brush she was using to give Flap's perch a quick clean causing Regina to shake her wings at her in horrified agitation.

'Clumsy,' Patrick remarked reproachfully. 'There, there she didn't mean to throw the brush at you, calm down you noisy great heap of feathery nonsense, you - well, do you, Nick?'
'6:58 at Colebridge Junction,' said Nicola expressionlessly. 'I'll get her to come right over, shall I?' she added, rather amazed at her own ability to be sarcastically unpleasant even if Patrick remained quite unaware that this was in fact what she was being.
'If that's all right,' said Patrick. 'Sounds a bit supper time, though.'
'I expect she'll ring you,' said Nicola distantly.
'Nick - '
'What?'
'Just because Ginty's back - well - it won't stop you coming over, will it? I mean - we're all friends, aren't we?'

Oh, 'strewth, thought Nicola. He just didn't get it at all. She carried on cleaning the perch with unnecessary meticulousness and wondered how to get out of this without looking either totally kiddish or a complete jealous prat.

'I don't much like playing gooseberry.'

There. It was out. Patrick now knew for certain that she knew exactly how things were between him and Ginty. So he knew that she wasn't prepared to pretend that friends was the right term for the three of them. And she hoped she hadn't sounded silly. And she hoped that he didn't imagine for one moment that she - liked him so much she'd do just about anything for him except, of course, be an audience for him and Ginty.

He went on gently smoothing Regina's throat feathers and said:
'The hawks'll miss you . . . couldn't you come - say - early - '
'Not very easily,' said Nicola with a frown. 'We're going off early tomorrow anyway, and then Esther's going back and it'll be all dentist appointments and haircuts and I might be going to stay with Miranda and then it's back to school, of course.'
'So you're quite busy.'
'Well - yes.'

He gave her a sudden lopsided grin.

'Let's just hope the rain holds off, then, because you've got to fly the Tweeds this afternoon, haven't you?'

Nicola's mother, however, had other ideas.

'I really think,' she said, capturing Nicola in the scullery where she was washing her hands for lunch, 'that Patrick can look after his own hawks for an afternoon. Esther's hardly seen you since she arrived.'
'It's not me she's come to visit,' pointed out Nicola. 'See each other all term, Esther and me can.'
'It still looks - cavalier.'
'Really?' said Nicola, briefly interested in the word although sensing that its meaning was not as dashing as it sounded. 'But Ma, I can't help it if it's just these particular days that Patrick's got Flip and Flap to look after as well. I'm being helpful.'
'Well, at least offer to take Esther with you. She might like to see Patrick's hawks.'

Nicola wondered why she ever bothered explaining anything about hawks to her family. They never seemed to grasp the most basic information.

'But I can't just turn up with someone the hawks have never met before,' she said patiently. 'They don't like it. And it will be the last time I go, prob, because - well, because we're going to Mulcross Bay tomorrow. I'll be with Esther all day.'

So, having convinced her mother, she spent a perfect hour or so in the late afternoon following Patrick's signals and finding, to her pleased astonishment that the Harris' hawks were reasonably content to do what she wanted them to when she wanted them to do it. She knew, of course, that they were well trained and experienced birds and used to being handled by different people. Beacons of the Falconry Club, Patrick had told her earlier on. You could pretty much call them tame, he said, especially Flap, the male, certainly far less temperamental than Regina and much more predictable in his moods and reactions.

'I wish I could have a hawk again,' she exclaimed as she reluctantly brought the flying to an
end. 'You are lucky, Patrick, being at the school you're at. Do you think they'll ever take girls?'
'Not in your lifetime,' he said. 'About as likely as your establishment opening its doors to boys, I should think.'
'Or Miss Keith starting a Falconry Club like your head,' said Nicola with a slight giggle.

She was relieved that they were able to act in a normal fashion with each other and it was only when she looked up from hooding Flip to see him glancing surreptitiously at his watch, that she was brought back to reality.

'Got to go,' she said abruptly. 'Ma said not to be late.'
'All right,' he said and she thought, in her jangled state that he sounded relieved. 'Look - Nick - '
'Mm?'
'If you do find you've got time you will come and see the hawks, won't you?'

Like hell, I will, she thought as she nodded stiffly and set off home at a sharp pace. She wouldn't do anything so silly as to cry. There was nothing to cry about.

'Look at this!'

Lawrie, who'd been lying in wait for her twin, grabbed her and waved a letter under her nose.

'What is it?' Nicola said with little curiosity. 'An invitation to bypass exams and age restrictions and join RADA next term . . . '

Lawrie contemplated this enticing suggestion for a moment, ever prepared to suspend disbelief, and then said regretfully:
'No, it's from Tim. She's having a party just before we go back to school and she's invited us and says we can stay and then go back to school with her!'
'Thought Tim lived in Scotland. It's a long way to go for a party.'
'Tim hasn't lived in Scotland for years - just hordes of relatives and a croft on a farm somewhere for holidays -'
'A croft is a farm, you dope.'
'You don't sound a bit keen - '
'What I'm keen on right now is supper,' said Nicola, although she didn't feel particularly enthusiastic about anything much just at that moment.
'What we all want,' said Rowan, coming into the lobby behind the twins. 'Go and give the bell a good ring, one of you - Mrs Bertie says it's about ready. I've got half an hour precisely and then that goat'll start bleating for attention. Amongst a thousand other things bleating for their share of attention, of course.'

Lawrie obliged.

'I thought,' said Nick, following Rowan into the dining room, 'that Ma was going to do all the goat milking? When Jan's not here?'
'So she sort of does,' said Rowan. 'And I'm sure she'll get quicker in time - won't you Ma, darling?' - as Mrs Marlow appeared helping Ann with the trolley - 'but Ginty has chosen just the wrong train so I chose to milk rather than drive. Good grief, what's this? Are we expected to eat it - it rather looks as if something already has - '
'Don't be disgusting,' said Mrs Marlow firmly. 'Doris found the recipe in one of her magazines and wanted to try it on us as a starter. Anchovy, mustard and egg au gratin - does anyone know where Peter and Esther are?'
'Anchovy and - words fail me,' said Rowan, prodding cautiously at the concoction that Ann had passed her. 'At least there's a bit of toast at the bottom - if you can find it - '
'Fussy,' said Nicola gloomily. 'Where's your spirit of adventure?'
'Alive and kicking - just some things have good reason not to end up on the same plate,' said Rowan, nevertheless eating it with the energy of the truly hungry.
'Perhaps they didn't hear the bell,' said Ann. 'I think I heard Peter tell Esther he'd show her the roof.'
'As long as that's all he's showing her,' commented Rowan.
'Daks was with them,' said Lawrie, the reproving maiden aunt. 'You don't think my Peter would do anything ungentlemanly in front of Daks, do you?'

Nicola, in spite of not feeling much like it, chuckled and said:
'Daks would have his throat out - oh, here they are. Where have you been, you two?'
'We're really sorry - ' Esther began.
'My fault. We'd forgotten supper was going to be early, Sorry, Ma - Lordy, what's this I see before me?'
'Try and think of it as a gastronomic challenge,' Rowan advised him. 'Actually it's better than it looks.'
'Well, it couldn't possibly be worse,' said Peter. 'It looks like a - '
'Peter!' warned his mother. 'And the rest of you, just be very thankful that Mrs Bertie and Doris don't mind helping to cook for such an uncivilised bunch of ingrates. If you had to rely on my cooking all the time you might have genuine cause for complaint but not many people would give up their evenings like they do, I can tell you. In fact, I think it's high time they had a wage rise - don't you think so, Rowan?'
'Do you mean you pay them?' said Peter, feigning surprise. 'And there was me thinking they came out of the goodness of their hearts because they liked us all so much. Well, well.'
'Nick,' said Lawrie who found this talk boring in the extreme when she had Tim's invitation burning a hole in her pocket. 'You will come to Tim's party, won't you?'
'I haven't read it properly, yet.'
'Read it now - I've got it right here - '

She rummaged in her pocket and brought out the envelope.

'Put it away, Lawrie. It'll keep until after supper,' said her mother testily. 'Your turn to help clear, isn't it?'

Lawrie made an impatient noise, rushed off to clear plates and bring in Toad in the Hole and sat down to say:
'Tim'll be awfully disappointed if you don't come.'
'Doubt it,' said Nick. 'She'd probably be ecstatic. What's it for anyway? It's not her birthday - I remember that happening months ago.'
'Her father said that if he sold enough stuff at some exhibition he's just had then Tim could have a party to celebrate. And he has and she wants it soon or he might change his mind, she says. Oh, Nick, you must come - I can't go on my own!'
'Don't be so feeble. You love parties.'
'Not the party. Getting there. Will you go, Esther, d'you think?'
'Me?' said Esther, who had been quietly thinking how super not to be in the least involved in this. 'Tim won't ask me to her party, I shouldn't think.'
'She said she was asking everyone she thought could get there.'
'Where does Tim actually live?' asked Mrs Marlow.
'Canterbury. I couldn't possibly get there on my own - '
'That's no distance once you're in London,' said Rowan. 'You've only got to get across to - Victoria, isn't it - from Paddington. A few stops on the Circle Line if my memory serves me.'
'On the underground?' said Lawrie, as if Rowan had proposed a trip to the Far East. 'On my own?'
'We used to,' said Nicola. 'I remember us wanting to go out on our own when we lived in London, and liking it.'
'Together, that was,' said Lawrie. 'That's different. Oh, you will come, Nick, won't you?'
'Well, I wanted to go and see Miranda - if she's back.'
'If she is back Tim will have asked her, too,' said Lawrie firmly. 'Nick - '
'Lawrie, don't pester,' said Mrs Marlow. 'Nick can make up her own mind. Esther, more Toad?'
'Well, if you don't go to Miranda's - '
'I don't know Lawrie. I'll tell you when I do know. Now shutting up about it would be quite restful, yes?'

After supper, Mrs Marlow went to fetch Ginty, Rowan went to milk the goat, Peter, Lawrie and Esther cleared and washed up under Ann's watchful eye and Nicola took the opportunity of everyone being nicely engaged to take herself off to the office to phone Miranda.

Once again there was no reply so Nicola could only suppose that the Wests were still in Venice. And even if they weren't Nicola still wasn't absolutely sure what she was going to say. Miranda had been just a bit quiet at the end of the previous term, politely agreeing that yes, she would find the dates of their holiday and let Nick know if it was okay to visit later than they had originally planned. Nicola had taken this to mean that Miranda would definitely contact her one way or the other but thinking back over their last conversation, Miranda could quite easily have meant she would only phone if it was okay. So she couldn't possibly say Can I come and stay? Although if she was there Nicola hoped she might work up to it - sort of - in a roundabout polite sort of way. Except that Miranda had never ever been the kind of person one needed to be roundabout with.

She knew it was about her wanting to help Patrick with the hawks. In retrospect she could pinpoint almost exactly when that slight coolness had set in. But although she felt vaguely that it was perhaps a bit what her mother would have called shabby it surely wasn't such a big deal. Did Miranda think it was? Was this the end of the Best Friend phase? She supposed, thoroughly pessimistic now, that she had been in it for longer than most of Miranda's previous best friends. But she'd mind if she got back to school to find Miranda doing a Sandra Grigson on her - that would mean she'd been discarded by both Patrick and Miranda . . .

A step outside made her jump guiltily although she'd nothing to feel guilty about. Rowan put her head round the door and said:
'Making a phone call? Can you get a move on - paperwork - bills - you know . . '
'Sorry.' Nicola scrambled up so that Rowan could take her place at the desk.
'No need to be sorry, just speedy - Lord, how I look forward to handing all this over . . . '
'Do you?' asked Nicola. 'Doesn't it feel - I mean, you're good at all this - won't you hate somebody else being in charge?'
'Not one tiny tiddly widdly bit,' said Rowan happily. 'They can hunch themselves over unpaid feed bills while I can live it up at Colebridge Tec.'

Nicola sighed deeply.

'What was that for?'
'Well - going back to school - it just seems odd. You and Peter. One minute you're a farmer and he's a sailor and the next there you'll both be sitting tamely on a bus to get to school every morning.'
'I can't tell you how much more enticing sitting on a bus sounds than sitting on a tractor,' said Rowan. 'And it is school but not as we know it, Scotty - no-one's going to expect me to don a school hat and blazer and if I want to eat fish and chips in the street, I can - did you know Gin's back, by the way - why don't you go and say hello?'

Like hell I will thought Nicola for the second time that day.

biskybat @ 2008-02-24T12:03:00

2008-02-24T12:06:46Z

Chapter Fifteen
Lois Reflects

It was the morning of the last day of term. Snow, which had begun the previous evening as no more than a promise - although enough of one to cause parents who had decided to stay overnight in one of Wade's hotels thankful they had decided to do so - had become a silent blanket by the morning. Ginty, unusually first out of bed because of last day anticipation had been the first to draw back the curtain and give a squeal of excitement. Even Karen, who occasionally thought she was surely becoming rather too old to become excited about such things as nasty cold white stuff which brought on her chilblains like nothing else, and most certainly Ann and Rowan joined Ginty at the window to point and exclaim and in Rowan's case to throw open the window and scoop up a handful of snow to fling down into the back drive where Tabbles, Mrs Jersey's cat, mincing cautiously and up to his hocks in snow, paused and twitched his ears at the slight soft movement beside him.

"That was close," Karen observed. "You nearly hit him."
"Miles off," said Rowan airily. "and a handful of snow wouldn't have upset more than his dignity anyway."
"If Mrs Jersey had seen you she wouldn't have thought so," said Ann seriously.
"Oh, I know - she'd personally make sure I was on short rations forever but she didn't see me - and I don't care anyway! Isn't it simply better than anything to be going home today!"
"And going home in the snow!" added Ginty still entranced by the changed view from the window. "And Miss Miller said she'd take us out for a snowball fight this morning if there was enough snow and we all got our cases packed in time."
"How very sprightly of her," said Rowan. "Don't remember such energy when I was in the Second."
"She said it would be a kind of reward for doing our songs so well," said Ginty. "She can be really nice sometimes. And Miss Ussher said she might come too - they were laughing about it last night after the concert."
"The Usshe and the Jolly Miller throwing snowballs at each other!" said Rowan. "Where are you having your snowfight? It's almost worth the effort of coming to watch!"
"I wonder if it's snowing in London," Ann said leaning her elbows on the window sill. "D'you remember last year when it snowed and there was a snowman competition on the Heath and the twins won?"
"Well, they won't be winning any snowmen competitions this year," said Rowan. "Did you hear Ma say they were going to have to stay indoors for ages and rest most days and not do anything that might remotely aggravate their coughs?"
"And they're not going back to school for weeks and weeks," said Ginty wistfully. "I heard Mummy telling Miss Keith all about it. Lucky things."
"Not so lucky," said Karen. "They'll be awfully bored, I should imagine - I would be - and think of how much they're missing. I'm sure they're already behind where we all were when we started here. Neither of them know any French to speak of and Lawrie's handwriting and spelling are dreadful."
"Perhaps we can help them," said Ann hopefully. "I like French, and good handwriting is only practice, Miss Miller says."

Karen and Rowan laughed.

"Miss Ann Marlow's Dame School," said Rowan not unkindly and added, "You can try of course, Ann, but I can't see either of them taking kindly to doing rows of pothooks."
"Pothooks are kindergarten," said Ginty scornfully. "Miss Miller said one of the reasons I came top in English was because of my beautiful handwriting."
"All you need to do now," said Rowan, "is develop a beautiful nature to go with it."

The dining hall was a mass of excitement. Miss Keith had wisely decided that the combination of snow and the prospect of going home was reason enough to be lenient about the level of noise and on the top table was carrying out her own conversations with the rest of the staff about the previous evening's concert.

"Very satisfactory," she said mainly to Miss Kempe and Miss Usshe whose idea it had originally been. "An
excellent opportunity for the girls to work together in their forms and to show their capabilities."
"And one or two pleasant surprises," said Miss Kempe. "One of my favourites was the Second's St Lucia songs. Did they think of it all themselves, Miss Miller?"
"Monica Eliot came up with it," replied Miss Miller with a gratified smile. "I sent them off to find out all they could and they all became very keen. The only sticking point was about who was going t play St Lucia herself. So many of them wanted to and you know how quarrelsome they can be at that age."
"At any age," said Miss Cromwell, cutting toast her toast in half with a swift decisive action . "My class frequently resembles a flock of corvids - I overhear several things I'm sure they don't realise they do - but you didn't actually have a St Lucia, did you, Miss Miller?"
"No," said Miss Miller regretfully. "Whoever we might have ended up choosing there was the problem of the lighted candle headdress - I didn't think my nerves would stand it, so, Monica again - she is a sensible child - suggested they all dress up as St Lucia and wear paper crowns. Ginty Marlow was disappointed, being the most vociferous contender for the role, but we all agreed it was the best idea. And of course, Miss Ussher helped with the music."
"I would have liked more music altogether," commented Miss Ussher. "But those who did choose to sing acquitted themselves well, I thought. There are some very good voices in Upper IVA for instance."
"Talking of good voices," said Miss Miller. "That new child in your class, Miss Cromwell, speaks out very well. She made me shiver in that first poem she did with Rowan."
"Lois Sanger," said Miss Cromwell, considering. "Yes, very talented. And will do well in several areas, I daresay, when she becomes less intent on rushing in to make a good impression."
"I value your opinion, Miss Cromwell," put in Miss Keith. "But I can't think it a bad thing to want to make a good impression. I find her very well behaved with a great desire to do well for herself and the school. Positive attributes I would have thought."
"Indeed yes, Miss Keith," agreed Miss Cromwell with a tiny ironical smile directed solely at herself.

Miss Keith rose to her feet, always a sign for immediate and complete silence and in spite of the general excitement as effective as ever. She gave out the final few notices and treated the school to a beneficent smile as she wished them all a safe journey home and a happy Christmas.

Karen kindly offered to finish Ginty's packing for her so that she could join her class mates outside in the snow and to Rowan's protest that this was outright indulgence said peaceably that surely Rowan would prefer not having her under their feet while they completed their own packing. Conscientious Ann had finished her own packing very quickly and her elders had shooed her away from helping them by suggesting she went to make her fond farewells to the rest of her form.

Their cases lay full to bursting, especially Ginty's, on the middle of the floor.

"Isn't it strange," remarked Rowan, "how there's always more to go into our cases at the end of term than at the beginning."
"Christmas presents, don't forget," Karen said. "Ginty bought loads at the bazaar. Too late to go in the trunk, of course."
"I didn't buy a thing this year," said Rowan. "Even if I'd had any money was there truly anything there that anyone would actually want?"
"Of course there was," said Karen briskly. "That's just sour grapes - even you must have liked the Upper Fifths jigsaw puzzles - I got one for Peter - and the cake stall was just incredible with all those different sweets - they were sold out in half an hour."
"We weren't sold out," said Rowan ruefully. "Although we did better than last year. People really did like those crocheted thingymejigs. I must admit, although it pains me to do so, that Lois was right there."
"You really don't like her much, do you?" said Karen busily squashing socks and other small items well down into her case. "I always think she looks rather nice."
"That's half the problem," said Rowan. "She does look nice and so she can be and some people like her a lot but she's not someone I'd want to have around in a crisis. She'd save herself first and then possibly other people, I think."
"That's a bit hard."
"Perhaps," said Rowan and went on rather more reflectively, "And perhaps it's got something to do with her parents. Her mother was nice and bought loads of things from our stall but her father looked very sniffy - as if he'd rather be doing anything else. You could see Lois madly trying to impress him but he just wasn't very interested."
"I'm glad Daddy isn't like that," said Karen. "At least he pretends to be interested even if he does make awful jokes about raffia mats and home made aprons."
"Yes and he does talk to people. Lois's father didn't speak to anyone at all except to ask Lois how much money our stall was expected to make which was dead embarrassing. You couldn't help feeling a touch sorry for her. I ended up feeling a bit sorry for her mother too - she was awfully nice to us and wanted to know loads about the school but Lois seemed embarrassed by her as well - really not sure why."
"Parents can be embarrassing," said Karen knowledgably. "Perhaps especially when it's their first visit to school. I suffered tortures at my first Kingscote bazaar and Ma wore this terrible hat - "
"Yes, but you were nine. Lois is thirteen. We all know we can't help our parents," said Rowan.
"But Lois's father does sound rather difficult," said Karen. "He must have been pleased at the concert, though. She was very good in your form's poems."
"Well, that was another thing," said Rowan thoughtfully. "They went out before the end - Lois's parents, I mean - so I don't suppose she knows if he was pleased or not. She was good though. Everyone knows she's the one who held it together properly. But . . . "
"But what?"
"I do feel a bit sorry for her because of her father and I know she's good at things and I know everyone thought we'd be best friends because of both liking games but honestly, Kay, she is a - bit strange. You never really know where you are with her."
"Ann likes her," said Karen. "Because of Guides. Ever since someone helped themselves to her box of knots or something and left them a bit untidy - you know what Ann's like if her stuff is half an inch out of place. Ann said Lois helped her tidy it and she didn't have to at all. They aren't even in the same patrol."
"Doesn't sound a bit like Lois," said Rowan sceptically. "Unless Miss Redmond was watching - probably Lois left them untidy in the first place - "
"That," said Karen reprovingly. "Is what Miss Kempe would say is an uncalled for remark. Now, are we sure we've got absolutely everything in? Then come and sit on this, Ro, while I try and do it up."

In Lois's dormitory a similar scene was taking place except that most of the girls were packing only for themselves. Lois, whose packing was neat and quick, had almost finished although there was not the same urgency for her. She would be travelling home by car and taking her trunk with her, unlike some of the others in her room who were going home by train and were under strict orders from Matron to have all cases ready by ten o'clock sharp

Around Lois, girls in a state of high noisy excitement were doing their best to obey Matron's orders in the teeth of such distractions as missing hats, odd socks and the necessity of stopping every now and then to exchange addresses and phone numbers or to dart to the window to ensure that the snow really was settling properly.

Lois lingered over her last items going over in her mind the previous day's events: the bazaar and the concert and her parents' visit to the school. She had known as soon as she had caught sight of him that her father was in one of his moods, that nothing would be right and she would be lucky if he didn't embarrass her with some unpleasant remark for which he would not bother to lower his voice. It was all very well, she thought, Mummy saying they must all be patient with Daddy, he had come back from the war a different person and would take time to adjust and be completely his old self again but it was hard on her never knowing what he was going to be like in front of her friends. It had been massively embarrassing the way he'd asked how much money the stall was going to make in that direct way of his which had made the others stare. Of course Rowan Marlow had had to be there, she thought bitterly, listening, looking sympathetic, all right for her with her perfectly ordinary - better than ordinary - parents, her father making them all laugh by saying the dressed spoons in their droopy dishcloth outfits belonged in a fashion show and then buying two of them. Her own father hadn't bought a thing and it had been embarrassing all over again when her mother had scooped up far more than she needed to in an attempt to cover up for him.

And they'd left immediately after Lower IVA had finished their poems. She'd been disappointed to find they'd booked a table at their hotel for seven although they'd known the concert wouldn't be over until later. Her mother had tried to excuse this by reminding her how Daddy liked to have his meals on time and of course they would stay long enough to hear her part in the proceedings but it didn't help very much. Almost better, she thought, to be like Jan Scott whom she had overheard saying quite equably to someone: 'Oh, my father never comes to school things'. She'd briefly wondered why and whether Jan had a mother in the picture - perhaps she too had an odd - a different - home background although she could never ask - although she wished she could. It might help to find out how other people coped.

It was possible, she thought wistfully, that her father might be fine tomorrow. Just occasionally he emerged from his glooms and talked to her properly, seemed proud of her and interested in all she did. It would be wonderful if he would be like that and even more wonderful if it would last all over Christmas . . . She would love to have a really good talk with him, tell him all about the term and her triumphs - perhaps even confess her mistakes. It was never much good trying to talk seriously with her mother about things like that. Her mother thought everything she did was wonderful and could not imagine her behaving in any way other than perfectly.

"Coming down for break, Lois? You've finished, haven't you?"
"Nearly. In a minute."

They clattered cheerfully out, Jill Ballam pausing to tell her to hurry up or all Mrs Jersey's mince pies would be gone.

Her mistakes. Well, not mistakes exactly, she defended herself. Just not always knowing what was expected - by the school - by the other girls. Like the swimming pool on her very first evening. Or accidents. Like forgetting to turn off the oil lamp in the Guide hut. That could have happened to anyone. Or knocking Linda Peel over - she hadn't meant to. A bit unfair if that was why Jan Scott had been a bit offhand since the match - she'd said sorry not just to Linda but to everyone and that hadn't exactly been easy - but at least Jan wasn't in the same class. Although it was still a pity if Jan was going to hold it against her because accidents happened, everyone knew that.

But people would have forgotten all those little things by next term. They'd remember the things like the concert. They'd never have found the Thomas Hardy poem without her and everyone said she'd read it brilliantly - and Penny would remember the way she'd helped her get her voice to project across the theatre. They'd spent ages practising The Coming of the King, attributed to Henry Vaughn until Penny had managed to properly separate 'King' from 'attributed' and raise her voice effectively so that on the night no-one could have had the least trouble in hearing and understanding what she was saying. Penny had been grateful - really friendly. And the bazaar. She'd worked hard on that - harder than some people - Rowan hadn't worked anything like as hard but of course she seemed to get away with it. And the Guides all really liked her - even Muriel Pollack had stopped giving her those slightly funny looks. Miss Redmond relied on her for all sorts of things and often said so - and Ann Marlow seemed to quite admire her - perhaps she would tell Rowan and Rowan would . . .

Next term. Next term she would start again, the good things remembered, the not so good things forgotten. And Rowan would have forgotten too.

THE END

Thank you for humouring my friends thing. Do feel free to defriend/unfriend, whatever.

biskybat @ 2008-02-24T11:59:00

2008-02-24T12:00:46Z

Chapter Fourteen
Rowan Reports Back

"Look, we need some kind of plan."

Hilary's voice, as perturbed as anyone had heard her. Around her, clustered in the foyer of the school theatre, were Mary and Gillian where Gillian, panicked by the non return of Rowan, had just told the others where their form mate had gone.

"There's still half an hour," said Mary calmly. "Plenty of time really."
"Half an hour until we're all expected to be on the stage," said Hilary grimly. "But a very short time before everyone else arrives to get sorted. What on earth do you think's happened to her?"
"Probably nothing," said Gillian uncertainly and then went on, "I say, I've just thought! Do you think she told me because she had a premonition - about the mangled corpse bit?"
"No, we don't," said Mary tersely. "Late connection far more likely."
"But how are we going to cover up for her during the rehearsal?"
"Even if we should - rather than report her missing, I mean - how can we? No-one else has practised the Thomas Hardy poem and that's where she'll be missed."
"And even if we asked Lois to do the whole poem Miss Keith is going to notice she's not there."
"She might not. If we sort of huddle together more," said Gillian optimistically. "We could ask Lois to do the whole poem."
"Of course Keith will notice," said Hilary impatiently. "And Crommie's going to be there as well, don't forget. The only thing we can do is say right at the start that Rowan's not there because - because . . . "
"Why have I got to read all the poem?" came Lois's voice from behind them. "What's happened to Rowan? Is she all right?"

The other three glanced at each other.

"As far as we know," said Mary guardedly.
"But she hasn't been around all afternoon," Lois persisted. "Do you know where she is? Because the rehearsal starts soon, doesn't it?"
"We were just saying," blurted out Gillian and went on in spite of Hilary's hard nudge. "We were just wondering if you could do the Thomas Hardy poem on your own, Lois - if Rowan isn't back . . . "
"Back from where?"

Mary and Hilary exchanged an exasperated look.

"Do keep quiet, Gill, the less anyone else knows the better."
"But Lois needs to know because of the poem."
"Needs to know what?"

Reluctantly, they told her. Lois, at first pleased to be included in something that seemed only to involve the very people she most wanted to have as best friends, became noticeably more bothered as she heard the complete story.

"But we could all end up in the most frightful trouble!" she exclaimed. "I mean, for knowing and not saying anything."

They stared at her.

"Actually we're more worried about Rowan herself," said Hilary coldly.
"Well, yes, of course, I mean . . . " Lois floundered a little. "I didn't mean I'm not worried too, just that, well, it just seemed a bit - a little bit - unthinking of Rowan to involve so many people when if no-one knew - I mean, of course I'm worried too - "
"Are you trying to say Rowan's been a little selfish?" asked Mary politely.
"Not exactly selfish," said Lois, feeling their eyes upon her. "But, well - Hilary - you're always saying about how she got out of doing the milk round, f'rinstance - "
"What on earth's that got to do with anything?" asked Hilary incredulously.
"She only told me," Gillian said loudly. "She wasn't being selfish - just in case of emergency, she said. And the milk round's a joke. Rowan and Hilary are always having fights but it doesn't mean anything. Everyone knows that."
"It never sounds like a joke," Lois muttered. "And you all say she's bossy and gets her own way all the time."

Shut up, shut up, she told herself despairingly, stop being so stupid as to think you can make them think badly about Rowan because you can't. Trying her best, she gave a tentative smile.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean that to sound as if I'm - criticising Rowan - "

The door behind them opened and banged shut again.

"Oh, here you all are!" said Rowan cheerfully. "I've been looking everywhere for you - don't shriek like that, Gill, what on earth's the matter?"
"You're what's the matter," said Hilary severely. "Talk about cutting it fine. We were just having a confab about what to do - deep concern over your whereabouts - "
"I was starting to think the mangled corpse thing might have actually happened," said Gillian in patent relief. "Ever so worried, I was. That's why I told the others - sorry - but - why are you so late back? Did you see them?"
"Slow train," said Rowan. "I could have walked back faster. I felt like walking back, I can tell you. Heartfelt ajopolies all round - didn't mean to be late."

Lois, on the edge of this, thought why did I have to say anything - why didn't I just agree with them?. Mentally she rewrote the little scene in her head, this time giving herself the part of leading the concern for Rowan's safety and offering straight away to read the whole poem along with coming up with a wholly practical and praiseworthy idea to explain her absence to Authority while they all considered what to do next. If she had then she'd now be properly in the middle of this group - properly accepted because even without the way she'd squarely planted her foot in it she didn't think she was.

Kind hearted Gillian noticed Lois's uneasy hovering.

"And Lois was just gearing herself up to read your bits of the poem, weren't you Lois?" she said.
"Well, now you won't have to," said Rowan. "Although I must say given the choice between reading the poem and sinking into a nice hot bath I know what I'd choose. Every time I opened the window to see why we were stopping yet again for so long I got another smut in my eye. Do I look very grimy?"
"You do a bit," said Mary candidly. "A quick splash wouldn't come amiss before we face the glare of the spotlights."
"Yes, come on," said Hilary. "The others are probably in the Green Room by now."

The concert practice soothed Lois's jangled emotions a little. Saying the poem with Rowan was always fun especially as she knew that her voice was the better one for this sort of thing and that her feel for the poem was probably deeper than Rowan's. The elocution lessons she had attended over the years stood her in very good stead and she had no problem at all in projecting her voice to the very back of the theatre, unlike some of the others who struggled to do so. This afternoon she noticed the little nod between Miss Keith and Miss Cromwell as the poem drew to a close and knew that she had done well.

When their performance was over Lower IVA shuffled uncertainly, glancing at each other for guidance. Miss Keith beckoned them to the front of the stage.

"A fairly creditable effort," she said. "I have one or two comments to make. Sonia, playing with your hair detracts not just from your own performance but from the whole form's." She paused to allow Sonia to turn scarlet and went on more graciously, "But a reasonable attempt generally. Lois, I am sure your form is particularly pleased in more ways than one, that you joined us this term. I assume you have taken elocution lessons?"
"A few, Miss Keith."
"Then you are a credit to your teachers. Now, I believe you wanted to add something, Miss Cromwell?"
"Thank you, Miss Keith - yes." Miss Cromwell consulted her notebook and the members of Lower IVA exchanged resigned glances. "All of you - when you come on to the stage you sound and look like a crowd of badly organised scene shifters. If you must all wear your heaviest shoes do at least try and co-ordinate the noise they make. Penelope, when you introduced the third poem I could not hear you so unless you want the whole audience to be as mystified as Miss Keith and I were I suggest you practise. Perhaps Lois might be able to help you a little."
"Yes, Miss Cromwell," said Penny stolidly.

Miss Cromwell finished the comments she had to make, which did not contain anything that Lower IVA thought they would find too difficult to correct. With relief they left the stage, as consciously quietly as they could manage, to make the most of the time they had left at their disposal before supper.

Rowan separated from her friends to go in search of Karen to tell her about her afternoon's venture before they were due to make their daily telephone call to their mother. Karen was predictably horrified.

"Rowan, you didn't! You could have got into the most awful trouble - you still could if - "
"There aren't any ifs," said Rowan firmly. "I'm back safely, aren't I, with no-one any the wiser. And I rather thought you might be pleased - possibly even admiring. Don't you want to hear how the little tykes are?"
"Of course I do - how are they?"
"Sitting up in bed and looking bored on Nick's part. Playing for as much attention and sympathy as she can on Lawrie's. Both fine."
"So Mum wasn't trying to hide anything from us. She wasn't just trying to keep us happy."
"Well, they might have been iller before, I suppose," said Rowan thinking back to her visit and remembering that 'listless' had come to her as a word that described them both quite accurately. "But they looked more or less okay this afternoon. A bit pale and a bit thin - but then they often do, don't they? Come on, Kay, it's nearly time to phone."
"I promised Ann and Ginty they could come too."
"What? What for?"
"They came and found me during the Sixths' match this afternoon. They're still quite worried."
"Ann might be," said Rowan. "Ginty just can't bear the thought of not being in on things."
"You know, Ro, you are a bit hard on Ginty at times," commented Karen. "In fact just lately you've snubbed her hard practically every time she opens her mouth."
"She needs snubbing," said Rowan firmly.
"Not all the time. She's only eleven."
"More like seven, some days," said Rowan dismissively. "Kay - should I tell them, d'you think? About going to see the kids?"
"Heaven's sake, no!" said Kay in alarm. "It'll only give Ann something else to worry about and Ginty'll never keep it to herself. Unless - well, I suppose you'll tell Ma about it? When we phone?"
"Well, I wasn't going to. I sort of thought it could wait until we break up - just in case she thinks I ought to do something gruesome like go and tell Miss Keith or something."
"But Nick and Lawrie are bound to say something."
"I asked them not to," said Rowan with a sudden gloomy presentiment. "And I'm sure Nick won't. But I suppose it is asking a lot of Lawrie. But even Lawrie won't have had a chance to say anything yet."

They made their way to the school office where they found Ann and Ginty already waiting.

"Bags me speak to Mum first!" said Ginty.
"It's not a game," said Rowan. "And anyway Kay always makes the call and goes first. Then me, then Ann. Then you last of all and then only if you absolutely promise not to start talking about yourself."
"But I wanted to tell Mummy about what Miss Keith said about our St Lucia carols - "
"Oh, let her," said Karen, frowning at Rowan. "It hardly matters, does it?"
Ginty made a face at Rowan who said: "You really are an immature little so and so - "
"Can we make the call?" asked Ann. "Instead of arguing?"

Rowan glanced at Ann's tense, rather white face. She and Karen were a real pair, she thought quite tolerantly: bursting into tears like that or belting off in the middle of the night to pray like mad as if they were all in some dreary Victorian novel. It was a good thing she was there to balance things a bit, she thought, and come to think of it not a bad thing exactly that Ginty was there too. Nobody could say that Ginty was remotely like a character in a Victorian novel. She looked across at her younger sister's face as Karen made the call and felt a slight pang of conscience. Perhaps she was a bit hard on her now and then - even though she did feel it was in Ginty's best interests - perhaps Kay was right . . .

"You can go next, Ginty," she said.

It was much later on in the evening after the four of them had spoken to their mother, that a snippet of Rowan's own conversation with her came back to her. Mrs Marlow was now prepared to admit what Karen and Rowan had suspected, that the twins had given her some nasty moments - Lawrie particularly. But, she had added, totally believably, they had both turned a corner the previous night and although not quite well enough to come home for a day or two were now responding to the medication they were being given and firmly set on the road to recovery.

Last night. Rowan remembered Ann slipping out of the bedroom to kneel in the draughty chapel as her own way of responding to the news. Coincidence. It had to be, she thought, a small shiver of doubt running through her. She mentioned it in as offhand a way as she could to Ann but Ann was quite unsurprised. She had a confident expectation that her prayers would produce some kind of an answer. In Ann's experience they usually did.

biskybat @ 2008-02-24T11:54:00

2008-02-24T11:57:39Z

Chapter Thirteen
Making Sure

Karen's steady diligence and ability in all things academic, her readiness to take her part in a wide variety of other school activities, if not with great skill then certainly with dependable calmness, and her naturally sensible law abiding nature led those in authority to look favourably upon her and, although she would have been horrified to hear it, to be already ear marked by Miss Keith for a significant future responsibility post, possibly even head girl. However, Kingscote life was not the kind of environment where Karen was liable to find many challenges of the emotional kind and therefore staff and pupils very rarely witnessed what her family referred to as 'Kay's flaps'.

And now, with the idea firmly lodged in her head that the twins were more seriously ill than their mother was letting the rest of the family know, she was by no means her usual school self.

"What's the matter with Kay?" asked Ann at bedtime on the second evening after the letter about the twins had arrived. "She seems awfully upset about something."
"Dunno," said Rowan, turning her back to Ann to hunt for something in their communal chest of drawers. She hated telling lies for any reason. "Probably got an exam coming up or something."
"But exams are finished. And Kay likes exams anyway. She never gets bothered about them."
"Well, perhaps now she's starting to."
"But - "
"Don't pester me, Ann," said Rowan shortly.

Ginty sat up in bed ready to put in her own twopennor'th. "She is different, though. She got really snappy when I asked her if she'd help me with my French this evening."
"Quite right too. You know you're not supposed to ask us for help with your prep."

Ginty lowered injured eyes. "One tiny bit of French vocab - "
"Sh," said Rowan. "Here's Kay now."

By the time Karen came to bed she could reasonably expect Ginty and Ann to be asleep and Rowan to be in bed. To find all three of her sisters wide awake and giving her looks ranging from Ann's concern, through Ginty's curiosity to Rowan's exasperation was yet another thing to throw her off balance.

"What's the matter?" she asked them, instantly wondering if there had been news that somehow she hadn't heard -
"Nothing," said Ann soothingly.
"But we were wondering what was the matter with you," chirped Ginty.
"Nothing!" said Karen and promptly burst into tears.

This was so very unlike Kay, who even in the worst of a flap was seldom seen to cry, that her sisters were highly disconcerted. Ann bounded out of bed to put her arms round her and beg her not to, Ginty bit her turned down lip hard and thought of all the worst possible things Karen's tears might mean. Daddy's ship, she thought, Lost with all hands - drowned - we'll all be orphans - Ginty, who in contrast to Karen cried easily, began to sniff.

Rowan, observing all this, thought, oh, for goodness' sake and saw that only the truth would do. So she told them and Ann stared at her in disbelief and Ginty began to cry in earnest.

"But they haven't been really ill for ages," said Ann sombrely.
"And they're not now," said Rowan firmly. "Kay's got this idea in her head that they are but whooping cough's nothing these days - not like - like the Middle Ages - "
"People still die of whooping cough!" sobbed Ginty. "L-lawrie and Nicky might die!"
"No they won't, you complete idiot," said Rowan furiously. "Babies might - sometimes - hardly ever - but not when you're ten - "
"But why are they in hospital?" asked Ann.
"Just in case."
"In case of what?"
"I don't know," said Rowan. "But Mum says they're all right - she'd tell us if they weren't , wouldn't she?"
"Have you spoken to M-mummy, then?" asked Ginty. "When?"
"We phoned her yesterday and today," said Rowan reluctantly. "Oh, shut up, Ginty! Yes, it is fair - Mum didn't want you to be upset and can't we all see why - where are you going, Ann?"

Ann was reaching for her dressing gown and pushing her feet into her slippers.

"I'm going to the little chapel," she said and for Ann she said it defiantly. "I know you all probably think it's soppy but I'm going to pray for them. And don't say I can't because you know we can - we're allowed to - if we have something - well, I'm just going, anyway."

She closed the door firmly behind her. Karen, with a massive effort, pulled herself together.

"Sorry," she said. "Shut up now, Ginty. Rowan's absolutely right. The twins are only in hospital because everyone knows if they get something they sometimes get it badly. And they've been in hospital before, haven't they? When they were babies. and when they had that chest infection that nearly turned into double pneumonia - remember - - but no-one's ever thought - well - anything - except that they needed special care. Now just lie down and go to sleep or we'll have Matron after us."

To Rowan's ears it sounded more as if Karen were trying to reassure herself rather than her younger sister. But Ginty swallowed tears and responded to the return of the old, matter of fact Karen who tended to be right about things. She lay down and obediently closed her eyes, abandoning with only the tiniest regret, the thought that had arrived unannounced then I'll be practically the youngest and get everything I want like Lawrie does and prepared herself for sleep.

Karen and Rowan did not speak again, neither wanting to disturb Ginty. Ann returned twenty minutes later from the tiny chapel on the next floor and slipped noiselessly into bed assuming that her sisters were all asleep. But Rowan lay awake, unable to settle. For the last two days she had spent her time so firmly assuring Karen, no, everything would be fine, like it always was, that she had not quite considered exactly how anxious she was herself.

But I'm not, she thought, giving up on sleep altogether and rolling on to her back. She clasped her hands behind her head and stared up at the ceiling which, with its now familiar assortment of tiny cracks and bumps she could just make out in the dim shine from the fanlight over the door. The worst that could possibly happen was another endlessly long convalescence for the poor kids and the likelihood of their Kingscote career being delayed yet again. That was bad enough for them, she mused, but honestly Ann rushing off to pray for them like that - she couldn't help a small grin at the thought of the twins' reaction to that if they should ever find out. Lawrie would, no doubt, be fascinated at the idea of being prayed for but Nick would be sternly affronted and not in the least grateful. The grin uncurled itself at the thought that however much she might be down to earth about it all it really didn't help having Karen going to pieces on them and setting off Ann and Ginty like that. Perhaps tomorrow the news would be better - less vague. There was no doubt that Mum was hopeless at getting the true picture across to them. She was so anxious to make everything sound all right that she simply made them feel suspicious.

Was she never going to get to sleep? She heaved a huge sigh and as she blew it out she made a sudden connection in her mind. Cleveland Hospital was the one bang near the entrance to Paddington station where the Wade Abbas train terminated. She could almost nip down to London, check that the little blighters really were all right and nip back again - two and a half hours - three hours at the most. Could she?

She sat up and hunched her knees to her chin. Tomorrow was Saturday. Tomorrow was going to be one long day of practices and last minute bursts of creativity in the run up to the bazaar and concert. And the Sixth was staging a netball match, Lower against Upper, which Miss Golfe was umpiring and which the whole school would undoubtedly want to watch. In all that hustle and bustle surely she could manage not be missed. Everyone would think she was somewhere else -

Money. She was lucky there, too. She still had the five shillings which she had taken out of the bank to help pay for last minute odds and ends for their stall and then hadn't needed. She had enough.

All she had to do was slip away immediately after lunch and make sure she was back by five when Lower IVA was due in the theatre for a Form rehearsal in front of Miss Keith. Tea time, she thought optimistically, where she might normally be missed, would be no problem with all the extra coming and going.

It would be easy. And then she could tell her jittery sisters that she had seen the twins and they were completely fine.

Rowan woke early the next morning and dipped a cautious toe into her previous night's plan. But she could see no obstacles whatsoever. She passed the morning in a state of well concealed excitement and it was only as everyone was filing out of the dining hall and she was within minutes of making her getaway that her mother's voice sounded in her ear: always tell someone where you're going. Her mother's stock phrase ever since Peter had wandered onto the Heath and lost himself and no-one had known where to start looking. She halted outside the boot room and considered whether it was fair to involve anyone else and Gillian, coming up behind her nearly went into her.

"Sorry!"
" 'S okay - where are you off to, Rowan? It's miles too early to go and watch the netball."
"Um," said Rowan and made up her mind. "Gillian, I want to tell you something but you mustn't tell anyone else."
"Crumbs!" said Gillian for this was most unlike Rowan.

Rowan pulled Gillian into the boot room and very rapidly filled her in on how her afternoon was going to unfold.

"Crumbs!" said Gillian again. "But Rowan, you'll be in the most awful trouble if you're caught and if your mother says your sisters are okay - "
"Yes, yes, I know," said Rowan. "It's what's called setting people's minds at rest. You don't have to share a room with the Three Panics."
"And you rather want to see for yourself anyway," said Gillian quietly.
"Well . . . look, Gillian, I'm only telling you in case there's some fearful emergency like the train blowing up or something so they know to look for my mangled corpse - but you won't breathe a word, will you? Not unless you absolutely have to in the direst possible circumstances?"
" 'Course not," said Gillian very readily. "Although I do think you're taking an awful risk - someone might easily see you in your school togs."
"I'm wearing my mac," said Rowan who had already thought of this as being less noticeable than her regulation great coat. "And no hat, obviously - "
"No hat? Oh, Rowan, that's almost worse than clearing off to London for the afternoon - "
"Look, stop telling me things I already know - if I don't go now I'll miss the train!"

It was at times like these that she missed Diana, Rowan thought as she made her way as nonchalantly as possible down the school drive - where am I going? Oh, just for a quick breath of air . . . There was no particular rule about the drive but the jog to West Wade station was nerve racking even after she'd turned off the main road to take the short cut across the fields. Di wouldn't have come with her because Rowan wouldn't have let her. There would have been no point at all in two people landing in trouble but she would have felt a lot happier leaving her whereabouts in Di's safe keeping. Di would have understood perfectly the 'direst possible circumstances' and not only stuck to it but also, without Rowan needing to say anything, provided first rate back up if necessary. Rowan pictured her particular wide eyed expression - Rowan? Oh, she said something about going off to practise her poem, didn't she? Di could act puzzled bewilderment or vague disinterest better than anyone Rowan knew. Rowan liked Gillian very much and did not doubt her loyalty but was less sure about her ability to hold on to a secret. Although she'd only tell Hilary or Mary, of course, if she was concerned. She wouldn't actually go knocking on Miss Keith's door, Rowan hoped.

The train safely caught, Rowan's first rueful thought was that this truly was the point of no return, her second that she was very glad indeed that she had worn her plain navy blue raincoat because to be sitting in a carriage full of people wearing a more distinctive item of Kingscote uniform might have been awkward. Her third thought was one of regret that she had involved Gillian as it could just possibly lead to trouble for her if the afternoon's escapade ever came to light. Her fourth thought caused her heart to turn over.

She had concerned herself so much with the mechanics of reaching the hospital she had given no thought at all to visiting hours or indeed as to whether the twins would be allowed any visitors at all, apart from their mother, if they were infectious.

"You feather brained nitwit," she told herself. "You burbling great clot - why didn't you think!"

And then the fifth thought: if she managed to coincide with visiting time and if she were allowed in then naturally her mother was going to be there too and Rowan couldn't imagine for one moment that her mother would be at all pleased to see her.

If the train had been a stopping one Rowan would have got off and caught the next one back to West Wade. As it was she could do nothing except sit there and try to manage her dismay, aware that she had more than likely embarked on a wild goose chase of her own making. She knew nothing about hospitals apart from the brief visit she had made four years ago to have her broken arm set in plaster and that had been a trip to Casualty. She certainly knew nothing about visiting hours. It was even possible, she realised with another miserable thump, that you had to be sixteen or something to be a visitor at all.

She'd thought she'd been so clever with her planning, she thought bitterly, as the train slowed for its final mile or so before coming to rest at Paddington, and she'd missed the most important details of all. Trouble was potentially gathering for her from school and from home and it was going to be all for nothing. Stupid.

Feeling every kind of an idiot she tugged at the door the second the train stopped and wove her way as swiftly as she could through the people and along to the end of the platform. She knew exactly where the hospital was and as soon as she was out of the station she started to run, feeling a certain urgency to complete what she felt would probably be an fruitless mission as quickly as she could.

Visiting hours, she discovered from the board outside the hospital, were from one thirty to two thirty and the steady flow of people coming past her out of the main doors was a clear indication that the time was over. She slipped between them, keeping a weather eye open for her mother, and followed the signs for the Children's Ward. It wasn't hard to find but Rowan became thoroughly unnerved by the sudden silence and emptiness of the corridors as she left behind the last of the leaving visitors. A nurse informed her quite kindly that she was going the wrong way and Rowan obediently turned round and walked the other way for a few paces until the nurse had disappeared ahead of her. Then she walked a little further in the direction of the Children's Ward and when she was within a few yards of it she stopped in a state of indecision. She couldn't just march in, she was sure of that, she'd just be marched straight out again and anyway if the kids were infectious they wouldn't be in a main ward, would they? They'd probably be in one of these little side rooms but she could hardly peer into each and mount a search for them . . . although what else could she do except look? Then she gave a gasp of relief. MARLOW, Nicola and Lawrence neatly printed on a slipped in card on one of the doors. What complete and utter stupendous luck when they could have been anywhere at all . . .

"What are you doing?"

Rowan jumped and swung round to find a woman whom she would have recognised as Authority even without the uniform and cap of a hospital Matron. She looked forbiddingly unsmiling and unsympathetic and Rowan's heart sank. She saw little chance of help but she put on her politest voice.

"I was hoping to see my sisters."
"Visiting hour is over."
"Yes, I know. At least, I didn't know until just now - "
"The exit is that way."
"Yes," said Rowan. "Thank you. I wondered if I might see them - just for a minute."

The Matron peered at Rowan over the top of her glasses.

"Are you over twelve? Because if you aren't you have no business to be here at all, visiting hour or no visiting hour."
"I'm thirteen," said Rowan, hiding her indignation, for she was occasionally taken to be older than Karen.
"And who are your sisters?"
"Nicola and Lawrence Marlow. They are both girls even though - oh, please," Rowan used the only recourse she felt she had left which was to plead. "Please, could I see them, just for a minute?"
"No, of course you can't. Only seriously ill patients may receive visitors out of visiting hours and they most certainly are not."
"Oh!" said Rowan and felt relief flood her. It was what she had come for. The Matron, simply because of her uncompromising severity had unknowingly offered her confirmation of what her mother had already told them.
"Now perhaps you'll be good enough to leave?"
"Yes," said Rowan meekly. "Thank you."

She felt the Matron watch her as she turned and started to walk purposefully away hoping that she was giving the impression of definitely leaving. Around the next corner she waited until she could be certain that the area was empty of people again and then she darted forward and along the short corridor to MARLOW, Nicola and Lawrence, because she hadn't come all this way to fall at the final fence. Even if it might not be strictly necessary after what the Matron had said she still wanted the evidence of her own eyes. Without pausing she seized the door handle, turned it and was inside in a moment to see Nicola looking up in amazed pleasure from her languid attempt at a jigsaw puzzle of the Battle of Trafalgar, and in the other bed, Lawrie, her face to the wall apparently asleep.

"Rowan! What - "
"Sh, not a sound. I shouldn't be here." She looked at Nicola's rather wan face and said doubtfully. "How are you, Nick? And is Lawrie all right?"

Nicola dropped her voice to a whisper.

"I'm all right. And Lawrie's asleep. She's all right too now but - "

Lawrie's blankets heaved and she sat up blinking. She was far less surprised to see Rowan than Nicola had been. Lawrie's imagination had lately become a ferment of grieving brothers and sisters making their penitent way to her sick bed from where she could magnanimously and bravely forgive them for all the wrongs they had inflicted upon her . . . She gave her eyes a rub.

"Rowan - hello! Did you bring us something?"
"Bring you something? I've had enough trouble bringing myself, thank you. Now do shush, both of you - there's a terrible old harridan of a Matron prowling about who'll certainly have me escorted off the premises under armed guard - makes our Matron at school seem positively soft and fluffy - "

Lawrie giggled and Nicola said: "How did you get here? Does Mummy know you're here? She's only just left."
"Train," said Rowan briefly. "And no, she doesn't. In fact it'll be a fairly good thing if she stays not knowing - until I can tell her myself. So keep it to yourselves, won't you?"
"Were you really worried about us, then Rowan?" asked Lawrie, impressed to find at least part of her daydream coming true.
"No," said Rowan crushingly. "The only reason I came is so I can report back to the others that you're still alive and kicking. And you are, aren't you by the look of you both."
"Last night I wasn't," said Lawrie importantly. "I couldn't breathe I was coughing so much. They had to put me in an oxygen tent."

Rowan looked at Nicola who nodded in agreement.

"It's horrible when you cough," she said. "It's hard to breathe properly sometimes."
"I remember, I think," said Rowan. "I had it when I was little and I sort of remember."
"I went blue," said Lawrie proudly. "Well, I did, Nicola. I heard them say."
"Only for a minute," said Nicola. "And don't do it again because they want to send us home soon as long as you don't cough too much."
"I can't help it," said Lawrie. "It just sort of comes."
"I can't wait to go home," said Nicola wistfully. "It's so boring in here. We have to stay in bed all the time and even if we could go and talk to the other children we can't because of spreading our whooping germs around."
"Yes, we just lie here and lie here," added Lawrie.
"Well, stay lying there," said Rowan. "Because none of us want any more scares from either of you."
"Scares?" repeated the twins and Lawrie persisted, "Were you really worried about us, then, Rowan?"
"No," said Rowan. "Not in the least."

biskybat @ 2008-02-22T10:06:00

2008-02-22T10:10:27Z

Chapter Twelve
Unsettling News

The last few weeks of term gathered speed. The school was practising now in earnest for the end of term concert which was to be opened to parents and was to end with carols to be sung by everyone. Forms operated to a strict timetable so that they could each take their turn to rehearse in the school theatre and there was a hum of preparation and expectation in the air.

The bazaar, which was to be held on the same day as the concert, claimed its own share of attention. To Lower IVA's collective disgust they had again been allotted the Kitchen Stall and a game called Roll the Penny as Miss Keith had decided that ownership of stalls would be strictly by pulling names out of a hat.

"So now we've got to spend all our time knitting dishcloths and decorating boxes of matches. How utterly super whiz, I don't think," said Rowan when Hilary and Mary returned from the Form prefects meting with this dismal piece of news. "And there we were hoping for the Cake Stall so we could spend hours in Dommy Sci making cakes."
"Well, we can't," said Hilary crossly. "and it's no good anyone going on and on about it because there's nothing we can do about it."
"Wouldn't anyone swap?" persisted Rowan. "Who did get Cake Stall, anyway?"
"The Sixth. And no, we weren't allowed to swap. Miss Keith told us before we had the draw."
"Oh, how very typical," said Rowan including both the Sixth and Miss Keith in this.
"I've just had an idea," said Gillian suddenly. "How about if we all write home and get our mothers to send us loads of wooden spoons? We could have a wooden spoon stall! All shapes and sizes! I bet they've never done that before!"
"That's brilliant," said Rowan enthusiastically just as Hilary said:
"They'd never let us, you know they wouldn't. They'd just say it was being lazy. Which it is. Trust you, Gillian!""
"But everyone uses wooden spoons," argued Gillian.
"And everyone hates all those table mats and tray cloths and woven bits and pieces and knitted stuff," said Rowan. "You know what it was like last year when we had to try and sell things at reduced prices and still had to buy up what was left over ourselves."
"Well, they were fairly ghastly - "
"But perhaps we'll be a bit better at making things this year," said Hilary firmly. "Those dishcloths you made were terrible, Rowan - all dropped stitches and holes - "
"Thank you - so tactful - "
"Well, they were," said Hilary. "If we all think hard we're bound to come up with something a bit different."
"I know how to crochet," said Lois diffidently. "It's a lot quicker than knitting once you get the hang of it and we could make those mats people stand glasses on. My aunts have all got dozens of them - they always say you can't have too many."
"But your aunts won't be coming, will they?" said Gillian. "All that kind of stuff makes me feel sick. I think my wooden spoons is a much better idea."

Lois, who was making strenuous efforts both to negotiate for a return to the good relationship she'd enjoyed with her form before the netball match and also not to take offence at chance remarks said: "Well, some people like them. And they are dead easy to make," and was rewarded by a murmur of interest and Sonia and Mary both professing a desire to learn how to crochet and how about going - now - to the needlework room and seeing how many needles Mrs Ward might have at her disposal.

"It's hooks you need," explained Lois, pleased with this enthusiasm. "Crochet hooks. You get different sizes like you do for knitting but you only need one of them."

To Lois's pleasure learning to crochet became something of a craze in Lower IVA with even Gillian learning along with everyone else. Mrs Ward presented them with as much yarn as they needed as her contribution to the bazaar.

"The trouble is," said Rowan a few days before the bazaar, eyeing the growing piles of circular, square and rectangular pieces of crochet in ever more varied textures and colours with a marked lack of enthusiasm (she had not been one of the keener members of the crochet group,) "we've been so busy doing these we haven't done much else. Our stall's going to look more like a giant advertisement for crochet work patterns than for 'useful items for the kitchen'. They may be ornamental but they're not particularly kitcheny, are they? More afternoon tea with the vicar - "
"We can turn some of it into pegbags."
"And kettle holders."
"And I'm putting shells round mine - when I can get the shells - to go on milk jugs to keep flies off."
"I do think a few wooden spoons would have provided a bit of a contrast," said Gillian plaintively. "How about if we ask if we can make a special trip into town to buy some?"
"They don't like us just buying stuff up," said Hilary. "We're supposed to be creative."
"And we all know what that means," said Gillian. "Dressed up spoons - again. Oh, well, at least we've got plenty of crocheted stuff to do it with."
"Does anybody mind if I do an extra stint on Roll the Penny?" asked Rowan. "I don't honestly think I can stand being in charge of the Best Dressed Spoon stall again."

Since the netball match relations between Rowan and Lois had remained far from warm. The rest of Lower IVA, after some initial and fairly forthright disapproval, were prepared to put it down to over enthusiasm on Lois's part and to forget the whole unfortunate incident but Rowan, perhaps because she had had a better view of it than most, found it harder to do so. She coped with her antagonistic feelings by staying out of Lois's way as much as she possibly could and keeping conversation to a bare minimum. Lois, who did not return Rowan's dislike, was sure that if she kept being as friendly as she could then the coolness between them would eventually end. She was aware that Rowan's distant politeness towards her masked her real feelings but decided to think that this, although uncomfortable, was a lot better than being ignored completely. After all she hadn't done anything so very terrible. Anyone might have shown annoyance at having to make changes to the team at the last minute and everyone realised - she was sure - that she hadn't meant to knock Linda Peel over; okay, perhaps she'd been a bit careless but it had been a real accident for which she had apologised. And if Linda could manage not to make a big thing of it then Lois really didn't know why Rowan couldn't simply put it behind her too.

And as Christmas approached and the rehearsals for their part of the concert stepped up in intensity, needing as much form co-operation as it was possible to gather, Rowan found it was becoming possible to do just this, or if not to forget entirely then at least to tuck it well away in the back of her mind. After much discussion, argument and near despair it had been decided by Lower IVA that Lois and Rowan should share the reading of the Thomas Hardy poem and it made things an awful lot easier, Rowan thought philosophically, if she could get on with her reading partner.

They had found it far harder than they had expected to find suitable poems and realised early on in their search that they had been rash in their decision to find one poem from each British country. No-one was confident about reading aloud in any accent apart from their own and, as Penny Matlock pointed out, if someone didn't read it in the proper accent then what was the point of doing a Celtic one at all and if they did then no-one would understand it anyway. Gillian's suggestion of the Lyke Wake Dirge had been barely considered for these twin reasons, fun though they all agreed it might have been to perform.

So their choice of poems ended up being a motley collection: Thomas Hardy's The Oxen which had been the one unanimous choice, one early English ballad about St Stephen and a later seventeenth century one called The Coming of the King. Upon being asked of the poems' uniting theme Lower IVA had gaped at Miss Cromwell (hadn't it been a long enough slog finding any three poems everyone could agree upon) and weakly suggested, English Christmas Poems. She had looked the length of her nose at them and said that if that was really the best they could come up with then it would have to do, wouldn't it, which caused Rowan to later remark, quite admiringly, that Crommie could be far more scathing in far fewer words than anybody else on the entire staff.

"So remind me again," Rowan said one morning, a week or so before the end of term, when she and her sisters were getting ready to go down to breakfast, "what are you all doing in the concert."
"We're doing St Lucia. From Scandinavia," said Ginty, promptly. "We're all dressing up in white with tinsel and lace in our hair and if we've got long hair we're going to wear it loose - "
"Yes, but what are you going to do?"
"We're doing two songs about St Lucia - one of them goes like this - "
"I don't want to hear them, thanks - what about your lot, Ann?"
"We're doing a mime about a Spanish donkey," said Ann. "Well, sort of a mime. Some of us are taking turns reading the story and the rest of us are being animals. We've already made the masks."
"Sounds like a mime to me. What's your animal?"
"I'm doing some of the reading."
"Boring," said Ginty. "I'd much rather be an animal."
"You're nearly there," said Rowan. "In fact - "
"Out main bit is the Journey of the Magi which is sort of Egypt," said Karen hastily. "Kempe's giving us quite a bit of help, actually, because she says she doesn't want us to murder it."
"Miss Ussher's helping with our carols," said Ginty. "Because we've got to do loads of percussion and recorders and stuff."
"How very unfair," commented Rowan. "Thought it was supposed to be our own unaided efforts."
"Form teachers don't count, I suppose," said Karen. "After all, they won't want to be embarrassed by their form's measly efforts on the day, will they?"
"Well, Crommie hasn't fallen over herself to offer help to us," said Rowan. "In fact, rather the other thing. I think on the day she'll probably disassociate herself from us entirely and firmly look the other way."
"Why? What are you doing?"
"Three English Poems."
"Boring," said Ginty immediately, to get her own back.
"Why English?" asked Karen.
"Because they're not anything else."
"But I thought they had to be associated with a country - "
"So they are. England."
"England!" scoffed Ginty. "That's cheating."
"How?" inquired Rowan. "I suppose England is actually a country. I mean, you may have noticed you do actually live in a country called England?"
"Still boring."
"Nothing like as boring as you, little Ginty," said Rowan with a yawn, pulling her jumper over her head. "Do you think there might be a letter this morning everyone? Mum hasn't written yet this week, has she?"

A letter from home, addressed to Karen, was delivered to her at breakfast time. It was customary but not obligatory to share items of news with friends and Karen was delighted to tell not only Margaret Jessop, her best friend, but anyone else who cared to listen that her father would be home for Christmas, if all went according to plan. However she became very still as she read the last paragraph:

Nobody is to worry about this but my last piece of news isn't quite so cheerful. Nicky and Lawrie have somehow managed to contract whooping cough which means they are in for a miserable time, I'm afraid. Dr Gordon thought it best, as a precaution, (this last was underlined heavily) that they go into the Cleveland Hospital where (the next few words had been heavily crossed out which was unlike Mrs Marlow whose writing was rapid and loopy but not usually characterised by errors) they will be comfortable and looked after very well indeed. Now you really are not to worry, Kay darling, or allow the others to. We all know how frightening these sudden illnesses of the twins can be but they are old enough now for whooping cough to be a very minor setback for them . . .

She put the letter back into the envelope without saying anything further to anyone.

"Are you all right?" Margaret Jessop, her best friend, asked her, concerned by Karen's expression. "Not bad news?"
"I - hope not," said Karen. "It's the twins. They've both got whooping cough."
"Oh, dear," said Margaret sympathetically. "That's tough - but they're old enough for it not to be serious, aren't they? I mean, it's not as if they're babies."
"That's what Mummy says," said Karen. She opened her letter again and scanned it. "She says they've been taken to hospital but we're none of us to worry as it's only a precaution. But Margaret - do they take people into hospital as a 'precaution'? Don't you have to be really ill before - "
"No, you don't," said Margaret firmly, not knowing at all but recognising that Karen, inclined to over reaction in times of excitement or stress, was becoming panicky. "And your mother says you mustn't worry - she's telling you the truth, I'm sure."
"But they get so ill when they get ill - I must tell Rowan - " She thrust her letter back into its envelope again and stood up with the rest of her table to say grace and then to dart away and await Rowan by the dining room door.

Rowan, more disposed than her sister to weigh things up before deciding the amount of attention or anxiety to show read the letter quickly and then said, "Poor things. Being in hospital so near Christmas, they'll hate that."
"But, Rowan, don't you think - that - they must be seriously ill to have to be in hospital?"
"No, I don't," said Rowan. "Like Mum says, a precaution."
"But - "
"Kay, you know what they're like - if they get anything it goes straight to their chests and then everyone acts immediately to stop whatever it is affecting any other bits of them. And although they have these sudden illnesses they're always all right in the end, aren't they? Well, aren’t they? How many times has this sort of thing happened before?"
"But not for ages," said Karen soberly.
"No, well, I suppose that's true," agreed Rowan.

They looked at each other.

"So do we tell the others?" asked Karen shakily.
"Mum, didn't say not to," said Rowan doubtfully, "but perhaps wait a day or so until we can be quite sure there's nothing whatsoever for anyone to be worried about. You know what Ann's like - she'll probably want to take the first train home. And Ginty'll just cry and we can all do without that."

Later that morning, during break, Miss Keith asked to see Karen and Rowan together in her study, a summons which threw Karen into an immediate flap.

"There's only one thing she'll want to see us both about!" she whispered as they waited outside Miss Keith's door. "Isn't there?"

Rowan said nothing but was immensely relieved to see that Miss Keith looked exactly as normal and not at all as if she had bad news to impart.

"Sit down, both of you," she said kindly. "Now, I understand you have heard from your mother this morning about your younger sisters?"

They nodded, Karen extremely tremulously, because to her mind this was exactly how Keith might look if she had bad news for them - kind - benign - she never asked you to sit down -

"Have you heard - something?" she asked in an anxious croak.
"Only that your sisters are being kept in hospital so that they can be kept under observation," said Miss Keith, giving them both a reassuring nod. "I spoke to your mother on the telephone a short while ago and she wanted me to give you permission to receive a regular phone call from her so that you can hear for yourselves how Nicola and Lawrence are. She also asked me to tell you not to alarm Ann and Virginia with any of this. Your mother doesn't want them to suffer any anxiety at all about the twins until they are safely well again."

Safely well again. The words buzzed in Karen's head.

"Do you mean they might not be - safely - well - ?"
"No, Karen," said Miss Keith patiently. "Perhaps I should have said safely home again. Now, your mother and I have arranged that you may make a telephone call home this evening but until then I'm afraid there is nothing more I can tell you."

She dismissed them after this with platitudes about not worrying that were, in Karen's case, quite useless. Normally the most attentive of pupils she found it impossible to approach any of her lessons that day with her usual focussed interest. Rowan too, for all her sturdy common sense and refusal to become agitated where no agitation was called for, found it surprisingly hard to give her mind to parsing sentences or labelling Captain Cook's routes on her world map; the image of her sisters seemed constantly in front of her and although she would not describe herself as worried she was most definitely unsettled all day. At four o'clock exactly, the earliest they felt that could be interpreted as 'evening' they both presented themselves at the office where Miss Carter seemed to know all about it and let Karen make the call with the minimum of explanation.

The call was brief. Their mother was distracted and although she wanted to reassure Karen that she was not particularly anxious about the twins she did not manage it. After a minute or two of watching her sister's face grow paler and hearing the pitch of her voice rise, Rowan seized the phone.

"Mum - just tell us - are they really seriously ill or not? . . . What does that mean? . . . But when? . . . But why? . . . Yes, but . . . Yes, all right, Mum . . . Okay . . Yes, I'll tell her . . . "

"Tell me what?" asked Karen nervously as Rowan put down the phone.
"Same things," said Rowan tightly. "Not to worry, not to alarm the others, not to think that the twins being rushed into hospital in the middle of the night is anything at all out of the ordinary - "
"What - but she didn't tell me that!"
"I don't think she meant to tell me. It slipped out when I asked when they'd gone into hospital and then she wouldn't say much else," said Rowan. "Look, we can't do anything, Kay. Even if we were home we wouldn't be able to. Let's just imagine it's like all the other times Nick and Lawrie have frightened the life out of us all and ended up perfectly all right."

biskybat @ 2008-02-22T10:01:00

2008-02-22T10:02:59Z

Chapter Eleven
The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

It was not possible to walk from the forms' gardens to Matron's room without encountering a certain number of girls going about their leisurely Saturday morning business and generally only too pleased to stop and enquire into what Rowan had done to herself. By the time they reached their destination Rowan had imparted the information several times over that she had mashed her foot on a mallet and no, it didn't hurt much and yes, she was well aware of the afternoon's match and yes, she was going to still be in it - it was only a tiny injury and no doubt Matron would fix it up for. Nevertheless, she was glad to sit down and wait for Lois to scurry off and locate Matron and while she was sitting she became more and more doubtful about her stalwart claims because her foot had moved out of not hurting 'much' into something rather more painful.

Matron tutted and, having sent Lois on her way, took off Rowan's boot and sock and peered at the now very bloody injury.

"Bleeding a lot under the nail," she said briskly, beginning to clean the wound. "Messy, but nothing's actually broken by the look of it although you'll probably lose that big toenail."

Rowan squirmed under Matron's probing fingers and hoped she wasn't going to be sick. More to take her mind off Matron's ministrations than because she honestly thought she was chasing more than an outside chance, she asked whether she would be fit to play in the match that afternoon.

"Don't be silly, Rowan," said Matron without looking up. "Can you imagine yourself?"

Rowan couldn't. She found she was not in the least sorry to be helped on to the couch and told to lie down and stay there under the blanket while Matron organised some tea for her. And after that and two aspirin she was even less sorry to find herself drifting off to sleep.

She awoke with a start an hour later with the dominant thought of the afternoon's match. Did everyone know about her? The Wallabies would have to play Linda Peel which meant they probably wouldn't win which was a shame but would, she thought with a tiny wry grin to herself, please Lois. Or would Jan play the Wombats' sub, Bridget Fell and step down herself or ask Lois to as an evening up gesture? Rowan knew it was what she herself would certainly do if the situation had been reversed and she became increasingly sure that Jan would do the same - if she knew. And surely she would. News travelled very fast and probably by now the school had her with both legs in plaster and no games practically forever. She sat up and instantly Matron was there.

"Feeling better, Rowan?"
"Heaps and heaps," said Rowan truthfully. "I'm sure I can hobble about a bit."

Under Matron's watchful eye she found that she could. The pain in her toes had subsided to a tamed, if persistent, throb - quite bearable - and although she knew she wasn't up to the netball match she was sure she was capable of watching it to say nothing of making her way downstairs and into lunch . . .

"Lunch up here," said Matron firmly. "And then perhaps you can go. But I shall want to see you again this evening."

Armed with the indignity of a stick (Yes, Rowan, no point at all in falling down these deathtrap stairs and make sure you use it.) and after forcing down more Shepherds Pie than was really comfortable in her efforts to convince Matron that she was perfectly all right, the first two people Rowan came across were Jan Scott and Lois outside the boot room having what looked like an argument.

"Well, hello," said Jan, eying her with detached sympathy. "So you got in the way of a mallet. How extremely careless of you. Are you okay?"
"Walking wounded," responded Rowan. "But out of the match unfortunately."
"Just what we're discussing - if discussing is the right word. So you're definitely out of it?"
"Definitely. Why, what's happening?"
"Only that if you can't play then obviously one of the older Wombats should stand down as well and let both our subs play. And it ought to be me."
"Thought you'd want to do that."

Jan shrugged.

"Seems the right and proper thing to do under the circs."
"But," burst out Lois, "whole teams don't rearrange themselves just because the other team has to play a reserve! It seems mad!"
"As I've just said," Jan stated patiently. "Normally I'd agree with you - school teams say - but this is a bit different - can you imagine the Wallabies' Linda Peel instead of Rowan up against you, for instance?"
"It's hard luck but things like that happen," said Lois. Two spots of red showed on her normally sallow face. "It seems so - so amateur to accommodate the younger ones like that!"
"It is amateur - if you want to use that word. We're all amateur. The knockout is the amateur of the amateur which is why - oh, Lois, surely you can see that it's the only thing to do?"

Lois said nothing. Jan and Rowan exchanged a mystified glance for this was a side of Lois neither really knew existed although Rowan suddenly found that she was not actually surprised that Lois felt like that, incomprehensible as it was to her.

"It's only a game, Lois," Rowan offered.
"Yes, I know. But we've all been practising so hard and now we've all got to shift about and change positions all because . . . "
"All because of a spider two inches across," suggested Rowan. She meant to sound light hearted but either it didn't come across that way or Lois was feeling too tense to notice.
"It's not my fault about the mallet!" she exclaimed and then tried to gather herself. "I mean - I'm really sorry you're hurt but anyone would have jumped. It was an accident!"
"Of course it was," said Rowan a little impatiently. "No-one's trying to suggest you tried to sabotage our team. It's a game for goodness' sake!"
"But without Jan it'll be a walkover for your team!"
"I could say that with Jan it'll be a walkover for yours!"

A moment of real dislike flared between them. Jan said:
"Highly flattering if not necessarily true. Look - Lois, I'm not going to change my mind about this so let's not talk about it any more. Help me gather everyone together and let's decide on the best positions to put people. Rowan - none of my business but your team does know about you, I suppose?"
"Yes," Rowan said with a sigh. "Message from Cathy while I was upstairs being mauled about by Matron. More in anger than sorrow, I felt, and certainly more concerned about the team than about poor little me."
"Well, natch - are you up to coming and watching?"
"I wouldn't miss it," said Rowan elaborately, "for anything. Fully mobile, I am - stick - look - "
"Adds years to you," said Jan with a slow grin. "I suppose you'll look pretty similar in your dotage."
"Cheek!" said Rowan. "Well, I shall make myself useful hobbling away to find Miss Golfe. I suppose I can't actually wish you both luck exactly but I do wish everyone a jolly good game."

She included Lois in her good tempered grin but received only a rather blank look in return. Goodness, she thought, seriously out of temper - worse than Ginty when she can't have what she wants. Poor Jan.

By the time the match was within a half hour of starting the Wombats and the Wallabies, under the direction of Jan and Cathy respectively, had organised court positions to everyone's agreement. The only exception to this was Lois. Jan, never one to spend too much time trying to please all of the people all of the time, had nevertheless offered her the chance to sit out of the match instead if she preferred. Lois had not preferred and had proceeded to turn down flat Jan's suggestion that she played centre whereupon Jan had ceased to pay her any further attention and had simply arranged the team around her.

Lois, thoroughly rattled, knowing with one part of her that she was behaving in an unsporting way but unable to ignore the persistent feeling inside her that this was all wrong - they should be playing in the positions they'd become accustomed to - it was stupid to accommodate their opponents like this - sat a little apart from the others and put great concentration into tying her plimsolls extra firmly. A burst of laughter from the nearby clutch of girls made her feel even more isolated and at odds with everyone. She bent her head to examine a developing bruise on her shin - must have been where she'd barged into the wheelbarrow that morning. Did it hurt or didn't it? She rubbed it gingerly and then, noticing Jen Wallace detaching herself from the group and coming towards her, stretched her leg out to look at it from a slightly different angle. Jen thumped down next to her on the bench.

"Banged your leg?" she asked solicitously. "How did you do that?"
"This morning when Rowan and I were gardening, I think."
"Oh, I don't think anyone realised you were hurt as well. Quite a bruise. Are you okay to play? Because we're just about to have a warm up."
"Oh, yes," said Lois, standing up and grimacing a little. "At least, I think so - "
"If you're not okay, tell Jan and she'll play instead of you. You're nearly as good as her - it won't make much difference."
"No," said Lois hastily. "Not now everything's been sorted - resorted. I'll be fine. I don't want to go upsetting things at this late stage. They're upset enough already."

Jen made a doubtful, noncommittal sound and Lois, unable to help herself, said in a low, disgruntled voice: "Don't you think Jan is making a bit of a fuss about this standing down business? It's up to the Wallabies how they arrange their team, not for us to help them out, surely?"

Jen, who'd come across to Lois partly because, as a fellow Guide she'd felt sorry for her in her isolation, albeit self contrived, looked uncomfortable.

"Seemed the decent thing to do," she mumbled. "And Miss Golfe agreed. Of course, if it was an inter school thing it would be different."
"Doesn't Miss Craven have an opinion?"

Jen shrugged.

"She'd probably say the same - oh, do cheer up, Lois. It's not as if the World Cup was at stake, is it?"

But to Lois, who wasn't exactly limping but who wasn't going to pretend she was a hundred percent fit either, it felt exactly like that.

Rowan settled herself as comfortably as she could on one of the benches ready to watch the match, eying with regretful envy, the match players who were beginning to toss the ball around. At least the Wallabies were. She wondered why the Wombats were still in a huddle - probably Lois wanting to give them some last minute advice on tactics she thought with a grin to herself. Odd character, Lois, she reflected. It was obviously very important to her, this winning business. Someone should tell her not to get things out of proportion a phrase Rowan heard occasionally from her parents, usually levied at Ginty or Lawrie or sometimes Karen. Lois so clearly thought that winning was of tremendous importance and clearly, from her comments in the garden, thought also that Rowan shared this opinion. Remembering this Rowan felt uneasy again - strange to see oneself as others might see one . . .

Suddenly thoughtful, she pondered. Because she did share Lois's opinion. She did think that winning was important. Everyone did. So why had it made her feel so uncomfortable to hear Lois speak so frankly about it, as if it were all a foregone conclusion? Wasn't that what Mary and various others were always saying, that she, Rowan didn't have a thought in her head apart from the next games fixture? And hadn't someone said, right at the beginning of term that she and Lois ought to get on very well as they were both equally obsessed with sport of all kinds? And they did get on well. They did both like playing games and being on the winning side so -

"Can I sit here?"

Jan, being polite, making sure before she sat down next to Rowan.

"Shouldn't you be with your team?" Rowan asked moodily.
"Done all I can," Jan said. "I'm sick of all the high pitched squabbling - I've left them to it."
"You sound fed up. I thought you had it all sorted out."
"So did I," said Jan. "I didn't know I had it in me to be so diplomatic. All the juniors happy with what they were doing, Bridget pointing roughly the right way, Octavia confident of lots of goals and then your Ann pipes up who was going to be captain if I wasn't playing and I said it didn't matter, I could still do the call for cheers at the end but no, they all started wanting someone who was actually playing - like a lot of sheep. So I said Val and Val said no, she didn't feel she was the right person to do it, what about Lois and I - well, it was then I found that there are limits to my diplomacy."
"Well, go on," said Rowan, interested. "So then what?"
"I dug my heels in and said Val ought to be because she's the oldest and all the other team captains are from the Upper IVths and Val was on the point of agreeing when Lois muttered something about how she'd done loads of coaching sessions and Val hadn't and how I'd got it in for her and before I knew it they'd all taken sides. So I left them. I nearly told them I didn't want to be a Wombat any more but just stopped myself from sounding as bad as them. Honestly!"

Rowan's mouth curled into a grin.

"Well, you won't have to be a Wombat after today," she said. "What a kerfuff over nothing."
"Quite. I might just start cheering for the Wallabies instead."
"I say, Jan,"
"What?"
"Have you got it in for Lois?"
"Of course I haven't!" said Jan very promptly and then, staring into the corner of the court where the Wombats were still in a tight, arguing bunch, she went on more reflectively, "I haven't got it in for anyone. But Lois - there's something a bit - desperate - obsessive - about her. She's quite capable of upsetting the whole team to get her own way in things that are often fairly trivial. And I didn't think she'd make a good captain even for this one match although naturally I didn't want to say so outright. But if they want her to be then it's their funeral. I don't suppose there's much more that can go wrong. You are a chump, Rowan, letting a mallet fall on you like that - couldn't you have waited until tomorrow?"
"Deep sorrow," said Rowan absently, her mind on an earlier comment of Jan's. Then she went on with uncharacteristic hesitancy, already knowing it would probably make her cringe later to remember, but suddenly needing Jan's opinion, "Jan - d'you think - I'm obsessive - about games?"
"Yes," said Jan and added kindly, "But not like Lois, if that's what you're thinking. I mean, I expect you'd notice if a member of your team fell over and broke her neck - not sure Lois would until it became too much of an inconvenience stepping over her - oh, good - here comes Miss Golfe. Perhaps we can get started."

From the first few minutes it became clear that the Wallabies were determined, in spite of the loss of their key centre player, to eradicate from the minds of the spectators any memory of the last time they had played against the Wombats. They rapidly became a team on the attack, impervious even to Val's goal defence tactics which had so disconcerted the goal shooters before. By half time the Wallabies were delighted to find that they were four goals in the lead.

Lois, who had finally been voted in as captain, mainly because she wanted it so much, gave the Wombats a pep talk while they gloomily sucked their pieces of orange.

"We've got to get the ball to Octavia and Jen," she said agitatedly. "Bridget, you kept throwing it right into Gina's hands - "
"I didn't mean to. I was trying to get it to Pauline but Gina just kept being there."
"Because you were so slow!" Lois said. "Three seconds you've got before you must pass, you know that - I've told you often enough - and Octavia, you've got longer if you're shooting so don't rush like you've been doing. I've never seen so many muffed shots - "
"Three, actually," said Pauline with a frown. "If you mean missed shots. Don't be so hard on them, Lois. They're doing their best. We're all doing our best."
"That's debatable," muttered Lois, "or we wouldn't be trailing 6-2."
"Well, you weren't that brilliant if we're going to get personal," said Pauline, who was slow to anger but could, as her friends knew, become very annoyed indeed on occasion. "Plenty of times you could have had the ball away from that IIIB kid - she was running rings round you - "
"No, she wasn't! And anyway, if you'd had a bang on your leg like mine you'd be a bit slower!"
"Oh, don't let's quarrel," said Ann anxiously. "Val, what do you think about the way we were playing? You had the best view of us - some of the time - "
"Well," said Val, in her slightly ponderous way, and paused. The others looked at her. The balance of leadership between Val and Lois suddenly tilted into Val's direction, if only because her slow and measured response was a relief after Lois's agitation. "I think we are all playing our best and therefore there's no point whatsoever in anyone criticising anyone else. Especially Bridget. It's not her fault she had to suddenly play and I think she's doing a very good job. And Octavia if you remember to take your extra seconds while you're aiming then you'll do even better. And everyone knows Ann always tries her best - it's what Marlows do, isn't it, Ann?"

Lois, listening to this, felt a little ashamed. Why hadn't she stopped to be encouraging first before coming down so hard on those kids, she thought to herself. Only because there was hardly any time - Miss Golfe was already beckoning them over. She put her piece of orange back on the tray and forced herself to join in with the small chuckle that Val had raised and which, heavily as the remark had been made - perhaps because it was so heavy - seemed mildly amusing and served as a much needed diversion.

"Sorry," she said over her shoulder as the team jogged back on to court. "I didn't mean to sound - too critical. I just think we - deserve to win - sorry."

She directed a quick smile towards her team and, except from Pauline, received forgiving grins in reply. It wasn't that they didn't like Lois, each team member more or less told herself, she just got a bit worked up - she should take things rather more calmly and then there wouldn't be those stupid spats which arose, really, out of nothing at all . . .

In the first few minutes of the second half the Wombats managed two rapid goals in succession which were largely due to Lois's skilful interception of some crucial passes. Spurred on by the cheers of the agog audience who were sitting or standing three deep around the court, for a while she played as if inspired, causing Jan to remark to Rowan with reluctant approval: "She is pretty good - no denying it - "

But play as well as they possibly could and each Wombat team member was following Lois's lead and putting in a valiant performance, the Wallabies seemed infused with determination not to allow their earlier lead to slip, and the next three goals belonged to them.

Lois did her best to control her frustrated feelings by muttering inaudibly to herself as she watched Bridget allow a couple of easy passes to be taken from her - you addle handed clot - and Octavia's aiming becoming a little wild - leave it to Jen, you prize idiot - while Ann Marlow's habit of standing with her hands out in front of her in that idiotic way - who did she think was going to pass the ball to her from that side of the court - aroused little short of fury in her. And Linda Peel - why was the Golfe allowing her extra seconds because she was sure she was - it simply wasn't fair - the kid hadn't a clue - this was the worst game ever - they were going to lose - and all because Rowan had to go and hurt herself and Jan would insist on standing down -

Linda Peel again in the wrong place. Lois leapt for the ball, knowing she ran the risk of knocking the child flying - but she shouldn't be there -

"Did you see that?" said Rowan in amazement. ""Did you see that? She pushed her out of the way!"
"Well, not quite," said the more judicious Jan. "Well, okay, yes, she did. But perhaps she was expecting Linda to move out of the way rather more sharpish. I don't think she deliberately meant to hurt her."
"I think," said Rowan slowly, "that at that moment she didn't particularly care what happened as long as she got her hands on the ball."

They exchanged a puzzled glance with each other.

"Well, say I'm not right, then - I'd rather not be right," said Rowan.

Jan shook her head.

"I don't know," she said.

Linda, her knee bandaged up, and fully prepared to take the blame and consequences for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, opted to play on for the last five minutes of the match and received her own personal cheer for doing so but the result was already a foregone conclusion. Although, naturally, the Wallabies were delighted to win, and to win by such a margin, everyone's pleasure was dented. Lois apologised publicly before she called for cheers which went a little way to restoring the equilibrium but even those who hadn't been properly looking and who thought Linda had brought it at least partly upon herself knew that there was such a thing as protocol and that Lois had run it very close indeed.