Coming Home (17 page)

Sunday is letter-writing day, so here I am writing a letter. Everything is fine, and I am settling down. Weekends are funny. We do prep on Saturday mornings, and play games out-of-doors on Saturday afternoons. Yesterday we played either netball or kick-the-can. Sunday mornings we have to walk to church in a crocodile, which is boring, and the church is pretty boring too, with lots of kneeling. It is very High Church and they have incense and one girl fainted. Then back for Sunday lunch, then another walk (as though we needed it) and now letter-writing, and then tea. After tea is nice because we all go to the library and Miss Catto reads aloud to us. She is reading
The Island of Sheep,
by John Buchan, and it is very exciting. Can't wait to know what happens.

Lessons are all right, and I'm not too behind except in French, but I am having extra coaching. We do gym on Tuesdays but it is difficult climbing the rope. We have prayers every morning in the gym and sing a hymn. There is a lot of music and once a week we listen to classical gramophone records. On Fridays we have an hour of Community Singing, which is lovely, and we sing songs like ‘Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill’, and ‘Early One Morning’.

My form-mistress is called Miss Homer, and she teaches English and History. She is terribly strict and I am Blackboard Monitor and have to keep the blackboard clean and make sure there is plenty of chalk.

I am in a dorm with five other girls. Matron is not a bit kind, so I hope I am never sick. Do you remember the girl who was buying uniform when we did? She is called Loveday Carey-Lewis and she is in my dorm too, only she sleeps by the window and I am by the door. She is the only weekly boarder in the school. She is in a form lower than me, and I haven't talked to her much because she has a friend who is a day girl called Vicky Payton and they have known each other before.

I have had letters from Aunt Louise and Aunt Biddy. And a postcard from Phyllis. Half-term is the 6th March, we get four days, and Aunt Louise is going to buy me my bicycle then.

It is very cold and wet. Bits of the school are warmish but most of it is cold. Hockey is the worst because bare knees and no gloves. Some girls have chilblains.

My present from Dad has still not come. I hope it is not lost, or that Mrs Southey has forgotten to send it on.

I hope you are all well and that the journey out in the boat was nice. I looked on the map and found Singapore. It is
miles
away.

Lots of love to everybody and Jess,

Judith

The head-girl of St Ursula's was a strapping and glorious creature who rejoiced in the name of Deirdre Ledingham. She had long brown pigtails and a splendid bust, and her dark-green gym tunic was well decorated with games colours and various badges of office. Rumour had it that when she left school, she was going to the Bedford School of Physical Training to learn how to be a games mistress, and to witness her leaping over the vaulting-horse was a sight not to be missed. As well, she sang solo in the choir, and it was not surprising that she was the object of violent crushes amongst the smaller and more impressionable girls, who wrote her anonymous love letters on paper torn from exercise books, and blushed furiously if in passing she threw them so much as a word.

Her duties were many and various and she took her responsibilities with great seriousness; ringing bells, escorting Miss Catto to Morning Prayers, and organising the long, straggly crocodile that trod, weekly, to church. In addition, she was in charge of the daily distribution of letters and parcels which arrived, in the post-van, for the boarders. This event took place each day during the empty half-hour before lunch, when she stood behind a large oak table in the Main Hall, rather like a competent shopkeeper, and handed out the envelopes and packages.

‘Emily Backhouse. Daphne Taylor. Daphne, you'd better go and do your hair before lunch, it's dreadfully untidy. Joan Betworthy. Judith Dunbar.’

A large and heavy parcel, wrapped in thick hessian, strongly tied, labelled and plastered in foreign stamps. ‘Judith Dunbar?’

‘She's not here,’ somebody said.

‘Where is she?’

‘I don't know.’

‘Well, why isn't she here? Someone go and fetch her. No, don't bother. Who's in her dorm?’

‘I am.’

Deirdre looked for the girl who had spoken, and saw, at the back of the shoving throng, Loveday Carey-Lewis. She frowned. She had taken against this wayward new-comer, who she had decided was altogether too big for her boots, having already caught her twice running in the corridors, a cardinal sin, as well as surprising her eating a peppermint in the cloakroom.

‘Judith should be here.’

‘It's not my fault,’ said Loveday.

‘Don't be cheeky.’ A small extra penance seemed to be the order of the day. ‘You'd better take it to her. And tell her that she should attend Letters every day. And it's jolly heavy, so mind you don't drop it.’

‘Where shall I find her?’

‘No idea, you'll have to look. Rosemary Castle. A letter for you…’

Loveday moved forward and gathered the enormous parcel to her bony chest. It was extremely heavy. Clutching it tightly, she edged away from the table and set off across the polished floor, through the long dining-room, and so into the corridor which led to classrooms. She went to Judith's classroom first, but it was empty, so turned back and started up the wide uncarpeted staircase, headed for the dormitories.

A prefect was descending.

‘Heavens, what have you got there?’

‘It's for Judith Dunbar.’

‘Who told you to take it?’

‘Deirdre,’ Loveday told her smugly, safe in the knowledge that she had authority on her side. The prefect was discomfited. ‘Oh, well, all right. But don't either of you be late for lunch.’

Loveday stuck out her tongue at the prefect's retreating back view and continued on her way. Her burden became heavier with each step. What on earth could be in it? She reached the landing, set off down another long passage, finally came to the door of the dormitory, pushed it open with her shoulder and staggered in.

Judith was there, washing her hands in the single basin which they all shared.

‘I've found you,’ said Loveday, and she tipped the parcel onto Judith's bed, and, as though exhausted, collapsed beside it.

Her sudden and unexpected appearance, bouncing in like a jack-in-the-box, the reason for it, and the fact that, for the first time, they were alone together, with no other person to intrude, caused Judith to be overcome by a painful and maddening shyness. From that moment in Medways, when she had first set eyes on the Carey-Lewis mother and daughter, she had thought Loveday quite fascinating, and longed to get to know her. So the most disappointing aspect of her first couple of weeks at St Ursula's had been the fact that Loveday had totally ignored her presence, leaving Judith with the sad conviction that she was such a nonentity that Loveday did not even recognise her.

She has a friend who is a day girl called Vicky Payton,
she had written to her mother, but the cool little sentence had been carefully framed to allay suspicion, because her natural pride would not allow her mother to think that she was hurt or upset by Loveday's indifference. At break, and after games, she had covertly watched Loveday and Vicky together, drinking their mid-morning milk, or walking back to school after hockey, chattering and laughing and enviably intimate.

It wasn't that Judith hadn't made friends of her own. She knew all the girls in her class by now, and the names of everybody in the Junior Common Room, but there was nobody special, not a real friend like Heather Warren, and she had no intention of making do with second-best. She remembered her father saying, ‘Beware of the first man who speaks to you on the P & O boat, for he will surely be the ship's bore,’ and his wise words had stayed with her. After all, boarding-school was not all that different, for one was thrown into the company of a lot of people with whom one had little in common, and it took time to sift out the grain from the sand.

But Loveday Carey-Lewis, obscurely, was different.
She
was special. And now she was here.

‘I've been told to give you a row because you weren't at Letters.’

‘I was filling my pen and I got ink on my hands. And it simply won't come off.’

‘Try a pumice stone.’

‘I can't bear the feel.’

‘No, I know, it's horrible, isn't it? Anyway, Deirdre told me to find you and bring you this. It weighs a ton. Do come and open it, I want to know what's inside.’

Judith shook the water from her hands, reached for a towel and started to dry them.

‘I think it's probably my father's Christmas present to me.’

‘Christmas present! But it's February.’

‘I know. It's taken ages.’ She joined Loveday on her bed, the impressive package parked between them. She saw the stamps, and the postmarks and the customs labels. She smiled. ‘That's what it is. I thought it was never coming.’

‘Why's it taken so long?’

‘It's come from Colombo. In Ceylon.’

‘Does he live in Ceylon?’

‘Yes. He works there.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘She's just gone back to be with him. She's taken my little sister with her.’

‘You mean you're all
alone?
Where do you live?’

‘Nowhere, just now. I mean, we haven't got a house in this country. So I stay with Aunt Louise.’

‘Who's she, when she's at home?’

‘I told you. My aunt. She lives at Penmarron.’

‘Haven't you got brothers and sisters?’

‘Just Jess.’

‘Is she the one who's gone with your mother?’

‘That's right.’

‘Goodness, that's awful. I am sorry for you. I didn't know. When I saw you in the shop…’

‘So you
did
see me?’

‘Yes, of course I did. Do you think I'm blind?’

‘No. It's just that you didn't talk to me. I thought perhaps you hadn't recognised me.’

‘Well, you haven't talked to
me.
’

Which was true enough. Judith tried to explain. ‘You're always with Vicky Payton. I thought you were her friend.’

‘Of course I am. We were at baby school together. I've known her forever.’

‘I thought you were her
best
friend.’

‘Oh, best friends!’ Loveday mocked, her vivid face alight with amusement. ‘You sound like someone out of an Angela Brazil book. Anyway,’ she pointed out, ‘we're talking now, so that's all right.’ She laid her hand on the parcel. ‘Do open it. I'm bursting to see what's inside, and as I've humped it all the way up the stairs, the least you can do is to get it unwrapped and show me.’

‘I know what's inside. It's what I asked for. A cedarwood box with a Chinese lock.’

‘Then hurry. Quickly. Or it'll be the lunch bell and we'll have to go.’

But Judith knew that she couldn't open the present in a hurry. She had waited so long, and now it was here, and she wanted to keep the excitement going, and, once it was open, have time to examine every single detail of her new and longed-for possession.

‘There's not time now. I'll do it later. Before supper.’

Loveday became exasperated. ‘But I want to
see.
’

‘We'll open it together. I promise I won't look without you here. We'll change terribly quickly for supper, and then we'll have heaps of time. It's going to take ages to get all the wrappings off. I can tell, just by looking at it. Let's wait. And it'll be something lovely to look forward to all afternoon.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Loveday was persuaded, but obviously against her will. ‘How you can be so strong-minded I can't imagine.’

‘It just makes it last longer.’

‘Have you got a photo of your dad?’ Loveday's eyes moved to Judith's white-painted chest of drawers, identical to the other five placed around the dormitory.

‘Yes, but it's not very good.’ She reached for it and handed it to Loveday to inspect.