In the Fifth at Malory Towers (14 page)

Maureen warmed to Mrs. Lacy. Here was someone she could talk to easily. She gave her silly little laugh.

“Oh, Mrs. Lacy, it’s so kind of you to let me come with you. It’s my first term here, you know — and really I don’t know
what
I’d have done without dear Gwendoline. She’s really been a friend in need.”

“I’m sure she has,” said Mrs. Lacy. “Gwendoline is always so kind. No wonder she is so popular.”

“And do you know, the girls say Gwen and I
ought
to be friends, because we’re so alike,” chattered Maureen, tucking the rug round herself in the car. “We’ve both got golden hair and blue eyes, and they say we’ve got the same ways, too. Aren’t I lucky to have found a twin!”

This was the kind of conversation that both Miss Winter and Mrs. Lacy understood and liked. Miss Winter made quite a fuss of Maureen, and Gwen didn’t like that at all.

Gwen hoped that Maureen would say nice things about her as she was taking her out for the day. But Maureen didn’t. Maureen talked about herself the whole time. She described her home, her family, her dogs, her garden, all the holidays she had ever had, and all the illnesses. Gwen couldn’t get a word in, and after a time she fell silent and sulked.

“What a bore Maureen is! How silly! How selfish and conceited!” thought Gwen, sulkily. “What a silly affected laugh.”

Her mother made a most terrifying remark at lunch-time. She beamed round at both girls. “You know, except that Maureen’s teeth stick out a little, you two are really very alike! You’ve got Gwen’s lovely way of chattering all about your doings, Maureen — and even your laugh is the same — isn’t it, Miss Winter?”

“Yes, they really might be sisters,” agreed Miss Winter, smiling kindly at the delighted Maureen. “Their ways are exactly the same, and even their voices.”

Gwen felt quite sick. She could hardly eat any dinner. If her mother and Miss Winter, who really adored her, honestly thought that that awful, boring, conceited Maureen was exactly like her, then she, Gwen, must be a really appalling person too. No wonder she wasn’t popular. No wonder the girls laughed at her.

That day was a really terrible one for Gwen. To sit by somebody who was supposed to be like her, to hear her own silly laugh uttered by Maureen, to listen to her everlasting, dull tales about herself, and see her own shallow, insincere smile spread over Maureen’s face was a horrible experience.

“I shall never forget this,” thought poor Gwen. “Never. I’ll be jolly careful how I behave in future. And I’ll alter my laugh straightaway. Do I
really
laugh like that? Yes — I do. Oh, I do feel so ashamed.”

“Gwen’s very quiet,” said Miss Winter, at last. “Anything wrong, Gwen?”

“Oh, poor Gwen — she’s so disappointed because she’s not chosen for Cinderella,” said Maureen, swiftly.

“Well, so were you!” retorted Gwen.”
You
thought you were going to be. Moira said so!”

“Girls, girls! Don’t talk like that to one another,” said Mrs. Lacy, shocked. “Why — I quite thought Gwen was to be Cinderella!”

“Yes — you said in your letter that most of the girls wanted you to be,” said Miss Winter. “Why didn’t they choose you, Gwen? You would have made a fine Cinderella! It’s a shame.”

“For the same reason they didn’t choose Maureen, I suppose,” said Gwen, sulkily. “They didn’t think we were good enough.”

“Well, of course, I couldn’t
possibly
expect to be chosen — it’s only my first term,” said Maureen, quickly.

“You
did
expect to be!” said Gwen.

“Oh no, Gwen dear,” said Maureen, and laughed her silly laugh. It grated on Gwen’s exasperated nerves.

“I shall go mad if you laugh that laugh again,” she said, savagely.

There, was a surprised silence. Maureen broke it by laughing again and Gwen clenched her fists.

“Poor Gwen!” said Maureen. “Honestly, Mrs. Lacy, it was a shame they didn’t choose her — it really did upset her. And when we go to rehearsals it’s, maddening for Gwen to see Mary-Lou as Cinderella, whilst she’s only a servant, and says nothing at all — not a single word in the whole of the play!”

“Darling!” said Mrs. Lacy, comfortingly, to the glowering Gwen. “I’m
so
sorry! I don’t like to see Mother’s girl sad.”

“
Stop
it, Mother,” said Gwen. “Let’s change the subject.”

Mrs. Lacy was very hurt. She turned away from this unusually surly Gwen, and began to talk to Maureen, being extra nice to her so as to show Gwen that she was very displeased with
her
. Miss Winter did the same, and Maureen blossomed out even more under this sunshine of flattery and rapt attention. Poor Gwen had to listen to more and more tales of Maureen’s life, and to hear her silly laugh more and more often!

The day came to an end at last. Maureen thanked Mrs. Lacy and Miss Winter prettily, tucked her arm into Gwen’s, and went off, waving.

“I’ll look after Gwen for you!” she called back.

“Well,
what
a charming child — and
what
a nice friend she’d make for Gwen,” said Mrs. Lacy, driving off. “It’s a pity Gwen’s so upset about that Cinderella business. Maureen must have been just as disappointed.”

“Yes. I’m afraid dear Gwen’s not taking that very bravely,” said Miss Winter. “Never mind, she has that nice child Maureen to set her a good example.”

“I think we ought to ask Maureen to stay for a week or two in the Christmas holidays,” said Mrs. Lacy. “It would be so nice for Gwen.”

Poor Gwen! If she had heard all this she would have been furious. She was to get a great shock when her mother’s letter came, telling her she had invited Maureen to stay for a week in the holidays.

She pulled her arm away from Maureen’s as soon as the car drove out of sight. She turned on her.

“Well — I hope you’ve enjoyed spoiling my whole day, you beast! Telling your awful tales, and laughing your awful laugh, and sucking up like anything. Ugh!”

“But, Gwen — they said I was so like you,” said Maureen, looking puzzled. “They liked me. How can I be so awful if I’m exactly like you?”

Gwen didn’t tell her. It was a thing she really couldn’t bear to think about.

THE days began to fly after half-term. Darrell and Sally got fits of panic quite regularly whenever they thought of the pantomime being performed to the parents at the end of term.

“We’ll NEVER be ready!” groaned Darrell.

“No. We never imagined there’d be so much to do,” said Sally, seriously.

“If only everyone knew their parts like Mary-Lou and Mavis,” said Darrell. “Louella drives me mad. She forgets the words of her songs every single time. I wish we hadn’t chosen her to be the fairy-godmother now.”

“Oh, she’ll be all right on the night,” said Sally. “She was like that in the play she was in last year — never knew a word till the last night, and then was quite perfect.”

“Well, I only hope you’re right,” groaned Darrell, amusing the steady Sally very much. Darrell went down into the dumps easily over her precious pantomime. Sally was very good for her. She refused to think anyone was hopeless, and was always ready with something comforting to say.

“Alicia’s marvellous, isn’t she?” she said, after a pause, looking up from the work she was doing.

“Yes. She’s a born demon,” said Darrell, with a giggle. “I get quite scared of her sometimes, the way she leaps about the stage and yells. And her conjuring is miraculous.”

“So is her juggling,” said Sally. “And she’s practised that demon-sounding voice till it really sounds quite uncanny.”

Daphne joined in with a laugh. “Yes — and when she suddenly produces it in French class, the amazement on Mam’zelle’s face is too good to be true.”

“Alicia’s a scream,” said Darrell. “She’ll be the best in the show, I think.”

There was a little silence. “There’s only one thing that
really
worries me,” said Darrell, in a low voice. “And that’s Moira. She’s not hitting it off with Betty at all — or Alicia either. She’s bossing them too much.”

“Yes. She can’t seem to help it,” said Sally. “But it’s idiotic to be bossy with people like Betty and Alicia. After all, Betty’s co-producer, and Alicia’s a terrific help to them.”

Darrell was right to worry about Moira. Moira was intensely keen on getting the whole pantomime perfect, and made everyone work like slaves under her command. The girls resented it. Louella purposely forgot her words in order to annoy Moira. Bill purposely came in at the wrong side each time to make her shout. And Moira couldn’t see that she was handling things in the wrong way.

She was a wonderful organizer, certainly. She had gone into every detail, worked out every scene with Darrell, proved herself most ingenious, and given very wise advice.

But she did it all in the wrong way. She was aggressive and opinionated, she contradicted people flatly, and she found fault too much and praised too little.

“You’re a dictator, Moira,” Bill informed her at one rehearsal. “I don’t take kindly to dictators. Nor does anyone else here.”

“If you think you can produce a first-class pantomime without giving a few orders and finding a few faults, you’re wrong,” said Moira, furiously.

“I don’t,” said Bill, mildly. “I never said I did. But you can do all that without being a dictator. You sit up there like a warlord and chivy us all along unmercifully. I quite expect to be sent to prison sometimes.”

“Let’s get on,” said Darrell, afraid that Moira was going to blow up. Arguing always wasted so much time. “We’ll take that bit again. Mavis, begin your song.”

Mavis sang, and a silence fell. What a lovely voice she had, low and pure and sweet. That would make the audience gasp! It wasn’t often that a schoolgirl had a voice like that.

“We shall miss her when she leaves, and goes to study music and singing at the College of Music,” thought Darrell. Mavis’s song came to an end, and she stepped back to let Buttons come on and do her bit.

Yes, rehearsals were hard work, but they were fun, too. Sally and Darrell began to feel more confidence as time went on. Darrell surprised herself at times, when she suddenly saw something wrong with the lines of the play, and hurried to alter them.

“I know just what’s wrong and what’s right now,” she thought, as she scribbled new lines. “I adore doing this pantomime — feeling it’s mine because I wrote it all. I want to do a play next.
Could
I write one — perhaps just a short one for next term? Shall I ever, ever be a well-known playwright?”

Gwen was a sulky actor. She hated being stuck at the back in the chorus, dressed as a servant, with nothing to say or do by herself. Maureen was much more cheerful about it. She drove Gwen nearly mad by some of the things she said.

“Of course,
I
don’t mind having such a small, insignificant part,” she said. “But it’s different for you, Gwen. You’ve been here for years, and I’ve not been even one term. You ought to have had a good part. I couldn’t expect one.”

Gwen growled.

“I shall write and tell your mother you are
awfully
good as a servant,” went on Maureen. “I do think it’s so kind of her to ask me to stay. Won’t it be fun to be together so much, Gwen, in the hols?”

Gwen didn’t answer. She was beginning to be a little afraid of Maureen. Maureen was silly and affected — but she had a cunning and sly side to her nature, too. So had Gwen, of course. She recognized it easily in Maureen because it was in herself too. That was the dreadful part of this forced friendship with Maureen. It was like being friends with yourself, and knowing all the false, silly, sly things that went on in your own mind.

Gwen did try to alter herself a bit, so that she wouldn’t be like Maureen. She stopped her silly laugh and her wide, false smile. She stopped talking about herself too.

To her enormous annoyance nobody seemed to notice it. As a matter of fact, they took so little notice of her at all that if she had suddenly grown a moustache and worn riding-boots they wouldn’t have bothered. Who wanted to pay any attention to Gwen? She had never done anything to make herself liked or trusted, so the best thing to do was to ignore her.

And ignore her they did, though poor Gwen was doing her best to be sensible and likeable now. She had left it a bit too late!

Two more weeks went by, and then suddenly a row flared up at a rehearsal. It began over a very silly little thing indeed, as big rows often do.

Alicia took it into her head to evolve a kind of demon-chant whenever she appeared or disappeared on the stage. She only thought of it a few minutes before rehearsal, and hadn’t time to tell Darrell or Sally, so she thought she would just introduce the weird little chant without warning.

And she did. She appeared with her sudden, surprising leaps, chanting eerily. “Oo-woo-la, woo-la, riminy-ree, oo-woo-la...”

Moira rapped loudly. The rehearsal stopped. “Alicia! What on earth’s that? It’s not in the script, as you very well know.”

“Of course I know,” said Alicia, annoyed as always by Moira’s unnecessarily sharp tone. “I hadn’t time to ask Darrell to put it in. I only thought of it just now.”

“Well, we can’t insert new things now,” said Moira, coldly. “And in any case it’s not for you to suggest extraordinary chants like that. If we’d wanted one we’d have got Darrell to write one in.”

“Look here, Moira,” said Alicia, losing her temper rapidly, Tm not a first-former. I’m...”

Darrell interrupted hastily. “Moira, I think that’s really a good idea of Alicia’s. What do you think, Betty? I never thought of a chant like that for the demon — but it does sound very demon-like, and...”

“Yes,” said Betty, anxious to go against Moira, and back up her friend Alicia. “Yes. It’s a jolly fine idea. We’ll have it.”

Moira went up in smoke at once, in a way that a demon king himself might have envied!

She stood up, glowering. “You only say that, Betty, because you’re Alicia’s friend, and...”

“Shucks,” said Betty, rudely.

Moira went on without stopping. “And Darrell only says it because she always backs up Alicia, too. Well, I’m chief producer, and I’m going to have my way over this. There’ll be no demon-chant. Get on with the rehearsal.”