The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School (16 page)

Even as the new girl but one, Amy shouldn’t have felt especial sympathy for Rayne. They were in different Houses, different dorms, different clubs. Five desks was a chasm, rendering Rayne a virtual stranger – a Patagonian or a Jainite. If Rayne was of her mother’s opinion on moths, Amy could have precious little common ground with her. Professor Rosalind Rowley Rayne dismissed moths
and
butterflies in a mere two pages in her
Child’s Taxonomy
… while devoting seventeen pages to uninteresting species of ant.

…and yet, Amy
was
concerned.

She raised the Damocletian issue at a meeting of the Moth Club. Kali said Rayne’s forthcoming death was her own business… and besides, she’d probably just get tied to a netball goalpost overnight. Then, the Heathens would crack on with persecuting someone else. Palgraive was overdue for doom and the apostate Paule must be in Gryce’s black books – though the chosen victim could as easily be some scrawny Fourth or beanpole Second no one had thought to take notice of before.

Amy still hadn’t found a way to share her suspicions about the identity of Red Flame with her friends and was self-conscious about her lack of candour. Kali already deemed her father a rotter of the first water, but Amy didn’t know how she’d react if told he was behind the Hooded Conspiracy. She was keeping quiet about Paule and the Purple too, and being vague about her dreams. How did she come to have so many secrets? Even from her closest pals?

‘I rather like Black Hat’s pluck,’ said Frecks.

Was Rayne brave? Or simply acting according to her nature in ignorance of the consequences? The new girl struck Amy as sly and a shade sinister rather than a heroine to rally behind. She had more time for Absalom’s futile gestures than Rayne’s carapace of uncaring superiority.

‘I reckon I’d cut a dash in black,’ Frecks said. ‘I can see myself in widow’s weeds. Or whatever you call mourning clobber when it’s, say, a useless brother who’s booted the bucket.’

Light Fingers had visited the Viola dorms to take measurements for the Mid-Winter Revue costumes. She reported that, since Rayne joined the ranks, the theatricals were quieter, less tizzy-prone and decidedly off their feed. Amy guessed the new girl’s House Sisters were afraid Gryce might decide to make an example by tying, say, Rayne’s whole dorm to that goalpost.

‘It’s not that,’ Light Fingers said, ‘it’s something else. I’ve never seen Viola like this. It’s like they’ve found something precious and are protecting it, but are afraid of it at the same time.’

‘I wouldn’t put Viola in charge of guarding the family silver,’ said Frecks, ‘unless I wanted it half-inched so I could put in an insurance claim.’

Frecks’ brother had pulled this swindle as a way of realising fast cash on what ought to be Frecks’ inheritance. Doing something about Viscount Ralph was on the agenda of the Moth Club.

‘If Rayne winds up in concrete overshoes, Viola ain’t gonna do nothin’ but shut up about it,’ said Kali. ‘If Gryce’s goons messed with Goneril, they’d land up in the infirmary. Sheesh, if they came round here and pulled that fright stuff, we’d give ’em Italian smiles…’

An Italian smile was a throat cut from ear to ear.

‘…and dump the stiffs on the doorstep. But Viola… nah, it’ll never happen. Rayne’s a goner. Them’s the breaks. A solid gone goner.’

If Harriet/Marion had snapped before Imogen Ames, Amy would have been in Viola instead of here. She remembered the dorm rallying around when the Murdering Heathens came to call… she’d only survived her first week at Drearcliff because of her friends in Desdemona.

All Rayne had were the blubbing babies of Viola.

Amy agreed with Kali – she was a solid gone goner.

It shouldn’t matter to her, but – somehow – it did.

W
HEN THE
S
CHOOL
Rules were written – if not at the Diet of Worms in 1066, then in secret sessions nearly fifty years ago – each word in each phrase in each sentence in each paragraph on each page was considered. Everything was weighed and debated. Ambiguities were eliminated or enshrined. Rights were established and traps were set. After the final deliberation, the Rules were inscribed in the Drearcliff Grange School Charter. The Founders – often-invoked, never named – ceremonially cut their fingers and shed blood on the document.

Their decisions would stand until the End of Time.

The Last Trump would not sound until the last lesson was taught. Girls would not face Judgement until all books, chalk and pens were tidied away and the desks lined up. An orderly crocodile would be formed. Hats must be worn in the presence of Angels Hallowed or Fallen, but doffed in the presence of Archangels and Above. Whether in Heaven or Hell, a Drearcliff Girl would be a credit to her cloud or furnace. Among the saved or the damned, she would be exemplary.

According to School Rules, girls had Break of forty-five minutes between midday meal and afternoon lessons. Unless it was raining, the period was to be spent out of doors. The word at issue was ‘raining’. With a looser definition of precipitation, current conditions might trigger the subsidiary clause which allowed that pupils could take Break in a designated classroom. There, they could play whist for ha’penny a trick, desperately cram up on subjects they should have covered in prep or gossip like washerwomen. As it was, strict interpretation of the Rules meant girls were not excused outdoor Break if it were only snowing.

At the beginning of term, enthusiasm for snowball fights, skating and other winter pastimes ran high. That petered out by the end of the first week. Captain Freezing kept popping up, and de Vere continued her by-now demented solo assaults on his incarnations. Every day, more complaints of chills, colds and frostbite were presented to Nurse. All but the manifestly dying were turned away from the Infirmary. A sudden, unprecedented enthusiasm for second and third helpings of semolina delayed expulsion to the freezing outdoors. Girls volunteered to clear away the meal-things, traditionally a punishment handed out to those whose spirit the whips wished to crush. Only Palgraive had put her hand up for this before. Now, smiling with her mouth and screaming with her eyes, she competed for the chore of scraping leftovers into the foul vats which were carted away to feed pigs or for use in scientific experiments. What unholy life might stir in the depths of foetid custard, rancid bacon rinds, bitter trifle and leathery liver?

For a week Miss Kaye supervised Break. No stickler she for rigorous interpretation of School Rules. Under her merciful regime, girls stayed in the Refectory until the lesson-bell tolled. Provided they didn’t get in the way or set fire to benches and tables. Board games were played, Buller retained her status as Arm-Wrestling Champion, and paper aeroplanes sailed the length of the hall. Light Fingers showed Amy how to do cat’s cradle, which she said helped her focus and not make involuntary quick moves with her hands – keeping her talent under a bushel, so to speak. Amy saw what her friend meant, but had more than fast fingers to worry about. Intricate string constructs didn’t keep her on the ground, so she was back to stones in her pockets. Harmony Meade, a Viola Fourth, reclaimed the long-disused minstrels’ gallery. She plucked a lute as the wind blew snow against the long, rattling windows. She knew all the tunes from
Chu Chin Chow
and
The Bing Boys Are Here
.

Then Digger Downs took over as Break Mistress. A fanatic for a literal reading of School Rules, she threw girls out in the cold, cold snow like errant daughters in the melodramas of yesteryear. Scarved and mittened, the whole school had to be herded by literal whips. The prefects used riding crops. Even the hardiest Goneril amazons complained it was a bit much, while the weeds of Viola gave voice to lamentation and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Amy kept her head down and trudged. The Moth Club spent Break in the Quad, which was somewhat protected from icy wind. Many huddled in Mauve Mary’s covered walkway, reminding Amy that the spectre had made herself scarce lately. On the playing fields, snow drifts formed around girls who stayed in one place too long.

A rumour went around that Digger was mostly brass. A miniature coke-burning furnace served her for a heart, the remains of her brain floated in a glass jug in her skull and her mechanical hide was coated with special paint that looked like skin. The story was that she had been caught under an aerial incendiary dropped on Stogursey by an off-its-course Zeppelin, then rebuilt in the Hypatia Hall Machinists’ Workshop to combat a shortage of teachers during the Great War. If the leading proponent of the Downs-is-an-automaton theory weren’t Smudge, Amy would have believed it. For a start, the teacher stationed herself in the cold too. When Ponce was Break Master, he shooed the rabble outside, then oversaw them from inside his cosy study. The contrast might have earned Digger respect, except no one raised her possible finer points for fear of being throttled. Even the Sixths who enforced her rule looked miserable about it, though they had the privilege of huddling around a stove in the Whips’ Hut after the forced exodus was effected.

Everyone had to develop a survival technique. Gonerils practised calisthenics. Tamoras burned Violas’ possessions in braziers – diaries, motion-picture fan magazines and woolly nighties yielded the most warmth, apparently. Ariels sported expensive furs and lied about great white hunter daddies shooting snow leopards or dire wolves when anyone could tell they were shop bought. Desdemonas tried it on with uniform variations more inventive than Rayne’s black skirt and blazer, generally not caring whether innovations were cited as Minor Infractions.

Under her boater, Amy wore a snug leather flying helmet.

* * *

Happily for the Moth Club, Light Fingers scavenged fur-lined flying helmets from the Viola Dramatic Society’s ambitious production of
Captain Skylark vs the Demon Ace
. Amy considered saving hers to add to the Kentish Glory costume, in case she had to float in this weather. However, an urgent need to keep her ears from falling off persuaded her that the prize headgear was best suited to everyday use. Her helmet had been worn by the departed Marion/Harriet, who played Lieutenant Basil ‘Goosey’ Gander, Skylark’s former fag at Uppingham. Goosey was poignantly shot down on his first mission. Half the school wept as Harriet/Marion expired in Mansfield’s manly arms, prompting the gallant captain to vow vengeance on the Satanic Hun.

Only Kali – used to walking around with a caste mark/sniper’s target on her forehead – was willing to sport the crest of the fiendish Fokker. Frecks tried her uncle Lance’s chainmail hood, but the cold metal stuck to her ears. The blessed object might protect her from grievous injury, so long as her cause was just and true, but it was little use when it came to keeping out the bally cold. Also, she heard strange music when she wore the thing and developed a faraway look in her eyes.

Girls huddled on the Quad in knots and cliques, shivering and considering Digger Downs with hostile eyes. At this rate, the teacher would lose a popularity contest even if the other entrants were Hans von Hellhund, Zenobia Aire and Dr Shade’s arch-enemy Achmet the Almost-Human. Kali had an idea what First Prize should be…

‘Scorpions. In her bed. So when she gets under the covers at night…
sting sting sting
!
Death death death
! I don’t care if she’s brass or bone, a dose of scorp juice’d lay her on the slab. Yeah, scorpions…’

Kali’s father dealt often with Singapore Charlie’s, a well-established supplier of exotic flora and fauna on a ‘no questions asked’ basis firm. When a crimelord installed an alligator pit under a trapdoor in his office, intent on putting errant employees ‘on the spot’, only one firm sold the requisite hungry reptiles. Mr Chattopadhyay exported Kafiristan’s uniquely venomous camel spiders for Singapore Charlie. Camel spiders were Solifugae, a separate class of arachnid from Araneae – as related to camels as horseflies were to horses.

Amy had to tell Kali that scorpions wouldn’t survive long in Somerset at this time of year. She couldn’t think of any suitably poisonous species indigenous to Arctic climes.

So that bright idea got scratched.

W
EDNESDAY
. T
HREE DAYS
into the Digger Downs tenure as Break Mistress.

Amy and her chums shuffled out on to the freezing Quad. The ordeal was almost routine now.

‘Lovely weather for polar bears,’ said Peebles, ducking to avoid a thumping. She’d said the same thing two or three times a day since term started.

‘Great Aunt Gertie’s garters!’ exclaimed Frecks. ‘Look at Black Hat!’

Amy followed Frecks’ line of sight.

In front of the Heel, Rayne was skipping again. She wore her normal abnormal uniform – no scarf, no mittens, no overcoat. As Rayne stepped up and down, her boater didn’t blow away or fall off. Her pleated black skirt rose and fell, showing knees that weren’t blue and legs that weren’t frostbitten.

Other girls reported that no amount of healthy exercise kept you warm in weather like this. The hollow shell of Roberta Hale limped around to prove it. ‘Work up a sweat and it freezes on you,’ said Big Bren Manders, Captain of the Second Eleven. ‘You could die of it.’

But Rayne seemed to have conquered the cold.

‘What the devil is she saying?’ asked Light Fingers.

As she skipped, Rayne rattled off a rhyme.

Skipping was for Firsts and underdone Seconds. Amy hadn’t skipped since infants’ school. It was a babyish thing she had put aside, along with conkers, off-ground touch and spinning tops. Small as Rayne was, it was unsettling to see a Third skipping. Like catching a grown-up sliding down the banister or riding a rocking horse.

What was skipping? A pastime or a game? Silliness or sport? An innocuous survival of a once bloody pagan ritual? Now Amy thought of it, perhaps Boadicea or the Morrigan skipped a rope made of entrails of fallen foes. Passed down through generations of schoolgirls, along with rhymes whose meanings were long-since obscured, rope-jumping might be a martial tradition… like parade drill, jiu-jitsu or sword display.