Rosie Dixon's Complete Confessions. Rosie Dixon
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“I sincerely hope not,” says Guy. “Do you remember how long it took us to catch the horses last time?”
“And Fanny Scutterbuck fell in the cow byre—in every sense of the word.” They both laugh lightly.
“Well, it’s here if you want it,” says Guy.
Penny touches his arm. “I know. And it’s a great source of comfort to me.”
“He’s nice, isn’t he?” says Penny as we speed on our way. “We might drop in there later.”
“Yes,” I say. “Tell me, Penny. All that talk about food poisoning and epidemics. That was just a joke, wasn’t it?”
“Of course,” says Penny. “You have been immunised against the Black Death, haven’t you?” She sees the expression on my face and laughs. “No, seriously. Reports of creaking tumbrils bearing the dead away from the school gates have been vastly exaggerated. There was a spot of bother with the cook, but once he stopped doubling up as biology master that soon resolved itself. I always wondered why the frogs legs tasted of formalin. And as for the school cat, well, I hated the bloody thing anyway, so—what’s the matter?”
“Just trying to get a window open,” I say, struggling desperately. “I find it a bit stuffy in here.”
“Yes, it is a bit niffy, isn’t it? I think we must have stood in something at the stables.”
I gulp in a few mouthfuls of fresh air and try to think of any topic of conversation that will get us away from the school cuisine. Luckily, a large barrack-shaped building looms up in front of us.
“There it is,” says Penny. “It used to be a lunatic asylum, you know.”
“Really,” I say, thinking back to Dad’s remark. “It doesn’t look a bit like it does in the photograph.”
“That was taken from the other side,” says Penny. “The side you see when you’re in the head mistress’s garden—which you are on Commemoration Day and Sports Day if you’re lucky.”
“What are they doing?” I say, pointing to a group of girls engaged in sawing up a tree.
“Activities. It’s part of Grimmer’s ‘Survival In The Seventies’ programme. She’ll tell you all about it.”
We swing through a gate and past a sign which says “Girls drive carefully” and I feel butterflies invading my tummy. What will Miss Grimshaw be like? Will I be able to make the right impression? Despite what Guy and Penny have said about the school, its sheer size takes my breath away. Everywhere I look there are acres of playing fields. It is like Epping forest with fewer trees.
“Who was that?” I say. We have just passed an elderly, brawny looking man with mutton chop whiskers and a sun bronzed complexion. He is wearing a pair of dungarees and an ear to ear leer. Some women might find him attractive in a rather brutish way but I prefer something more sensitive.
“That’s Ruben Hardakre. He and his son, Seth look after the playing fields. You can tell when the girls are maturing. They start prefering Ruben to Seth.”
“Which do you prefer?” I ask.
“I like them both,” smiles Penny.
The drive seems like an extension of the A3 and I don’t envy the milkman. At the top there is a large circle of gravel and a doorway like the entrance to Westminster Abbey.
“I’ll drop you here,” says Penny. “You can have a chat with Grimmers and pop over to the East wing. I’ll wait for you there. You can gobble a spot of entro vioform before we have lunch.”
I do wish I knew when Penny was joking.
I go into the dark hallway and up an even darker flight of stairs. The last house like this I saw had Count Dracula’s slippers beside the front door. Penny might have shown me the way before she scooted off.
I get to the top of the stairs and listen for sounds of life. Nothing. Maybe everybody has gone to dinner, it is twelve thirty. I should never have listened to Penny. She means well but she causes more trouble than Muhammad Ali at a Peace Corps cocktail party. I am considering tip-toeing away when I hear the sound of heavy breathing—in fact, it is not so much heavy breathing as snoring.
I peer into an office and see a large woman asleep with her head in a filing tray. Every time she breathes out, the corners of the papers vibrate. There is a typewriter nearby, and also, a bottle of whisky which has slightly less scotch in it than the glass it is standing next to. Who is this woman? Is it Miss Grimshaw’s secretary or could it be—?
“Miss Grimshaw?” I murmur.
“Just a small one.” The answer comes back immediately but the head does not move. The lady must obviously be very tired.
“You wanted to see me,” I say, apologetically.
“Put it down on my account.” A thin trickle of spittle leaks from the corner of the mouth like syrup from a spoon.
“I’ve come about the job of assistant sports mistress.”
“WHAT!!?” The woman’s head jerks up and I nearly jump out of my skin. “Do you usually creep into people’s rooms like that?”
“I’m sorry,” I gulp.
“I should think so.” The speaker wipes her mouth with a piece of carbon paper and knocks over the whisky bottle. “Cold tea,” she says.
“What?”
“I said ‘cold tea’.”
“No thank you. I had something on the train.”
The woman looks at me as if I am mad. “I meant, it’s cold tea in this bottle. A prop for the school play we’re going to do one day.” She picks up the bottle, bangs home the stopper with the flat of her hand and drops it into a drawer. There is a loud clink suggesting that other props have found a home there. “You were supposed to be here at twelve, weren’t you?”
“The train was a bit late,” I lie.
Miss Grimshaw takes a swig of her cold tea and allows a long shudder to pass through her large frame. “The service is appalling. The whole country is going to the dogs. It’s institutions such as our own which represent the only alternative to a descent into barbarism.”
I am murmuring my agreement when I hear the sound of shrill, girlish voices outside the window. They seem to be excited and the volume is rising fast. Miss Grimshaw says something I can’t quite catch and strides purposefully to the window. I fall in respectfully at her elbow. Below us, the figure of a man can be seen staggering across the circle of gravel. He is wearing a T-shirt—or rather, was wearing a T-shirt. The tattered rag streaming from his broad sun-bronzed shoulders could have been nothing else. The man must be in his early twenties and is definitely a bit of all right in the fanciable stakes. As we watch he darts a glance over his shoulder and the look of haunted terror in his eyes is plain to see. He takes another step forward and collapses on the gravel.
“Blast!” says Miss Grimshaw.
Round a corner of the building stream about twenty girls wearing shorts and blouses. There is a collective shout of triumph and the prostrate man rises on his elbows and starts trying to crawl towards the house we are standing in. Miss Grimshaw throws herself at the window and wrenches up the sash.
“GET BACK!!” she bellows. “BACK! I say.”
The leading girls have now nearly closed with the man who has stopped crawling and curled himself up like a hedgehog. They stumble to a halt and stare up at the window resentfully.
“Back to your rooms!”
There is a moment’s hesitation and then the girls begin to split up into groups and file away. The man picks himself up and raises an accusing finger towards our window.
“I want to see ’ee,