The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [25]
We ran down the corridor, each clutching an armful of books and reached the classroom just as our teacher turned the corner. Everyone stood as she came into the room. The next subject was geography, and to my relief the topic was fiords, which I had studied last year, but the lesson had barely begun when there was a knock at the door and Ross appeared.
As I soon learned, working girls were the lowest form of life at Claypoole. We were constantly being taken out of lessons to prepare meals and then being punished for being late for class, or for not finishing our homework. Mrs. Harris seldom called on me and barely heard when I gave the correct answer. I knew the other working girls experienced the same treatment but, it seemed to me, with greater cause. Several of them could barely read the hymns we sang each morning in assembly.
The regular fee-paying pupils were mostly from middle-class families; many had parents who worked abroad in Hong Kong or Nigeria or Kenya. While I cooked and cleaned and slept in one-twelfth of a bare, leaky room, they lived in a much more comfortable fashion. Their dormitories had radiators, rugs on the floor, and pictures on the walls. Their doors closed. They received parcels of food. On Saturdays they wore their own clothes and were allowed to go to the shops in Denholm. These differences made friendship between a regular pupil and a working girl virtually impossible. A girl who failed to say please or thank you to Cook had to write out a hundred times, “I will be polite to Cook,” but anyone could say anything to us.
Even the regular pupils, however, were carefully monitored. The school grounds were surrounded by a high wall; no one could come in or out without permission. Nor was it easy to communicate with the outside world. The only telephones belonged to Miss Bryant and Matron. Every Sunday evening an hour was given over to letter writing, but the letters had to be put, unsealed, in the mailbox in the hall. Girls who wrote anything critical about Claypoole soon found themselves in Miss Bryant’s office.
Of course a few people knew about the school—Mr. Donaldson, after all, had warned me—but private schools were not subject to inspection, and Miss Bryant was very skillful in managing her educational experiment. The working girls were presented as a stroke of philanthropic genius. Here was a way to give scholarships to a dozen girls. The school would raise us up to be hospital orderlies or maids or, like one star former pupil, work for the post office. The entrance exams I’d prided myself on passing were irrelevant. I could have claimed that Moses gave the Sermon on the Mount and Henry VIII invaded Scotland; once my aunt had determined to send me to Claypoole, my fate was sealed. Pupils were cheaper than maids. The other working girls were the daughters of farmers, factory workers, or disabled soldiers. Several, like Ross, came from homes that made being at the school a relief. Their main recreation was to periodically, for no obvious reason, gang up on one of their number. For several days they would play tricks on the victim, ambush her in the bathroom, sing stupid rhymes, make fun of her bra and a mysterious article of clothing called a sanitary belt. Then, just as suddenly, the attacks would cease. Presently a new victim would be chosen.
The week after I arrived, Drummond was the victim. A stolid girl with beautiful red hair, she was almost as old as Ross but much less forceful. Even the simplest question—is it still raining?—brought her to a standstill. Now I watched, mesmerised, as the girls surrounded her and undid her shirt.
“Look, Hardy,” called Ross, “this is a bra. And this”—I glimpsed pale skin, a nipple—“is what’s under a bra.”
Drummond shrieked and half-a-dozen girls pulled her to the floor and fell on her, tickling and pinching.