And Both Were Young (7 page)

Saturday afternoon, Flip thought. That was when I was planning to go look for Paul and Ariel. Well, maybe I can go tomorrow after quiet hour, though it doesn’t give me too much time. I do want to see Paul again. He was nice to me by the lake and I don’t think he disliked me. Going off to see Paul would be quite a deed, only I can’t tell anyone.

Gloria was smiling a secret, pleased smile to herself.

“What’s the joke?” Jackie asked, always eager for something to laugh at.

Gloria twined her arms about her ginger-colored head and tried to look mysterious. “I was thinking of a deed.”

The door opened and Miss Tulip burst in. “Girls! The light bell rang five minutes ago. Just because I wasn’t able to get here sooner is no reason for you to be out of bed. Get in at once. Do you all want deportment marks?”

“We didn’t hear the bell, Miss Tulip,” they chorused, making a mad scramble for their beds.

The matron waited until they were lying down and the covers drawn up, then she switched off the light. “Now I don’t want to hear another sound from this room or I’ll have to report you to Mademoiselle Dragonet. Good night.” And the door clicked shut behind her.

Every morning before classes, all the students gathered in the Assembly Hall and one of the teachers called the roll. On Saturday and Sunday mornings call over was held as usual, although
it was not followed by lessons. On Saturdays the girls trooped into the common room for sewing, and on Sundays they remained in formation and marched from the Assembly Hall down to chapel.

The morning after Erna’s and Jackie’s inquisition, Gloria did her courageous deed during call over. Fräulein Hauser, the gym teacher, was calling the roll. She was considered one of the strictest of all the teachers (though not so strict nor so quickly obeyed as Madame Perceval) and when it was her turn to take call over the girls stayed very quietly in their lines, answering smartly as their names were called. It wasn’t long, then, this Sunday morning before Flip and most of the girls in her class, and the classes standing near, noticed that Gloria, with an expression of unconcerned innocence, was chewing something. Chewing gum was strictly forbidden, and although the girls frequently smuggled it in, none of them would have dared chew openly in the presence of a teacher.

“Anne Badeneaux,” Fräulein Hauser was saying, “Moire Beresford, Anastasia Bechman, Hanni Bechman, Lischen Bechman, Jacqueline Bernstein, Esmée Bodet, Ingeborg Brandes, Dorothy Brown, Gloria Browne . . .” As Gloria answered to her name Fräulein Hauser looked at her sharply. “Gloria Browne,” she said.

Gloria, still chewing, answered meekly. “Yes, Fräulein Hauser?”

“You know chewing gum is forbidden?”

“Oh, yes, Fräulein Hauser.”

Fräulein Hauser held out her hand. “Come here.”

Gloria detached herself from the lines of girls and went up to the platform. “Yes, Fräulein Hauser?”

Fräulein Hauser kept her hand outstretched. “Spit,” she said.

Gloria spat, and there in Fräulein Hauser’s upturned palm lay a gold plate attached to which were Gloria’s four front teeth. Gloria turned around and smiled a brilliant, toothless smile at the assembly.

Fräulein Hauser said icily, “Get back into line. You may report to me immediately after chapel.”

“Yef, Fäulein Haufer. May I haf my teef, pleef, Fäulein Haufer?” Gloria lisped. Fräulein Hauser handed her the teeth and Gloria resumed her place in line.

Throughout the entire school shoulders were shaking in ill-suppressed laughter. Erna let out one snort and turned almost purple in her effort to keep the rest of her rapture inside. Tears of mirth were streaming down Jackie’s face, and even Flip felt an ache of laughter in her chest. Fräulein Hauser looked at the assembly coldly. She clapped her hands and the sound cut sharply across their laughter. “Silence!” she hissed, and her face was pale with anger. “Silence!” She stared wrathfully at the girls until their amusement was somewhat controlled. Then she went on with the roll. “Cornelli Bruch, Sally Buckman, Elizabeth Campbell, Margaret Campbell, Bianca Colantuono, Gioia Colantuono, Maria Colantuono, Jeanne-Marie Crougier . . .”

After call over they marched down to the chapel where the English chaplain from Territet gave them a sermon, and after chapel Gloria was haled off by Fräulein Hauser and they did not see her until they met in the dining room for Sunday dinner. Gloria stood, looking bloody but unbowed, behind her chair as they waited for Mlle Dragonet to say grace.

Grace ended, Mlle Dragonet pulled out her chair, and then all the other chairs in the big dining room scraped across the floor with a sound of ocean waves. Tables were changed weekly but the girls were seated according to classes and the whole of dormitory 33 this week was together, with Solvei Krogstad and Sally Buckman. Miss Armstrong, the science teacher, was at their table for that week, but she had gone down to Montreux to have lunch with a friend who was passing through.

“Thank goodness Balmy Almy’s not here!” Erna cried joyfully. “What did old Hauser do to you, Gloria?”

And Jackie was squeaking simultaneously, “How did you do it, Gloria? How did you do it? Tell us quick!”

Gloria clicked her tongue around inside her mouth and suddenly she was grinning with the four front teeth outside her lips. It was a macabre and horrible grimace. Another click and they were back in place.

“You stinker, why didn’t you tell us before?” Sally asked, pushing her fingers against her nose.

“I was saving it,” Gloria said. “It’s my deed, so I can help with the initiation. Will it do?”

“Okay with me.” Sally nodded violently.

“What happened to your teeth anyhow?” Erna asked.

“I lost ’em in the blitz. We got bombed out the night before Mummy was going to take me to the country.” Gloria rubbed the tip of her tongue over her teeth. “I don’t know how I ever used to put up with my own teeth. These are ever so much more useful.”

“Daddy sent me back to America before the blitz,” Sally said enviously. “I was in Detroit the whole time.”

“Alphabet soup!” Gloria cried as plates were put in front of them. “The last letter left in the soup is the initial of the man you’re going to marry. Mine is always X. Imagine marrying a man whose name begins with an X! At the last school I was at there was a girl who lost an eye in the blitz, and she had a glass eye she used to take out whenever she got in a row. She’d hold it in her hand and the mistress could never go on rowing her properly. But I think she used to carry it too far. One day at dinner the mistress at the table was rowing her about something and she took her eye out and put it in her glass of water. Now I call that too much. She was heaps of fun though. She got kicked out the same time I did.”

“You got expelled!” Jackie exclaimed. “Ooh, what did you do, Glo?”

“Well, Pam—this girl—and I sneaked out of school one Saturday afternoon and went into town to meet Pam’s brothers and of course one of the mistresses saw us and we got bounced. We didn’t care though. It was a beastly school, not half as nice as this one.”

“But weren’t your parents upset?” Jackie asked.

“Who, Mummy and Daddy? They didn’t care. There were only a couple of weeks till the summer hols and they’d have had me on their hands soon enough anyhow and this gave them a good excuse to send me off to stay with some people in Wales for the whole summer. I say, let’s play Truth or Consequences, seeing Balmy Almy isn’t here.”

Erna, Jackie, and Sally agreed vociferously. Flip looked across at Solvei and watched her quietly eating her potatoes. She liked the Norwegian girl, who was the class president and who seemed able to assume responsibility without putting
on any airs. Now Solvei said, “Let’s wait till after lunch. Black and Midnight’s been cocking an ear over here and looking disapproving, and you know how she hates games at the table.”

Gloria stuck out her lower lip. “That old arachnid. Always poking her nose in other people’s business. Why can’t she leave us alone?”

“She has a special ‘down’ on our class,” Sally said. “And she says the middle school’s more trouble than the lower and upper schools together. What a dreep. Oh, my golly, will you look! Suet pudding again. You can feel every bite of that stuff hit the soles of your feet five seconds after you’ve swallowed it. I’d like a good American banana split.”

“Here it is dessert”—Gloria wagged a finger at Flip—“and Pill hasn’t said a single word since we sat down. What’s the matter, Pill? Cat got your tongue?”

“No,” Flip answered, blushing.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard Pill say anything.” Sally grinned at Flip, but somehow there seemed to be nothing pleasant about the grin. “Can you talk, Pill?”

“Yes,” Flip said.

“Well, say something then.”

“There isn’t—I don’t—I haven’t anything to say,” Flip stumbled.

“Don’t we inspire conversation?” Sally asked. “A lot you must think of us. Does she ever talk in the room?”

Erna was gobbling her suet pudding. “She sometimes answers if you ask her a question, if you insist. Yes, or no. That’s all.”

“What do you do when you go out on a date, Pill?” Sally
asked. “Or don’t you ever go on dates? What kind of a line do you think Pill uses on a boy?”

Flip said nothing.

“Well, what kind of a line
do
you use, Pill?” Sally persisted. “Maybe you could teach us something. Well, for John’s sake, say something, can’t you!”

“Oh, do leave her alone,” Solvei said impatiently. “If she hasn’t anything to say she hasn’t anything to say.”

“But how can someone
not
have something to say!” Gloria exclaimed incredulously. “There’s
always
something to say. Any time I can’t talk I’ll be dead.”

“Well, maybe Pill’s dead,” Sally suggested. “How about it, Pill. Are you dead?”

“No,” Flip said.

Solvei interfered again on her behalf, but Flip felt that it was only from a sense of duty, that privately Solvei considered her just as much of a pill as the rest of the girls did. “Madame Perceval says your father’s an artist, Philippa.”

Flip nodded, then said, “Yes. He is.”

“How’d Percy know? Did you tell her?” Erna asked.

Flip shook her head. “No.”

“Oh, Percy always knows everything about everybody,” Jackie said with admiration. “I don’t know how she does it. And you can’t ever get away with anything with Percy but you never mind how strict she is. Sometimes I think I love Percy almost as much as my mother.”

“You have a crush on her,” Sally said.

Jackie looked at the grey lump of suet pudding remaining on her plate and turned up her nose in disgust. “I merely have a great admiration for her.”

“Oh, for John’s sake, Jackie, I was just kidding. Can’t you take a joke? Let’s change the subject. Tell us a story, Glo. Have you heard any good ones lately?”

“Well, Esmée told me one yesterday,” Gloria started.

Solvei broke in, “Not at the table. Save it for the common room if you feel you have to tell it.”

Flip looked at Solvei in gratitude. Mlle Dragonet at the head table stood up before Gloria could reply. All the chairs in the dining room were scraped back and the girls filed out.

On Sunday afternoons all the girls were supposed to spend a rest period in their rooms, but after the rest period there would be two hours when Flip could try to escape and go back to the deserted château. She sat curled up on her bed with the dog-eared calendar she carried around with her in her blazer pocket and looked at the small block of days that was marked off and then at all the days and days that stretched out to be lived through somehow before the Christmas holidays and her father would finally come. Sometimes she was afraid that the Christmas holidays would never be reached. She knew already that the one certain thing in an uncertain world was that time always passed; but as day followed day, each one exactly like the other, she felt that nothing, not even time, could put an end to their unbearable monotony.

Oh, please, God, please, God, make Christmas come quickly, Flip prayed, her hand still moving softly over her dog-eared calendar. And because time did not wheel faster in its vast circle for her she became filled with despair and homesickness and bitterness at her misery and she shoved the book she had brought up with her off her bed so that it fell on
the floor with a thud. Across the room Gloria yawned noisily over her required weekly letter to her mother; Erna and Jackie, as usual, were whispering and giggling together. “They’re so childish,” Esmée was always saying to Gloria, but she was careful to keep on good terms with Jackie because Jackie’s father was a movie director.

Flip leaned over and picked up her book, smoothing out its pages in swift apology, and waited for the bell.

She hurried out of the room after quiet hour, got her coat from the cloak room, and started up the mountain. She knew that the others would think she had gone to chapel. She ran almost until she stood at the edge of the forest where the trees thinned out and mingled with the underbrush that surrounded the château, and there was the château as it had been the day before, cold and beautiful and deserted. She stood looking at the grey stones and at the birds, her heart thumping, but no Ariel came rushing toward her to knock her down with his greeting, and after a moment she began pushing her way to the château, jumping like a startled forest animal each time a twig snapped or the wind moved in the high grasses. Just as she had almost neared the decaying walls of the building she heard a low whine and there was Ariel standing in the shadow of a shutter that hung drunkenly. The shadow seemed to move and she saw that Paul was there, too, holding Ariel by the collar.

“Paul!” she called softly.

For a moment she thought Paul was going to go back into the château; then he stepped out of the shadow of the shutter and held out his hand in greeting.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

She took his hand. “Who else would it be?”

“There are a great many girls in your school, aren’t there? And you might be any of them.”

“I’m not any of them,” she said. “I’m me.”

“How did you get here?” he asked, still holding back Ariel, who was trying to leap at Flip. “How did you find me?”