Octavia (22 page)

She visited her own school on the following Friday evening and, although she was loath to admit it, her first sight of it was not encouraging. She stood in the empty playground for quite a long time while she assessed it – dark brick, three forbidding storeys high, with a sternly separate floor for infants, girls and boys. The entrance marked ‘Girls’, which she’d been told led to her floor, was narrow and dark and not at all welcoming. She would have to do something about that come September – a bright notice board perhaps, with a red arrow to show her new pupils the way. Something
eye-catching
. Inside there was the usual flight of concrete stairs, which led to five more, which took her eventually to the top floor and the rooms she had been allotted.

There were eight of them, five surrounding a hall full of broken furniture and old exercise books, and three more along the corridor, one of which had obviously been a Cookery room. They were all half-tiled in the usual dark green and impossibly scruffy, the dark green paintwork peeling and the floorboards stained and covered in dust. Being positive she noted that they were well lit, with the usual long high windows, and plenty big enough for the sort of classes she was expecting. Spot of paint’ll work wonders, she thought. That and a good scrub down. At least there were plenty of cupboards. She checked them out one by one – broom cupboard, smelling of disinfectant and beeswax polish; PT cupboard heaped with hoops and ropes and with an antique horse pushed into the corner, much scuffed; three stock cupboards full of books, most of them as old and tattered as the horse. Oh dear, oh dear. Then she went to check the room that would be her study.

It was in the corner of the hall and it too was full of broken
furniture, chairs with three legs, two broken easels and a cracked blackboard, two boxes full of tattered books and broken cups, even a pile of old coats. Where did
they
come from? It’ll take months just to clear it, she thought. But that’s where she would have to start because this room was where she would hold her interviews. I will write to the board and tell them what I want, she decided, and the sooner the better. She stood in the dust, took her notebook from her handbag and began there and then, determined not to be downhearted.
‘My study must be completely cleared and thoroughly cleaned. That is a priority, for this is where I shall be interviewing my staff. I shall need a good sized desk, several comfortable armchairs, similar to the ones in your waiting rooms, a large bookcase, a small tea table, curtains and a carpet.’
Then she went back home to write the letter and to compose the advertisements for the teachers.

By the end of the following week, to her public delight and private surprise, she had received five applications.

‘Isn’t that encouraging?’ she said to her parents at breakfast. With a constant flow of good news, breakfast was becoming the best meal of the day, despite the chill of the room and the poor quality of the bread.

‘I don’t mean to nag you, my dear,’ her mother said, ‘but have you told Tommy yet?’

In the excitement of planning her campaign, she’d forgotten all about him. ‘No, I haven’t,’ she admitted. ‘But he wouldn’t be interested if I had. All he ever thinks about these days is the war.’

‘Isn’t that a letter from him?’ Amy asked, looking at the envelope beside her daughter’s plate.

‘Yes, it is,’ Octavia said and was ashamed to think that
she’d set it to one side until she’d read the applications. Poor Tommy. ‘I’ve left it till last,’ she felt she should explain. ‘I’ll read it to you if you like. It’ll be all about how many men are sick and how atrocious the food is and how he hates the German spies and what a lot of fools the commanders are.’

In fact it held a surprise.
‘There’s a rumour we’re pulling out,’
he wrote.
‘If I’m any judge we shall be back in Flanders before Easter, ready for the next big push. Might even get a spot of leave. God knows I’ve earned it.’

‘Good heavens,’ Amy said. ‘Does he say when it will be?’

‘No,’ Octavia said, reading on, and felt ashamed again because she knew she was hoping it would be after she’d chosen her teachers. ‘Soon I should imagine.’

‘That’ll be nice,’ her mother said.

But Octavia was thinking of the car she meant to buy.

It was a little black Ford and she was totally enamoured of it from the moment she sat in the driving seat. It came with a book of instructions so it didn’t take her long to learn how to start it and put it into gear, speed it up and slow it down. Steering round corners made her arms ache until she got used to it but that was a small price to pay for the convenience of being able to drive to school exactly when she wanted to without standing in line for a tram. Her pupils were very impressed to have a car-driving teacher. ‘That’s never been known before, Miss Smith,’ they said, and came out into the playground in inquisitive groups to admire it.

‘The time will come,’ she predicted, ‘when all your teachers will drive cars. It will be as normal as riding on a tram.’

But for the moment, of course, it was unusual – but then so was being a headmistress designate at the age of twenty-nine.
She decided to treat herself to some new clothes as well as the car. If she was going to interview staff and parents – for she’d be bound to be interviewing parents when the school was officially opened – she needed to look the part.

She was in Derry and Toms, trying on dresses, when Tommy came home on leave, two days earlier than she’d expected him.

‘Not to fret, Mrs Prof,’ he said to Amy. ‘I’ll just stick around here and wait for her, if it’s OK by you.’

Amy gave him her permission and made him a pot of tea but he had a long wait. It was over an hour before Octavia’s little black Ford drew up behind his big black Packard and then she was so hung about with hat boxes and huge carrier bags that he could hardly see her.

‘My stars, Tikki-Tavy!’ he said. ‘Have you bought the shop?’

She
had
bought rather a lot, she had to admit. A summer dress in white cotton with a stylish scarlet jacket with a long white shawl collar to match, a pale green linen suit and a brown felt hat, decorated all over the crown with the prettiest pale green leaves, gloves and silk stockings, a fine pair of button boots in tan leather with Louis heels, even a boater with a blue and red ribbon to match the scarlet jacket. But she had a bigger surprise for them than her new clothes. She grinned at her mother, took off her old hat and threw it into the nearest chair. Her long frizzy hair had been cut into a short frizzy bob.

‘Oh, Tavy!’ her mother said, ready to reprove.

But Tommy was speaking at the same time and his tone was all delight. ‘My stars, Tavy,’ he said. ‘You’re a corker, damn if you ain’t. What say we go to the pictures? See this Charlie Chaplin feller they’re all talking about. You look just the ticket for a night at the pictures.’

So they went to the pictures and the theatre and the music hall, wined and dined at expensive restaurants, none of which seemed to have heard of meatless days, and returned to his flat at frequent and delectable intervals. And for eight of his ten days they were ridiculously happy together. Like everyone else he too was hoping that this last big push that was being planned would actually drive the Germans back.

‘If we can do that once,’ he told her, as they were driving off to another picture palace, ‘it’ll be the beginning of the end. Break their morale. That’s what we need. Should have done it years ago. Break their morale and then back to Blighty. And about time too.’ Then, feeling he ought to compliment her on her appearance, ‘Is that one of your new dresses?’

‘Good heavens no,’ she said. ‘This is ever so old. You must have seen it dozens of times. I wore it in Paris.’

He pretended to remember. ‘Then when am I going to see the new ones?’ he asked.

‘Not for a long time,’ she said. ‘They’re my Sunday-go-
to-meeting
suits. I bought them to wear at my interviews.’

He was disappointed because he was sure they’d been bought to please him. ‘What interviews?’ he said.

She didn’t notice the tetchiness in his voice so she told him – exactly.

He was very cross. ‘Oh, come on, Tavy,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to be a headmistress now. That’s all over and done with. Once the war’s over I shall come home and join the foreign office – it’s almost certain, did I tell you? You’ve no idea the strings I’ve been pulling – and then we can get married. We’ll have such a life together. I’ve got it all planned. We’ll choose a house for starters. Something rather grand, don’t you think? There are bound to be all sorts of parties – dinner parties,
cocktail parties, diplomatic parties. I can just see you playing the hostess. You’ll be top hole. We shall be in our element.’

‘No,’ she said angrily. ‘You’ll be in your element. My element is a school.’

‘You don’t want to bother with that,’ he said, pursuing his own thoughts. ‘I shall earn good money. Very good money. You’ll never have to work again. We’ll have holidays in the south of France, run a Rolls Royce. Oh, we shall live in style, I can tell you. You don’t want to mess about being a headmistress. You can leave all that.’

‘I’m a headmistress already,’ she told him.

‘Then write and tell them you’ve changed your mind.’

‘It may have escaped your notice, Tommy, but it’s what I want to be.’

‘Not when the war’s over, surely to God. Once we’ve done with all this fighting, you can marry me and live the life of Reilly.’

It was too much. He wasn’t listening to a word she was saying. ‘Stop the car,’ she said. ‘I want to go home.’

He was genuinely surprised. ‘What do you mean, want to go home?’

‘Stop the car.’

He obeyed her, looking puzzled, and watched as she struggled to open the door and got out, very ungracefully. By that time he was cross.

‘I thought we were going to the pictures.’

‘Well, you thought wrong.’

‘Shall I ring you tomorrow?’

She was already walking to the tram stop. ‘Do as you please,’ she said. ‘Just don’t live my life for me.’

He didn’t ring until his last day and then it was to suggest
that she might like to say goodbye at Victoria, ‘the way you used to’ and as he was going back to the fighting, and it would have been unkind to let him leave unkissed, she went.

It was a bittersweet farewell, for it occurred to her as they kissed that this could be the last time she would ever see him. ‘Oh, Tommy,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry we quarrelled. I do love you.’

‘Likewise,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, Tikki. I’m like the proverbial bad penny. I’ll turn up again before you know it.’

She waved goodbye feeling sick at her stupidity and unkindness, wishing they could have his leave all over again and live it differently. But it was done and he was gone and on Tuesday she would be interviewing her first set of applicants.

It was the middle of the Easter holiday before she had chosen all the staff she wanted and because it had taken so long and been such a delicate difficult procedure, she decided to hold a tea party at Hammersmith to celebrate. She wore her new green suit, her new felt hat and her new button boots, and took a picnic basket full of carefully packed tea things – Mrs Wilkins’ homemade seed cake, a bottle of milk, a small bowl of her precious rationed sugar, a small tin of biscuits.

It was more than three weeks since her last interviews and a lot had changed. The walls were newly painted and exactly as she’d specified, in a neutral cream that lightened the darkness of all those green wall tiles and would make it easier for pictures and notices to be seen. The hall had been cleared, and now she could see that it was a good size, with a clock on the wall at one end and a raised platform at the other. There were rows of new benches too and a piano for assemblies, and between the high windows, three sets of new wall bars for PT lessons. And down in the right-hand corner
her study had become a very pleasant room, with everything in it that she’d asked for – a carpet on the floor, a desk set at an angle to make best use of the light and a nice warm fire in the grate with five easy chairs placed in a circle around it. The tea table was set for tea and there was a welcoming note from the school keeper, tucked between the cups to say,
‘Dear Miss Smith, Ring when you want the Tea or if there is anythink else. HE Turner.’
She took the seed cake and the sugar and biscuits from her basket and arranged them among the cups and filled the milk jug from her bottle. Then she went to inspect the classrooms.

They too were much improved and were now clean and well ordered with new desks and new blackboards and plenty of bookshelves. Some of the new stock she’d ordered had arrived and was standing in the rooms waiting to be unpacked, which pleased her. Not all of it, of course. She made a note of the missing deliveries in her notebook. Then she walked through the hall to inspect the Cookery room.

She’d just reached the door and had her hand on the doorknob when she heard feet trudging up the stairs and the murmur of several voices. Her staff had arrived and spot on time.

There were three of them walking across the hall, all young, all carefully dressed and all nervous, smiling guardedly. She greeted them by name, introducing them to one another. ‘Miss Fletcher, our Cookery and Needlework teacher, good to see you again. Miss Genevra, who will be teaching French and Latin. Did you have a good journey? Miss Gordon, History and Geography. Your new History books have arrived, you’ll be glad to know.’ They relaxed a little, but were still guarded as they followed her into the study.

‘Mr Turner’s got a good fire going for us,’ she said. ‘We’ll have some tea first, shall we? And then you can have a look at your form-rooms.’ And she rang the bell for the school keeper.

The combination of hot tea and seed cake, blazing fire and warm welcome gradually made them relax. They started to talk shop, tentatively at first but with more confidence when she approved of what they are saying, and presently the fifth member of staff arrived, Miss Fennimore, the oldest and most experienced, who was to teach Science and Mathematics.