On the Bare (3 page)

Amelia stood glaring at her reflection. The shapeless grey blazer, the heavy woollen skirt, the itchy knee socks – all of it conspired to make her look fat. This was supposed to be her big break. Her big shot at fame. But the uniform!

The creature in the mirror looked like a nightmare version of herself. Her flaxen plaits were like wilted daffodils, and without make-up, the harsh fluorescent lights brought her every imperfection into sharp relief. The straw boater was an indignity, but the knickers were the ultimate humiliation. An atrocity in thick bottle-green cotton, they came up to her navel and pinched around the top of each thigh. She’d never even worn
shorts
that covered so much, let alone underwear. It was too awful!

She reached for her mobile phone before remembering that she’d handed it in along with all her other ‘modern’ items. For six weeks she would have access to nothing that wasn’t available in the schools of the 1950s. She was already feeling the ache of withdrawal and it had only been twenty minutes.

‘Hi! Cool uniforms, huh? I love the boater!’

Amelia stared glumly at the new arrival – a pale girl with mousy brown hair and glasses. The dreadful uniform suited her perfectly.

‘I’m Lisa Jennings,’ she chirped. ‘You must be Amelia Rutherford. They said you were already up here. I’m so excited – are you? I mean, it’ll be like going back in time!’

Amelia cringed as the girl prattled on.

‘People say they had like, better teachers back then and that our parents got a better education than we’re getting. I can’t wait to see how different it all is.’

‘I read the mission statement too,’ Amelia snapped, still glowering at herself in the mirror.

Lisa positioned herself next to Amelia and gazed with childlike wonderment at their reflections. ‘Hey, don’t be sad,’ she said. ‘It’s like an escape from the pressures of the modern world. No email, no Internet. Things were so much simpler back then.’

Did the girl always talk like that? Perhaps she’d been raised by motivational speakers – and not very good ones at that.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Amelia said, deciding to put on a game face. ‘Just wish I could text my boyfriend. I’ll have to see if I can find out where they took our stuff and sneak in to get it.’

Lisa looked betrayed. ‘But that’s like, going against the whole spirit of the show. The idea is for us to experience life without all of that.’

Was she for real? ‘Reality’ TV wasn’t about reality; it was about TV. No one would do it if there wasn’t an audience. Keira Knightley might wear a corset in some period costume drama, but between takes she’d be drinking double lattes in her air-conditioned trailer with her iPod and all the comforts of the twenty-first century.

‘The cameras are certainly authentic,’ Amelia said, nodding towards the open doorway where a man stood filming them. She wiggled her fingers at the lens. ‘Hi, Mum!’

Lisa ducked away shyly and headed off down the
corridor
where Amelia could hear her infecting the new arrivals with her perkiness.

Things got off to a smooth enough start and the pupils quickly overcame their self-consciousness about the role play. After a couple of days of hamming it up and showing off to each other, they began to settle into the 1950s routine. They were roused at dawn each morning for breakfast, morning assembly, and then the most tedious lessons Amelia had ever endured. Lunch was barely edible. Games were a joke. And after a vile dinner they were expected to do prep for two hours before going to bed.

Amelia got on well enough with the other girls, most of whom weren’t boarders at their own schools and were soon homesick. A couple of them were frightfully common and Amelia couldn’t help but grimace at their regional accents, but she was still friendly towards them. The whole country was watching, after all.

Darcy Pickthorn, from Cheltenham Ladies’ College, was made Head Girl, much to Amelia’s chagrin; she had wanted the position for herself. She found a friend in Hedy Lyttelton-Cole, though, a boarder from Gordonstoun. They shared class notes and helped each other study.

The boys were generally a scruffy lot and the only one Amelia found appealing was Edward Gascoigne, whose movie-star looks almost made her forget his impenetrable Geordie accent.

In class they were segregated – boys on one side, girls on the other. And they had all been taken aback by the bizarre teaching style in this ancient regime. One day Mr Franklin had whacked an inattentive boy across the back of the skull with an exercise book. The entire class had frozen with shock. Such a thing would have meant a lawsuit back home; here it was just par for the course. Here they had to suffer the withering sarcasm of teachers who weren’t obliged to entertain them and they had to memorise dates, parse sentences and use tables to figure out the square roots of ridiculously large numbers. The schoolbooks were a rude awakening too, filled with dense rows of text and few, if any, pictures.

There were also subjects they’d never encountered before. Mr Jones’s announcement that they’d be studying measures and mensuration was met with much giggling.

‘But sir,’ Edward said with mock ignorance, ‘surely it’s only girls who do that.’

The childish joke continued throughout the lesson and Amelia couldn’t resist inflicting it on Mr Lewis when she decided to take a break from history.

‘Please may I go to the ladies’, sir?’ In a stage whisper she added, ‘It’s a Female Thing. I need to … mensurate.’

Edward winked at her over the laughter and she imagined the wild speculation going on in the viewers’ minds back in the real world. Actually, she kind of hoped her boyfriend wasn’t watching.

Week Two found the pupils getting restless. The novelty had worn off and the lessons were becoming truly tiresome. And while the cameras had been a major distraction at first, now they hardly noticed them. Amelia often had to remind herself that this was a performance, a 24/7 screen test. Thousands of people were watching her at all times. The spectre of corporal punishment hung over them and they’d all been testing the waters to see how much they could get away with. A morbid curiosity simmered just beneath the surface. Who would be the first to push too far?

Although Amelia usually enjoyed English, swapping notes with Hedy was more fun than writing longhand compositions. They both agreed that Mr Campbell’s obsession with
The Fall of the House of Usher
was slightly disturbing and they spent one lesson filling a page with gruesome speculation about the reasons behind it. However, Hedy’s sketch of a dismembered schoolgirl was too much for Amelia and she blew their cover with an explosive burst of laughter.

Everyone spun to stare at them as Hedy tried desperately – and unsuccessfully – to hide the note. Amelia was still shaking with suppressed laughter as Mr Campbell read over their efforts, but she sobered up quickly when he set them lines.

I must pay attention in class. I must learn that, if I am naughty and disrespectful, I will be punished
. Two hundred times. To be done that evening after prep and handed in the next day.

‘And I shall check to make sure you get the paired commas right,’ he added.

After the first dozen repetitions Amelia was beginning to regret their mischief. And when she finally finished the imposition late that night her hand was so cramped that she couldn’t believe she’d ever been amused by Hedy’s drawing in the first place.

‘I’m going to complain to Matron tomorrow about Repetitive Stress Injury,’ Amelia whimpered later in the dorm.

‘No such thing,’ came Lisa’s cheerful voice from the far corner of the room. ‘Not in the 50s.’

‘Oh, shut up and go to sleep,’ Hedy groaned. ‘My hand hurts too, you know.’

Darcy compounded the humiliation by adding, ‘And you don’t want to get into any more trouble for talking after lights out.’

Power really went to some people’s heads.

A few days later Amelia was feeling restless again. She’d had it with the horrible knickers. The skirt was thick enough that she didn’t have to worry about an unsightly panty line, but even if no one could see, the ghastly things just made her
feel
hideous. Wearing sexy underwear made a woman feel sexy even when no one could see it, so the reverse must be true as well. There were no cameras in the loo, so she took them off and stuffed them into the bin. Of course, now there was nothing between her and the itchy wool skirt, but the trade-off was worth it. At least now the elastic wasn’t biting into her thighs.

‘What are you grinning about?’ asked Darcy as they gathered their books in the dorm and prepared for the next class.

‘Oh, nothing,’ she said blithely, enjoying the sensation of cool air circulating beneath her skirt. Her little secret. In a
way
it was a pity no one knew about her rebellion; she was sure it would have been a hit with the audience.

Divide £2,318 16s. 9
¼
d. by 139
.

Amelia stared in bewilderment at the problem before her. Not only was it long division, it was old money: pounds, shillings and pence. And she was expected to work that out by hand? With multiples of twelve and twenty where any sensible system used tens? And ninepence farthing! Two similarly monstrous problems had already been done on the blackboard with clumsy success. Amelia barely understood the amount, let alone the method.

Beside her Lisa was scribbling away dutifully, the little swot. So were some of the boys, who seemed to have a better understanding of numbers in general. To Amelia it might as well have been hieroglyphics.

She raised her hand with a petulant sigh, but didn’t wait to be called on. ‘Mr Jones, I don’t understand why we can’t use calculators for this.’

He gave her a condescending smile. ‘You know we can’t afford calculating machines here, Rutherford. They’re far too expensive with all those wheels and cogs. So you need to learn how to work the answer out for yourself.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘But it would only take five seconds with a calculator and this will take all day!’

His eyebrows climbed to his hairline as he eyed her with surprise. ‘Don’t answer me back, girl. And kindly show some respect for your elders and betters or you’ll find out what happens to silly little girls who can’t control themselves.’

Her face burned at his words and the heat deepened even more at the titters from the other pupils. She shot the nearest girl a filthy look and turned back to the hateful exercise, silently fuming. Even her bloody phone could work it out. It was so
stupid
that they had to do it the most cumbersome way imaginable. Bloody hell!

‘I’m sorry, Rutherford, what was that?’

She looked up in surprise. Had she said it aloud?

‘Did you say what I think you did, Rutherford? Because if so, I may have to send you to Matron to have your
mouth
washed out with soap. Carbolic soap. That will teach you to keep a civil tongue in your head.’

Amelia stared at him in disbelief, but had the sense to back off just a little. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she mumbled. ‘It – erm, just slipped out. I’ll be more careful, sir.’

‘Yes, indeed, Rutherford. You certainly
will
be more careful. You will need to be. And to drive the point home, I think you would benefit from some corner-time to think about it. In the corner, hands on your head, nose against the wall.’

Her eyes bulged, but she made no move to obey.

‘You heard me, Rutherford. In. The. Corner!’ He pointed to the vacant corner to the left of the blackboard and Amelia had a sudden image of herself standing there in disgrace, all her 1950s classmates sniggering behind their hands at her. And that wasn’t all. The cameramen at the back of the room, the ones who had all but blended into the walls, would be capturing it all on film for everyone – her friends, her boyfriend, her
real
teachers and classmates – to see. And laugh at.

No way.

‘No fucking way,’ she said with calculated defiance.

Mr Jones looked as scandalised as a genuine 1950s teacher would have been. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting that. ‘I beg your pardon!’

She made herself smile, the glacial smile of a Hollywood femme fatale. ‘Oh, you don’t have to beg, sir. Just ask nicely.’

The stunned silence that fell over the classroom was a satisfaction beyond anything Amelia had ever known. For that moment she was queen of the world. Unfortunately, a moment was precisely how long it lasted.

‘This is disgraceful, Rutherford. Quite unprecedented behaviour. But if you won’t take your punishment from me you can take it from the headmaster. I’m sure you know what that means.’

She did. The realisation hit her like an ice bath, but she swallowed her panic and looked at her fingernails as though unfazed. There was nothing for it now but to play to the crowd. ‘Whatever,’ she sighed.

Mr Jones strode to his desk and took out a sheet of paper. He calmly wrote out a note and folded it. Several pupils shifted uneasily in their seats. Amelia saw Hedy trying to catch her eye, but she didn’t dare look. If she faced anyone they would see her coolness for what it was: false bravado. The only way she could save herself now was to maintain her dignity and go to her fate with aplomb. Or at least the illusion thereof.

For a moment she wished Edward would leap to his feet like Tom Sawyer and gallantly offer to take her place. Then she pushed the cowardly thought away and slid carefully out of her desk, smoothing her skirt down with forced nonchalance as she stood up. A fever-hot blush rose in her cheeks but she maintained her haughty demeanour as she snatched the note from Mr Jones and flounced out into the corridor.

As soon as she was away from the others she sagged against the wall and released a long shuddering breath. She was shaking all over, her heart pounding as she took in what had just happened, what she’d just done.

Stiff upper lip
, she told herself, painfully aware of the cameras she wasn’t meant to notice.

She wasn’t afraid of the cane. Not really. Yes, she’d heard stories about it, but it couldn’t possibly be as bad as all that when all the old comic strips and cartoons made such fun of it. Besides, the hideous skirt would offer plenty of protection. The knickers would have provided even more padding, but honestly – how bad could it be? She was far more concerned about the humiliation of everyone knowing what was going to happen. Every single person in Queen Mary’s College and every viewer out there in the real world.