Pegasi and Prefects (6 page)

“As I recall, Helen of Troy had much the same problem,” Cecily murmurs.

“Too true. Only a complete rotter would blame us.”

“As did Medusa.”

“Now that was pure puss-cat, darling. You ought to take more care of my wounded dignity. Put a sisterly arm around me, bosom friend of my childhood, and Charley can sit at my feet and tell me over and over again how exceedingly good-looking I am. It’s balm to my broken heart.”

“Don’t push your luck.” I punch her arm.

“Hmm.” There is a moment’s quiet. “You don’t really think I’m prettier than Diana Struthers?”

“Of course you are,” I say, surprised at the question.

Cecily and Esther exchange little smiles. “And that, my sweet girl, is why we love you so much,” Esther says. ”Such loyalty and gallantry in this degenerate day and age is rare. I doubt that the rest of the school will agree with you, though. Diana has made a palpable hit.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” I say, a little annoyed by her posing. “Must we really go on talking about Diana until French? It’s enough that I share a study with her.”

“This child is also sick and tired of the subject,” Esther says agreeably. “I prefer, of course, talking about the more fascinating topic of my own beauty. Failing that, we can discuss how to inject something of interest into the part of Melissa, although I will admit that pretending to fall madly in love with Azalea Stuart is going to tax all my powers of verisimilitude. Why don’t you go in for acting, Charles?”

I scoop up her abandoned cushion and throw it at at her.

CHAPTER THREE

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

I’m annoyed, naturally, on Esther’s behalf, but I don’t really have the time or energy to worry my head too much about the Drama Guild and some auburn-haired girl pushing herself forward. Wednesday afternoon is when I take the lower forms for hockey practice for the first time.

I feel like a complete ass, standing there bossing the youngsters as if I’m such a spectacular player that I know better than them what they should do. I’m only saved from tongue-tied embarrassment by having Cecily, in her role as former Games Captain, and Miss Harlow, the games mistress, on hand to show me the ropes. I pay close attention to the way Cecily follows up criticism with easy praise and the way the girls play up under her attention, until I feel like I can do the same, awkwardly at first and then with more confidence. By the end of the first practice I’m shooting advice to the girls practicing passing and tackling as if I was Miss Harlow herself. It’s gratifying, seeing the way they listen solemnly to me and bridle with pleasure if I praise them. I have no idea why they pay so much attention to what I think. The games captain badge on my tie, I suppose. For all that, it’s rather nice.

The second time, the kids are left to my tender mercies alone. I find I mind much less than I did the job of finding things for them to do. I set myself to paying close attention to their potential: who runs fastest when I set them to sprinting, who passes quick and hard when they practice with the ball, who flags least by the end of the practice. I have to choose teams, and soon.

The responsibility weighs heavily on me, especially with the kids in the lower three forms. Fernleigh Manor is about one hundred and fifty girls altogether, not such a large school that there isn’t a place in one of the two top teams for every upper school girl who is really keen. These lower forms, though... I remember the way my palms grew wet the first time I checked the lists for the third team, and how heartbroken I would have been if I wasn’t on the list. I don’t want to let any of these kids down or be the one to blame for any secret tears.

It’s unfair of Miss Carroll to put the responsibility on me. She should have known perfectly well how I would detest it.

When they’re packing up, I call out to little Mary MacConnell, who has tried her heart out and is bent over retying a shoelace. “Nice work! Keep passing like that, and you’ll be in a team in no time.”

She lifts big, terrified eyes to me, turns bright red, and scampers off toward the school as if the devil himself was after her.

“What was that about?” I say aloud. “Do I look like I bite?”

Rhoda, a freckled imp from the second form, giggles. “Not a bit. She’s just cracked on you,” she says, as matter-of-factly as if she was pointing out that Mary had gone to change a broken shoelace. “Half the girls who are keen on games are.”

I shove my hands in the belt of my gymslip and whistle through my teeth. It hadn’t actually occurred to me until this second that this was one of the pitfalls of being Games Captain.

“Rhoda! You can’t say things like that,” hisses a wiry young thing who rejoices in the name Ethelberta.

“I don’t see why not. You know you’re cracked on her yourself. Oh, it’s not your fault, Charley,” Rhoda explains kindly, obviously noticing my discomfiture. “I’m staying loyal to Cecily, though. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh! Of course not.” I glance warily at the unfortunate Ethelberta, who has subsided into horrified blushes. “Be my guest.”

“You see, you’re ripping and all, but you’ve never ridden through a bush fire with a rescued baby kangaroo—”

“Joey,” fills in Kay Jones. I’m not entirely pleased to find myself at at the centre of a fascinated group of juniors drawing close.

“Don’t swank so, Kay. With a baby kangaroo,” Rhoda says firmly, “balanced over the pommel of her saddle. And fire bunyips screaming in her ears.”

“Did Cecily ever do that?” I ask, diverted.

There’s a murmur of enthusiastic agreement and vigorous nodding, especially from what I suspect is Cecily’s fan club in the second form.

“And she killed her first snake when she was eight. Her first
poisonous
snake,” Erica, another second former, assures me earnestly. “I bet it was a spirit snake, too.”

“She never said a word to me. Oh, I suppose that explains why she never has any hair ribbons when she needs them,” I say, knowing perfectly well I should be cutting off this conversation straight away—should probably have sat down properly on it in the beginning—and completely incapable of resisting. “Rhoda must take them to sleep with under her pillow.”

Rhoda turns a deeper red than as Mary as her friends dissolve into heartless jeering.

“Still,” says Kay, recovering from her squashing, “it was only an ordinary horse. Not a pegasus.” She beams loyally at me.

“My good girl, it would make just as much sense to be cracked on Ember as me,” I say briskly, coming back to a sense of my responsibilities. “Now, that’s enough of this nonsense, you understand? You’re not to talk such rubbish again. Go and change, now.”

There is a round of obedient nods and “Yes, Charley”s. I clap poor little Rhoda on the back, grin all around to show no offence taken, to the obvious relief of some of them, and make my way back into the School House, whistling.

I’m distinctly amused by the kids, if a bit abashed. Silly little things—just because I take them for hockey and have a fabled beast. I don’t remember feeling that way about Pam Carrington when I was in the bottom forms. I badly wanted her approval, but only because I wanted colours so badly. I wanted to be just like her, at times, but there was nothing sentimental about it. Stuff and nonsense. . .

It was rather sweet, for all that. They’re nice kids.

There’s a little sting under the amusement. I’m nearly up to my study before I place it. Playing at being in love with older girls, that’s all it is, just harmless fun and a stage a lot of babies go through. Passions for older girls and mistresses are simply a stage, before they grow up and turn their affections toward—toward forced uncomfortable kisses in the stables, toward thoughts of husband and marriage. It’s simply a harmless stage.

That, somehow, is exactly where the sting lies. Not that I’d want any of those kids to be serious, it’s just that, somehow, it feels all wrong that feelings for other girls are always playing. Never anything that means anything. I don’t know what I want it to mean.

Simply that everything is, in some indefinable way, wrong.

I push open the study door. Rosalind is curled in one of the easy chairs, a book open on her lap, the light turning her hair into a halo. She looks up at me, with something very clear and serious in the blue eyes behind those glasses, as if she can, uncannily, see straight into my thoughts. I bite my lip and look away, wondering is she’s a Sensitive herself.

Diana, at one of the desks, clicks her tongue in irritation, as if I was the one invading, despite the fact that neither Rosalind nor Valerie, who is sitting at my desk, belong there. The sound feels like a needle run against my nerves.

“Val, do you mind?” I say, more sharply than I intend. She gives me an outraged look, and I try to soften it a little. “I just need the full desk to work out team lists.”

She yields and gathers up her things, dumping them on Diana’s desk, and I get out my things. There’s only a few moments of blissful silence, enough time for me to just begin to think about the team list I’m making up, before Diana turns back to the others and says, “It’s simply wonderful how often Miss Evans is at the door when Herr Wolfsdorf finishes music lessons, isn’t it?”

I groan, trying to concentrate on the task at hand. Third hockey team. Little Rhoda Phillips is quick and good, but heaven knows Mary MacConnell worked like a trooper at practice, and she did run back to the school like the wind. I repress a grin at the thought. The first time I said “Good shot!” to Mary MacConnell, she tripped over and fell flat-faced in the mud. Oh, poor kid, it will break her heart if I don’t put her in. Yet Rhoda really runs like a dervish on the wings.

I simply don’t know who truly deserves the final place. It’s important, not just for the sake of winning the next inter-school match, but because I know whichever of the kids is knocked back to reserve will be crushed. And Valerie’s high-pitched giggles and all the chattering from across the room are making it impossible to concentrate. Diana treats the study like her own particular drawing room, when it’s just not big enough for four grown girls. Having studies is supposed to make it easier to concentrate than doing extra work in a common room. The Fifth form common room was a haven of peace compared to this.

Not that Rosalind contributes much to the noise. She sits quietly and listens to the other two chatter, saying the worst kind of girlish, spiteful, gossipy ways, and rarely says a word in response. She looks decidedly uncomfortable at times, especially when girls amuse themselves inventing lovers and romances for the mistresses, or start talking in a silly syrupy way about young men they met in the holidays. I often get the feeling that Rosalind doesn’t approve of these subjects any more than I do. She never protests, if so.

Mind you, I don’t object, either. I can’t, somehow. Every time I start to tell them off, I remember that out of the girls in this room I’m most likely the only one with any experience, as such, and the memory of Ray’s breath hot on my mouth seals it with shame.

I’m not as good at exerting a wholesome influence over Diana as Miss Carrol predicted.

Rosalind really is an oddly self-contained thing. Diana and Valerie pump her quite often about her family and her home, but she answers in soft little sentences, never giving much detail, and switches the conversation away from herself as soon as possible. I wonder if her people are very badly off, despite the elfin ears and platinum hair, the way she avoids speaking of them. Or perhaps she’s unhappy at home.

She seems so meek, but sometimes I look up from my studying and she’s watching me, quietly and thoughtfully, with the same penetrating gaze she’d turned on me when I entered the study that night. I have no idea what goes on behind those spectacles.

Not really worth thinking about it, in any case, not when her choice of friends tells so much about her character and I have all the extra games coaching to worry about. Besides, when she’s not looking at me, she’s looking at Diana, with a kind of worshipping attention like a puppy looking at its owner. I don’t understand Diana’s magical appeal in the slightest. Even Frances, who is usually as level-headed as is she irritating, is infatuated with her, although Diana rarely has time for her. Rosalind seems head over heels.

It’s a shame. For a while there, I’d hoped to have someone in the form who would understand and sympathise with how I felt about pegasi and unicorns and winged and magical beasts of all kind, but that would involve actually having a conversation or two some time.

It doesn’t matter. For my part, I certainly don’t have the time to bother with Diana Struthers and her friends. No time at all.

“As for that priggish Cecily,” Diana says, and I’ve had, I decide, quite enough.

“Cecily is the Head Girl of Fernleigh Manor. I don’t know how you did things in your old school, but here, it’s not done to carp at the Head Girl behind her back.”

Valerie and Diana stare at me as if they’ve quite forgotten I’m there and are none too pleased to discover my presence. In my own study. They take the cake. Little Rosalind is looking at me, too, only without surprise. Her lips twitch, so slightly that I’m not sure I haven’t imagined it.

“I suppose we need to show our loyalty to the school tie,” Diana says, sneering.

“Something like that. Loyalty to our Head Girl, certainly.”

Valerie looks a little shamefaced. “She’s right, Di. Drop it.”

Diana doesn’t seem inclined to drop anything. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t say what I think of her. I can’t abide that hearty, beefy type of girl.”