‘I’ll see you in the salle before French then? Mr Wellend is expecting us,’ said Portia.
‘Mr Wellend?’ I repeated, confused.
‘The new fencing master?’
‘Oh yaah,’ I agreed, remembering that not even fencing was going to be the same this term.
Portia added, ‘Think of it this way: now that Star’s chucked it, he’ll have more time to focus on us, darling. We can be his star pupils.’
I smiled, knowing she was reaching out at me but the truth was I felt like the ground beneath my feet was shifting and that it was only a matter of time before I lost Star and Georgina to Indie for good.
After breakfast, we went to chapel and then back to our rooms to make our beds and clean our teeth before Miss Bibsmore’s daily room inspection. Any fantasy I had briefly clung to that Honey’s newfound enemy, Miss Bibsmore, would dilute Honey’s horribleness evaporated as soon as the first bell went and Honey accidentally-on-purpose spilled a full glass of water on my bed, seriously drenching my mattress.
Portia was in the bathroom brushing her teeth at the time and without a witness it was pointless to dream Honey would ever apologise. All I could do was pull the covers off and hope the mattress would dry out before I had to sleep on it that night. But I wasn’t counting on any miracles.
Out of misery more than anything I turned my mobile on to check for messages and Honey’s meanness was suddenly the furtherest thing from my mind. I had two new text messages:
SEE YOU IN WINDSOR ON SATURDAY? X FREDS
To which I faux-casually replied,
YOU READ MY MIND! X C
The next one was from Billy, sent early this morning.
WOTS UP? BILLY XX
HONEY’S JUST WET MY BED. CALYPSO XX
He sent me a text straight back.
INCONTINENT LITTLE BITCH! SEE YOU IN WINDSOR ON SATURDAY. B
Honey was in the en suite so I showed Billy’s text to Portia. As she scrolled down through the texts she pointed out that my battery was low. Then her face broke into a smile, and as she read the last message she began to laugh.
She was laughing when Honey came out of the bathroom.
‘What’s so interesting about the text, then?’ Honey asked in an I-couldn’t-be-less-interested sort of way. ‘Oh nothing, darling,’ Portia assured her, handing me back my mobile and I took her advice and plugged it into my charger.
I was feeling so happy that I didn’t even feel pissed off when Miss Bibsmore came in and asked who wet my mattress.
‘Just an accident,’ I told her, no longer bothered by the soggy mattress I’d have to sleep on that night. Boys are brilliantly distracting like that.
Miss Bibsmore didn’t look convinced.
Honey laughed. ‘Americans are so clumsy.’
‘I’ve warned you, madam, I’m on to you’ was all Miss Bibsmore said as she eyed Honey up and down. ‘Now don’t forget, girls, you’ve been asked to report to the infirmary after lunch for your flu jabs an’ all.’
After Miss Bibsmore was out of earshot, I said, ‘Oh needles, just what I need to make this day perfecto!’
It was the sort of joke I would make for Star usually, but Portia laughed and, weirdly, so did Honey. Then she said, ‘So, are you going to share that text with me then?’
I was saved from replying though because the bell to class suddenly went off and Indie stuck her head into our room, ‘Coming?’ she asked.
‘Enjoy your Latin, girls,’ Honey called out after us but we were already in the throng of charging girls rushing down the corridor.
Latin was in one of the older buildings and consequently freezing cold. I was so regretting taking Latin and not just because Star had dropped it. We filed into the empty class and chose a table – I grabbed one by the radiator which gave off a sort of mild warmth. Portia sat beside me and Indie sat in front.
Even though Ms Mills was always threatening the physical manifestations of our souls, at least she knew her stuff. Now we were in Year Eleven we’d been lumped with a Mrs Obar whose only qualification for the job as our Latin teacher we soon realised was ‘I’ve been a teacher for thirty-seven years! Thirty-seven years, so there’s nothing you can tell me!’
Indie turned around to me. ‘As if there is the remotest chance she’ll ever draw breath long enough to let anyone tell her anything.’
Mrs Obar threw some chalk at her as if it was the most normal behaviour in the world, then she ordered us to open our books, sit up straight and pay attention. I noticed Indie bend down and retrieve the chalk from the floor a little later when Mrs Obar wasn’t looking.
After Mrs Obar struggled for a while with pronunciation, Portia put her hand up to question Mrs Obar’s specific qualifications to teach us Latin. Her response was to throw a piece of chalk at her as well, which Portia deflected with her Cicero translation book. Like Indie, I retrieved the piece of chalk from the floor, and later when Mrs Obar’s back was to us, I threw it at her, which set all of us off giggling. Of course at our exclusive school no class had more than five in it and in this case there were only the three of us, so our laughter didn’t create much of a noise and, to preserve her dignity perhaps, Mrs Obar pretended she hadn’t felt the chalk and continued writing on the board.
Indie turned round and passed me a note in her neat handwriting: Next time throw the book!!
Mrs Obar didn’t pretend to ignore the note though. She swooped down on us like a witch in her black serge gown and snatched it up.
‘And what might this note mean, Miss Kelly?’
‘We were sharing a translation,’ Portia told her swiftly. ‘See?’ Relying on Mrs Obar’s ignorance, Portia pointed to a passage in her book.
‘Oh, I see,’ Mrs Obar conceded. ‘Very good, Lady Harrington Briggs but Miss Kelly will eventually have to come to grips with her translations herself if she’s to distinguish herself to the examiners.’
I struggled to turn my barely suppressed smile into a look of humble acknowledgement but failed when Indie burst out laughing in her distinctive fulsome way for which she was given a blue.
By Year Eleven you just hand over your blues to a Year Seven to do for you in exchange for sweets or some other privilege. But as I was already starting to realise, Indie wasn’t like most girls.
She refused the blue that Mrs Obar passed to her, and merely looked at it as if it was a pair of dirty knickers. ‘I’m not accepting that, Mrs Obar!’
Mrs Obar raised her voice. ‘Excuse me madam but you will accept this blue or you’ll be getting another.’
Indie stood up. ‘Hardly!’ she exclaimed in a voice of shock, her hand over her heart in mortification. Then she continued calmly, ‘With all due respect, Mrs Obar, how can I possibly excuse you for wasting my time when I’m sitting eleven GCSEs and I’ve learned absolutely nothing in your class so far. I’m sorry, but if I were to accept your blue, in all conscience I’d be obliged to make a complaint to my father about the inadequacy of my tuition.’ And then she played her trump card as she held out a clenched fist and opened her hand to reveal the piece of chalk Mrs Obar had thrown at her earlier. ‘Also, I doubt he’ll be thrilled to hear that my teacher has been hurling chalk missiles at me.’
I was as awed as Mrs Obar, who was blatantly humiliated, was stuck for words. She stood there for a full minute clutching her blue impotently but eventually she gathered herself together, shoved the blue into her desk drawer and returned to the board where she proceeded to write down the pages in our work books that we needed to cover in prep that evening.
Portia, Indie and I all exchanged looks. I mouthed the words ‘sooo cool’ but by the end of class Mrs Obar was even letting us chat amongst ourselves. She’d been rumbled and she knew it.
Next class was English Literature with Ms Topler. I want to be a writer, but Ms Topler would make the most enthusiastic novelist stick pins in their eyes. We were doing Shakespeare’s King Lear which is my favourite play of all. You’d think given how much I love the play and how it was Shakespeare it would be hard to ruin. But I trusted that in Ms Topler’s capable hands she would dissect and deconstruct my beloved King Lear into something we could nod off to. I love Cordelia’s honesty. I love that she dares to stick up for the truth even though she knows her father is a total grown-up and ipso facto an egotistical hypocrite on a power trip. A bit like Ms Topler, I was thinking as she droned on and on about hubris. There’s nothing Ms Topler loves more than a good drone.
After lunch, I trudged off to Ancient Greek. Portia was already there and I sat at the desk beside her. Our teacher, Doctor Buffner told us that we’d be doing Oedipus Rex and for a special treat we were going to Cambridge after half-term to see it performed.
‘I hope they have a good DVD on the coach ride there,’ I whispered to Portia, because that’s usually the only fun part about school trips.
‘I know, can you imagine listening to an entire play in Ancient Greek?’ she whispered back.
We both simultaneously slumped on our desks at the very thought of enduring a whole play listening to incoherent piffle.
Indie arrived late and while she had a quiet word with Doctor Buffner, Portia asked me about Billy and Freddie and who I liked the most.
‘Well, that’s what I don’t know,’ I confided. ‘But I keep telling myself, as soon as I see them it will all work out.’
‘I think Billy’s seriously fit,’ Portia said. ‘I mean, as a fencer, on the piste. You know, he is the captain and well . . .’
I looked at her quizzically. ‘Fitter than Freddie?’ I asked, suddenly feeling an acute need to start getting some perspective on the decision awaiting me, because like I said, as much as having a text romance with two boys at once was fun, it couldn’t go on indefinitely.
Portia didn’t get a chance to answer, though, as Indie joined us and class resumed.
After lunch, I made a quick detour to the pet shed to check on Dorothy but my head was full of what Portia had said about Billy being fit. Even though she’d qualified it by explaining she was referring to his fencing ability, I felt a bit uneasy. Not jealous exactly; in fact, it sort of tipped my affections in favour of Freddie. Poor Freddie, I thought, feeling fiercely protective of his looks. The truth was, though, they were pretty evenly matched in the fit stakes. Billy was older, which gave him added kudos, but then Freddie was heir to the throne. It was like I had both boys on a set of weighing scales and I couldn’t bear to imagine the balance being tipped in one boy’s favour.
I picked up Dorothy. She’d put on weight, I decided, as I carried her over to the pet run for a little hop. The only other girls there were Year Sevens and Eights so when they offered to look after her for me, I agreed, as I had to rush to the infirmary for the hated flu shot. The queue was already snaking down the corridor and because everyone was waiting to be jabbed in the arm with a needle, conversation was sparse. It was going to be a long wait. The sadistic Sister Dumpster (real name, Dempster) – who is not a nun at all and quite possibly once worked for the Inquisition, she’s so old and nasty – liked to take her time torturing us. Flu jab day was her favourite day of the year.
I found Star and waited with her and we fell back into our familiar line of chat – ripping it out of our teachers and the disgusting lunch we’d just consumed. We both studiously avoided conversations about her giving up fencing, Latin and Ancient Greek although actually I didn’t really mind about the Latin and Ancient Greek because Portia and Indie seemed really fun. The fencing was another matter entirely, though.
‘Sister Constance said the food was going to be more imaginative this term too,’ Star moaned.
‘I think she meant more imaginatively evil,’ I told her.
‘What I want to know is how they make all the meat look identical? How can you make beef, pork, chicken and lamb look exactly the same? It’s scary.’
‘Well, we do have a salad bar that includes rocket leaves,’ I teased, knowing how much Star loathes green things.
Finally, it was my turn to have my arm jabbed.
‘It’s just a prick,’ Sister Dumpster told me menacingly, her eyes dancing with happiness as she shoved in the needle, hard and deep.
Star told her she’d do it herself but Sister Dumpster was resolute. ‘It’s my special fun and you’re not going to spoil it,’ she insisted. Well, what she actually said was, ‘I’m fully trained’ but everyone who overheard, knew what she really meant.
Afterwards I headed off to join Portia at the fencing salle. ‘Say hi to Professor Sullivan for me,’ Star called out.
‘He’s not our fencing master any more,’ I informed her and there it was, back again: the gulf between us. I saw it in Star’s guilty expression and I’d heard it in my tone. I almost blurted out something childish like ‘What’s happened to us?’ but thankfully I stopped myself just in the nick of time. Perhaps Portia’s aloof demeanour was starting to rub off on me . . .
‘Well, have a good one anyway, Calypso,’ Star said as we parted company.
I was going to miss fencing practice with Star, although she did allow herself to be distracted a bit much. Mostly by her pet rat Hilda or her snake Brian, who by the way are quite possibly the happiest healthiest pets in the pet shed. In Star’s mind however they are more sensitive than all the other pets. She’s convinced the rabbits and hamsters say mean things to them when she’s not around and give them beady-eyed looks, which really upsets me because Dorothy hasn’t got a mean fibre in her soft little body.
And although I can’t speak for Honey’s rabbit, Absinthe, in my opinion if any of the pets give beady-eyed looks, it’s Brian himself. I swear, Star’s snake, given half the chance, would eat Dorothy and the others. I’ve seen him eyeing them up — he practically licks his nonexistent lips as we take the rabbits on to the run. Not that I’d say that to Star. I always say things like, poor Brian, or, poor little darling Hilda. I even cuddle Hilda like cuddling a rat is what I live for. Indie no doubt genuinely adores both Brian and Hilda and doesn’t even have to pretend.
But I have decided to stop thinking mean jealous things like that. Just like I have decided to stop being annoyed with Star for dropping fencing. Over that morning, I had worked out that developing an aloof demeanour like Portia could easily be the answer to all my problems. It was sad that Star and I would no longer be the swashbuckling sabreurs of old but as Portia had put it, now Mr Wellend only had two senior sabreurs, he’d be able to give us more specialist attention. Yes, an aloof demeanour would be the making of me. I would pay more attention to what I said, drop the whole blurting thingamee and work on floating through life like Portia in a dignified way.
Perhaps this aloof demeanour, which by the way I could already feel creeping into my character, would even help me with my Freddie/Billy choice.