Portia and I were in the salle d’armes changing into the numerous items of fencing kit and armour when she said, ‘Was it Honey who wet your bed?’
‘What do you think?’ I replied, as I pulled on my new breeches. Like most girls in my year, I’d had another growth spurt over the summer and had to buy new fencing gear online from Leon Paul. I have just about reached the end of my tether with this growth spurt business. I am now five foot eight and if I keep going like this I’ll be taller than Freddie and Billy. I was madly taking back all the petitions I had made to Our Lady in Year Seven to make me tall and slim, explaining that when I said, tall and slim I actually meant stunning and leggy not a stick-like, freakish, giant.
‘Why didn’t you say anything to her, darling?’ Portia asked.
‘It’s pointless challenging her. You know what Honey’s like,’ I reminded Portia.
Star and I could have had a great deal of fun out of the ‘What Honey’s Like?’ conversation, but Portia was as silent as a throne. She simply went back to changing into her fencing gear as if that were the end of the matter. The next time she spoke was as we were heading out to the piste. ‘Oh I forgot, I spoke to Mr Wellend.’
‘What’s he like?’ I asked, whispering because I could already hear him out there and I didn’t want him to hear our conversation.
Portia began rearranging her plastic breast guard, which is a horrible, nasty piece of armour that is roughly shaped like breasts and is always impossible to get entirely comfortable. ‘He said that Emille – you know, she does épée; long, straight, blond hair, year below . . .?’
I shook my head. Almost all the girls at Saint Augustine’s had long straight blond hair, and while Portia had once been captain of the épée team, I had barely noted the girls that fenced foil or épée.
‘Well, anyway she’s moving on to sabre, so she can make up team, which is brilliant.’
‘Not as brilliant as Star,’ I pointed out.
‘No, but at least we can put up a team at interschool matches now, and also he was totally fine about the extra tuition thing. I think he’s as keen as us really, just a bit. . .’
‘What?’ I asked, starting to worry.
‘Well, put it this way, he’s no Professor Sullivan,’ she said.
‘You mean he’s not going to speak to us in French?’
She laughed as she shook her head.
‘Is he really old and horrible and wrinkly and mean?’
‘I can’t swear to his meanness,’ she replied enigmatically as she retied her breast guard, ‘but he is sort of odd. I mean old,’ she corrected herself quickly. ‘Old for a fencing master, that is.’
Quite old is a euphemism for ancient and in my experience most ancient men are pretty odd but Portia obviously wanted to leave it at that and so I dropped it.
Mr Wellend was waiting for us on the piste, practising his theatrical lunges. He looked to be pushing fifty or something woeful like that. And talk about odd, this fellow took the biscuit. He had a beard and I’ve never understood beards. Even when I was seriously young I was terrified of them. I always think that men with beards smell like soup. And this beard was one of those really neatly clipped ones that pointed at the end like one of the Three Musketeers’. Far worse than the beard thing, though, he was actually wearing a silver medal – an Olympic silver medal outside his fencing gear.
‘Right girlies, let’s start with some warm ups shall we?’ was his opening gambit. He had a South African accent and spoke to us in a sneering, creepy sort of way. As Portia and I looked at one another, I could tell we were thinking the same thing. We had a madman on our hands.
I shoved my mask over my head to smother my giggles. ‘No masks for warm-ups, girlies, no one’s going to get hurt.’ His voice was so slimy I couldn’t bear it and then he rubbed his hands together. Talk about oily.
I’m sure I must have been mistaken but I was almost certain I heard Portia whisper the word ‘creep’ under her breath.
I soon decided it was going to be quite good having Portia as my sabre partner. Like me, she was totally focused even in practice sessions. You can always lose yourself in fencing because you have to forget everything else and concentrate on the game.
Professor Sullivan was always going on about how fencing is a physical game of chess and incredibly enough for a teacher, he’s actually right! You have to anticipate your opponent’s moves as much as plan your own, all the while staying in the moment, attacking and counterattacking your combatant. Mr Wellend put it slightly differently . . .
‘Think with your brain, girlies, move with your body, slam ‘em with your blade.’
I don’t know whether it was Portia or me who came up with the nickname, Bell End, but it wasn’t long into our session before we were whispering asides to one another, doing piss-takes of Bell End’s accent. Which is an achievement in itself because as you can imagine, it’s not easy saying the word ‘bell end’ (which is the name for the end of a boy’s . . . well, you know what) while keeping a straight face.
After fencing, I told Portia I needed to go back to my room for a tampon, as I’d just discovered I’d started my period. I was relieved in a way because I decided that was why I’d been so emotional about everything over the past twenty four hours.
‘Actually, I think I’ll come with you,’ she told me. ‘I have to sort something out myself.’
We hurried back, anxious not to be late for our next class, which was French. I dashed straight into the en suite. I heard a bit of stomping about going on in the bedroom but thought nothing of it until I came out and discovered Portia struggling with a mattress.
‘Can you help me get this on to Honey’s bed?’ she panted.
‘Sure, what happened?’ I asked, as I supported the other end of the heavy mattress and helped her manoeuvre it on to Honey’s bed.
‘Just swapping mattresses,’ she explained blithely as she smiled serenely at me. ‘You don’t want to sleep on a wet mattress, do you?’
I laughed and then hesitated for a moment, imagining what Honey’s retaliation might be. ‘She’ll murder me!’
‘Well, we’ll murder her back then.’ Portia shrugged. ‘Besides, she’ll probably blame Miss Bibsmore.’
This was a very different Portia Herrington Briggs than the girl I thought I knew, that was for sure. She was as serene as ever but there was a warmth about her as well.
‘Good idea,’ I agreed. ‘Besides, I’m sure Miss Bibsmore wouldn’t mind.’
‘She might even give us a trophy,’ Portia added.
‘Oh, my Sarah and Bob would adore that. They’ve always wanted me to bring home a cup.’
After we finished our war with the wet mattress and remade the bed, I checked my phone for messages from Billy and Freddie.
‘Oh merde! I cried, as I saw I’d left my phone on.
‘What?’ asked Portia.
‘I left my phone on.’
‘Ten to one Honey snuck a look,’ Portia said, echoing my own thoughts.
‘Now we’ll definitely have to murder her,’ I told her in mock solemnity.
‘No other option,’ Portia said, shrugging, and we burst into peals of belly laughter.
There were no new messages from the boys but I didn’t mind. I was feeling a million times better about everything right up until we walked into the French classroom and I had a perfect view of Star, Georgina and Indie chatting and giggling together. Normally, Star would have saved me a seat.
Portia scribbled away, taking notes conscientiously, while I watched my friends enjoy the royal company of their New Best Friend. I gathered myself together and began taking notes because I was working madly at developing my aloof demeanour and girls with aloof demeanours don’t behave like green-eyed monsters.
The problem was, though, I was still only a novice at this aloof demeanour business and I found my eyes and attention constantly drawn to the line up of Star, Georgina and Indie. They appeared to be passing notes. I was vaguely aware of Miss Devante droning on and on and on about the importance of the article and I was scribbling away furiously to keep up the pretence of attention but that’s all it was really, a pretence. My page was covered in a scrawl of hearts and arrows.
‘Mademoiselle Kelly?’ she suddenly snapped.
‘Qu’est ce que c’est?’ I asked, as I realised I was the focus of her beady-eyed French attention.
‘Tell us about your vacation, en Français.’
‘Oh bugger,’ I blurted, before my aloof demeanour could stop me, which earned me a blasted blue.
Portia sidled up to me after class and said, ‘My cousin’s in Year Seven, darling and she’s fluent in French. Give the blue to me and I’ll take care of it.’
‘Are you sure, I could speak to Sister Constance? She might be persuaded to transmute it into a chore like floor sweeping?’
‘Sister doesn’t transmute punishments for Year Elevens,’ she reminded me. ‘But my cousin’s cool. For a bag of Hershey’s Kisses she’ll do anything.’
I remembered being in Year Seven fondly now. Apart from being teased about my stupid accent, I’d had hardly any work to occupy me, and that, coupled with an insatiable appetite for sweets and a worship of older, worldly-wise girls, made doing their blues an absolute joy. It was so lovely and innocent back then. We didn’t even know boys existed.
On top of that, back in Year Seven, Star would always have saved me a seat.