BY BEDTIME all the faces, the voices had blurred for Charlotte to one face, one voice. She prepared herself for bed, very slowly and deliberately, cleaning her teeth with the new green toothbrush, undressing awkwardly because she did not like to hide herself in the washing cubicle like the other new girl, Susannah. But she was much too shy and strange to undress openly like the other three, Vanessa, Janet, and Elizabeth. Vanessa wandered about for ten minutes at least in just her undershirt and navy blue school bloomers. She had freckles all over her legs; Charlotte had never seen anyone with freckled legs before.
Susannah had ceased chattering, which was a relief, but still giggled whenever Janet and Vanessa did, though she could not possibly have heard what they were giggling about; Janet and Vanessa talked, or rather whispered, exclusively to each other. The fourth girl, Elizabeth, was sprawled on her bed, reading a book. Charlotte had a book beside her, too, but was so tired and confused that she did not want to open it now. Her eyes felt stretched and huge. The light seemed too bright for them, glaring on white walls, white sheets and bedcovers; even the polished brown linoleum seemed to shine too much, so that the darkness, when the light went out, was the most thankful, cooling thing she had ever known.
“Pull the blind up, Charlotte,” a voice ordered—Vanessa’s probably, but it might have been Janet’s. Charlotte had to climb to the end of her bed to do that, and when the blind sped up with a hiss, she saw the moon rising across the river, a huge September hunter’s moon, the color, almost the texture, of honey.
At first, though so tired, she could not sleep. Her bed was uncomfortable in an unfamiliar way. Her old-fashioned school nightdress felt heavy and hot. All the sounds about her were unfamiliar, too, from the smothering roars of the airplanes landing at the nearby airfield to the slither of feet in the passages outside. She heard whispers and giggles from Janet and Vanessa, little snores from Elizabeth, an occasional sob from Susannah. She found herself worrying about her own younger sister Emma, whom she had left behind alone at home. After a while she began to think it might be a relief if she could cry as Susannah was doing and perhaps cry herself to sleep. But she could not cry—her eyes felt quite dried up. And every time that her eyelids drooped, an airplane came and jerked her awake again.
She must have slept at last, for later she awoke, abruptly, confusedly. At first she thought another airplane must have wakened her, but the silence seemed somehow too complete for that. The moon was silver now and bright, high in the sky. The shadows of the window bars lay on the foot of her bed, and beyond the window she thought she saw a tree, a huge tree, black against the light, but silver where the moon caught, with foliage like thick, floating strokes across its trunk. Yet it was odd, for as she became more awake, she remembered there was no tree, only a red brick arm jutting out from the main school building where she lay. Sleepily, she took it for some mere trick of the light, of the deceptive moon, and fell asleep again, though she dreamed all night in muddled snatches of the day that had just gone, her first day at boarding school.
•
There were four pillars at the entrance to the school, making a portico that looked somehow grander than the building. Four steps led up to double wooden doors with brass handles on them—their little flash and gleam in the morning sun had been almost the first thing Charlotte saw as she drove in through the gates in the white school bus, among a great many other girls all wearing the same dark blue uniform as she wore herself. She had looked perhaps more primly organized than most, the pleats in her skirt very sharp and new; but she felt quite impossibly dazed and strange. In the rush to get out when the bus drew up, she had scarcely dared to move until she had heard suddenly over the jumble of voices her own name loudly called.
“Charlotte Makepeace, Charlotte Makepeace!”
“Yes,” Charlotte said shyly. “Yes,” again, more loudly, and a tall, fair girl much older than herself had grabbed the suitcase from her hand and led her out of the bus and crowd and noise, through the portico, up still empty stairs.
“I’m Sarah,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m taking you to your bedroom.” Otherwise she had said nothing, walking ahead all the way along miles of indecipherable passage and eventually down four steep steps. She had a curious walk, Charlotte noticed, as if with each step ropes were slackened in her and then pulled tight again. Perhaps this was because she was so tall.
The bedroom to which she took Charlotte had the name Cedar printed on a small blue card pinned to its door. All the bedrooms were called after trees, it seemed; but there was nothing here to suggest a cedar, though through the window Charlotte could see other kinds of trees. She could also see a corner of the river, the view cut off sharply by the jutting of the building on the right.
In the room itself were five black iron bedsteads like Charlotte’s own at her home, Aviary Hall. They were about as chipped and shabby, too, but had white cotton bedspreads on them, smooth as snow. There were five white chests of drawers, and across one corner a faded curtain hung on an iron rod to make the washing cubicle.
“Which bed do you want, Charlotte?” the tall girl Sarah asked, dumping Charlotte’s case down on one of the chests of drawers.
“Which am I allowed?” asked Charlotte falteringly. The bed nearest the window she saw had little wheels, while the others had ordinary castors. She wanted that bed quite fiercely when she thought about it. But, as a new girl, she did not think she could choose it.
“Any you like. Most would choose the window one. I would myself.”
“Oh, so would I,” Charlotte cried. “Can I really have that one?”
“You’re here first, aren’t you?” asked Sarah.
It was odd then that Sarah remained, staring out of the window, swinging the window cord, quite remote-seeming and separate. But Charlotte had an impression that Sarah had something to say to her. Once she even turned around and opened her mouth to speak, but looked back to the window again before any words were formed. Charlotte stood behind her awkwardly and did not know whether to remain there or move away.
Beyond the bedroom door, down the long linoleum-covered passages, she heard feet begin to thud and scurry and voices begin to call, the sounds both channeled and enlarged by the passages as if they were sounding boards, until the whole building seemed to hum and buzz. Sarah turned more urgently and started to speak, but at that moment several pairs of feet thumped down the steps outside, skidded on the linoleum at the bottom, and the door burst open. Four girls jostled in through the doorway.
“Hello—Elizabeth, Janet, Vanessa,” said Sarah, friendly but quite detached.
“Hello, Sarah,” the three said, polite but less friendly, Charlotte thought. The fourth girl had dark curly hair and looked rather red about the eyes as if she had been crying; she giggled now for no reason, showing unexpectedly white teeth.
“I’m Susannah,” she said eagerly. “I’m a new girl, you know.”
“This is Charlotte who is also new. You can keep each other company. Oh, since Charlotte was here first, I told her she had first choice of beds. She chose the window bed.”
Sarah did not look at Charlotte again, but smiled briefly at no one in particular, and went out.
For a moment Charlotte was stared at in silence. Susannah and Elizabeth also smiled at her. But Vanessa said sharply, “Trust snooty Sarah to let the new girl take the best bed.”
“I don’t mind which bed I have, honestly,” Susannah cried.
“Nor do I.” Charlotte blushed unhappily, grabbing her suitcase off the bed on which she had set it again. “I don’t mind having another bed.”
But she did mind, ridiculously.
“Oh, you’d better keep it now.” Vanessa was grudging but perhaps less sharp. Her freckled nose was pointed, her straight hair pale as paper. “You’d better keep it if snooty Sarah said. She thinks she’s queen of the school, that’s all, just because her sisters were here, and her mother donkey’s years ago.”
“Still it’s not Charlotte’s fault,” added Janet more kindly.
“How did you get here first anyway?” Vanessa asked. “Why didn’t you have to report to the staff room then, like us?”
“Sarah said she’d do it for me, since I was new.”
“Goodness, isn’t she kind to you. Getting you the best bed, too. Do you know her at home or something?”
“No. . . .” Charlotte was puzzled, for Sarah’s kindness did seem odd now. “I don’t know her. I don’t know anyone here at all.”
By suppertime Charlotte knew all about Susannah, about her family, her father and mother and brother and sister (they were all just like Susannah, judging by their photographs), about her cats and dogs and ponies and guinea pigs, about the time she had been a bridesmaid and the time she had broken her leg and the time she had been to France. Charlotte had been shown each of the photographs and ornaments that decorated Susannah’s chest of drawers and envied them a little, having brought none herself, so that her own chest of drawers remained quite bare and personless.
Indeed, after a while, Susannah’s family seemed more real to Charlotte than the school yet seemed. She scarcely felt as real herself and spent much of her time hunting for her name, on lists, for instance, games lists, table lists, class lists, cloakroom lists; on everything, everywhere, lockers, pegs, drawers, clothes, shoes, even on her toothbrush and sponge, as if she needed it to prove her own reality. When she was not looking for her name, she was writing it, and not just Charlotte either as she would have put on her books at home, or even at the little village school where she went before. Charlotte alone proved no identity at all. Charlotte Mary Makepeace she wrote in full and in her best handwriting on each of the different-colored exercise books given to her. Besides the satisfaction of writing her name so carefully, it seemed also curiously comforting to prove emphatically over and over again that she was still Charlotte Makepeace just as she had been yesterday at home. For since this morning she had felt herself to be so many different people, and half of them she did not recognize.
•
The next morning Charlotte woke before the bell. At least no bell had awakened her, and she doubted if she would have slept through it on only the second day of the term. As she floated out of sleep, she remembered it was Sunday, so that the bell would be rung quite late in any case.
She lay with her eyes shut for a while, comfortable as a cat, the sun warm and rosy on her lids. When at last she opened them, she found she was looking almost into the sun itself. Its dazzle was broken and contained by a tree. In return, it blurred the dark limits of the tree’s branches, beamed through them in places, and shone full into her eyes, making her blink.
The tree; Charlotte sat up with a jump, for there should be no tree in the sun’s way. In fact, you would not expect to see the sun at all because the red building should have hidden it.
But though there had been a building there yesterday and no tree, today there was a tree and no building. The tree was a huge, dark cedar tree.
