I caught the quarter to eight train to school the next morning, saying I was flower monitress or something—which I was—and went left under the subway to Miss Philemon’s flat. I had to beat my way against the wind and rain along the promenade as I had forgotten my macintosh. It was a foul dark morning. You couldn’t have believed in the sun of yesterday afternoon. I climbed the four flights up to the flat and rang the bell, and she came to the door eating Marie biscuits.
‘Come in,’ she said, ‘my goodness me, you’re wet!’ She stood back blinking and smiling. There was a great sniff over by the window and Miss Crake, the art mistress, launched herself off the curtains and shambled across the room and out of the door behind me. She gave me the fright of my life. She was a huge-boned, bleak sort of woman who cared for nobody except Iris Ingledew who was the only girl in the school who could paint. She trailed a big carrier made of linoleum with paintbrushes sticking out of the top. What put me off was that she must have been watching me as I came along the seafront. I wondered what she’d been saying.
‘Sit down by the electric fire,’ said Miss Philemon, ‘and have a biscuit. I always have biscuits for breakfast—when I can get them that is. I do wish we could use our clothing coupons for food, don’t you? I’d so much rather have food than clothing.’
I said, ‘Yes,’ and sat down and gazed at the electric fire, an awful old bent thing, and the clock started ticking very loudly.
‘Miss Crake called in to tell me that they have caught the poor prisoner. Will you have some tea, dear? It hasn’t been made long.’ I said no thank you, and the clock ticked on. After a while Miss Philemon picked up her morning newspaper and began to read. I became stiller and stiller and suddenly I found I wasn’t sitting there any more. At least I was. My body was but I was looking down at it from somewhere up near the ceiling. I saw the top of my head quite clearly, my hair dry in the middle where my school hat had been, and wet round the edges, and my feet stretched out to the fire. What a poor looking thing, I thought. It’s grand to be free.
Then she rattled the paper and I returned with a jolt and a sigh. ‘I think I’d better be going,’ I said.
‘That’s right. You don’t want to be late for prayers and neither do I.’ I put on my horrible wet coat and hat and went down the stairs again and outside. But when I got on to the promenade I thought, ‘I really ought to have told her why I came. She’ll think I’m a bit funny. Anyone but her would have gone on and on to find out. It was really very good-mannered of her.’
I walked back upstairs to the flat’s front door and rang again and Miss Philemon answered it, wearing her hat now and carrying the huge suitcase.
‘I thought I’d better tell you what it was,’ I said. ‘When you said Miss Crake had heard they’d caught him I thought it would be all right. But still, I think I ought to tell you why I came.’
‘Are you sure you must?’ she said. ‘Some things are much better kept to oneself. Don’t feel you have to tell people everything. It is a great mistake. You often lose things if you pass them around. If you have been doing something wrong don’t think you’ll get rid of it by passing it to me.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s nothing wrong. But I’d better tell you. It’s about the prisoner. I met him.’
‘You—what dear?’
‘Met him. I met him yesterday afternoon in the sea-wood. He was bashing and bashing his head against the bandstand.’
Instead of saying ‘Whatever were you doing in the seawood?’ she said, ‘Did he see you?’
‘Well he wouldn’t of.’
‘“Would not have done”,’ she said.
‘Would not have done. But he started smashing at the dahlias.’
‘Smashing?’
‘Well, slashing. Pulling them and slashing them with a knife, and swearing at them. So I went for him.’
Miss Philemon sat down suddenly on the nearest chair and shut her eyes. ‘Yes?’ she said.
‘I went for him and said he mustn’t spoil them and he was horrible and shouted like anything, and then he started crying and sat down on the grass.’
She said, ‘Go on.’
‘And, then I felt sorry for him and—well I went away and left him there.’
She put down her case which she had forgotten to put down before and stood up and went over to the window and looked out through the rain at the cliffs. Her voice sounded different and I went all cold again like yesterday.
‘Did this man touch you?’
‘No.’
‘Do you swear this?’
‘Yes.’
‘You do realize that you were in great danger.’
‘Yes, Miss Philemon.’
‘Do you swear that you will never, never, never wander about in lonely places like this again? That if ever you find that you are alone with somebody behaving in this odd way you will go at once, that instant? That you will report it to the police?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Do you swear this, Jessica? Otherwise I must tell Miss LeBouche. If the man had not been caught I should have had to tell her this minute. Do you swear that he didn’t touch you?’
‘Yes, Miss Philemon. Actually, I did touch him.’
‘What!’
‘I patted him. He was crying. He really was absolutely miserable. I don’t think he would have hurt me.’
‘You patted him?’
‘Yes. I patted him on the head.’
‘And then . . .?’
‘And then I went away.’
‘And if it happened again?’
I thought.
‘It wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘It won’t. You see it was very . . . Well the sun was out, and there was this bandstand and the dahlias. And he was bashing and slashing and he was saying horrible words like an animal, a pig, a pig . . .’ I was crying, and she said, ‘Hush, let me think. Have a biscuit,’ and the room went silent again except for the awful clanking tick of the alarm-clock. After ages she turned from the window and shook herself. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘All right. No more. We shall say no more. Not you and not I. Keep it and don’t worry. Only promise me to take care. Promise me that you have learned something.’
I said, ‘Yes, yes I do promise that.’ (Though goodness knows what, I thought. Why can’t she say a bit more? I began to feel fed up. She was being like other people now, hinting things and saying nothing.)
‘So long,’ she said, ‘as you have told me everything?’ I thought, ‘Why haven’t I? Why haven’t I told her what he said? “You very preety.” I bet no one ever told her that.’
‘Off you go then. Off you go, child, before you miss prayers. You look tired. Don’t worry any more.’
As I stood up I saw a picture over the mantelpiece of some women standing side by side carrying baskets of fruit. One had her head turned and was speaking quietly to the other. They had no clothes on above their skirts and they were some sort of Africans. They were very steady and still against dark green trees. You could tell it was a man who was painting them and they were not easy about it. I couldn’t look more than a blink and I fell over my feet and dashed out of the flat and down the stairs and along by the sea in the beastly rain with the wind pushing me along behind. I rushed through the shoe-bags and was just in time to line up for prayers.
‘Very nice.’
‘I said “Very nice,” dear. Your essay. A very nice little essay.’
I went and got it and saw ‘V.G. Excellent work’ at the bottom in Dobbs’s clear big writing. I slapped the book down on my desk and wound my legs round my chair again. Out of the window the long waves were rolling in blotted out now and again by the splatters of rain on the glass. They say there is no land between Cleveland Spa and the North Pole. My desk with John Clare on it, and the window frame and the road and the barbed wire are the last solid things until the ice begins. Far away out there are a few dismal penguins looking towards Cleveland Spa and some loping old bears waving their heads about. Nothing else breathing above the water. The wind battered and screamed.
‘. . . be the first of many,’ she was saying, ‘. . . lucid, . . . fluent . . . For you have ability, Jessica. And I am really quite impressed with your spelling and punctuation, though the actual handwriting is very wild. Very interesting use of the semicolon. Are you listening?’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Dobbs.’
‘I said I hope it will be the first of many.’
‘Oh yes. Yes I can always do that sort of thing.’
‘Oh you can, can you?’ She began to push her books about and shift in her chair, and because of this gift I have I knew she was saying, ‘Why do I dislike this child so much?’
‘Jessie-Carr,’ she said, ‘will you please stop staring out of the window. You can read first today. Come along, The Cloister and the Hearth, Chapter ninety wasn’t it?’
At Break we couldn’t go out and had to cram into the hall—the big room at the front of the building where we had prayers. It had a piano in it and a splintery floor. The little girls in the first year pinged and ponged at the piano and pushed each other off the stool. There was a dismal sort of fire and the big girls huddled round it. I couldn’t be bothered to push in although I was frozen and I went over to the window and stood staring at the sea again. After a while I began to roll the blackout cord all over my face.
‘Why weren’t you on the train, Jessie-Carr?’
‘Oh shurrup.’
‘Oh all right.’ Helen flounced off. ‘Antediluvian,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Oh nothing.’
‘What’s antediluvian when it’s at home?’
‘You are.’
‘Good, I like being.’
‘She doesn’t know what it means,’ said Florence. ‘Don’t worry, she probably made it up.’
‘Jessica is so fluent. Jessie-Carr is so fluent,’ said Dottie.
I rolled the blind cord and leaned my face on the window and Florence asked a question, which she hardly ever does in case she is intruding. ‘What’s the matter? What you thinking about?’
I said, ‘Chocolate biscuits. Chocolate biscuits, cold ham, banana split, treacle tart. That woman in Elsie Meeney’s. Eclairs. I’m ravenous.’
‘What did you have for breakfast?’
‘Can’t remember. It was early. I had to get the early train.’
The little girls were squealing, ‘When the war is OVER’ at the top of their beastly voices. Some of them had got a rope and were skipping on the bare boards. I said, ‘Oh help! I’ve got a flaming headache.’
‘Why did you get the early train?’
‘Oh, I had to take something.’
‘Take something?’
‘Just to Miss Philemon’s flat.’ Florence said nothing and the little girls screamed, ‘So cheery, cheery OH!’
‘I went in.’
‘Did you? How . . .’
‘Oh it’s just a flat,’ I said. ‘Just a flat. But honestly! What a mess. Honestly, you’ve never seen! Mess everywhere. Books on the floor, under the sofa, on the mantelpiece. Her butter ration was on the clock. There’s clothes all over the place and she was eating Marie biscuits. Old Crake was there too, and she was eating Marie biscuits. And all her brushes sticking out of that bag. Miss P. was in that hat with the brim waving about—I think she’s trimmed it herself. She says she can’t be bothered with clothes, and I said, “You don’t say!” Well I didn’t but I nearly did.’
‘I thought you liked Miss Philemon.’
‘Liked her? What made you think I liked her? She’s cracked. You ought to see the mess. Old tins lying around—sardines and stuff and old green bread—and her pictures! She’s got filthy pictures.’
‘What pictures?’
‘Well one picture anyway. On the wall. Above the fireplace.’
‘What was it?’
‘Well, don’t say anything but it was some women, green women, and they were bare.’
‘What, all bare?’
‘No, their top halfs.’
‘Crippen, how big?’
‘Enormous.’
‘What were they doing?’
‘Just standing about. Holding fruit. And all their bosoms!’
‘Crikey! Have you told Dottie?’
We went into lessons and it was Geography. Miss Pemberton said almost at once, ‘That will do now. I don’t mind a bit of talking when it’s only tracing, but you are getting wild in that corner. What on earth is the matter, Helen?’
There were gulps and snorts and queer noises, especially from Dottie who asked if she could go for a drink of water and dropped a note on Betty Dawley’s desk as she passed. It said, ‘Miss Philemon has got a picture of green bosoms. Passiton.’ Betty Dawley read it carefully, sniffed and passed it to Joan Pearson who read it with distaste. They raised their eyebrows and shoulders at each other and Betty yawned. ‘Some people have got a funny sense of humour,’ said Joan.
‘Antediluvian,’ said Betty.
‘For goodness sake!’ said Miss Pemberton. ‘What is the row in the corner? It’s like the Marx Brothers. Clatter, clatter, gulp and crash. You are a silly lot. Betty, what did you say just then?’
‘Antediluvian,’ said Betty going pink but looking as if she didn’t care who knew it.
‘What is antediluvian? Me, I suppose. Well I feel it this morning so I’ll agree with you. Get on with the Rift Valley. That’s even more so.’ (‘I told you antediluvian wasn’t disgusting,’ said Florence.)
‘My Granny says “buzzums”,’ said Cissie and I began to snort like a pig. ‘Nine green buzzums,’ sang Florence in her booming whisper, ‘Hanging on the wall. Nine green buzzums,
‘If nine green buzzums
Should accidentally fall . . .’
‘Right. I’ve had enough,’ said Miss Pemberton. ‘Bring me that piece of paper, Betty, and let’s see what it’s all about.’
Betty stood up with a triumphant turn of her head and an air of being above it all. ‘I don’t know what it is,’ she said. ‘It was just put on my desk by someone.’ She picked it up in her fingertips and set off across the room with it, but fell over on the way because of Florence’s stretched-out foot and in the scrabble to get it back only got half of it so that it read ‘. . . picture of green bosoms’. Florence quickly swallowed ‘Miss Philemon has a . . .’
‘“Picture of green . . .” Good heavens, it looks like BOSOMS.’ Miss P. stared all round us. There were twenty-one of us all gazing back at her—some blankly, some anxiously, some (Cissie horrible Comberbach) with a creepy sort of excitement. When she got to my face she kept on looking and because of this gift I have I knew she was thinking how plain we all were and me in particular. ‘Maybe it’s just the dreadful uniforms,’ she was thinking, ‘or the late nights or the food . . . Green bosoms? What on earth are they up to now?’
‘Tell you what,’ she said suddenly, ‘let’s have some chocolate. I had a food parcel this morning from Canada. Turn up Canada again and I’ll tell you all about it. And Jessica, love, you take the box round. Five each and stop squealing the lot of you. They’re probably antediluvian. They’ve been three months in the post.’
I really absolutely loathe girls who get keen on mistresses. They make me ill. But I do very much like Miss Pemberton. She has about the best sense of anyone I’ve ever met.