Rusty attempted to explain to Lance how awful it was at her grandmother’s and how her parents were like strangers with one another; but she soon gave up, because it upset him so much that he couldn’t even look at her. And she remembered then that his own parents weren’t living together.
As the weeks progressed, Rusty managed to smuggle odd bits and pieces – like her trapper cap and Wind-breaker – back to the school, and lived for clear nights.
Lance began to grow more cheerful, but he tended to come, weather permitting, always on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that sometimes Rusty visited the Cabin on her own. It took him some time to pick up the knack of making fires. It wasn’t easy learning in the middle of the night when he was tired and it was freezing cold; but Rusty never gave up encouraging him, because doing so took her mind off her own troubles.
And Lance tutored her in Latin, although progress was slow, since the lessons couldn’t start until the fire had been lit. Rusty still disliked the language, but it seemed to cheer Lance up. Unlike Rusty, he liked his Latin master, who was apparently so enthusiastic about his subject that Lance had grown to love it.
As November blew icily into December, Rusty lived in a strange, dark sort of tunnel. The girls continued to ignore her, the teachers continued to dislike her, and the weekends grew more nightmarish. Soon she grew so adept at daydreaming that she could turn off her surroundings and enter her own private cinema in seconds. Every day she looked anxiously out of the window at the sky. If it was the slightest bit overcast, her stomach shrank so much that it seemed to fold itself back to the base of her spine. Rain was her jailer.
One weekend she discovered, quite by accident, that her parents did not sleep in the same room, and it worried her. After all, Aunt Hannah and Uncle Bruno even slept in the same bed. When she and Skeet and Kathryn were little, they used to crawl into it with them at weekends and romp around on Uncle Bruno’s knees.
Her mother grew distant and began to work again at the nearest W.V.S. centre and, although it was never said in Rusty’s presence, she knew that her father and grandmother disapproved.
And Charlie began to throw tantrums. He reminded Rusty of a cat she knew, which hissed at you when you approached it, but, as soon as you stroked its chest, it became all soft and friendly again. But Rusty was prevented from hugging him. Her father said that he was a boy, not a baby, and that he’d have to learn to act like a man.
One evening she and Lance were sitting in the Cabin in the Woods, talking. At about 1 a.m. it had started to rain, so they couldn’t leave. It was their last evening together before the Christmas holidays.
‘Funny,’ said Rusty, ‘I usually hate the rain, but now that I’m here, I like it. Means I get to stay longer.’
‘If it doesn’t stop, we’ll have to leave in it and get wet,’ said Lance anxiously.
Rusty shrugged. ‘Oh well.’ And she threw another branch on to the fire. ‘I wish we didn’t have to have a vacation. It’s so long, too. Over four weeks!’ She groaned.
‘I thought you hated school,’ said Lance. He gave the fire a prod with a branch. ‘Do you think you’re getting used to it?’
‘To school? Are you kidding?’
‘Well, Fit be glad to get back to school.’
Rusty was astounded. ‘Are you nuts?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s far better than tiptoeing around and being polite at my aunt’s. At least at school you’re not miserable on your own. There’s plenty of other people there as miserable as you are.’
She pulled one of the old blankets around her shoulders, like an Indian squaw. ‘It’s this place I’ll miss,’ she said. ‘I feel like it’s my home now, don’t you?’
He stared into the fire. T told you,’ he said. ‘School’s my home, really.’
‘But, Lance,’ she said, leaning forward with intensity, ‘if you come with me to America, Aunt Hannah and Uncle Bruno, they’d let you live with us, I’m sure they would.’.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. ‘You’re not really going to America, are you, though?’
‘I certainly am,’ said Rusty hotly.
‘So why not now?’
‘Because it’s too darned cold, that’s why. I’m going to wait till it gets warmer.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’
‘I don’t know. When I’m good and ready.’
He looked away.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You wait,’ she said, huddling closer to the fire. ‘As soon as I have some money, I’ll get a train to Exeter, catch the Plymouth train, and then smuggle on board a ship.’
They fell silent. A large gust of wind howled through the trees outside.
‘I wonder,’ said Rusty quietly, ‘I wonder what everyone back home is doing. I can’t imagine Christmas without them. No Thanksgiving was bad enough. But no Christmas…’ She lowered her head.
Lance turned away, embarrassed. Hastily, she brushed the tears aside.
It was past three o’clock when the rain stopped and they left the Cabin. By the time they had emerged from the woods, Rusty’s sneakers were caked with mud, and although it was no longer raining, a mist-like drizzle spattered their faces and seeped into their dressing gowns. After she and Lance had wished each other a hurried Merry Christmas, Rusty pulled the flaps of her trapper cap down over her ears and began climbing the wall.
The lacrosse pitch squelched noisily under her feet. As soon as she reached the hard ground under the scaffolding, she scraped the mud from her sneakers and wiped them in the grass.
She stared up at the scaffolding, gripped one of the bars, and hauled herself up quickly. Her foot skidded along it. She stopped. Funny, she thought, less than two months earlier she was trying to throw herself off this scaffolding. Now she was struggling to stay on it.
By the time she managed to reach the dormitory window, she was damp all the way through to her pyjamas. She pulled off her sneakers and two pairs of socks and carried them, together with her uniform and sponge-bag, out of the dormitory and down the stairs to the washroom. She didn’t dare turn on the light. Instead, she propped her torch on the small window-ledge above one of the sinks. Her teeth chattering, she stripped and hung her Windbreaker, cardigan, pyjamas and underwear over all three radiators. Shivering and naked, she washed, put on her uniform, minus her cardigan and socks which were slowly steaming. She undid her plaits, rubbed her hair vigorously with a towel, brushed and replaited it and then desperately began cleaning her sneakers with a wet handkerchief.
She was shocked to hear the morning bell ringing. She hurriedly pulled on her cardigan and a pair of socks,
stepped into her sandals, grabbed the rest of her clothing and sneakers, and wrapped them in her dressing gown. Already she could hear footsteps coming down the stairs. She turned the light on, ran back to the windowsill, and flung her torch into her dressing-gown bundle. Then, as casually as she could, she picked up her sponge-bag and towel and sauntered towards the door, where she met Judith Poole and the three girls from her dormitory.
‘Order mark,’ growled Judith Poole sleepily. ‘You know you’re not supposed to get up before the bell rings.’ She glanced up at Rusty’s head. ‘Have you washed your hair?’
‘Uh-huh. It was getting itchy.’
‘Oh, leave her,’ said her friend, Reggie. ‘If you give her any more order marks, the House’ll do badly.’
‘There is such a thing as honour,’ snapped Judith. ‘You know I don’t like giving order marks.’
I bet, thought Rusty, sneaking quickly out of the door.
‘But it’s my duty to report any…’
Rusty was already out of earshot.
It was during assembly, when the form places were being announced, that Rusty learned to her surprise that she had come in tenth in her form. Second from the bottom. From all the comments made about her school-work, she had expected to be last. But her English was reasonably good, and by the end of the term she was beginning to pick up the mathematics and scrape through the history tests. What was even more surprising was that she was not the worst in the form when it came to Latin. Just the next to worst. That was thanks to Lance’s testing her vocabulary and verb declensions. However, in French, geography, scripture and botany she was still hopeless.
She was so numbed with tiredness that it all passed over her head. All she was conscious of, as she sat there with the other girls, was her damp cardigan and socks clinging to her.
They stood up to sing the school song. When they had finished, Rusty was amazed to see that some of the girls were quietly dabbing their eyes. Rusty gazed, stupefied, at them. Boy, they had actually been moved by the words of the song; about the glory and honour of the school and all that stuff. She shook her head. At least she had survived the first term. Now all she had to do was find a way of surviving the holidays.
As soon as Mrs Grace had opened the door of Rusty’s father’s house, Peggy sent her upstairs to wash her hands. On the way up, she leaned over the banisters and saw her mother go towards the study. She was carrying the envelope with Rusty’s school report in it.
In the bathroom Rusty stared at her face in the mirror. It surprised her to see how much thinner she had become. She took a good look at her teeth. When Lower Four A had to visit a dentist, she was the only one who didn’t have to have any fillings. When the dentist said she had teeth like a race horse, someone had commented, ‘And the brains of one.’ And Filly had actually said, ‘Horses are jolly clever, if you want to know.’ Rusty had been surprised. For a moment she thought Filly was sticking up for her. But she wasn’t. She was sticking up for horses.
Rusty dreaded meeting her father. She had hardly finished having her tea when the summons came. Her grandmother strode in, poker-faced, and asked her to go and see him immediately.
When Rusty opened the study door, she found him standing with his back to the fire. ‘Close the door,’ he said.
She did so, and stood rather awkwardly in front of it.
‘I hope,’ he said angrily, ‘you have some explanation for this.’ And he waved the report.
‘Uh-huh,’ she began. ‘See, back in America we don’t start some subjects until high school. We sort of catch up later, I guess. And the history I studied was American history, and some of the spelling I learned was different.
For instance, in America we spell theatre with an er, and here you spell it re, see. And some of the words have two l’s instead of one l, so it’s confusing. I don’t think I did too badly, though. I only came tenth, and one place from the bottom in Latin, and it’s my first term.’
‘Virginia,’ he said quietly, ‘I have yet to come to your academic achievements. What concerns me is your appalling behaviour. You seem to have a record number of marks.’ He slammed the paper with his fist. ‘Bad marks, order marks, punctuality marks, and even’ – he paused as if to gain breath — ‘a discipline mark!’
‘Oh those,’ said Rusty. ‘They’re on account of my accent.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that you were given a punctuality mark because of your accent?’
Rusty nodded. ‘Because of my accent, no one’d show me around, so I kept getting lost in the hallways, and that made me late.’
‘And the discipline mark?’
‘Oh, that’s because I spoke to a boy. Do you believe it?’
‘You spoke to a boy?’ he said slowly.
‘Uh-huh. See, he was sent to Vermont, where Grandma Fitz and Gramps live. That’s Mr and Mrs Fitzgibbons. They’re Aunt Hannah’s mom and pop. And I hadn’t met–’
‘Virginia!’ he roared. ‘If I ever hear of you talking to or having anything to do with a boy, you will be confined to your room for your entire holiday period. Is that understood?’
Rusty stared at him aghast.
‘The only males you will be allowed to associate with,’ he continued, ‘are myself and your brother.’
‘But why?’
‘Because I say so.’
‘How dare you speak to me in that manner! How dare you!’
‘Why shouldn’t I? I think you’re just about the meanest person I ever met.’
‘Go to your room this instant,’ he said, stepping forward.
‘My pleasure,’ she shouted back.
She slammed the door behind her and stormed up the stairs. As she passed the bathroom door, her mother flung it open.
‘Virginia,’ she said, ‘what’s happening?’
‘Father’s sent me to my room. And that’s where he’d probably like me to stay.’ She whirled around to face her mother. ‘I wish I’d never come back here. I wish I was with Aunt Hannah and Uncle Bruno.’
It was too late. The words had left her lips. Her mother looked devastated. She turned hastily away.
As Rusty hauled herself up the stairs, she felt horrible. She’d have given anything just to die there and then; just to go to sleep and never wake up.
She threw open her bedroom door and crawled into bed. She was too tired and too cold even to cry.
She was woken up by the bedside lamp being turned on. Her mother was standing by the bed with a cup of cocoa and two slices of bread and margarine. Rusty pushed herself up to a sitting position. The room was so cold that a great cloud of mist rose from her mouth. Her mother handed her the cocoa and sat quietly at the end of the bed.
Rusty peered at her over the mug.
‘I’m awfully sorry about what I said,’ she whispered. ‘I was just so mad. He never lets me explain or anything...’ Her voice trailed away.
‘Drink that cocoa and eat up,’ Peggy said.
Rusty slowly sipped the drink and ate her way through what she realized was her supper. When she had finished, she pulled the blankets and eiderdown up to her neck.
‘I’m sorry about the report, too,’ she said. ‘I’m trying awful hard, but sometimes it just doesn’t go in.’
‘Do you think,’ said her mother hesitantly, ‘that you’d get on better with your schoolwork if you stayed at school?’
‘Oh no,’ said Rusty quickly. ‘I’m doing O.K. Even with Latin. Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant. See? I love. You love. He, she, it loves.’ She paused.
‘Look,’ said Peggy, ‘try and be patient with your father. He’s not used to being with children. It’s all very strange to him.’
Why was it, thought Rusty, that she had to be patient with everyone? She had to be patient with Charlie, patient with her grandmother, lose her accent, and now be patient with her father. No one was patient with her.
‘Mother,’ she said slowly, ‘I’m not going to apologize to him for answering back, because I don’t think it’s wrong.’
‘Oh, Virginia.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Well, I’m afraid you’re confined to your room until you do.’
‘But that’s blackmail! I mean, what am I going to do about Christmas shopping?’ She paused. ‘Oh well, since I don’t have an allowance, I guess I couldn’t buy anything anyway.’
Her mother stood up.
‘I’ll try and see if he’ll compromise. But he’s pretty displeased about your bad conduct at school, and your grandmother is quite horrified.’
‘But, Mother, I got a whole bunch of marks just for saying “O.K.”‘
‘And some, I suspect, for answering back?’
‘A couple.’
Her mother looked embarrassed for a moment. ‘Your
3O father also tells me that you received a discipline mark for talking to a boy.’
Rusty nodded.
‘Why, exactly, did you speak to him?’
‘He’d been sent to Vermont. He’d even gone skating on Lake Champlain, winters. It was an accident. I heard someone call him Tank. I thought it was me first of all, but then I saw this boy across the road, so I called out “Yank” too, and he turned around. I mean, he was from New England.’
‘Well, I’d rather you didn’t do it again,’ she said gently. ‘That behaviour is rather looked down on here. Do you understand?’
‘No, I don’t. What’s wrong with talking to a boy?’ She was about to add, ‘He’s my buddy,’ but she swallowed the words down quickly.
‘I know it’s difficult, but if a girl is known as someone who associates with boys, she’s not considered “nice”. There’ll be plenty of time for all that sort of thing when you’ve finished university.’
Rusty nodded dumbly. She was too staggered to speak.
Until Christmas Eve, Rusty stayed in her room except for breakfast and lunch. She was allowed a small electric heater, but it gave out little warmth, and she soon developed blisters on her legs from sitting too close to it. One day she cleared her dressing-table and spread out her stencilling equipment. At first she couldn’t summon up any enthusiasm at all, but gradually, as she began making sketches and mixing the paints on an old plate, the colours seemed to cheer her up.
She dipped the squares of thick card that Grandma Fitz had given her into a solution of linseed oil and turpentine, dried them, drew designs on them, and carved them out with her special stencil knife. Once she had cut out the designs, she pressed the cards firmly on to the paper.
Using one flower-and-leaf design, she painted the leaves
3O green and the flowers with the mustard-yellow paint. One design was of a single round-headed flower, stem and leaves. She painted the flower crimson and the leaves and stem brown. In between the leaves she placed a tiny stencil of small-petalled flowers and painted them yellow.
She remembered the time when Grandma Fitz had taken her to visit some old houses in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. They had travelled hundreds of miles to see them, and each time they had walked into one of them Rusty had been astounded, for on the walls, curtains and bedspreads there had been an extraordinary array of different stencil designs. Because some of them had been painted as far back as the 1800s, the paint was a little faded, but Rusty could still see them as clear as clear. There were leaves and wild flowers, running vines, hearts, acorns, birds, pineapples, baskets and urns of flowers and fruit, weeping willow trees, men and women in horse-drawn carriages or in sleighs, and they were painted on lampshades and boxes, in the panels of doors and on furniture, in the richest and palest of reds, greens, Prussian blues, black, rust and ochre.
As she sat in her bleak bedroom, the memories of those trips with her American grandmother slowly flooded back; and as she started remembering some of the old traditional designs, she felt she was back in the Fitzes’ home in Vermont, with everything spread out all over the long, cherry-red table, in front of a great roaring fire.
The night before Christmas Eve, Rusty’s father granted her permission to go with her mother and Charlie to see the Christmas lights.
They took a train to London. Rusty was disappointed. Compared with the Christmas lights in America, the English ones were a washout. But Charlie was completely entranced by them.
‘It’s the first time he’s seen Christmas lights,’ explained her mother. ‘He’s been used to the blackout.’
Christmas Day was orderly and quiet. After a polite meal of chicken and vegetables, they all went into the drawing room, where a small Christmas tree stood in the corner. It was so unlike the noisy Vermont Christmases, where the tree was as high as the ceiling, and where endless gifts and candy and popcorn hung from the branches and filled half the floor space. As they sat down, and her father stood by the tree handing out the parcels, Rusty suddenly spotted a group of packages from America addressed to her.
‘I paid a visit to Devon, the last week of your term,’ explained her mother, ‘just to check that the roof hadn’t fallen in, and they were there, waiting for you. Mrs Hatherley thought we might be spending Christmas there, so she hadn’t bothered to send them on.’
Mrs Dickinson Senior cleared her throat. ‘I hope you’ll open your family’s presents first, Virginia,’ she said stiffly.
Luckily the Omsks and Fitzes had sent Charlie presents too: a car that you wound up with a key, coloured pencils, and a large jigsaw puzzle made of wood.
From her father Rusty received writing paper and stamps for her thank-you letters, and from her grandmother handkerchiefs. Her mother gave her a small handmade doll.
‘Thank you, Mother,’ said Rusty, hiding her dismay. She knew it must have been hard getting a doll, but it made her feel like such a little child.
Eventually she opened the presents from America.
Jinkie had sent two pairs of elegant white bras and pants, Alice a warm tan-and-green-plaid shirt, Skeet a beautiful fishing fly, Janey a pair of bobby socks, and Kathryn the latest Nancy Drew mystery book.
From Grandma Fitz and Gramps she received a book called Early American Stencilling on Walls and Furniture by Janet Waring. Together with the book were jars of paint, linseed oil, turpentine and spare cards. From Aunt Hannah there was a huge ochre-coloured sweater with a big R on it in a russet colour.
‘It’s a sloppy Joe!’ she yelled.
The last parcel was from Uncle Bruno, and was so well wrapped that it took her a while to battle through all the cardboard. Inside was a record.
‘Frank Sinatra!’ she whispered.
‘Thank goodness we don’t have a gramophone,’ said her grandmother.
‘It’s O.K.,’ said Rusty. ‘I know this one by heart. It’s my favourite. That’s why Uncle Bruno sent it. I can imagine it going round and round, and I’ll hear the words and the tune and everything.’
Just then she noticed that Charlie was gazing up at her, entranced. He stared at her for a moment and then suddenly began pushing the car along the floor.
‘Broom, broom!’ he growled.
It was the final Friday before Rusty’s return to school. Charlie had gone to bed, and Rusty was in the bathroom dipping several cards into a solution of linseed oil and turpentine to make them more durable. She lined the bath-tub with newspaper and pegged the cards on to a piece of string she had attached over it. She was just opening the door to leave when she heard her father’s voice rising loudly from the drawing room.
‘I’ve never heard anything so absurd!’ he shouted. ‘Go to university? What are you thinking of?’
Boy, thought Rusty, her father was on her side. He didn’t want her to go to university, either. Maybe she could go to art school after all. She couldn’t quite hear her mother. Words like ‘independent’, ‘more security’, ‘women nowadays’, came drifting up the stairs.
‘And all this Latin is quite absurd.’
‘But she needs it for university.’
‘Quite. So if she doesn’t do it, then the subject of her going need never rise again.’
Better and better, thought Rusty.
She slipped out on to the landing.
‘At least let her continue these next two terms in the same form. It would be cruel to have her put in a B form now.’
‘The B’s?’ gulped Rusty.
‘After all,’ continued her mother, ‘you’re the one who’s worried about her being unsettled.’
As Rusty crept down the stairs, she heard her father say, ‘And when she’s finished at school, she’ll do a good cookery course and if she’s fortunate she’ll make a good marriage.’
Rusty was stunned. She didn’t want to do a cookery course either.
‘Well, I want her to have a career,’ said her mother.
‘Margaret!’ said her grandmother. ‘What can you be thinking of?’
‘You’ve done perfectly well without a career,’ said her father.
‘But I have enjoyed earning my own money.’
There was a pause.
‘And when did you ever earn your own money?’
‘In Devon. As a mechanic’
‘But I thought that was voluntary.’
‘The work I did for the W.V.S. was, but I was paid for private work.’
‘Yes. Well,’ her father said at last, ‘it’s hardly the sort of thing to brag about.’
‘Anyway, dear,’ said Mrs Dickinson Senior, ‘the War’s behind us. We’ve all had to do strange things. Now we’ve got to get back to normal.’
Just then the telephone rang. Rusty dived back up to the bathroom as Mrs Grace came shuffling into the hall to answer it.
Rusty kept the bathroom door slightly ajar.
‘Peggy?’ said Mrs Grace into the receiver. ‘I’m sorry, but there’s no Peggy here.’
The drawing-room door opened and Rusty’s mother came into the hallway. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Grace,’ she said. ‘That’s for me. Hello. Peggy here.’
Rusty opened the door a fraction wider.
‘Ivy! How lovely to hear you. How are you?’
Rusty was about to close the door when she noticed the dismay on her mother’s face.
‘What!’ she whispered. ‘Are you sure?’
Rusty watched her push her hand through her hair.
‘Yes… Yes. But why didn’t they let you know sooner?… I see.’
Rusty knew something awful had happened, and she guessed that Ivy was pouring whatever it was out to her mother, for she hardly spoke.
‘Now look,’ she said at last. ‘I’m going to catch a train down there tonight. No, no. I insist. I won’t be able to stay long, I’m afraid. Just until tomorrow night. Virginia’s just about to go back to school. But I’ll come down again next week… Oh, yes, she’s settling in very well. Now don’t worry about a thing. Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ She slammed the phone down and glanced at the drawing-room door. ‘What a mess,’ she murmured. ‘What a bloody mess.’
Rusty was shocked. It was the first time she had heard her mother swear. She waited until Peggy had returned to the drawing room before slipping back out on to the landing. Downstairs it sounded as though all hell was let loose.
Within minutes, her mother was flying out of the door. Rusty sprinted up the stairs to her bedroom, hid her stencils in the drawers, and leapt on to the bed with a book. It wasn’t long before her mother was knocking at the door.
‘Come in,’ she said nonchalantly.
Her mother stepped in quickly.
‘What’s wrong, Mother?’
‘I’m going to Southampton tonight to see Ivy Flanna-gan. I’ve asked your grandmother and father to tell Charlie that I’ll be back tomorrow evening. Remind him of that, won’t you?’
‘What should I say if he asks questions?’
‘Say that Auntie Ivy is not very well and that I’m going to try and make her feel better.’
‘Is it the baby?’ she whispered.
Her mother shook her head. She looked agitated.
‘Is she going to die, like Beatie?’
‘No. It’s nothing like that.’ She leaned on the rail at the foot of the bed. ‘She’s just received a telegram from an Australian hospital. They say that her first husband is a patient there.’
‘But I thought he was dead.’
‘Apparently not. He was taken prisoner by the Japanese. When he was removed from the prison camp, he was hardly conscious, and for some reason he was taken to Australia.’
‘But,’ stammered Rusty, ‘what about Captain Flanna-gan? I mean, they love each other, don’t they?’
Her mother nodded. ‘I’m afraid it’s all a bit of a muddle.’ She looked awkward for a moment. ‘You will keep an eye on Charlie, won’t you?’
‘Sure I will.’
As soon as her mother closed the door, the gong sounded for supper. Rusty gave a loud groan and rolled off the bed.
‘If a bomb fell, that darned gong would still be on time,’ she muttered.