Magda was lying in wait at the entrance to the Staff Locker Room.
“Lisa!” she cried. “I hope your name is also Lesley as your mother called you on the telephone. My young friend, this is a most happy day!” And she kissed her exuberantly on each cheek and held her hands, beaming with pleasure. “Now your future shines like the sun above you!” she exclaimed.
At this moment Fay entered, running rather late. She stopped however on hearing these words.
“What?” she said. “Is she engaged?”
“Oh tush!” cried Magda. “At her age? God forbid. No—have you not seen the newspaper? She has obtained magnificent results in the Leaving Certificate. Mon Dieu! First-class honours, four As, a B, not to be too horribly clever—she is such a good girl! How pleased Stefan and I were—he sends his love of course—we are to have a dinner party for all you clever young people, Michael Foldes has done very well too, did you look? And another girl we also know, so there will be a small celebration soon, I hope next weekend. We will discuss the details later.”
“Gosh,” said Fay. “Gee, Lisa, that’s terrific. Congratulations, I mean it!”
Lisa began to be self-conscious because all those standing nearby were now taking note and adding their voices. “Passed the Leaving have you? Good-oh!”
Within a minute of her arrival at Ladies’ Cocktail Miss Cartright appeared, and Mr. Ryder followed shortly after.
“The world is your oyster,” said the latter. “Mind you don’t swallow it whole!”
Lisa laughed, but her apprehensions about the approaching encounter with her intransigent father were severe. She was suspended between elation and dread, an almost dreamlike condition.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she kept saying, smiling and smiling. How nice everyone was. Finally the fuss abated and she turned to find something to do so that she might at last efface herself.
“Fay’s just told me you’ve done very well in the examinations,” said Miss Jacobs in a matter-of-fact tone. “Is that right? Well, that’s no surprise to me at all. I don’t expect it’s a surprise to you either. You’re a clever girl, I could see that. It’s a pleasure to work with you and I’ll be sorry when you leave us. You’ll be going to the university, won’t you, of course you will. A clever girl is the most wonderful thing in all Creation you know: you must never forget that. People expect men to be clever. They expect girls to be stupid or at least silly, which very few girls really are, but most girls oblige them by acting like it. So you just go away and be as clever as ever you can: put their noses out of joint for them. It’s the best thing you could possibly do, you and all the clever girls in this city and the world. Now, then. We’d better get on and sell some cocktail frocks, hadn’t we? Yes indeed.”
Lisa wandered about for a while in the half-empty city after leaving Goode’s. The afternoon sun lay along the pavements like a benediction: she felt herself still to be in that suspended state and she was dawdling because she did not want to get home before her father awoke. She realised as she walked along George Street that a great barrier had truly been crossed in her life, a barrier greater even than those she had lately crossed, and she felt extremely strange. But to feel strange, she thought, has lately begun to be almost ordinary. Would strangeness increasingly from now on become normality?
Her parents were sitting in the kitchen when she pushed open the back door. Her father rose.
“Well, Lesley,” he said, “I believe congratulations are in order. Everyone at work sends you theirs too. I’ve got the night editor and all of them on my back. I can’t see what you want with exams and first-class honours and universities and all that when you’re a girl. But still. Congratulations. You’ve done very well.”
“Thanks, Dad,” said Lisa.
“So what do you reckon you’ll do now?” said her father. “You’ve got to make your own decisions now. You’re almost grown-up.”
“You know what I want to do now,” said Lisa. “But you said I couldn’t. So I don’t know yet.”
“Oh, I suppose you mean the uni,” said her father. “Yes, well. I’ll think about it. That’s all. I’ll think about it. We’ll see if you get that scholarship—you won’t be going there if you don’t. I’m not paying your fees. It’s bad enough that I’d have to keep you as long as you’re there. So I’ll think about it, if you get that scholarship. I’ll give it careful thought. You needn’t celebrate yet. But I’ll tell you one thing: if I decide you can go, and you do go, if I ever hear of you being mixed up with any of those libertarians they have there, you’re out of this house like a shot and I never want to see you again, is that understood? Right then. If you go, no libertarians, not even one.”
Lisa was at last able to catch her mother’s eye. They gleamed at each other in secret. The telephone rang.
“You get that, Lisa,” said her mother. “It’s probably that Michael Foldes, he called you earlier.”
Lisa returned a few minutes later.
“What did he want?” asked her father suspiciously.
Mrs. Miles was putting the luncheon on the table: bread, cheese, tomatoes, and a jar of pickles; and some salami which she had indeed managed to find.
“Oh, nothing,” said Lisa very calmly. “He just wanted to know if I was doing anything tonight.”
“Of course you are,” said her father. “We’re all going out to celebrate, aren’t we? A slap-up meal at Kings Cross or somewhere like that.”
“Yes, that’s what I told him,” said Lisa. “Oh, and he’s asked me to go to a dance with him next Saturday week.”
“A dance?” said her mother. “Where?”
“Oh, the Yacht Squadron,” said Lisa with extreme sangfroid. “It’s being given by the parents of some of his friends at school. It’s to celebrate the exam results. They were going to cancel if anyone had failed but no one did, so it’s on. Can I go?”
“Well of course,” said her astounded mother. “But what will you wear?” She felt slightly desperate: a frock suitable for a dance of that kind—well!
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Lisa. “There’s a frock in the sale at Goode’s that will do. I’ll buy that.”
“Whatever next?” said her father. “And who is this bloke? Do I know him?”
His wife and daughter reassured him. Mr. Miles suddenly felt sad. Lesley had always been there, a kid, not the son he’d wanted, and now suddenly she was going out into the world; now suddenly it was almost all over, and he’d hardly noticed it as it flashed past him.
“Well, enjoy yourself while you can,” he said. “And what’s this?” He picked up a slice of salami.
“That’s salami,” said Mrs. Miles. “I got it for Lesley.”
“There’s no keeping up with you, Lesley,” said her father. And, he thought, it’s true. She’s even beginning to look pretty. Filling out. Quite the young lady. Well, what a day it had been.
“Salami, eh,” said Mr. Miles, tasting it. “I suppose I could get used to it. Let me try another piece. Quite tasty. What’s it made of?”