Roehampton Secondary School kept Octavia sane that autumn. The new building with all those pristine rooms and all that tempting yet-to-be-used space was an inspiration. Hardly a day went by without someone arriving in her office with an idea or a suggestion for some activity or other.
Jenny Jones wanted to start a school choir. ‘They’re ever so keen, Miss Smith,’ she said, sounding very Welsh in her excitement. ‘Now they’ve heard themselves in a room with good acoustics there’s no holding them. And it’s such a big room, there’s more than enough space for rehearsals.’
Morag and Helen Staples were keen to get curtains for the stage so that they could organise a play for the end of the term. ‘There’s bound to be something we want to do,’ Helen said. The sixth form wanted to put on a pantomime and asked if they could write it and rehearse it ‘in secret’. There was some staff discussion about that but in the end they agreed to it, saying they ought to be able to trust the sixth form. Sarah and Phillida offered to make the costumes for whatever play was going and Sarah found an attic storeroom that she said would be an ideal place to store them in. ‘You’d never believe the space up there!’
Alice wanted to start an ancient history club. ‘With all this interest in Tutankhamun,’ she said, ‘it’s just the thing. There’s so much material for display and the girls are really enthusiastic. There’s a sort of club already and we could meet in my teaching room. We only need the go-ahead.’
But it was Mabel and Elizabeth who came up with the most far-reaching suggestion and that grew from their concern for the first formers at lunchtime.
‘Some of these poor little things are having a really hard time trying to remember where they’re supposed to sit,’ Mabel said. ‘I’ve been watching them. They get muddled every day. In a place this size, they really need someone to look after them, especially in the first few weeks of a new year. How would it be if we ran a house system?’
It was a novel idea and not one that had occurred to any of the staff until then. In Hammersmith they’d all known exactly where they were and where they were supposed to be because there’d been so little space for them. Here in this big school even the fourth and fifth form had problems finding their way round.
‘Prepare a paper about it for the next staff meeting,’ Octavia told her two scientific mathematicians, ‘and we’ll discuss it.’
It was discussed at considerable length, for although they could all see advantages in such a system, especially in the idea that the girls would sit in houses at lunchtime with a senior at the head of every table to look after the first formers, there were differences of opinion as to how it should be organised. ‘A house system is bound to be hierarchical,’ Morag pointed out. ‘It will lead to prefects and games captains – and a head girl, probably. Is this what we want?’
Joan Marshall said she’d love some games captains, for house matches and that sort of thing. But who would choose them?
‘If the house were to be organised by the girls, they could choose their own leaders,’ Octavia said, thinking aloud. ‘They could have regular elections at the end of every school year to choose the leaders for the next year. That would be a democratic way of going about it. We could call them house officers.’
‘But if we were to start it now, how would they know who to choose?’ Morag said. ‘It’s a tall order to get to know all the seniors in a new organisation. I can see them being able to do it after a year, as Octavia says, but not now.’
‘Point taken,’ Elizabeth said. ‘They’d need at least a term to recognise the ones they wanted to lead them. But that needn’t be a problem. We could start it as soon as we liked – or were ready – and the senior girls in each house could take it in turns to sit at the head of the tables. The first formers would be looked after and leaders would emerge. They always do, if the process is democratic.’
‘And how would we sort out who is to be in which house?’ Phillida asked. ‘If you see what I mean? I wouldn’t like to think we were parting friends.’
‘We would have to do it very carefully,’ Octavia said, ‘and take our time over it. If we do it form by form, with each form teacher drawing up a list and everyone considering it, we ought to get it about right. There’s no need to rush.’
‘How many houses shall we have?’ Sarah asked. ‘I’ve got thirty girls in my form. That’s seven in each house and two left over if we have four houses. Or five in each house if we have six.’
‘When the school is at full strength,’ Elizabeth said, ‘which will be in another three years, we shall have ninety girls in each year plus the sixth form. That will give us a total of at least 460 girls and probably nearer 470. My vote would be for six houses with about seventy-seven girls in each.’
‘As we’re in to the logistics of the thing,’ Octavia said, grinning at them, ‘do I gather that the general feeling of this meeting is that a house system would be a good thing?’
It was.
‘We could name them after the primary and secondary colours,’ Phillida said. ‘Red, blue, yellow, green, orange and purple.’
‘Just think,’ Helen Staples said dreamily, ‘we could have a house drama festival.’
Her colleagues laughed out loud. ‘You and your drama,’ they said.
The house system, carefully thought out and planned, began when they came back after their first half term holiday. By then the school choir was rehearsing every Thursday in the Music room and singing at assembly twice a week, the sixth form had written their pantomime and were busy rehearsing it in the sixth form room, usually to shrieks of laughter, and the ancient history club had put on its first Egyptian display on the new notice boards all round the hall.
‘Everything we touch turns to gold,’ Octavia said to Elizabeth as the two of them were walking round the hall with Alice, admiring the exhibits. ‘There are days when I feel as if we’re living in a fairy story and the good fairies have put a spell on us.’
‘Long may it continue,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I like that picture of Tutankhamun, Alice. What a handsome young man he must have been.’
‘I’d like to see the mask itself,’ Alice said. ‘All that gold and lapis lazuli. It must be absolutely stunning.’
Octavia looked at the picture and thought how magical it was. Myths and fairy stories, she thought, mystery and magic, the stuff of dreams. I ought to read Antony and Cleopatra with the sixth form while this is on the walls. It’s just the right time for it. But then she sighed. If only the fairies would cast their spell on poor Pa. He was so very unhappy and she didn’t know how to help him. She’d tried special meals but he couldn’t eat them, she’d tried suggesting outings, to see Emmeline and the children or to walk on the heath but he said he didn’t want to go out. In fact there were times when she thought he would never want to do anything again.
She’d discussed it with Emmeline, of course, because she was the one person who could really understand the state he was in and Emmeline had been sympathetic but not particularly helpful. ‘It takes time,’ she said. ‘He’ll never get over it. You mustn’t expect that. You never do get over it. I think of my darlings every single day at some time or another. The best you can hope for is that he’ll learn how to cope with it.’
Octavia didn’t like the sound of that at all. She wanted him to enjoy his life a little. This incessant dragging unhappiness was dreadful. It sapped him of all his energy and gave him a jaundiced view of everything that was happening. He seemed to be shrinking into himself, doing less and less. Amy’s clothes were still hanging in the wardrobes and he wouldn’t let her clear them out, her chair was still exactly as she’d left it, crumpled cushions and all and couldn’t be touched, her stick still stood in the hallstand. ‘No,’ he said, when Octavia asked if she should move it. ‘Don’t change things. Leave it. I want it left.’ He read the papers incessantly, but it was all the most depressing and negative news that interested him. He noted that the Germans had been forced to print an entirely new currency because the old mark had no value at all, that the Labour prime minister was being taken to task for corruption, for accepting a car and shares in a biscuit factory from a business man he’d subsequently ennobled, that there was a civil war in China, and riots in India and that they’d passed a new law in South Africa, which would make it illegal for a black man to be given a skilled job. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man,’ he said. ‘What a terrible world we live in.’
‘How about a trip out into the country?’ Octavia tried. ‘It’s lovely weather.’
‘No thank you, my dear.’
‘Or perhaps you’d like to go up to town. We could go to the theatre.’
But the answer was always the same. ‘No thank you, my dear.’
The difference between her life at home and her life at school was so extreme that she could feel her mind stretching to accommodate it as she travelled from one place to the other. Poor dear Pa. What could she do to help him?
Matters reached a climax at the end of November, when Mrs Wilkins came in to see them after breakfast one morning to say that she and her husband would like to retire at Christmas. ‘I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,’ she said. ‘Not with everything being so difficult, but if you could find someone else, that’s what we’d like to do. We’ve got the chance of a flat by the seaside, you see, down in Devon where my sister lives, and we’d like to take it.’
‘And high time too,’ Octavia said. ‘You’ve earned your retirement if anyone has. I hope it’s a really long and happy one.’
But finding replacements who would do the work they’d been doing and be prepared to live in, was virtually impossible. The best that she could manage was a girl called Dilys who said she was ‘from the valleys’ and could come in daily for the housework ‘if that would suit’ but couldn’t cook.
I suppose I shall have to do the cooking myself, Octavia thought. She wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or worried by the idea. A bit of both probably. It would be pleasant to eat whatever meals she fancied, but would she be up to cooking them? Could she ever make lemonade like Mrs Wilkins or bake a seed cake or cook a Sunday roast? Even the thought of it was daunting. Perhaps, the time had come to buy a house of her own, at last, the way she’d always planned, somewhere near the school, and equipped with all the nice new modern appliances like gas fires and a gas cooker and a geyser for hot water. And lots of electric light, of course, and points for one of those electric cleaners. And a nice comfortable study for Pa. She could move them both in and run the place herself with a char to do the rough work and a girl to help her round the house. A new gas oven would be a particularly good idea. People said they were really easy to use and an old-fashioned stove could be tricky, as she knew very well. They could buy some new furniture that would be a bit more comfortable than the stuff they’d been using all these years. Some of the armchairs were wrecks. And of course they would have to clear out the cupboards and wardrobes if they were moving. Her mind made up, she went to see a couple of local estate agents at the end of the next school day.
They were both of the same opinion. ‘Wimbledon Park,’ they said. ‘That’s where you want. There are some beautiful houses up there, Edwardian, good-sized rooms, every mod con, very well kept up, and you’ve got a good road to take you straight to the school. Wimbledon Park. That’s the place.’
And so it seemed to be. That weekend she went to see four houses and liked them all although she had to admit they were rather too big for her. They all had at least four bedrooms and three big living rooms, usually a dining room, a drawing room and parlour, and the gardens were twice the size of the one in Hampstead. But the thought of living in one of them, close to the school and with room for family gatherings and parties, was such a temptation that she arranged to return to the two she liked best and bring Pa to see them too.
He wasn’t impressed. ‘You don’t want to move,’ he said. ‘We’re all right as we are.’
It was time to take a stand. ‘No,’ she said, seriously. ‘We’re not. When Mrs Wilkins goes I shall have to do the cooking. I can’t get another couple to live in and cook and care for us. People don’t do that any more. And I might as well tell you, Pa, I can’t cook on that stove. It’s far too temperamental. I need something I can depend on.’
He frowned at her. ‘What sort of something?’
‘One of those nice new gas cookers.’
His eyebrows rose with disbelief. ‘You’re surely not telling me you want to move house to get a gas cooker,’ he said. ‘You could have one put in our kitchen here, if that’s what you want.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not just the cooker. It’s all sorts of things. A geyser to give us hot water for baths and to wash with. Think how nice that would be instead of having to wait hours for the fire to warm the water like we do here. Gas fires so that we can have warm bedrooms first thing in the morning. Think of that. It would be a better life for both of us in one of these houses.’
He was surly with disapproval. ‘I can’t see the need to go uprooting ourselves for a cooker and a gas fire,’ he said. ‘No, no, we’re all right as we are.’
‘You might be,’ she told him sternly, ‘but I’m not. Oh, come on, Pa. I want a home of my own. I’ve waited long enough for it.’
But he wouldn’t be persuaded. ‘We’re all right as we are,’ he insisted.
‘What am I to do with him?’ she asked Emmeline later that week. ‘I’ve never known him like this before. It’s as if he’s a different person. He wouldn’t even go and look at them.’
‘Give him time,’ Emmeline advised. ‘He’ll come round.’
‘Well, I hope it’s before Christmas, that’s all,’ Octavia said, ‘or I shall be cooking on that awful stove. Thank God for the school!’
The end of the Christmas term was the most enjoyable she’d ever experienced. The form rooms were hung with paper chains, the cooks produced a Christmas pudding for their final school dinner and the sixth form pantomime was riotous. They told the story of the Babes in the Wood but sent the babes to a school which was recognisably Roehampton, for there were all the staff, idiosyncrasies and all. Elizabeth with her pince-nez, saying ‘neatness is everything in mathematics’ as she always did, Morag in her long cardigan and her flat shoes, saying ‘a little less noise gels’ as she always did, Phillida in a smock with one paintbrush in her hand and another behind her ear, Joan Marshall in a gymslip, carrying a hockey stick, and yelling ‘Bully off!’ There were cheers and screams at their every appearance and when the cast took their final bow the applause went on for such a long time that Octavia had to hold up her hand for it to stop so that she could thank ‘their talented players’ for the great fun it had been.
She drove home on that last afternoon, happy but exhausted. And there was a letter waiting for her from one of the estate agents. A property had just come onto the market, which seemed to him to be exactly what she was looking for. Perhaps she would care to telephone him about it.
She phoned at once and agreed to go and see it the next afternoon. But I shan’t tell Pa, she thought, as she put the receiver back in its cradle. He’ll only say no and there’s no point in disturbing him until I’ve seen it. It might not do at all.
It was the best house she’d seen and in quite the most pleasant road, a short, wide, unpaved, cul de sac, avenued with lime trees and bordered by gardens so green and well grown that to walk between them was like walking in a country lane. The house was big like all the others she’d viewed and very handsome to look at. She stood gazing up at it, enjoying the white frontage and the grey slate roof, feeling peculiarly satisfied by the balance of it, the three identical windows on the first floor, exactly balanced by the two on either side of the central front door. It reminded her of something but for a few seconds she couldn’t remember what it was. Then her father’s voice spoke in her mind ‘all designed according to exact mathematical principles, little one,’ and she realised it was the Georgian house she’d lived in as a child, the house in Clerkenwell.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s very handsome.’
‘Would you care to see inside, ma’am?’ the estate agent said, hopefully.
She followed him through the front door rather apprehensively in case the interior was a disappointment. But she needn’t have worried. It was such a warm and welcoming place, she liked it as soon as she stepped inside the hall and she soon found that it had everything she could possibly want, a gas cooker in the kitchen, a geyser in the bathroom and gas fires in all the main bedrooms, a parlour and a dining room and a magnificent drawing room running the length of the house, four bedrooms and a dressing room on the first floor and another two rooms in the attic. There was no furniture in it at all – ‘An executor’s sale, you see, ma’am,’ the young man explained – but that didn’t worry her. The emptiness made it easier for her to imagine how she would arrange things herself.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s an excellent house.’
‘I thought you would like it, ma’am,’ the young man said. ‘Would you care to see the attic rooms?’
‘I might as well, now I’m here.’
They were bigger than she expected, with sloping ceilings and dormer windows that let in a surprising amount of light but it was the wallpaper in the room that overlooked the back garden that was the real surprise. It was a William Morris design, and not just any design, what’s more, but the one that Pa had always had in his study.
‘This,’ she told the young man, resting the palm of her hand against the familiar pattern, ‘might be the deciding factor.’
He had no idea what she was talking about but he could see that he was within reach of a sale. ‘I’m very glad to hear it, ma’am,’ he said.
I must plan this very carefully, Octavia thought. I’ll wait until after Christmas, until we’ve said goodbye to the Wilkins, and then I’ll cook a few meals on that horrible stove and we’ll see how he likes the change of cuisine and if he complains, and I’ll bet he does, I’ll try to tease him into seeing it. If I handle it lightly I might just be able to do it. I’m not being very kind to him, poor man, but I’ve got to ease him out of his misery somehow and the longer he sits at home and broods the more difficult it will be. Besides, it’s high time I had a home of my own. I’ve been putting it off a darn sight too long.
She gave a farewell tea to her old servants and invited Emmeline and her children, who turned up in style, Dora looking extremely pretty, wearing red lipstick and a new dress with a very short skirt.
‘Although what her father would say if he could see her I dread to think,’ Emmeline said. ‘We’d never hear the end of it. He thinks lipstick is sinful.’
‘All the best things are,’ Octavia said, looking at Dora. And was given a conspiratorial smile.
In the New Year, when they’d finished off the cold turkey and eaten all the Christmas puddings, Octavia finally did battle with the stove and produced a roast that was burnt black on the outside and underdone in the centre.
‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ J-J said laying his knife and fork aside. ‘It’s inedible.’
‘I did warn you.’
‘You’ll get used to it,’ he said. ‘Better luck next time, eh?’
Next time she tried to cook a cake and that was even worse. The mixture was only cooked round the edges and the centre of the cake had collapsed into a soggy pool.
‘Perhaps we ought to buy one of those cookers,’ J-J offered. ‘What do you think?’
‘I tell you what,’ Octavia said, seizing her moment, ‘why don’t we go and look at a new house and see what you think about that.’
‘Put like that,’ he said, looking at the wreckage of the cake, ‘how can I refuse?’ And added, with a touch of his old wry wit, ‘But you will remember that I’ve lived in this house for twenty-seven years and I’m in no hurry to leave it.’
They went the very next morning. And although Octavia promised herself that she would be calm and sensible and not rush him and take care to point out all the bad features about the place, so as to show she was taking a balanced view, she forgot her good intentions as soon as she turned into the avenue and saw the estate agent again. She introduced her father but then she couldn’t wait to get him into the kitchen and show him all the excellent things that were there, the two walk-in larders and the long Welsh dresser and the shining new gas cooker.
‘Yes,’ he said, rather dourly. ‘I see.’
‘It’s a very good size,’ the young man pointed out hopefully.
‘Come and see the drawing room,’ Octavia said. ‘And tell me if you don’t think it would be ideal for family parties.’
‘Yes, very nice,’ he said, when he’d seen it. But his tone was non-committal.
She showed him all the rooms on the ground floor, took him round the garden, and upstairs to see the bedrooms and finally, having sent a signal to the young man that he was to stay where he was, and with her heart beating quite ridiculously fast, she climbed the last two flights of stairs to the attic.
‘There,’ she said, throwing open the door to the William Morris room. ‘What do you think of that?’
‘Good heavens!’ he said. ‘It’s my wallpaper.’
‘This could be your study,’ she said quickly, ‘and you’d hardly know the difference from the one you’re in now, except that this is marginally bigger. They both overlook the garden, there’s lots of light. Imagine it with all your furniture in it, your desk and your bookcases. It could be a lovely room.’ Oh please, Pa, at least think about it.
He walked to the dormer window and looked out at the garden, while Octavia waited. ‘You want to move here very much, don’t you, Tavy?’ he said.
It was time for the truth. ‘Yes, Pa, I do.’
‘I would prefer to stay in Hampstead even if it means eating burnt meat for the rest of my life,’ he said. ‘But if you are set on this house, and I can see that you are, I suppose I had better consider it. It has a pleasant balance, almost Georgian.’
‘I thought that as soon as I saw it,’ she said. ‘It reminded me of the house in Clerkenwell.’
He was surprised. ‘Fancy you remembering that,’ he said.
‘You told me how it was designed,’ she said, ‘according to mathematical principles. I think this is a similar house.’
‘Yes,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘So what with that and the gas cooker and the wallpaper, I suppose we must buy it.’
She was instantly racked with compassion for him. He was so generous and so loving and he missed Mama so much and she’d been putting such pressure on him. ‘Dear Pa,’ she said, putting her arms round his neck and kissing him, ‘you mustn’t agree to this just for me. I want you to be happy here. If we buy it, it will be your house every bit as much as mine.’
‘I know that, my dear. I have thought about it.’
‘I’ve had the school to keep me going, ever since Mama died,’ she said, ‘and you’ve been at home all on your own except for the Wilkins, and it must have been awful for you. And now you’re all on your own except for Dilys and I don’t suppose she’s any help at all, is she? No, I didn’t think so. I’d like to give you something to fill your days a bit, something new, something that would make you feel just a little bit better. I hate seeing you so down and serving you awful meals and leaving you alone for so much of the day. If we live here we’ll get a girl to come in every day and look out for you, make you tea and that sort of thing – and put the kettle on when I come back from school. And when I’m home we can explore the common and the village. I’ve driven round it and it looks pretty. And you can have a wireless in your study so that you can listen to music up there. And there’s a theatre just down the hill, we can go there whenever we like, and there are lots of bookshops. I know it won’t be a wonderful life, not without Mama to share it. How could it possibly be? But it might be better than the one you’re living now.’
He stroked her cheek, lovingly. ‘You are a good girl, Tavy,’ he said.
So they bought the house and took possession of it six weeks later on a cold February day in the middle of her half term. And although she was trying to be calm and serious about it, so as not to upset her father, Octavia found herself singing as she unpacked.
* * *
By the end of the summer term they had established a new pattern of life in this new house of theirs. Octavia learnt how to cook on her new gas cooker and spent a lot of time mastering the art of making cakes and pastry; Emmeline came to visit with one or other of her children at least once a week, and they all went for a walk to Wimbledon village or took the air on the common, stopping at Caesar’s Well to buy ice creams of course; and in the afternoons, J-J listened to the wireless in his by-now familiar study with his familiar books ranged round him in their familiar order and felt there was some good in his life after all.
The next school year began with an invitation for Octavia from a man who signed his letter AS Neill and said that, like her, he had started an experimental school, in which children were not bullied or coerced into learning but allowed the freedom to learn in their own time and their own way. In his case it was a school for children who were considered ‘difficult’ or ‘failures’; in hers, he assumed, it was a school for girls who had passed an examination for entry, which presupposed a difference in kind. But he thought that they would find they had much in common and suggested that she might like to come to Suffolk and visit him.
‘How would you fancy a trip to the country, Pa?’ she asked and passed the letter across the breakfast table for him to read.
It was an interesting experience, for Neill, as everyone called him, was an extraordinary man and his views matched Octavia’s almost exactly. One of the things that interested her particularly was the school parliament at which staff and pupils made the rules together. She questioned him deeply about it, asking how often they met (every week) and what they discussed (whatever they want to) and what would happen if they made a rule that didn’t work when it was put into practice.
‘They’d change it at the next meeting,’ he told her. ‘Children are practical creatures, if they’re allowed to be. And cussed of course. Force them to do something and they’ll do anything to avoid it, give them freedom and they use it wisely. As you must have found out.’
As they drove home through the sunset, Octavia mulled over all she’d heard. ‘I think a school parliament is a very good idea,’ she said.
‘So that will be inaugurated first thing on Monday morning, I suppose,’ her father said.
‘No,’ she said, grinning at him. ‘That will be inaugurated when the need for it arises. I’ve given up imposing my ideas on people. That’s a fool’s game. I shall bide my time and wait for the moment to arrive.’
It arrived rather sooner than she’d anticipated and with an uproar over the trees in the school grounds. The original field had already contained several well established trees when they moved in, and as soon as the playing fields and gardens had been planned, several more had been planted. Now, to Phillida’s horror, the juniors were climbing all over them.
‘It’s not the old trees so much,’ she said, ‘they’re strong enough to withstand it, but to swing on our little flowering cherry! I mean to say, they’ll snap it in two. And then all our beautiful blossom will be gone for ever. We’ve got to stop them.’
‘They have been told,’ Elizabeth said. ‘The sixth form are always reminding them.’
‘It should be a school rule,’ Phillida said. ‘Freedom is all very well but we’re letting them behave like vandals.’
Although that wasn’t what she’d intended, she sparked a passionate debate on the value of freedom in education. Some were for allowing the juniors to learn the hard way, ‘since that is what freedom entails, surely.’ Others were for protecting the tree, and passing a new school rule. But there were arguments put forward against that. What if it were ignored? Rules were made to be broken. How could it be implemented? As Phillida said, ‘We can’t be out in the fields all day, even if we took it in turn’. They argued for nearly twenty minutes before pausing for breath and looking at their headmistress to see what she would say.
It was a happy moment. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘we should allow the school to make the rules and then we would be certain of them being kept. What do you think?’
They were interested, wanted to know more, questioned her closely and for another twenty minutes, and at the end of their long debate, decided that a school parliament might well be an excellent innovation. And as a way of testing the idea, they decided to put this particular matter to the school, sending a notice of their concerns to every form and asking for suggestions. ‘Then we shall see what happens.’
What happened was that there was overwhelming support for a tree protection scheme. It was suggested by one of the third forms who said they thought the way to deal with the problem was to have ‘a tree planting day followed by a week during which all the senior girls would take it in turns to be in the school grounds to remind anyone who needs reminding of the proper way to treat young trees.’ It was a great success, especially as the new tree was planted by the two youngest girls in the school who also happened to be the most agile climbers. By the end of the tree protection week there was already talk of forming a school parliament; by the end of the term two representatives from each form had been elected, the Art room had been chosen as the best place for the council chamber, and everything was ready for their opening session, which would be in the first week of the spring term.
The school years passed happily, with a series of academic successes, of problems solved by parliament, and of high days and fun days of every description. By the start of their fifth year, the now renowned Roehampton Secondary Girls had grown out of all recognition and beyond even Octavia’s most optimistic expectations. It had nearly five hundred pupils and twenty-four members of staff and even an upper sixth of a select half a dozen who were preparing for the Higher Schools Certificate and university entrance. The garden was maturing splendidly, the flowering cherry was superb, all the class libraries were well stocked, the school choir was much admired and had begun to win prizes at competitions, the sixth form play was a regular romp, and the school parliament was such an established institution that nobody could remember a time when it didn’t exist.
‘Teaching,’ Octavia told her father at breakfast, at the start of that fifth year, ‘is the most rewarding job in the world.’
J-J dabbed his mouth with his napkin and smiled at her. ‘I am glad our opinions concur,’ he said. ‘I gather things are going well.’
‘They are,’ Octavia said with great satisfaction. ‘Oh, they are indeed. There are moments when I feel capable of absolutely anything. As if I could fly through the air if I put my mind to it.’
‘I trust you will not put your belief to the test,’ her father said. ‘I should hate to see you splattered all over the front garden. Think how it would upset the neighbours.’