Forbidden Lessons (3 page)

"You’ll get death threats if you keep this up," Laura warned.

"Oh they’ll all handle it," Charlotte said. "They’ll thank me once exam time comes."

"Not from them - from us. I don’t mind paying a bit more attention to Latin homework, but I wasn’t bargaining on extra lines. If Margery doesn’t end up strangling you in your bed then I will." Laura was still slightly bewildered by Charlotte’s Latin resolution. Some secret lay at the bottom of it, she was quite certain, and she would find out in time what it was.

"At least we’re through all the grammar this year. All the conjugation tables and so on." Last year had progressed through noun declensions, verb conjugations, tenses and voices. There was endless memorisation every homework, and tests at the start of every lesson.
 

Every few weeks had seemed to required them to double their knowledge. Re-learning everything in the passive had been bad enough. But when Mr Tyrrell introduced the subjunctive they had nearly collapsed in despair.

"We’re not really through it all though, only the testing," Margery said. "I still struggle to remember them all." It was an honest admission as languages were Margery’s thing.

* * *

Happily they had the new female teacher for English, though she explained that classes would alternate with Mr Peters this year. Miss Wingrove was as pleasant and as interesting as she appeared and Laura mentally ticked English as a look-forward-to lesson.

With the plays taken up by Miss Vine and Mr Peters, Miss Wingrove’s side project that year was going to be a poetry recital. "All kinds, not just Keats and Shakespeare. Your own works if you like."
 

Laura liked this idea. Margery detested it. Charlotte was indifferent. She had a good voice and plenty of confidence but no real interest in the arts. It was no issue to her whether she took part or not, though if Laura did, she’d probably give it a go. "Maybe you could write something for me, and I’ll recite it," she suggested to Margery.

* * *

Once again they scurried to finish in the bathroom so they could pick up their pens for the diary writing.

"Should we read one another’s work every week or so?" Margery asked. Laura blanched.

"God no," said Charlotte.

"Why? Are you writing horrid things about me?" Margery asked.

"No. I simply don’t want to read your entries, I suspect they’ll bore me to tears," Charlotte said. Laura silently thanked her. Right now her journal was her only confessional. She had craved writing it since the morning, even though she didn’t plan to write very much.
 

"Perhaps we can read our favourite excerpts aloud once a month," she suggested to mollify Margery. She also didn’t want Margery peeking. Laura wasn’t sure what was going on with herself right now, but it felt like she had entered another dimension.

They were running out of time before lights out, so they hurriedly picked up their pens.

"Dear Diary. I have never felt so alone. I feel that something has taken me away from my friends, and put me in a new reality that they can never understand. It’s like the rest of the world has vanished. Is anyone else feeling this way? Is everyone? I can’t be the only one. I had a crush on Nick James all last year but it was nothing like this. What do I do? Will it go away? I wish you could answer me."

In their next German lesson Mr Rydell remarked on Laura’s handwriting when he handed back their corrected translations. "Fine handwriting, what pen do you use?" The neutrality of his tone made it more like an observation than a compliment.

Laura did have good handwriting. A couple of years ago a history teacher had held optional calligraphy classes, and she had tried and enjoyed them. She had since practiced incorporating some of the features in her regular writing.

"It’s a cursive Italic nib."

"Does it slow you down?" he asked.

"Not really." She tended to use a different nib in exams, when faster writing was required. But homework was generally written out carefully and it took her no longer with the Italic nib than with a rounded one.

He nodded, looking directly at her. He held the glance just a fraction longer than necessary, and for a moment she thought he was going to ask her something further, before he moved to the next desk. We connected, she thought. Or am I reading too much into this? She felt shaky from merely speaking with him.

"Are you ok?" Charlotte whispered to her.

"I’m fine, why?"

"You look odd. Pale. Like when you fainted in gym." A couple of terms ago Laura had been coming down with a bad virus and had fainted during a gym lesson.

She pinched her cheeks to flush them, and smiled at Charlotte. "Better?" Then she looked up and saw Mr Rydell looking at them both, his eyebrows raised slightly, and blushed for real. Fortunately he didn’t censure them for talking and the lesson continued.

* * *

Morning break was twenty minutes between lessons, which they tended to spend in the courtyard unless something had been forgotten for the next class.
 

The "court" was the centre point of the various buildings at Francis Hall. It had a flowerbed surrounded by a low wall - red brick like the surrounding architecture - that was convenient to sit on. Different groups of girls might have appeared to be seated randomly, but there was in fact a distinct and unspoken understanding on who was supposed to sit where, based on social hierarchy.

Charlotte, with her confidence and figure and her rumoured success with boys, had risen the ranks over the past year, taking Laura and Margery with her. This elevated them to a coveted position on the west wall.

No one ever sat where they were not supposed to sit. Laura always marvelled at the order of it. "What would happen if we simply went and sat on the east wall one day?" she said.

"Prefects would kick us off and be on our backs all term," Charlotte said.

"It’s idiotic though, it’s just a wall. I mean if we went and sat on the steps with the fourth formers, would anyone care? It’s not like it’s a rule."

"Some things matter more than rules."

* * *

Laura dreaded lunch more than supper at the moment. Mrs Ayers was assigned to their table that week, and her gimlet eye made it nearly impossible to swap unwanted food or smuggle it into a pocket. Worse still, it was liver today - grey-green and scummy - and Laura didn’t think she could bear to even taste it.

Skipping lunch without reason was a severe offence, so she went to the school nurse’s room to try and contrive an illness and get a pass. A sore throat, requiring a liquid diet? Nausea? She had to be careful, because too many attempts to avoid meals might put her under even more scrutiny. If they thought she had an eating disorder she would be done for, with a teacher breathing down her neck every meal.

The nurse was in a kind mood that day. "It’s liver today, isn’t it?" she said, when Laura started to invent symptoms.

"Yes." There was no point lying. "I honestly have a healthy appetite, but I just can’t do it, I really can’t."

"You don’t look underweight. I don’t want you getting that way though, so be careful. You can have a note today, but it won’t be possible every Tuesday."

Laura thanked her.

"What about registering as vegetarian? Would your parents agree?" the nurse suggested.

It was an idea. Laura tried to think of meat dishes she would actually miss. Beyond cottage pie, there weren’t many. "I’ll write to them this evening." She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.

Thanks to the note she could safely avoid the dining hall altogether, and so she decided to sit and read in a sunny spot overlooking the tennis courts. For some time she lost herself in Rebecca, one of the approved novels in the school library.

"Isn’t it lunch time?" She heard a voice behind her and froze. It was him. He seemed even taller outdoors in the sun, his shoulders broad, forming his body into a triangle shape as it narrowed to his hips. He looked so strong. She wondered wildly what it would be like to be crushed in his arms.

"I have a sick note."

"Are you ill?" She realised there was actually concern in his voice, which made her feel embarrassed, particularly given her very healthy train of thought.

"Actually no, but it’s liver today." This time he raised his eyebrows fully, and for a moment she wondered if he would smile, but he didn’t.

"I haven’t yet experienced that delicacy."

"I hope you manage to enjoy it when you do," she said. He continued to look at her, his gaze inscrutable, and then - still unsmiling - he left.

* * *

"Where were you at lunch?" Charlotte demanded, as they went to the Maths classroom.

"I managed to get a note."

"You’re lucky you were looking pale before. It was even more of a struggle than usual, it really stank," Charlotte said.

"Actually Nurse guessed it was liver, but let me off anyway which was nice. She’s suggested going vegetarian."

"That’s still pretty awful you know. Very dull - grated cheddar one day, and a hard boiled egg the next. And you’d still be stuck with cabbage," Charlotte warned.

"At least I could eat that."

"If you did diabetes you could probably get off puddings too," said Margery. "But I think you’d need an actual doctor’s note for that."

"And syringes and things." It wasn’t a great idea.

* * *

The last lesson that day was Double Art - it was always two lessons back to back, due to the time taken setting up and clearing up. Margery hated art, but Charlotte and Laura regarded it more as fun than work.
 

Today they had to practice shading gradients with different hardnesses of pencil, then sketch a still life object from the art room. Laura chose a terracotta vase, made and abandoned by a long-ago sixth former. The Lower School didn’t get to use either of the pottery wheels.

Mr Lanaway was in despair trying to help Margery. He was a very thin, pale man and a brilliant sculptor. Margery simply had no sense of light and shade. The fact that she despised art, considering it a waste of time that could be spent more profitably on academic subjects, didn’t help either.

Having finished her sketch Laura wandered around the pottery room, looking at damp lumps of clay-in-progress under cloth on various trolleys. Classroom discipline was quite different in Art, they were encouraged to explore what other people had been making. She saw that one class - probably A-Level Ceramics - had been trying to sculpt human figures.

There was a huge block of clay on the table, ready for Mr Lanaway to cut up. It was solid, square and dark grey. Laura suddenly imagined pulling a form from it: sinewy shoulders, flat pectorals, a strong, well shaped neck. She wanted to make something she could touch.
 

"Sir, could you teach us how to sculpt this term?"

A lot of girls didn’t like ceramics because of the sticky, muddy feel of clay, and getting it stuck under their fingernails. Art in terms of drawing or painting was considered less messy and physical. So it was an unusual delight for the art teacher to get such a request. Mr Lanaway was also delighted to find interest shown in his own area of talent.

"By all means. We’ll start next week, those that are interested."

* * *

"Dear Diary, he stopped to talk to me today. Did he stay longer than he needed to? I feel like this must be all in my head, but it’s as if there is no one else in the world when he’s there. I have to get over this. There’s the whole of the sixth form before me."

Charlotte was no fool. She knew she had put backs up through her new zeal for Latin and that it would be socially strategic to make amends.
 

She put her hand up in class. "Sir, I was wondering if it might help bring our Caesar text to life if we visited the Welchester Roman Museum one day? Perhaps on a Sunday afternoon?"
 

Seeing the Latin teacher’s expression start to open to the idea she fired the killer shot. "And of course it could be very useful to those of us thinking of doing Latin for A-Levels."

Fewer and fewer girls every year took Latin in the sixth form, much to Mr Tyrrell’s despair. The prospect of having Charlotte and some of these other bright girls in his class next year was the perfect carrot.

"I should think that would be a splendid idea!" he said. One of the girls in the back row muffled a snigger. Only Mr Tyrrell could get excited about a town museum.

What Mr Tyrrell didn’t know but what Charlotte and every other girl was keenly aware of was that St Duncan’s boys were taken to Welchester Museum nearly every weekend, as their school was in the same town. Even if there wasn’t a contingent at the museum itself that day, there was a good chance of seeing some of the sixth form boys down at the shops.

"I’ll see about getting the school coach for next weekend," he told them.

Charlotte’s crown of popularity was restored.

* * *

"If only we could wear mufti," Laura sighed. The days they were allowed out of school in regular clothes were extremely rare. Francis Hall’s school uniform, which was nearly head-to-toe maroon wool in the winter term, was not considered fetching by any of them.

"I’m going to borrow Mary Rudge’s skirt," said Charlotte. Mary Rudge was the shortest girl in Michaelmas house.

"But she’s half your height!" said Margery.

"Exactly. Her skirt will be above my knees, and if Gi-Gi or anyone else tries to get me to roll it down it won’t be possible. I’ll put it on it at the last minute so there’s no time to change." Rolling skirts up at the waist was a popular way to shorten them but you could get a demerit point if you were unlucky.
 

"We can manage some make up too, if we put it on in the coach," Laura said. "Depending on who’s coming to supervise, of course."

"It will probably be one of the teachers who can drive the coach if Jenkins is off," Margery pointed out. Jenkins was the school handyman who doubled up as a coach driver, but a few of the teaching staff also held bus licences.