Pegasi and Prefects (7 page)

I gather up my list and my books. “I advise you to think about it whenever you’re around me, then. I
am
a Senior Prefect. If you insist on acting like a lower former who needs to be shaken into shape, then I will treat you like one. School code of conduct, written out ten times, on my desk by tomorrow.”

Diana opens her mouth to protest. Rosalind touches her arm, and she subsides.

Something drops out of the pile of books in my arms, and I bend to pick it up. It’s a bookmark, carefully embroidered, with a rearing pegasus on it, its wings spread wide. It’s beautifully done. I wonder for a moment where it came from, and then I realise it’s a probably a token from one of the youngsters. Nice kid, to not show any sign of who made it, so as not to be accused of schlooping and trying to win her way into the team by devious measures. I smile down at it.

“What’s that?” Valerie catches my arm to stop me straightening up and peers over my shoulder. “It’s pretty.”

Stupidly, still pleased at the kindness of the present, I tell her.

“Don’t tell me that kind of thing is allowed at Fernleigh Manor,” Diana says. “It’s disgusting.”

“What is?”

She tosses her burnished hair. “Crushes and passions and all that unnatural nonsense. It’s sickening enough, the way the little ones flock around that great clumping—oh, well,” she finishes hastily, before I lose my temper completely. “But to actually encourage them to send gifts and tokens to you!”

“I don’t encourage the babes.” I shove the little bookmark back in the pile. “Anyway, there’s no harm to it.”

“It’s unhealthy.” Diana’s grey-green eyes are bright with malice. “Especially when the object of their affections is, well. You don’t even try to look like a normal girl, do you?”

“Diana!” Valerie seems torn between shock and glee. In her own corner, Rosalind is as pale and tense as if she’s seen a ghost.

I shove my way through the door and let it slam behind me. Poisonous beast! Ruining some lower former’s sweet little gesture like that, turning it into something quite unlike the innocent little show of admiration it is. I don’t see how Miss Carroll could ever expect me to be any influence on someone with a nasty mind like that. The one who is actually having an influence on the school, I decide as I kick at the closed door, is Diana. Valerie wasn’t half so bad until she had Diana dripping her poison into her ear day and night. As for that quiet little Rosalind kid, heaven knows what she thinks of the school she’s moved to, with girls like Diana and Val to judge by. A pit of vipers, surely. No wonder she looked like she was going to be sick.

I catch my breath back, willing my hammering heart to slow. I know, really, why Diana’s spite upset me so much. It’s important not to think about it too much, because thinking about things makes them true.

I need to find somewhere to make up this blasted team list. I head for Frances’ study. Not that we’re particularly close friends, but with Rosalind taking up space in my study Frances should have a desk to spare.

The door is closed when I arrive and no one answers my Frances must be at her Guides meeting. She’s quite cracked on Guides. Somehow, I don’t like the thought of letting myself in and settling down in Frances and Rosalind’s study without permission, even though Frances isn’t the sort to mind. It might be awkward if Rosalind came back, especially after that little scene.

Esther, too, is probably alone. I hesitate. Somehow, Esther is the last person I want to talk to right now.

Instead, I knock on the door of the study Cecily and Gladys share. “Mind if I work here a bit? Rather a nasty atmosphere in my study.”

Gladys snorts in understanding. She has no time for Diana and Valerie. Cecily gives me one sharp look, then smiles and nods. That’s the ripping thing about her; she can sense what you’re feeling, but she never pries, just lets you be. She goes back to reading her letter from home to Gladys.

Despite Esther’s predictions, the two of them seem to be quite cosy together in their study. There had been one terrible flareup early on when Cecily had wanted Gladys to leave the room because a third former had come quaking to her Head Girl for advice and Gladys had objected to being cast out. Esther, telling me about it, insisted that the new mark on the rug was Gladys losing control of her Firewielding out of temper. Whether that was true or not, Gladys had learned that, for all Cecily’s air of being a dear Little Mother, she is about as easy to bully as a mother dragon.

After that one flareup, literal or not, peace had reigned, and the two seem to have become fast friends. It makes me a little lonely. Certainly, even though I’ve been ordered to do the same with my own study mate, it’s not happening. I comfort myself with the fact that Esther and Valerie are also still to become bosom pals, so I’m not the only one failing at getting along in my study.

I curl up and try to work, letting Cecily’s pleasant colonial accent soothe me. Her brothers have written her a letter in turns, and they are talented at what Cecily calls “yarning”, making Gladys and I chuckle with their ridiculous tales of snakes and adventures. I can hear the loneliness in her voice, though; she doesn’t speak much of it, but I know it’s not just her brothers she misses, but the place she comes from, so far across the seas. I miss my brothers and sisters too, and I love my home, but I don’t have the same strong sense of place.

So there’s absolutely no reason that the longing in my friend’s voice sets off an unfocused wave of longing and loss in my own heart.

Sixth form life is supposed to prepare us for grownup life. Part of that is getting used to dressing for dinner in the Head’s dining room, followed by dancing. It’s not every night, thank goodness, just once a week, with School House taking Saturdays, another sign of our privilege. The dancing is expected to be a little more formal than the giggling and tugging each other around in the gym that we’ve done formerly.

Some of the girls, like Valerie, are gleeful at the prospect of showing off their evening frocks and begin primping long before it seems necessary to dress. I’m far less sure about the fun of dressing up to exchange stilted small talk under Miss Carroll’s eye.

At least my dress is nice. Mother picked out something for me in a dark chocolate heavy stuff that makes my eyes look more brown than green, very simply cut without any fuss or frippery. I have to admit it makes me feel queerly grownup, having all that long fabric swirling around nylon clad legs. I’m not so sure I like the way it’s clinging to my upper body. I feel ridiculously exposed, more, for some reason, than I do in a bathing costume, which I’ve worn without embarrassment in front of the other girls a hundred times.

The girls around me are brushing and curling and pinning. Even Cecily has released her mass of brown hair from its usual ponytail and is arranging it in elegant coils at the nape of her neck. I tug a comb through my hair and leave it, feeling a little out of place among all this girlish giggling and primping. There’s not much I can do to make my hair more fancy than serviceable.

“Charles, you’re hopeless. Come here.” Esther, wearing something floaty in marigold that makes her look even more golden than usual, pushes me into a chair. Her clever fingers move through my curls, winding in a black ribbon to hold them back a little, so that they spring up crisply behind. “There, that’s better.”

“Not bad,” Diana admits, crossing over, Rosalind in her wake. Diana is wearing filmy white with bare arms and looks deceptively innocent and pretty and sweet, like a girl at a coming out dance. She’s going to freeze to death. “You could almost be fooled into thinking she’s a real girl.”

“No one could mistake you, on the other hand, for anything but genuine cat,” Esther says. She gives her handiwork one last pat. “Not quite Cinderella, but you’ll do, dear heart.”

Rosalind, unexpectedly, says, “I think Charley looks very pretty with her hair like that.”

I blink at her. No one, as far as I can remember, has called me pretty since I was six years old, not even Esther. Nor has Rosalind ever volunteered a remark to me, or really to anyone other than Diana and Valerie.

“Thanks.” I wonder if I should say more.

Diana wrinkles her nose and sweeps her shadow off before I can find something better to say. Later, though, when I find myself paired with Rosalind for a dance, I remember to return the compliment.

“You look nice in that pink thing.” It’s perfectly true. While she looks pasty and washed-out in our dark green uniforms, the pale rosy colour of her frock brings out her extreme fairness in an entirely different way, her eyes very blue, her dull greyish hair shining softly on top of head and braided up like the tresses of a Greek goddess, or a Swiss milkmaid. There’s even a faint rose on her cheeks. It must be the reflection of the pink dress.

“Thanks, Charley,” she says. She lowers long fair eyelashes over her eyes for a moment. “Esther looks very lovely, doesn’t she?” It’s as much as I’ve ever know her to say directly to me, and I smile encouragingly. “She and Diana look so perfect together.”

I turn my head. The two are indeed partnered together, Diana touching Esther as little as possible with clear distaste while Esther, equally obviously enjoying herself, is playing the devoted suitor and being ridiculously solicitous and complimentary. The more flowery she is, the more Diana’s forehead furrows with bad temper.

Rosalind, I think, must see the scene a little differently to the way I do. I can feel my cheeks dimpling despite myself.

“Diana is so beautiful, too,” Rosalind adds wistfully. I frown, a little. There’s no argument about Esther’s good looks, with her sleek bronze hair and golden complexion. I don’t see what is so special about Diana. Her face is pretty enough in an ordinary way, of course, with an excellent figure, and white suits her, granted. She’d still hardly qualify as a raving beauty in my book.

Between my puzzlement and my amusement at Esther’s teasing of Diana, I find myself paying too much attention to the other couple instead of my own partner, and end up losing track of my feet and stumbling over her.

“I’m sorry!” Dismayed, I try to set us back on course. Rosalind smiles and shakes her head, but I suppose she’s relieved when we finally exchange partners again. She certainly hasn’t seemed happy for the rest of the dance, or inclined to chat more. It’s a pity. For a moment there, I thought we were actually making some kind of connection. At least she talked to me. I absently extend my hand to my next partner.

“I know you’re taller, but I think it would be safest if I lead,” Cecily tells me, grinning. “I value my feet too much.”

“Shut up, Cis,” I say, and let her take the lead. For my money she’s prettier than Diana, too, with her rich brown skin and full figure. Yet no one seems to gush over her the way they do over Diana. It’s an oddity.

I’m starting to get hotter and sweatier in my dress than I ever feel on the field or pitch, and I can feel the ribbon slipping loose from my hair already. I don’t know if it’s permissible to let go of Cecily’s hand to put it back in or if that’s a terrible breach of etiquette.

I feel in my heart that Saturdays, all things taken into account, are going to be a bit of a trial.

My out of lessons hours are so crammed that I almost welcome History as a precious chance to slack off a bit. It’s one of the hours at which Miss Carroll gathers up all the brilliant hopes for England’s womanhood to coach for university and scholarship exams, so I suppose it’s natural that we plodders left behind seize the chance to take it easy a bit. Especially since we share the lesson with those bright scholars in the Fifth considered unsuitable for further studies in Latin.

Miss Spears is a new mistress engaged only last term when Miss Logan gave us up as a bad joke. Unlike Miss Logan, who was content to name a chapter and have us take notes, Miss Spears is keen on modern teaching methods. She asks us to read up on subjects in our precious prep. hours and then tries to engage us in intellectual conversation about what we’ve read. It’s pretty gruesome, sitting staring at our laps while Miss Spears gazes around with bright, hopeful eyes, transparently hoping for someone to be moved at last to enthusiasm and insight. Esther, safely off with the other bright sparks, is cruelly offering odds on how long it will take her optimism to break utterly and the poor teacher to resign herself to set us copying out chapters in our exercise books.

At least we’re better off than the juniors. According to rumour they’re chosen in turn to dress up and act scenes out of history, a particularly merciless form of torture for the shy ones.

Today’s theme at least interests me a little. Miss Spears had us read up on myths and accounts of the unheralded arrival and abrupt departure of the elves. I’m mostly interested because it seems pretty certain that until the elves arrived, the world was tame and there were no magical beasts at all: no unicorns, no sea beasts in the oceans, no yowies and bunyips to enliven Cecily’s childhood rides, no nameless terrors haunting the night. It seems impossible that there could ever have been a time in which there were just lesser, earthly animals with no magic to them at all. Right now, if I concentrate, I can feel the spiky minds of the fairies outside the window.

I might just make Miss Spears faint by actually asking a question. It’s hovering on my lips when Gladys gets in first with a complaint.

“I don’t see why we have to read up on myths. It’s not proper history at all,” she says, her brow black. She is always in a bad temper after Esther and the other luminaries are taken off or coaching. Everyone expected her to be part of the chosen circle, and it must sting a little to be here in the dunces’ class. “My father says that there’s no proof the elves ever really existed—they’re just a story made up to explain magical abilities and new species that developed naturally, through processes of evolution. All it takes is the proper scientific approach to find out why some people have some gifts and not others, and why they are sometimes passed on through families, and how horses grew wings and horns and—”