Miss Denham passed down the line, placing the end of the ruler on the floor and measuring the height of each gym-slip hem from the floor. It was about two inches. Kate glanced down, knowing, with a sinking heart, what she would see. Her own tunic was longer than everyone else’s, its hem wrinkling against the bare boards.
She watched as Miss Denham paused in front of Brenda, measuring carefully. Kate could see that the girl was bending her body forward slightly so that the hemline came a little nearer the floor. Miss Denham passed on without comment and Kate could almost hear Brenda’s relief.
They were standing before Kate and there was no need for the ruler. ‘Stand up, Katharine,’ the voice boomed. As she did so, Miss Denham grasped the hem of Kate’s gym-slip and, turning it up, inserted the scissors into Esther Godfrey’s neat stitching and cut the thread. There was a tearing sound as she ripped the hem undone.
‘Go down to Miss Ogden’s room and ask her to supply you with needle and thread. You will sew up this hem to the correct length tonight. And another thing, Katharine, I am not satisfied with the neatness of your plait. You know the rule, unless you can plait your hair neatly in a single plait down your back, you must have it cut short.’
Kate’s face flamed and when the two women had left the room, noise broke out on all sides.
‘Phew! That was a close one. I thought I’d had it!’ said Brenda.
‘She didn’t even look at my shoes,’ the other girl said petulantly, then cheered up. ‘Still, at least I’ve found them.’
‘Ya’d better get goin’, Ka-ate,’ Isobel mimicked. ‘Else ya’ll be up ’alf the night a-plaiting yar hair.’
Kate turned and left the room, the sound of their laughter following her along the corridor.
*
The days crawled by and she had been at the school two weeks. Two weeks in which she had hardly been able to eat. Fourteen days of sitting beneath Miss Denham’s gaze, for the Principal had ordered her to sit beside her for every meal instead of moving to Miss Ogden’s table.
Miss Ogden had been the only person to show even a glimmer of kindness, but that was made tentatively, as if she herself feared reprisals should she show too much sympathy towards the new girl. In the classroom Miss Ogden was patient, and Kate felt as if the young teacher would have liked to display more understanding but dared not show favouritism in front of the rest of the class. As for the other girls – led on by the three who had assumed the role of her tormentors, Isobel, Brenda and Hazel – there was not one friendly word from any of them.
Meals were purgatory. Under Miss Denham’s glare Kate struggled to eat the unappetizing food, while her stomach churned rebelliously and constantly threatened revolt.
Then came the day of the gooseberries.
T
he meal had been going quite well. She had managed to eat all the first course – steak and kidney pie. For once the meat was tender and the pastry not too soggy. But when a bowl of gooseberries was placed before her, Kate looked around for the custard. There was none. She bit her lip and said tentatively to the girl next to her. ‘
Passez le sugar, sivoo play
.’
‘
Sucre, sucre
,’ boomed Miss Denham’s voice to her left. ‘
Tu n’as pas besoin de sucre.
’
Kate looked down at the small green bullets in the dish. Reluctantly, she picked up her spoon and selected two of the gooseberries that looked a little softer than the rest. The moment she put them in her mouth the sourness attacked her taste-buds so that her mouth salivated and her stomach erupted. Before she knew what was happening, she had vomited into the dish in front of her, bringing up all the first course.
Next to her, a girl screamed and pushed back her chair, ‘Oh how disgusting!’ while Miss Denham rose and grabbed Kate’s arm in a vice-like grip and hustled her, still retching, down the room past all the staring faces. Kate found herself dragged through the hallway and pushed into a small lavatory. The door slammed behind her and miserably she leaned over the bowl and retched until there was nothing left to bring up but evil-tasting, yellow bile. Yet still her mouth salivated and her stomach heaved.
At last she leaned against the wall, weak and trembling, a cold sweat breaking out all over her.
A knock came on the door and Miss Ogden’s gentle voice said, ‘Katharine, are you all right?’
When Kate did not answer, the door opened and pushed against her as she stood behind it. ‘Katharine . . .? Oh, my dear girl . . .’
The teacher drew Kate out of the small, dark room. ‘Are you feeling better now? Come along, let me take you up to Matron.’
But the Matron was as unsympathetic as Miss Denham. ‘Clean yourself up, girl. How dare you create such a disgraceful scene? You’re doing it on purpose, just to cause disruption. Change your dress and then you are to report to Miss Denham’s study.’
Half an hour later Kate was standing in front of Miss Denham’s desk. The Principal rose majestically. ‘Come with me.’
Meekly, Kate followed and found herself in the huge dining room being seated at the table once more. All evidence of her humiliation had been removed, but the floor showed damp patches where it had been wiped clean.
A maid entered from the kitchen and placed a plate of food in front of her. It was the first course.
‘You will stay here and eat the whole meal again and you will not leave until you have done so.’
Kate watched the woman turn and leave the room. The door closed behind her.
Left alone, without Miss Denham’s critical gaze upon her every mouthful, strangely Kate found she could eat – at least the first course – but when another dish of gooseberries came, she hesitated. She picked up her spoon and ate one. The gooseberry itself was just as sour as before but now the juice in which the fruit lay was sweet – much sweeter than before. Someone had realized what was happening and had taken pity on her. Kate felt a warm gratitude towards the unknown person beyond the kitchen door.
When Miss Denham returned, Kate was sitting with two empty plates in front of her.
The woman stood over her. ‘There, you see, you can eat it when you try.’
Kate stared back at the woman, deliberately keeping her face expressionless. When dismissed, the young girl stood up and, holding her head high, walked out of the room. There was no way she could win against the authority of this horrible woman, but Kate Hilton was certainly not going to be cowed by her.
But oh, how she longed to be back home running along the beach with Danny panting after her shouting, ‘Wait for me, Katie, wait for me!’ or to feel the chubby arms of little Rosie Maine winding themselves around her neck and hear her merry voice pleading, ‘Come and play with me, Kate.’
Before returning to her classroom Kate went up to the dormitory and felt in the pocket of her coat for the whelk shell, standing several minutes with it pressed against her ear so that even in this dismal, lonely room she might still hear the sound of home.
On the third Sunday, Peggy Godfrey arrived at the school to take Kate out for the afternoon.
Two whole hours of freedom, thought Kate ecstatically. It was her first escape from what she thought of as her prison.
They walked down the hill and along a straight road past a park on the left-hand side until they came to a side street where Mr and Mrs Godfrey lived at number eight. The houses were terraced, with a small frontage outside the bay window and front door. A passage ran between every second house leading to both back yards.
‘Kate, how lovely to see you.’ Jonathan’s mother was smiling a welcome as she opened the front door and Kate found herself stepping straight into the best parlour.
‘Come through to the living room, dear. Take no notice of all this.’ She laughed and waved her hand to encompass the front room. Kate glanced around as she followed Jonathan’s mother. The room was littered with paper patterns and pieces of material. In the centre of the room on a small table stood a sewing machine.
‘I use it as my workroom,’ Mrs Godfrey was explaining, and Kate remembered that at Lilian’s christening Peggy had said her mother was a dressmaker. ‘My ladies come here for fittings so I have to have somewhere nice and we never use the front room for anything else except at Christmas.’
Mrs Godfrey led the way through to the back living room, ‘Here we are, dear. Look who’s come to see us, Henry.’
Kate stepped into the room, where the smell of their recent Sunday dinner still lingered.
‘This is Mr Godfrey.’ Mrs Godfrey was gesturing towards a man sitting in an easy chair near the fire. He lowered the newspaper he was reading and stood up, and Kate found herself looking into the kindly face of her stepfather. An older face, of course, but the likeness was so astonishing that she could not prevent the words escaping her lips.
‘Oh, you’re just like me dad.’
The others laughed and Mr Godfrey’s deep voice said, ‘That’s not the first time I’ve been told that.’ He smiled gently down at her, his eyes crinkling just like his son’s.
‘Sit down, sit down. I hope you can stay to tea, dear,’ Mrs Godfrey was saying. ‘Peggy has made a trifle, haven’t you, Peg?’
Taking off her coat and hat, Peggy nodded.
‘And how do you like the school, young Kate?’ Mr Godfrey asked.
As she felt the eyes of the three adults upon her, Kate bit on her lower lip to still its sudden trembling. She glanced from one to another and saw the genuine concern written on all their faces; such an expression of friendliness which she had not seen since her arrival in this city.
‘It’s awful,’ she burst out, and the tears held in check for so long now spilled over and flooded down her face. At once Mrs Godfrey pulled her down on to the settee and sat beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders. Shocked, Peggy stood in front of them wringing her hands. Mr Godfrey sat down in his chair again, but laid his newspaper aside and sat forward, his forehead creasing worriedly.
‘Tell us all about it, love,’ Mrs Godfrey insisted. And out it all came tumbling.
‘Well!’ and ‘Oh, how could they!’ and ‘I can scarcely believe it!’ were the only interruptions they made and when she had finished and leaned her head against Mrs Godfrey’s shoulder, it was Peggy who said, ‘We can’t let her go back there, Mother.’
Mrs Godfrey glanced worriedly at Kate and then at her husband. ‘What do you think, Henry?’
Mr Godfrey shook his head, ‘It used to have a very good name when Miss Peterson ran it . . .’ He paused and Kate saw the glance that passed between husband and wife.
Mrs Godfrey put her arm around Kate, ‘Come along and have your tea, dear, and then we’ll think what to do.’
As she sat at their tea table, hunger overwhelmed her. There were delicately cut cucumber sandwiches, a trifle with cream, and cakes – a chocolate one with chocolate icing and a sponge cake with jam in the middle.
‘Help yourself, dear.’
Six sandwiches, two helpings of trifle and three pieces of cake later, Mrs Godfrey said, ‘Better now?’
Kate nodded, feeling comfortably full for the first time in weeks.
‘Now,’ Mrs Godfrey turned to her husband. ‘What ought we to do, Henry?’
‘I’ve been thinking, whilst we’ve been having tea,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m afraid we didn’t ought to let you stay with us. It wouldn’t be right. The school would be angry and your mother wouldn’t thank us for interfering. But,’ he added hurriedly, ‘we’ll write to Jonathan – yes, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll tell him everything you’ve told us and he’ll talk to your mother.’
‘Couldn’t you go and see this – this Miss Denham, Father?’ Peggy put in quietly. ‘Perhaps she’d listen to you.’ She turned to Kate to explain. ‘Father’s a deputy headmaster at the boys’ school in the city.’
Kate nodded. ‘I thought it was
his
school I was coming to,’ she said simply, but the note of wistfulness was not lost upon the three adults. Mrs Godfrey patted her hand.
‘I’d go and see this Miss Denham if I thought it would help,’ Mr Godfrey was saying. ‘But from what you tell us, Kate, the woman would undoubtedly see it as interference and it could make things even worse for you.’
Kate bowed her head and her long hair fell forward hiding her face. She knew what Mr Godfrey was saying was reasonable; that was exactly how Miss Denham would react. And she doubted whether a letter to her stepfather would help either. He might be sympathetic, but would her mother be?
Slowly Kate rose from the table. ‘Thank you for the tea, Mrs Godfrey, it was lovely,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Now, you can come here any time you like. Every Sunday for your tea. And in the week too, if they’ll let you.’
Kate shook back her long hair. ‘I dun’t think they’ll let me come for another two weeks.’
‘Well, come whenever you can. We’ll be here. Now, Peggy will walk back with you.’
As they walked up the hill, Peggy said, ‘I’m sorry you’re having to go back. I’d have let you stay with us if it had been up to me. But Father’s in a difficult position, being in the teaching profession too. And Mother’s afraid of upsetting your mother. She thinks the world of our Jonathan, you know, and doesn’t want to do anything that might cause trouble between him and his wife. You do see, don’t you, Kate?’
Inwardly Kate sighed. Yes, she did see – only too well!
‘Matron wants you, Sicky.’
‘You’d better get along to her room instead of standing there gaping.’ Her three tormentors – with Isobel Cartwright as the ring-leader – had brought her the command and now they stood close together, their heads bent towards each other, giggling and whispering.
Kate’s stomach contracted. She had no choice but to obey the summons. She tucked the shell she was holding under her pillow and slipped off the edge of the high bed. With an exaggerated movement the girls stood back out of her way.
‘Dun’t get near ’er,’ Isobel mimicked. ‘She’ll be sick all ovver ya.’
‘She will be sick when she knows what Matron wants her for.’ They all laughed again.
As Kate moved away from her bed, Isobel pounced forward and thrust her hand under the pillow. ‘Let’s see what you’re hiding under here . . .’