The Four of Us (5 page)

The queue was already fairly long and as she and Geraldine attached themselves to the end of it, as did the diminutive girl with the mop of spicy red hair.

‘I thought your father was great,' Geraldine said to her, ignoring the instruction not to talk and breaking the ice immediately, just as she had done with Primmie. ‘A lot of people wouldn't have kept their temper as he did. Primmie,' she gave a nod of her head in Primmie's direction, ‘thinks the driver of the Rolls is a nouveau riche from the East End.'

‘I never said any such thing!' Primmie protested, scandalized.

‘Silence, please!' the woman holding the placard thundered.

‘And what's a noovo reesh?' Primmie persisted, lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘A criminal?'

‘No, idiot.' Geraldine gave a gurgle of laughter, uncaring of the glare she received from the woman at the head of the column they had formed. ‘It's someone who's come into money and has no taste – or, in this case, no manners.'

‘We are now going to file
silently
into the Grand Hall for assembly,' the woman said, shooting Geraldine a look to kill. ‘After assembly you will then re-form in a line to be taken to your form rooms and given an introductory talk.'

‘I don't like the sound of form rooms, plural,' Geraldine said as their column began to move off. ‘It means we may be split up if we don't keep together. Let's stick close, shall we? I'm Geraldine Grant and this is Primmie Surtees.'

‘Kiki Lane,' the red-haired girl said and then, as they entered a huge hall already filled with line after line of dutifully silent pupils, ‘And why does Primmie know about the East End? Is that where she's from? Is it why she speaks with a Cockney accent?'

Primmie's reaction was drowned as five hundred voices launched into a spirited rendering of ‘Jerusalem'.

No hymnbooks were used and Primmie, who had never sung the song before, was at a loss.

‘And did tho-ose feet, in ancie-nt ti-me,' Geraldine was singing in cut-glass tones beside her. ‘Walk upon Eng-land's moun-tains green.'

It was Kiki Lane's voice that was the real surprise, though. Strong and rich and with perfect pitch, it sent tingles down Primmie's spine. Deciding that anyone who could sing so stunningly deserved forgiving for the remark about her accent, Primmie hummed along as best she could, looking round the vast hall with interest as she did so.

Enormous polished boards hung on the walls, bearing lists of names of former pupils in gold lettering, along with the dates they had attended Bickley as well as their eventual scholastic achievements on leaving university. On another wall was a reproduction of Jean-Francois Millet's
The Angelus
and, several yards down from it, a reproduction of Sir John Everett Millais'
Ophelia
.

Turning her head to look behind her to see if there were any more pictures, she saw the plump fair-haired girl whose father had behaved so appallingly to Kiki's father. She wasn't singing the words of the hymn, either, but somehow Primmie didn't think it was because she didn't know them, but because she'd been crying – and looked as if, at any second, she would begin crying again. Her eyes were red rimmed and she was clutching a sodden handkerchief in one hand. Having obviously entered the hall late, she was standing at the far end of the rear row, looking so miserable that Primmie's heart went out to her. It hadn't, after all, been her fault that her father had behaved as he had.

As she turned her head away she saw out of the corner of her eye that the girls further along the rear row were nudging each other and making whispered comments that were quite clearly about the new girl and, equally clearly, were spitefully unkind.

‘Till we have built Jer-u-salem,' Kiki and Geraldine were singing at full belt, ‘in England's green and pleasant la-and.'

Fifteen minutes later, when assembly had been dismissed, they and the rest of the new girls had been divided into two groups and led off towards two separate classrooms.

‘So far so good,' Geraldine said as they remained steadfastly together. ‘We're the only three in this group who haven't come up from the Lower School, did you know that? It means we'll never fit in with the rest of them and why should we try? I'm only here because I didn't get a place at Benenden. I'm guessing you're here on a non-fee-paying scholarship, right?'

Primmie nodded, happy to have her non-fee-paying status out in the open where her two new friends were concerned.

‘And what about you, Kiki?' Geraldine asked as, bringing up the rear of their group of twenty or so, they finally reached the light and airy classroom that was apparently going to be their form room. ‘Why did you opt for Bickley High?'

Kiki gave a rude snort. ‘I didn't. I wanted to go to stage school but Daddy said no way, not until I'd got what he calls a proper education. He's a doctor,' she added as everyone in front of them began selecting desks and sitting at them. ‘He thinks I've got the brains to be a doctor too, and I probably have, but I don't want to be one.'

‘Let's take three desks at the back,' Geraldine said, indicating the still half-empty back row as it became apparent that if they didn't they weren't going to be able to have desks next to each other. ‘So what is it you want to be, Kiki? An actress?'

‘A singer. A rock singer.'

‘Would you three girls at the back please have the good manners to be silent,' the woman who had formed them into a column before leading them into the school hall now said, glaring freezingly at Geraldine, who seemed incapable of lowering her voice to a discreet whisper. ‘My name is Mrs Sweeting and I am your form mistress for the next year. Now, before I give you the introductory talk, can you please tell the rest of the form your names, starting with the girl in the bottom left-hand corner and continuing along each row until we reach the girl seated at the top right-hand corner. I'm well aware that the majority of you have come up from the prep department and already know each other, but I do not know you as yet and neither do any of the girls who have come here from other prep departments.'

‘Or Rotherhithe Juniors,' Kiki whispered wickedly to Primmie, making her grin.

‘Samantha Wade-Benbridge,' an affectedly languid voice said from the front of the class. ‘Lauren Colefax,' the girl seated next to her said. Other names came thick and fast. ‘Mirabel Des Vaux.' ‘Sophie Menzies.' ‘Beatrice Strachan.'

The door opened, bringing the litany to a halt. ‘I'm sorry to interrupt, Mrs Sweeting,' a lady Primmie recognized as being the school secretary said as she entered the room, ‘but the group numbers are uneven and in order to correct them this young lady, Artemis Lowther, has been taken out of Miss Roberts's class and will, instead, be with you.'

The girl in question was the plump, fair-haired girl, who looked even more distressed now than she had when in assembly.

There was an outbreak of giggling from the front of the classroom and Primmie could hear someone say in a loud whisper: ‘It's
her
. The girl with the thuggish father.'

Standing a few feet behind the school secretary and in full view of the entire class, Artemis flushed a deep, ugly red.

Primmie wasn't remotely surprised. Her one fear, until an hour or so ago, had been that she wouldn't be able to make friends at Bickley High; that she wouldn't be able to fit in. Thanks to Geraldine and to Kiki, that was a fear she no longer had. Artemis Lowther, though, was suffering exactly the kind of torments she had feared she would suffer, not because she spoke differently or because she was a non-fee-paying scholarship girl, but because her father's behaviour had singled her out as being someone to be ridiculed.

‘Thank you, Mrs Bridges,' Mrs Sweeting said as, her errand accomplished, the secretary left the room. ‘And now, Artemis, if you would take a desk on the back row please, we will continue with what we were doing.'

The only spare desk on the back row was the desk next to Kiki.

In an agony of embarrassment Artemis Lowther made no attempt to move and the situation wasn't helped by Kiki sucking in her breath and then saying fiercely in a low voice, ‘No
way
. Not till hell freezes over.'

It was a remark that Mrs Sweeting, lifting up the lid of her desk, mercifully did not hear. Artemis did, though, and so did everyone else. As the red stain in Artemis's cheeks spread and deepened and as there was a fresh outbreak of barely suppressed giggling, Primmie said urgently to Kiki, ‘Give her a break, Kiki. What her dad said to your dad wasn't her fault. And she's like us. She hasn't come up from the prep department. No one knows her.'

‘They do now,' Geraldine interjected dryly.

Mrs Sweeting slammed down her desk lid. ‘Artemis Lowther, please do as you are asked and take your place at the spare desk in the back row and will the three girls seated at the left-hand side of the back row be
silent
.'

With a deeply disgruntled sigh Kiki raised her hands palms outwards, in a pax sign, to signify to Artemis that she wasn't going to cause a scene if she took her place at the desk next to hers. Primmie shot Artemis the widest, most sympathetic smile possible and Geraldine, ignoring Mrs Sweeting's strictures with careless contempt, said, ‘I think our little band has just increased in number, Primmie. For better or for worse, it's not going to be the three of us. It's going to be the four of us.'

Kiki opened her eyes, looked at her bedside clock and saw with relief that there was another half an hour to go before she needed to get up. In the bed a few feet away from her, Primmie continued to breathe deeply, still fast asleep.

Kiki put her hands behind her head, thinking about the day ahead. It was Friday, thank God. Tonight there was
Ready, Steady, Go
on the television and it was an event she looked forward to all week. Her singing voice was miles better than most of those who appeared on the programme and she longed for the day when she, too, would make her name as a pop star by appearing on it.

‘Are you awake, Primmie?' she asked, wanting to share her good mood with her.

A slight snore was the only response.

She stared at her friend in disbelief. How Primmie could sleep so soundly, never waking until their alarm rang, was beyond her. ‘She sleeps the sleep of the righteous,' her father would say about Primmie, always with fond amusement in his voice.

Kiki swung her legs out of bed, marvelling, not the for the first time, at how much nicer things had been at home since Primmie had begun staying at Petts Wood from Monday to Friday.

‘Of course she can stay here during the week,' her father had said when she had explained to him Primmie's problem – that not only was the journey from Rotherhithe to Bickley High a long one, but leaving and returning home every day in her distinctive school uniform was causing difficulties for her with her former friends in Rotherhithe.

And so for the past four years she and Primmie had lived almost as sisters.

She padded barefoot across deep carpet to the window, reflecting that her father did do his best to keep her happy. Recently she'd begun calling him by his Christian name, explaining that now she was fifteen she found ‘Daddy'too babyish, ‘Dad'too common and ‘Father'too stuffy. She'd expected there to be a battle about it and, truth to tell, had been looking forward to one, but he'd merely laughed and said that if she wanted to call him Simon it was all right by him.

Pulling back the curtains she pushed the already opened window even further open and leaned as far out as possible.

It was a glorious morning and the scent from the Albertine rose that grew up the wall to the left of her window and the honeysuckle that scrambled up the wall to the right of it was as heady as a drug. Beyond the long rolling vista of the immaculately kept lawn, a heat haze hovered over the woods and the far distant view of the Weald. It was a view she was too familiar with to rhapsodize over, as Primmie always did, but even she, who longed only for central London and Tin Pan Alley and clubs and coffee bars, had to admit that it was pretty breathtaking.

Her father, of course, loved the fact that Primmie thought their garden – and the view from it – so magical. ‘Where's Primmie? In the garden? It's nice to have someone so appreciative of it,' he'd say, coming in from evening surgery and dropping his doctor's bag in the hall. Five minutes later, after checking whether her mother was slightly tipsy, very tipsy or just plain sozzled, he would be changing out of his suit and into an old sweater and pair of shabby corduroys, all set for a therapeutic hour of gardening.

‘Isn't it a bit embarrassing at times, having Primmie living with you when your mother's on a bender?' Geraldine had once asked her in her forthright fashion.

It hadn't been a question she'd taken offence at. Between Geraldine, Primmie, Artemis and herself there were no secrets where their respective home lives were concerned. All three of her friends knew that her mother drank too much.

‘It's OK. It isn't a problem,' she had said to Geraldine. ‘Things are much better at home when Primmie is with us. There aren't the arguments there used to be. If Mummy's tipsy when Simon comes home, he doesn't get upset the way he used to. And Primmie is great. Nothing ever embarrasses her. There was a phone call not long since from the local supermarket manager saying Mummy was “distressed” and in need of being escorted home. What he meant, of course, was that she'd been drinking and was causing a scene. If I'd gone to haul her off home the scene would have become twice as horrendous – we'd have been shrieking at each other like fishwives. Primmie, though, behaves as if Mummy being drunk is nothing to get excited about, and Mummy's never abusive or aggressive towards her – which she might be if it were me or Simon trying to deal with her.'