Daughters of Fortune: A Novel (11 page)

Caitlin nodded at Georgina’s side of the room. “I guess you like horses, then.”

It was an understatement. The walls, desk, and closet door were covered with equestrian paraphernalia—posters of Grand National winners, photos of Georgina in competitions, and trophies celebrating her wins.

Georgina grinned. “You could say that!”

It did the trick. Within half an hour, the two girls were friends. It turned out Georgina—or George as she preferred to be called—had been equally worried about sharing with one of the Melville girls.

“But you seem like a good sort,” she declared. “Nothing like Elizabeth.”

Caitlin smiled. She’d been right. Being at Greycourt wasn’t going to be so awful after all. She wondered briefly if George knew Elliott but decided to wait until later to ask.

Greycourt tried hard to foster a sense of community among its pupils. As such mealtimes were formal occasions, served in the school’s magnificent dining hall. The lower school—seventh through ninth grade—sat down at six on the dot. The upper school, the sophmores, juniors, and seniors, then convened at the more civilized hour of seven-thirty.

The dining room itself was a re-creation of a Tudor banqueting hall, with vaulted ceilings, massive wooden beams, and large arched windows dividing the stone walls. Huge candelabras lit the room—a health and safety nightmare, but why let that get in the way of tradition?

At twenty past seven that night, George and Caitlin filed into the hall with the rest of the upper school. George pointed to the far end of the room. “My friends always sit over there.” She waved at one of her pals, who had been instructed to save them places.

The air crackled with excitement. It was the first dinner of the term, so everyone was milling around, taking a while to catch up and settle in. George and Caitlin had to force their way through the crowds to get to their seats. As Caitlin squeezed between the wall and a burly rugby player’s back, she caught sight of a familiar face in her path. It was Elliott, leaning casually against the wood paneling, chatting to a couple of girls. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans and tried to think of something intelligent to say. Nothing came to her. Instead, as she drew level with him, she slowed down and gave him a shy smile.

“Hi, Elliott.”

“Hey.” He looked blank for a moment, and then there was a flicker of recognition. “It’s Elizabeth’s sister, right?”

“Caitlin,” she filled in, trying not to feel disappointed that he’d forgotten her name.

“Right, right. Caitlin. Sure.” He gave her a lazy grin. Her stomach turned over. “I knew that. Good to see you again.” Then he turned back to the pretty redhead next to him and resumed their conversation.

Caitlin stood there for a moment, feeling foolish. She’d spent weeks fantasizing about the moment when she saw him again. And that was it. He’d barely glanced at her. She was trying to think of something else to say to him, but before she could, George grabbed her hand.

“Come on. The teachers will be here soon. We ought to sit down.”

Caitlin had no choice but to follow.

“Do you know Elliott?” she asked, once they were away from his group.

“Everyone knows Elliott Falconer.” The way George said it didn’t sound especially complimentary. She paused and looked back at Caitlin. “Why? When did you meet him?”

Caitlin quickly explained. “He seemed really nice,” she added, wanting to get the other girl’s opinion of him.

George snorted. “Yes. Elliott can be awfully charming when he wants to be.”

“So, how well do you know him?” Caitlin pressed. “Are you friends?”

George didn’t answer right away. By now, they had reached her group. Once they were seated and quick introductions made, George gave Caitlin a sidelong look. “Look, there’s something you ought to understand about Greycourt. There’s a strict social hierarchy. People like us,” she indicated her set of friends on the bench, “aren’t friends with the Elliotts and Morgans of the school. And, to be honest, that’s no bad thing.”

Before Caitlin could ask what she meant, a gong sounded, silencing the chatter. Benches scraped as the pupils got to their feet. A moment later, the teachers filed in and walked toward the high table. Once they were settled, Elizabeth went to the front of the hall and everyone bowed their heads. As student council president, she would start the year off by saying grace. She began to speak Latin in her strong, clear voice.

“Benedic, Domine, nos et dona tua . . .”

The rest of the meal, Caitlin tried to concentrate on what George and her friends were saying. They seemed to be nice, down-to-earth girls, like George herself. But every now and again, Caitlin’s gaze would stray to Elliott’s table. Everyone around him seemed so cool. The guys were good-looking, the girls slim and pretty. Caitlin looked at the slightly disheveled lot that surrounded her. She could suddenly see George’s point about the two groups not mixing. It hadn’t been like this back in Ireland at Holy Cross. The school had been too small for cliques. It was yet another change she would have to get used to.

_________

Caitlin’s first month at Greycourt passed at breakneck speed, mostly because there was so much to get used to. Privilege surrounded her at every turn. The facilities were unbelievable. There was a fencing salle, a judo dōjō, an Olympic-size indoor pool, and a nine-hole golf course. She couldn’t help comparing it to Holy Cross. The two places were worlds apart.

Never was that more apparent than in class. At Greycourt, academic prowess was highly prized. The school’s motto,
Sapere Aude
, Dare to Be Wise, said it all. Classes were brutal. Caitlin found that out on day one. The school secretary handed her a badly photocopied map, and she promptly got lost in the maze of dark corridors. None of the pupils rushing through the cloisters seemed interested in helping her, the new girl.

She was fifteen minutes late to her first class, which was English. Mr. Reynolds, a rodent-like man with a penchant for tweed, brushed aside her breathless explanation. “In future, make sure you arrive at my class on time, Miss Melville,” he said, his tone filled with ennui. “Otherwise Berrylands will be docked ten house points.”

Caitlin found a seat at the back. She didn’t recognize any faces in the room. Classes were streamed, and, unfortunately, George and her friends were in the top tier. Caitlin had been slotted into the bottom—“until we see what you’re made of,” the headmistress had said at their meeting that morning. Caitlin already suspected she’d be staying put.

The class was on the metaphysical poets, and it gave Caitlin an insight into Greycourt’s Darwinian approach to learning: only the fittest
survived. Mr. Reynolds read out one of Donne’s sonnets, “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” picking randomly on pupils to explain particular parts of the poem. If someone didn’t answer correctly, the teacher would groan loudly while the rest of the class sniggered.

Finally, Caitlin’s turn came. Mr. Reynolds stood over her desk and barked, “Miss Melville! The final three verses. What can you tell me about them?”

Eleven pairs of curious eyes turned to stare at Caitlin, eager to evaluate her. The girl gazed down at her notepad, trying to collect her thoughts. But Mr. Reynolds didn’t give her a chance.

“Come along now, weren’t you listening? Time’s up, Miss Melville!” He turned to the rest of the class. “Anyone else care to venture a guess on this?”

A dozen hands shot up.

“Yes, Miss Adams.” Mr. Reynolds moved on to a striking brunette. “Would you care to enlighten us where Miss Melville could not?”

“We see Donne’s most famous conceit being introduced here,” the brunette said with an air of superiority. “The two lovers are likened to the two points of a compass. At first this seems like a ridiculous comparison, but Donne goes on in the rest of the poem to show us how it makes sense.”

Mr. Reynolds nodded along as she spoke.

“Good, good,” he said. The brunette preened under his praise. “And how does he do this?”

Caitlin spent the rest of the class trying to keep up but feeling as if she was falling further and further behind. And this was supposed to be the slow class . . .

“I’m never going to be able to do all this homework,” Caitlin remarked to George during that first week. She was trying to get to grips with trigonometry. She’d spent twenty minutes on the first problem and still had no idea how to solve it. There were fifteen more to do before she could even think about going to bed.

George looked over at the question she was struggling with. “Don’t worry. I can help you with that.” She nodded down at her geography textbook. “Just give me five minutes to finish this.”

She was true to her word. In no time, she’d simplified the mathematical concepts so that Caitlin knew exactly what to do. Caitlin wasn’t
surprised, since George was naturally academic. It was only because she didn’t have a competitive bone in her body that she had ended up in Berrylands.

Caitlin had discovered that every house at Greycourt had its own distinctive character. The head made a judgment at each pupil’s interview about where they would be best suited. To most of the other houses, Berrylands was a joke. Inter-house competition was actively encouraged, with points being handed out for academic achievements and sporting wins. Results were published annually.

“Berrylands is always last,” George told Caitlin cheerfully.

There was a pecking order for everything at Greycourt. As Caitlin had observed that first night, there was a clear divide between the popular and unpopular pupils. That meant Elliott was out of her league. Not only was he two years older, he was part of Greycourt’s in-crowd. Being friends with George and her group meant Caitlin didn’t even appear on his radar.

It worked both ways. George and her friends had no time for them, either.

“Look at Barbie,” George would say scornfully, nodding over at Morgan in the dining hall. “I don’t know why she bothers putting food on her plate. She’s only going to throw it up in half an hour.”

The table would laugh along with her, but Caitlin couldn’t help looking over wistfully at Elliott. There was part of her—a shallow, superficial part, she knew—that wondered what it would be like to be accepted by his group.

Art lessons were the one part of the week Caitlin enjoyed. It helped that she got on well with Mr. Wright, the head of the Art Department. A gentle man in his early forties, he was a gifted teacher. The Head, it was rumored, wasn’t happy with his somewhat unorthodox appearance—he favored Black Sabbath T-shirts and black jeans and had a diamond stud in his left ear—but he got results, so she put up with it.

At the end of Caitlin’s first class, Mr. Wright asked her to stay behind. She half-expected him to say she wasn’t up to the acceptable standard. Instead, he asked if she’d like to join the class he taught after school on Wednesday and Friday afternoons.

“It’s mainly for the juniors and seniors,” he told her, “but I think
you’d really benefit from coming along. It’s purely optional, of course.” What he meant was that it was a privilege to be asked.

The classes turned out to be more fun than Caitlin had imagined. The AP course was art-school oriented, with students encouraged to experiment and explore their own style. For the first time, she had an opportunity to shine.

The only problem with joining the class was that Morgan Woodhouse was taking art, too.

As the lessons were outside of school hours, uniforms weren’t required, so on the first afternoon Caitlin turned up in a maroon floor-length gypsy skirt and olive green long-sleeved T-shirt. As she walked to her easel, Morgan leaned over to the girl next to her.

“God, what
is
she wearing?” she said in a stage whisper.

“I don’t know,” her friend giggled. “She must think the hippy look is back!”

Caitlin ignored the jibe, thinking that eventually Morgan would grow bored with being horrible to her. But she was wrong. It didn’t get any better, especially once it became apparent how talented Caitlin was. Morgan was used to being the best in the class at art, and she didn’t take kindly to this scruffy kid usurping her title.

Caitlin stood back from her easel so Mr. Wright could see what she had been working on. Two weeks earlier he had given the class a new project, with the prompt “To create an alternative self-portrait.” Caitlin had decided to explore the changes that had happened to her over the past few months. She had split her canvas into a grid of nine boxes, each square showing a different scene from her life. All nine pictures then cleverly came together to form one large portrait of her.

This was the first time Mr. Wright had seen it, and she was impatient to hear his thoughts. He stared at the canvas for a long time and then finally started to nod.

“It’s good,” he said, almost absentmindedly. Then went on, “I mean, it’s more than good. It’s exceptional.” He squatted down beside her. “You know, the Saatchi Gallery runs a competition each year for schoolkids. I really think you should consider entering. If you win, your work gets displayed in the gallery and you’ll be considered for a scholarship to one of the major art Schools.”

He spoke just as there was a lull in the class’s conversation, meaning
that everyone heard the unprecedented praise. Morgan’s head snapped up, and she scowled over at Caitlin.

After chatting to Caitlin about her work for a few more moments, Mr. Wright moved on around the class, offering praise and advice as it was due. He finally came to Morgan, who had a confident smile on her face. Her painting was an oil-on-canvas piece, similar to a Picasso self-portrait from his Cubist period.

Mr. Wright looked at it for a moment, frowning. “Morgan,” he said at last, “I think you’ve missed the point of the exercise.”

The girl’s smile faded.

“While technically this may be good, a self-portrait is supposed to be about self-expression and exploration,” he explained gently. “It’s meant to reflect the very essence of you. What you’ve shown me here is a picture of you in the style of Picasso. That doesn’t tell me anything about you as a person.”

Morgan’s face reddened, but Mr. Wright didn’t seem to notice.