Forbidden Lessons (15 page)

How any part of this was to be achieved was beyond the others. But Susie had it all worked out. Darius had a cousin with a car who would drive them over and the boys would bring the alcohol. "Darius is always sneaking out. His cousin picks him up, they go out on the town and then he sleeps in the car and walks in as normal with the day boys the next day." St Duncan’s had day pupils as well as boarders.

"We’ll need a venue of course," Susie said. "I was thinking of that pavilion that’s not being used."

It was where Laura had first touched Mr Rydell’s hand albeit by accident. When she had first really known deep down that she wasn’t imagining it all.

"We would all get expelled instantly if anyone found out," Charlotte said.

"It’s the thrill isn’t it? We’ll be fine though."

"Would it just be Julian and Darius?" Laura asked. She was suddenly worried about Jonathan coming. He’d written her an apologetic letter after having to leave her on the night of the sixth form dance, and she’d realised that he still had no idea that it was over between them.

"Have you still not dumped Jonathan?" Susie asked. "He’ll be proposing marriage and kids at this rate, blissfully ignorant that you’re in love with your German teacher."

Margery had decided she wanted no part of the escapade. The risk it involved made her feel physically sick.

Both Charlotte and Laura also wanted to back out, but they both knew they owed Susie. They would also continue to need her help. Maybe there was some way her plan could be tamed.

* * *

German was agony and ecstasy. Mr Rydell smiled and caught her eye but beyond that had to play things with caution.

She loved being in his presence. Hearing his voice, looking at him. Knowing he was hers, and she was his. Even when she saw Teresa Hubert making her stupid eyes at him she didn’t care. She knew he felt the same.

Her fingers found the jewel he had given her through her blouse. She rarely took it off. When she had shown it to the others Susie had informed her it was a diamond. "Look at the box. Shops like that don’t sell cubic zirconias."

Laura who loved it regardless had then worried about its value but didn’t dare ask. Fortunately Charlotte did so.
 

"I don’t know, probably a grand or so," Susie said. Laura was horrified but Susie seemed quite blithe about the cost.

Charlotte and Laura sat together in the cold Courtyard at break time, the November day grey and chilly. Margery was elsewhere and Susie appeared to have been held back after class by Mrs Ayers again.

"So do you feel different?" Laura asked Charlotte.

"Yes and no. I thought it would seem bigger, like crossing a really major line, but it’s just something that’s done, isn’t it?"

Laura thought about her own situation. She had been changed long before she ever slept with Mr Rydell. Falling in love with him, those early glances, the wondering, that was when her world had changed.

"Are you in love with him? Has he said it?" Laura asked.

"I don’t know, and yes. He might have just said it to persuade me though. He didn’t need to."

"But you’re glad? No regrets?"

Charlotte shook her head. "Why, did you regret it?"

Not for a moment. It had opened up the world for her. "No. I just wanted to make sure you were ok. And that he took care of things, you know."

"Yeah, he did. He was well prepared. I’m going to go on the Pill though. Oh God, there’s the Axe. Hide me."

The Geography teacher walked through the Courtyard, freezing everyone in her path. "Imagine how much happier this place would be if she were gone," Charlotte said. "She’s a blight."

* * *

Laura was still hanging back to keep pace with Margery in cross country which helped sustain their friendship. Susie had made it into the squad so it was just the two of them which Margery was glad for. She didn’t dislike Susie but she found her hard to relate to.

Laura and Margery had also grown closer due to all the extra time Charlotte was spending playing hockey. The combination of hockey and Julian had also quite wiped out Charlotte’s good intentions where Latin was concerned. Margery had been dismayed to find out that Charlotte’s original zeal was largely due to one of her Welsh Romeos reading Classics.
 

"Perhaps it doesn’t matter what the motive is if it still leads to a good result," Laura said.
 

She herself had persisted with putting in extra study for the ancient language. It had made an enormous difference to her grasp and enjoyment of the subject and was the reason she was giving it serious consideration for A-level.

"Will you stay with Mr Rydell for the final exeat?" Margery asked as they passed the groundsman’s cottages.

"Probably, if he asks me," Laura said.

"Aren’t you worried about getting caught? What if one of the staff dropped round to speak with him?"

"I’d hide upstairs I suppose." Laura hoped it wouldn’t happen but it would be kind of exciting if it did.

"Doesn’t it bother you always having to sneak around?"

Laura thought about the day in London where she was able to walk around with Mr Rydell openly. "Sometimes."
 

But it was also thrilling to have a secret that hardly anyone knew about.

* * *

Mr Rydell did manage to communicate with her. When she got her homework back, there was a folded piece of paper inside it.
 

"I love you and I want you all over again."
 

He hadn’t signed it which meant she could more safely keep it. She tucked it into her journal, its pages left blank since before half term.

Laura wondered if she could send him something back. Then it came to her that she could write something in German in her exercise book. In the unlikely event anyone else ever found it, it would look like homework.

To be on the safe side she decided to choose a quotation. She went to the school library where she found Miss Vine on duty. It had the usual hush that hung thickly in the air over the smell of hardback books.

She found the Modern Languages shelves and pulled out a book of Goethe. This would be tricky as there was no way she could translate it since her German was still too basic a level. So she hunted down an English translation to pick a couple of lines that she could then cross reference in the original German.

Selecting the text was harder than she thought. She didn’t want it to be too soppy. Most of the poems were also written from the point of view of a man to a woman. Eventually she found a couplet that she liked, and wrote the German down.

"What bliss it is! We exchange safe kisses,

"Without worry we draw in one another’s breath and life."

Instead of "safe" - she wrote
gefährliche
- dangerous.

Grace Grant had noticed the endless detentions that the newest pupil was getting. All of them, it would seem, ordered by Mrs Ayers. She was used to the Geography teacher handing out unfair punishment to Michaelmas girls and had argued on their behalf many times, but this was unprecedented. She also noticed that despite doing well in other subjects, Susie’s record showed a slew of Cs and Ds for Geography.

She called Susie into her office.

"I notice you seem to be in detention rather frequently for Geography."

"That’s right," said Susie.

The housemistress was rather taken aback by her tone. "Is there something the matter?"

"Not that I can think of," Susie said.

Grace Grant could tell there was, but she also recognised that Susie was the type of child who couldn’t be prised open by any means. "Perhaps you would let me see your Geography book," she asked.

Susie fetched it, and when Grace Grant opened it she was disturbed. Expecting a messy scrawl of poorly completed work, such as might justify the low grades and repeat punishments, she saw quite the opposite.

Rarely had she seen such carefully done work: neat handwriting, beautifully drawn diagrams, essays that were clearly above and beyond the usual length of an assignment. Geography wasn’t her subject, but even a brief read of Susie’s work showed it to be quite exceptional. Most worryingly there was a distinct lack of red ink, just a large C, C-, or D scrawled at the end of each entry.

Mrs Ayers was clearly acting towards Susie with sheer vindictiveness, but Grace Grant had no idea why. For the first time in her tenure at the school she felt fear. As she looked at Susie’s face, with its polite, impassive expression, she knew that her misgivings were not for Susie.

I shall have to elevate this, she thought. Whatever is going on cannot endure. She had long thought that Mrs Ayers was unhinged, but not to the point of sabotaging a pupil’s record.
 

"Are you concerned about the marks you are getting? Do you feel they are unfair?" she asked her.

"I can only do my best," Susie said.

Whatever game the girl was playing would not end well, for Mrs Ayers and possibly the school as well. It was time to consult Miss Grayson.

* * *

They had vowed to avoid risking further contact outside class but it was Mr Rydell’s turn to sit at the head of their table at lunch. It was a more than welcome change from fussy Miss Quayle the previous week.

The others contrived to make sure Laura sat next to him, taking all four places at the top end of the table much to the fury of Teresa Hubert who still fancied her own chances.
 

Concentrating on normal conversation with his leg pressed against hers under the table was not easy. But she was near him, as near as she could be to him in public, and he could talk directly to her without it drawing undue attention.

"So what are all your plans for the final exeat?" he asked them, knowing full well what Laura’s were.
 

Charlotte had been toying with the idea of "doing a Susie" and spending the exeat hidden in Julian’s dorm at St Duncan’s. On balance she had decided it was too risky. Susie’s birthday escapade would be dangerous enough. Charlotte had just got into the First Eleven hockey team and didn’t want anything to jeopardise it. She would instead turn the dullness and constriction of home to her advantage and spend most of the weekend training.

"I’ll just be going home. Revising probably." They had exams between the exeat and the Christmas holidays: the last few weeks of term were usually pretty gruelling.

"I’ll make sure I prepare you all something sufficiently rigorous in German then," he told Charlotte.

"Please don’t. We were hoping you might set us something easy, Sir."

"Harder things are often more interesting." He was pushing his leg more firmly against Laura’s as he said this. She reddened but fortunately it seemed to go over everyone else’s heads. Those that didn’t know what was going on with her and Mr Rydell at least.

"Where are you going for the exeat Sir?" someone asked.

"Staying here, marking your work," he told them. His hand was on Laura’s thigh. She was freaking out that someone would see but didn’t dare move away lest it made it more obvious.

"Doesn’t sound like much fun. You should get out more Sir," Teresa Hubert said, trying to sound flirtatious. Charlotte and Susie caught one another’s eye and were trying not to dissolve into laughter.

"Staying in has pleasures of its own." His fingers caressed the inside of Laura’s thigh and she jumped, nearly knocking over a glass of water. He looked at her, a gleam in his eye.

"Maybe you should lighten your load and let us off German homework next week," Charlotte said. There was a volley of voices in support of this. "Oh please Sir!" "Go on Sir!"

He smiled. "I’m only happy to sacrifice my holiday to ensure you all excel at German in your end of term exams. Any more requests and I’ll set you double."

* * *

Susie was currently absorbed with the midnight feast plans. Her campaign against Mrs Ayers was no longer her primary concern. She had devised her strategy and let it tick along without a great deal of conscious thought.

It was all arranged that Darius and Julian would come over around midnight and meet them by the pavilion. If the gate to the playing fields was padlocked they would scale the railings further along where a tree provided convenient branches. "Don’t smash the bottles," she had warned Julian over the phone.

Susie had been in two minds about the guest list. They were taking such a huge risk already that publicising it beyond their dorm would likely be fatal. Someone was bound to let it slip. On the other hand the larger the crowd, surely the lower the chance of a mass expulsion? They might expel her as the ringleader but that didn’t worry Susie unduly so long as the others got off with a warning or a few detentions. But she didn’t want to drag them all the way down with her.

In the end she decided it would just be the four of them - or the three of them if she couldn’t persuade Margery. It might be useful to have Margery snoring in her bed if Matron did make a late round.
 

"Matron normally sleeps like the biggest log of all. When someone’s ill in the night you really have to hammer on her door to get her up," Charlotte said.
 

Laura desperately wanted Margery to come as otherwise if Darius and Julian brought Jonathan she would end up getting paired up with him. Even if they brought a fourth boy that might help. Would Robert come? That might even persuade Margery to attend. Though if she managed to get off with him Laura was back to her original problem of being one-on-one with Jonathan.

But Margery outright refused.

"I don’t care if you all think I’m square. I don’t want to mess my entire life up by getting expelled. I wouldn’t enjoy it at all, sitting there and stressing over a teacher showing up."

She had a point. Laura wasn’t looking forward to it either for much the same reasons.

* * *

His initial attempts to coach Susie privately for the poetry recital rebuffed, Mr Peters had decided to attend the general rehearsals under the guise of lending his assistance to Miss Wingrove. She was forced to tolerate his presence since he was the Head of Department but paid him as little attention as possible.