In the Fifth at Malory Towers (10 page)

“What are we to do with this pest of a Maureen?” complained Janet, one evening. “She comes and asks if she can help me and then if I give her the simplest thing to sew, she goes and botches it up so that I have to undo it.”

“And she had the sauce to come and tell me she didn’t like some of my chords in the opening chorus of
Cinderella
,” snorted Irene. “I ticked her off. But she won’t learn she’s not wanted. She won’t learn she’s no good! She’s so thick-skinned that I’m sure a bullet would bounce off her if she was shot!”

“She wants a lesson,” said Alicia. “My word — if she comes and offers to show me how to juggle, I’ll juggle her! I’ll juggle her all down the corridor and back again, and down into the garden and on to the rocks and into the pool!”

“Gwen’s looking pretty sick these days,” said Belinda. “She doesn’t like having a double that clings to her like Maureen does. I wonder if she knows how like her Maureen is. In silliness and boringness and conceitedness and boastfulness and...”

“Oh, I say,” said the saintly Catherine, protesting. “Aren’t you being rather unkind, Belinda?”

Belinda looked at Catherine. “There are times to be kind and times to be unkind, dear sweet Catherine,” she said. “But you don’t seem to know them. You think you’re being kind to me when you sharpen all my pencils to a pinpoint — but you’re not. You’re just being interfering. I don’t want all my pencils like that. I keep some of them blunt on purpose. And about this being unkind to Maureen. Sometimes unkindness is a short cut to putting something right. I guess that’s what Maureen wants — a dose of good hard common sense administered sharply. And that’s what she’ll get if she doesn’t stop this silly nonsense of hers.”

Catherine put on her martyr-like air. “You know best, of course, Belinda. I wouldn’t dream of disagreeing with you. I’m sorry about the pencils. I just go round seeing what I can do to help, that’s all.”

“Shall I show you how you look in your own thoughts, Catherine?” said Belinda, suddenly. Everyone listened, most amused at Belinda’s sudden outburst. She was usually so very good-natured — but people like Maureen, Gwen and Catherine could be very very trying.

Belinda’s pencil flew over a big sheet of paper. She worked at it for five minutes, then took up a pin. “I’ll pin it to the wall, girls,” she said. “Catherine will simply love it. It’s the living image of her as she imagines herself.”

She took the sheet to the wall and pinned it up. The girls crowded round. Catherine, consumed with curiosity, went too.

It was a picture of her standing in a stained-glass window, a gleaming halo round her head. Underneath, in big bold letters Belinda had written five words:

OUR BLESSED MARTYR, ST. CATHERINE.

Catherine fled away from the shrieks of delighted laughter. “She’s got what she wanted!” said Darrell. “Catherine, come back! How do you like being a saint in a stained-glass window?”

BEFORE that week had ended Darrell was ready with the whole pantomime, words and all. Most of the music had been written, because Irene almost snatched the words from Darrell as she finished them.

“Quite a Gilbert and Sullivan,” said Moira, rather sneeringly, speaking of the famous comic opera pair of the last century. She was feeling rather out of things. Until the pantomime was written, she could not produce it, so she had nothing to do at the moment. And Moira disliked having nothing to do. She liked running things, organizing things and people, dominating everyone, laying down the law.

She was not a popular head-girl. The fifth-formers resented her dictatorial manner. They disliked her lack of humour, and they took as little notice of her as they could.

Moira chafed under all this. “Do buck up with this pantomime, Darrell and Sally,” she said. “I wish I’d undertaken to write it myself now, you’re so slow.”

“You
couldn’t
write it,” said Darrell. “You know you couldn’t. You hardly ever get good marks for composition.”

Moira flushed. “Don’t be cheeky,” she said.

Catherine spoke up for her, using a sweet and gentle voice. “I’m sure Moira only let you and Sally do it to give you a chance,” she said. “I’m sure she could have done it very well herself.”

“There speaks our blessed martyr, Saint Catherine,” put in Alicia, maliciously. “Dear Saint Catherine. She deserves the halo Belinda gave her, doesn’t she, girls?”

Catherine frowned. Belinda called out at once. “Hold it, Catherine, hold it! No, don’t smile in that sickly sweet manner, let me have that frown again!”

Catherine turned away. It was too bad that she should be laughed at when all the time she was trying to be kind and self-sacrificing and really
good
, poor Catherine thought to herself. She glanced at the wall. Blow! There was yet another picture of her up there, with a bigger halo than ever!

Catherine regularly sneaked into the common-room when it was empty, and took down the pictures that Belinda as regularly drew of her. But always there was a fresh one. It was absolutely maddening. This one showed her sharpening thousands of pencils, and if anyone looked carefully at the big halo they could see that it, too, was made of sharpened pencils set closely together.

“It’s enough to make anyone furiously angry,” thought Catherine. “I wonder I don’t lose my temper and break out, and call people names. Well — I
try
to like them all, but it’s very very difficult.”

The fifth form decided they must deal with Maureen as well as with Catherine. “Better show them both exactly where they stand before we begin rehearsing,” said Alicia. “We can’t be bothered by interferers and whiners and saints when once we’re on the job. Now — how shall we deal with Maureen?”

“The trouble with
her
is that she’s so full of herself — thinks she can do everything better than anyone else, and is sure she could run the whole show,” said Darrell. “She’s so jolly thick-skinned there’s no doing anything with her. She’s too vain for words!”

“Right,” said Alicia. “We’ll give her a real chance. We’ll tell her to draw some designs to help Belinda — we’ll tell her to sing one or two songs to help Mavis. We’ll tell her to compose one or two tunes to help Irene — and write one or two poems to help Sally. Then we’ll turn the whole lot down scornfully, and she’ll know where she stands.”

“Well — it sounds rather
drastic
,” said Mary-Lou.

“It does, rather,” said Sally. “Can’t we tell her to do the things — and let her down not too scornfully?”

“Yes. We could pretend she wasn’t being serious — she was just pulling our legs when she brings the tunes and verses and things,” said Darrell. “And we could pat her on the back and clap and laugh — but not take them seriously at all. If she’s got any common-sense she’ll shut up after that. If she hasn’t, we’ll have to be a bit more well — drastic, as Mary-Lou calls it.”

Everyone was in this plot except Gwen and Catherine. The girls were afraid one of the two might tell tales to Maureen if they knew of the plan. Moira approved of it, though she thought it not whole-hearted enough. She would have liked the first idea, the “drastic” one.

Maureen was told to submit verses, tunes and designs. Also to learn two of the songs in case she could improve on Mavis's interpretation of them.

She was so gratified and delighted that she could hardly stammer her thanks. At last, at last she was coming into her own. Her gifts were being recognized! How wonderful!

She rushed straight off to tell Gwen. Gwen could hardly believe her ears. She listened, green with jealousy. To ask
Maureen
to do these things! It was unbelievable.

“Aren’t you pleased, Gwen? I can do them all better than the others, can’t I?” cried Maureen, her pale-blue eyes shining brightly. “At last the others are beginning to realize that I
did
learn something at Mazeley Manor.”

“You and your Measley Manor,” said Gwen, turning away. Maureen was shocked. Had Gwen, Gwen her friend, actually said “Measley”? She must have misheard. She took Gwen by the arm, chattering happily.

But Gwen was strangely unfriendly. She was so jealous that she could hardly answer a word.

Maureen worked hard. She produced two lots of verses, two tunes, and a variety of designs for costumes. She learnt the two songs that Darrell had given her, going alone into a fifth-form music-room, where she let her loud voice out to such an extent, and so much off the note, that the girls in the next music-rooms listened, startled and amazed.

It was not only a loud voice, but it was not true in pitch — it kept sliding off the note, and going flat, like a gramophone just about to run down. It made the astonished girls in the rooms nearby shiver down their spines. Whoever could it be, yowling like that?

Bridget, Moira’s fourth-form sister, went to have a look. Gracious, it was a fifth-former yowling in there — who was it — Maureen Little! Bridget grinned and went to find Connie. The two of them had become friends, and Connie was gradually leaving Ruth to herself, coming less and less to ask for her company.

The two fourth-formers peered into the square of glass window set in the door of the practice-room where Maureen was singing.

“Hear that?” said Bridget, maliciously. “Wonderful, isn’t it? Let’s both go into the room next door and yowl too. Come on. It’s empty now. If a fifth-former's allowed to do that, so are we!”

So the two of them went next door and made such a hullabaloo, pretending to be a couple of opera-singers, that everyone in the corridor was startled.

Only Maureen, lost in her loud voice, soaring to higher and louder heights, heard nothing. Her door suddenly opened and Moira came in.

“MAUREEN! Shut up! We can even hear you in the common-room!”

Maureen stopped abruptly. Then, from the next room rose more yowls. Moira hurried there, amazed. Now what was going on?

Connie stopped as soon as she saw Moira. But Bridget, who cared nothing for her sister’s anger, sang on vigorously, altering the words of her sung at once.

“OHHHHHHH! Here is MOIRA! HERE — is SHE-EE.”

“Bridget! Stop that at once!” said Moira, angrily. But Bridget didn’t stop.

“HERE — is SHEE-EEE!” she repeated.

“Did you hear what I said?” shouted Moira.

Bridget stopped for breath. Tm not making nearly such a noise as Maureen,” she said. “And anyway I keep on the note and she doesn’t. If a fifth-former can yowl away like that why can’t we?”

“Now don’t you start being cheeky,” began Moira, going white with annoyance. “You know I won’t stand that. Connie, go out of the room. I advise you not to make close friends with Bridget. You’ll only get yourself into trouble.”

Connie went, scared. If it had been Ruth with her, in trouble, she would have stayed and stuck up for her — but Bridget was different. She always stood up for herself. She faced Moira now.

“
That’s
a nice thing to tell anyone about your sister, Moira,” she said. “Washing your dirty linen in public! Telling somebody I’m not fit to make friends with.”

“I
didn’t
say that,” said Moira. “Why can’t you behave yourself, Bridget? I’m ashamed of you. I’m always hearing things about you.”

“Well, so am I about you?” said Bridget. “Who is the most domineering person in the fifth? You! Who is the most unpopular head-girl they’ve ever had? You! Who didn’t go up with the old fifth form because nobody could put up with her? You!”

“
Oh
!” cried Moira, whiter still with rage. “You’re unbearable. I shall report you to Miss Williams, yes, and Connie too. And I shall report you every single time I find you doing something you shouldn’t.
I
know how you sneak out of your dormy at night to talk to the third-formers.
I
know how you get out of the jobs you ought to do. I hear things too!”

“Sneak,” said Bridget,

It was a very ugly sight, the two sisters standing there, shouting at one another. Moira was trembling now and so was Bridget. Moira had to keep her hands well down to her side, she so badly wanted to strike her sister. Bridget kept well out of the way. She always came off worst in a struggle.

There was a pause. “You’ll be sorry if you do report me about this afternoon,” said Bridget at last. “Very sorry. I
warn
you. Go and report Maureen! She’ll expect it of the domineering Moira! But just remember — I’ve
warned
you — you’ll be sorry if you report
me
.”

“Well, I shall,” said Moira. “It’s my duty to. Fourth-formers aren’t allowed in these practice-rooms, you know that.”

She turned and left the room, still trembling. She went to find Miss Williams, the fourth-form mistress. If she didn’t report those two straightaway, whilst she was furious, she might not do it when her anger had died down.

Miss Williams was rather cool about the affair. She wrote down the two fourth-form names Moira gave her, and nodded. “Right. I’ll speak to them.”

That was all. Moira wished she hadn’t said anything. She felt uncomfortable now about Bridget’s threats. How could Bridget make her sorry? Bridget was so very fierce sometimes, and did such unaccountable things — like the time when she had broken every single one of Moira’s dolls, years ago, because Moira had thrown one of Bridget’s toys out of the window.