Love Lessons (8 page)

‘I'm rubbish at art but Prue is brilliant,' said Grace.

‘I'm not,' I said, blushing.

‘Yes, you are,' said Grace.

I had to shut up or we would have got stuck in a ludicrous pantomime routine.

Mr Raxberry glanced at me. He had a very intent way of looking, as if he was actually drawing me, noting everything about me. I wished I didn't look such a total idiot in my tablecloth dress. His dark eyes seemed very warm and sympathetic, as if he understood exactly what I was thinking.

He showed us to the office and introduced us to one of the school secretaries. ‘Gina will look after you. Good luck! I hope you enjoy your first day,' he said, and then went hurrying off down the corridor.

Gina stared after him wistfully. She would obviously have preferred to look after
him
. She gave us forms to fill in and then told us to wait on chairs outside the headteacher's study.

We crouched there, all three of us, totally unnerved, while great gangs of students careered up and down the corridors, laughing, calling, shouting.

‘Why don't the teachers tell them off?' Mum whispered. ‘Still, the teachers seem a pretty rum lot. Imagine, that Mr Raxberry had an
earring
. You wouldn't think they'd allow it.'

‘He teaches
art
, Mum,' I said.

‘I don't know what your dad would say.'

There was a little pause. We were all horribly aware that Dad couldn't manage to say two words together at the moment.

I hunched up on my hard chair, guilt stabbing me in the stomach. Grace reached out sympathetically, and smudged the ink where she'd written her name on her form.

‘Oh rats,' she said, sighing.

‘Grace! Don't make it all messy,' said Mum. ‘Do your name again, and try to keep your writing neat. Look, it's all over the place. Make it smaller, to fit on the line.'

‘It won't
go
smaller,' said Grace, gripping her pen so tightly her knuckles went white. She stuck her tongue out as she wrote, concentrating fiercely. Then she peered at my form. ‘Oh no! I've done my address wrong. I've mixed up the postcode letters,' she wailed. ‘Shall I copy it out?'

‘No, it'll look even more of a mess. Just leave it. As if it matters!' I said, though I'd written mine in my neatest printing, using my fine-line black drawing pen.

A smart blonde woman in a black trouser suit and high-heeled boots walked past us into the headteacher's office without even knocking.

‘What a nerve! We were here first,' said Mum. ‘Do you think she's his secretary?'

She wasn't the secretary. She put her head back round the door in two minutes and beckoned us in. She was the headteacher, Miss Wilmott.

‘We didn't think you'd be a woman,' Mum said stupidly.

‘Well, I promise you I'm not a man in drag, Mrs King,' she said.

Mum looked dreadfully embarrassed. Grace and I sniggered uncomfortably.

‘Welcome to Wentworth,' said Miss Wilmott. ‘We're all new girls together. I've only been here since the beginning of term.'

She indicated three chairs in front of her desk. She sat behind it, resting on her elbows, her hands crossed in front of her. They were very pretty hands with beautifully shaped nails, pink with bright white tips, as perfect as a porcelain doll.

Mum hid her own bunch-of-bananas hands in her floral lap. Grace sat on her own bitten fingernails. I made myself sit with my hands by my sides, pretending to be relaxed. I looked past Miss Wilmott at the paintings on her wall. They were mostly creation myths, but I recognized one Nativity scene, with a host of angels flying round above the stable, playing a heavenly version of ‘Ring-a-ring-a-roses'. The painting had been in the same room as Tobias and his angel.

Miss Wilmott saw me staring. ‘Do you like my painting? It's Italian, by Bellini.'

‘No, it isn't!' I said, astonished. ‘It's a Botticelli. He paints very differently, in a very poetic and ethereal way. I just adore his work.'

‘I'm so pleased,' said Miss Wilmott, though she didn't sound pleased at all.

‘She's very into art, our Prudence,' said Mum. ‘My husband takes both girls to all the galleries, fills them in on all the details. He's taken such pains with them.'

‘Excellent,' said Miss Wilmott briskly. ‘Well, I'm determined there's going to be a big emphasis on the arts in Wentworth. I'm sure your daughters will appreciate their art lessons.'

‘Oh, not me!' said Grace. ‘I don't want to do art, thanks, because I'm useless at it. I'll just do English and history and geography and some nature stuff, but not anything hard.'

‘You'll be given a timetable, Grace,' said Miss Wilmott. ‘You'll find you'll be doing all sorts of subjects. But first of all, I'd like both of you to do a little test for me so we can sort out which year group to put you in.'

‘I can't do tests,' said Grace anxiously, seemingly determined to convince Miss Wilmott she was totally bonkers.

‘She panics,' Mum said. ‘She's not really that clever – she takes after me, poor girl.' She laughed a false little ha-ha-ha. ‘Prudence is the bright one,' Mum continued. ‘She'll be top of her class, no problem.'

Miss Wilmott's smile was getting strained. ‘We'll have the girls do their assessment tests and then we'll see,' she said. ‘Meanwhile, Mrs King, I'd like to remind you that we do have a very strict uniform policy. Can you make sure the girls are kitted out in the regulation green uniform, please?'

‘Oh yes, I've got that all in hand. They're going to buy their uniform at the special shop,' Mum said.

‘I see,' said Miss Wilmott. She paused delicately. ‘Are you on benefits, Mrs King? We do have an excellent free school lunch if that's the case.'

‘Oh no, they'll take a packed lunch,' said Mum. ‘We're not on any benefits at all, thank you.' Her cheeks were burning.

Miss Wilmott had no idea how she'd insulted her. She'd never heard one of Dad's rants about the Great Unwashed living off the State. Maybe Miss Wilmott thought
we
were the Great Unwashed, and possibly barking mad to boot. Her perfectly manicured nails were starting to fidget impatiently.

‘Right then. We'll get Prudence and Grace settled in. School finishes at three thirty.' She gave Mum one more tight smile of dismissal.

Mum sat still, smiling back, not understanding. Grace sat gawping too.

‘I won't have to do running or jumping or any games, will I?' Grace said.

‘You'll have a games lesson twice a week. I think you'll find it fun,' said Miss Wilmott, getting up.

‘But I can't, I've got a bad heart,' said Grace, putting her hand on her chest in a theatrical gesture.

I stared at her. She didn't have anything wrong with her heart. She could obviously lie as fluently as me when she was desperate enough.

Mum blinked at Grace, wondering what she was on about. Miss Wilmott didn't look convinced.

‘If you want exemption from games you'll have to bring a letter from your doctor,' she said. ‘But I'm sure a little gentle exercise won't do you any harm at all. Now, I really have to go to assembly. I'll settle you down with your tests, girls. Goodbye, Mrs King.'

Even Mum couldn't fail to get the message that it was time to go. She heaved herself upwards and gazed at Grace and me. Her eyes brimmed with tears but she did her best to smile. ‘Have a nice day then, girls,' she said. ‘I'll be waiting for you in the playground after school.'

‘
No
, Mum, we'll walk home ourselves,' I said.

‘Well, take great care, dear. Make sure you mind the roads and don't talk to strangers.'

She was treating us as if we were six. It was a relief when she waddled off down the corridor. She turned to wave at us again and again, as if she thought this was the last time she'd see us.

Grace and I sat at adjacent desks in a small room in a special unit called the Success Maker. Another girl sat at the back with some sort of helper. She was stumbling through an early reader book, spelling out the simplest words, often getting them wrong. Two foreign boys were with another teacher. He was making slow, deliberate conversation with them. ‘Hello. My name is Mr Evans. I am thirty years old,' he said, expecting them to reciprocate. The boys mumbled and fidgeted, looking round the room, baffled.

I squeezed Grace's hand reassuringly under cover of the desks. She could speak English, she could read fluently. She didn't need to look so worried.

Gina gave us both booklets of questions and a pen each. ‘There we go. You've got an hour and a half.'

Grace flicked through the pages, looking horrified. ‘To answer all
this
?'

‘Just answer as many questions as you can. Don't panic.' Gina made for the door. She turned and saw Grace edging nearer to me. ‘And don't copy either!'

We opened our booklets.

‘Oh help help help!' Grace muttered. ‘Half of it's
puzzles
. And mixed-up words. Oh, there's that spring cleaning bit from
The Wind in the Willows
– goodie, we can answer questions on
that
.'

I stared at my own booklet, looking for acrostics and anagrams and Moley in his burrow. I couldn't find them. My booklet was full of meaningless mathematical diagrams and sinister scientific formulae. My heart started thumping.

We had different booklets. Grace had one for eleven-year-olds just entering the school. Mine was for fourteen-year-olds starting Year Ten. I didn't know any of the answers. I was as hesitant as the girl reader, as baffled as the two boys. I stared at the paper long after Grace started scribbling away, her exuberant handwriting sloping wildly up and down the page.

I was so unnerved by the maths and the science that I was unsettled by the general intelligence questions too. I could see most of the missing sequences, fill in all the bracketed words, work out every code – but perhaps they were all trick questions? I dithered and crossed out and agonized, then decided to leave them and go back to them afterwards.

There was a passage of Shakespeare, unacknowledged, but it was the balcony scene from
Romeo and Juliet
so it was pretty obvious. I couldn't believe the question.
Do you think this scene was written recently? Give reasons for your answer
. Maybe this was a trick too? I decided to write a proper essay for Miss Wilmott to show her I wasn't a total moron.

I wrote three pages about Shakespeare and his times and the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. I commented on the difference between courtship in Elizabethan times and nowadays, though I knew little about girl/boy relationships in my own time. It had been love at first sight for Romeo and Juliet. She was only fourteen, my age. I tried to imagine falling so headily, instantly in love that I would risk everything and kill myself if I couldn't be with my beloved.

I conjured up Tobias and wondered what it would be like if he stayed with me until sunrise. I wondered what he'd say, what he'd do . . .

I started violently when a very loud alarm bell rang and rang. I jumped up and grabbed Grace, looking round wildly for flames and smoke. But it wasn't a fire alarm, it was simply the school bell.

‘It's break time now,' said Gina, bustling back. ‘Time's up, girls. Pass your booklets to me.'

‘But I haven't finished! I haven't done any of the stuff on the last two pages,' Grace wailed.

‘Never mind. It's not like a real exam. It's just so we can assess you properly,' said Gina, snatching the booklet away from Grace.

I hugged mine tightly to my chest, feeling sick. I'd done far worse than Grace. I'd answered only a quarter of the questions. I just had to hope my essay would be taken into account.

I felt I'd let Dad down. I saw his face screw up with rage and frustration as he tried to berate me.

‘There's no need to look so tragic,' Gina said to me. ‘I'm sure you've done very well, dear. You've written heaps.'

I'd written heaps of rubbish. I was put in a remedial class.

They didn't
call
it that. It was simply Form 10 EL. I pondered the significance of EL. Extreme Losers? Educationally Lacking? Evidently Loopy? I discovered they were merely the initials of our form teacher, Eve Lambert. But it was obvious that we were the sad guys in the school, the hopeless cases. Some could barely speak English and were traumatized, looking round fearfully as if they expected a bomb to go off any minute. Others were loud and disruptive, standing up and swearing. One boy couldn't sit still at all and fidgeted constantly, biting his fingernails and flipping his ruler and folding the pages in his notebook. He hummed all the time like a demonic bee. Most of my fellow pupils seemed scarily surly. The only girl who gave me a big smile had obvious learning difficulties.