Spying on Miss Muller (13 page)

Ada made pig noises that sounded so good, we all began grunting and crawling around on the floor.

“Dicks! Dicks!” Someone called from the bathroom, warning that a teacher or prefect was coming, and we struggled to our feet.

“Uh-oh,” we muttered, remembering what Old Rose had said. “Gas masks are not toys. They are never to be used inappropriately or for anything other than their intended function, which is to insure your survival should the Germans drop poison gas.” Old Rose had said it more than once.

We pulled and tugged at them. Gas masks clamped themselves to your skin, which is what they were supposed to do, and you had to peel them off. They came away like limpets from a rock.

We were still struggling with them when Bengie came into the dorm. This meant trouble.

Bengie watched us. “What is that awful smell?” she said.

“We thought maybe the Germans had dropped poison gas,” Ada said quickly. “We thought we should protect ourselves as best we—”

“Ada, give over,” Bengie said in a sort of absent-minded way. She was looking at me.

“Jessie?”

It was amazing the meaning that one ordinary word could have. It was more amazing how my stomach got the message so quickly since it had to go all the way from my ears to my brain first.

“What?” I asked, stopping with the gas mask half stuffed into its case.

“Miss Rose wants to see you in her sitting room,” Bengie said.

“Now?” I felt Lizzie Mag move closer to me, felt her shoulder touch mine.

“Did that Carol go and blab and tattle about Jessie's letter?” Maureen asked. “It didn't take her long to get to Old Rose.”

“Carol Murchison, Gestapo agent,” Ada said.

Lizzie Mag took my gas mask from my hands and said, “I'll do this for you, Jess.”

And then Bengie said, “You're to come right away, Jessie.”

There was such a hollow feeling inside me.

“Good luck,” Ada said as Bengie and I left, and Lizard said, “I'll put your books in your cubie, Jess.”

I walked fast to keep up as Bengie strode along the corridor.

“Is it about—” I began.

Bengie didn't slow. “All I know, Jess, is you had a telephone call from home.”

“What?” I stopped. “It's not about the letter? But... from home?”

The cord on my dressing gown had come untied again and I tripped over it. “But Bengie, it's so late. It's after eight. They never call this late. Something must be wrong.”

“I don't know... Bengie took the dressing-gown cord from me and tied the ends neatly in front, just where my stomach was starting to cramp really badly. I didn't like the gentle way she did it, as if she knew something bad and was sorry for me. Now she was hurrying again. I could tell she didn't want to talk, didn't want to have to answer questions.

Last night we'd all come along this corridor on our way to the shelter, the sound of bombs falling around us, but I was more frightened now. “Is it Daddy?” I whispered. Maybe Bengie didn't hear me, because she didn't answer. I had this instant picture of him, drunk on a road, a car running over him, or his liver splitting from the drink. Dr. Conway had warned him about his liver. “It's pickled like a herring, Magnus,” Dr. Conway had said. “One of these days it's just going to explode.”

We'd reached the door of Old Rose's sitting room. From the walls of the front hall the portraits of the former headmistresses gazed down at me, uncaring. They were dead. They weren't worrying about anybody now.

“Are you okay?” Bengie asked gently.

I nodded and knocked on the door.

Old Rose was sitting by the fire, her radio playing some soft music, it might have been “Clair de Lune.” I think it was the Palm Court Orchestra, or maybe the BBC Light Programme. A tray was on a small table beside her. It held a jug of cocoa and a blue plate of digestive biscuits arranged in a circle. There were two blue mugs.

“Hello, precious.” She held out a hand without getting up, and I had to go across and take it. She did that sometimes. Ada said Old Rose thought she was the Archbishop of York and we should kneel to be blessed.

“What a pleasure it is, Jessie, seeing you twice in one day.” Her voice was so sweet it scared me more. Why was she being so sweet? Normally she wasn't sweet at all. “Your dear mother phoned, and though it is late I gave permission for you to phone her back.”

My throat was dry. “Is it... has something happened to my father?”

“No,
no,
precious. As far as I am aware, your mother and father are perfectly fine. Why don't you just speak to them....” She let go of my hand and waved toward the phone. She didn't ask me to sign the book. She didn't remind me to keep the conversation short. She even turned her chair so she was looking at the fire and not at me. Something was very wrong.

My fingers trembled as I dialed. There was no view of the grounds tonight. The blackout curtains were closed, hanging in thick folds. The lamp dripped a small pool of light over Old Rose's chair. I could see the top of her head, the finger wave she always had put in her hair that looked like the ripples at the edge of Lough Neagh.

“Jessie?” My father's voice, sober, steady, gentle.

“Yes, Daddy?”

“I have bad news.” With one hand I held the edge of the table.

“The War Office sent your aunt Clara and uncle Eammon a telegram,” my father said. And then he told me that my cousin Bryan had been taken prisoner by the Germans. That he was a prisoner of war.

I
COULD IMAGINE
my cousin Bryan in some cell, Nazi soldiers kicking him with those high polished boots they wear. No sun, no air. Bread and water. A hole under the ground.

I couldn't bear it. I gnawed at my knuckles.

My father said he and my mother were driving early in the morning to Enniskillen to be with Aunt Clara and Uncle Eammon. They'd got an extra compassionate ration of petrol from the Ministry of Transportation. My father said there'd be a list of Northern Ireland soldiers taken prisoner in the
Belfast Newsletter
in the morning.

“We were afraid someone might tell you about it, or ask you, darlin', Bryan's last name being Drumm same as yours. And it not a usual name at all at all. Not like Johnson,” he joked, and I knew he was trying to cheer me up because he always told me how lucky I was to have a distinguished name like Drumm and not my mother's family name, Johnson. I swallowed. Bryan Drumm, prisoner of war. Maybe he'd only be a number now.

“Are you still there, darlin'?”

“Yes.”

I wanted to be home. To have my arms around my daddy's neck. To cry.

“Oh, darlin', your mother and I know how much you love Bry.”

I nodded, though he couldn't see me. Bryan was the brother I didn't have, the friend who understood about Daddy. The one I could talk to and who could comfort and advise me.

“Miss Rose thought it best that we talk to you ourselves tonight, Jess. She was very good, so she was.”

“Daddy, will you tell everyone how sorry I am.” I choked back my tears. “Tell them I'll be writing to them.”

“I will. Would you like to speak to Mummy?”

“No. It's all right.” I didn't think I could talk anymore. My throat hurt and my ears, too. Why did my ears ache?

“I will not take a drop of the stuff, Jessie,” my father said in a low, tight voice. “I'm promising you that. They'll all need me. I mean it, Jess.”

“Good.” I knew he meant it. I was almost sure he wouldn't be able to do it. The thought made my throat and ears ache even more. “Good night, Daddy.”

Old Rose turned her chair. It was on those little wheel things so it turned easily. “Come here, precious,” she said, and stood up and enfolded me in her arms. She was soft as a cushion. My nose was filled with the smell of stale face powder and stale perfume. Her hair, washboard stiff, scratched against my cheek. Ada always said the waves were sculpted in cement.

“There, there, there,” she whispered. Part of me was wailing for Bryan. The other part was staggered by all this. Old Rose and I hugging.

She let me go and held me away from her. Her little green eyes were soft and swimming in their own tears. “Sit down here, love.” She patted the thick flower-patterned seat of one of the big chairs. “You and I are going to have a nice cup of cocoa.”

I watched the cocoa stream, brown and frothy, into the two blue mugs while I sank into the chair. My dressing gown hung open. My misty-morning lisle stockings were dusty on the knees where I'd been crawling around on the dorm floor being a pig. The toes of my brown suede wedgies were scuffed. I rubbed them one at a time against the trail of my dressing gown. All those clothing coupons they'd required. Bryan had never even seen my wedgies. He would have liked them.

“Biscuit, darling?” Old Rose passed me the plate. I took one. The turf fire sparked and glowed red and peaceful in its depths. The music wrapped itself around us.

“Your father told me Bryan is your favorite cousin,” Old Rose said.

I broke off a piece of biscuit. “Yes.” Oh, thank goodness my father had been sober when he'd called and not talking nonsense. Usually my mother kept him and Old Rose separated. She kept him separated from just about anyone outside of Ballylo. Inside Ballylo was like his own big drunken playpen.

“Bryan's young and strong, Jessie,” Old Rose said. “He'll have the will to survive.” She sighed. “His wonderful years of youth are being stolen from him, and that's a tragedy. But war is a tragedy.”

The lights-out bell sounded and I set down my halfdrunk mug of cocoa on the hearth beside Gog, or maybe it was Magog, and half stood.

Old Rose waved her hand. “You are allowed to stay up late tonight. I arranged for Miss Müller to put the torch lamp in your room so you can see to get undressed.”

The torch lamp was the little battery-run lamp that was placed on the cubie dresser if a girl had the runs and had to go the lavatory a few times in the night, or maybe if a girl was having a nightmare. It was a rare occurrence, though. I wondered if Old Rose had told Miss Müller about Bry. Your rotten, murdering Huns got him, I thought. They've taken my cousin. Hitler has stolen the years of his youth.

“Sit down and be comfortable, Jessie,” Old Rose said. She offered another biscuit and I took it, crumbling it between my fingers, catching the crumbs before they could drop into the chair.

Old Rose lay back and closed her eyes and we were quiet. The music was nice.

“It's called
La Mer
and it's by Debussy,” she told me, moving a hand dreamily. “It makes me think of days by the sea when I was a child. We always spent our holidays in Cushendun.” Old Rose had been a child? How strange this all was, as if she really cared about me. Maybe she did. Maybe she cared about all of us in her actressy way.

She opened her eyes. “How do you feel, Jessie? Does your stomach hurt? Shall I ring for Nursie to give you something?”

“No, please.” The thought of milk of magnesia was more than I could bear.

“Well, we'll just sit quietly for a little while then and let the music soothe us.” She stirred up the fire with the big poker. White ashes drifted like snow and settled below the grate.

I sat there and tried to imagine the sea, but instead I thought about Bryan, about the last time he'd taken me up to Glenshane Pass on the back of his big Norton 350 motorcycle. The way his cheeks were so red and his hair, curly as mine, stood up like a paintbrush.

When the piece ended and a man's voice came on to tell us what was next, Old Rose stood and said gently: “Perhaps you should run along now, darling. Have a good cry. Crying helps mend the heart, but never quite.” She kissed my forehead. “If you want to talk anytime, I am here. I am your friend. And tomorrow you may come right after last period and you may phone your parents. I have the number in Enniskillen where they will be.”

“Thank you, Miss Rose.”

She was my friend. Right now I believed that absolutely. But still I backed my way out of her room.

Alveara lay quiet. It must have been half an hour ago that the lights-out bell had sounded. All the girls would be in bed, the little ones long ago. There'd be nobody around except teachers and maybe a prefect or two. They could stay up till ten, ten thirty on weekends. Lizzie Mag and I were looking forward to that part of being prefects, if we ever made it.

I went fast along the corridor, the clip-clop of my wedgies echoing against the walls. It was spooky at night with the door of halfway house open and all the tables and shelves swabbed down and empty, and the stairs to the basement shelter disappearing into the darkness below.

I hurried through Long Parlor. The bad smell was still there. I'd forgotten about it, but now it seemed even worse. I found a hanky in my pocket and held it against my nose. It was gritty with digestive-biscuit crumbs, and it was damp, too, where I'd wiped my eyes.

Long Parlor was dark except for the faint light that filtered in from the bathroom at the top of the dorms. Magazines had spilled from the table onto the floor. I saw the one with the picture of Betty Grable on the cover. Maybe it was
Life.
We hardly read anything in
Life,
or
Time
either, except the film-star features.

Tomorrow I'd ask Mr. Bolton to let me see his
Belfast Newsletter.
He always walked down and got it at the end of the drive in the little shop next to the College Chemists. I'd find Bryan's name in the paper. Maybe Mr. Bolton would let me cut it out. I could fold it and keep it in my blazer pocket. Oh, Bryan...

On the long vinyl sofa at the far end of Long Parlor a shadow moved. My heart stopped, started again with a jerk. Somebody there. Something. The ghost of Marjorie? I wanted to run, but as in the dream I had sometimes, I couldn't move.