The Following Girls (5 page)

Stottie smiled gratefully at her friend and scribbled another ‘O’ into the inky mess: noughts and crosses played by a dangerous lunatic.

Baker spotted Bunty at the far end of the room but pretended she hadn’t seen her. Strolling across to the classroom blackboard, she was about to pull a tissue from her pocket in order to update the chalk count in the corner (eighteen days to go till the end of term) when she spotted that their form mistress, Mrs Lorimer, a practical-minded woman, had brought in an off-cut of knitted dishcloth to wipe the board with since the real thing had disappeared. That was her little game, was it? Baker picked up the dusty white rag and dropped it down the back of the bookcase en route to her locker. The original felt brick thingy was still hibernating beneath a pile of dead leaves directly under the classroom window. Astonishing the amount of nuisance you could create with the simplest act of sabotage: the hunt under desks, the search for tissues, the selection of a volunteer to go next door (‘Sorry, Mrs Rathbone, but Mrs Lorimer says can we borrow your board rubber?’). Hours of fun.

Amanda McQueen had, entirely against her will, been designated classroom noticeboard monitor and was standing on a desk posing menacingly with a staple gun like a lost Bond girl. The class next door had a trendy-looking collage of sunsets culled from back numbers of the
National Geographic
. Queenie’s current display was composed of pages torn from the London A–D telephone directory with ‘Call me’ scrawled across the lot with one of her mother’s old red lipsticks. Downright embarrassing, or so Mrs Lorimer felt as she made her way to the front desk and frowned for the hundredth time at the solitary blue carpet tile set in the otherwise grey floor. The room directly above had blue but none of their floor tiles was missing when she went to look (none you could see, anyway: Bunty had taken enormous care to pinch one from underneath the corner lockers). The form mistress looked up and noticed yet another drawing pin in the ceiling: a good twelve feet away. How did they
do
that?

‘Amanda!’

Mrs Lorimer let out a wincing ‘tut’ as she remembered too late that all four heads would turn. Odd the way girls’ Christian names washed in and out of fashion. Three of her grandmother’s five brothers had married Dorothies: Dot; Dot; Dot.

‘Amanda Baker. I daresay your father has spoken to you about yesterday evening?’

And Baker placed a bet with herself that she’d say ‘new leaf’ and she did. Good as gold.

Bryony and Vicky and Patricia were all admiring a centrefold inside Bryony’s locker – same singer, different picture (different denim shirt, anyway).

‘Excuse me, lads,’ said Baker, squirming past the metal locker door. ‘Oozat then, Brian?’

Brian. Tee hee. But it was their own fault really. Samantha started it – her and ‘call-me-Jo’ Josephine. As if you could just choose your own nickname. Well two could play at that game. And now the whole lot of them had a boy’s name: Paddy, George, Brian, Vic. All except Natasha. Natasha could easily have been ‘Nat’ but she wasn’t. Natasha had only arrived a year ago, just after the Christmas holidays. She had been at some swanky ‘international school’ in Brussels or Bruges or Belgium or somewhere and had breezed in on her first day very, very full of herself, face and hands dry-roasted by a radioactive ski tan.

‘I’m Natasha – Natasha Baldwin,’ she gushed, ‘but you can call me Stash.’

Except no one did of course. Bunty christened her ‘Tash’ and it stuck (what with the dark hair and everything).

The assembly hall was already nearly full as Baker and Bunty took the seats that Queenie and Stott had run ahead to save for them, only they had to budge up and let Baker sit at the other end of the foursome, as far away from Bunty as she could get. There were still two empty rows in front of them, thanks to an extended lecture being given by Mrs Rathbone to her half of the Lower Fourth on the importance of punctuality in later life.

That was one of the Rathbone’s running gags, that codswallop about ‘preparation for later life’, the idea that this artificial planet they’d created, with its nutty rewards and punishments, with its poxy little pecking orders and traditions was some sort of model village version of the world beyond its chain-link fencing. The idea that once you let yourself yield to the joys of Mildred Fawcett, let her into your life like Jesus in gown and kick-pleated tweeds, you could be re-made as a separate species,
femina Fawcettiana
, merely by being banged up in the same institution for seven years. Did Holloway make the same boast?

Mildred Fawcett had begun in 1900 as a far smaller school, but had grown steadily from the original thirty pioneers. After the war, when more and more girls were demanding to stay on for their Higher Certificate, the trustees had decided that the old junior and senior schools should be split into three sections, but to this day not one of the staff had tumbled to the fact that every boys’ school in the district knew their precious sixth form as ‘Fawcett Upper’.

The assembly hall was lined with oak panels – Dr O’Brien’s ‘Wall of Glory’ – prefects, captains of games, the odd scholarship. Nothing later than 1952, mind you (when the space ran out). Were they even real, these Sidebottoms, Trubshaws and Pratts? They made them up, surely? Or had they just bought a job-lot of sign writer’s samples?
Scrote
? That was just being silly.

Lower Four R were finally clacking across the parquet, a blur of blues. All those different materials – serge, Courtelle, botany wool, nylon, flannel, not to mention the many, many different vintages (and wash temperatures) – meant that there were a dozen shades of Fawcett blue: matchbox; spaghetti wrapper; salt bag; Rothman packet. Not forgetting knicker – and bruise.

The miniskirt, still all the rage when Baker started in ’70, had resulted in a diktat that all hemlines should be one inch from the floor when you knelt down but it was a tricky bugger to enforce: ‘On your knees, Upper Threes!’ – not really how the goons saw themselves. Fashion had now swung the other way which made a sizeable fraction of the second year very groovy indeed as their entire kit was several sizes too big – ‘Mummy says I’ll grow into it’. Mummy bloody well hoped not, actually, but it lasted longer and Mummy secretly preferred the shapeless silhouette and had an inbuilt horror of seeing her daughter’s perfect young shape in anything too obviously form-fitting. Mummy pined for the days of bust-binding and the Liberty bodice and was ready to thank heaven fasting for the six-month craze for thick black tights and granny boots.

One sure-fire way to wind everyone up was to wear everything much too small. Queenie, a veteran of the prep department (alias Fawcett Under), was still skinny enough to fit into her original blazer, a saucy little bum-freezer in faded blue flannel which she had grown into and out of since her mother first bought it when she was seven. The goons, who spent more time and energy belly-aching about hemlines and hairstyles than they did on
Macbeth
or matrices or petty larceny, were horribly torn about this. Making do and mending had stained their thinking like beetroot on a powdered egg omelette, but it drove them all good and mad just the same.

The alternative strategy was to get everything in the largest possible size: growing into things was never an exact science, after all, and large was very very large indeed – it had to be. Every form had one – a walrus in blue serge wearing sizes you normally expected to see being pulled out proudly by slimmers of the year in mumsy magazines at the dentist.
Glands
, they usually said, or
big bones
. How big? There was a skeleton in the Biology lab and it was hard to picture it inside Rosemary McReadie. That neat, bleached pelvis would be lost underneath those forty-six-inch hips (‘death helped me shed twelve stone’).

Brian and the lads preferred to wear everything on the small side: skirts on the short side, shoes on the high side, purse-belts pulled unlunchably tight, in hopes that wolves would whistle at them. But nothing too rebellious, nothing detention-worthy and all very much as per The List which was pinned inside the special glazed noticeboard on the wall of the entrance lobby along with the names of governors and where to muster should the whole putrid place go up in flames. The List told you where to buy it, how many to get, which styles were acceptable, but it was quite an old list because it still had ‘gymslips’ as an option.

The only shop in England authorised to sell the uniquely terrible outfit worn by the girls of Mildred Fawcett didn’t find there was much call for gymslips and finally stopped stocking them in 1969 (stopped stocking stockings too), but they were still on the blessed List and the local Oxfam shop had them: only 20p; irresistible; one step closer to the St Trinian ideal.

Baker’s stepmother hadn’t minded the gymslips – pleasantly traditional; safely girlish; undeniably practical – and she said as much in her reply to Mrs Mostyn’s letter which had heavily hinted that a skirt be bought.

It had been two years now since anyone had worn a hat but, like gymslips, they still featured on The List: felt in winter; straw in summer; which was fine if Daddy drove you in but an incitement to riot on the top of a local bus and the School Council vote against had been unanimous. Mildred Fawcett MBE, would be turning in her grave.

The current head (Desiree Mary O’Brien MA Oxon, PhD Lon) generally excused herself Tuesday assemblies. The excuses varied but whatever it was – important calls, pressing matters,
other business
(a cigarette by the open study window) – appeared to involve a great deal of strong tea and shortcake biscuits. Proceedings were directed instead by the dreaded Mostyn, Snog Monster and all round graffiti-magnet. This morning the deputy head was a vision in violet Crimplene beneath a crumpled nylon wig.

‘Looks
zackly
like Ted Heath in drag.’

Baker and Stottie had begun a silent game, safe in the knowledge that Miss Gleet would never dare pull them up for it. ‘Talking in assembly’ was a recognised crime but ‘playing Scissors Stone Paper’ definitely wasn’t. Braver souls than Miss Gleet had been known to go for ‘mucking about’ but it still looked pretty bloody feeble spelled out on the printed pink detention form.

They carried on with the game. Baker could see the slightly alarmed look on the mistress’s face as, count after count, their two hands made identical shapes – until it dawned on the silly cow that the three shapes were coming round in order: stone, paper, scissors, stone . . .

Baker altered her strategy: scissors, scissors, scissors, scissors, to leave her mind free to wonder what the hell Bunty was playing at, while Stottie alternated stone and paper and the Mostyn got stuck into one of her god-awful readings.

Dr O’Brien usually liked to rustle up her morality tales from scratch, using raw ingredients from the
Daily Telegraph
. Not the juicy bits – like the story about the jilted lover who posted baby rats through the letterbox while her rival was away on the Norfolk Broads for three weeks. Nothing fruity. Just common-or-garden tales of polio victims playing the oboe.

Mrs Mostyn preferred the ready-made musings to be found in
Gladsome Minds
, a slim green volume packed with convenience food for schoolgirl thought, homely homilies that could be relied upon to bridge the gap between
Non Nobis Domine
and the netball results. There was a moral – there always was – to Mrs Mostyn’s dismal stories: pride being skin deep or beauty going before a fall. Some rubbish.

The first hymn was ‘I Vow to Thee’, omitting the slightly belligerent second verse. Mrs Mostyn still missed the bone-buzzing hum of the organ (out of commission since Founder’s Day 1969). Even with the pedal down the baby grand was simply no match for copper-bottomed hymns like ‘Jerusalem’ or ‘Those in Peril’.

The Mostyn’s next task was to announce that a first year called Mary Field had been chosen to represent Surrey in a chess competition and as a result the staff room had voted to award her a blue enamel badge with ‘School’ printed on it. Surprised applause in the first year ranks. Young Miss Field hadn’t breathed a word about her chess habit, fearing (rightly) that it wouldn’t play well with the Upper Third. But a ‘School’ badge? Nice one.

Mrs Mostyn handed the prize over with her left hand while crushing the girl’s metacarpals with her right. Blue was the first rung of merit badging. Green came next, then red, then yellow, then, finally, white – but no one ever got white, just as no one was ever given full marks for an English essay (always something to strive for). The entire school badge collection lived in a roll of green baize in a tambour-fronted cupboard in the school secretary’s office, along with a whole card of virgin badges in various shades marked simply ‘Leader’, a stillborn brainchild of the head before last that had been voted down by the staff room. Rather a pity, thought Mrs Mostyn.

The founding headmistress had originally intended there to be only
one
white merit badge to be awarded in truly exceptional circumstances to the Fawcettian
par excellence
. There were in fact
two
, left over from 1949, a vintage year when the legendary Mallinson twins had been joint head of school, taking it in turns to welcome visitors with confident, painstakingly-elocuted votes of thanks. At least, Mrs Mostyn paused in her happy daydream, one
assumed
they were taking it in turns . . . they were identical, after all. Identical in
most
respects, at least (only
one
of them got into Cambridge). One never knew, twins did lark about so . . . Mrs Mostyn had yearned for a twin: the
fun
one could have had.