The Little Secret

 

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For Tom, George, Felix, Elsa, Claudia and Max

 

With the assistance of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

This story was inspired by a traveler's tale near

the end of Goethe's novel
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.

 

“Silver Threads Among the Gold,”

by E. E. Rexford and H. P. Danks, 1873

THE NEW GIRL

On Monday morning there was a new girl in Jane's class. She stood at the front beside Mrs. Burrows.

“Everyone,” said Mrs. Burrows. “This is Staffa. She's spending a few weeks with us until the end of term.”

“How do you do,” Staffa said.

Everyone stared. Jane thought Staffa was the oddest girl she had ever seen. She must have been eleven, like the rest of the class. But she was as small as an eight-year-old, and very skinny. She had two long braids of shiny black hair. Her skin was paper white, and you could see the blue veins in her spindly little arms. She wore a stiff dress of dark red velvet, white socks and polished black shoes. Jane thought she looked like one of the old-fashioned children in books about the Second World War. Ellie and Angie, the other two girls in the class, had started tittering behind their hands.

Staffa stared right back, not at all shy. She looked carefully at every face in the classroom. This did not take long. Lower Lumpton Primary was a very small school, in a very small town that was really a large village. There were only ten children in the whole of sixth grade.

“Welcome to our school, Staffa,” said Mrs. Burrows. “Why don't you tell us something about yourself?”

“There's not much to tell,” Staffa said. “I was brought up in a very remote place in the far north. My mother and I are traveling 'round the country, on our annual tour of interesting places. We're resting here for a while, before we make our long journey home, and I'm hoping to make a new best friend.”

Staffa's voice was babyish and squeaky, but she spoke like a posh and rather nutty old lady. She sounded hilarious, and the whole class was giggling. Jane tried to keep a straight face because it felt mean to laugh at someone new, but even Mrs. Burrows was smiling.

“Thank you, Staffa. I'm sure you'll make lots of new friends.”

“Oh, I'm only looking for one,” Staffa said.

The giggles got louder.

“Settle down!” warned Mrs. Burrows.

Staffa did not seem to care about being laughed at. She smiled graciously. “Please don't worry about me, Mrs. Burrows. My life has been rich and varied, and I'm quite used to new experiences. Shall I sit next to that boy with the red hair?”

“Boy with —? Oh, you mean Jane!”

The class exploded into a roar of laughter.

Jane felt that if she blushed any harder, her ears would catch fire. This weird new girl had mistaken her for a boy and mentioned her hair. She couldn't have said anything worse. The two things Jane hated most about her life were her red hair and the fact that she had to wear boys' clothes.

“Jane's certainly not a boy,” Mrs. Burrows said with a kind look at Jane and a stern look at the rest of the class. “I expect you thought she was a boy because she has her lovely hair tied back.”

“But she's dressed as a boy,” Staffa said. She pointed at Jane's Manchester United sweatshirt. “She's wearing some sort of soccer costume.”

There was another burst of laughter. The boys at the back shouted “soccer costume!” in silly posh voices.

Mrs. Burrows told them to be quiet, but she was laughing too. “I don't know where you've been for the past fifty years, Staffa. These days, it's perfectly normal for girls to wear soccer stuff. Look.” She put her foot on a chair, hitched up her trouser leg and showed the class her Arsenal sock. “Even old lady teachers do it.”

The fire in Jane's face cooled. She was grateful to Mrs. Burrows for taking the attention away from her, but it wasn't much good when the new girl had to sit right beside her. It was the only empty place in the class.

Staffa sat down in the empty place. “Well, this is cozy,” she said. She opened an old-fashioned brown leather satchel and began unpacking pencils and paper. “Sorry I thought you were a boy.”

“Right, everybody,” said Mrs. Burrows. “Let's get started.”

“Yes, do carry on,” Staffa said. “I'll soon get into the swing of things.”

She spoke to Mrs. Burrows like a royal person on an official visit.

Jane wished the new girl had sat somewhere else, but she couldn't help being interested in her. She was tiny and she wore babyish clothes, yet she was not like a child. Staffa filled in her math sheet quickly and neatly. When she handed it in at the end of the lesson, she said, “Forgive the gaps, Mrs. Burrows — long division was always my Achilles' heel.”

At break, Staffa sat on the low playground wall. She took a Thermos out of her satchel and poured herself a cup of strong black coffee. Jane thought it smelled disgusting. She was curious. What kind of eleven-year-old drank black coffee?

Ellie and Angie called Jane over to their corner of the playground. Normally, these two spent most of their time whispering together and ignoring Jane. Today, they needed her so they could whisper about Staffa.

Ellie said, “You'd never get me in a dress like that. It looks like curtains.”

Angie said, “Her shoes are stupid too — toddler's shoes. And she's got a stupid name.”

“I quite like her name,” Jane said. She was surprised that she wanted to stick up for the new girl. “It's different.”

“Oh, like you've got such great taste,” Ellie said scornfully.

“Janey!” Jane's younger brothers, Mike and Phil, yelled at her from the other side of the playground. “Come and play soccer! We need another man!”

Angie giggled. “Does Staffa know you're a girl yet?”

“She thinks you're a red-haired boy,” Ellie said. “She probably likes you.”

Jane scowled and ran off to play soccer, hating Ellie and Angie. She could swear they got sillier every year. All they talked about was clothes and makeup. If only the new girl had been someone she could talk to sensibly.

But Staffa didn't seem to want to talk at all. She spent the rest of break sipping coffee and looking at her watch. When they returned to the classroom, she yawned and stared out of the window.

At lunchtime, she turned to Jane. “I assume that smell of boiled socks is our midday meal.”

This made Jane smile — the school lunch did smell rather like boiled socks. “It's okay when you eat it,” she said. “I'll show you where we go.” Someone had to look after Staffa.

And I suppose it'll have to be me, Jane thought crossly, because there isn't anyone else — just my luck to get stuck with the oddball.

She led Staffa into the lunch hall. Staffa immediately went over to one of the long tables and sat down.

“Is there a menu?” she asked. “Or does one ask the waiting woman?”

Jane swallowed a snort of laughter. She did not believe this girl — Staffa was lucky nobody else had heard her. “We don't sit down until we've gotten our food,” she explained. “We have to line up at the window.”

Staffa was fascinated. She loved standing in line. She loved watching the lunch ladies, as they spooned out chicken nuggets, baked beans and mountains of fries. She loved the school fries. “These chipped potatoes are delicious! And how clever to put ketchup bottles next to the knives and forks!”

Jane wondered what kind of school Staffa had come from. It must have been a very fancy school, she thought, if it really did have menus and “waiting women.”

“This is a highly efficient way of feeding large numbers of people,” piped Staffa. “I must tell my mother. She's always trying to cut costs in the servants' canteen.”

Jane wished Staffa would stop talking. Couldn't she see that everyone else at the table was staring, and whispering behind their hands? It was very embarrassing.

When she had finished her fries, Staffa wiped her mouth with a lace handkerchief. She stood up. “Let's have our coffee outside.”