You Must Be Sisters (15 page)

Just then the phone rang. Claire’s speculations were cut short; indeed, all thought of Laura vanished from her mind, for it was Geoff and he was asking her to come out with him the next Saturday night

HOLLY’S SCHOOL DORM
, occupied as it was by girls who were nearly thirteen, bore witness on its walls to their momentous transition. The school had started to allow posters to be hung (‘But girls, only pins. Absolutely no Sellotape!’). The result was that the girls with bosoms had their beds down one end of the dorm and had hung up pop stars, while the girls who still possessed flat chests had their beds down the other end and had hung up horses.

Holly’s bed was firmly down amongst the horses. Her neighbours,
though
outnumbered (and as the months went by, increasingly so) by those with bosoms, had a fine collection between them – horses with their foals, horses jumping, horses just standing with their manes floating in the wind, agonizing close-ups of beautiful intelligent horses’ heads with eyes that understood everything. Most girls, too, had photo frames beside their beds containing blurred snapshots of their own pony, or their cousin’s pony or, failing that,
any
pony.

Above Holly’s bed hung the best picture of all, a huge colour photo given by Claire of a lot of white horses splashing through the sea. Fancy anyone preferring boring old pop singers to that! thought Holly, gazing at it as she put on her clothes. Crikey, they even wore
make-up
! Men with make-up, I ask you. Nutcases.

At about the same time that Claire got Laura’s letter in Clapham, Holly got one too. She couldn’t read it at breakfast because if one’s attention was distracted, all the toast disappeared. Breakfast, with twenty of them fighting for one blob of marmalade, required concentration.

But after breakfast they had Free Time for ten minutes. Holly threw herself on her bed.

It was lovely seeing you at Christmas. I’ve found that bottle-opener you gave me jolly useful lately, having a rather boozy friend. We went out for a picnic the other day and I brought along some wine and used that nifty corkscrew thing on it. Afterwards we had fun climbing trees but he fell down and tore his jeans which, being full of holes anyway, I spent a whole evening mending when we got home
.

How’s school? I feel such a bond with you, us both being away in institutions for the first time. Does yours have lots of awful rules like mine? Are they a bore? Mine were, so I moved out and now I live in a lovely room which I’ve filled with yellow daffodils. I have a garden too – sort of – and I’ve planted lettuce and broad beans and cornflower seeds in it. It’s only a tiny patch but I hope it’ll be dug a bit more soon by my friend with the mended jeans
.

Lots of love
,

Laura

Holly’s friend Ann, also at the horsey stage, plonked herself down beside her on the bed. ‘Who’s it from?’

‘My sister.’

‘The one who came in the snazzy car?’

‘No, the other one.’

Joyce, who had passed the horsey stage and was getting lumpy, sat down next to them. ‘He was a
dish
,’ she sighed.

‘Who?’

‘The one with the car.’

‘Oh,’ said Holly. She must mean Geoff.

‘Didn’t you think so?’

‘Dunno about dishes. He didn’t like the same sorts of things as me and Claire. We couldn’t do them with him there.’

‘Of course,’ sighed Joyce, turning round and gazing at a poster on the wall, ‘nobody, just
nobody
could compare with Dave.’

Holly and Ann looked at Joyce pityingly. ‘Here we go again,’ said Holly. ‘David Essex, I ask you!’

‘Honestly, Joyce,’ said Ann, ‘you can see all his mascara and stuff. He’s just like a girl.’

‘Worse than a girl,’ said Holly. Really Joyce was a different species, what with all the things she and the others down the dorm giggled about after lights out. There were so many more interesting things to giggle about.

‘Oh, you just don’t understand!’ said Joyce, gazing dreamily in the direction of the poster, her chin already bumpy with the beginnings of acne.

Just then the bell rang for the first lesson. It was English.

Whatever differences they had in the dorm the entire class was united during the English lessons. They dreaded them. Last term it had been all right, but this term they had a terrible new teacher called Miss Withrington. She was young and extremely friendly.

‘Call me Margaret,’ she had said at that now legendary first lesson. ‘That’s my name, after all. Much nicer than Miss Withrington, don’t you think?’ She had smiled down at them. ‘You see, I’d like us to be people together rather than pupil and teacher. Not you and me. Us.’

They had sat petrified. Down the class she’d walked, between the desks. ‘I think I see some puzzled looks. Don’t worry, I understand. I expect it’s all rather a surprise for you, even a shock. After all, it
is
rather shocking when one’s suddenly treated as a person, isn’t it. Especially in an environment like this one, where rules sometimes seem in danger of engulfing us as individuals completely.’

Silence. She paused. ‘Well, enough about me. This is
your
class. I want you to feel that it’s a special place where you can express those rather special thoughts. One thing we must never
feel
,’ she smiled at them, ‘is embarrassed. Now, is that a promise?’

Her steps had taken her to Holly’s desk. Her hand was on Holly’s shoulder. Holly froze.

‘And what’s your name?’

‘Holly Jenkins, Miss Withrington.’

‘Now Holly, I know it might be a little strange for you to get used to this new franker way of speaking, but it’s Margaret, OK?’

Holly couldn’t get her mouth to answer.

‘Anyway Holly, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself. Any interesting events in your life, something that’s made you happy or sad. Don’t be shy. Whatever you say we’ll all find it special because it’s
you
.’

Holly’s mouth went dry. It was a nightmare. She clenched her palms together, clammily. Nothing; she could think of absolutely nothing.

Never had her mind been blanker. She sat there, every muscle in her body urging Miss Withrington to pounce on somebody else. A hundred years later, she did. Smiling still – she always smiled – she went over to another girl and Holly sat back, flooded with a relief more exquisite than she’d believed it possible to feel.

After that first lesson the classroom buzzed. ‘Cripes, what a nutcase!’ … ‘poor old Holls having it first’ … ‘she’s bats!’

But words couldn’t really do it justice. Nor could the giggling quite cover up the acute and humiliating embarrassment of the thing.

One of the bosomy girls, more articulate than the rest, heaved a deep sigh. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘She’s
unspeakable
.’

However often she reminded them, smilingly, Miss Withrington could never get them to call her Margaret. But curiously enough, nor could they bring themselves to bestow on her a nickname. Withers, they might have called her behind her back, or Old Withered (she was definitely bony) or even, if they were really witty, Shrivel. If she’d been anyone else, they would have.

But somehow Miss Withrington’s very informality, her unflagging closeness, had taken the wind out of their sails. She defied nicknames; she terrified them too much. Amongst themselves they could only call her, in tones of dread, Miss Withrington.

On this particular day, the day of Laura’s letter, they trickled into the classroom even more slowly than usual.

‘You know what we’re doing, don’t you,’ said Holly.

‘That Spring Thing,’ answered Ann.

‘Just think. We’ve got to do it in front of the whole Junior School! Just imagine! They’ll think we’re nuts.’

The Spring Thing was called by Miss Withrington
Rebirth: An Event
. It was all very confusing but seemed to consist of four girls reading poems on the subject of spring while the rest chanted. ‘It’s all very
free
,’ Miss Withrington had explained. There was supposed to have been a little dance, too, but even Miss Withrington had had to admit that the rehearsals for that had not been a success.

Holly, because of her long wiggly hair, was one of the chosen four. ‘The image of Flora,’ Miss Withrington had said, smiling down.

Today she dropped the bombshell.

‘Our four young readers,’ she said to the class, ‘should, I’ve decided, wear something a little more appropriate than their school uniforms, which after all have little of the spirit of spring about them. Buttons, collars and those crippling ties …’ She reached down and took something out of a carrier bag. ‘So I’ve run these up.’ She held out a thin muslin robe, grass-green.

‘But you can see right through it!’ one girl gasped before she could stop herself.

Miss Withrington looked tolerant. ‘You’ll all be wearing underclothes, won’t you? So where’s the problem?’

Holly sat back aghast. How
could
she wear it? She’d have to wear her vest underneath, but her vest was so dreadfully babyish. The other three girls already had bras, she knew, but she hadn’t. Everyone would see. How
could
Miss Withrington not understand?

‘Never mind,’ whispered Ann, who didn’t have to wear it. ‘I know it’s awful but it’ll soon be over.’

‘But …’ Even to Ann, her oldest friend, she couldn’t quite bear to talk about the vest. ‘But … nobody’s ever done anything like this in Assembly before. They’ll think we’re mad. It’s so long, too.’

That was another point. Although every Friday one class was given the task of contributing something to Assembly – the bit between the hymns and the headmistress’s stern notices – it was an unspoken rule that this consisted of just five minutes of a girl reading from something dull or perhaps playing the piano. Any longer and it meant that the Senior House, who went to a different Assembly, would get to breakfast first and finish all the
marmalade
. No one had quite dared to explain this to Miss Withrington. Anyway, to dress up and
chant
… they’d look so
stupid
.

‘Now, remember that I’m not going to tell you what exactly to chant,’ said Miss Withrington, putting the robes away. ‘I’m just going to give you some words which you can use in any order you like. The impression, as I’ve told you, should be a mass thing, suggesting all at once the richness, liberation and yet, somehow, the
painfulness
of spring.’

‘We’ll suggest that all right,’ muttered Ann.

‘All right? Just scribble down the words then … Green … thrust … burst …’

Holly looked down at the poem she had to read. It was all about daffodils. She would have quite liked it at any other time, but of course she’d never be able to read it again after this.

Daffodils reminded her of Laura’s letter. In a moment of introspection (perhaps she
was
growing up, despite not liking David Essex) she thought: Laura might hate her rules but I like mine. This beastly Spring Thing is against all the rules; it doesn’t make me feel safe at all.

‘… rustling … blooming …’

Miss Withrington finished and looked at the girls with that understanding smile, that bright, hectoring smile. ‘It’ll be very beautiful,’ she said.

Holly felt lost. School was so vast and unnerving that rules helped; and anyway, wasn’t half the fun breaking them? But to have a grown-up go and break them for you – it was all wrong. Laura could say what she liked. It
was
all wrong.

THE NEXT THURSDAY
Laura returned from a seminar not one word of which, now she was back, could she remember. She closed the door behind her. What had it been about? It was different with practicals; setting up labyrinths for the long-suffering rats, transporting mice from one box to another, that sort of activity occupied her hands and left her mind pleasantly free. Anyway, she enjoyed it. With the exception of slugs she liked all animals;
mice
and guinea pigs had been her companions since childhood. It was odd, of course, seeing them in a lab, like meeting an old friend in hospital, but at least she knew where she was with a practical.

Seminars and lectures, though, were less successful. The professor’s voice droning on about patterns and theories and empirical situations struggled to compete with what Mac’s supple body had been doing to hers the night before. Not surprisingly, it lost. Invariably, after the first few words the voice faded to a hum, a far murmur like the noise of the sea. A pleasant sound. She just sat there, skin singing, limbs warm, mind busy with recollections. Probably she was smiling.

It wasn’t just Mac, either. Her room, her garden, what she was going to buy for supper, how she was going to get that pipe fixed, all the mechanics of her fascinatingly real and adult life filled her head and left no space for anything else.

She dumped her shopping down on the draining-board. She gazed at the plug-hole and tried to remember even one word. Impossible. Gone, like the washing-up water, for ever.

In a way she knew her father had been right.
You may have found Hall irksome
, he had written,
though I am amazed if you did. But it left you free from normal day-to-day things, free to develop your mind, make friends and readjust. Believe me, you have the rest of your life to do things just as you wish. I find it disappointing that you have suddenly decided to do it now
.

Daddy had obviously taken great pains with this letter. With extra-neat writing and no crossings-out it had certainly been copied from a rough draft. Laura preferred his chatty ones, about the peculiar people at his evening class and how Badger chased a cat right through Mummy’s crocuses. That word
disappointing
stuck. She could bear almost anything but Daddy’s disappointment, which made his shoulders droop and his manner, always courteous, grow achingly polite. She always pictured him in his faded green cardigan when he was disappointed, it made him look so sloping-shouldered and old.

Also
, it had continued,
there is another reason. Hall protected you in many ways. It’s worrying to think of you on your own. Why did you have to be the special one like this? In October you would have all moved out anyway
.