Jane Steele(20)
“Yes, Miss,” said a thin waif, and we winced, for this was clearly worse than any other punishment.
Following art was sewing lessons given by Miss Kitts. Ages were combined during class periods, but thence divided into circles appropriate to our ability; having been separated from Clarke, I asked her in high alarm what the matter was when we rejoined in the hall and I saw her doll’s mouth a-tremble.
“I was just feeling better and now I’m to miss luncheon, all over badly embroidering a pansy,” she confided, angrily swiping at the tears in her eyes. “I’m useless at stitchwork, my mind wanders so. What are decorative pansies to us, Steele?”
When I arrived at Latin, Miss Werwick briefly quizzed me, found me dismal, and bid me sit with the youngest girls, muttering happy imprecations about the amount of meals I should likely be forced to sacrifice. Never having studied Latin previous, I congratulated myself when at the end of the hour, I was explaining the lesson to the perplexed circumference, and Miss Werwick forgot herself far enough to frown at this development.
Midday dinner was allowed me, though it seemed a mere two thirds of the young ladies initially assembled the night before were present. Not seeing Taylor, I sat across from Fox, who fiddled with a piece of her already-greasy hair before saying, “Anything immediate?”
I swallowed hearty cabbage and pork broth, regarding her questioningly.
“It’s what we say,” Fox confided. “A code. To find out if anyone is . . . well, really in trouble.”
“Oh.” I set my spoon down, sobered. “Clarke isn’t here—an embroidery mishap.”
“I’ve an apple in my pillowcase,” Fox said matter-of-factly. “All’s well.”
This was the day I learnt that friendship need not be labelled as such in order to be a very similar thing indeed.
A combined history and geography course given by Miss Halifax followed dinner. She was a hatchet-faced woman with animated hands—but there was no harm in her, and her enthusiasm was engaging.
“Why, Steele, though you are not well-read regarding the Ottoman Empire, you ask exceedingly incisive questions,” she exclaimed. “You shall sit with the thirteen-year-olds and with Clarke here.”
Clarke, whose brilliance on all subjects, save that of rendering decorative flowering plants with thread, was the envy of the entire school, seemed strangely happy when I descended into the hard-backed chair beside her.
“Good, we can go over dates of battles before bedtimes,” she decreed lightly, adjusting the strange white cap we wore. “My parents are pacifists, the disgrace of our entire street, and when I arrived, I didn’t know a Cossack from a dragoon.”
“Of course. Anything immediate?” I asked, a shower of golden sparks prickling my skin as I did something illicit.
“Ha. No,” said Clarke, one cheek dimpling. “Thank you, indirectly, for the apple.”
Music class ensued immediately afterwards. Remembering Vesalius Munt’s opinion that spiritually contented artists were beings not to be found upon this teeming globe, I looked forward to Miss Lilyvale’s tutelage with intrigue. Was her virtue so potent it could withstand the moral ravages of even art? A simpler answer proved true: Miss Lilyvale’s musical ear was the happy amalgam of a deaf mockingbird’s and a colicky newborn’s, and thus could not have troubled her character in the smallest degree.
“Class, we have much to do today!” she called. “But first as ever, I will lead us in a hymn. Young ladies, here is our music. As this is a new piece—do think of it as an exercise in sight-reading.”
We stood all in a semicircle and sang Horatius Bonar’s latest opus. My ignorance of whether the Almighty’s glory swelled in the wake of our praise remains profound to this day; I can inform the reader, however, that no gain in sight-reading skills resulted. Taylor was present, and I greeted her afterwards, even as she mumbled George Louis, George Augustus, George William Frederick, George Augustus Frederick. . . .
“Taylor,” I whispered, “anything immediate?”
“Oh, go away, you horrid nosy thing,” cried Taylor, her eyes edged in pink. “I’ve had nothing to eat since the porridge, and meanwhile Granville is such a sweet girl, all those golden curls and her family from a simply ancient coffee fortune, and so the best sort of people, and she was made to slap herself in the face—herself, mind, and hard—after Mr. Munt caught her laughing over a sketch Fiddick did of Miss Hardbottle. Don’t touch me, I can’t bear anyone,” she sobbed, fleeing.
Mathematics followed, and theology, and French (at which I excelled, naturellement, and thus forever after avoided the red welts my classmates carried as souvenirs from Madame Archambault), and after we had crammed our heads full of geometry and the Book of John, the inevitable Reckoning followed.
I ate my stew and kept my head as low as any true acolyte.
I reproduce this workaday agenda to illustrate that we lived practically in one another’s pockets, so that in moments of emergency—which were as frequent as moments of breathing—we might offer help. If we succeeded thanks to cleverness and collaboration, we might fall asleep with a meal or even two, perhaps, rounding the hollows of our bellies. We were not friends; but so many others strove to make us wretched that we lacked the energy to turn upon one another save in the extremest necessity.
When I dropped exhaustedly next to Taylor at nine o’clock that first night as the sun vanished, I felt the same electric charge I have always gained from thwarting authority traversing the narrow ridge of my back.