“You’re sure you haven’t got a cigarette?”
We were leaning against the stone rim of a neglected goldfish pool in a small courtyard behind the laundry.
“No,” I said. “I told you. I don’t smoke. It’s a filthy habit.”
“Sez who?” Van Arque demanded, squinting like Popeye and taking up a boxer’s stance—squeezing her biceps to make them bulge. I knew she was joking.
“Never mind,” she said. “Here comes Fabian. She’s always good for a fag. Fabian! Over here!”
Fabian was a tall blonde who looked as if she came from Finland: a pale, cool Nordic type, who wore rather too much face powder, as if she had a lot of spots to hide. I wondered if she, like me, was exiled from her homeland.
“How much?” Fabian asked, holding out a single cigarette. She didn’t even need to be asked.
“A nickel for two,” Van Arque said.
“Three for a dime,” Fabian countered, and the deal was done.
“It’s highway robbery, that’s what it is,” Van Arque said, lighting up when Fabian was gone. “She’s only been here a year and she’s already as rich as Croesus. She pays seventeen cents for a pack and makes three hundred percent profit. It isn’t fair.”
Nickels? Dimes? I knew that cents were roughly equivalent to pence, but beyond that, Canadian currency was a veiled mystery.
Why had I ever been sent away from the land of the sixpence—the land of half-crowns, ha’pennies, florins, farthings, and shillings, the land of decent coinage, where everything made sense?
How could I possibly learn to survive in such a pagan place, where trams were streetcars, vans and lorries were trucks, pavements were sidewalks, jumpers were sweaters, petrol was gasoline, aluminium was aluminum, sweets were candy, a full stop was a period, and cheerio was good-bye?
A towering wave of homesickness broke over me: a wave even greater than the Atlantic gales through which I had safely sailed; greater than anything I could ever have possibly imagined.
I put a hand against the stone wall to steady myself.
“Are you all right?” Van Arque asked anxiously.
“Yes,” I said weakly. And then again, more strongly, “Yes.”
It was only the thought of this curious creature who stood so casually beside me, smoking, that gave me strength. If Van Arque could go from choking to joking and smoking in the wink of an eye, then surely so could I.
“Morning, ladies,” said a voice behind me, making me jump. I whirled round to find what I took at first to be a weasel in a shabby trench coat: a thin young man with an alarmingly pale, pinched face and an unconvincing mustache.
“Students, I take it?” he asked. “A couple of Miss Bodycote’s beauties?”
“Go away,” Van Arque said, pulling a nickel-plated whistle from her pocket, “before I call the police.”
“Hey, take it easy. Don’t do that,” he said, dredging a damp leather wallet from the depths of the wreckage that was his raincoat. He flipped it open and held out what appeared to be some kind of official identity card.
“Wallace Scroop,” he said, offering it. “The Morning Star. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“We’re not allowed to speak to reporters,” Van Arque said.
“Listen,” he went on, ignoring her. “I’ve heard this place is haunted. It’s an old convent, you know … ghostly footsteps in the night—all that sort of thing. I thought it would make an interesting story. You might even get your pictures in the paper.”
“There are no such things as ghosts—or haven’t you heard, Mr. Scroop? Any footsteps in the night at Miss Bodycote’s are caused by too much lemonade at the school carnival—not by phantoms. Now please go away.”
“If I did,” Scroop said, “my editor would wring me out like a dishcloth. Come on, girls, have a heart. Let’s be honest. What do you know about the body that was carted off to the morgue last night? Someone you know, maybe? Listen, I could make it worth your while.”
I glanced at Van Arque, but she didn’t seem surprised at the news. Without further warning, she jammed the whistle between her lips and blew a long, ear-piercing blast. For a fraction of a second, Wallace Scroop looked as stunned as if she had slapped his face. And then, with a couple of surprisingly coarse words, he was gone.
“Creep,” Van Arque shot after him, but he was already too far away to have heard her.
Somewhere indoors, a bell began to ring.
“Curses!” Van Arque muttered. “Wouldn’t you just know it?”
She tossed the cigarette down and ground it out beneath her heel. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got to go. They’ve put you in the fourth form—at least for the time being. As I said, Miss Fawlthorne told me to oversee you until she gets round to the formalities. She’s got rather a lot on her plate at the moment—or so she says.”
“I should say she has!” I volunteered, wondering if Van Arque’s had been one of the cherub faces floating in the darkness. “Did you see what happened in Edith Cavell last night?”
I hated myself as soon as I had said it. I am not ordinarily a gossip, but some inside force was suddenly making me spit out information like a clockwork ticket dispenser.
Was I automatically sucking up to Van Arque because of my inferior position as a new girl? I surely hoped not.
“No,” she said. “But I heard about it. That’s for darn sure!”
I said nothing. I have learned to use silence as a jimmy to pry information free. Or did I keep my mouth buttoned because I was still nauseated from that tidal wave of homesickness? I shall never know.
But whatever the reason, I held my tongue.
And it paid off. Van Arque couldn’t resist demonstrating her superior knowledge.
“The guff has it that Miss Fawlthorne found you standing over a dead body in Edith Cavell, and Collingwood in hysterics. I told you—you’re notorious. Now hurry up before they skin us and use our guts for snowshoes.”