I don’t think that I shall ever forget, as long as I live, the sounds of Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy coming to life in the morning.
First would come the clanking of the pipes and steam radiators, sounding for all the world like armored knights having a practice joust with playful young dragons, who gurgled and hissed more to show off than anything else.
Then the distant tobacco-coughing of the mistresses and—I’m sorry to say—some of the more forward girls, which seemed to me were most of them.
Next was the synchronized flushing of the WCs. Somewhere a gramophone would start up as one of the sixth-form girls exercised her senior’s rights: The sounds of Mantovani’s “Charmaine” would come slithering down the staircases like liquid honey, pooling stickily on each floor before oozing on down to the next. This would be followed by “Shrimp Boats Are A’Comin,” “Mockin’ Bird Hill,” “On Top of Old Smokey,” and “Aba Daba Honeymoon.”
To ears such as mine, brought up on the BBC Home Service, it was like living in a grass hut among savages on a desert island.
Voices would call to one another and sudden laughter would ring out, followed by the scuffing of shoe leather on floors and stairs and, drifting in through an open window from the street outside, the clopping of the elderly automaton horses that drew the various bread and milk wagons from door to door.
In the distance, on the Danforth, the streetcars would clang their impatient ding-ding! at foolhardy motorists and pedestrians.
How very different it all was from the seclusion of Buckshaw.
It was then, in the mornings, that homesickness would rise in my throat, threatening to choke the very life out of me.
Hold on, Flavia, it shall pass, I would tell myself.
I was doing that this morning, hanging on to the mantelpiece for dear life when suddenly, and with no warning, my door flew open.
It was Miss Fawlthorne.
“Report to me after gymnastics,” she said abruptly, scanning the room with a professional eye, and then she was gone.
Damnation! I’d been hoping she’d forgotten about my promised punishment, but it was obvious she had not. Collingwood would be there, too. We would go to the stake together like a yoke of Christian martyrs.
Would I have time to question her—even as we burned?
Gymnastics was humiliating. The class was being held out of doors today, on the hockey field, and we were made to dress in plimsolls and bloomers that would have been laughed off the beach even in Victorian Blackpool.
We exercised to shouted commands:
“Heels: Raise! Sink!
“Right knee upward: Bend!
“Right knee backward: Stretch!
“Knee: Flexion! One! Two! Three! Four!”
The games mistress was the hatchet-faced individual with the short gray hair, the one I had spotted at breakfast. She stood off to one side, commanding us with a shrill whistle.
Phweeep-phweeep-phweeep! “Cheerfully now!”
“Cheerfully!” Gremly grumbled through gritted teeth. “Yes, Miss Puddicombe. No, Miss Puddicombe. Three bags full, Miss Puddicombe.”
From this I gathered that the games mistress’s name was Miss Puddicombe.
Puddicombe by name, Puddicombe by nature, I thought, even though I knew it didn’t make any sense.
But in times of torture, even a defiant thought can serve as a soothing salve.
I had just finished changing from bloomers to tunic when Jumbo stuck her head in at the door.
“Headmistress wants to see you,” she said. “Better shift your carcass.
“And, oh,” she added, smiling sweetly, “you’ll keep mum—if you know what’s good for you.”
Miss Bodycote’s was like that, I was to learn: the slap in the face with a velvet glove, the sting in the smile, the razor blade in the butter.
Just as in real life.
“Come in, Flavia,” Miss Fawlthorne said in reply to my knock.
I squeezed through the barely opened door.
“Sit down,” she commanded, and I obeyed, perching myself on the edge of a leather divan.
“First things first,” she said. “You will recall, no doubt, that I promised you punishment?”
“Yes, Miss Fawlthorne,” I said. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Tut!” she said, holding up a restraining hand. “Excuses are not legal tender at Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy. Do you understand?”
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway, imagining a red-faced magistrate in a horsehair wig glaring down at me from his elevated bench.
“Rules are rules. They are meant to be obeyed.”
“Yes, Miss Fawlthorne. I’m sorry.”
The old, old formula. It had to be played out, step by meticulous step, according to some ancient ritual.
Perhaps I should have business cards printed to hand out, each embossed with my name and the words “I’m sorry, Miss Fawlthorne.” Every time I offended I would pluck one from my pocket and hand it— “For your punishment, I want you to write out five hundred words on William Palmer. He led, I believe, an interesting life.”
It took a moment for the light to come on, but when it did, my brain was dazzled by the sheer brilliance of it.
William Palmer? The Rugeley Poisoner? Why, I could write five hundred—a thousand—ten thousand!—words on dear old, jolly old Bill Palmer with my fingers frostbitten, my wrists handcuffed, my ankles bound, and my tongue tied behind my back.
I struggled to keep from squirming. Remember, Flavia—play the game.
“Yes, Miss Fawlthorne,” I said, putting on a hangdog look.
I could hardly wait to lay hands on my pencil and notebook.