“All the trouble this week has come from your class, Mary. The tantrums, the mishaps, the abscondments. The children feel they can take liberties with you.”
“But I feel for them, Miss Vine. Saying goodbye to their parents for who knows how long? The state they are in, I thought perhaps a little license—”
“Could kill them. I have no idea what these next few weeks or months will bring, but I am certain that if there is violence then we shall need to have every child accounted for at all times, ready to be taken to shelter at a moment’s notice. They mustn’t be who-knows-where.”
“I am sorry. I will improve.”
“I fear I cannot risk giving you the time.”
“Excuse me?”
“At noon, Mary, we are to proceed on foot to Marylebone, to board a train at one. They have not given me the destination, although I imagine it must be Oxfordshire or the Midlands.”
“Well, then . . .”
“Well, I am afraid I shan’t be taking you along.”
“But Miss Vine!”
The headmistress put a hand on her arm. “I like you, Mary. Enough to tell you that you will never be any good as a teacher. Find something more suited to your many gifts.”
“But my class . . .”
“I will take them myself. Oh, don’t look so sick. I have done a little teaching in my time.”
But their names, thought Mary. I have learned every one of their names.
She stood for a moment, concentrating—as her mother had taught her—on keeping her face unmoved. “ ‘Very well.”’
“You are a credit to your family.”
“Not at all,” said Mary, since that was what one said.
Noon came too quickly. She retrieved her suitcase from the trolley where the rest of the staff had theirs, and watched the school evacuate in rows of three down the Outer Circle Road. Kestrels went last: her thirty-one children with their names inscribed on brown baggage tags. Enid Platt, Edna Glover and Margaret Eccleston made up the front row, always together, always whispering. For four days now their gossip had seemed so thrilling that Mary had never known whether to shush them or beg to be included.
Margaret Lambie, Audrey Shepherd and Nellie Gould made up the next row: Audrey with her gas-mask box decorated with poster paint, Nellie with her doll who was called Pinkie, and Margaret who spoke a little French.
Mary was left behind. The green sward of grass beside the abandoned zoo became quiet and still. George Woodall, Jack Taylor and Graham Brown marched with high-swinging arms in the infantry style. John Cumberland, Harry Rogers and Carl Richardson mocked them with chimpanzee grunts from the row behind. Henriette Wisby, Elaine Newland and Beryl Waldorf, the beauties of the class, sashayed with their arms linked, frowning at the rowdy boys. Then Eileen Robbins, Norma Reeve and Rose Montiel, pale with apprehension.
Next went Patricia Fawcett, Margaret Taylor and June Knight, whose mothers knew one another socially and whose own eventual daughters and granddaughters seemed sure to prolong the acquaintance for so long as the wars of men permitted society to convene over sponge cake and tea. Then Patrick Joseph, Gordon Abbott and James Wright, giggling and with backward glances at Peter Carter, Peter Hall and John Clark, who were up to some mischief that Mary felt sure would involve either a fainting episode, or ink.
Finally came kind Rita Glenister supporting tiny, tearful James Roffey, and then, in the last row of all, Fay George and Zachary. The colored boy dismissed Mary by taking one last puff of his imaginary cigarette and flicking away the butt. He turned his back and walked away with all the others, singing, toward a place that did not yet have a name. Mary watched him go. It was the first time she had broken a promise.
—
At dinner, at her parents’ house in Pimlico, Mary sat across from her friend Hilda while her mother served slices of cold meatloaf from a salver that she had fetched from the kitchen herself. With Mary’s father off at the House and no callers expected, her mother had given everyone but Cook the night off.
“So when are you to be evacuated?” said her mother. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”
“Oh,” said Mary, “I’m to follow presently. They wanted one good teacher to help with any stragglers.”
“Extraordinary. We didn’t think you’d be good, did we, Hilda?”
Hilda looked up. She had been cutting her slice of meatloaf into thirds, sidelining one third according to the slimming plan she was following. Two Thirds Curves had been recommended in that month’s Silver Screen. It was how Ann Sheridan had found her figure for Angels with Dirty Faces.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. North?”
“We didn’t suppose Mary would be any use at teaching, did we, dear?”
Hilda favored Mary with an innocent look. “And she was so stoical about the assignment.”
Hilda knew perfectly well that she had neither volunteered accepted the role particularly graciously nor survived in it for a week. Mary managed a smile that she judged to have the right inflection of modesty. “Teaching helps the war effort by freeing up able men to serve.”