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‘Why is she smiling at us?’ Joan whispered.
They probably think I’ve gone mad. Wilkins isn’t coming so just press on… She blew her whistle.
‘One at a time on the springboard. Only dive when the water ahead of you is clear. Please try to make a dignified exit from the water.’ Familiar instructions that she spoke without the need to think. ‘Swallow dive!’ She refused to allow herself to dwell on whether she would deliver them ever again.
Following her signal, the first seven obediently bent at the knees, swung their arms above their heads and each one of them tore through the water in just the right spot. Their feet all gulped up at exactly the same moment. The audience applauded and the next batch of girls shuffled forward and curled their toes over the edge of the boards.
She blew her whistle again. ‘Cannonball!’ And so they worked their way through the rehearsed schedule of dives until there was just one dive left to perform.
The door at the rear of the baths swung open. Mr and Mrs Wilkins’s heads turned, and everyone else followed. In sauntered Margaret, her hair tidied back, lips tinted. Apparently unaware of the stir she was causing. She slid her silk dressing gown from her shoulders and left it in a heap by the wall, and then she looked to Natalie to tell her which board to join. Natalie raised her forefinger. The high board. The pinnacle.
She raised her forefinger again.
‘Last dive, Wilkins. The gainer.’ Margaret was a nuisance, there was no doubt about it, and the other compliant girls were more deserving of her affections, but Natalie couldn’t help herself. Margaret and her fresh ideas were just what this place needed; it was her duty to encourage her.
She ran forwards three steps, sprung up from her right foot, the hurdle bounce showcasing her excellent balance, her bounce high. She landed with toes at the end of the dipping board and then sprang back high into the air, her somersault taking her towards the board. Gasps came from the audience, before she released at the last into the water.
Mrs Wilkins stood to lead the applause that broke out among the audience. Her hands clapping together like the wings of a hoverfly.
‘Bravo!’ called Mr Wilkins, his palms slapping together with force. ‘Bravo!’
Behind them, Lord Lacey’s face was stiff, his brow heavy. He broke Natalie’s gaze with a long blink. It was a small victory, and even though she knew it would be short-lived, she couldn’t help but smile to herself when she was sure he was no longer looking.
After the display the audience scattered. Once the Wilkinses had congratulated their daughter on a wonderful dive, Margaret leant into Natalie’s ear and whispered, ‘It would have been better to music.’
Then Lord Lacey appeared at her shoulder. He too leant in close, his hot breath on her ear. ‘When you’re quite ready, come straight to Miss Lott’s office.’
*
Lord Lacey threw open the door to Miss Lott’s rooms and rolled his palm sarcastically as if to suggest he was in the presence of royalty. Like a disgraced student, her head bowed, she went in.
Because the curtains were drawn, it wasn’t immediately obvious that the windows were shut. Bit by bit she sensed the change. The room was still, the usual animated breeze snuffed out, the scent of heather suffocated by soot. The fire cracked and hissed and doused her shins in its fierce heat.
Even though Miss Lott’s rooms were always bracing, Lord Lacey had taken the heat too far the other way. On the mantelpiece, the petals of Miss Lott’s roses were edged brown, the heads flopped forwards, unaccustomed to such warmth.
Lord Lacey stood in front of the fire, his arms behind his back.
‘I’ve told Miss Lott that enough is enough. She is too unwell to remain Principal,’ he said. ‘Her sister arrives in the morning to take her to Scotland to ensure she has a comfortable end.’
Natalie hoped he might point to one of the empty armchairs and invite her to sit down. She looked about her instead for something to support her, considered stepping to the mantelpiece and gripping it. She pulled her handkerchief from her tunic pocket. She didn’t care if he saw her crying. She hoped it made him feel ill at ease.
It was hard to imagine Miss Lott gone. Even her impression remained on the seat cushion of her favourite armchair.
He ran his thumbs and forefingers away from each other across his moustache as he paused for dramatic effect.
‘It’s been agreed that as Chair of the Trustees I will step into the breach until events reach a conclusion with Miss Lott. Then we can look for her permanent replacement.’
‘I see.’ She swallowed, wiping away more tears and wishing she could go and find Miss Lott.
He turned his attention to the fire, stoking it with the poker. He picked a sheaf of papers from the fireplace and tossed a handful on to the logs. She stepped back as the first sparks ignited and crumpled, black and red-edged, spitting and snapping, blue-at-heart flames stroking the bricked inners of the fireplace.
‘I’ll do whatever I can to help.’
He placed the poker back into the fire set.
‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘then we have you.’
He turned back to her, folded his arms across his narrow, suited chest.
‘You’re only here because Miss Lott saw something in you.’
He smoothed his moustache again.
‘I never saw you as the right sort for the college. Rather too outspoken for my liking. Easily distracted. I find it hard to see you with Miss Lott’s eyes. You spent your inheritance on being trained in a profession. Noble and sensible yes, but exceptional?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not surprised it has come to this.’
‘To what?’
He kept her waiting, looked at the fire again.
‘Your dalliance with the Women’s League has sent shockwaves right to the very top of the Board of Education. There can only be one outcome. I’m sure you’ve come to much the same conclusion yourself.’
Without even trying she knew that she couldn’t speak, but he was right; she had known it would come to this.
‘How old are you?’ he pressed on.
‘How old? I’ll be thirty-five in September.’
‘Well then all is not lost. It won’t be easy at your age to find a husband. You were led off course by an unnerving display of loyalty to Miss Mulberry, but there’s still time.’
It’s not Delphi’s fault I haven’t married. They both knew that while the war had indeed left a shortage of marriageable men, it was her dedication to her teaching career that had taken her out of the husband race altogether, and the war had seen to it that it was a race. Once she’d trained as a teacher she discovered spinsterhood was part of the package. Men didn’t like to marry teachers, and if that wasn’t enough to keep her from taking the veil, there was the government’s marriage bar for teachers too. How can he say it is because of my friendship with Delphi? That is ALL I have had these past years.
But Lord Lacey was saying she needed a husband, not for love…because my teaching career is over.
‘Lord Lacey. My commitment to this college has never wavered.’
It wasn’t the truth. More and more she’d felt she was missing out on life beyond the grounds. That’s what took me to Olympia, wasn’t it? A lack of commitment. Confusion. She allowed Margaret to run amok because she wished she could do that herself. But, no matter how disillusioned she’d become, she needed this job. It was her home, her income, her pension. Even if I often wish it wasn’t the case: this job is who I am.
The room had become unpleasantly hot. Everything was to be lost over a silly mistake.
He held up his pistol-shaped hand. ‘Miss Lott has insisted we give you another opportunity to explain yourself, so go on...’
She cleared her throat and waited until she was ready to speak.
‘Lord Lacey. I am as uncomfortable about the Women’s League of Health and Beauty as you, or any official at the Board of Education.’
‘Then you’ve been irresponsible. You have allowed your views to be misrepresented.’
Shaking, she put her hands on her hips. ‘Please, Lord Lacey. I’ve made a mistake and I’m truly sorry.’
She hid her trembling hands behind her back.
‘Please.’ Whether she had said that aloud or just whispered it, she couldn’t be sure.
He took a deep breath, fondled his moustache, and then finally shook his head.
‘You know, I might have been inclined to help you if you’d done what I asked and sent down Margaret Wilkins. Instead I had to listen to her mother gloating about her daughter’s raw talent. You realise your actions have made it harder to get rid of that family now?’
That was the general idea.
‘Miss Flacker, you are dismissed from your role here.’
‘You can’t. Please,’ she said, or at least she thought she said it. She heard the words at a distance.
As soon as she’d seen that photograph and the stupid caption in the newspaper, she’d known what would happen. Yet she’d still hoped that common decency and Miss Lott’s reach would be enough to save her. That damned Stack woman was behind that caption. She must have sought out that photographer, told him Natalie’s name, position, and exaggerated about their meeting.
She realised that alongside the panic and fear of how she would survive without her job, part of her, a large part of her, was relieved that she would be leaving and free of this place after so long.
‘To keep this scandal to a minimum…’ he pushed back his suit blazer to put his hands in his pockets ‘…it would be for the best if you left quietly in the morning.’
*
Natalie jumped up so fast at the knock on her door that she banged her knee on the metal frame of her bed. It was just after midnight.
Miss Lott stood in the doorway in her flannelette nightgown, her curls drooping and her face bearing considerably less sheen than the pearls around her neck.
‘You’re still here?’ Natalie said.
Miss Lott gestured that she wanted to come in.
Natalie looked at her own bare feet, her plum-coloured satin pyjamas, and pulled the door to unhook her matching dressing gown from its peg on the door’s inside. She sat on the edge of the bed so that Miss Lott could take the desk chair.
‘I came to find you earlier, but I thought I’d missed you,’ Natalie said. ‘I’m so sad that you’re leaving.’
Miss Lott sighed and rested her hands between her open knees. ‘And I’m not the only one leaving, am I?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m afraid Miss Flacker that Lord Lacey has always rather liked the scent of your scalp. You’ve too much gumption for a woman. He doesn’t like it. I’ve always managed to talk him around but I’m afraid this time you’ve gone too far.’ Natalie swallowed hard.
‘Perhaps it’s for the best.’ She could at last be honest about it. ‘I didn’t much fancy staying on without you.’
‘It is going to be difficult for you to teach again.’
Natalie stayed quite still as she waited for Miss Lott to continue.
‘Whatever possessed you to go to the rally? Meeting that crank, Stack. I always said you and Delphi Mulberry were too close. She leads you astray.’ She shook her head.
Miss Lott would never understand what she’d seen and experienced at Olympia. Only Delphi knew what it meant to simultaneously be part of one huge uniformed mass in a hall, while having individual freedom.
‘It was a chance meeting with Miss Stack,’ she said instead, ‘and actually I left her with a flea in her ear about her methods. It’s not what Lord Lacey or the Board think at all.’ And still I can’t bring myself to tell her that I was curious and tempted by the League.
‘They need to make an example of you now. I’ll let you rest.’ They both rose, curving their upper bodies backwards to give each other a little more space.
Miss Lott glanced about her to the pile of books on the bedside table beside the photograph of Natalie’s father and three brothers, all of them gone now, except for William. The piles of belongings she’d have to pack in the morning: Women’s Weekly for the patterns, the Gray’s Anatomy and the college curriculum on the top.
Miss Lott glanced at a pile of letters on the bed stand, fastened with string, took a sharp intake of breath and closed her eyes. Natalie watched for a clue. Was she in pain or was it just disapproval for her correspondence with Delphi and where it had led? Miss Lott pinched the bridge of her nose, then lifted her head with an all too brief smile.
‘I doubt either of us will sleep actually. Who’d have thought it – both of us to leave in the morning. Would you care for a walk?’ Miss Lott led the way around the balustrade of the grand staircase.
Outside, footsteps crunching on the gravel path, Natalie tugged her dressing-gown belt tight. Miss Lott walked carefully ahead of her down the driveway, one hand on her hip, the other holding a lantern in front of her to light their path to the Principal’s Lodge near the entrance.
‘I suppose you should have changed out of your bedclothes.’ Miss Lott looked into the darkness. ‘We look a curious sight I’ve no doubt.’
The Lodge was an old turreted gatehouse at the foot of the driveway to the mansion house, a round building, like a dislodged chimney stack. Miss Lott unlocked the door and cut across the patchwork of rugs to the side of the room that made up the small kitchen.
‘I was here earlier, when you were trying to find me.’
There were rumours about the Lodge, but she’d never before been inside the heather-scented sanctum. She waited in front of an armchair covered in a red tartan blanket, while Miss Lott made the tea. It felt magical, like the inside of a fairy’s toadstool. She never wanted to leave.
The bookshelves ran around the concentric walls, lined mainly with anatomy and physiology and college yearbooks, breaking for the rope handrail lining the stone staircase that led to what must have also been a single, cornerless bedroom. There was another door next to the kitchen area that Natalie assumed must lead to the outhouse, where there was a small fenced-off yard and a storehouse out the back, hemmed in by the woods. The gate to the yard was always locked from the path.
Miss Lott sagged with the weight of loss. She was already unwell and now Natalie was adding to her woes. Her curls had completely relaxed now, her papery skin was pale and the pouches beneath her eyes a deeper purple.
The kettle sung and Natalie brewed the tea and set the pot on the sideboard next to a framed picture of a woman who looked quite like Miss Lott, only she had a young boy on her knee and her hair was longer. This must be the sister from Scotland, on her way now to collect Miss Lott and take her away.
Miss Lott pulled the pearl earrings from her earlobes into her palm and sat back in her armchair, lifting her feet on to a small leather footrest.
‘I feel I must take some responsibility here,’ Miss Lott sighed.
‘Not at all. It’s my fault…’ Natalie cut in. ‘I shouldn’t have gone, and I shouldn’t have lied to you.’
Miss Lott raised her voice and then squeezed her eyes shut. ‘No. You should not. You were to be my legacy.’
So deceitful. So ungrateful. If only she’d had as much commitment to the college as Miss Lott. Her legacy was wasted on Natalie.
‘You were such an odd young girl when you came here, desperate not to be with your brother, longing for company. Forever looking over your shoulder for a boy to take you away from it all. You needed a home and family as well as a place of work. I sensed that from the start. And I still sense that while you’re happy here, the college isn’t enough for you. You feel too cut off.’
She didn’t need to deny it; Miss Lott had understood her all along, she reflected, while filling their cups.
‘For all its faults this is my home and I don’t want to leave.’
Her tea was too hot to drink. She set it on the floor by her feet and thought about pulling the blanket over her knees.
‘Neither do I, my dear. Neither do I. But perhaps you courted this scandal because deep down you wanted an adventure and you weren’t ever going to be bold enough to break free yourself.’ Natalie said nothing. Perhaps she had flirted with danger. It was difficult to even admit it to herself. ‘The most productive thing you can do is think about your future, how you’re going to put a roof over your head.’
They fell into a silence that was only interrupted by gentle slurps from their teacups.
After a short while Miss Lott set her cup down on the table beside her.
‘Enough of this talk. I brought you here because I want to show you something.’
In the small yard at the rear of the Lodge, Miss Lott pulled a key from her pocket to unlock the padlock, held the lantern to the lichen-mottled wooden gates and pushed them open. The yard was bricked and uneven and hard to negotiate in the dark. Behind a shadowy open barn, they came to a concrete shed with a corrugated and rusty tin roof. Miss Lott produced another key and unlocked the wooden door.
