Interesting flowers could be found on a railway embankment so her mother probably had only half an ear for Victoria’s chatter.
‘Beds. Very comfortable I believe.’
‘Beds!’ Victoria thought of the journey home. It took more than twelve hours and her mother, Louise and Hester were sick off and on all the way. Yet there were beds to be had, if you were rich enough to have them. But her mother was just not giving them a thought. She didn’t mind that other people had things she had not. As for Daddy, he would be glad they couldn’t have beds – he would think it was wrong to be so comfortable. But she, Victoria, did not feel like that and never would. Every inch of the journey home she would imagine William, Marigold, Harold, Daphne, Agnes and Katherine asleep in beds – while they, stiff and cramped, had to sleep propped up against each other all night. She did not grudge The Plas family their comfort, but it gave her something to add to her list of intentions.
‘When I’m grown up,’ she vowed, ‘I won’t do anything, not even go on a train, unless I can go in the best way there is!’
The next day was one of those when The Plas family came to the beach. After lunch Victoria, apparently deep in a book, was startled to see Marigold, after a whispered conversation with William, coming towards her.
‘We were wondering,’ Marigold said, ‘if you’d like to join our game of cricket.’
Victoria was surprised at the revulsion she felt. She had made the family up – it would spoil them if she knew what they really were like.
‘No, thank you,’ she said politely, hoping Marigold had not seen she was reading a story about Sherlock Holmes. ‘I’ve got to work.’
That was the first time Victoria discovered that what she had imagined, and what was real, could get entangled – but it was far from being the last.
17
Autumn Term
Nobody ever began a term more full of great intentions than Victoria. Much to Miss Brown’s disgust the question of how to handle the problem of moving up Louise into Victoria’s form was got round by dividing the form in half. Victoria was in the A division, Louise in the B and a pupil teacher was engaged to assist – especially in the B division.
‘Such pandering to Victoria,’ Miss Brown grumbled to Miss Black.
Miss Black was scornful.
‘You’ve only yourself to blame, Brown dear. You let Miss French ride roughshod over you.’
Of course, exhibitionist Victoria dramatized her reformation. When she remembered she wore a solemn – she hoped saintlike – expression. And openly, though it was not allowed, studied in her free time. When she was spoken to she replied with exaggerated politeness, which the mistresses found almost more aggravating than her previous rudeness.
‘At least I could scold her for being rude,’ one of the outside mistresses complained to Miss Brown. ‘Now, I can’t say a thing.’
‘I know,’ Miss Brown agreed. ‘So sad for her father to have such a difficult daughter, for he is such a splendid man. How I grieve for him.’
But though Victoria dramatized herself, in her heart she was a frightened girl. Surely, if you worked really hard and even did arithmetic and geometry in free time, you should get on awfully fast until you reached the top of the class. It was true she got slightly better marks than she had last term, but she never rose above a B which, though better than the disgrace of a C, was a long way from the A plus she expected.
At last, after some weeks of B’s, Victoria unwillingly took out the pad of pink paper and wrote: ‘Can I see you please? Urgent. Victoria Strangeway.’
An hour later she was in Miss French’s study.
‘Well, Vicky, what’s the problem?’
Victoria poured out her story.
‘So you see I’m doing exactly what Daddy asked me to do, and what you said I should do for him, but, as I explained, it isn’t doing any good. I only get B’s.’
Miss French looked at Victoria. She would, she recalled, be fourteen at Christmas, and she was changing. It would not surprise her, Miss French decided, if this very ungainly fledgling became a swan some day.
‘I am not a bit sorry for you, Vicky. You are experiencing what I supposed you would experience. Where did you first go to school?’
‘To Elmhurst, when I was seven.’
‘Seven – and you are now thirteen, nearly fourteen, and, I suspect, working for the first time. Concentration and the power to work are qualities that have to be learned. None of us have them by nature; we may be naturally studious, but we still have to practise application. You have never begun to work until this term yet you expect, as if you had Aladdin’s lamp, just to give it a rub – and hey presto, there you are at the top of the form.’
Victoria was disappointed in Miss French. She had not known what she would say, but she had thought ‘bad luck’ would have been part of it.
‘If it’s not going to do any good, I don’t see much point in slaving as I am.’
‘Nonsense. You don’t know it, but every day you are learning how to use that neglected brain of yours, and you are learning to concentrate. What you have to work at now is not to get discouraged. It is hard on you to work as you are doing, for small results; but we all have to pay in the end for wasted chances. That is something everybody has to learn – and the earlier the better.’
Locked in a lavatory, Victoria had a little cry after that talk.
‘Slave, slave, slave and nothing to show for it. I don’t see how Daddy’s ever going to know I worked hard if all I get is B’s. And I couldn’t bear another term of getting up early to saw those beastly logs. If only I could see John! This term is being the longest I ever knew, and I get no time to read. I shouldn’t think anything nice would ever happen again.’
But in spite of Victoria’s gloomy forecast, of course nice things did happen. One was funny: it was on the quiet day which the children’s father held for the clergy in his rural deanery. The children enjoyed anything which upset the ordinary routine, and this certainly did that. The day before, meals were eaten in the little room Isobel used for her painting, for the dining room was being given an extra clean by Hester. For the occasion, the dining room table was stretched to its fullest extent.
In those days all dining room tables were made with an eye to an increasing family. When the table arrived, probably as a wedding present, it was quite small, suitable for two people and two guests. But when children were born and grew old enough to come down to meals a winder opened up the table and a section was inserted which added to its length. Presently, as the family grew, another section was added, and sometimes for especially big families, another. Then, as time passed, the children married and went away to homes of their own, and first one section and then another was removed until finally the dining room table was back to the small table that had been used before the children were born. Two sections were always needed now in the vicarage, since the children had meals with their parents, but for the quiet day a third had to be added.
On a quiet day nobody spoke until tea time. So for days beforehand Miss Herbert had been busy painting direction arrows on pieces of cardboard, and labels to hang on the doors. One glance at those cards and arrows and the girls saw an opportunity for a splendid joke. They and their mother were going to neighbours for breakfast, leaving Annie free to cook breakfast for the hungry clergy who would stream into the vicarage after Holy Communion. To keep an eye on Hester and Annie Miss Herbert was remaining, but on the understanding that she stayed in her own room except when she slipped down the back stairs to lend a hand in the kitchen or dining room.
‘We’re leaving at eight for breakfast,’ Victoria reminded her sisters. ‘We’ll have to nip round and change everything just before we go, or the Herbert will spot what we’ve done.’
‘She won’t,’ said Louise. ‘She’s promised Annie to help her dish up. They’re eating bacon and eggs and Annie says they’ll be hungry as wolves.’
Victoria giggled.
‘I wish – oh goodness
how I wish I could see them all going into the wrong rooms! We’ll put all the WC arrows to Miss Herbert’s room and hang WC on her door.’
‘Do you think Daddy will be very angry?’ Isobel asked.
Victoria, set on a task, could see no future dangers.
‘I wouldn’t think so. He’ll be so full of quiet day he won’t notice. You know how he is.’
The children’s father had written to Miss French asking that they might be allowed home by four o’clock so that they could hand round at tea.
‘I feel they should know the clergy in my rural deanery, and the clergy should know them,’ he had explained.
When the girls got back to the vicarage, the rule of silence which had held all day was over, and it sounded like Babel in the dining room. As the girls slipped up to their room to tidy Isobel whispered:
‘I do hope you were right, Vicky, and Daddy isn’t angry we changed the arrows. I feel a bit wormish inside.’
‘Someone’s changed them back,’ Louise pointed out. ‘I purposely marked Mummy and Daddy’s bedroom “Dining room” and the card’s gone.’
Looking unbelievably innocent the three girls came into the dining room. Their mother did not see them for she was pouring out tea but their father saw them come in. He beckoned to them, his lips twitching at the corners.
‘Here you are! I’m afraid Miss Herbert’s very angry with you. And you may have to make your peace with some of my clergy.’
That was all that was said.
‘How odd,’ said Isobel to Victoria that night, ‘that Daddy did not mind about the arrows.’
Victoria thought she knew the answer.
‘I suppose that was the sort of thing the uncles and aunts did – what Granny calls “mischief”. I’ve always noticed he doesn’t mind things he calls that.’
Another brief spot in that rather dull autumn was an entertainment the girls arranged. In those days in most parishes there were branches of The Band of Hope, which brought children up to sign the pledge. This meant they promised not to taste, touch or handle strong drink.
Eastbourne had many branches of The Band of Hope, which each year competed for a shield. On the night when the shield was awarded, the largest hall in the town was hired and each branch put on a short so-called entertainment. From what the children’s father had seen last year, the parish church’s contribution to the entertainment had been of even poorer quality than that of the other parishes, for there was no one competent or willing to produce it. So this year he handed the job over to his daughters.
‘There is a rule that no branch may spend more than ten shillings on dresses and things. It has been the custom to pick about ten children to perform, but actually almost the whole Sunday School belongs to The Band of Hope and it is a large stage at the Winter Gardens, so I would like to see as many boys and girls used as possible.’
The three girls went into consultation.
‘Ten shillings sounds a lot,’ said Isobel, ‘but it isn’t so much if we use lots of children, so it’s no good thinking of anything that wants much dressing up.’
It was Louise who had the bright idea.
‘Why not nursery rhymes? I could join some together to make one piece of music.’
They were in Isobel’s little painting room. Victoria, as she always did when she was seized with an idea, began pacing up and down.
‘They could dance in two and two and then sing while some acted the parts. I think the great thing will be to do it all very fast.’
Isobel had her sketch book.
‘I tell you what. I expect each of the girls has a white frock; why couldn’t they have a pleated paper skirt with their frocks tied back over them, like fishwives have?’
‘And couldn’t we dye their stockings?’ Louise suggested. ‘That would look gay.’
Victoria hung over Isobel’s shoulder.
‘What about the boys?’
‘There is some frightfully cheap stuff of a sort of cotton.’
Isobel made a few rough sketches.
‘Look, if the boys wore jerseys, they could have lengths of that stuff, with holes cut for their heads, and fasten them at the waist with any belt they have.’
‘What about their legs?’ Victoria asked.
Isobel sketched out a few more ideas.
‘I know. They can cross-garter with tape – like Morris dancers.’
The idea being born, the girls set to work. Victoria visited the church school and explained what she wanted and asked for volunteers. After last Christmas’s successful play she had no difficulty in getting offers though, as the performers had to be free to rehearse on Saturday mornings, all who would have liked to take part could not. Finally, she selected twenty boys and twenty girls.
At the first rehearsal Isobel stepped in. Using one girl and one boy as a model, she showed them what it was planned they should wear. Then she sent them all home with, in the case of the girls, a roll of bright blue crinkly paper, and the boys with lengths of green cotton.
‘We’re going to dye you girls’ stockings ourselves, so they all come out the same colour,’ she explained, ‘so please will you bring a pair of white cotton stockings marked with your name to next Saturday’s rehearsal.’
Louise, with her usual competence, had strung a selection of nursery rhymes together which she could rattle off on the piano with immense verve. Victoria ruled the rehearsals and, since the boys and girls performing were proud to have been chosen, she got a well-drilled gay performance out of them.
The result exceeded anything the sisters had dreamed of. The standard of the entertainment, until the parish church children’s performance, had been universally low: six girls dressed in kimonos had enacted a dreary routine with fans; a group of boys had given a tedious exhibition of Indian clubs, and a temperance song had been sung of which the refrain had been: ‘Drinking like a fish. Drinking like a fish’ – and while they had sung it the children on the stage had shaken admonitory fingers at the children in the audience.
After an hour of this sort of thing the audience was comatose. Then suddenly, singing ‘Boys and girls come out to play’, on danced the parish church team. They had good coloured overhead lights and these blazed down on what was really a pretty sight, for the girls looked charming with their white frocks pinned back over their blue paper skirts, and the boys most effective in their Robin Hood green. And as one nursery rhyme succeeded another the enthusiasm of the audience rose until, when the children danced off the stage, they were followed not only by clapping but by cheers and stamping of feet.
There were queries afterwards by the suspicious as to how such a performance was put on for ten shillings, but Isobel had her accounts to show. And any such pinpricks were far outweighed for the girls by the pleasure they had given their father.
‘This will be the talk of the town,’ he said, ‘and just what my parish wanted. They need to feel proud of themselves.’
At the end of the term poor Victoria came home in floods of tears over her examination results.
‘What’s the good of working?’ she sobbed. ‘My marks are hardly any better than last year. Miss French, when ever I see her, says I must learn not to be discouraged, but I am discouraged, and I don’t care who knows it.’
It was not possible for either her father or her mother to offer Victoria much comfort, as they both knew she was paying for having frittered away her time.
‘Mummy and I know you have worked this term, and that is a beginning,’ her father said. ‘But you can’t expect to catch up in one term. It will be in a year’s time that we should see real improvement.’
But there was improvement in Victoria’s report; it was the only fairly good one she had been given since she was seven. There was no praise, but the words ‘Much improved’ appeared several times.
‘Well done, Vicky,’ said her father. ‘Those words “Much improved” have been harder for you to earn than the “Excellent” that I see on both Isobel and Louise’s reports.’
r /> Then it was the Christmas holidays, and Victoria and Spot were at the station to meet John. Isobel had asthma, Louise had a cold and Dick had stayed at home to keep her company. The children’s parents were at a prize-giving, and Miss Herbert had accompanied Victoria, but had left her to do some shopping. So Victoria was alone as the train was signalled. Suddenly her heart began to beat so fast it felt as if it was in her throat. John was coming home. She had not seen him since Christmas. How strange to be so happy it hurt. Suddenly the train turned the corner and puffed into the station – and John stepped down out of it. A year older, but even though he was now just sixteen, looking the same John.
‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘My word, it’s good to see your comic face!’
Victoria grinned.
‘Good to see yours. Miss Herbert’s outside somewhere. Let’s send her home with your luggage, and we’ll walk.’
18
Influenza
Nineteen hundred and twelve began badly, for all the family had influenza. The boys had it first. Dick must have come home from school with the germs in him, and he shared them first with John. It was supposedly disappointing for the boys to miss the Christmas parties and dances (neither cared), but they were mild cases, so as soon as they were over the worst they managed to enjoy themselves playing ludicrous games, such as Snakes and Ladders and the then popular ‘Who Knows?’, and working at elaborate booby traps to catch the unfortunates who brought in their trays. And for Dick there was the special treat of having Spot on his bed at any time when someone was not taking him for a walk.
Victoria was really the next to catch the disease, but no one knew this, as on the day John went back to school she disguised the fact that she was feeling most peculiar, in order not to be forbidden to go to the station. For this was a special occasion because, now that she was fourteen, she had been told she might go alone, provided she hurried straight home the moment the train had gone.
As it turned out, the journey to the station was not a success; John was cross, because he was only convalescent, and Victoria, who was feeling worse every minute, was monosyllabic. After a few abortive attempts at station conversation John lost his temper.