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Chapter 6

Early Days

In the Mistresses’ Common Room news was being exchanged. Foreign travel, plays seen, Art Exhibitions visited. Snapshots were handed round. The menace of coloured transparencies was in the offing. All the enthusiasts wanted to show their own pictures, but to get out of being forced to see other people’s.

Presently conversation became less personal. The new Sports Pavilion was both criticized and admired. It was admitted to be a fine building, but naturally everybody would have liked to improve its design in one way or another.

The new girls were then briefly passed in review, and, on the whole, the verdict was favourable.

A little pleasant conversation was made to the two new members of the staff. Had Mademoiselle Blanche been in England before? What part of France did she come from?

Mademoiselle Blanche replied politely but with reserve.

Miss Springer was more forthcoming.

She spoke with emphasis and decision. It might almost have been said that she was giving a lecture. Subject: The excellence of Miss Springer. How much she had been appreciated as a colleague. How headmistresses had accepted her advice with gratitude and had re-organized their schedules accordingly.

Miss Springer was not sensitive. A restlessness in her audience was not noticed by her. It remained for Miss Johnson to ask in her mild tones:

‘All the same, I expect your ideas haven’t always been accepted in the way they—er—should have been.’

‘One must be prepared for ingratitude,’ said Miss Springer. Her voice, already loud, became louder. ‘The trouble is, people are so cowardly—won’t face facts. They often prefer not to see what’s under their noses all the time. I’m not like that. I go straight to the point. More than once I’ve unearthed a nasty scandal—brought it into the open. I’ve a good nose—once I’m on the trail, I don’t leave it—not till I’ve pinned down my quarry.’ She gave a loud jolly laugh. ‘In my opinion, no one should teach in a school whose life isn’t an open book. If anyone’s got anything to hide, one can soon tell. Oh! you’d be surprised if I told you some of the things I’ve found out about people. Things that nobody else had dreamed of.’

‘You enjoyed that experience, yes?’ said Mademoiselle Blanche.

‘Of course not. Just doing my duty. But I wasn’t backed up. Shameful laxness. So I resigned—as a protest.’

She looked round and gave her jolly sporting laugh again.

‘Hope nobody here has anything to hide,’ she said gaily.

Nobody was amused. But Miss Springer was not the kind of woman to notice that.

II

‘Can I speak to you, Miss Bulstrode?’

Miss Bulstrode laid her pen aside and looked up into the flushed face of the matron, Miss Johnson.

‘Yes, Miss Johnson.’

‘It’s that girl Shaista—the Egyptian girl or whatever she is.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s her—er—underclothing.’

Miss Bulstrode’s eyebrows rose in patient surprise.

‘Her—well—her bust bodice.’

‘What is wrong with her brassière?’

‘Well—it isn’t an ordinary kind—I mean it doesn’t hold her in, exactly. It—er—well it pushes her up—really quite unnecessarily.’

Miss Bulstrode bit her lip to keep back a smile, as so often when in colloquy with Miss Johnson.

‘Perhaps I’d better come and look at it,’ she said gravely.

A kind of inquest was then held with the offending contraption held up to display by Miss Johnson, whilst Shaista looked on with lively interest.

‘It’s this sort of wire and—er—boning arrangement,’ said Miss Johnson with disapprobation.

Shaista burst into animated explanation.

‘But you see my breasts they are not very big—not nearly big enough. I do not look enough like a woman. And it is very important for a girl—to show she is a woman and not a boy.’

‘Plenty of time for that. You’re only fifteen,’ said Miss Johnson.

‘Fifteen—that is a woman! And I look like a woman, do I not?’

She appealed to Miss Bulstrode who nodded gravely.

‘Only my breasts, they are poor. So I want to make them look not so poor. You understand?’

‘I understand perfectly,’ said Miss Bulstrode. ‘And I quite see your point of view. But in this school, you see, you are amongst girls who are, for the most part, English, and English girls are not very often women at the age of fifteen. I like my girls to use make-up discreetly and to wear clothes suitable to their stage of growth. I suggest that you wear your brassière when you are dressed for a party or for going to London, but not every day here. We do a good deal of sports and games here and for that your body needs to be free to move easily.’