Читать книгу The Lido Girls - Allie Burns - Страница 9

Chapter Three

The gainer

The diver faces the end of the board. After a forward approach and hurdle she somersaults back towards the diving board while moving forward.

She followed Lord Lacey into the office. He strutted over to the fireplace and turned to face her. Miss Lott, dressed now, though her hair was still untamed, sat with her hands clasped in front of her on the desk. She shook her head at Natalie and coiled her lips.

Frozen to the spot just inside the doorway, Natalie had not even made it to the hearthrug. She just stood there, her feet rooting her to the wooden floorboards, waiting for whatever it was to strike.

‘Have you seen this?’ Lord Lacey said eventually, unfolding a newspaper from under his short arm. She stepped closer. It was the Sunday Times, the front-page headline:

Stresa Conference Heralded a Success

MacDonald Secures Continued Contribution to European Peace

Britain, France and Italy Pledged to Maintain Peace

Lord Lacey turned the pages with a rustle, thumbing through until he set the paper down on Miss Lott’s desk. Correspondingly the Principal leant away from it.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Lord Lacey was watching her, not reading the newspaper. So was Miss Lott.

Saturday Night Robberies

She scanned the story, her eyes travelling quickly – in search of what, she wasn’t sure. She just had a feeling she’d better find it double quick. Then she saw it.

Record attendance at the Women’s League of Health and Beauty’s annual rally

Beneath the columns of text were two black and white photographs. The first was an aerial shot of the women seated in the Grand Hall, row upon row, indistinguishable in their white blouses and dark shorts. The second was of Prunella Stack, a shot taken from low down to capture the full length of her bare legs, as she shook hands with someone.

Natalie snatched the page closer. Surely not.

The photograph had been taken in Prunella’s changing room. Delphi was just a blur in the background, but her blond hair and petite figure were distinctive enough if you knew who you were looking for. But Natalie’s own image was so clear she practically jumped from the page: her heavy nose, the swept back hair, the wave reaching her jaw, the exposed legs Jack had been so quick to notice. In the Sunday Times.

‘Oh dear.’ Her expression made her look as though she were shaking hands with the devil, but whatever her expression, she was shaking hands with the head of the Women’s League in the Times.

As she read the caption she lost control of her jaw.

‘The Women’s League’s leader Prunella Stack has a fruitful meeting with the Vice Principal of Linshatch College of Physical Education.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Is that all you have to say?’ Lord Lacey pounced. ‘I had a telephone call from the Chairman of the Board of Education himself today. But alas, my joy was short-lived. As was his at the sight of my staff pictured in a national newspaper having a jolly nice time with the very woman the education establishment abhors.’

She looked at Miss Lott again. Natalie was one of her staff, not his. But still Miss Lott said and did nothing. Lord Lacey waited, now holding the open page of the Sunday Times in front of him as if it were contaminated. He was directing this performance, his theatrical leanings coming to the fore. Miss Lott seemed to be present only as a witness, powerless to defend her.

‘I can explain… It was a chance meeting.’

‘You’re wearing the uniform of the Women’s League, I see.’ He held up the crumpled page. ‘How…fetching. What a chance.’

‘Well, yes, that is…’ She looked to Miss Lott but she still wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘It was research,’ she added, seeing a way to save her skin. ‘My friend, Delphi Mulberry…’ she pointed to the picture ‘…she’s considering becoming an instructor and I thought it would be useful. They say to keep your enemies close and…’

‘When you say enemy I assume you are referring to Miss Mulberry. She was a troublemaker as a student and certainly no friend of the establishment.’ He stroked his white moustache and then folded the newspaper back in half and tossed it as if forgetting that its contents were so incendiary. ‘You know the Board of Education officials have shunned these women, of course. In the last year, two of our teachers have defected to the League.’ He held up two fingers. ‘The Board is extremely twitchy. We do not want to be seen associating our highly respected teaching methods with this band of distrusted and unethical intellectual lightweights. What you’ve done is tantamount to treason to the good name of physical education.’

‘I’m very sorry. I’m entirely dedicated to the work we do here…’

Lacey closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

‘Right after that photograph was taken I told Miss Stack that her activities were artistic poppycock.’ She widened her eyes and smirked, but neither of them joined her.

‘You’re to stay in your room until further notice…’

‘But I have the diving display tonight. The Wilkins family are here and…’ She cut herself short, but Lacey didn’t seem to notice.

‘Have you sent that Wilkins girl down yet?’

‘No, no I haven’t.’

He looked to Miss Lott and then paced up and down the hearthrug, playing his role for all it was worth. Perhaps Mrs Wilkins had been wrong about his acting potential after all.

‘Wilkins is supposed to be in the display tonight, is she?’

They both nodded.

‘Very well. Go ahead with it. If you give the girl enough rope she’ll hang herself. Then her mother can also experience humiliation on a public stage.’

‘Thank you,’ she breathed out. She needed to find Margaret right away.

‘In the meantime I’ll speak to the other trustees and decide on your fate.’

So much for supporting one another in our careers. I make a bad impression for Delphi with Prunella Stack and in return I’m going to lose my job.

As she left the room Miss Lott finally looked at her and twitched a discreet consolatory smile, but it vanished as soon as Lacey looked their way. It had been a risk on Miss Lott’s part, a small act of kindness that left Natalie scurrying back to her room before the tears could set in.

*

She found Margaret reading her book aloud, acting it out, with her legs hanging over a fallen trunk that extended across the river. She wasn’t in the least bit embarrassed when Natalie appeared from behind the upended roots and explained that her parents were at the college, that she needed Margaret to turn up to the diving display, prove her abilities publicly and show that she deserved her place at the college.

‘Could I dive to music?’ Miss Wilkins asked.

‘Music?’ She stood by the riverbank, hands on hips, facing Margaret on her pontoon. ‘Of course not. Who ever heard of such a thing? We’re trying to match the men at their own games. And the men aren’t diving to music, let me tell you.’ She shook her head. ‘Miss Wilkins, do you want to remain at the college?’ Because if you don’t, you’ll save me from fighting a near impossible battle when I should be thinking of myself.

Margaret looked up from her book.

‘Yes. Yes, I do. I think.’ She followed a robin as it hopped from one branch to another. ‘It’s just that I’m so used to thinking and acting for myself and here, well you teachers want to do my thinking for me. I mean to say, who cares if men aren’t diving to music? What’s to say women can’t do it and can’t be good at it? And if we strike out with some ideas of our own we won’t have men telling us how we should be doing it either.’

She had a point, but they’d always done the diving contests the same way. She couldn’t go changing it now.

‘You want to blow the whistle,’ Margaret continued, the wind behind her now, ‘and tell me when to dive off that board, how to dive, how to land. I want to decide for myself. And, in my lessons I want to hear a male perspective from time to time.’

Natalie gasped at this. They all knew that most parents wanted their daughters to be taught by a man, but she’d never before heard a student agree.

‘Could you compromise?’ Natalie asked.

‘Perhaps…’ Margaret shut the book, swung her legs over the trunk. ‘Could you?’

‘Not today, no. You need to show you can succeed in the system as it is now, Miss Wilkins, and then perhaps you will have the power to change it in the future.’

And I hope you do a better job of bringing about change than I have.

She checked her watch. They only had thirty minutes to go.

‘Can I count on you to be there? To dive when I blow my whistle? If you can’t, then I really think you may as well pack your bags and go home today.’ As she walked back down the pathway that led to the playing field she muttered, ‘Perhaps that’s what you really want anyway.’

Margaret didn’t answer and with her own future hanging in the balance, Natalie couldn’t help but wonder why she even still cared.

*

Tacks gripped between her front teeth, Natalie climbed the wooden stepladder barefooted and tapped a nail through the bunting’s ribbon. She tugged it to check it was fastened to the wall, while glancing at the clock at the far end of the pool.

The door opened as the first of the students came in. No one appeared to be behaving differently towards her and, thankfully, most of the staff had been out on their Sunday ramble so they would have missed the drama with Lord Lacey.

Lifting the ladder, she sidestepped further along the narrow path between the wall and the pool, then climbed again. The blasted nail wouldn’t go in. She brought the hammer forwards with such a force that the nail bent into an untidy L and tinkled to the tiled floor.

‘Damn it,’ she grunted through her tack-filled teeth, and released another between her thumb and forefinger.

The last of the diving girls filed through, making fourteen in total. They were missing just one.

‘She must still be in her room, Miss Flacker,’ Joan Mason told her.

‘Could you go and check on her for me, please? Try the riverbank if she’s not in her room.’

The preparations were completed just as the aristocratic trustees began to fill the front row, their toes just inches away from the edge of the pool. What did they know? They must have seen the Sunday Times themselves. She’d be the talk of the Phys Ed corridors. The parents of the girls who lived nearby trickled in now too. What would they think about their Vice Principal dabbling in such ill-informed teaching methods? I should have listened to my own better judgement and stayed away from Olympia.

The audience bubbled with conversation, but as she approached the podium, the voices stilled. Where is Miss Lott? She’d never missed a diving display.

The girls filled the seven tiered diving boards five deep, mirroring the shape of the pitched roof above them. They were dressed in matching white caps, fastened under the chin, and navy blue knitted bathing costumes. Focus on the job in hand. But even that’s a mess if Miss Wilkins doesn’t show up.

She avoided making eye contact with Mr and Mrs Wilkins. Why would they try and persuade their daughter to stay here after this? Behind them, leering through the dip in their shoulders, sat Lord Lacey. He would be smiling smugly. She didn’t need to look at him to know that. Everything was going just as he hoped.

‘What are we waiting for?’ a parent in the front row asked in a loud whisper. Her neighbour shrugged.

Natalie looked about her, taking it all in. The girls had been confused by her lingering smile. They furrowed their brows and looked at one another.

‘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.

‘Look at that beauty.’ She held her lantern up in the dark to shed a pocket of light on a white dust sheet with handlebars loosely described beneath.

‘It’s a motorcycle?’

Natalie often heard an engine ratcheting down the lane at the weekend, but she never imagined that it was stored on the college grounds.

‘A beautiful machine, with its own personality. Just like the college.’ Miss Lott walked into the dank building, not much wider than the motorcycle, and peeled back the dust sheet to reveal the handlebars and then tossed the sheet further still so it travelled beyond the seat and the back wheel and fell in a heap behind it.

‘It’s mine, you know.’ She lifted the brown leather helmet and goggles from where they hung on the handlebars and put them on.

‘Yours?’

Miss Lott handed Natalie the lantern and hoisted up her nightgown. Natalie turning so as not to see anything she shouldn’t as Miss Lott sat astride the saddle.

‘Oh, Miss Lott.’ The image of her in her nightgown, helmet and goggles was too much.

‘I’m not strong enough to handle her now. Mr Lovett keeps her ticking over. He loves this motorcycle as much as I do.’ She pointed out of the door towards the main building. ‘But those Sunday afternoons you imagined me leaning over an interminably dull cross-stitch. Do you know where I’ve been? Out on the open road. I rather like angling. You didn’t know that about me, did you? I strap my equipment to my back and off I go. It’s made me feel alive to do something I love. Taking the stopper out of the bottle’s neck.’

‘It looks such fun.’

Natalie tried to reconcile this image of Miss Lott against the person she thought she’d known for so many years. How could she not know this about her? Had she been blind to seeing Miss Lott in any other way than the image of a spinster college head that she’d decided on? The perception she resented others holding about herself.

‘So I do understand, you know. How you might find the college to be stifling.’ Miss Lott dismounted, beckoned Natalie over and took the lantern.

The seat was a little hard and uncomfortable. It wobbled on the stand and needed her to hold the handlebars to keep it upright. She imagined the engine at full throttle. How had she never seen Miss Lott riding this? Perhaps she had; perhaps Miss Lott had driven past her on the lane and she’d not even noticed it was her beloved Principal beneath the helmet, because she was the last person she’d expect to be riding it.

‘I want you to have her,’ Miss Lott said. ‘When I’m gone. She’s given me such pleasure and I hope she does the same for you.’

‘Oh!’

Was that all she could think to say? She didn’t actually need anything to remember Miss Lott by; she’d shaped her life so much already.

‘Mr Lovett will take care of her until you are settled, and when you come back he will give you a lesson, show you how to set her up and kick-start the engine, and you will need to think about a licence if you want to keep her.’

What a gift! She ran her fingers across the smooth enamel of the engine’s shell, the painted red fox, and took hold of the handlebars again, picturing herself on the road. Imagining the staff’s surprise when they discovered it was her who was revving off to goodness only knows where. Wouldn’t Delphi love this? She could make them special riding outfits. That trouser suit would have a use after all.

‘Thank you,’ she remembered to say. Her sadness had flipped in the air like a pancake and had now flopped back to fill the pan. Her eyes met Miss Lott’s and she smiled back. The connection surged between them, the meeting of two kindred spirits. Natalie knew she didn’t have to say another word, because the Principal had heard and understood every thought that had just flitted through her mind.