The following morning they arrived promptly outside Miss Reid’s office. They both hoped that whatever the punishment was they would be able to do it in secrecy. No one knew of their evening adventure and they hadn’t even told Elizabeth or Leonora. Miss Reid made them both wait to prolong the agony. Then a few minutes before chapel she emerged in a tweed skirt and jersey with a string of old pearls hanging loosely about her neck. ‘Come with me,’ she ordered, walking past them towards the Great Hall and front door. Bewildered the two girls followed her onto the gravel towards the chapel. She stopped just before the little steps that led up to it and turned to face them. ‘Now, you’re going to be human trotting poles,’ she stated. ‘I want you to lie on the ground and all the girls are going to walk over you to get to prayers. They know what you have both done and that you, Alicia, didn’t even manage to do it with competence, but fell off. No one will talk to you all day. Then you will both get up every morning at five to help clean out the stables. Not for one day, or for two, but for the whole term. Until you have learned that rules are there for a reason. My priority is the safety of my pupils and of my animals. You could have seriously hurt yourselves last night and damaged those poor ponies. What you did is beyond the pale. It will not happen again. If it does I will not be so generous. Alicia, you’ve been here a mere ten days and have revealed a very ugly nature. Perhaps you should use the opportunity of morning prayers to ask God for His forgiveness. As Jesus said, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” You have much to learn.’ Alicia swallowed hard. She hated the idea of being a human trotting pole for all the other girls to walk over and she hated the idea of getting up to clean the stables at five every morning. It was the worst possible punishment. Miss Reid knew and was satisfied. Alicia was a special case and required a special punishment. She walked up the steps to take prayers while the rest of the girls filed out of their classrooms towards the chapel. She felt a warm sense of contentment and quietly thanked God for His inspiration.
Chapter 19
Audrey had spent the two weeks living for the weekend when she would see her daughters again. She had written to them every morning in Cicely’s small sitting room, beside the fire for it rained continuously and was damp and cold. She felt compelled to write in order to have some sort of communication with them although she had little news to share. Alicia had only written twice, the obligatory Saturday letter they were all made to write to their parents and one to Mercedes, but Leonora had written every day.
Leonora’s letters were long and poetic. She wrote about her new friends and Miss Reid, whom she liked enormously, and the rides on those fluffy round ponies in the riding school where they trotted and cantered one behind the other and jumped red and white poles. She compared the riding to the casual way they rode in the Argentine and decided that she liked it better in England because Frankie, the instructor, was kind to her and praised her in front of the other girls. She was learning to play the piano and had been chosen to sing in the junior choir. But she loved the art classes best of all and had been elected to form the art committee with three other girls. That required them to take Art Club on Saturdays and make sure that the art room was well looked after and tidy. In return they had a meeting once a week with Mrs Augusta Grimsdale who brought in tea and cakes and allowed them to call her Gussie. She wore long floral dresses and ethnic beads which wound around her neck and hung down to her waist like Great Aunt Edna’s. She didn’t say how much she missed her mother, because she was tactful and she didn’t write about Alicia being made into a human trotting pole because she knew how upset her mother would be. Instead she painted flowers on the paper and love hearts which she spent all prep colouring in with a red felt pen. The only indication of her homesickness was the odd smudge in the ink and the odd watermark on the paper. Audrey convinced herself that they weren’t tears. She had to in order to carry on.
Cicely floated around the house in her floppy drawstring trousers with Marcel’s sky blue shirts flapping around her waist, reminding her of him each time she passed her image in the hall mirror. She helped Panazel and Florien in the garden, cutting hedges and picking apples, plums and blackberries until the storeroom was bursting with the gifts of autumn. She drove Audrey around the farm where the neighbouring farmer was finishing off the remains of the harvest with large green combines that resembled fierce beasts chomping their way through the linseed and spring oil seed rape. She told Audrey how the land belonged to her but since her husband’s death eight years before, Anthony Fitzherbert, who owned the large estate next door, had farmed it for her. ‘Farming makes little money these days, but it keeps me clothed and enables me to continue living here. I wouldn’t leave Holholly Grange for anything in the world,’ she had said. ‘Besides, it’s all I have left of Hugh.’ Cicely didn’t speak much about her late husband. Perhaps it didn’t seem appropriate with Marcel lurking upstairs in the attic. But everyone needs someone and Audrey imagined Marcel was good for her, even though it was quite obviously a physical attraction and not a meeting of minds.