old suit.’
‘The other girls?’
‘Who else?’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t just go to the river to dream and read, you know. I go to get away from them. They’re impenetrable if you don’t fit in.’
‘I know.’
‘No you don’t,’ Margaret snapped.
‘The more you hide from them, the harder it will be.’ Margaret tugged at her white sheet and pulled it close. ‘I think I’d really prefer it if you were to sit up while I spoke with you.’
‘I don’t have to do as you say any more.’ Despite saying this, Margaret still heaved herself up on her arms and propped her pillow against the bare wall. Her chin-length waves were tangled and she still wore her gymslip from the morning’s drills, Natalie noticed.
‘If you applied yourself like you did last night,’ Natalie said, leaning in to look plainly at the face that she hid behind her hair, ‘you could have your pick of friends. They’re competitive; they can’t resist a winner.’
‘But I’m not the competitive sort. I’m not their sort at all. The longer I’m here the more I see that I don’t suit boundaries and rules. The freedom Mother gave me was a gift, not a punishment. But I do so love the sport. I know I’m good at it…’
‘Miss Wilkins. The way I see it is this: you’re here, like it or not, until the end of the year, at the very least. You bring so much to the college – why not take something from it too? You’re a talented diver, swimmer, batswoman… I could go on. I think you should show them that a whimsical actor’s daughter with talent is more at home at this college than a disciplined baron’s daughter with none.’
‘Perhaps.’
Natalie smiled. She had got through to Margaret; she’d seen it in her face.
‘You ought to be worrying about yourself, not me.’
‘I’ll be all right. I have been here a long time. One might say this is just the challenge I need.’ At least I sound confident. I have no idea what I will do once I leave these grounds. ‘And I have to tell you that I know exactly how you feel. I had no parents at all when I came here, so I had to be better than everyone else too, simply so they’d overlook my second-hand uniform and lack of status. But I decided I’d rather that, and it was easy, actually, because I was better than most of them. And so are you.’
‘Well it hasn’t worked out well in the end, has it?’
She stood from the chair, hands on hips, and winced as Margaret wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
‘That’s as it may be, but times are changing and it isn’t too late for you.’
*
No sooner had she left the dormitory entrance than Natalie collided with Miss Lott’s secretary, Mrs Lancaster.
‘Lord Lacey has heard you’re still here, you know. He’s looking for you and he’s not best pleased. You ought to think of saying the last of your goodbyes.’ She thrust Murray’s lead, the dog attached to it, into her hand and suggested that she take him down to Miss Lott at the Lodge on her way out.
Murray exhausted the ground on which to piddle or sniff within the circumference that his lead would take him and looked up at the two women with his mouth open, his tongue working like a piston.
The dog tugged. He knew the way. Without turning to bid Mrs Lancaster farewell she allowed Murray to lead her out on to the path to the Lodge.
Murray paused to lift his leg, staining the trunk of a sweet chestnut tree. As she looked anywhere but down she spotted Miss Lott unsteadily propped against the Lodge’s doorway, holding on to the frame for support.
‘Ah, there you are.’ Her smile was shaky and her words ran into one another. Her dress was so big on her, flopping off the shoulders, the belt tight but meeting no resistance. She had always been slight, but now the shape of her hip bones pushed through the floral fabric.
Inside, behind Miss Lott, a lady of similar height and hair colour removed books from the shelves and stacked them into apple crates. She looked up and nodded and then returned to the books. Natalie recognised her from the photograph, now gone from the empty side table.
Miss Lott bent herself into her chair. She moved slowly as if she’d aged twenty years since she’d clambered on to the motorcycle just last night. Her hair was limp and the grease at the roots made it a darker shade of grey.
Murray clambered on to his mistress’s lap and while she stroked him, Natalie retreated to the kitchen, her jaw and throat too tight to even raise her lips to a smile.
When she came back, Miss Lott’s sister flipped an apple crate for a seat. Natalie dunked her rich-tea biscuit into her tea and watched the tan tideline turn it dark. The soft half melted to nothing on her tongue, but the sweetness couldn’t overpower the acidic taste in her mouth.
‘Mr Lovett has agreed to keep the motorcycle in the shed…’ Miss Lott’s mouth was dry and claggy, with dried spittle at the corner of her pale pink lips ‘…until you’re ready for a lesson or two and you’re settled into your new home. I think he was a bit put out that I hadn’t left it to him.’
‘Then that’s kind of him,’ Natalie said. She pushed aside the rest of the biscuit and the tea.
‘Help yourself to a book or two, if you’d like.’
Natalie daren’t look up. She focused her attention on the spines of each book, going through each of the three columns a good few times, before sliding out the yearbooks from the years she’d both joined and graduated from the college. She piled them on the rug.
Miss Lott cleared her throat. ‘Don’t be sad. I will be in good hands.’
Her sister paused to squeeze Miss Lott’s shoulder.
‘You know over the years…’ Miss Lott’s thin voice filled the silence ‘…from time to time, I’ve asked myself if the professional life was the right choice for me. But when I tried to imagine myself in a quiet and empty home…’ she paused to catch her breath, twiddling Murray’s fur ‘…dusting the sideboard and waiting for the sound of my husband’s key in the door…’ she stopped again ‘…it’s then that I knew without doubt, that I made the right choice, that my career was the only path I could have ever taken.’
Miss Lott slumped from the exertion of her speech and closed her eyes.
‘Teaching would have been poorer without you,’ Natalie replied.
After a while the sister unfolded the tartan blanket and placed it over Miss Lott’s knees. A moment later, Miss Lott’s eyelids fluttered across her grey-blue watery eyes.
‘Now you’ve lost your job,’ her frail voice began again, ‘you’ll be thinking perhaps you should have tried harder to find a man to marry, but I like to think that if you could have had a husband, you wouldn’t have taken one anyway.’
It was meant as a consolation, but Natalie had never been given the option. She’d not had to choose between her career and a man because there was never a chap who wanted her as a wife. The war
