03.5 Visitors for the Chalet School

Introducing Patricia

Devonshire Close was a pleasantly secluded London square, tucked well away from the hustle and bustle of Kensington High Street. Tall, smartly painted Victorian houses rose, cliffs of respectability, around the trim gardens in the center. At the south-east corner stood number 28. The drawing-room was on the first floor and its huge balconied windows, with their elegant green brocade curtains, kept watch over the street and gardens below.

One sunny September afternoon, at about a quarter-past four, a girl was sitting at one of these windows, her long legs doubled up awkwardly on the narrow window-seat. Patricia Davidson was seventeen, very tall and very thin. She had dark grey eyes and brown straight hair, tied tightly back from her face, which tended in repose to have the look of strain, even severity. But she had an exceptionally charming smile and, from time to time, it would light up and transform her expression.

At this moment she was not smiling. Her brows were knitted anxiously as she waited for her new friend, Juliet Carrick, to arrive. “Oh, dear! I do hope Juliet won’t be late,” she thought; “that would be a black mark against her from the start.”

Through her thoughts came her mother’s voice, gently insistent: “I presume, Patricia, that your – friend –can at least speak English?” (There had been a subtle hesitation before the word “friend”.)

“What on earth do you mean, Mother? Of course she can speak English. She
is
English, you know, so whatever makes you think she wouldn’t?”

“But you said, dear, that she comes from this place in Germany … whatever it’s called … the one you are going to visit with school. I’m quite sure that is what you told me.”

“Juliet doesn’t
come
from Briesau, Mother, she just went to school there, that’s all.” Patricia spoke quietly, but there was an edge to her voice. “Anyway Briesau isn’t in Germany, it’s in Austria.”

“Isn’t it all much the same thing?” Lady Davidson’s languid tones managed to suggest that the difference, if any, would be if no interest to a well-bred English person. She returned to the shiny pages of
The Queen
.

Patricia hunched herself up still further into the corner of the window-seat and watched the street below with worried eyes. On the pavement opposite a cat was stalking its non-existent quarry through the scattering of fallen leaves. Patricia’s thoughts, like an aching tooth, continued to nag. “I do hope Mother will be decent to Juliet. And I hope Juliet won’t say too much about going to university. If Mother got the idea I was being encouraged in that direction, things could be jolly sticky.”

Meanwhile Juliet Carrick was slowly making her way through the tree-lined Kensington streets. She had left the hotel where she was staying in plenty of time and was in no hurry. So, at the gates of Grange House School she paused for a moment to look through the railings. Juliet was interested to see this school, for she had been hearing a great deal about it recently and Patricia Davidson, with whom she was now going to tea, was a pupil there.

This afternoon the school was deserted: buildings and grounds slumbered in holiday peace. As Juliet moved away from the high wrought-iron gates, she was thinking that Grange House sounded rather an unusual school. And (in more ways than Juliet realized) it
was
unusual.

Having begun in only two rooms, the school had grown to fill a site in Grange Avenue that originally contained six large houses and gardens. It had, moreover, become extremely fashionable. The headmistress, herself a titled lady, could claim many cousins among the aristocracy, and her school always had a large contingent of girls from London’s most exclusive families.

Not that this in itself was unusual, for there were plenty of other fashionable schools in and around London. But few of these offered much opportunity for serious study. They were convenient places where society girls could pass the time until they were old enough for the London season – that ceaseless whirl of parties and dances, culminating (as Miss Denny had explained to Juliet) in the grand occasion when each girl, splendidly arrayed, would be presented at Court and make her curtsey to the King and Queen.

The Grange House headmistress knew well that this was the only path awaiting many of her girls.

Nevertheless she was determined that her school should, in the meantime, offer its girls as excellent an education as was taken for granted in the top boys’ schools. She had ensured that a wide range of subjects was always available at Grange House; and her highly qualified staff were instructed to demand serious hard work from their pupils. Woe betide any girl, however well bred, who failed to hand in her essay on time, or to learn her daily quota of French irregular verbs. A hundred relatives in
Burke’s Peerage
could not avail to save her.

“It must be an enormous school,” Juliet mused, as she crossed the road and turned into Devonshire Close.

“Heaps bigger than ours. Lucky things, going off traveling for a whole term! I wonder how they’ll like the Tiernsee?” She looked round for number 28. It was perplexing the way that house-numbers in London seemed to be arranged differently in every street. Now, after a few minutes’ fruitless search, she realized she was on the wrong side of the square.

There were a great many things about London that Juliet found confusing, for this was her first visit to England. She had spent her entire early life in India until, at fifteen, she had been sent to the Chalet School in the Austrian Tyrol. Shortly after this, the death of both parents in a motor accident left her an orphan and the Chalet School had become her home. She was deeply devoted to the school and its former headmistress, Mrs Russell, who was her legal guardian.

Juliet was eighteen now, and about to begin an exciting new chapter in her life, studying for a BSc degree at London University. Already her schooldays seemed a long way off, but in fact it was barely ten days since she and Miss Denny, whose eccentric brother taught singing at the Chalet School, had arrived in London where they would be staying until the university term began. A friend of Madge Russell’s had recommended the Leighton Hotel in Kensington, and it was here that Juliet first met Patricia Davidson.

The hotel was quite small and, among the few residents, one stood out – a handsome, rather formidable-looking woman, somewhere in her early forties, who appeared punctually each day at breakfast and again at dinner-time.

Miss Denny and Juliet were sitting in the residents’ lounge on the second evening after their arrival when, to their surprise, they was this lady come bearing down on them. “You must be Sarah Denny … just had a letter from my cousin … said you’d be staying here and asked me to introduce myself … How d’you do? …

My name’s Bruce, Stella Bruce.” She shook hands firmly with Miss Denny and looked towards Juliet. “Yes, of course … going to the Royal Holloway College, aren’t you,” she stated rather than asked, when Miss Denny murmured Juliet’s name. “How d’you do? … Which course are you taking? … BSc? … very good degree at London they tell me … Now, you were at the Chalet School, weren’t you? … Oh, yes, I’ve heard of it … my sister was governess for a while to that Belsornian child … Elisaveta what’s-her-name? … And I’m going to be visiting the school myself quite soon.”

Miss Denny and Juliet looked at her enquiringly. “Party of Sixth formers from Grange House … that’s
my
school … going to stay in Briesau next month … hotel called the Stephanie … expect you know it … Ah, there’s the dinner gong … better be going … delighted if you would like to sit with me.”

At dinner they learnt that Miss Bruce was deputy headmistress and also head of the English department at Grange House School. She told them that she had been spending her holidays doing research in Anglo-Saxon literature at the British Museum Library; and since Grange House was closed during the summer and her home lay some distance from London, she had taken a room at the Leighton Hotel.

“Hope they’re looking after you here,” she boomed over the roast mutton. “Not a bad place … suits me very well … quiet and fairly comfortable … no frills.”

Juliet decided she liked Miss Bruce, although it was difficult to get used to her way of delivering pronouncements in a series of jerks. It was rather like a whale having hiccups, Juliet thought suddenly, biting her lips to suppress a smile.

It was clear that Miss Bruce in her turn liked Miss Denny and Juliet. She made herself most agreeable throughout the evening and sealed her approval with an invitation to lunch the following day. She was expecting a visit from one of her pupils, Patricia Davidson, and would like the two girls to meet.

“Your Juliet will be very good for Patricia,” Miss Bruce announced to Miss Denny, after Juliet had departed to bed. “Patricia is a very gifted girl … not particularly in my subject, you know … Science is her line … but she’s got one of those stupid society mothers … thinks of nothing but her looks and her clothes.”

(Miss Bruce clearly never gave a thought to either.) “I don’t suppose the poor child will ever be allowed to do any serious study once she leaves us.”

Patricia and Juliet took to one another on sight. Juliet had been finding things at the Leighton Hotel just a little dull after her busy life at the Chalet School, surrounded by friends of her own age. And Patricia, though well used to being on her own, was delighted to have a companion with whom she shared many interests.

She escorted Juliet round some of London’s museums and historical buildings; took her shopping and out to Richmond Park; and finally she plucked up courage to ask her mother if Juliet might come to tea at Devonshire Close.

Even now, Patricia winced at the memory of her mother’s icy reply; she shifted uneasily on her perch at the drawing-room window as she recalled it. “Now, Patricia, surely you must realize that it would be quite out of the question,” Lady Davidson had begun. “We know nothing at all about this girl and you cannot invite just anyone to the house, even if it
is
only to tea.”

Patricia had stifled a retort. She knew that her mother always emerged victorious from such exchanges.

Instead of arguing, she secretly decided to enlist Miss Bruce’s help. And when a letter came, in which Miss Bruce introduced and warmly commended Juliet, Lady Davidson did reluctantly agree to the invitation being given.

Not that friction between Patricia and her mother was anything new. During the past year they had been increasingly in conflict, particularly over the matter of Patricia’s future. Lady Davidson was immovably decided that her daughter would leave school at Christmas and make her debut in society during the next summer’s London season. Patricia cherished ambition to study at university and become a doctor – a project which would have had Grange House’s full approval – she airily dismissed as “ridiculous nonsense”.

It filled Patricia with despair that her mother totally refused to discuss the situation, or even to acknowledge that there
was
a question to be discussed. “If only she’d let me, just for once, try and explain my side of things,” Patricia thought as she watched, without really seeing, two nannies, pushing gleaming perambulators, pass below her in stately procession. But discussion was not Lady Davidson’s way; she preferred to annihilate opposition by simply disregarding its existence.

Still no sign of Juliet. Patricia gave a surreptitious glance at her watch; twenty-seven minutes past four –no! nearly twenty-eight past – Oh, hurry up, Juliet, hurry up, do!

Out of sight round the corner, an agitated Juliet had at last succeeded in finding the right door. It did seem unfair that the entrance to No. 28 was not in Devonshire Close at all, but at the side of the house in Coverley Gardens. Beginning to feel thoroughly nervous, Juliet hurried up the steps and pulled the bell.

As its distant clang reached the drawing-room above, Patricia’s tightly clenched hands relaxed. There was still half a minute to go before half-past four.

An Uncomfortable Tea-party

The sound of the bell had scarcely died away before the door opened by a maid, unsmilingly efficient in her neat black dress, white frilled cap and apron. She ushered Juliet inside, took her hat and coat and led her upstairs to the first-floor landing. Here, having asked with a totally disinterested expression “What name shall I say, Miss?”, she threw open the drawing-room door and intoned: “Miss – Juliet – Carrick.”

Juliet, a little dazed by all these rituals, tried hard to maintain the poise befitting a former head girl of the Chalet School. But she was already apprehensive at the prospect of meeting Patricia’s mother (whom Miss Bruce had described as “A decidedly chilly lady …
Not
a comfortable person.”). And, as she entered the broad L-shaped room and began moving across what seemed like acres of Persian carpet, Juliet had a horrid feeling of having somehow acquired eleven legs, all imperfectly synchronized. It was a relief to see Patricia jumping down from the window-seat to greet her, although even she appeared somewhat ill at ease and her first words sounded unusually formal. “How do you do, Juliet? It’s lovely to see you. I’m so glad you could come.”