And Both Were Young (18 page)

“I haven’t anything. Won’t the cook give you something in the kitchen?”

“She’s in a bad mood this morning. What are you doing out here all alone? Shouldn’t you be in the school?”

“Not till call over at a quarter to nine.”

“But why are you here all alone?” the man asked her, and she was afraid of the hungry look in his dark eyes.

“I’m skiing.”

“But why do you ski here all alone every morning?” he persisted.

“I like it.”

Now at last he let go of her arm. “Well, I’m off up the mountain,” he said, and without another word or a backward glance he struck off across the snow.

The thought of him troubled her until she went in to get the mail before call over. Then she had a letter that made her so angry that she forgot all about him. The letter was from Eunice, and it said:

My dear Philippa,

I am glad to hear from your father that at last you are getting along better at school. But I must admit that I am rather hurt that you choose to spend the holidays with some strange boy you have just met rather than with me. However, you have always been an odd child, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I do want to say, though, Philippa, dear, that I know your poor father would be happier if you came to Nice, and I assure you that I would see that you had a pleasant vacation. As I said in my letter to you last week, there will be a number of charming young people nearby, and I am sure it would do you good to know them. Just remember that all you have to do if you change your mind is to let me know, and don’t forget that you have your father’s peace of mind to think of as well as your own choice. It is very hard on him to be laid up in the hospital, poor darling, and I shouldn’t think you’d want in any way to add to his worries. I’m
afraid this will make you angry, Philippa, dear, but do remember that I’m just thinking of your best interests and that I’m very fond of you and devoted to your father.

Affectionately, Eunice

Quivering with rage, she tore the letter into as small pieces as possible. Madame Perceval, on duty behind the desk, finished distributing the mail and asked with a smile, “What’s the cause of your fury, Flip?”

“It’s that Eunice again,” Flip said. “A woman who’s always after my father. She thinks I ought to spend the holidays with her and I’m afraid she’ll try to convince Father that I ought to too. There isn’t time for that, is there?”

“No, Flip, there isn’t. Anyhow, Mademoiselle Dragonet had a cable from your father this morning giving his permission for you to stay with Paul. She supplanted Georges’s cable with one of her own, saying that she thought it far better for you to stay with her nephew than for you to make the difficult trip to Nice. So I don’t think you need worry.”

“Thank goodness,” Flip said. “I think I’d die if I couldn’t spend the holidays with Paul. I just wish Eunice hadn’t written the letter and tried to spoil things for me.”

“Just forget it and enjoy yourself,” Madame Perceval advised.

“I will,” Flip said, and she ran upstairs to throw the scraps of Eunice’s letter in the classroom wastepaper basket; Eunice had used such heavy paper she was afraid it would clog the toilet. Erna was in the classroom before her, sitting glumly at her desk.

“What’s the matter, Erna?” Flip asked shyly.

“I can’t spend the holidays with Jackie,” Erna answered and put her head down on her arms.

Flip perched awkwardly on her desk and put her feet on the chair. “Oh, Erna, why not?”

“My mother wrote Mademoiselle Dragonet and said she wanted me home for Christmas. She doesn’t want me home at all. She sent me away to school because she didn’t want me home.”

“Oh, Erna,” Flip said, her voice warm with sympathy.

“Both my brothers were killed in the war,” Erna said in a muffled voice. “And I know Mutti wishes it had been me. She always liked my brothers better. I was the baby and so much younger and I always got in the way.”

“Oh, no, Erna,” Flip protested. “Your mother wouldn’t feel like that.”

“She does,” Erna said. “If my father would be home and be all funny and nice the way he used to be before the war when I was tiny, it would be all right. But he’s always at the hospital. He says the only thing he can do to help people’s souls is to try to give them strong, well bodies for the souls to grow in, and most of the time he sleeps in the hospital. I think he likes me and I think he’s glad because I want to be a doctor, too, but Mutti doesn’t like me to be around because I laugh or sing or make noise and that disturbs her unhappiness.”

“Oh, Erna,” Flip whispered again.

“I don’t want to go home,” Erna said. “I thought it was going to be so wonderful to be with Jackie. Her mother tells wonderful stories and she wrote me the most wonderful letter, saying how much she would love to have me for the holidays and she wrote my mother and the Dragon saying she’d take
good care of me and everything and we were going to go to the theatre to see a play and to the opera, but my mother wrote the Dragon and said I couldn’t and the Dragon called me to her living room after breakfast and told me. I don’t want to go home.”

The night before, Flip had heard Maggie Campbell talking to Solvei Krogstad in the common room and almost crying because she was going to have to stay at the school during the holidays, but Erna was continuing. “If I could stay at school it wouldn’t be so bad, it would be all right. Lots of girls stay at school. Gloria’s going to stay, and Sally, because her parents have gone back to the United States, and lots of them are going to stay. The Dragon takes a chalet at Gstaad for the holidays and Sally stayed last year and said it was wonderful. I love school. I just love it. I wish I could stay here always.”

Flip sat quietly on her desk and let Erna talk. This miserable girl was very unlike the brash gamine she was used to, and she ached with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Erna, I’m awful sorry,” she said softly.

Erna took a tight ball of a handkerchief out of her blazer pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “Don’t tell Jackie I almost cried.”

“I won’t.”

“Sometimes I dream my mother is like Jackie’s mother,” Erna said, “and comes in and looks at me after I’m in bed to see that I’m covered, and comes in and kisses me in the morning to wake me up. Was your mother like that, Flip?”

Flip nodded.

“It must have been awful when she died.”

Flip nodded again.

“I don’t think Gloria’s mother loves her too much, but Glo doesn’t seem to care. Well, it must be almost time for call over. Come on. We’d better go down and get in line. The holidays won’t last too long and then I can come back to school.” Erna gave her desk lid a slam and walked briskly to the door.

While she was brushing her teeth that night Flip thought more about Erna. It somehow had never occurred to her that anyone could really love the school. She herself was learning not to hate it, and was beginning to have fun, and to lose some of the dreadful shyness that had tormented her, but she hadn’t even thought of really loving school so that she would be miserable whenever she had to leave. She felt a sense of warm companionship with Erna, now that each had witnessed and tried to comfort the other’s unhappiness.

When she got back to the room Erna was already in bed, rubbing mentholatum on her chapped hands, Gloria was combing the snarls out of her hair, and Jackie was wrapping a towel around her hot water bottle.

“Hi, Pill,” Jackie greeted her. “We’ve been wondering something.”

Flip hardly noticed anymore whether they called her Flip or Pill. When Jackie said “Pill,” it sounded like an affectionate nickname, not a term of contempt, and only Esmée continued to use it in a derogatory manner. “What have you been wondering?” she asked.

“Well, you’ve been seeing Percy every Sunday for a while now. Have you learned anything about her private life?”

“Jackie has a crush on Percy, Jackie has a crush on Percy,” Gloria droned.

“If you want to call it that,” Jackie said. “I admire her more than anybody in the world except my mother and I’m not ashamed of it.”

“Needn’t get huffy, ducky.” Gloria threw her comb down in disgust and tried to get her snarls out with her fingers. “I must need a new perm. My hair’s just awful. It’s the way Black and Midnight washes it with that beastly old soap. I’m just as curious about Percy as you are. Where do you suppose
Mr
. Percy is? Come on, Pill. You must have found out something.”

“I haven’t,” Flip said. “Not a thing. Nobody’s ever said anything about her husband.” She thought of Denise, but said nothing.

“Couldn’t you ask?” Gloria rubbed some lip balm over her lips as though it were lipstick.

“Good heavens, no!” Flip cried, aghast. “Of course she couldn’t ask,” Jackie exclaimed. “What are you thinking of, Glo?”

“Well, I’d ask if I wanted to know.”

“Oh, yes, you would!”

“Well, I would!”

“Well, maybe
you
would,” Erna said, “but Flip wouldn’t, and neither would I.”

This would have crushed Flip, but Gloria merely took her nail scissors out of the manicure box her mother’s Emile had sent her for her birthday, and started to clip her toenails.

“Sometimes when Percy thinks no one is looking at her she gets the saddest look in her eyes,” Jackie said. “It’s as if she hurt deep inside.”

“Maybe her husband died on her wedding night and she’s mourned for him ever since,” Erna suggested.

“Gee, I wish I could put nail polish on my toenails,” Gloria sighed, “but Black and Midnight would spot it somehow. Maybe he was killed in the war.”

“Switzerland wasn’t in the war, dopey,” Erna said.

“Well, maybe he was French or something, dopey,” Gloria retorted. “Or maybe he ran away and left her.”

“Hah,” Jackie snorted. “I bet if anybody left anybody, Percy would do the leaving.”

“Well, maybe he was an awful drunkard and she left him. I bet she’s divorced.”

“She wears a wedding ring,” Jackie said. “She wouldn’t wear her wedding ring if she were divorced.”

“Well, maybe he has amnesia and he’s just wandering about.”

Jackie snorted again, then said, “I used to think that when she went out every Sunday afternoon maybe he had T.B. or was insane or something and in a sanitarium and she went to see him. But now we know she just goes to see this Paul.” The bell rang and Jackie tucked her hot water bottle carefully under the covers and got in after it.

Lying in bed after Miss Tulip had turned out the lights, and after she had said her prayers, Flip, too, wondered about Madame Perceval. Often she had noticed the sad look in her eyes and thought perhaps it had something to do with Denise. Why is it, she wondered, that things that hurt people make them deeper and more understanding? She was closer to Erna because of the German girl’s pain than she had ever been before. Gloria had had bad things happen to her, but they seemed to slide off without touching her. Whatever had happened to hurt Madame Perceval had strengthened her, inwardly, outwardly. Madame Perceval, Philippa realized, had
a zest for living that was enlarged rather than diminished by whatever had happened to her husband and daughter.

Am I growing because of Mother? she asked herself. Is it making Father grow? I would like to grow up to be as strong as Madame Perceval.

Then she slid into sleep, and dreamed that she was running to meet her mother down a long path, and just as she got up to her, laughing with delight, her mother turned into Eunice Jackman, who was saying, “Really, Philippa, you’re too clumsy for words. Can’t you get out of my way?”

Flip saw the dark man once again on the Sunday before the holidays. She was at the gate house and Paul had sent her out to the kitchen to ask Thérèse for some bread and jam. When she opened the kitchen door, there he was leaning against the sink and drinking a cup of coffee. As Flip pushed open the door he put the cup down quickly and slipped out.

“What do you want?” Thérèse asked crossly.

“Some bread and jam, please, Thérèse.”

Thérèse gave her the bread and jam and when Flip got back to the living room she asked Paul, “Who is that man?”

“What man?”

“I don’t know. There was a man in the kitchen drinking coffee, but he went away when I came in.”

“I’ll go see,” Paul said.

Flip waited, gnawing away on a chunk of bread and jam while Ariel tried to scramble onto her lap and share it with her.

Paul returned, saying, “Thérèse says there wasn’t anybody there.”

“There
was
,” Flip persisted. “I saw him.”

Paul sat down on the floor and helped himself to bread and jam. “Oh, well, he was probably one of Thérèse’s boyfriends. She’s always having her boyfriends in and feeding them things and then she pretends that they weren’t there and she gave the food to Ariel. Just think, Flip, next Sunday you won’t have to go back to school. You’ll be living here.”

Flip sighed, curled on the fur rug with Ariel licking her ear, and the warmth from the fire flickering over her body. “That will be wonderful. I can ski all day long and we can talk and talk and talk—” She had almost forgotten her disappointment at not being with her father.

The last day before the holidays really was as much fun as Erna and Jackie had told Flip it would be. The girls packed all morning and even Miss Tulip turned a deaf ear when they ran shouting up and down the corridor. Erna and Jackie chased Flip, who crashed into Madame Perceval at the head of the stairs and apologized abjectly, though her face was still flushed with pleasure and fun.

“Just a little more quietly, Flip,” Madame Perceval said, but she smiled with satisfaction as she sent Flip running back to the others.

After lunch they were all sent out for a walk. Signorina took the walk and she didn’t make them march in line but let them throw snowballs and tumble about in the snow. And she, too, smiled as she watched Flip gather up the snow in her scarlet mittens and hit Esmée Bodet square in the face. Of course Esmée spoiled it by pretending there was ice in the snow and trying to cry, but Signorina said briskly, “Now, Esmée,
don’t put on. You know you aren’t hurt in the least. You just wish your aim were as good as Philippa’s.”