And Both Were Young (3 page)

Now the train was slowing down. Eunice stood up and brushed imaginary specks off her immaculate white skirt. Philip Hunter took Flip’s suitcase off the rack. “This is it, Flippet,” he said.

An old black taxi took them farther up the mountain to the school. The school had once been a big resort hotel and it was an imposing building with innumerable red-roofed turrets flying small flags, and iron balconies were under every window. The taxi driver took Flip’s bag and led them into a huge lounge with a marble floor and stained glass in the windows. There should have been potted palms by the marble pillars, but there weren’t. Girls of all ages and sizes were running about, reading notices on the big bulletin board, carrying suitcases, tennis racquets, ice skates, hockey sticks, skis, cricket bats, lacrosse sticks, armfuls of books. A wide marble staircase curved down into the center of the hall. To one side of it was a big cagelike elevator with a sign,
FACULTY ONLY
, in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. At the
other side of the staircase was what had once been the concierge’s desk with innumerable cubbyholes for mail behind it. A woman with very dark hair and bushy eyebrows sat at it now, and she looked over at Eunice and Flip and Philip Hunter inquiringly. They crossed the hall to the desk.

“This is Philippa Hunter, one of the new girls,” Eunice said, pushing Flip forward. “I am Mrs. Jackman and this is Mr. Hunter.”

The black-haired woman behind the desk nodded and reached for a big notebook. Flip noticed that she had quite a dark mustache on her upper lip. “How do you do? I am Miss Tulip, the matron,” she said as she began leafing through the ledger. “Hartung, Havre, Hesse, Hunter. Ah, yes, Philippa Hunter, number ninety-seven, room thirty-three.” She looked up from the book and her black eyes searched the girls milling about in the big hall. “Erna Weber,” she called.

A girl about Flip’s age detached herself from a cluster and came over to the desk. “Yes, Miss Tulip?”

“This is Philippa Hunter,” Miss Tulip said. “She is in your dormitory. Take her upstairs with you and show her where to put her things. She is number ninety-seven.”

“Yes, Miss Tulip.” Erna reached down for Flip’s suitcase and a lock of fair hair escaped from her barrette and fell over one eye. She pushed it back impatiently. “Come on,” she told Flip.

Flip looked despairingly at her father, but all he did was to grin encouragingly. She followed Erna reluctantly.

At the head of the stairs Erna set down the suitcase and undid her barrette, yanking her short hair back tightly from her face. “
Sprechen Sie deutsch?
” she asked Flip.

Flip knew just enough German to answer “
Nein.
”

“
Parlez-vous français?
” Erna asked, picking up the suitcase again.

To this Flip was able to answer “
Oui
.”

“Well, that’s something at any rate,” Erna told her in French, climbing another flight of marble stairs. “After prayers tonight we aren’t supposed to speak anything but French. Some of the girls don’t speak any French when they first come and I can tell you they have an awful time. I ought to know, because I didn’t speak any French when I came last year. What did Tulip say your name was?”

“Philippa Hunter.”

“What are you? English?”

“No. American.”

Erna turned down a corridor, pushed open a white door marked 33, and set the suitcase inside. Flip looked around a sunny room with flowered wallpaper and four brass beds. Four white bureaus beside the beds and four white chairs at the feet completed the furnishings. Wide French windows opened onto a balcony from which Flip could see the promised view of the lake and the mountains. Each chair had a number painted on it in small blue letters. Erna picked up the suitcase again and dumped it down on the chair marked 97.

“That’s you,” she said. “You’d better remember your number. We do everything by numbers. That was Miss Tulip at the desk; she’s the matron and she lives on this floor. We call her ‘Black and Midnight.’ She’s a regular old devil about giving order marks. If one corner of the bed isn’t tucked in just so or if you don’t straighten it the minute you get off it or if a shirt is even crooked in a drawer, old Black and Midnight
gives you an order mark. So watch out for her. Have you got any skis?”

Flip nodded. “They were sent on with my trunk.”

“Oh. They’ll be in the ski room then. Rack ninety-seven. Your hook in the cloak room will be ninety-seven too.” Erna pulled open one of the drawers in Flip’s bureau. “I see you sent your trunk in time. Black and Midnight’s unpacked for you.”

“That was nice of her,” Flip said.

“Nice? Don’t be a child. They unpack for us to make sure there isn’t any candy or money or food in the trunks, or books we aren’t supposed to read, or lipstick or cigarettes. Have you got anything to eat in your suitcase?”

Flip shook her whirling head.

“Oh, well, you’ll learn,” Erna said. “Come on. I’ll find your cubicle in the bathroom for you and we’ll see what your bath nights are. Then I’ll take you back down to Miss Tulip. I suppose you want to say good-bye to your mother and father.”

Flip started to explain that Eunice wasn’t her mother, but Erna was already dragging her down the hall. “
Himmel
, you’re slow,” Erna said. “Hurry up.”

Flip tried to stumble along faster with her long legs. Her legs were very long and straight and skinny, but sometimes it seemed as though she must be bowlegged, knock-kneed, and pigeon-toed all at once, the way she always managed to stumble and trip herself up.

Erna pushed open a heavy door. Down one side of the wall were rows and rows of small cubicles, each marked with a number. Each had a shelf for a toothbrush, mug, and soap,
and hooks underneath for towels. On the opposite wall were twelve cubicles, each with a wash basin, and a curtain to afford a measure of privacy. “The johns are next door,” Erna said. “Here’s the bath list. Let’s see. You’re eight forty-five Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. That’s my time too. We can bang on the partition. Once Black and Midnight found a girl crawling under the partition and she was expelled.”

Erna’s French was fluent, with just a trace of German in it. Flip had learned to speak excellent French that summer in Paris, so she had no difficulty in following it, though she herself had nothing to say. But Erna seemed to be perfectly happy dominating the conversation.

“Come on,” Erna said. “I’ll take you downstairs, and you can say good-bye to your parents. I want to see if Jackie’s come in from Paris yet. She’s one of our roommates. This is her third year here.”

“Jackie what?” Flip asked, for something to say.

“Jacqueline Bernstein. Her father directs movies. Last year he came over to see Jackie and he brought a movie projector with him and we all had movies in Assembly Hall. It was wonderful.”

They had reached the big entry hall now and Flip looked around but could not see either her father or Eunice, and at this point even Eunice would have been a welcome face. Erna led her up to the concierge’s desk where Miss Tulip still presided.

“Well, Erna, what is it now?” the matron asked.

“Please, Miss Tulip,” Erna said, her hands clasped meekly in front of her. “You said I was to show this new girl our room and everything, so I did.”

Miss Tulip looked at Erna, then at Flip, then at her notebook. “Oh, yes. Philippa Hunter, number ninety-seven. Please take her to Mademoiselle Dragonet, Erna. Her father is waiting there for her.”

“Come on,” Erna told Flip impatiently.

Mlle Dragonet’s rooms were at the end of the long corridor on the second floor and were shut off from the rest of the school by heavy sliding doors. These were open now and Erna pulled Flip into a small hall with two doors on each side. She pointed a solemn finger at the first door on the right. “This is the Dragon’s study,” she said. “Look out anytime you’re sent there. It means you’re in for it.” Then she pointed to the second door. “This one’s her living room and that’s not so bad. If you’re sent to the living room, you’re not going to get a lecture, anyhow, though the less I see of the Dragon the happier I am.”

“Is she?” Flip asked.

“Is she what?”

“A dragon.”

“Old Dragonet? Oh, she’s all right. Kind of stand-offish. Doesn’t fraternize much, if you know what I mean. But she’s all right. Well, I’ve got to leave you now, but I’ll see you later. You just knock.”

And Flip was left standing in the empty corridor in front of the Dragon’s door. She gave a final despairing glance at Erna’s blue skirt disappearing around the curve of the stairs. Then she lifted her hand to knock because if her father was in there she didn’t know how else to get to him. Besides, she didn’t know what else to do. Erna had deserted her, and she would never have the courage to go back to the big crowded
lounge or to try to find her room again all alone. She tapped very gently, so gently that there was no response. She hugged herself in lonely misery. Oh, please, she thought, please, God, make me not be such a coward. It’s awful to be such a coward. Mother always laughed at me and scolded me because I was such a coward. Please give me some gumption, quick, God, please.

Then she raised her hand and knocked. Mlle Dragonet’s voice called, “Come in.”

The rest of the day had the strange, turbulent, uncontrolled quality of a dream. Flip said good-bye to her father and Eunice in Mlle Dragonet’s office, and then she was swept along in a stream of girls through registration, signing up for courses, dinner, prayers, a meeting of the new girls in the common room . . . she thought that now she knew what the most unimportant little fish in a school of fishes must feel like caught in the current of a wild river. She sat that night on her bed, her long legs looking longer than ever in candy-striped pajamas, and watched her roommates. On the bureau beside the bed she had the package her father had left her as a going-away present: sketch pads of various sizes and a box of Eberhard Faber drawing pencils. There was also a bottle of Chanel No. 5 from Eunice, which she had pushed aside.

“You’ll have to take those downstairs tomorrow morning,” Erna told her. “We aren’t allowed things like that in our rooms. You can put it in your locker in the common room or on your shelf in the classroom. They’ll be marked with your number.”

Flip felt that if she heard anything else about her number, she would scream. She was accustomed to being a person, not
a number, and she didn’t like number 97 at all. But she just said, “Oh.”

Jacqueline Bernstein, the other old girl in the room, pulled blue silk pajamas over her head and laughed. Flip had noticed that she laughed a great deal, not a giggle, but a nice laugh that bubbled out of her at the slightest excuse, like a small fountain. She was a very pretty girl with curly black hair that fell to her shoulders and was held back from her face with a blue ribbon the color of her uniform, and she had big black eyes with long curly lashes. Her body had filled out into far more rounded and mature lines than Flip’s. “Remember when old Black and Midnight caught me using cold cream last winter?” she asked Erna. “She’ll let you use all kinds of guk like mentholatum on your face to keep from getting chapped, but not cold cream because it’s makeup.”

Flip looked at her enviously, thinking disparagingly of her own sand-colored hair and her eyes that were neither blue nor grey and her body as long and skinny as a string bean. That’s just it, she thought. I look like a string bean and Jacqueline Bernstein looks like somebody who’s going to be a movie star and Erna looks like somebody who always gets chosen first when people choose teams.

She hoped her grandmother was right when she said she would grow up to be a beauty, but when she looked at Jackie, Flip doubted it.

The door opened and Gloria Browne, the other roommate, came in. She was English, with ginger-colored permanent-waved hair. Erna had somehow discovered and informed Flip and Jackie that Gloria’s parents were tremendously wealthy and she had come to school with four brand new trunks full of clothes and had two dozen of everything, even toothbrushes.
“Esmée Bodet says Gloria’s
nouveau riche
,” Erna added. “Her father owns a brewery and an uncle in Canada or someplace sent her the clothes.”

“Esmée always finds out everything about everybody,” Jackie had said. “I don’t know how she does it. She’s an awful snoop.”

Now Gloria walked to her bureau and took up her comb and started combing out her tangles.

“Use a brush,” Erna suggested.

“Oh, I never use a brush, ducky,” Gloria said. “It’s bad for a permanent.”

Jackie laughed. “That’s silly.”

“Your hair’s natural, isn’t it?” Gloria asked.

“But yes.”

“Have you ever had a permanent?”

“No.”

“Then don’t say it’s silly. If you brush a permanent, all the wave comes out.”

Jackie laughed again and got into bed. “Well, at least you speak French,” she said. “At least we won’t have to go through
that
struggle with you.”

“Oh, I went to a French school in Vevey before the war.” Gloria gave up on her tangles. “This is my fifth boarding school. I started when I was six.”

“How are you at hockey?” Erna asked.

Gloria shrugged and said, “Oh, not too bad,” in a way that made Flip know she was probably very good indeed.

“How about you, Philippa?” Erna asked.

Flip admitted, “I’m not very good. I fall over my feet.”

“How about skiing?”

Gloria pulled a nightgown made of pink satin and ecru
lace over her head. “I just dote on skiing. We spent last Christmas hols at St. Moritz.”

“I’ve never skied,” Flip said, “but everybody says I’m going to love it.”

Erna looked at Gloria’s nightgown. “If you think Black and Midnight’s going to let you wear that creation, you’re crazy.”

Jackie looked at it longingly. “It’s divine. It’s absolutely divine.”

Gloria giggled. “Oh, I know they won’t let me wear it. I just thought I’d wait till they made me take it off. Emile gave it to me for a going-away present.”

“Who’s Emile?” Erna asked.

“My mother’s fiancé. He’s a count.”