Jill (20 page)

“The Head will see you now.”

Jill walked with trembling knees through the half-open door and closed it behind her. Miss Badger was standing by the fire in the marble fireplace, with the opened telegram in her hand.

“Come in, Jill. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Your father is very ill and your mother suggests you go home at once.”

V

Six days later Jill travelled back by train to the school. In the meantime her father had died and she had attended the funeral, which she could not forget. The wind had heaved restlessly about as they stood in the wet churchyard, throwing handfuls of rain, making the women hold their black hats and skirts. It was awful to see the coffin going down into the grave. Jill was too terrified to cry.

Not till the train was slowing down into Mallerton did Jill remember her quarrel with Miss Keen, and it seemed so far away that it was not worth bothering about. She knew nobody would ever mention it now, but she tried not to think of it because it seemed to be bound up with her father’s death. Every time she thought of that she felt sad and frightened—sad, because she had not done so much for her father that she should have done; and frightened, because never before had she come into contact with death. She, too, must die like that, and her mother and everyone she knew.

It was nearly dusk when she got out of the train at Mallerton, and the porter came along the platform with a lamp, to take her ticket. She handed it over dumbly.

And there, in the tiny booking-hall, stood a girl—Minerva Strachey—under a light, her hands in her pockets.

“Are you Jill Bradley? Miss Badger asked me to meet you. There’s a taxi outside.”

Jill stared at her, trying in a moment to bridge the gap of six days back to something she hardly remembered.

“Oh,” she said. “I see.”

They slid together into the broad leathery back seat of the taxi, Minerva saying through the open glass partition:

“The school, please.”

“Got to go slow, Miss. Fog’s coming on.”

“Very well.”

The taxi crawled off down the main street of Mallerton, past the Corn Exchange, the driver honking his horn—an old, bugle-shaped one. Jill wondered what Minerva would say to her.

“A good journey?”

“Oh, yes, thank you.”

“I’ve some chocolate, if you feel hungry.”

“Oh, no, thank you——”

“Go on. There’s plenty. I’m not crazy about it.”

Jill took off her hat and accepted the chocolate. It was a kind she liked. Her confusion and unpreparedness for this meeting were being slowly overcome by the grace and calmness that Minerva spread about her.

Minerva said directly:

“I hear you’ve had some bad news. I’m very sorry; if there’s anything I can do to help, I should be only too pleased.”

Her voice was so soft and clear that Jill never thought about crying.

“Thanks—no, there’s nothing to do, now.”

“I’m very sorry,” said Minerva again.

“It was all very unexpected. He had ’flu—and it turned to pneumonia—and it seems he hadn’t any strength to resist it. He’s been overworking.”

“That’s very sad, very sad indeed.”

Suddenly Jill burst into tears. She turned her face away and looked down at her lap. Minerva paid no attention, only saying after a pause:

“You must be feeling very miserable: I’m sorry I brought the subject up. But you will have to get used to it, you know.”

“Oh, it’s not that. You don’t understand. I know everyone has to die. It’s the thought of having to waste one’s life in awful places like school.…”

“Oh, don’t you like school?”

“No!”

“Have you no friends?”

“No.”

“Not one?”

“Not a real one.” Jill stopped crying and looked at Minerva wretchedly. “What am I going to do?”

“I don’t know. Stick it out, I should say. Things will get better.”

“Everyone thinks I’m stuck-up.”

“Everyone thinks
I’m
stuck-up.”

“Oh, but they don’t—and you aren’t! No, you’re different!” cried Jill impulsively. “And, anyway, it doesn’t matter with you—you’re so far beyond them, you can get on without anyone else—but I can’t, though I’ve tried; I’ve watched you and tried——”

Minerva raised her eyebrows.

“What a queer thing to say,” she said coolly.

Jill suddenly swallowed her emotion and bit back more open confessions that were to follow, recognizing instantly that Minerva had administered a gentle rebuff. She was ashamed of herself. She saw that Minerva had indicated that her detachment, even though it was admired, must still be respected; that loneliness was not to be abandoned at the first chance of friendship, but was a thing to be cherished in itself. She sat silent for the rest of the journey. Once Minerva offered her more chocolate, which she took.

The stone gate-pillars loomed through the fog, and they began to put on their hats. “I hope you get on all right,” said Minerva, smiling pleasantly at Jill. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, won’t you?” The taxi stopped. “And tell Miss Badger you’ve arrived—I must stop and pay the driver.”

Jilll got out of the taxi, glad to stretch her cramped legs. Taking her small suitcase in one hand, she walked up the steps
to the front door and went in. Minerva turned to the driver, with money in her hand. Seeing Jill hesitate at the door, she smiled and waved briefly. Jill remembered that her father was dead.

But on reading it through a day later, he was disappointed that it was so little of what he had desired. It seemed to present nothing of the Jill he knew; indeed, it blurred her image rather than anything else, and thinking what it lacked was intimacy, he searched through all the stationers in the town till he found a diary for the current (though almost spent) year. This he began to keep for her, concocting entries day by day, not surprised at the ease with which he wrote them.

T
UESDAY
. Oh, a horrid day. Horrid and hateful! Now the novelty’s worn off (and it wears off damned quickly in these days) I’m getting to hate it as much as ever. All my kirbi-grips had vanished for a start this morning (yes, and WHO took them?), so what with searching for them and trying to find a slide, I hadn’t time to get my hymn-book before prayers—and of course the Badger had to choose today to inspect them, as she said she’d seen too many girls sharing recently. I suppose she thinks I
like
sharing with Molly. Anyway, the upshot is I’ve got “Eternal Father Strong to Save” to write out three times. Then Jennings put me on in Latin just at the very line I’d broken off to listen to Jackie talking about her sister (the actress) and got a black mark for that—“You
least of all
, Jill, can afford to waste time.…” Then, oh well, then it was sausages for dinner, which I’m convinced give me spots. And object drawing in the afternoon, with the highly-inspiring object being a pair of steps. I rubbed mine out so much that Miss Shore said: “Well,
underneath the dirt
, Jill, I dare say it’s an excellent drawing, but not seeing, can’t say.” Everyone laughed, so I said: “I think the paper is of rather cheap quality.…”

W
EDNESDAY
. This is supposed to be a half-holiday, but I was roped in for compulsory-voluntary-compulsory gardening, in consequence of which I have a blister on my hand which is why this writing’s so bad. That’s the trouble with this place—nothing is private. This ghastly spirit of keenness—always rushing to or from a place, getting marks for this or stripes for that or prizes for the other. It keeps me continually on edge, ready to fly out at anybody. “Our little spitfire, Jill,” as Jennings puts it (I must get so that I can say that
quite calmly
).

T
HURSDAY
. I must be honest and say I don’t like Keats as much as Dowson. The O to A, for instance—“their
clammy
cells”.… Ugh! People’s hands. “Wailful choir”—“hilly bourn”—so
old-fashioned
, which is a silly thing to say, I suppose. And then “burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine”—apart from reminding me of Joy Roberts, always makes me think of dentists and false teeth.

Must stop now. I always think it’s a good comment on this place that I have to write my diary locked in the lavatories.…

F
RIDAY
. Today we were messing about in the Hall during break because it was raining, and I caught sight of myself in the glass of one of the pictures. Quite a shock—just another tunic, blouse and tie. Me from the Outside. And this is Me from the Inside? No, on the whole I don’t think so, not the real me; not like when I’m riding Toby in a “wordless ecstasy”, or listening to the Faery Song from the
Immortal Hour
.…

S
ATURDAY
. Another loathsome day, all through Delia. Why the hell should we have to sit in alphabetical order? I hate her more than I’ve ever hated anyone else in my whole life. I hate her stupid fat face and her fringe. I hate her clumsy untidiness—the way she can’t write without bending her forefinger concave on the penholder. In Maths today we had geometry, and she hadn’t got a pencil. She asked me for one—I’d only got a new Venus, and said so. Before I could stop her, she said “That’ll do,” snatched it away from me, broke it in half and gave me back the half without a point. I tried to hit her in the face, and we scuffled a bit so that old B. peered round and chanted some kind of warning to us. Why can’t the old fool keep order? I was absolutely trembling with fury and couldn’t
see for tears. I hadn’t got a penknife to sharpen the bit I had, and I knew that I should burst out crying if I asked anyone to lend me one, because it was a special pencil out of the box Daddy gave me for last Christmas, and I’d really brought it back to do some sketching. I just sat staring at the page until old B. came round and saw that I hadn’t done anything. Then the fat was
au feu
. I told her I hadn’t got a pencil, and she said that was no reason, I could have borrowed one. I said I didn’t feel well. “You were well enough to be fighting ten minutes back,” she said. “I
wasn’t
fighting,” I said, and burst out crying, raging and loathing myself and wanting to kill the whole crowd of them. Luckily the bell went.

L
ATER
. She—Delia—’s kept
on
at me. She’s noticed I spend ages in the lats every night (writing this, of course, but she won’t believe that) and goes about telling everyone. I wish this place were burnt to the ground with everyone in it.

S
UNDAY
. The day of rest, I don’t think. Too furious to write more.

M
ONDAY
. Got told off today, and really nobody seems to think I shall get my school cert. I don’t myself. Why can’t one go and live quietly away from this pack of guttersnipes and fools?

T
UESDAY
. A queer thing happened today. Miss Fairfax had a class of babes to look after as well as us, and they were in the next room, sewing. She told me—ME!—to go in and read to them, and literally put me in charge of a whole class of twenty babes. I was so surprised that I was hardly nervous at all, and read them a fairy story about a woodcutter’s daughter who lived in the Depths of the Woods (lucky beast). I put loads of expression into it, so that they were quite thrilled, and every now and then I had to tell them to get on with their kettle-holders and hair-tidies and pin-cushions, they were just listening with open mouths. But they got their cottons into such hideous tangles that I had to keep stopping to help them, and in the end I just let them sit round and listen till the period ended. They were entranced. At one point I felt a horrid pang for my own lost youth and salad days—but really I’m not sorry at all. I mean I know things will get worse and worse, but I don’t
mind because they’ll get better and better too. I wouldn’t go back, not for millions.…

They weren’t so bad today.

Then he was troubled because the rest of the diary was untouched, and he began trying to fill in the whole year with entries, hoping secretly to create one year of her life, that he could amplify with little poems about spring and autumn and letters of thanks for birthday and Christmas presents. But it meant transposing the story he had written, and this tired him, and then he grew confused about chronology, and suddenly the whole thing seemed vapid and uninteresting. He had not moved one inch nearer creating an independent Jill; all he had done was to model himself on her image. And doing so had pushed the image from his mind. Try as he would, he could not coax a picture of her to materialize, though at first they had come so easily.

The final possession came one day at lunch, when he was quietly eating bread and cheese and listening to casual talk among the scholars, some of whom were discussing the sinking of the
Jervis Bay
. He sat spellbound, holding his knife, his heart beating loudly. The sensation he had was of looking intently into the centre of a pure white light: he seemed to see the essence of Jill, around which all the secondary material things formed and reformed as he wrote them down. He thought he saw exactly what she was and how he should express it: the word was
innocent
, one he had used dozens of times in his own mind, and yet until that moment had never understood.

He rose, leaving a crust of brown bread and some cheese still uneaten, eager to get back to pen and paper, but as he reached the door another student came up to him and began talking persuasively about the activities of some political club. The young man had red hair and enormously broad shoulders. John shifted in suspense, longing to get away.

“But I don’t know anything about——”

“Then you’re exactly the kind of person the club is meant for. You see, this is the way we look at it. We students have certain advantages here—advantages that we’ve worked for, perhaps—
but at any rate advantages that put us in the position of being able to get a grip on affairs. A lot of fellows of our age are working in factories or in the services, and have no free time at all. We have, and I think you’ll agree that it’s up to us to put it to good use. We’ve got libraries, a good supply of speakers, and even in the short time we get up here now it’s possible—I know it’s possible—to learn enough about the past and present in order to avoid making a mess of the future when the time comes for us to be citizens.”