Tennis Shoes (6 page)

The worst of it for Susan was that she and Nicky did not get on. She really felt that Nicky ought to count as a little one and go about with David. Instead of that there they were, going to school together.

St. Clair's was thought a very good school. That is to say, it had masses of boards in the hall, with the names of all the people who had won scholarships and exhibitions written on them in gold. In the gymnasium there were even more boards, bearing the names of those who had distinguished themselves at games, written in scarlet.

Susan hated being conspicuous. She never went anywhere without trying to be as much like everybody else as possible, at least on the outside. St. Clair's tried to make everybody alike inside as well as out. Susan knew outside she was managing very well, but she sometimes doubted if she was the real St. Clair's girl inside.

Stuck up in the hall over the platform from which the head read prayers every morning was: ‘Who aimeth at the sky shoots higher much than he who means a tree.' Naturally Susan knew what it meant, but she knew as well (without actually thinking it) just what sort of sky St. Clair's meant you to shoot at. Being good at work. Being good at games. Being a good influence in the school. Lots of other things which might have seemed part of the sky outside, certainly were not part of the one in. Music, for instance. Books or art in any form. Dancing was all right, but only as exercise. There was no harm in being able to sing or play an instrument, but being too fond of it was showing off. Reading books was all right, but you mustn't talk about what you'd been reading. That was putting on side. If you painted or drew you were expected to do it in the art class once a week and not mess about with it at other times. Caricatures, of course, were different. That wasn't drawing; that was being funny.

The school suited Susan. She liked being in uniform. Brown serge in winter. Brown checked cotton in summer. She was good at lessons and at games. In fact, she was almost exactly what St. Clair's wanted. It did seem hard on her, therefore, that before she had been at the school two years Nicky must arrive, undoing in a moment the good impression she had created.

Nicky did not really mean to be as aggravating as St. Clair's found her. But she never remembered rules, and she never wanted to be like anybody else. Susan was terribly ashamed of her.

The school was divided into four houses. The marks of everybody in each house, both for lessons and for games, were added together, and a cup was given to the top house every term. The result was that St. Clair's was full of girls struggling to get to the top of their class and to win their colours. In fact, almost all the school but Nicky. Susan did her best to make her try.

‘But you must see how you are letting your house down by always being at the bottom of your form.'

Nicky would look aggravatingly vague.

‘What house?'

‘You know quite well it's St. Catherine's, Nicky. Your house-captain, Alison Browne, is awfully nice. You're very lucky to be in her house. Such lots of people who were in it are on the boards.'

‘But I don't want to be on a board,' Nicky explained.

Susan looked shocked.

‘But think of all the girls reading your name in gold, while they are at prayers in the morning, for ever and ever.'

‘I don't see what good that would do me,' Nicky argued.

As she had no effect on Nicky, Susan had to apologize for her when her house grumbled.

‘She'll be all right presently. I know she's always getting into rows, but she doesn't seem to be able to understand about rules. She's awfully proud at being in St. Catherine's House really.'

Susan wrote long letters to Jim telling him how awful it was about Nicky. But letters are unsatisfactory. Hers made her feel more than ever that she wanted him home.

It was about half-way through the term when the worrying thing happened. St. Clair's was not a tennis school. Lacrosse, hockey, and cricket were their games. Of course they played tennis and had tennis teams, but there were not enough courts to go round, and so it was never considered quite so important as other games.

Tennis in the lower school was only for the two top forms. Susan had moved into the lower of the two top forms that term. She found she did not care much for the tennis now that she was allowed to play. Her father put her off for one thing. He said he would much rather she did not touch her racket at school. That he was trying to get some style into her, and messing about with a lot of kids would not do her any good. Susan felt inside that quite honestly this was true. But of course she could not possibly refuse to play. After all, her only excuse was that her father thought the game at school was not good enough. She was ashamed at agreeing with him inside. It was in a way criticizing your school, which was not done at St. Clair's.

The tennis was rotten. There was no coaching in the lower school and they all slammed the ball about just as they liked. Susan tried to practise special strokes, especially her backhand, which her father said was very weak. She would keep up a running criticism of herself in her head.

‘Look which way you are standing. Sideways. You can't take a backhand unless your right shoulder is towards the net. Don't spoon it up. Look at your feet, Susan. My good child, look at your left foot. Unless your left foot is behind for you to swing back on, how do you think you are going to take the ball? That was better. That was much better. Don't get too close to the ball. You took that one very nicely indeed.' And all the time she whispered: ‘Follow through. Follow through. You idiot, you took your eye off the ball.'

Of course it was splendid advice and was exactly what her father had told her. Actually very few of her strokes followed the advice she gave herself. She was not experienced enough to know the good ones from the bad, and they looked better than they were because the other girls could not return the ball. In fact, most of her practice came when taking a service.

At one of the lower school tennis afternoons, the school tennis captain happened to be passing just as one of Susan's backhands came off. Susan did not see her standing there, or she would never have hit another ball. As it was, though of course she made plenty of mistakes, she was at least in the right position all the time. The next day she was sent for.

‘Susan Heath, will you go to the senior prefects' room, at once?'

Susan got up, scarlet in the face. She knew she had done nothing. At once she suspected Nicky. What awful sin could she have committed that would take her, a junior, in front of the senior prefects?

‘Who wants me?' she whispered.

‘Ann Ford. Go on.'

Susan, hurrying like a scared rabbit up the stairs, forgot that Ann Ford was the tennis captain and only remembered that she was a prefect. By the time she got to the top flight she had decided that Nicky, and probably herself too, as she was Nicky's sister, would be expelled. When she reached the prefects' room she was almost too scared to knock, but she made herself somehow. Ann Ford was sitting at her desk. She looked up as Susan came in.

‘Hallo! Are you Susan Heath?'

‘Yes,' Susan agreed apologetically, certain that the school would soon be ringing with the name.

‘You've had some tennis coaching, haven't you?'

‘Tennis?' Susan looked stupid, for it is very difficult to jump your mind from your sister being expelled to tennis.

‘Well, haven't you?' Ann asked again.

‘Yes, from father,' she agreed.

‘I see. Well, I'm having you put on to special coaching. You'll get a chance to play every day. At the end of the term I'll come and look at you to see how you are shaping. Might get you into a team next year.'

Susan felt she ought to curtsy or something. This was, she knew, a most tremendous honour. But as she went down the passage back to her form she felt worried inside. Her father had said he did not want her to play at school. He would simply hate her playing every day and being coached by somebody that perhaps he would not think very good. On the other hand, what would her house say if she missed the chance of being in a team with all the marks that brought in? How dreadfully swanky they would think her if they heard that her reason for not playing was that she was being coached in case she might turn out what her father called ‘first-class.' How awful to even suggest that any game at St. Clair's was not ‘first-class.' Of course, the tennis was not, and the tennis coaching was not, and everybody knew it, but it was not the sort of thing you could possibly say.

All the rest of the day she turned the problem over and over in her mind. Should she not tell her father and just be coached? She knew at once that was no good. Nicky would be sure to hear and tell him. She did hope her father would understand. He had been at school himself. He must know how the rest of your house thought about you if you let them down.

She had meant to tell him that evening after tea. She came in strung up to do it. But the moment she got into the house she was told something that put it right out of her head. Next Sunday her father was motoring her down to see Jim.

In bed that night she remembered that she had forgotten about the coaching. But somehow, tennis and teams and things like that did not matter so much as they had. Nothing mattered really except that she would see Jim on Sunday. In any case they were driving down. If you are by yourself with somebody who is driving a car, it's the easiest time really to explain things.

The only thing wrong with Sunday was that they were to have lunch at the school. Susan had done it before and thought it terrifying. She supposed all the boys were not really staring at her, but she felt as though they were.

Sunday was a most lovely day. The hedges were full of honeysuckle and dog-roses. The fields had so many buttercups in them that they looked as if they had turned yellow. It was so dry the cow-parsley along the borders of the road had its leaves grey with dust. Ashdown Forest looked cool. Susan would have liked to get out and walk through the trees and amongst the gorse. There was so much to see after being at Tulse Hill that she left talking about the coaching until they were going home.

Jim was waiting in the school drive for them. He was most terribly glad to see them and would have liked to say so, but he never found it easy to say things to his family when they came to the school. School was school and family was family. You could not expect them to mix. So all he said was:

‘Hallo! You don't want to see the chapel again, do you? You saw it last time.'

‘No. I think we'd better go and pay our respects,' Dr. Heath suggested.

Jim looked at his watch.

‘Well, I don't know about that yet. Lunch is a quarter past one. It's only a quarter to. What would we do for half an hour?'

But Dr. Heath said he thought they would not be too early, so they went in.

As a matter of fact it worked out rather well. The headmaster's wife, Mrs. Partridge, took Susan to wash and to do her hair, and when she came back she found both Mr. and Mrs. Partridge drinking sherry with her father, so she and Jim were able to get in a corner and talk.

‘Dad gave me an awful shock,' Jim told her. ‘In his letter he didn't exactly say who was coming. I thought he might be bringing Nicky too. It would have been simply awful if he had. She'd have been sure to say or do something frightful in front of everybody.'

His talking of everybody reminded Susan of lunch.

‘Am I sitting next to you?'

‘Yes. I'm to move up to the end. On the other side of you is Mr. Partridge.'

Jim did not really care for having his family to lunch. Susan was pretty and all that, and she looked all right in that green thing she was wearing. But somehow it made him shy, the other boys looking at his father and sister. Of course, it was not likely they would do anything wrong, but they might. Anyway it was lucky they looked all right. He did not want to be like Lang last term. His mother coming down dreadful and fat and all over paint. She had left her lipstick on the napkin. Jim supposed that if a thing like that happened to him he would have got dad to take him away. He was sure he could never have borne the shame.

Luckily, as Jim and Susan were shy, Mr. Partridge was a very talkative person. He told them all through lunch about how he had been in Lapland. He was very interesting and the twins, in listening to him, almost forgot the rows of eyes down the table.

After lunch they went on the pier. Dr. Heath changed a shilling into pennies and gave them six each, and told them not to leave the pier as he was going for a walk and would come back and fetch them. They had a lovely afternoon. The pennies lasted a long time in the slot machines, as they used them for football matches and things like that where one always comes back. When they had used all the pennies up, except one or two with which they bought chocolate, they went and sat on a bench and watched a man fish. Susan told Jim all about the tennis coaching. At the end he said:

‘I should think dad's bound to see. He knows that if they want you to play in teams and things at school you have to.'

Susan screwed up her face.

‘I sometimes think he doesn't think it matters so much at girls' schools. I hope he'll understand, but I don't feel a bit sure.'

Jim wriggled more comfortably on to the bench.

‘Have you done anything about getting your money yet for the tennis house?'

She nodded.

‘I've kept the half-crown I had on my birthday. Didn't you?'

Jim looked a bit ashamed.

‘Well, I had meant to, and then Jones Mi. bought a catapult one Saturday. Not a bit like an ordinary catapult. You ought to see it. I bet if I had it here I could get that sea-gull.' He pointed to a bird that was so far away it was only a speck.

‘So you spent the half-crown on it?'

‘No. One and fourpence. Honestly, I think it was worth it. It's a handy thing to have about.'