Time for Silence

“Ah, Lucia,” said Mademoiselle Artois. “This is Annabelinda Denver, who will share with you until the end of term, or till another single room is available.” She turned back to Annabelinda. “This is Lucia Durotti. Lucia is Italian. You will help each other with your languages.”

Lucia and Annabelinda surveyed each other with interest.

“You must tell Annabelinda which wardrobe is yours…and explain to her what she will want to know,” said Mademoiselle Artois. “She will want to wash, I am sure, and unpack. Show her, Lucia.”

“Yes, mademoiselle,” said Lucia, turning to Annabelinda with a smile.

“And now it is your turn,” said Mademoiselle Artois to me, and we moved into the corridor.

She paused before another door and opened it.

A girl was in the room.

“You are here, Caroline,” said Mademoiselle Artois. “Good. This is Lucinda Greenham, who will be in your dormitory. You will show her where things are and help her when need be.” She turned to me. “There will be four of you in this room: Caroline Egerton, yourself, Yvonne Castelle, who is French, and Helga Spiegel, who is Austrian. We like to mix our nationalities, you see. It is helpful for languages. We cannot always do this, because there are more French and English girls than any others. But it is Madame Rochère’s wish that we mix you as much as possible.”

“I understand, Mademoiselle Artois,” I said.

“Caroline is here to meet you because she is English and that will make it easier for you at first I shall leave you now. Caroline will show you your wardrobe, and before your family leaves you may come down to say good-bye to them. I shall send someone to bring you down…” she looked at the watch pinned on her blouse “…in, say…fifteen minutes. That should be about right.”

When she left us, Caroline Egerton and I stood surveying each other for a few minutes. She had brown eyes, brown hair and a pleasant smile, so I felt it would not be difficult to be friends with her. Then she showed me where to put my clothes and helped me to unpack. She asked me where I came from and what my father did and why I had come with another girl. I answered all these questions and asked a few of my own. She told me that it was “all right” at the school. She had been here two years. The older girls were given a fair amount of freedom, and there was a great deal of attention given to the social side.

“Very French,” she said. “Very formal. Madame Rochère is an old tyrant. Arty’s all right. A bit soft, but not bad, because you can get away with things.”

I asked about Yvonne Castelle and Helga Spiegel.

“Oh, they’re all right. We have some fun…talking after lights out and that sort of thing. Sometimes girls come in from other rooms. That’s forbidden. There would be trouble if we were caught.”

“Have you ever been?”

“Once. The fuss! We were kept in from recreation for a week…and had to write masses of lines. But it was worth it.”

“What do you do when the girls come in?”

“Talk.”

“What about?”

“School matters,” said Caroline mysteriously.

I was beginning to get intrigued, and by the time I was taken down to say good-bye to Aunt Celeste and the Princesse, I felt I knew Caroline very well.

When I made the acquaintance of Yvonne Castelle and Helga Spiegel I discovered that Yvonne had been at the school for a year, Helga a little longer. They were all eager to instruct me in procedure, and Caroline, who had a streak of motherliness in her nature and had been instructed by Mademoiselle Artois to “keep an eye on the newcomer,” watched over me with assiduous care, which in those early days was comforting. Within a week, I felt I had been there for much longer, and because I shared a dormitory with these three girls, they became my special friends.

Caroline was a sort of leader. She enjoyed her role, and I noticed she extended her motherliness to the others as well as to me. Helga was more serious than the rest of us. She was very eager to do well at her studies, because her parents had struggled hard to send her to such a school. Yvonne was the sophisticated one. She knew about Life, she told us.

I did fairly well at lessons and was assessed as adequate for my age, and I fit in comfortably with the group.

I did not see very much of Annabelinda. At school she was known as Anna B. Grace Hebburn, who was the daughter of a duke and therefore was valued by Madame Rochère as “good for the school,” was a sort of head girl, having reached the dizzying pinnacle of seventeen years. Grace had decided—as she said somewhat inelegantly—that “Annabelinda” was “too much of a mouthful” and in the future Annabelinda should be known as Anna B.