The Lido Girls
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Murray broke the awkward silence, scampering through the French doors, his paws sliding on the polished floors, taking a running jump on to his mistress’s lap.
Natalie angled up the lid to peer inside the teapot, the tea now a deep copper.
‘Shall I pour?’ she said. The thought of Miss Lott’s decline brought to the surface the mangled pain of her father’s death, her brothers’ too, anguish she supposed she’d always have to live with.
Miss Lott rhythmically stroked the dog, shifting him on her lap. His head tilted upwards. He licked the end of her nose, making Miss Lott wrinkle her face with delight.
Meanwhile the tea slipped through the strainer and purred into the floral bone-china cups, the steam unfurling into the spring morning. Once she was finished, she looked down at the playing field ahead. She had to say something to Miss Lott, but what?
‘The rose garden is shooting up,’ was the best she could do.
Below the white-spindled frontage of the balcony was the Principal’s own private garden. In two large beds, framed by shin-height box hedges, the new season’s rosebush shoots shouldered fresh burgundy leaves.
The truth about the severity of Miss Lott’s illness had been right in front of her. The soil hadn’t been dug over; the tubers hadn’t been planted out. Instead, deep-toothed dandelion leaves and a ground covering of bindweed had taken advantage of her weakness and were overrunning the beds and the bricked pathway.
Mrs Lancaster, her secretary, entered with two squat tumblers on a tray, ice cubes chinking, the soda water fizzing and the whisky staining the water a thin amber. She set the glasses down with an appraising glance at Natalie. She must have known that Miss Lott was going to break the news to her today – the whisky the medicine to help the sadness go down. Perhaps, she thought, a dull Sunday wouldn’t have been such a bad thing after all.
‘Bottoms up, ladies.’
Natalie took a large gulp.
‘I’ll be off to the village to get the newspapers then.’ Mrs Lancaster left them to it.
As comforting as cocoa, the whisky warmed her up and left her feeling alive and awake and tired and ready for a rest all at the same time. It also relaxed her tongue and mind almost instantly.
‘None of the words that I can think to say sum up my gratitude to you…and my devastation that you won’t be here.’ Still, I can’t be honest. Still, I can’t tell you how frustrated I’ve become here. If I am, you’ll think me ungrateful.
Miss Lott’s breathing came in a pattern of shallow snatches of air.
‘Words can do that, can’t they? Language is so rich and expressive and yet so insubstantial and hollow at times.’
On the playing field the girls began their Sunday bowling practice with Miss Hollands in the mid-morning sun. Murray spotted the red cricket ball as the batswoman rolled it over her shoulder. He jumped down to put his nose through the bars, yapping at the ball.
‘Murray! Murray!’ Miss Lott called. ‘Cricket isn’t for you, I’m afraid. You must know by now that you need to be a female to join in our games.’
*
Natalie wiped her nose, catching a glimpse of its red tip and her blotchy eyes in the mantelpiece mirror as she headed for her study door.
Mr Wilkins, the girl’s father, shuffled in, hat in hand. He was tall in his brown woollen suit, with salt and pepper hair smoothed down, but only in places.
He looked first at Natalie’s made-up face, no doubt noticing that the tears had streaked her powder, and then her Sunday attire of taffeta bows stitched to her shoulder seams, her silk skirt. She was used to this preliminary assessment by now. She worked hard to not fit the expected schoolmarm bill of tweeds and sensible shoes, and it often unsettled the parents.
People wondered who she thought she was making the effort for, thought that she was deluded and wasting her time, but she’d heard stories of love creeping up unexpectedly on other women of her age. Why not her? Why not someone like Jack? Don’t be silly. You know why not.
Behind him came Mrs Wilkins, a black silk scarf wound around her head with chestnut wisps creeping on to her face. Her matching black silk kaftan billowed behind her as she swept in, the fabric as iridescent as a scarab beetle. She dodged Natalie’s hand and instead kissed her on the cheek, planting the scent of patchouli beneath her nose. She curled into one of the chairs Natalie had placed on the hearthrug, her legs up from the floor, feet tucked beneath her.
She waited for Mr Wilkins to drape his folded mackintosh over the back of his chair and saw that despite the silk tie, his suit was fraying at the cuffs and was worn on the elbow and knees.
‘You know our trustee Lord Lacey, I hear?’ Natalie asked as he tossed his hat on to her desk.
‘That’s right. He’s one of our Heathfield Players.’
Natalie lifted her shoulders in question.
‘Gerry runs the local am-dram society.’ Mrs Wilkins’s shoes clattered from her feet to the rug. ‘Lacey is always trying out for the male lead.’ She rolled her eyes. Natalie suppressed her smile. She could well imagine it. ‘Can’t act for toffee…but he doesn’t let that…’
‘Now, now, Clarissa.’
‘Well…’ Her false eyelashes tickled her powdered cheek as she winked at Natalie and wedged a cigarette into a slender black holder.
‘You both act.’ Natalie said it more as a statement. It was coming back to her now: their first meeting at Miss Wilkins’s assessment. She’d been too distracted with the task in hand to really register how out of place the family were and consider whether their daughter would fit in.
‘I write too,’ Mrs Wilkins explained, ‘some of the scripts for the Heathfield Players that our dear ham Lacey murders on stage.’
‘I see,’ said Natalie, understanding now the source of Margaret’s bohemian tendencies.
‘He earned us a terrible review in the Heathfield Times.’ She lowered her head and Mr Wilkins put his hand on her arm.
‘Well, anyway, thank you for coming here today to discuss Miss Wilkins – Margaret, that is.’
Mrs Wilkins lit her cigarette and filed the smoke into the air. Natalie had previously moved her chair out from behind her desk so it was opposite the parents’ chairs. She’d liked the idea of meeting them in an open space. She’d thought it would be less confrontational for their delicate discussion, but now she wished she was tucked behind the safety of her desk.
‘Oh look.’ Mrs Wilkins stood, her cigarette cocked at her shoulder, as she walked barefooted to the window. ‘Is that our Margaret out there? Taking a class on a Sunday?’
The three of them stood and moved to the bay of the window to watch the girls line up on the fir-tree-backed playing field.
‘Just an hour of drills for the first years. It’s quite an impressive sight, isn’t it?’ Natalie said, resting her hand on the windowsill.
Margaret, their nineteen-year-old daughter, in the front row, was easily marked out by her black-rimmed glasses and chin-length thatch of hair.
Mrs Wilkins stifled her mirth behind her hand. ‘So she isn’t fitting in then?’
‘She’s a very talented sportswoman…’
‘Is she?’ Mr Wilkins raised his eyebrows and looked at his wife. ‘This was our daughter’s idea, you know,’ Mr Wilkins said. ‘She insisted on applying for a place here. We tried to discourage it.’
‘You did?’
‘She said she needed boundaries.’ Mrs Wilkins shook her head. ‘That she didn’t think the freedom I gave her was entirely good for her.’
‘She did?’ It was hard for Natalie to imagine Margaret Wilkins desperate for any sort of regulation.
Framed by the playing field’s two sprawling monkey puzzle trees, the four long lines of girls – spaced at arm’s length from one another – were lined up like an army organised for battle. Identical from the neck downwards in the same navy blue box-pleat gymslips, white shirts and dark woollen stockings. While Miss Hollands faced the rows with her whistle gripped between her teeth.
‘Rebellion is a good thing. Or that’s what I think anyway.’ Mrs Wilkins’s exhaled smoke hit the windowpane. ‘So we gave her the freedom to come here and see how much she’d hate discipline.’
‘Oh.’
The wind did tend to gather force as it travelled along the open field and outside the girls were under attack. Their hair whipped up in tendrils about their faces and into their eyes, their shirtsleeves billowed, while their tunic skirts were tugged this way and that, periodically lifting to expose their gym bloomers. But these weren’t the sort of girls to be ruffled by something as trivial as the weather.
‘So do you want us to take her home today?’ Mr Wilkins asked.
‘No!’ she said, and they both turned away from the window to face her. ‘That would be a terrible shame, for all concerned.’
‘Then why are we here?’ Mr Wilkins asked.
The girls finished their lunges and stood with arms pinned to their sides while Miss Hollands raised her hands into a perpendicular spire above her head and arched her back. The girls followed. Margaret watched the wind passing through the trees behind her and lifted her arms as if they too were branches, before jumping at the report of Miss Hollands’s whistle.
‘I bet Lord Lacey wants her gone, doesn’t he?’ Mrs Wilkins answered her husband. ‘He’s still sulking after we gave him the chorus in our last production.’
‘He had something to do with you being here…’ she gestured them back towards their seats ‘…but your daughter has talent and lots of potential and I wanted to talk to you about how we might coax her into playing along. Rigour and discipline are as important as anything else here and I can’t justify her place to the Board, and Lord Lacey, if she has no respect for the rules.’
She hadn’t at all expected this lack of discipline from the family. Parents always fought for their daughters, even if they weren’t worthy of it, but Margaret was worthy and yet… Her bravery, her devil-may-care attitude is just what it’s going to take to change things around here in the future, but she is going to have to play along, just a little. She’d never yet had to persuade any parents that they needed to encourage their daughter to stay at the college.
‘We won’t ask our daughter to change – no.’ Mrs Wilkins stubbed out her cigarette on the fireplace. ‘And neither should you.’
‘But something drove her here…’ What a waste. Natalie had a thought. ‘We have a diving display tonight. Can you stay? You can see for yourself what a talent she is. You might see what potential we’d be letting go.’
‘Oh look, there’s his car…’ Mr Wilkins broke off. He rose to his feet, pointing at the driveway off to the side of the playing field.
She recognised the car too.
‘Is that Lord Lacey’s Rolls?’ Mrs Wilkins pointed.
The study door opened without a knock coming first.
‘Lord Lacey.’ She moved across the hearthrug, hand outstretched, towards the white-haired, pink-skinned, diminutive college trustee. But Mr Wilkins shot over, beating her to it, stooping to shake the Lord’s hand and thank him for coming. Mrs Wilkins toyed with one of the curls that sprung out from her headscarf and flashed him a gritted smile.
‘Lord Lacey. It’s good of you to take an interest, but I have the matter with Wilkins in hand,’ Natalie interrupted. She didn’t need him to hear the parents’ recalcitrance.
‘What?’ He looked again at the Wilkinses as if only just registering who they were. ‘I’m here on another matter altogether. Excuse us, won’t you.’ He nodded to Mr and Mrs Wilkins. ‘Miss Flacker. Follow me.’
Chapter Three
The gainer
The diver faces the end of the board. After a forward approach and hurdle she somersaults back towards the diving board while moving forward.
She followed Lord Lacey into the office. He strutted over to the fireplace and turned to face her. Miss Lott, dressed now, though her hair was still untamed, sat with her hands clasped in front of her on the desk. She shook her head at Natalie and coiled her lips.
Frozen to the spot just inside the doorway, Natalie had not even made it to the hearthrug. She just stood there, her feet rooting her to the wooden floorboards, waiting for whatever it was to strike.
‘Have you seen this?’ Lord Lacey said eventually, unfolding a newspaper from under his short arm. She stepped closer. It was the Sunday Times, the front-page headline:
Stresa Conference Heralded a Success
MacDonald Secures Continued Contribution to European Peace
Britain, France and Italy Pledged to Maintain Peace
Lord Lacey turned the pages with a rustle, thumbing through until he set the paper down on Miss Lott’s desk. Correspondingly the Principal leant away from it.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Lord Lacey was watching her, not reading the newspaper. So was Miss Lott.
Saturday Night Robberies
She scanned the story, her eyes travelling quickly – in search of what, she wasn’t sure. She just had a feeling she’d better find it double quick. Then she saw it.
Record attendance at the Women’s League of Health and Beauty’s annual rally
Beneath the columns of text were two black and white photographs. The first was an aerial shot of the women seated in the Grand Hall, row upon row, indistinguishable in their white blouses and dark shorts. The second was of Prunella Stack, a shot taken from low down to capture the full length of her bare legs, as she shook hands with someone.
Natalie snatched the page closer. Surely not.
The photograph had been taken in Prunella’s changing room. Delphi was just a blur in the background, but her blond hair and petite figure were distinctive enough if you knew who you were looking for. But Natalie’s own image was so clear she practically jumped from the page: her heavy nose, the swept back hair, the wave reaching her jaw, the exposed legs Jack had been so quick to notice. In the Sunday Times.
‘Oh dear.’ Her expression made her look as though she were shaking hands with the devil, but whatever her expression, she was shaking hands with the head of the Women’s League in the Times.
As she read the caption she lost control of her jaw.
‘The Women’s League’s leader Prunella Stack has a fruitful meeting with the Vice Principal of Linshatch College of Physical Education.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Is that all you have to say?’ Lord Lacey pounced. ‘I had a telephone call from the Chairman of the Board of Education himself today. But alas, my joy was short-lived. As was his at the sight of my staff pictured in a national newspaper having a jolly nice time with the very woman the education establishment abhors.’
She looked at Miss Lott again. Natalie was one of her staff, not his. But still Miss Lott said and did nothing. Lord Lacey waited, now holding the open page of the Sunday Times in front of him as if it were contaminated. He was directing this performance, his theatrical leanings coming to the fore. Miss Lott seemed to be present only as a witness, powerless to defend her.
‘I can explain… It was a chance meeting.’
‘You’re wearing the uniform of the Women’s League, I see.’ He held up the crumpled page. ‘How…fetching. What a chance.’
‘Well, yes, that is…’ She looked to Miss Lott but she still wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘It was research,’ she added, seeing a way to save her skin. ‘My friend, Delphi Mulberry…’ she pointed to the picture ‘…she’s considering becoming an instructor and I thought it would be useful. They say to keep your enemies close and…’
‘When you say enemy I assume you are referring to Miss Mulberry. She was a troublemaker as a student and certainly no friend of the establishment.’ He stroked his white moustache and then folded the newspaper back in half and tossed it as if forgetting that its contents were so incendiary. ‘You know the Board of Education officials have shunned these women, of course. In the last year, two of our teachers have defected to the League.’ He held up two fingers. ‘The Board is extremely twitchy. We do not want to be seen associating our highly respected teaching methods with this band of distrusted and unethical intellectual lightweights. What you’ve done is tantamount to treason to the good name of physical education.’
‘I’m very sorry. I’m entirely dedicated to the work we do here…’
Lacey closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘Right after that photograph was taken I told Miss Stack that her activities were artistic poppycock.’ She widened her eyes and smirked, but neither of them joined her.
‘You’re to stay in your room until further notice…’
‘But I have the diving display tonight. The Wilkins family are here and…’ She cut herself short, but Lacey didn’t seem to notice.
‘Have you sent that Wilkins girl down yet?’
‘No, no I haven’t.’
He looked to Miss Lott and then paced up and down the hearthrug, playing his role for all it was worth. Perhaps Mrs Wilkins had been wrong about his acting potential after all.
‘Wilkins is supposed to be in the display tonight, is she?’
They both nodded.
‘Very well. Go ahead with it. If you give the girl enough rope she’ll hang herself. Then her mother can also experience humiliation on a public stage.’
‘Thank you,’ she breathed out. She needed to find Margaret right away.
‘In the meantime I’ll speak to the other trustees and decide on your fate.’
So much for supporting one another in our careers. I make a bad impression for Delphi with Prunella Stack and in return I’m going to lose my job.
As she left the room Miss Lott finally looked at her and twitched a discreet consolatory smile, but it vanished as soon as Lacey looked their way. It had been a risk on Miss Lott’s part, a small act of kindness that left Natalie scurrying back to her room before the tears could set in.
*
She found Margaret reading her book aloud, acting it out, with her legs hanging over a fallen trunk that extended across the river. She wasn’t in the least bit embarrassed when Natalie appeared from behind the upended roots and explained that her parents were at the college, that she needed Margaret to turn up to the diving display, prove her abilities publicly and show that she deserved her place at the college.
‘Could I dive to music?’ Miss Wilkins asked.
‘Music?’ She stood by the riverbank, hands on hips, facing Margaret on her pontoon. ‘Of course not. Who ever heard of such a thing? We’re trying to match the men at their own games. And the men aren’t diving to music, let me tell you.’ She shook her head. ‘Miss Wilkins, do you want to remain at the college?’ Because if you don’t, you’ll save me from fighting a near impossible battle when I should be thinking of myself.
Margaret looked up from her book.
‘Yes. Yes, I do. I think.’ She followed a robin as it hopped from one branch to another. ‘It’s just that I’m so used to thinking and acting for myself and here, well you teachers want to do my thinking for me. I mean to say, who cares if men aren’t diving to music? What’s to say women can’t do it and can’t be good at it? And if we strike out with some ideas of our own we won’t have men telling us how we should be doing it either.’
She had a point, but they’d always done the diving contests the same way. She couldn’t go changing it now.
‘You want to blow the whistle,’ Margaret continued, the wind behind her now, ‘and tell me when to dive off that board, how to dive, how to land. I want to decide for myself. And, in my lessons I want to hear a male perspective from time to time.’
Natalie gasped at this. They all knew that most parents wanted their daughters to be taught by a man, but she’d never before heard a student agree.
‘Could you compromise?’ Natalie asked.
‘Perhaps…’ Margaret shut the book, swung her legs over the trunk. ‘Could you?’
‘Not today, no. You need to show you can succeed in the system as it is now, Miss Wilkins, and then perhaps you will have the power to change it in the future.’
And I hope you do a better job of bringing about change than I have.
She checked her watch. They only had thirty minutes to go.
‘Can I count on you to be there? To dive when I blow my whistle? If you can’t, then I really think you may as well pack your bags and go home today.’ As she walked back down the pathway that led to the playing field she muttered, ‘Perhaps that’s what you really want anyway.’
Margaret didn’t answer and with her own future hanging in the balance, Natalie couldn’t help but wonder why she even still cared.
*
Tacks gripped between her front teeth, Natalie climbed the wooden stepladder barefooted and tapped a nail through the bunting’s ribbon. She tugged it to check it was fastened to the wall, while glancing at the clock at the far end of the pool.
The door opened as the first of the students came in. No one appeared to be behaving differently towards her and, thankfully, most of the staff had been out on their Sunday ramble so they would have missed the drama with Lord Lacey.
Lifting the ladder, she sidestepped further along the narrow path between the wall and the pool, then climbed again. The blasted nail wouldn’t go in. She brought the hammer forwards with such a force that the nail bent into an untidy L and tinkled to the tiled floor.
‘Damn it,’ she grunted through her tack-filled teeth, and released another between her thumb and forefinger.
The last of the diving girls filed through, making fourteen in total. They were missing just one.
‘She must still be in her room, Miss Flacker,’ Joan Mason told her.
‘Could you go and check on her for me, please? Try the riverbank if she’s not in her room.’
The preparations were completed just as the aristocratic trustees began to fill the front row, their toes just inches away from the edge of the pool. What did they know? They must have seen the Sunday Times themselves. She’d be the talk of the Phys Ed corridors. The parents of the girls who lived nearby trickled in now too. What would they think about their Vice Principal dabbling in such ill-informed teaching methods? I should have listened to my own better judgement and stayed away from Olympia.
The audience bubbled with conversation, but as she approached the podium, the voices stilled. Where is Miss Lott? She’d never missed a diving display.
The girls filled the seven tiered diving boards five deep, mirroring the shape of the pitched roof above them. They were dressed in matching white caps, fastened under the chin, and navy blue knitted bathing costumes. Focus on the job in hand. But even that’s a mess if Miss Wilkins doesn’t show up.
She avoided making eye contact with Mr and Mrs Wilkins. Why would they try and persuade their daughter to stay here after this? Behind them, leering through the dip in their shoulders, sat Lord Lacey. He would be smiling smugly. She didn’t need to look at him to know that. Everything was going just as he hoped.
‘What are we waiting for?’ a parent in the front row asked in a loud whisper. Her neighbour shrugged.
Natalie looked about her, taking it all in. The girls had been confused by her lingering smile. They furrowed their brows and looked at one another.
‘Why is she smiling at us?’ Joan whispered.
They probably think I’ve gone mad. Wilkins isn’t coming so just press on… She blew her whistle.
‘One at a time on the springboard. Only dive when the water ahead of you is clear. Please try to make a dignified exit from the water.’ Familiar instructions that she spoke without the need to think. ‘Swallow dive!’ She refused to allow herself to dwell on whether she would deliver them ever again.
Following her signal, the first seven obediently bent at the knees, swung their arms above their heads and each one of them tore through the water in just the right spot. Their feet all gulped up at exactly the same moment. The audience applauded and the next batch of girls shuffled forward and curled their toes over the edge of the boards.