Dangerous Things Page 9

  She saw Genevieve then and stepped back to let one of the others — Bonnie as it happened — take over her place. She’d take a short rest, and she moved even further back so that she was behind the girls who were busily serving, and stared shamelessly at the group in the corner.

  They’d managed to get themselves a corner of a table to sit at, and were huddled there, Genevieve and two people who were clearly her parents. Her mother looked like a larger blurred copy of Genevieve; the small clearly defined features that made Genevieve appear vulnerable and birdlike were on her mother merely pointed and sharp and gave her a peevish expression; the thinness that was so much a part of Genevieve under her usual high-necked sweater and bulky skirt, was in her mother a sort of thickening, yet lacking in form. Looking at her was like looking at a wax doll that had been left out in the hot sun so that its limbs and trunk had melted and become misshapen. The bones were still there, easy to see, but shadowed by unpleasant dimpled flesh. Her clothes were depressing; she had clearly made a great effort to look as a mother should look at a school event; a fine see-through fussily printed fabric dress over a darker slip, and a hat that should have looked rather cheeky but managed only to look silly were accompanied by perfectly clean white gloves of the sort no one ever wore any more, and a pair of high-heeled shoes that must have been agonizing to walk in on the soft ground of the quadrangle. There was a line of pain between the woman’s brows that suggested just how grateful she had been to sit down.

  But it was at her husband Hattie looked longest. A man of equal neatness to his wife, in a dark grey suit and a shirt of such blinding whiteness it was almost blue, the obvious effort to dress up which looked faintly foolish on her was in him somewhat intimidating. His shoes shone so aggressively that it was hard to believe there were feet inside them, the crease lines on his trouser legs looked as though they’d been drawn with a set square, and the line of shirt cuff above each soft white hand seemed to threaten to cut them off by the sharpness of their edges. He was sitting with one of those hands set lightly on his daughter’s, and his head was close to hers as he ate steadily, pushing egg sandwiches into his neat little mouth, and all the time watching Genevieve.

  She wasn’t eating at all. Hattie watched her pushing a piece of sandwich about on the paper plate in front of her, and went on watching as she seemed to raise pieces of it to her mouth, but so obviously — to Hattie the trained observer who had spent a full year dealing with anorexic deviousness — not allowing a crumb to pass her lips, that her own lips tightened. This girl was sick. Very ill, and clever with it. She was watching her father eat, her eyes fixed on him whenever he looked up from his plate, and he was happy and relaxed and didn’t see what she was doing at all. Hattie flicked a glance at the mother then, and felt a sudden jolt. The woman was staring at her husband with her eyes so wide and dark that it was as though she were shouting something at him that he refused to hear, and Hattie moved sharply, pushing past Bonnie to get out, and went over to them. She had to.

  ‘Hello, Genevieve.’ She managed to sound very bright as she came alongside them and Genevieve looked over her shoulder at her, her face very pale in the greenish shadow thrown by the walls of the tent.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mrs Clements,’ she said after a long moment and then very deliberately turned back to her parents, making no effort at all to introduce them.

  And that made Hattie angry. She didn’t know what at; being snubbed was not so awful, after all. And anyway, maybe the child hadn’t meant to be rude and just lacked the social grace to know how to behave. Hattie pushed the anger down inside her and smiled widely.

  ‘May I introduce myself? I’m Hattie Clements. I look after the girls’ welfare here, while they’re in the sixth form, and I’m also the school nurse. The Headmaster appointed me specially, since he had no women on the staff. He felt you, as parents, would prefer to know your daughters had a woman to talk to, if necessary.’

  The woman looked up at her eagerly and her hat shifted slightly on the back of her head rather ludicrously, and Hattie thought, She doesn’t wear that often. She dressed up especially for today. For the school? For her daughter? For her husband?

  ‘Oh,’ she said breathily. ‘How do you do?’ And she got to her feet and held out one hand.

  The man beside Genevieve said nothing, but he stopped eating, just sitting there with his hand over Genevieve’s and staring up at Hattie from beneath lowered brows.

  ‘How nice — Yes, very sensible of the Headmaster — very kind, I mean, who can know, yes …’ And she shook Hattie’s hand. Her glove felt damp and thick under Hattie’s fingers. Unaccountably the woman giggled and looked nervously at her husband and daughter.

  ‘Er — my husband — Genevieve’s dad — used to be a boy here, you know. Still on the Governors — Both our sons were — Yes — Gordon, dear? Mrs Clements?’

  It was definitely a question and for a moment Hattie thought he wasn’t going to answer; that he was going to look away and ignore her, and go on talking to Genevieve who had kept her head turned well away from Hattie throughout. So Hattie didn’t give him the chance.

  ‘Hello, Mr Barratt,’ she said cheerfully, even effusively, and without waiting to be asked moved past them to the back of the table where a chair was pushed well beneath the edge for lack of space to be pulled out, and tugged at its back. Unwillingly Gordon Barratt got up and nodded at her.

  ‘How do you do?’ he said and then stared at her owlishly.

  ‘May I join you for a moment or two?’ Hattie said brightly. ‘It’s so exhausting serving tea. I’ve been on my feet for hours, it seems. I do hope you’re enjoying our efforts.’

  The chair was pulled out at last so she could wriggle in and she sat there opposite Genevieve, between her parents, smiling from one to the other.

  ‘I do hope you are,’ she said. ‘It would be too miserable if after all our work you didn’t like what we’d made for you all.’

  ‘They’re very nice sandwiches,’ Mrs Barratt said eagerly. ‘Very nice. Aren’t they, Gordon?’

  He didn’t look at her. He was sitting staring at his daughter again. ‘Very nice,’ he said after a pause just long enough to be insulting.

  ‘You too, Genevieve?’ Hattie said, determined now to carry it through. She’d come across this stonewalling before. They had to be got at, had to be hauled out from behind their damned defences.

  ‘Me too what?’ Genevieve said after a moment and Hattie laughed. ‘At least I’m not teaching you English,’ she said and could have kicked herself for it. There’d been no need for that. ‘The sandwiches. I wondered what you thought of them.’

  Genevieve looked down at her plate. ‘Very nice,’ she said woodenly.

  ‘Oh,’ Hattie said and smiled even more widely. ‘Are you sure?’

  Genevieve looked up. ‘How do you mean, sure?’

  ‘I wondered how you could know they were nice. You’ve only been pretending to eat, you see. I’ve been watching you.’

  There was a sharp silence between them, highlighted by the roar of chatter and laughter going on all around them and then suddenly and horribly Mrs Barratt began to sniff and tears rolled down her cheeks. She made no effort to control them. Just sat there sniffing.

  ‘Stella, shut up,’ Gordon Barratt said softly. ‘You’re making an exhibition of yourself.’

  ‘Dad, I’d better be on my way.’ Genevieve began to get to her feet. ‘Got to go and see if the girls need me to take over.’

  Hattie had reached for her at her first movement and had her by the elbow and now, gently but firmly, pulled her down so that she had to sit again. ‘No, Genevieve, I really think you should stay and hear me. Because I have to talk to your parents about you and I don’t want to do it behind your back.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk to them about,’ Genevieve said, but there was no fight in her voice. She spoke faintly, as though it didn’t really matter whether anyone was listening to her or not.

  ‘Genevieve, there is. I s
uspect you’ve lost half a stone more since the beginning of term. It can’t go on like this, can it? Someone in your family has to face up to what’s going on. I’ve been watching you, and — well, this mayn’t seem the best sort of place to discuss it, but it’s the place we happen to be in. Someone has to talk to you and your parents about the way you’re starving yourself. Maybe even to death.’

  She said it very deliberately, not taking her eyes from Genevieve’s face but very aware of the two adults flanking her. ‘I’ve tried to talk to you about it already this term, haven’t I? Since you got here, really. I saw it the first time I met you. You’re ill, love, and someone has to do something about it, if you won’t.’

  ‘She’s not ill,’ the man said and his voice was as flat as Genevieve’s had been, but there was menace in it. ‘Not in the least. This is a lot of nonsense and I’ll thank you to confine your interest in my daughter to school hours —’

  ‘This is school hours,’ Hattie said, and looked at her watch. ‘For another five minutes, anyway. And you’re here. I’d have felt it best to come to your home to see you if you hadn’t happened to be here.’

  He seemed to stiffen at that, and she turned her head to look at him, for Genevieve was now sitting with her head bent and her hands clasped in her lap. ‘You can’t come to our house just like that!’ He sounded amazed, as if she’d suggested he strip off and dance naked in the middle of the tent. ‘I never heard of such a thing! We come to the school as and when it’s necessary, and that’s as far as it goes. This is a day school, in case you hadn’t noticed, not one of those all-in places.’

  ‘And Genevieve is a sick girl attending it, and I have responsibility for her while she’s here. For her health and welfare, that is. I’d be failing in my job if I didn’t point out to you that she’s ill. She has a condition called anorexia nervosa. I don’t usually go around making diagnoses, prefer to leave that to doctors. But I have a lot of experience in this condition and I know I’m right. Aren’t I, Genevieve?’

  She leaned forwards and reached for Genevieve’s arms and, tugging on them, managed to bring her clasped hands up on to the table and to hold them. They felt thin and dry beneath her fingers. ‘Not only don’t you eat, and not only are you as thin as a scarecrow in consequence, but you’ve got a downy skin — look at your cheeks in the mirror, Genevieve, and turn your head to the light and you’ll see it — and you’re restless and tense and your periods have stopped —’

  On her left there was a sharp hiss as Gordon Barratt took a breath and she looked at him and he said in a slightly higher voice, ‘Really, this is disgusting. To talk of such things in public and in front of her father.’

  Hattie frowned fleetingly. ‘That sounds very, well, outdated of you, Mr Barratt. It’s been a long time since periods were something never talked about —’

  ‘Not in my house it hasn’t. We still keep a decent home, never mind what people like you do.’ He got to his feet abruptly. ‘Genevieve, come on. We’re going home. It’s time we left anyway. I’ll see you to the underground and then I’ll come back for the Governors’ meeting. I’ll deal with this matter then. Come on now.’ And he went, pulling Genevieve behind him like a small child, and Stella Barratt stood up and stared after them, her tears drying on her face and her expression flat and empty.

  ‘There, you’ve done it now, haven’t you?’ she said, and turned and looked at Hattie. ‘Talking about that in front of him. He’s very squeamish, you see. Can’t deal with it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Hattie said. ‘I didn’t mean to cause …’ She was shaking now inside, aware of how badly she’d mismanaged the whole business, and suddenly Stella Barratt amazed her, for she smiled, seeming to know, to understand.

  ‘It’s all right. He’ll get over it. He always does. These things come up and there’s all sorts of fireworks and the next time you speak to him, it’s like it never happened. Never says another word about it. He won’t at the Governors’ meeting either. I wouldn’t worry. And you’re right about Jenny, of course. But what can I do? It’s them against me. I worry about it all the time …’

  And then she too was gone, threading her way out through the crowd and leaving Hattie standing staring after her. And slowly becoming aware of someone tugging at her skirt and saying with increasing urgency, ‘Mummy, Mummy, I want to do a wee — Mummy, a wee, now.’

  Nine

  The only place to take her was the boys’ cloakrooms. To reach the staff loo would mean a trek through long corridors, not very practicable with a child who was now urgently clutching herself in an effort to prevent her bladder emptying, and Hattie hurried her there, praying silently the place would be unoccupied. A small girl among schoolboys could cause considerable upheaval.

  It seemed to be and she breathed a sigh of relief as Sophie, even more relieved, at last pulled up her knickers, flushed the lavatory and emerged.

  ‘Where can I wash, Mummy?’ she asked virtuously, peering around her with great interest, and Hattie, eager to get her on her way, said hastily, ‘I’ll find you a wet flannel when we get back to the tent, darling. This loo’s for boys and it’ll upset one if he comes in and finds we’re here as well. Come on now.’

  ‘There’s one here already,’ Sophie said conversationally as obediently she followed Hattie towards the doors, and Hattie stared over her shoulder at her.

  ‘What did you —?’

  ‘I saw. Under the walls, you know? I always look along when I’m at my school, just to see how many feet there are.’ She giggled. ‘It looks so funny, lots of feet with knickers round them. These feet didn’t have knickers though. Boy’s feet, with trousers.’ Hattie lifted her head and listened, but there was only silence and she stood uncertainly, frowning. If there was a boy here when they came in, why didn’t he make his presence known? Why be so particularly quiet? To have made some sort of sound would have been the natural thing to do, surely. Or was he shy because he’d realized the new arrivals were females? Or — and here she bit her lip — was there some sort of naughtiness going on? Smoking perhaps? She sniffed. No tobacco smoke. Well then, what? She wasn’t exactly one of the boys’ invigilators, and yet she was one of the adult staff. Which meant that she had a responsibility to make sure all was well. Usually there was a staff member around the boys’ cloakrooms when they were in use, to make sure there was no mayhem, but now she was the only member of staff, and didn’t that mean she should check all was well with whoever was hidden away?

  She heard a sound then, a sort of thick gulp, and she thought, Someone’s being sick. Now I really will have to check up.

  ‘Darling,’ she said softly to Sophie. ‘Can you find your own way back to the tent? See, just down the corridor there to those doors and then turn to the left, that way. You’ll see the quadrangle and the tent quite easily. Go and find Auntie Judith and ask her to get a wet flannel from one of the girls for you. I have to see everything’s all right here.’

  Sophie went off with alacrity, delighted to get the chance to be on her own in this exciting new place, and as the big double doors sighed and closed behind her after she had pushed her way through them, Hattie went back into the cloakroom and stood quietly, listening.

  Whoever it was must have assumed the interlopers had gone, because now he was sobbing, a soft, irregular gulping sound that made Hattie’s throat tighten. The sound of others’ distress had always disturbed her too much. It had taken her the most part of a year of her nursing training to learn how not to cry herself when she saw someone else doing so. Now, at the end of a long hard day and with her defences down, she was startled at the strength of the old response in her, and it made her sharpen her tone and she called loudly and peremptorily, ‘Who’s there?’

  There was an immediate silence and she could feel whoever it was holding his breath. She wasted no more time, but marched along the line of cubicles, each with its wide gap at the bottom of its door, and its narrower one at the top, pushing on them, hard.

  The one at the end was
n’t locked, but there was resistance to her push and she thought, He’s holding it, and stopped her own pushing at once. There was the sound of a bolt being slid home and she sighed and said firmly, ‘Look, I won’t come in if you don’t want me to. No need to hide, though, if you’re feeling ill. It’s Mrs Clements here. Remember? I’m a nurse. If you’re ill I can help you. What’s the matter?’

  There was silence again and that irritated her and she almost shouted, ‘Open this door at once!’ and shook it. And the authority her anger gave to her tone seemed to work, for now the bolt was drawn back and the door opened and a boy came out.

  He looks sick, she thought, very pale and sweating, and he was shaking so much it was impossible for him to hide it, and her anger melted at once. She set her arms across his shoulders and half pushed, half led him to one of the benches in the middle of the cloakroom, below the rows of hooks bearing assorted coats and school bags, and sat him down there.

  ‘Here, you poor old thing!’ she said, slipping easily into the briskly informal note she used to use with anxious patients. ‘You do look under the weather! What’s the matter? Feeling nauseated?’

  The boy managed to shake his head and she looked closer at him and recognized him. ‘You’re Botham, aren’t you?’ she said and the boy, still shaking, opened his mouth as though he wanted to speak and then closed it, and tried to nod. But the shake in his neck was so powerful that all that happened was a sort of waving motion and he looked at her with a face so filled with misery that again she could have wept for him.

  ‘You’re terrified,’ she said, almost under her breath, realizing at last what the problem was. ‘All this shaking and breathlessness — What on earth happened to make you feel this way?’