Part 4 (1/2)
”Dear Diary, you must be bored to death with me. I can't stop thinking about him. I'm sure he's sick of schoolgirl crushes by now. I think I should try a new focus. It's the Museum trip on Sunday, and the others plan to track down some Dunks guys.”
8. Misbehaving.
There was a buzz of excitement in chapel that Sunday among those who had convinced Mr Tyrrell to take them to Welchester Museum. He, poor man, was merely surprised and delighted by their sudden fervour for the Cla.s.sics.
Laura's services were in big demand on the coach, as she carefully applied ”art room eyeliner” and even rouge she had fas.h.i.+oned out of moisturiser and a filched oil pastel in Damask Rose. Susie, who had been allowed on the trip even though she didn't do Latin, had a smuggled lipstick she was happy to share.
”Ow! You jabbed my eye!” said Margery.
”I can't help it if there's potholes. Keep still.”
They had discovered to their delight that Susie simply didn't do school rules. Morally or pragmatically, the new girl had no scruples whatsoever about breaking them.
She had already given the school food short shrift. ”This is absolutely foul, I simply can't eat this. I'm Italian for G.o.d's sake.” She was planning to have a cousin of hers, a medical student in Milan, send her a forged doctor's note in Italian excusing her from practically everything.
Sweet Miss Vine had fortunately been on their table the first day, and Susie had explained how it would simply be totally irresponsible of her to neglect her own health by making herself ill with ingredients proscribed by her doctor. Miss Vine was cowed by such eloquence, and Susie got her way.
They raced through the Museum as quickly as possible to maximise their time in the town. Any worries they had about how to approach the St Duncan's boys were taken care of by Susie. She simply walked up to a group of them and flashed a smile. Susie didn't know or care that they were actually Upper Sixth formers and prefects, and thus should have been far beyond their league.
”We've escaped prison for the day. Are there any pubs round here?”
Susie was pretty and charming enough to get away with murder, Laura thought. Instead of getting the brush off, they soon found themselves sitting around a cafe table with the premier league of St Duncan's boys. They felt slightly overawed - Margery in particular was very quiet and didn't dare speak - but Susie chatted away quite merrily.
A couple of the boys were particularly charismatic and good-looking and these two seemed most interested in Charlotte and Susie. Particularly after Susie managed to poke Charlotte in the back so she stuck her chest out in surprised reaction. Then there was a swotty looking boy, with a strong resemblance to Mr Poynter the History teacher, who ended up sitting by Margery.
A fourth boy, good looking but slightly quieter, seemed to be the most attentive to Laura but her thoughts wandered. She tried very hard to feel interested in them all but she couldn't stop comparing everyone to Mr Rydell. He was so much more mature and serious and worldly.
School dances were organised strictly by year, so there wasn't much hope of meeting these boys again at the Lower School formal, but Susie was not daunted. She would always find a way if she felt strongly enough about something.
They all went for a walk around the church in the centre of town. There was only one reason to do this and it was to take advantage of the privacy that the ancient thick yew bushes afforded. Charlotte and Susie separated off with their respective boys, and Margery turned to go back to the museum. The swotty faced boy followed her, rather to her consternation. Laura couldn't help feeling that he looked like a pudding.
That left her with the quieter boy. ”Shall we?” he said, rather awkwardly. They found a dark and undisturbed spot in the yews on the north of the graveyard, and he went to kiss her. She closed her eyes and tried to enjoy it, tried to wind the clock back to last summer when this would have been the greatest thrill ever, but all she could think of was Mr Rydell.
Their conquests were the talk of the coach on the way back. Getting off with an Upper Sixth boy was a huge feat for the Lower School, let alone a prefect. Susie held court with all the salacious details, which truth be told weren't many. But it was all in the telling.
Margery was at pains to point out that she had merely gone back to the Museum with her partner. ”Margie, don't be square,” Charlotte hissed at her.
”Well I don't think it's very nice kissing a boy five minutes after you meet them,” Margery said indignantly. She was secretly annoyed - even though she didn't like to admit it even to herself - that her own partner hadn't displayed the courage or inclination to do so. She had never kissed a boy before.
Laura looked out of the windows, thinking. As the coach rolled back into the school she looked across at the cottages in the distance.
”You're looking very moony, Laura.” Charlotte said. ”Did you really like him?”
It was another hour until supper so Laura, tired of the endless boy talk, escaped with a book. She was tempted to go out of bounds just to get away from it all. She felt stifled.
The groundsman's cottages were drawing her with an invisible thread, so she deliberately found somewhere as far as possible in the opposite direction. This was a pavilion on the other side of the playing fields that was rarely used except in summer and was locked, but had two wooden benches outside. She sat on one of these.
She didn't know how long she had been reading, but it was quite a few chapters, when she sensed that someone was there. She looked up. It was him. Mr Rydell.
”Reading again?” He sat down beside her. ”I'm not disturbing your peace?”
”No, not at all.” What was he doing here? Why didn't he just greet her and walk on by?
”You weren't at lunch again.” So he'd been looking for her? She explained about the Museum trip, for which they'd been given packed lunches. ”I thought there were quite a few faces missing.” So it wasn't just her, he had noticed others as well.
She wondered why he had stayed around for school lunch on Sunday. Most teachers went outside the school whenever they got the opportunity, if they weren't on duty. But then he was living on the premises, so perhaps that was the reason.
”Is the Museum worth a trip?” he asked.
”If you're Mr Tyrrell, yes. It's not bad really but we've all been so many times. I suppose I prefer seeing the actual places more,” she added, not wanting to sound ungrateful.
”Are there many historic sites around here?”
”There's the remains of a Roman villa a bit further away. It has mosaics, exactly where they would have been all those thousands of years ago, where people actually walked on them.”
”They don't seem real, do they, until you see things like that?” He understood. The Romans seemed so dead when they read about them in cla.s.s, they may as well have never existed, been nothing but stories. Until you were actually faced with the physical traces their armies and colonists had left behind.
Both sat there silently for a while, looking across the fields. Laura's senses were heightened, she couldn't relax properly with him so near to her.
She went to clutch the edge of the bench with her hands, and accidentally put her hand on his in doing so. She hadn't realised it was there. ”G.o.d, sorry!” She was mortified, withdrawing hers quickly. He must think she was trying to hold his hand.
”It's ok.” He actually laughed, defusing the tension.
And then his face became serious again and they both looked at one another. It was longer than it should have been, unmistakably. Her stomach was flipping over again, but she couldn't dig her nails into her thumbs this time. She bit her lower lip instead, nervously.
Abruptly he stood up. ”The bell will go soon, we should both make our way back.”
”You're so dreamy Laura! Did you really like him that much?”
Laura started, then realised that Charlotte was talking about the St Duncan's boy. ”He was very nice, but that's not what I was thinking about.”
”Well what is it then? You've been on another planet all evening.”
Across the room Susie was looking at her intently but didn't say anything. But at the first opportunity, when Margery and Charlotte had left the dorm, she slipped over to Laura's bed.
”It's another guy, isn't it?”