The Following Girls by Louise Levene Read Free Book Online

gap between Non Nobis Domine and the netball results. There was a moral – there always was – to Mrs Mostyn’s dismal stories: pride being skin deep or beauty going before a fall. Some rubbish.
    The first hymn was ‘I Vow to Thee’, omitting the slightly belligerent second verse. Mrs Mostyn still missed the bone-buzzing hum of the organ (out of commission since Founder’s Day 1969). Even with the pedal down the baby grand was simply no match for copper-bottomed hymns like ‘Jerusalem’ or ‘Those in Peril’.
    The Mostyn’s next task was to announce that a first year called Mary Field had been chosen to represent Surrey in a chess competition and as a result the staff room had voted to award her a blue enamel badge with ‘School’ printed on it. Surprised applause in the first year ranks. Young Miss Field hadn’t breathed a word about her chess habit, fearing (rightly) that it wouldn’t play well with the Upper Third. But a ‘School’ badge? Nice one.
    Mrs Mostyn handed the prize over with her left hand while crushing the girl’s metacarpals with her right. Blue was the first rung of merit badging. Green came next, then red, then yellow, then, finally, white – but no one ever got white, just as no one was ever given full marks for an English essay (always something to strive for). The entire school badge collection lived in a roll of green baize in a tambour-fronted cupboard in the school secretary’s office, along with a whole card of virgin badges in various shades marked simply ‘Leader’, a stillborn brainchild of the head before last that had been voted down by the staff room. Rather a pity, thought Mrs Mostyn.
    The founding headmistress had originally intended there to be only one white merit badge to be awarded in truly exceptional circumstances to the Fawcettian par excellence . There were in fact two , left over from 1949, a vintage year when the legendary Mallinson twins had been joint head of school, taking it in turns to welcome visitors with confident, painstakingly-elocuted votes of thanks. At least, Mrs Mostyn paused in her happy daydream, one assumed they were taking it in turns . . . they were identical, after all. Identical in most respects, at least (only one of them got into Cambridge). One never knew, twins did lark about so . . . Mrs Mostyn had yearned for a twin: the fun one could have had.
    Yellow merit badges were slightly easier to come by but there were still only four of them in circulation at any one time like Orders of Merit or Companions of Honour or Garters. Someone had to leave the school or die or elope with their orthodontist (in the infamous 1962 case) for a Yellow to become available.
    Mary Field’s chess gong would normally have been it for school news. There had been a happy time when the names of those in detention were read out to shocked silence, a real black cap moment: ‘The following girls . . .’ but Dr O’Brien’s arrival had put an end to the practice on the grounds that the additional humiliation was ‘unnecessary and inhumane’ (or so she put it at the policy meeting). But she too had probably seen the smirks and heard the admiring giggles as the same naughty names were recited week after week, heroines of the wrong sort of school story.
    O’Brien’s unwillingness to draw attention to the undesirable element meant that Mrs Mostyn wasn’t able to give her next announcement the weight it deserved, but the assembled girls sensed at once that something significant had occurred. Eliza Warner was to be head of Nightingale House with immediate effect. There was a puzzled burst of applause as the captain badge was handed over and Eliza (who had been sitting in the second row of prefects) now took the empty seat alonside the Head in the first. The seat where Alison Hutchinson usually sat.
    ‘What happened there?’ whispered Baker.
    Stottie shrugged her shoulders. A hushed hum filled the hall as the girls puzzled over the substitution.
    ‘ Silence !