Laurels Are Poison

Chapter 1

OPEN, SESAME

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Deborah, who had that true sense of humour — if connoisseurs of it are to be believed — the ability to laugh at herself, felt that she must look rather like Will Hay in The Ghost of St Michael’s. Up the hill and over the moor she was toiling, suitcase in hand, and although she had been informed at the station that the distance to College was approximately two miles, she already felt as though she had walked at least ten.

The suitcase, which had seemed light enough at starting, now weighed, she thought, not less than three-quarters of a hundredweight, and she was further handicapped against rough country walking by her handbag and a large bunch of chrysanthemums which her landlady had thrust upon her at parting and which she had not liked to leave in the train. In addition to these other discomforts she was wearing a tiresome hat.

Fortunately the College buildings, once she was clear of the town, formed the dominating feature of an almost treeless landscape, and made at once a landmark there was no escaping and a goal towards which, without fear of error, her steps could be directed.

The moorland road was narrow and stony, and it bore out the description given by people apt at simile that it was ribbon-like. Deborah walked along in the middle of it, and was so much occupied by her physical discomforts and mental fears that she did not hear the car until a respectful sounding of the horn caused her to move aside and glance round.

The car stopped purposefully, Deborah politely, although she knew that it would be of little use for anyone to demand of her any knowledge of the country-side. The chauffeur got out and saluted. He was a stocky, grave-faced, irresistibly respectable man, and he spoke quietly, with firmness.

‘Madam would be honoured if you would accept a lift, miss, if perhaps you were bound for the College.’

‘A lift? To the College? Oh, thank you so much. It’s awfully kind. I’d be very glad indeed,’ she responded truthfully and with alacrity.

Still grave, the chauffeur relieved her of her suitcase, and led her to the car. He opened the door at the back and observed:

‘The young lady, madam, is bound for the College.’ He then assisted her in, closed the door, deposited her suitcase in front, took his seat and drove on.

‘So we meet slightly before Philippi,’ said a rich, remarkable voice, completing the statement with an unnerving cackle of laughter.

‘Oh? Are you going to the College, too? It was awfully silly of me, but I missed the bus,’ said Deborah. Could this be the Principal, she asked herself, terrified at the idea of making her first entry in such dreadful and distinguished company.

‘I am going to the College,’ replied the singular old lady, who, at Deborah’s second glance, proved to be black-eyed, small and incredibly costumed in sage-green, purple and yellow, ‘but whether I shall stay there is another matter entirely. And to which branch of knowledge do you propose that your particular students shall be taught to cling?’ she concluded, grinning at Deborah’s startled and guilty expression.

‘I’m supposed to do a bit of lecturing in English, I believe,’ answered the girl. ‘But I’m really going to help run one of the College Halls.’

‘My talents also appear to show a tendency towards the domestic,’ said the little old woman, with a ferocious leer which gave the impression of assessing these talents at their true worth and then of discarding them. ‘My name is Bradley.’

‘Mine is Cloud — Deborah Cloud.’

So astonishingly different was the speed of the car compared with the progress that she had been able to make on foot that she had time to say no more, for she perceived that they were on the point of arrival at the College. This first intimation that they had reached journey’s end took the form of wide-open double gates giving on to a gravel drive. The legend, in large letters, Cartaret Training College, on a white board, served the double purpose of introduction and reassurance.

‘I think we’re here,’ she observed unnecessarily. Another disquieting cackle was the only reply.

The chauffeur drove in carefully, and drew up in front of a large, modern building flanked, fronted and generally compassed about by lawns, flower-beds, shrubs and green-turfed banks.

‘Delightful,’ said the owner of the car. The chauffeur came round and opened the door.

‘The main College building, madam.’

He handed his employer out, and Deborah followed.

‘George will see to your baggage and find out where to put it,’ said the old lady.

‘Oh, thank you very much, but perhaps I’d better take it,’ said Deborah nervously. ‘And thank you very much for the lift, Miss Bradley. It was awfully kind.’

‘Mrs,’ said the philanthropist; adding, with another hoot of laughter : ‘strange to say.’

‘Mrs Bradley?’ thought Deborah, racking her brain and, at the same time, walking up the first flight of steps she came to in anguished haste to be rid of her uncomfortable benefactor. ‘Where have I…? Goodness gracious me!’

For enlightenment came as she passed in through the open doorway of a dim, wide corridor. She stood still, upon the realization that she had been accepting a lift in the car of one of the most famous of modern women. She breathed deeply, thought — for she was only twenty-six, in spite of a formidable degree and three years’ teaching experience — ‘Something to write home about at last!’ — and then glanced uncertainly at the various doors which flanked and confronted her, whichever way she turned.

Making up her mind, she selected the first door on her left, set down her suitcase, and knocked.

Within there was the clatter of tea-cups and the impatient clacking of a typewriter. Feeling — partly as a result of her encounter with Mrs Bradley — rather like a particularly bewildered Alice, she knocked again, this time a good deal more peremptorily.

‘Come in,’ said a voice, and the clacking of the typewriter ceased as though someone had switched off the wireless. Committing her soul to the angel of the diffident and nervous, she picked up the suitcase, turned the handle of the door, and went in.

‘Deborah Cloud,’ she said. There were four other people in the room. The one behind the typewriter, a dark-haired, horn-rimmed woman of about thirty-five, smiled slightly and flicked over the lists that lay beside her on the desk.

‘Miss Cloud? I don’t remember… Oh !’ She looked up. ‘Miss Cloud! Are you the new Sub-Warden at Athelstan? Miss du Mugne…’ so it was pronounced ‘dew Moon’ Deborah gratefully noted. She had been dreading the first time she would have to use the Principal’s name. One fence crossed, at any rate… ‘will be glad to know you’ve arrived. Do have some tea, won’t you? My name is Rosewell. I’m the College secretary. This is Miss Crossley, the bursar, and this is Mrs Stone, the librarian. Oh, and this is Miss Topas, who came last term to do history.’

Thankfully Deborah abandoned her suitcase, flowers and hat, placed her handbag on the floor beside her chair, and accepted tea and her first introduction to the College.

The librarian, who wore a grey tweed costume and a shirt blouse, was one of those lanky, overgrown, easy-going, ‘helping-hand’ sort of women who are found chiefly in vicarages, Girl Guide camps, mixed schools, some country houses and, as in this case, training colleges.

The bursar was also tall; she was a little older than the secretary, Deborah decided; possibly as old as forty, and might have made a nun; never a Mother Superior, but possibly a Mistress of Discipline. Discipline, in fact, was her strong suit, Deborah concluded, listening to the confident masculine tones and noting the short upper lip and obstinate full chin.

The lecturer in history, Miss Topas, was a fair-haired, round-faced, grey-eyed person rather older than Deborah. (It turned out, later, that she was just thirty.) She had the youthful, triumphant, slightly devilish and ineffably raffish appearance of the extraordinarily gifted. Deborah took to her at sight, and greeted her nervously.

‘Hullo,’ said Miss Topas. ‘Welcome to the morgue.’ Following her recent encounter with Mrs Bradley, this choice of metaphor gave Deborah a shock.

‘I suppose,’ she said, after she had drunk two cups of tea and had accepted a couple of biscuits, ‘I ought to see Miss du Mugne?’

‘Don’t dream of it,’ said Miss Topas, earnestly. ‘It isn’t necessary. Tessa can ring through and announce the glad news of your arrival, can’t you, Tess? Miss du Mugne will only hate the sight of you if you go and disturb her now, and, after all, that can come later. You cut over to Athelstan and make yourself known to the Warden.’

‘There’s really no need to beard Miss du Mugne this afternoon unless you like,’ said the secretary, with unexpected gentleness. ‘I shall have to go in to her as soon as the College list is checked, and I’ll let her know then that you’re here. If she wants to see you, I’ll ring Athelstan. You can’t miss it, by the way. The Halls are all in a line here.’

‘You’ll soon be wishing you could miss it,’ said Miss Topas cheerfully.

Upon these encouraging notes, Deborah, picking up her suitcase and the flowers, found herself again in the passage. Following the directions she had received, she turned left upon leaving the main College building, discovered an off-shoot of the drive, passed a pleasant grassy bank at the top of playing fields, crossed more lawns and an asphalt tennis court, and mounted a flight of wooden steps to another impressive sweep of gravel.

A maid answered the door.

‘Beowulf Hall, miss?’ she said.

‘Oh, no ! I’m supposed to go to Athelstan,’ said Deborah blushing.

‘Next Hall but one on the right, miss. You can’t mistake it Next door to the bakehouse.’

‘Oh, thank you. I’m sorry. I…’

‘No trouble at all, miss. It’s always a bit strange at first.’

Deborah walked past two large rockeries and a building similar to Beowulf, and at last found herself on the threshold of Athelstan. Except for the fact that it was indeed flanked by the bakehouse, she could discern no difference in its outward appearance from that of the two Halls she had already passed. There were five Halls, the two she had not passed being on the further, or east, side of Beowulf. As she stood at the front door of Athelstan she looked back along the gravel walk to get a glimpse of them. There was, in any case, no time for more. A maid answered the door, and, on this occasion, there was no mistake.

‘Miss Cloud, miss? Come in, miss, please. The Warden will see you in a minute, miss, if you’ll kindly take a seat’

Deborah was aware of highly polished linoleum on which it would be disastrously easy to slip, and a row of chairs, three of which were occupied. The whole atmosphere seemed to her to breathe the tension of a dentist’s waiting-room. She took the end chair, and placed her suitcase in front of her and her flowers and handbag on top of it. Then she picked up the handbag and rested it on her knee.

‘Hullo,’ said her neighbour. ‘You weren’t on the bus, were you?’

‘No,’ replied Deborah, glancing round to make certain that she was the person addressed. ‘No, it had gone, so I walked.’

‘Heroine!’ said her neighbour devoutly. ‘I say, Kitty, she walked.’

‘Golly!’ said the second occupant of the row. ‘“Wanted exercise, I should think. I say, isn’t this going to be an ice-house in the winter? Has it struck you?’

‘Bound to be a lazar-house, anyway,’ returned her friend. Before the conversation could develop, another student came from an adjacent doorway. She was carrying a typewritten list.

‘Your turn next,’ she said, ‘if you’re Miss Menzies. Are you?’

‘Pray for me,’ observed Deborah’s neighbour, sotto voce, getting up. ‘What’s the Head’s name again, Kitty?’

‘Murchan,’ hissed Kitty. ‘And call her the Warden.’

‘Right.’

She was gone. Deborah felt as though she had lost a friend. Kitty, however, moved up one place, and took the vacant chair.

‘I say,’ she observed confidentially, ‘you’re not, by any chance, Welsh, are you?’

Before Deborah could reply to this question, the student with the list appeared again and said : ‘Are you Miss Davis?’

‘No,’ said Deborah, and was about to announce who and what she was when the student made a microscopic mark on the paper, and then smiled and looked inquiringly at Kitty.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘Trevelyan. I’ve come on the off-chance, really. Not sure whether there’s room. They told me to turn up in case. Same like old Dog.’

‘Trevelyan,’ said the student, writing it at the bottom of die list ‘It isn’t down, but I know one or two aren’t coming, so I expect it will be all right. Anyway, I’ll ask.’

‘Thanks,’ said Kitty, adding, as soon as they were alone again: ‘I don’t think.’

‘Didn’t you want to come here, then?’ asked Deborah, who, for her own part, would as soon have confessed, on her first day at her own College, that she didn’t want to go to heaven; not that she had any strong or positive inclination either towards College or heaven, but she now realized that she had always seen them as parts of the same dim future.

‘I want to be a hairdresser,’ said Kitty.

‘But that’s… I mean, there’s a good bit of difference, isn’t there?’

‘Well, you don’t have to pass Higher or even Matric, that I know of, for hairdressing,’ responded Kitty. ‘But then, I’m still all right, you see, because I haven’t passed either.’

‘Oh? Then…?’

‘General Schools, my love, by the skin of my teeth, with the result that, goaded thereto by my family, I have written to every training college in the country, without result until now. These places are choosy. I shouldn’t wonder if it isn’t easier to get to Oxford or Cambridge than into one of these professional deathtraps.’

Deborah sat and digested a new point of view, but not for long.

‘Miss Boorman?’ said the student, emerging once more, list in hand, and smiling kindly upon the hitherto silent member of the community.

‘I say,’ observed Kitty confidentially to the student, jerking her head in the direction of the door, a bourne from which, it seemed to her, no traveller returned. ‘What have they done with the corpses?’

‘The corpses?’ said the student, who appeared to have a literal mind.

‘Yes. The girl friends. They come, they go into that room, and that appears to be the writing on the wall, so far as they’re concerned.’

The student smiled, as though at the naïve question of a small boy, and when Kitty had gone in, turned to Deborah.

‘My name is Cloud,’ said Deborah. ‘I suppose you are the senior student. Do you mind telling the Warden?’

The senior student’s pose of good-natured efficiency vanished with ludicrous effect.

‘Oh, I say! Oh, I am sorry, Miss Cloud! I ought to have known! Mary might have said! Lulu’s usually on the door, so I suppose Mary didn’t ask your name.’

‘Oh, no, it’s all right,’ said Deborah. ‘I’ll go in when they’ve done with Miss Boorman.‘

‘A bit under the weather, that specimen,’ had said Kitty, who had a very kind heart. The senior student begged Deborah to accompany her. Deborah regarded the Warden’s door with mixed feelings. The senior student tapped, listened, opened the door and announced:

‘Miss Cloud, the Sub-Warden, Warden.’

Deborah entered, to be confronted, to her immense surprise and confusion, by Mrs Bradley, who was seated in a swivel chair behind a handsome, imposing desk, blandly established in office.

‘So we do meet at Philippi,’ she observed, getting up and giving Deborah her hand. ‘Those poor children,’ she continued, withdrawing her skinny claw from Deborah’s grasp, and waving it towards the three students, who, looking scared and uncomfortable, were occupying chairs about the room, ‘have come up today instead of tomorrow, to see whether the College has room for them. What they’re to do with themselves for twenty-four hours I can’t think, and neither can they. At least…’

With what seemed devilish omniscience she intercepted a wink which passed between Miss Trevelyan and Miss Menzies… ‘At least, that was our first impression. Have you met them?’

‘Yes,’said Deborah, smiling shyly at the students. ’Yes, we — we met under false pretences. I hope they won’t hold it against me.‘

‘We thought Miss Cloud was a student, Warden,’ observed Miss Menzies. ‘Instead of the Second Grave-Digger,’ she added, sotto voce.

‘Of course you did, child,’ agreed Mrs Bradley, grinning at the subject of this remark. ‘And now, what about tea?’

Deborah, who had had nothing but the couple of biscuits dispensed under the hospitality of the College secretary, assented with pleasure to this suggestion. She could not have told how she knew it, but the realization came to her, with the inevitability of prophecy, that Mrs Bradley’s idea of tea would be something substantial on north-country lines. She was right, for the little party sat down to toast, ham, boiled eggs, sardines, new bread, butter, honey and jam with zest, goodwill and (apart from a spasm of hiccups on the part of the unfortunate Miss Boorman for whom Deborah, herself a prey to nervousness, felt overwhelming sympathy) unalloyed pleasure.

The meal over, Mrs Bradley took Deborah off for what she called (leering hideously at Kitty, who had developed a fit of giggling) a review of the situation, and the three students went over to College, under the escort of the senior student, who had had tea with the rest of the party, and who continued to show herself, to Deborah’s relief, to be a sensible homely girl, likely to prove helpful and non-critical. Deborah already felt that the more help and the less criticism her initial efforts evoked, the better everything would be.

At the entrance to College the senior student left the others pleading that she had a list of their study-bedrooms and bath-times to make out.

‘But you don’t know whether any of us will want a study-bedroom or a bath-time until we’ve seen the Principal,’ objected Laura Menzies. ‘I say, what price the Old Trout?’ she added to her comrades.