Eight

Sandra/Cassandra

The others were in the sick bay so it was just Eliza and I hanging out. I was perched on the chair in her cubicle; I’d had to move a heap of clothes meant for the laundry to be able to sit. Eliza was on the floor, writing in one of her hundreds of A5 notebooks, her back resting against the bed, long ragdoll legs stretched out, big feet pushing up against the wall opposite. That’s what she looked like, I had decided, a beautiful rag doll. She dressed like one, too. Today she was wearing red and black horizontal striped woollen tights, a floral print summer skirt with different coloured patches sewn on and a long black knitted sweater. Back when I first met her I had thought that she dressed the way she did for effect but I had come to realise that she actually thought those weird combinations looked nice. And on her, to be fair, they usually did.

‘Shall I take your stuff to the laundry?’ I asked her.

She glanced up as if she were surprised to hear from me, then she threw me a warm smile. ‘Would you? That’s really kind.’

As I went down to the basement I thought of Gillian Taylor saying that I should be careful not to let Eliza treat me like some kind of servant. ‘She doesn’t mean to,’ Gillian had said. ‘She just thinks it’s completely natural that other people should run around doing things for her.’

So what? Gillian was jealous. Everyone knew she had the biggest crush on Eliza. She said she was over it but it didn’t seem like it to me.

I returned to the cubicle. ‘I’ll hang it up later,’ I said.

‘Gosh, no, I’ll do that,’ Eliza said. I knew she wouldn’t, though. She would forget about it until someone did it for her, either as a favour or because they needed the washing machine themselves.

‘What are you writing?’

Without looking up, she said, ‘I’m re-working one of Grandmother Eva’s stories.’

Grandmother Eva wasn’t actually Eliza’s grandmother at all, she was Rose’s, but because Eliza’s grandmothers were both dead she was allowed to borrow this one. ‘Can I look?’ I asked her.

Eliza passed me the notebook. She had framed the writing with her drawings. She was a good artist but I didn’t personally go for all that fairy tale stuff, although the huge ugly trolls were cool and the boy who played the violin by the lake.

‘I wish I could draw,’ I said.

‘I’d love to be able to sing like you.’ She smiled up at me. I don’t know how she did it but she had a way, when she was paying attention, to make you feel special, chosen somehow.

‘You would?’

But her attention had already wandered back to her notebook. The others wouldn’t be staying in the San for ever and then who knows when I would get her to myself again. I was sure that if I could only spend enough time with her, just the two of us, we would become real friends. I reckoned she and I actually had a lot more in common than she had with the other two. Like art and music, for example.

She was absorbed in her drawing once more. I knew she didn’t mean to be rude. She just loved what she was doing. I was like that myself, passionate.

‘It’s funny how you got your artistic skill from Grandmother Eva,’ I said. ‘Because I’ve got the singing from my grandmother,’ I said, kind of implying that I had forgotten Grandmother Eva wasn’t actually Eliza’s grandmother. She’d like that. I knew because a friend of Jessica’s, a girl who was adopted, completely loved it when anyone forgot her parents weren’t her real parents.

‘Really,’ Eliza said, but she still wasn’t paying full attention.

‘She was an opera singer.’ That just slipped out but as it happens it worked because now she looked at me, actually looked at me and without those longing glances at her notebook. I didn’t want that to end.

‘Really? You never said.’

I shrugged. ‘It never came up, I suppose.’

‘Where did she sing?’

‘Oh everywhere, all the big places. Covent Garden, The Metropolitan, La Scala, all of them.’ I listened to myself say those things and I thought how right it sounded. It was how it should have been, my grandmother in a long velvet gown receiving a standing ovation, not standing behind the counter at Henson’s department store in the regulation blue uniform. ‘We were the first to use terylene, as it was called back then.’ I remember her saying that as if it were an event. An achievement. And my parents had nodded and my father had said, ‘My, is that so’ and my mother had asked about the exact shade of blue. I didn’t belong with them, with people like that. I belonged here, at LAGs with Eliza and the others.

And Eliza was looking at me with big starry eyes. ‘Gosh. How exciting. I love opera. What’s her name? Is she Mitchum too? I might have heard her. My mum certainly will have. She’s a complete opera freak.’

I had to think fast. ‘She died really young.’

‘And she still sang at all the big opera houses. That’s amazing.’

I felt my eyes flickering and I bent down pretending to do up my laces. Straightening up, I said, ‘Sorry, what I meant was she was supposed to sing in those places if she hadn’t died. It was really tragic. She was studying. In Italy.’ I was able to look her straight in the eyes as I continued, ‘In Florence. She was about to debut and she drowned.’

Drowned. ‘How?’

‘Swimming pool.’

Eliza looked at me and her eyes were almost completely round. For a moment I thought she might be laughing at me but when she said, ‘That’s dreadful,’ she sounded genuine.

‘Well, it was a long time ago.’

‘Your poor mum. She must have been tiny.’ She had finally put her notebook and pencil down. ‘Or perhaps it’s better that way. I don’t remember a thing about my father and sometimes I think that’s good because I’m not actually missing something concrete, although sometimes it makes me feel sadder for exactly the same reason. And your grandfather, too, he must have been devastated.’

I pulled a regretful face. ‘Well, that’s another thing. She wasn’t married. She got pregnant by this Italian guy. He was a count or something.’ I made my voice casual as if it made no difference to me if my grandfather was a count or not. ‘Of course they weren’t allowed to get married.’

‘Why?’ She was looking up at me, her large hands resting on her knees and her auburn hair streaming down her back and shoulders. Right then I would have killed to look like her, even with the big hands and feet and the freckles.

‘Oh, all sorts of reasons.’ I tried to think of some.

‘I suppose him being Catholic?’

I nodded. ‘That’s it. It wasn’t allowed on religious grounds.’

‘So you’re really the granddaughter of an Italian count? Cool.’

‘Well, not officially, obviously. My grandmother had to leave the opera and she came back and married her childhood sweetheart.’

‘But she went back to Italy eventually?’

‘No, I don’t think she did. She longed to but that was part of the tragedy, she never got back. She was stuck in this small town married to this guy she didn’t love.’

‘But she drowned? In a swimming pool in Florence?’

‘Yeah. I mean, no, she did drown but it was back home in England. In a swimming pool, a public one, obviously, because they were really poor.’ I noticed Eliza had picked up the pencil and notebook again.

‘Anyway,’ I gave a little laugh. ‘Enough about my boring old family.’

‘Hardly boring,’ Eliza said, but by now she was looking at her drawing. I nodded at the large poster of Leslie Howard that she had blu-tacked to the wall above her bed. ‘He died tragically young, too, didn’t he? I know because my mum is always going on about him. Him and Cary Grant.’

I had got her attention back. ‘He wasn’t really young, forty or something, but too young to die, obviously. He was on a secret mission on behalf of Churchill when his plane was shot down. Everyone always goes on about Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind but I don’t get that. I think Leslie Howard is just completely amazing.’

I wasn’t going to point out to her that she was the only person I knew under the age of fifty who gave a toss about either Leslie Howard or Clark Gable because she wouldn’t care anyway. She didn’t seem to go for any of the things that the rest of the girls liked but she never got teased, not even the way she dressed.

‘I sometimes think I too will die young,’ I said. Actually I hadn’t ever thought about it, but I just kept on saying stuff, any stuff, to keep her attention. She put her hand out and touched my knee lightly, for just a moment. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘That would be really sad.’

I sighed and gave her a smile. ‘I won’t, then. For your sake.’

Maybe I had gone too far because her tawny brows knitted together in a frown and her eyes took on a wary look.

‘You always seem so, well, sure about stuff,’ I said quickly. ‘What you like and who you like and what you look like; everything.’

Now she looked more puzzled than anything. ‘Do you think I am sure of everything?’

I nodded. ‘You all are, Rose and Portia too.’

‘Maybe we are. I hadn’t really thought about it. I mean, I know what I know and that’s it really. I expect it’s the same with them.’ She scratched her nose with the tip of her pencil and leant her head against the bed. Her face and body were covered in those tiny freckles but her neck, where her chin had shaded the skin from sunlight, was semi-transparent, blue-tinged like skimmed milk. She straightened up again. ‘I think certainty is very restful.’ She paused for a moment, her head tilted to one side. ‘In fact that’s what’s so good about fairy tales. They rule in a realm of certainty. I mean you don’t have “And the princess was quite pretty if you liked that kind of thing and the prince would follow many quests to gain her hand although he did draw the line at confronting the dragon. And they lived happily ever after, we hope.” ’ She grinned at me.

We exchanged smiles, two friends who understood each other. I didn’t want the moment to end but I wanted even less for it to end the wrong way so I got up from the chair. ‘I’ll go and check on your washing.’

‘No, don’t you do it. I’ll go in a minute.’ She made a move as if to get up herself, but she remained where she was, her gaze on her drawing, her hand poised with the pencil.

We both knew she wasn’t going to.

Her washing was finished and I sang to myself as I hung it up; her hideous tights, that black dress she loved that made her look just like a Victorian orphan, her knickers and her two bras. She had tiny boobs.

A little later I returned to iron her school dress.

I heard Miss Philips having a go at her. ‘Eliza Cummings, the state of that dress is a disgrace. Surely you have been taught how to iron.’

I heard Eliza’s cool voice. ‘Yes, Miss Philips. I’m sorry, Miss Philips.’

‘There’s no excuse for being a slob, Eliza.’

‘No, Miss Philips.’

Eliza was getting into trouble because of my crap ironing. The thing is, Mum always did that sort of stuff for me and at school I used the school laundry service. ‘I’m not having you wasting your time on washing and such things,’ my dad had told me. ‘We can afford it.’

I think Rose and Portia used it too, but Eliza didn’t. She’d mentioned that she and her mum had to be a bit careful with money. I remember being really surprised. I had imagined that everyone here apart from me was really well off.

My heart pounded as I stepped round the corner to face them. ‘Miss Philips.’

Miss Philips stifled a sigh. ‘Yes, Sandra?’

I pushed my shoulders back and raised my chin in defiance exactly like a young heroine in a film. ‘It was me. It was my fault.’

‘What was your fault, Sandra?’

‘The state of Eliza’s dress. I ironed it.’ I caught Eliza’s eye and gave a little nod to show it would all be OK.

‘Is that true, Eliza?’ Miss Philips asked. ‘You let Sandra iron your uniform for you?’

Eliza shrugged and mumbled something.

‘Miss Philips . . .’ I began.

‘That’ll be all, thank you, Sandra.’ Miss Philips didn’t even look at me, keeping her pebble eyes on Eliza.

‘But . . .’

‘I said, that will be all.’

Menopausal cow. I stomped off but as soon as I was round the corner, out of sight, I stopped and listened.

‘I simply will not put up with that kind of behaviour in Hill House, Miss Cummings. Getting another girl to act as your maid. It’s especially distasteful seeing that Sandra Mitchum is here under the new Assisted Places scheme. I’m disappointed, quite frankly. And surprised. There are some girls from whom I’d expect no better, but from you, Eliza . . .’

The cool had left Eliza’s voice as she repeated that she was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t tell Miss Philips that I had done it without asking. As I dithered about whether or not to intervene again Miss Philips finished with Eliza and stalked back towards her flat. I poked my head round the corner and saw Eliza sitting on the stairs. She was crying.

The other two were furious with me. They cornered me in the supper queue. ‘We thought you should know that Eliza’s on cleaning duties for the rest of the month thanks to you having to be the Goody Two Shoes. “It was me, Miss Philips, I did the ironing.” ’

The way they looked at me, the way they imitated my voice, it was as if I were some lesser mortal. And it was so unfair. ‘That’s not how it was at all,’ I said. But they had made their minds up. They didn’t hear me. I felt my eyes tearing up. ‘She was being told off for not doing it properly. I was trying to help her.’

‘Sure you were,’ Rose said. ‘Great help running to Miss Philips to say you’d been left doing her laundry.’

‘That’s so unfair. I . . .’

‘Save it for someone who cares,’ Portia said. She turned to Rose. ‘Let’s join the back of the queue. Air’s better there.’ She swung around and her straight fair hair fanned out and danced round her shoulders.

‘Rice or potatoes,’ the cook asked me.

‘Both,’ I said.

‘It’s a choice menu, dear, so you have to pick one or t’other. The rice is good today.’

I looked at her, at her stupid red face, and then I fixed her with a princess stare. ‘I said I wanted both. You’re not a teacher. You can’t tell me what I can eat or cannot eat. Do you know how much we pay to come here?’

You wouldn’t have thought it possible but she turned even redder. ‘There’s no need to talk like that, young lady. Just because you have money doesn’t mean you can be rude, you know. Now what will it be, rice or potatoes?’

‘Neither,’ I said my voice calm and haughty. ‘You can shove your disgusting food.’

Actually, I almost liked her for thinking I was one of them.