A Chalet Girl in Trouble

by Lisa Townsend

Chapter Ten: Cecil Takes a Hand

ON returning to bed, Grainne had fallen so deeply asleep that not even the rising bell at 07.00 hours could wake her the following morning. The Head had decided to let her sleep for longer, and so it was not until the end of Fruhstuck that she leaned over to speak to the junior secretary, Miss Kennedy, to ask her to rouse Grainne and discover whether the girl felt well enough to come into school that morning. Privately, both Matron and Miss Annersley doubted it, but given the circumstances they preferred to give Grainne the choice.

To everyone’s surprise, Grainne decided to come into school. Claire passed this information on, and exchanging a startled glance with the Head, Matey prompty left the table to go to her.

Grainne, fully dressed and attempting to brush her unruly hair into some semblance of smoothness, felt her heart sink when the school’s domestic tyrant entered. She wanted to go into school, but did not want to have to answer questions from that lady, whom she felt to be too sharp.

Matey eyed the girl carefully. Grainne’s face still looked strained, but the shocked white look of the previous evening had largely been dispelled.

“How are you feeling this morning?” she demanded without ceremony.

Grainne met her eyes frankly. “Better than yesterday. Can I go into lessons this morning, Matron?”

“’May I,’” Matey automatically corrected. All of the staff were well aware of the Head’s crusade against the loose use of ‘can’ for ‘may’ and consequently the girls found themselves well drilled in this aspect of English grammar- often to the amusement of those who had had mothers and aunts at the school. Matron continued. “Have you been sick?” she queried.

“No, Matron,” Grainne responded, devoutly hoping that the brisk little lady would not demand to know whether she felt nauseous. The truth was that she did, but it was not so bad this morning since the Head’s instructions meant that she had missed breakfast. Unfortunately for her, this had not escaped Matey’s notice.

“Very well,” she agreed. “You may go into school, for the morning at least. In the meantime, I’ll have a tray sent up. You’d better be quick, child. You have approximately half an hour before you need to be in Upper Iva- although I could explain to Mrs Entwistle that you may be late?”

Grainne blushed distressfully. She was anxious enough about the questions she might face from the others, and had no wish to become even more conspicuous by arriving late. So she agreed to take the milk and for Matey to speak to her form mistress, and in the event she did manage to arrive in time- partly because while she had forced the milky coffee down, most of the bread roll was crumbled onto Miss Annersley’s private garden in the hope that it would be taken by the birds before anyone noticed. As this was what happened, she heard no more about it.

Mrs Entwistle only just managed to prevent her face mirroring her surprise when she saw the new girl seated in her normal place. However, she managed it, and took the roll before departing to take special coaching for various new girls in Lower IV. Meanwhile, Grainne divided her attention between her History and Geography and her own problems, and it was just as well for her that today was an ‘English’ day. In addition, both Miss Charlesworth and Miss Ferrars set the form written work to complete, so she was not pulled up for insufficient concentration as she might otherwise have been had the class involved more discussion.

The Chalet School believed in working the girls hard during lessons and prep time, so it was not until the bell went for Break that Cecil and her Crew were finally able to be reunited with their missing member. In response to their questions, Grainne simply told them that she had had bad news the day before and had been very upset, which was why she had been kept away from them, and did not want to talk any more about it. She then changed the subject by asking what the prep had been the previous day, and in between explaining and groaning over the amount of work set by Miss Wilmot and Miss Armitage respectively, the rest of Break passed relatively uneventfully for Grainne.

However, if the Crew were satisfied with her explanation, the same could not be said for its leader. Cecil had gathered enough from her conversation with Len to realise that Grainne’s problem, whatever it was, was considerably more serious than anyone was letting on. In addition, throughout the morning’s lessons, she had glanced repeatedly at her friend, searching her face for information. In the process, she got caught and reprimanded by Miss Derwent during English, but by that time she had been able to see that Grainne, in spite of her surface normality, was looking very anxious and strained, and that her gaze was often abstracted while she worked.

Cecil was not inclined to let the grass grow. As soon as they had any free time at all, Cecil took advantage of the pleasant evening to drag Grainne across the garden away from the others, frowning horribly all the while at various members of the Crew who tried to join them. Fortunately, Rosita who had also taken note of Grainne’s unaccustomed lack of application in lessons put two and two together and correctly assumed that Cecil wanted to talk to Grainne in private. Therefore, she added her own weight to Cecil’s glares, and between the two of them, the Crew left their leader and newest member together in peace.

Grainne followed Cecil with more than a little nervousness. She had been starting to hope that her absence of the previous day would continue unremarked.

Cecil collapsed under her favourite tree- one which was on the boundary between the school and Freudesheim, and where she was often to be found even in holiday time. She made herself grin up at Grainne and reached out to pull the other girl down beside her.

“Grainne, is everything OK?” she asked abruptly.

Grainne started. She had not expected Cecil to be so direct, so she dropped her eyes and said nothing.

Cecil put her hand on her friend’s arm. “Grainne!” She gave her a slight shake. “I know there’s something wrong. Don’t try to tell me there isn’t. You were out of school all day yesterday, and today it’s a wonder you didn’t find yourself on the carpet! I’ve never seen you look so distracted in lessons before!”

Grainne looked up in surprise, and some anxiety. “Was it that obvious?” she asked nervously.

“It was to me! And I think Ros noticed, too. Dunno about the rest of them. They haven’t two brains to rub together, sometimes! What is it? Can’t you tell me?” Cecil’s voice was very gentle as she put the question, and her eyes were soft.

Grainne made a sudden decision. Grown ups were all very well, but part of her ached to discuss what had happened with someone of her own age, despite her instinctive wariness. Cecil had consistently been kind and friendly, and Grainne decided to make a leap of faith, and trust that Cecil would not react too harshly.

With her eyes on the ground, and her fingers plucking repetitively at the grass, she began to speak very quickly. “Cecil, what do you know about how babies are made?”

Cecil gave a gasp and Grainne looked up to see that her black eyes were almost round with surprise. “I mean, I know about the science part of it,” she continued, her face reddening, “but that can’t be all. I need to know the rest of it.”

Cecil looked at her speculatively, but decided to keep her own counsel for the moment. Cecil herself was in full possession of the ‘facts of life’ although it was questionable whether her mother was aware of this. Shortly after her marriage, Len had realised how little preparation she herself had had, although she had of course learnt something during her years at Oxford. Consequently, she had taken Felicity and Cecil aside and explained things to them in full and to answer their questions. As a result, Cecil was well placed to answer Grainne’s query. The only problem was that the School as a whole frowned on such talk, and Cecil was afraid that if she was overheard, there would be trouble. She leaned forwards to Grainne.

“I’ll tell you. But not here. There’s too many prees about! Come with me,” and, rising to her feet, she pulled Grainne up and around through into Freudesheim’s garden. There, checking that neither her mother nor Anna were anywhere about, she sat Grainne down and turned to face her squarely.

“What do you know?”

Still flushed, Grainne explained how far her knowledge and gone, and Cecil nodded wisely. “Yes, you know the biology side of it,” she agreed. “But-but you need to know the people side of it?”

“Yes.” Grainne’s voice was so low that Cecil had to strain to hear her. Wondering again just what was behind this, she told Grainne what Len had told her. “You see, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they show it with their bodies, and that’s how babies are made,” she finished.

“Can it happen if you don’t love the other person, or even know them?” Grainne asked.

Cecil was flummoxed. Although Len had given both her and Felicity a fairly full picture, she had been less explicit with Cecil as the younger of the pair, and Cecil’s understanding was essentially that making love was the physical expression of love, and after listening to Len’s rather banal description, she had concluded that she couldn’t even *imagine* doing such a thing, unless she did love someone very much, and thoughts of romantic love had not intruded too much into Cecil’s life thus far.

“I don’t know,” she responded honestly now. “I supposed it can, though I can’t imagine why anyone would want to!” she added frankly. “Look, Grainne, I’ve told you what I know. Please, won’t you tell me what this is about? You can trust me!”

Grainne curled herself up, with her knees to chest. “It’s happened to me. What you’re talking about. During the holidays. I was staying with my cousin, and she took me to parties, and- and they did things. Then I came here and I was sick in the mornings and Matey got worried and they got me to see Dr. Venables, and she said that it had happened.”

Cecil, not surprisingly, was rather confused by this involved explanation. “Are you saying that you have done it? That you’ve made love with someone?”

Grainne met her eyes fully for the first time. “Yes, although it wasn’t love. I don’t even know who it was. But Dr.Venables says that I’m going to have a baby, so I must’ve.”

“But don’t you know what happened?” Cecil asked, blankly. She was too shocked to ask anything else.

Grainne shook her head. “I haven’t a clue. That’s the problem. I don’t remember anything much about those parties- just coming in and then they pass around these drinks. I didn’t go to all of them, you see, and Sinead- that’s my cousin- said that if I didn’t want to be left by myself I had to go with her and do what I was told. So I had to go even though I didn’t want to. Sometimes I would leave the room before anyone noticed and go to sleep in another room. But there were a few times that Sinead and her friends wouldn’t let me do that, and they talked to me and gave me drinks and stuff. It felt quite strange at the time, but then I got sleepy or something and I couldn’t remember what happened the next morning, but when I asked Sinead about it she said not to worry, everyone felt that way, but sometimes she would laugh when she said it, and I always wondered what the joke was, but I thought it was just me being stupid.”

Cecil remained silent for so long after Grainne had finished that she became alarmed. “Cecil? Are you mad at me?”

Cecil paused a moment longer and then faced her. “No. I’m not mad. I’m shocked, but I’m not mad- except maybe at your cousin. Do Len and Auntie Hilda know?” In her perturbation, Cecil forgot all she had been told about using those titles.

“Most of it. I didn’t tell them everything I told you, though. Come to think of it,” Grainne stopped to frown. “I think the Head must’ve been talking to my mum because she seemed to know more than I had told anyone else. Maybe that’s why she’s been so kind.”

Cecil looked at her curiously. “What do you mean?”

“My mum hasn’t really any time for me,” Grainne returned bleakly. “I-I don’t think she ever wanted children, really. But if she had to have them, she wanted a boy. There were two babies before me, but one of them died when he was born and the other died in his sleep before he was one. Then I came along a couple of years later and she was so disappointed that she didn’t want anything to do with me. I had nannies when I was tiny and then when I was five she sent me to Holy Family and I was there until I came here. I spent most of my holidays either at the Convent or with one of my aunts.”

“If you’d been at the Convent all your life, why did your mum decide to send you to us?”

Grainne gave a slight shrug. She was finding it easier to speak now that the initial ice had been broken. “I-I think there must have been something very wrong about those parties with Sinead, but I don’t know what. My mum must know, though. She shouted and screamed at me for being stupid and careless and not knowing anything about life and that I’d made such a mess of things that I had to go away, and she was going to send me here. But I think that maybe there was a lot of gossip because Sinead is an Earl’s daughter and everyone knows her in Dublin. People must have heard that I’d been at the parties too and someone must have told Reverend Mother. I think she said I couldn’t go back, and that’s why my mum sent me here.”

Cecil’s shock was starting to wear off, and like her sister and the Head before her, she was beginning to feel that Grainne had had a most unfortunate time, to put it mildly. As a doctor’s daughter she had overheard him talk about the effects that drugs could have on the mind and body, and she suspected that that was possibly what had occurred here. Furthermore, she felt rather dimly that to find yourself pregnant with no real idea how or why was a rather terrible thing, and she decided there and then that no matter what happened, she’d stand by Grainne. To her dismay, when she told her that, the other girl burst into tears, and Cecil threw her arms around her.

“Gron, don’t cry!” she protested. “It’ll work out, honestly. I’ve said that I’ll do all I can to help you!”

“I thought you were never going to speak to me again!” Grainne said shakily. “And I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. And my mum’s going to kill me. I *don’t* know if everything’s going to work out. And I’m so scared and I wish I just knew what to do. Everyone has been so kind, but it doesn’t really help, because I don’t know what’s going to happen next!”

Cecil had been thinking. “Maybe you should ask the Head to let you phone your cousin,” she suggested. “Then you’d be able to ask her what had happened at those parties.”

Grainne sat up and wiped her eyes. “Do you think it would work?” she asked doubtfully.

Cecil shook her head. “I don’t know. But at least it’s something you can do!”

“But what happens if Sinead won’t tell me?”

Cecil chuckled in a manner that could only be described as malevolent. “Then you get the Head onto her!” Grainne looked her surprise, and Cecil explained. “I know Auntie Hilda seems awfully gentle, but, trust me, she can make you feel so wormlike that even the worms would despise you! And if that doesn’t work, Matey’ll soon sort her. C’mon. Let’s go in now and join the others. Tomorrow we’ll snaffle Len- she’ll have gone home now anyway, and ask her to speak to the Head about permission to phone your cousin. But you need to think about something else for a while. It’ll be our bedtime soon.” And with this piece of wisdom, Cecil abandoned serious conversation and did her best to jolly the other girl along for the rest of the evening. When they finally parted- Grainne was to stay in the Annexe for an additional night- the Irish girl went bedwards feeling momentarily happier.