A Vicarage Family by Noel Streatfeild

Author:Noel Streatfeild
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141369556
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

11

Settling Down

The first meeting on their own between Miss French and Victoria was, of course, a disaster. Miss French knew this the moment it happened, and, much as she disliked a raised voice, because it was a sign of lack of control, on that one occasion she wished she had not scolded – or at least not so sharply. There is nothing that is so shattered as a fallen idol, and for Victoria Miss French was just that, for to her it seemed cruel to talk to someone with a sprained ankle in the way that she had.

‘It was worse than the pharisees passing by on the other side,’ she told Isobel later. ‘It was like kicking the injured.’

It was true that, the reproof over, Miss French had knelt down to examine the ankle, and had then said in a voice which Victoria grudgingly admitted she supposed was meant to be kind: ‘You have indeed sprained it. I will send for matron, she will strap it for you.’

But even if Miss French had looked after the ankle herself, it was too late for her to climb again to the pedestal on which Victoria had placed her. She was off that for good, and Victoria, scowling as she waited for Matron, was back at her favourite mutter: ‘She’s mean. She’s mean.’

From that time onwards Victoria ceased to try to get on at school. If they were mean to her, she told herself, she would be mean to them. It was not that she was noticeably tiresome – she was not at that time in a position to lead the other girls, and it was a bore making a nuisance of yourself alone – but she made no effort to learn. Class after class she sat through, outwardly conforming, but actually trying to take in as little as possible.

‘It’s a stupid school,’ she wrote to John, ‘so I am not bothering with it. In class I pretend I am somewhere else.’

John was a scholar so he loved learning, he gloried every time he felt he was really getting a grip on a subject. But, like many of his sex at that date, he did not think it mattered if girls were educated, and anyway, from what he could hear, all girls’ schools were crazy, so he wrote back:

‘As you have promised Uncle Jim you will write a play for the parish children, if you have nothing better to do during a class you might work on that. It will have to be one of those “enter a crowd of elves” affairs if you are to use all the children who will want to take part.’

So Victoria dreamed up a play and when she could manage it without being noticed she wrote a page or two of dialogue.

In the vicarage things were improving. Somehow the children’s mother had got through her calls, helped on a few afternoons by lifts in other people’s carriages. Cousin Alexander, after a last blazing row, had retired as

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