‘And is this your first visit to the school?’ I said. ‘I must introduce you to dear Miss Shanks.’
‘Oh no, we know Miss Shanks,’ said Mr Simmons. ‘We’re very close to Miss Shanks, aren’t we, Mother?’
‘You see we’re not just parents,’ said his wife. ‘We’re benefactors.’
‘Or we will be soon.’ Mr Simmons put his thumbs under his braces and rocked on his heels with pride. ‘Just need to make up our minds between a yacht and some stables.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I said.
‘Don’t you know?’ said the man, looking rather crestfallen. ‘I’d have said it was worth talking about, me.’
‘Father and I are going to make a bequest to the school,’ said Mrs Simmons. ‘Riding stables, we thought. But Miss Shanks is quite keen on a yacht to give the girls sailing lessons. Oh, Father! I hope she comes round to the stables. I’d never sleep thinking about Tilly out on them big waves.’
‘We’re not used to our kid being away from us yet,’ Mr Simmons said. ‘Never went away to school, didn’t Mother and me.’ I had guessed as much; everything from their hat and braces to their pancake-flat vowels announced that even though they might have a great deal of money (a very great deal if stables were on the cards) they had made it all themselves and were showering upon their daughter all the advantages they had missed. Since I am no snob (no matter what Alec says) my only concern was to help them shower it sensibly.
‘Can I just ask,’ I said, ‘what made you decide to send Tilly to St Columba’s instead of one of the bigger and better known schools?’
‘Oh, we had her down for Cheltenham,’ said Mrs Simmons. ‘But friends of ours, well, neighbours, new neighbours, after we moved, said to us that St Columba’s was the place. And their girls are to be presented at court, you know. Real young ladies.’
‘I see,’ I said, which was a lie. ‘Well, simply lovely to have met you, Simmonses.’ I gave a little bow and was amused to see them giving a real bow and curtsey in return as I left them.
‘And where are all the mistresses?’ said a voice as I plunged into the crowd once again. Where indeed? I thought. I had expected to feel a hand on my collar a lot quicker than this, and while in one way it was splendid to have had such a run at the parents and girls (not to mention the fact that I felt I was hearing all sorts of useful stuff from their innocent lips), looked at another way I knew that I was only ever going to solve the puzzle of St Columba’s by skewering the Misses Christopher, Barclay and Shanks. Those three were at the root of it, whatever it was.
‘Which mistress would you like most to talk to?’ I said, turning with a smile. ‘Perhaps I can take you to her or fetch her for you?’
‘Miss Barclay,’ said a man in a brown suit with a pipe in his mouth. ‘Geography. Our Christine is going to Edinburgh University to do geography at the end of next year.’ His voice had grown louder, in the hope that the bystanders nearest him would hear him and marvel.
‘Up to Edinburgh to read geography, Rex,’ said his wife in far softer tones.
‘Rex?’ said her husband. ‘Who’s Rex, when he’s at home? I’m Reg and I always have been.’ He winked at me. ‘She only started the Rex lark when Christine got interviewed at the university and they said she was in!’
‘You must be very proud of her,’ I said, smiling with genuine pleasure for them.
‘Oh well, how else would it be?’ he said. ‘My wife chose the school and took care of all that. I’m a plain man and happy to see the girls take after their mother.’
‘You’ve chosen very well for your daughter, Mrs…’ I said. ‘Edinburgh University, eh?’
‘She was worth it,’ said the woman, curiously tight-lipped beside her beaming husband.
‘And you have another daughter too?’ I said.
‘She’s not coming here,’ said the woman. She stared me straight in the eye. ‘You can tell Miss Shanks that from me, whoever you are.’
At last the pipe band gave a long discordant groan and an exhausted wheeze and were silent. A gong was struck and a voice – I thought it was Mrs Brown – announced that luncheon was served in the refectory. I turned back to the quiet woman and took hold of her arm as discreetly as I could do it.
‘I need to talk to you,’ I said in a low voice. ‘Or rather I think you need to talk to me.’
But she brushed me off quite roughly and backed away, shaking her head.
‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘Not any more, not again. You can forget it.’ And with that she turned and vanished into the crowd.
‘My wife,’ said her husband, looking after her. ‘Nerves, you know. Been that way a few years now. You’ll have to forgive her.’
‘Of course,’ I said, with a distracted smile. ‘Don’t mention it. I hope she’s soon feeling better and please tell her I apologise if I upset her in any way.’
‘Dandy?’ The voice was not loud but it cut through the hubbub of jostling parents like a shard of glass. I turned and smiled.
‘Candide,’ I said. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’
‘But you have sons!’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me Shanks is taking boys now.’
‘Not as far as I know,’ I said, ducking under the hat brim and clashing my cheeks against hers. ‘I’ve just seen Stella. She’s your absolute twin these days.’
‘Only to look at,’ said Candide in a cool murmur. ‘How are your boys getting on, then? Not turning your hair white, I trust?’
‘Oh well, Donald is a bit of a handful,’ I said. ‘Teddy hasn’t set into shape yet, so who knows?’ But she was not really listening and I changed the subject. ‘I’ve seen your bathing pool,’ I said. Candide’s face, always quite foxy, grew positively pinched at the mention of it.
‘Blasted thing,’ she said. ‘I had no idea that they’d put our names on it.’
‘Very good of you, still,’ I said. ‘Given the times, especially.’
‘Hah!’ said Candide. ‘Well, yes, that bloody pond used to be a Canaletto. There’s a pale patch on the landing wall.’ I stared at her and she looked off to one side, took a short sharp nip at her cigarette, almost like a little kiss, and then blew the smoke out in a long stream. ‘One does what one can,’ she said. ‘And better a simple bequest than a lifetime’s obligation worked off in testimonials.’
‘Well, Stella is a fortunate girl,’ I said, ‘and Miss Shanks a very fortunate woman.’ I knew I was staring harder than ever but in truth my mind was far away, sorting through all that I had heard: from the Simmonses and the Duncans, from Mr and Mrs Reg to Candide’s few cryptic offerings.
‘Stella,’ said her mother, ‘is a disappointment and a pest. I only hope she makes it all worthwhile in the end by marrying someone half-decent, that’s all.’ Then she threw down her cigarette, flashed me a quick smile, clashed cheeks again and swept towards the open dining-room doors, the lesser parents (and that was more or less all of them) parting like the Red Sea at her coming.
‘Oh no,’ I groaned for, in the space where she had been standing, there now stood Stella herself, and for once her brow was not arched and her lip not curled. She was white-faced with shock and her mouth trembled.
‘What did Mummy just say?’ she said, not drawling at all now.
‘I didn’t catch it,’ I answered. Feigning unlikely deafness is such a help at so many awkward moments.
‘A disappointment?’ Stella said. ‘A pest?’
‘Have you quarrelled?’ I asked. She had been badly enough crumpled by the unfortunate overhearing that I did not shrink from putting a friendly arm around her, as one would any child. And crumpled as she was, she submitted to it.
‘No,’ she said. ‘The last time we quarrelled was when they said I had to come here to school instead of where I wanted.’