Free One Young Fool in Dorset by Victoria Twead

seemed to be taken.
    “ Ach , I can’t see a spare bed,” said my
mother.
    A girl with straight blonde hair looked up from the
locker she was filling. She and I stared at each other for a
moment. There was a naughty glint in her eye which I liked
immediately.
    “This bed next to me is empty,” she said, and her
smile lit up her face.
    I found myself smiling back at her, and in that
moment I knew I had a friend.
    Soon, the parents had to leave but I scarcely
noticed mine go. Helen and I had finished our unpacking and were
sitting side by side on her bed, swinging our legs and chattering
about whatever eleven-year-olds chatter about.
    Our dorm was on the first floor, and below it was
the junior common room. The common room was fitted out with
mismatching tables and chairs and some threadbare comfy chairs. We
had an old-fashioned record player with a needle that scratched our
records if we jogged it, but only a few records. The strains of Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkel even now immediately
transports me back to the common room. That and the taste of
butterscotch sweets, which were my tuck item of choice. After lunch
every day, Matron unlocked the tuck cupboard and we were permitted
just two of the sweets we had stashed.
    I fitted into boarding school life fairly happily. I
didn’t see much of my sister as she was already in the upper school
and used a different common room. But I made friends quite easily,
especially after my housemates realised that my initial silence was
due to shyness. As soon as I felt comfortable, I was as lively as
the others. In fact, I was usually in more trouble than most,
except perhaps for my best friend Helen.
    To exit the building, one had to walk along a
lengthy corridor, past the locker room where we kept our coats and
outside shoes, and out of the back door. It was just my luck that I
bumped into Matron just after I’d taken a shortcut.
    “Victoria! Did I just see you jumping out of the
common room window?”
    “Yes, Matron.”
    “Good heavens! You know we can’t allow our gels to
jump out of windows! Whatever next?” Matron tried hard to sound
cultured, and girls were always ‘gels’.
    “It’s not very high.”
    “Nevertheless, I shall require you to write me two
hundred lines, I must not jump out of the window .”
    My heart sank.
    “Yes, Matron.”
    “By chapel this evening.”
    “Yes, Matron.”
    As if our nightly visits to chapel weren’t bad
enough, now I had to waste time writing lines as well. I enlisted
the help of Helen and some other friends, and luckily Matron never
noticed the sudden changes of handwriting styles. This was common
practice, and I learned always to offer help with other people’s
lines, in readiness for when I was given my own to complete.
    Matron was a formidable lady. She wore a white
starched uniform and white cap perched squarely on her red hair
which was rolled up into some sort of pleat. The white lace-up
shoes she wore were utterly silent, allowing her to prowl around
without a sound. Her footsteps may have been silent, but Matron’s
booming voice could be heard from the other side of the
building.
    “Gels! Gels! You are not permitted into the dining
room except at meal times!”
    With a rustle of uniform, she bore down on us.
    “Gels! Out you go, unless you want to write some
lines for me?”
    No, we didn’t. We exited swiftly.
    Matron had her favourites, and I wasn’t one of them.
You knew if Matron liked you because on Sunday evenings, which were
hair-wash days, Matron let a small group of girls into her room to
dry their hair in front of the two-bar electric fire she had there.
I don’t think any of us had heard of hair dryers then, and we
certainly didn’t own one. Matron’s door would close and we’d hear
the sound of laughter as her favourites dried their hair and helped
themselves to Matron’s tin of Scottish shortbread.
    Of course, anybody who courted trouble, as I and my
friend Helen did, would never get to dry her