Free The Chinese Garden by Rosemary Manning

shadow of a harpy’s wing for ever hovering over her, a creature which saw her downsitting and her uprising and spied out all her ways, quick to mark what she did amiss.
    â€˜It was the sixth point. I’ve got P.D.,’ she said ruefully to Rachel the following evening. ‘I shan’t be able to come out tomorrow. I’ll be on that awful block of concrete, being tortured . Will you go down and feed Willy? And then, after P.D., if there’s anything left of me, I could come down and join you.’
    â€˜But I suppose I’ll have to go out “on bounds”,’ said Rachel.
    â€˜You could easily put your name down with Margaret or one of the others, couldn’t you?’
    Week-end walks outside the park – ‘on bounds’ – had to be taken in groups of not less than three, and passes had to be obtained from the housemistresses. Margaret and Rachel had both, on several occasions, persuaded others to include their names on a pass, and then gone off secretly upon theirprivate occasions. It was an easy technique, though the consequences of such a deception, if found out, would have been serious. But both were delighted to take risks of this kind, Rachel even more than Margaret, for to Margaret it was largely a matter of indifference whether she were expelled, whereas to Rachel it was a deliberate risk, compatible with the physical risks she took to satisfy her physical strength. For Bisto to encourage such a thing showed the measure of her desperation. She could not face Saturday afternoon without Rachel. After P.D. was over, there was nothing for the victims to do but wander about the park or sit in their form-rooms. Others took this in their stride, but Bisto, broken by previous occasions, dreaded it almost as much as the P.D. which preceded it. She needed Rachel to restore her after an hour in the hands of Miss Christian Lucas, who took the punishment drill. Rachel agreed to fake a pass, and Bisto looked a little less tortured.
    Although not a member of the triumvirate, Miss Lucas was bound to Chief by a personal tie. She was no mere employee. Her friendship with Delia Faulkner had been formed during the war, and it was in her house in Somerset that the school had been founded, and existed for three years before its growth necessitated the move to Bampfield. Miss Christian Lucas was tall and although only in her thirties had a shock of pure white hair. Her eyes, like Miss Gerrard’s, were of a hard, piercing blue, but with a difference. The eyes of Miss Gerrard were like the eyes of God. They pierced through one’s soul. They were moral eyes. However uncomfortable they made me feel, I never feared them as prying eyes, nor was there a hint of cruelty in them. They were terrible but just. I was afraid of her, as most of us were, but I believe that fear was the most wholesome emotion atBampfield. Miss Christian Lucas’s eyes were the slightly bulging china-blue eyes of the sadist. They assumed a horrid magnitude and her face a hue of unhealthy purplish red when she was angry. But no one ever laughed at Miss Lucas. She was powerful not merely by virtue of her friendship in high places, but in her own right. She had the inner power of evil as I think I have never seen it in anyone else. She did me less harm personally than some others in authority at Bampfield, yet for her I feel a detestation untempered by pity.
    I remember well my first meeting with her. It was the second day of my school career. The tall white-haired figure bore down upon me, an alarming figure – the blue eyes very prominent and glaring, the muscles taut and stringy, stretched over a frame of which flesh and skin seemed to have shrunk to a mere carapace.
    â€˜I am Miss Christian Lucas. What is your name?’ asked the figure.
    â€˜Rachel Curgenven.’
    â€˜And where do you live, Rachel Curgenven?’
    â€˜At Sandhurst, Miss Lucas.’
    â€˜I see. At Sandhurst. Your father is