Free No Talking after Lights by Angela Lambert Page B

fact that no man had ever asked her. She liked men well enough. She thought lesbianism was unnatural and wicked, and would have preferred to dismiss staff whom she suspected of such leanings, but unfortunately the law was not on her side.
    The Head continued to brood.
    â€˜She’s never administered corporal punishment, as far as I know…’
    â€˜Henrietta, she doesn’t need to. She frightens them to death as it is.’
    â€˜What am I supposed to do, Peggy? I can’t possibly replace her at this stage of term - not with O and A levels just coming up. I’ve tried to talk to her. She denies having any personal problems.’
    â€˜Diana Monk doesn’t look capable of making trouble,’ said Peggy, and smiled wryly. ‘She’d never stand up to her. No, I think it’s a matter of temperament. Parry’s one of those people with more than their fair share of anger. She could fly off the handle at the slightest thing. Did you give her a formal warning?’
    â€˜Not this time. I hinted that she could do with a weekend off, but she turned it down.’
    â€˜Let’s hope we don’t get any parents complaining. That could be tiresome.’
    â€˜Keep an eye on her for me, won’t you, Peggy?’ Therain-pattering sound of applause swelled from the wireless. ‘Now then, shall we listen to the news?’
    Half an hour later, after the usual depressing reports from the Korean war (it couldn’t - could it? - affect her boy in Hong Kong), Henrietta Birmingham sat looking out across the darkened lawns to the trees silhouetted against the slate-blue sky. Too late for the sunset, too pale for moonrise; only the evening star hung above the earth. She used to watch it as a girl from her bed in Scotland. She had had a bedroom to herself by the time she was twelve, but when the boys were away at the Front she preferred to sleep in the old nursery, with its memories of the time when they’d all been children together under the benevolent eye of Nanny, rather than stay in a grown-up room empty of ghosts. How hard it is being a girl, she used to think when her brothers’ stilted letters arrived. They told her nothing, hardly more than their dutiful letters home from Eton, but she read between the lines and imagined the thrill, the rivalry, the dramatic challenge of doing your best -not just in a cricket match, but for your country. She had envied them at first.
    Jamie had kept his promise to write, but what was she to make of the cryptic lines which expressed no pride and delight? He was just being modest. He must be doing marvellous things. She longed for something broader and greater than her own limited horizons, for the chance to escape, to be brave and glorious, for something beyond the narrow confines of girlhood. But the world, her parents, Nanny, her brothers, even Jamie - they all thought her yearnings foolish. They told her that one day, when a good man asked her to marry him, everything would fall into its proper place and she would find her destiny.
    Every evening she prayed for them, alone in their nursery with its alphabet frieze round the walls, toystidily ranged in the toy cupboard, watching her through the glass doors, books in order on the shelves (she would take them out sometimes, wistfully -
Jock of the Bushveld, The Crimson Aeroplane)
. Praying was all she could do, and so she prayed for hours: first for Jamie, that she might see him again, then for the other two, that they might not be wounded or … or called to God just yet. She prayed for all British soldiers and airmen, and for the Canadians and Australians, and the brave Indian regiments whom she had seen marching at the King’s coronation; she prayed as well for all German officers and soldiers and all poor prisoners wherever they might be; and most earnestly she prayed to God to make the generals end this wicked war. Finally, opening her eyes to the high, cold, hardhearted moon,