Goodbye, Ms. Chips Read online

  “Wonderful!” I said. “Just so long as he doesn’t have to sell Merlin’s Court when he lands on Mayfair. Which he will do, there being a dreadful inevitability when one is losing at Monopoly. Our children can be pretty ruthless. Miss Chips is fortunate not to be at their mercy. I can’t see her being content if forced to move very far from St. Roberta’s. It’s a good thing that property in country areas tends to be more reasonably priced than in the cities.”

  “Not the case with Lower and Upper Swan-Upping.” Dorcas shook her head, causing a noncompliant strand of hair to escape onto her brow. “Even Cygnet’s Way, once a strip of laborers’cottages, has gone up-market, so I’ve been told.”

  “It’s the fault of them bloody commuters!” Mrs. Malloy’s sympathetic outrage refracted off the faux emeralds and rubies on her storefront bosom.

  I nodded agreement. “Someone, preferably the government, should put a spoke in their wheels. The cheek of people thinking they can have it both ways! Working in London or Birmingham and going home to a picture-postcard cottage enlivened by children named Buttercup and Daisy after the congenial cows in the adjoining pasture.” Turning to Dorcas, I said I remembered Cygnet’s Way as a dismal little street.

  “Wouldn’t know it now, Ellie. Bumbleton and Sons, the builders, bought the houses, did them up, and then sold the lot for a huge profit. Blow for Matron! Had been hoping to buy the one she’d leased over the years to live in during the hols.”

  “Is that where Ms. Chips bought?” I asked.

  “No. Purchased a house on the green. Tudor. Named The Laurels or Fir Trees—something of the sort. Didn’t need to worry about price. Came into a handsome legacy last year. Being a thundering good sport, she also financed a new gymnasium for St. Roberta’s. Bumbleton’s got that job too. Old chap’s on the Board of Governors.” Dorcas was again compelled to reach for the handkerchief. “Better woman than Marilyn Chips never invoked the old sporting spirit.”

  I was stunned that Ms. Chips had a first name. Who would have thought! “That must have been some legacy.” My attempt to brighten the mood succeeded with Mrs. Malloy. It was her frequently voiced opinion that there is nothing in life more romantic than coming into bundles of money, especially if doing so means cutting out others hoping to scoop the lot after years of buttering up the doddering old benefactor. Something I can say I didn’t do with Uncle Merlin. Not that Mrs. M would have held it against me. For Mrs. M, true life should always merge with fiction. Noting the gleam in her eyes, I could tell she was increasingly enthusiastic about the prospect of a sojourn at St. Roberta’s. In her mind it would be a storybook school complete with illustrations. A place where the girls were not as bothered with getting an education as in the formation of secret societies, with all the attendant excitement of midnight feasts, whispered passwords, and the thrilling discovery that the fourth-form mistress is the ringleader of an international smuggling ring. To her credit Mrs. Malloy contained her emotions, merely asking if Ms. Chips’s legacy had been unexpected.

  “Bolt from the blue. According to Matey, had planned to live off her pension.” Dorcas emerged from her handkerchief. “Makes this cup business especially sad, bang up against Chippie’s shining moment. Gala evening planned to celebrate the new gymnasium: fruit punch, sausages on sticks, that sort of thing. All arrangements made. Cards sent out. Board of Governors, parents, old girls, local notables invited.”

  “This event takes place when?” I asked.

  “Twenty-eighth of June. Same day the Loverly Cup passes on.” Dorcas spoke with a brave attempt at calm.

  “No time then to be lost in recovering it.” Mrs. Malloy glittered with energy. “When does the headmistress want to see Mrs. H?”

  “Tomorrow morning if possible.” Dorcas blinked an apologetic look my way.

  “I’d drive back with you?” My hand searched for a jam tart.

  “Know it puts you in a spot, working out arrangements for the children and setting aside current work.”

  “That’s manageable,” I replied, in hollow accents. No escape hatch here. Ben, who owns a French bistro named Abigail’s in the village, could delegate as necessary to my cousin Freddy, who works for him, and so be home with Tam, Abbey, and Rose when they weren’t in school. Being the husband he is, he wouldn’t make a moan about not being able to crack on with the cookery book he is writing. As for myself, I had no interior design commissions on the verge of completion. A check of my calendar, which might lead to few phone calls, would be the only requirement in freeing me up for the next couple of weeks. “Where would I stay?”

  Dorcas explained about a house on the grounds that fifty years ago had been occupied by the school chaplain and his family. After that, it had been left to the invasion of mold and decay until Miss Chips came into her legacy. In addition to her beneficence with the gymnasium, she had fulfilled a longtime aspiration of refurbishing the house as a retreat for old girls, ones who needed a temporary escape from the pressures of their lives: divorce, loss of a job … . I’d have to come up with a cover to explain my arrival. Dorcas made a couple of suggestions that floated past me.

  Some dickey birds had settled in the minstrel’s gallery of the closest beech tree and were singing their little hearts out, as befitted their brown choir robes. I’m not much of a judge—in fact, Mr. Middleton, who had taught music at St. Roberta’s, had informed me I had a tin ear—nevertheless, I doubted there was a nightingale in that feathery lineup. The performance struck me as sadly mediocre. I was pretty sure that at least two sparrows were off-key, and the bigger one hit a seriously sour note seconds before the sun slunk behind a sudden cloud. My heart went out to the loyal little band of family and friends gathered in the audience with their hearts in their throats and bright little smiles on their beaks, hoping against ardent hope that Percy would get through “O Sole Mio” without being bitten to death by the bird to his left. A portentous little bully if ever I saw one.

  I had been horribly bullied my first year at St. Roberta’s by a girl in my class named Rosemary Martin, who had a singing voice that drowned out the chirpers and a Roman nose that, in all fairness, she couldn’t help. Mr. Middleton had assigned solo parts to her either because she really was good or because otherwise she would have had him fed to the lions.

  Now, in a determined effort at more positive thinking, I focused on my father’s words of consolation when I’d told him what Mr. Middleton had said about me. “Better a tin ear,” quoth Daddy, with a customary flourish, “than a tin cup.” Words of wisdom to cling to in my present situation. Dorcas hadn’t asked me to sit on a pavement and beg for change from impervious pedestrians. From the sound of the renovated Chaplain’s House, its accommodations would more than pass muster. I might even find myself enjoying the company of other old girls who might be staying there.

  A sideways glance at Mrs. Malloy showed she was looking as glum as all get out.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

  “Tomorrow’s no good for me. Like I’ve been telling you all week, me sister Melody’s coming to stay for a few days, bringing her new husband to show him off. I can’t just bunk off and leave them to it, can I?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “And you’ve been dying to see the wedding photos.”

  “She’s me only sister. It wouldn’t do not to take an interest.”

  “It was a delightful wedding,” I informed Dorcas.

  “Jolly ho!” she enthused kindly.

  It had been lovely. Unfortunately, Melody could never have been a Grecian urn and at age sixty was ever less likely to be rhapsodized by poets, but she had radiated a joy that made her frizzy hair and dumpy figure enviable, while the bridegroom had beamed with love and pride.

  “That cherry suit I helped her pick out was just right,” said Mrs. Malloy. “Left to herself, she might have decided to wear white, and that would have been a terrible mistake for a woman of her age. She would have looked like the spook bride in The Sexton’s Secret, Mrs. H!”

 
I remembered vividly that particular scene in the book: a ghoulish figure drifting down the aisle … gown yellowed and spotted with age, reeking of mildew and death … a garland of crumbling rosebuds … the organist who displayed a flair for the mournful … effigies on the wall that turned a paler shade of marble as their eye sockets searched the gloom for shadows that had life in them. When reading those lines I had recalled the legend of the Gray Nun, whose wraith was said to haunt the ruined convent at the edge of St. Roberta’s grounds. My one midnight excursion into the crypt with a couple of my classmates had produced no sight of her, but that might have been because she didn’t consider a bunch of giggling fourteen-year-olds a worthy audience for fleshless hand wringing and pitiful moans.

  “Of course I want to do right by Melody.”

  Mrs. Malloy still sounded seriously put out. In addition to her disappointment at not being able to accompany Dorcas and me to Lower Swan-Upping, she might have been remembering that as Melody’s bridesmaid she had not looked her best in dusty pink, a color she despised.

  “I had intended on giving her and the new hubby me own room with the comfy double bed.” Sticking her nose in the air, she risked having it pecked off by Percy, the musical sparrow, or another passing dickey bird. “But on second thought, if I was to put them in the box room that has the single with the thin mattress, they could get to thinking as how they was imposing by staying as long as they planned, and take themselves off.” Catching Dorcas’s eye, she looked momentarily abashed; then her purple mouth set in a mulish line, indicating that her heart had hardened. “If you ask me, Miss C, it’s not natural for a newly married couple to stay with relations. You’d think with both of them waiting so long to tie the knot they’d want to focus on taking the instruction booklet to bed with them every night to see if they couldn’t get top marks. What if they’re not getting the hang of things because Melody’s too shy? Or she thinks Bill should try them pills some men need to take and I’m roped in to listening to their bedroom problems?”

  “Difficult.” Dorcas’s complexion rivaled her red hair.

  “Like Mrs. H will tell you, it’s not in me nature to enjoy mixing in other people’s business.” Mrs. Malloy laid out this whopper without the hint of a blush. “Besides, I wouldn’t want little Ariel Hopkins thinking I wasn’t bothered about seeing her.”

  The mention of this name gave me a jolt. My horror at the thought of returning to St. Roberta’s and being forced to confront the episode involving Philippa Boswell had made me forget that Ariel had for the past year been a student at the school. Her father was Ben’s cousin Tom Hopkins, and the family lived in Milton Moor, making them acquaintances of Melody. The opportunity to spend a few days with the Hopkinses had been a bonus for me in driving Mrs. Malloy to her sister’s wedding. Ariel, who had been home for half term, was fourteen.

  “Bright girl,” said Dorcas. “Plenty of spirit.”

  But had Ariel wholeheartedly embraced life at St. Roberta’s? I wondered. She was a prickly little person, apt to scorn popularity for the sake of it or because she preferred to bury her nose in a book featuring life at its more exciting. One could never tell which way she would jump next, although I doubted it would be into my arms on seeing me. She liked me, and would endeavor to ferret out the reason for my taking up temporary residence at the Chaplain’s House, but displays of affection violated the offhand manner she took pains to present.

  “I wish you could come,” I told Mrs. Malloy with a pang, “but even it weren’t too late to put the newlyweds off for another time, doing so would not be kind.”

  “I suppose not. Although”—her eyes brightened—“what if I was to borrow Tobias Mousecatchky and take him down to my house and pretend he was a stray I’d taken in? Melody was saying just yesterday on the phone as how Bill has a proper aversion to cats and can’t be around them without screaming. And of course,” she continued, with a self-righteous puffing of the chest, “that wouldn’t be fair to the neighbors. Old Mrs. Flagg next door has high blood pressure and don’t always remember to take her medicine. A nasty shock like that could kill her. I can’t see a nice man like Bill taking the risk.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Tobias is getting up in years and doesn’t adjust well to change. He prefers being home with his pipe and slippers—or communing with familiar surroundings,” I was forced to add, spying my beloved feline wending his way across the lawn in dreamy contemplation of a butterfly that, being all beauty and no wit, had settled within easy paw-dabbing distance on a hydrangea bush.

  Luckily, Tobias was distracted by the nosy eruption of the children through the kitchen door. Tam and Rose both dark like Ben, Abbey with her elfin fair curls, they came hurtling toward us, laughter spilling around them, one of those ordinary moments that will later be pulled out of the treasure box of memories many times over. It wasn’t any trick of sunlight that turned the garden into an enchanted glade. It was the love I saw on Dorcas’s face when she looked at my children.

  “We’ll leave for St. Roberta’s early tomorrow morning,” I told her with a real smile. Mrs. Malloy’s pout was equally genuine, but she would recover from her disappointment when her sister and brother-in-law arrived.

  The butterfly turned into a gauzy winged fairy and flitted away as Tobias joined the rest of us in going into the house. No further danger in the garden and none for me in responding to the headmistress’s summons. The mystery of the missing Loverly Cup did not amount to evil on a grand scale. No diabolical force was at work in the old school, merely some childish silliness. This thought almost cheered me into facing the prospect of an excursion into my past with less foreboding than might have been anticipated.

  What I failed to remember was that one of my reasons for being hopeless at lacrosse was that I had always failed to see the ball when it was coming full at me.

  2

  The source of the children’s exuberance sprang from the three of them having ganged up against their father and ruined him at Monopoly. Mercilessly they had stripped him of houses and hotels, failed to remind him to collect two hundred pounds when he passed Go, and helped each other out with under-the-table loans. After getting out of jail for the third time and immediately landing on the Water Works, Ben had pounded his forehead with his fists and agreed snarlishly to file for bankruptcy. His misery had been music to their unfilial ears. Rose, who, according to Tam and Abbey, had been laughing the hardest, had threatened to put him back in jail if he didn’t stop growling.

  There was some talk as we sat down for dinner that it might be necessary to sell Merlin’s Court to pay for the legal advice Ben had received from Diddle, Swindle & Kashownli. Mrs. Malloy said it was all very sad, but she had no sympathy for people who got in over their heads, thinking they was better than other people because they’d won second place in a beauty contest. She remembered that it was when her second—maybe her third—husband was caught dipping into the Community Chest that she decided to divorce him. Ben assumed a suitably shifty expression; after consuming a second helping of Apple Charlotte, Mrs. Malloy took herself off to make the last-minute preparations for Melody and Bill’s visit. Dorcas was more helpful. She advised Ben and me to relax in the drawing room while we still owned the furniture, adding that she would take the children outdoors for a game of tag before bedtime.

  As I had expected, Ben made no fuss about my abandoning him at short notice to take off for St. Roberta’s. He thought the filching of the Loverly Cup mildly amusing rather than sinister. At the school he had attended in a rough neighborhood of London, a caper of that sort would not have raised an eyebrow. No boarding school for my husband. Unlike my parents, his weren’t the sort to have crossed their fingers and hoped like the dickens they could repay a bank overdraft that would have sunk a ship. My in-laws would have made the sensible assumption that there would be a seven-year blight on fruit and vegetables. They’d lose their greengrocer’s shop and would one day come home to find a man in a dark coat and a hat tipped over his nose camped in th
eir sitting room. He’d have a gun in his hand and would ask in an adenoidal voice if they’d mind very much having their legs broken. ’Cause if they didn’t make good on the loan by Friday, the boss was likely to remember that his mother had always liked his brother best and turn irritable.

  A provident couple, Ben’s parents had done well by their one offspring in their own way. Ben might not have been born with a silver rattle in his fist, but he hadn’t been hard done by in other ways. Mother Nature had been more than kind. Even as a schoolboy he must have been a heart-stopper. When we first met I thought him the handsomest man I’d ever laid eyes on. The intervening years had only enhanced his attractiveness, increasing the strength and sensitivity of his face along with an easy confidence of manner that came from life’s experience. I looked into his blue-green eyes and loved the warmth and tenderness I saw in them.

  “A penny for your thoughts, sweetheart?” Ben threaded gentle fingers through my hair.

  “If it weren’t for Dorcas I wouldn’t go. St. Roberta’s does not have me by the heartstrings, but it will be nice to see Ariel.” I returned his kiss and curled up even closer to him on the sofa. “Poor Mrs. Malloy! She pretended that her reason for minding being left behind is she’s afraid the cup thief will decide to do away with me if I snoop too closely.”

  “Somehow I’m not worried you’ll be coshed on the head as you join in singing the school song, whatever you think of your voice.”

  “Don’t tell me it thrills you to the core, or I’ll never believe anything you say again. Mrs. Malloy is dying to go to boarding school. The concept, if you’ve read the storybooks, sounds enormous fun. When I lent her Head Girl at the Manor School she couldn’t put it down, and she’s been an addict ever since … .” My voice petered out.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben cupped my face tenderly with his hand.