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MP Visits Saint Clare – Part VIII – Mustn’t Grumble Gladys

Posted on By Mija

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The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a constellation of documents—some official, drawn from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others more intimate, taken from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font.

Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained. But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here, and promise to respond. Moreover your ideas and reactions also join the archives, where they may quietly shape what comes next.

 

Archivist’s Foreword

The following entry was written on the evening of 12 July 1955, after the party from Saint Clare had arrived at Bryn Derwen.

Unlike the previous document, which was composed under some pressure and at speed, this account was written in a place that ought to have been familiar and consoling, but was neither. It does not revisit the events of the Headmaster’s study (those are recorded elsewhere, and at some length), but concerns itself instead with what lingers once the official business is concluded, everyone has been properly seen to, and there is nothing left but supper, accommodation, and, possibly, tears at bedtime.

Former pupils may find the tone uncomfortably recognisable.

The MP Visits Saint Clare – Previously posted

Gladys’s Diary

12 July 1955

Evening (at Bryn Derwen)

The scene in the Head’s study was the worst of it. The rest of the day wasn’t as loud or dramatic, but it sat on me just as heavily. I cannot remember feeling so weary, so empty.

I never did drink the Head’s tea. Even the sandwiches looked poisonous, the bread curling at the edges, the ham shining faintly in the heat. I watched Gerald eat, cool as a cucumber. When the Head returned, he thanked him as if nothing more awkward than a recent school report had been discussed.

(more…)

discipline

MP Visits Saint Clare – Part VII – Ghastly Gladys

Posted on By Mija

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The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a constellation of documents—some official, drawn from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others more intimate, taken from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font.

Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained. But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here, and promise to respond. Moreover your ideas and reactions also join the archives, where they may quietly shape what comes next..

Archivist Foreword

The document that follows was written in the back seat of a carefully maintained Humber on the afternoon of 12 July 1955, shortly after its author had been summoned to the Headmaster’s study at Saint Clare’s. Although Gladys Williams was no longer a pupil of the school, this distinction proved to be of limited practical importance.

Readers familiar with the school story will recognise the situation without difficulty. A former girl returns, meaning well, and finds herself required to explain her conduct, to wait, and to remain present. The rules, once learned, are not easily forgotten, and are applied with particular confidence to those who ought to know better.

This entry does not attempt to set out the facts of the incident in full; those are recorded elsewhere, and in proper order. What Gladys provides instead is a running account of the afternoon as she experienced it: the Headmaster’s study, the formalities observed, the tea tray, the silences, and the journey that followed. She writes quickly, with feeling, and at some length. This too will be familiar to readers of school diaries.

With this entry, the Saint Clare record pauses. Lessons resume, bells ring, and the school continues. The account that follows travels on.

The MP Visits Saint Clare – Previously posted

Gladys’ Diary

12 July 1955

Later (the Head’s Study; continued in the car)

I won’t forget today, no matter how old I get or how many pages I scribble. Ghastly. Utterly ghastly. There were so many awful bits I can’t even decide which was the worst, nor which to write first. Now that we are back on the road I am writing as fast as I can, partly so I don’t have to look up. If I don’t look at him, perhaps Gerald won’t speak to me. I can feel him watching me over the tops of his papers, but I go on as if I were completely absorbed.

Instead of letting me slink away after that wretched drive up from London, Gerald marched us straight down the dim corridor to the Head’s study. The cabbage smell clung to the walls and our shoes echoed like a sentence already passed. He opened the door, stood back, and waited for me to go in first, as if I were being presented for inspection. We weren’t expected — not then — but he behaved as if the place had been waiting for him all along, papers under his arm, that terrible air of purpose he puts on when he’s decided something. I think Miss Kelley tried to say something, but I barely caught her eye before I was all but pushed into the Head’s office.

Mr Lewis blinked at us from behind his spectacles, plainly surprised to see a party from London descend on him without warning. Gerald merely inclined his head and said, smooth as you please, “A word, if you please.”

The Head invited us as if we had not already imposed ourselves, and then, almost absurdly, rang for a tea tray with sandwiches .

These niceties over, Gerald turned on me, using that dreadful low voice of his, the one that weighs more than shouting ever could.

“Miss Williams,” he said, quiet and clipped, “I wish you to tell the Head exactly what you have done.”

There was nowhere to look. My heart sank straight through my shoes. I am not a pupil; I have not been one for years. And yet there I stood, spluttering and stammering like a schoolgirl hauled up for passing notes. Gerald would have none of it. I had to admit everything: Clarissa’s letter with Inez’s enclosed, the request to send it on to her mother, my saying yes, my writing a cover note and posting them off to Lady de Vries. I told it in silly little scraps, and every bit felt worse once the Head had heard it. The words slid out like stones, and the room, large though it was, felt very small as the shelves of books seemed to close in around me.

When I finally finished, Mr Lewis did not address me at all, but remarked, almost to the furniture, “Ah, so that is how she knew.” The “she” was certainly not me.

Then, more formally, he straightened in his chair and addressed us both. He was polite, firm but almost apologetic, and said the School could not possibly condone letters carried privately. He paused and added (as I could have told him) that as I am no longer a student, my part in the matter was not his affair, but one to be settled between my brother-in-law and me.

Gerald nodded, but replied that he wished the matter on record, and asked that Clarissa be called.

Mr Lewis went to the door and asked Miss Kelley to have a prefect bring Clarissa to his office. We heard her give instructions to “Fairfax” — a prefect, I suppose — just as one of the kitchen maids came in with the clattering tea tray. Then, adding to the whole Lewis Carroll feeling of the afternoon, the Head apologised for the tray’s “meagre fare,” offhandedly blaming our sudden appearance for leaving the kitchen unprepared.

What followed was an extreme bout of conversational awkwardness. He talked about anything except what we were really there for: the heat, the gardens, the fête already past, the coming holidays. His small talk sounded thin and nervous to me. Gerald answered in kind, dry but courteous, as he ate sandwiches and drank two cups of tea. I never touched mine. No one seemed to notice. Everyone else was fed. The silences between the men grew longer and heavier until they felt like stones piling up. Despite the tea, my mouth was completely dry, and I contributed nothing.

After what felt like hours, but was probably no more than twenty minutes, Clarissa arrived, walking through the doorway as if to her doom, her legs so embarrassingly bare and vulnerable in her field hockey skirt, grass stains still on her knees. I saw the shock on her face when she took in Gerald and then me, sitting there together. Her eyes were huge and round. I heard Miss Kelley say something low to the prefect as Clarissa crossed the threshold. Mr Lewis remained at his desk.

Gerald didn’t waste a moment. After the briefest of greetings, he took Clarissa through the same wretched confession he’d forced out of me, making her tell the Head exactly what she had done. My stomach clenched and I was glad I hadn’t touched the tea. I felt her eyes on me, begging for help, but I couldn’t meet them.

I won’t pretend I listened to every word. I heard her first stumbles, the brave little resolves, the determined refusal to betray Inez. Clarissa would not, could not, name her. Gerald repeated my admissions for her benefit and scolded her for involving me, his voice dry and clipped, as if this were all part of a lesson that needed to be properly understood. Mr Lewis sat very straight in his chair and said nothing, nodding only occasionally.

When it was done, the Head stood, cleared his throat, and spoke with that careful, official politeness of his, saying he was satisfied he understood the situation. He added that the School could not be party to further discussion of family discipline, and that Gerald was welcome to make use of the study. Then, murmuring something about other duties, he left the room.

The door shut behind him and, just like that, the air changed. We were alone.

(more…)

Saint Clare

The MP Visits Saint Clare, Part VI – Inez’s Diary, 13 July 1955

Posted on By Mija

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The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a constellation of documents—some official, drawn from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others more intimate, taken from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font.

Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained. But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here, and promise to respond. Moreover your ideas and reactions also join the archives, where they may quietly shape what comes next.

Foreword

The following diary entry was written by Inez de Vries during the night of 12–13 July 1955, after visiting Clarissa Charrington in the infirmary. It was not intended for circulation and does not appear to have been shown to anyone, the author having taken the precaution—elsewhere noted—of invoking a suitably comprehensive curse against unauthorised readers.

It is reproduced here without alteration as part of the Saint Clare materials relating to the events of that week. The entry does not describe the incident itself, which is documented at length elsewhere, but records Inez de Vries’s role in the aftermath.

The MP Visits Saint Clare – Previously posted

13 July 1955 – after midnight

I went to the infirmary after lights-out, waiting until Matron’s rounds had slowed and the house settled again. It didn’t seem right to go while things were still actively happening.

Clarissa was awake. She looked different, the way people do when they’ve stopped performing. Smaller, younger — or simply unfinished. She tried to sit up and then thought better of it. Good move.

She wanted me to stay (even asked me)  and I didn’t know what to say. Stay?

But I sat down and we talked a little. Well, I talked a little. Clarissa talked a lot. It more or less balanced out. She’s still very young, new to school, new to boarding. She hasn’t yet learned that what girls say rarely matters, and that everything passes — and quickly.

Two months is nothing. I’ve been here for years now. (more…)

Guest Story – Naughty Arabella’s Just Desserts

Posted on By Mija

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Introduction:

What began as a playful observation on Bluesky (that the name “Arabella” is destined to belong to the naughtiest girl in any school) has now grown into a small constellation of stories. Mine took a folkloric turn with Saint Clare’s and Krampus; this one, shared here today, takes its own wonderful path.

So enjoy this spirited take on Arabella: The Patron Saint of Bad Behaviour Everywhere written by a fellow participant in the thread who wishes to remain unnamed, at least for now.

Again for clarity – this is a guest contribution to that Arabella-led challenge. It is entirely outside the Saint Clare universe. This is simply a wonderfully cheeky contribution inspired by the same mischievous spark: the girl Arabella whose name alone hints at trouble. I’m so delighted to be able to share it.

Guest Story – Reposted Here with the Author’s Permission. 

 

Naughty Arabella’s Just Desserts

Was it even real? Did that really just happen?? I slid my claw along the gilded edge of the envelope in my pocket as I threaded my way through the throngs of teenagers toward Mr Climbover’s class.

It felt real enough. But it could be a trick. Arabella had never noticed me before – not that I minded but – she was the coolest girl in school, everyone knew her name and when she walked through the halls the other kids made space for her and her trail of lackeys trying to kiss her perfect butt.

Most of us dragons, if we bother to shapeshift, stick with other animals. It’s easier. Not her.

Arabella stayed in her human form indefinitely, as far as anyone knew. There were even some rumors she was actually human who somehow sneaked into the conclave’s boarding school – how else did she get the form so perfect??

All of her lackeys tried to mimic her, of course, with varying degrees of success. Her simpering entourage looked more like humans going trick or treating. Cheap costumes even. None of us dared say anything because the comet they followed could make or break anyone’s social standing with a single sneer.

As I settled into the hard wooden student desk, I reached for my stashed envelope again. I slid it out of my pocket and smoothly slipped it into my history text book on my desk. Its golden filigree edge peeked out of the heavily thumbed pages, a sparkle of hope for my own social standing.

An invitation to Arabella’s birthday party! With my name on it!

(more…)

discipline

NEW STORY – Naughty Arabella Gets the Sack – A Krampus at Saint Clare Story

Posted on By Mija

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Foreword:

Every so often, a Saint Clare story arrives from an unexpected corner—this one came from an offhand comment on Bluesky about how “Arabella” is the name of a girl who is absolutely up to mischief. That joke blossomed into an open challenge to write a story with “Naughty Arabella” somewhere in the title.

https://bsky.app/profile/mija-again.bsky.social/post/3m754wu5vrc2n
This is my offering.

Naughty Arabella Gets the Sack – Winter 1925 at Saint Clare’s takes place firmly within the larger Saint Clare universe, but outside the Inez of the Upper IV arc. It introduces an earlier generation of girls—and a long-standing bit of school folklore involving a seasonal visitor who is, essentially, OFSTED with hooves. Krampus pays annual calls to Saint Clare’s, but this year he meets his match in Arabella Fairchild: blonde, brilliant, catastrophically charming, and overdue for supernatural accountability.

The result is part school-story romp, part institutional mythmaking, and wholly Saint Clare’s.

 STORY – Naughty Arabella Gets the Sack

Chapter I – In Which Saint Clare’s Watches a Drama Unfold

Saint Clare School for Girls slept beneath a frosty moon in the winter of 1925, its chimneys puffing industriously and its corridors stretching away into dim, draughty mystery. Most of the Second Form were fast asleep in their flannel nightgowns—except for those peering nervously from their beds, listening to the unmistakable CLONK—CLONK—CLONK of something decidedly not school-sanctioned approaching.

Arabella Fairchild, however, was not in her nightgown.

Oh no.

Arabella stood at the centre of the corridor, dressed in her full uniform—immaculate gymslip, snowy white shirt, hair ribbons neat at either side of her head—because Arabella firmly believed that if one must face the supernatural, one should at least look as though one were about to captain the lacrosse team.

She was, as the Headmistress had once remarked in a despairingly admiring tone, “the sort of blonde beauty who, in six years, during her first season, will oblige her father to consider hiring armed guards1Borrowed from Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather (I think). in addition to the usual chaperones.”

Arabella knew this.

Arabella relied on this.

But Arabella’s beauty had never yet faced Krampus.

Girls Who Watched

Behind her, in the rows of narrow iron bedsteads, half the Second Form crouched behind blankets, whispering furiously.

“She’s done it again,” hissed Primrose Pembury, who had once taken the blame for Arabella’s practical joke involving a frog in the Latin master’s hat.

“And she’ll get away with it again,” muttered Clara Dawlish, who had written one hundred lines after Arabella persuaded her to switch name-tags on the exam papers.

“I’d like to see her caught. Just once!” whispered Lottie, who had been given detention when Arabella accidentally (on purpose) set off a smoke-bomb during sewing.

Little Sally Billings (who had been framed for the “ink-in-the-cocoa” incident) clutched her hot-water bottle and breathed, “Look at her! Smirking like she owns the place!”

The girls’ resentment simmered in the cold air.

This was the year Arabella Fairchild would receive her comeuppance.

They could feel it.

(more…)

  • 1
    Borrowed from Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather (I think).
discipline External shot of St. Clare School in the afternoon sun. In the foreground is a girl in a white shirt laying on a cot.

The MP Visits Saint Clare Part V – Clarissa in the Infirmary 1

Posted on By Mija

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“The MP Visits Saint Clare” continues

Earlier instalments:

Further particulars may be found in the Foreword below.

This sequence draws from the Charrington Papers and the less officious corners of Saint Clare’s—those neat staff reports never meant to withstand scrutiny; the household logs written with a pointed, domestic hauteur; and the diaries, margins, and illicit notes in which the girls record rather more than their elders imagine. Some documents are respectably typed. Others arrive in the swift, unsteady cursive of someone writing under pressure, or in a place she very much oughtn’t be.

Readers are invited to take up the archivist’s task, and the investigator’s pleasure, of weighing the School’s polished accounts against the smudged, contradictory recollections of those who actually lived the day. Much will be implied. Little will be stated outright. And attentive readers may notice that Miss Gladys Williams’s file, though she left Saint Clare more than five years ago, has begun to grow again—curiously, and on no official authority whatsoever.

The archive remembers. And so, of course, does Inez.

Comments are warmly welcomed. While I enjoy seeing them on Bluesky and Twitter, those left here become part of the archive proper, where they may—quietly—shape what follows.

Saint Clare November: 42,924 / 50,000 words

Foreword

From the Archivist

Having concluded Miss Kelley’s contribution to the Charrington Papers—written, as ever, from a strategically advantageous desk—we proceed to the next document set, in which Saint Clare’s own medical wing weighs in.

Clarissa Charrington’s transfer to the infirmary on the evening of 12 July was recorded with the calm efficiency peculiar to boarding school matrons, who tend to regard tears as symptoms, disobedience as diagnosis, and cod-liver oil as cure. Matron Whitlock’s notes provide the official version: measured, sensible, and serenely unconcerned with the child’s sense of dignity.

Clarissa’s corresponding diary entry presents something rather different: a young heroine stunned by shock, shame, and a games skirt that suddenly felt two inches too short for public consumption.

Between the two, the reader may triangulate something like truth.

CLARISSA CHARRINGTON – DIARY

Entry 1 – In the Headmaster’s StudyMiss Kelley comforts crying girl.

12 July 1955 – Afternoon

It happened. It truly happened. I keep writing the words to make them real, but my hands won’t stop shaking. Papa asked Mr Lewis for the room, and then for me, and he was perfectly calm – horribly calm, the kind of calm that means there is no escape. I thought I knew what it would feel like, being in trouble with Papa, but it is worse when he doesn’t even raise his voice. Worse than shouting. Worse than anything.

I was marched in still in my games kit, looking a fright. I had grass on my socks and my blouse wasn’t properly tucked in, and all I could think was that if I’d known he was coming, I would at least have changed. But I didn’t know. No one warned me. Georgie Fairfax only said the Head wanted me at once. (more…)

fiction

The MP Visits Saint Clare Part IV – Heard From the Outer Office

Posted on By Mija

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Banner of "How to Read Inez of the Upper iV"“The MP Visits Saint Clare” continues

Earlier instalments:

Further particulars may be found in the Foreword.

This sequence draws from the Charrington Papers and the less officious corners of Saint Clare’s—those neat staff reports never meant to withstand scrutiny; the household logs written with a pointed, domestic hauteur; and the diaries, margins, and illicit notes in which the girls record rather more than their elders imagine. Some documents are respectably typed. Others arrive in the swift, unsteady cursive of someone writing under pressure, or in a place she very much oughtn’t be.

Readers are invited to take up the archivist’s task, and the investigator’s pleasure, of weighing the School’s polished accounts against the smudged, contradictory recollections of those who actually lived the day. Much will be implied. Little will be stated outright. And attentive readers may notice that Miss Gladys Williams’s file, though she left Saint Clare more than five years ago, has begun to grow again—curiously, and on no official authority whatsoever.

The archive remembers. And so, of course, does Inez.

Comments are warmly welcomed. While I enjoy seeing them on Bluesky and Twitter, those left here become part of the archive proper, where they may—quietly—shape what follows.

Foreword – Archivist Note

Among the curiosities preserved in the Saint Clare papers, few are as revealing—or as inadvertently scholarly—as the diary entries of Miss Anne Kelley, English Mistress. Her account of 12 July illustrates a trait well known among school staff but rarely acknowledged in print: the ability to listen with perfect composure while appearing to be engaged in productive labour.

This instalment reproduces her notes from that afternoon, recorded with the precision of a woman trained to mark essays, spot inconsistencies, and deduce motive from grammar alone. Her vantage in the outer office afforded her a position both enviable and unenviable: she was neither participant nor bystander, but something closer to a reluctant ethnographer with unusually good access.

Readers familiar with the preceding parts (particularly the testimonies of Miss Williams) will find here a corrective of sorts. Where Gladys dealt in melodrama and sensation, Miss Kelley offers structure, sequence, and the kind of politely shaded inference that could, if one wished, form the basis of a conference paper on mid-century educational discipline.

What follows is her account: measured, attentive, and unintentionally comprehensive. It is a rare look at how a seasoned member of staff interprets a scene that most schools prefer to consign to institutional memory rather than institutional record.

From the Journal of Miss A. Kelley

12 July 1955

  An extraordinary scene in the Head’s office today. I shall write it down in detail if only to convince myself it truly happened.

  I was meant to be correcting essays in the outer office, though in truth I had half an ear cocked to the corridor. One learns early at Saint Clare’s that most essays will wait, but a first-class opportunity to eavesdrop will not.

(more…)

fiction

The MP Visits Saint Clare Part III – Gladys Williams’ Return

Posted on By Mija

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“The MP Visits Saint Clare” continues

Earlier instalments:

Further particulars may be found in the Foreword.

This sequence draws from the Charrington Papers and the less officious corners of Saint Clare’s—those neat staff reports never meant to withstand scrutiny; the household logs written with a pointed, domestic hauteur; and the diaries, margins, and illicit notes in which the girls record rather more than their elders imagine. Some documents are respectably typed. Others arrive in the swift, unsteady cursive of someone writing under pressure, or in a place she very much oughtn’t be.

Readers are invited to take up the archivist’s task, and the investigator’s pleasure, of weighing the School’s polished accounts against the smudged, contradictory recollections of those who actually lived the day. Much will be implied. Little will be stated outright. And attentive readers may notice that Miss Gladys Williams’s file, though she left Saint Clare more than five years ago, has begun to grow again—curiously, and on no official authority whatsoever.

The archive remembers. And so, of course, does Inez.

Comments are warmly welcomed. While I enjoy seeing them on Bluesky and Twitter, those left here become part of the archive proper, where they may—quietly—shape what follows.

Foreword (From the Archivist):

Readers who have followed Part II will remember that Miss Gladys Williams arrived at Saint Clare already defeated by heat, hunger, and Mr. Charrington’s conversational style (which may be charitably described as “Hansard, but crosser”). What awaited her inside the administrative building was not respite but that most perilous of schoolgirl terrains: the dim corridor leading to the walnut-panelled study of the Head.

Few who have passed through those doors, whether with contraband in their pockets or mud on their gym-slips, ever forget the sensation. The smell of polish, the sense of one’s sins rising from the floorboards like mist, the dreadful awareness that one’s shoes are suddenly either too loud or too squeaky but never, alas, normal.

Gladys records here the brief march between the playing fields and that fateful door, her glossy heels clicking out a rhythm that suggests not so much “dignified adult woman” as “junior in a very great deal of trouble indeed.” It is one of the more revealing passages in the Charrington Papers: a moment when a grown woman discovers, to her horror, that the past can still catch her by the collar.

This instalment brings us only as far as the threshold. Beyond it, another witness. One who’s far calmer, far drier, and with far fewer personal grievances, will take up the tale. 

From Gladys Williams Diary

12 July 1955 continued

Yet there was no way for me to join the Saint Clare girls on the upper fields. Turning away from the bright, joyful noise, I faced the administrative building, every brick of it as unforgiving as I remembered

Here we stepped out of the light and into the dim hallway. That smell! Lavender wax polish, some sort of industrial cleaner, and somehow, beneath it all, a faint whiff of boiled cabbage.

The heat of the motor had wilted me utterly. My suit,  the darling black one with the tiny white polka-dots (quite of the moment!) .hung heavy and creased from the long ride, the fitted waist damp where I had leaned against the sticky leather. My little red hat, once crisp, now felt mashed and crooked against my hair, and my matching gloves clung unpleasantly to my fingers. Even my handbag seemed accusatory, its bright scarlet too bold in the dim corridor. Worst of all were the heels, high, glossy, and entirely unsuitable for school tiles. Theye struck the floor sharply with every step, announcing my approach like a metronome of doom. (more…)

fiction

The MP Visits Saint Clare Part II – The Road to Saint Clare

Posted on By Mija

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Banner of "How to Read Inez of the Upper iV"This sequence draws from the Charrington Papers and the less officious corners of Saint Clare’s—those neat staff reports never meant to withstand scrutiny; the household logs written with a pointed, domestic hauteur; and the diaries, margins, and illicit notes in which the girls record rather more than their elders imagine. Some documents are respectably typed. Others arrive in the swift, unsteady cursive of someone writing under pressure, or in a place she very much oughtn’t be.

Readers are invited to take up the archivist’s task, and the investigator’s pleasure, of weighing the School’s polished accounts against the smudged, contradictory recollections of those who actually lived the day. Much will be implied. Little will be stated outright. And attentive readers may notice that Miss Gladys Williams’s file, though she left Saint Clare more than five years ago, has begun to grow again—curiously, and on no official authority whatsoever.

The archive remembers. And so, of course, does Inez.

Comments are warmly welcomed. While I enjoy seeing them on Bluesky and Twitter, those left here become part of the archive proper, where they may—quietly—shape what follows.

The MP Visits Saint Clare continues. The earlier parts are:

Context is in Foreword below.

The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a constellation of documents—some official, drawn from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others more intimate, taken from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font.

Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained. But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here, and promise to respond. Moreover your ideas and reactions also join the archives, where they may quietly shape what comes next.

Foreword (From the Archivist)

Those who have read the entry for 11 July 1955 will recall that the day ended in no small amount of sulking, slammed doors, and the sort of tense household quiet that staff notice before anyone else. Indeed, Mrs Dorcas Fielding—Housekeeper of Birchwood Grange and long-suffering witness to Miss Gladys Williams’s moods—noted in her report that she was “glad to see the back of them both” when the party departed the next morning.

With that cheerful blessing, we arrive at 12 July, a date that would prove no gentler for anyone involved.

This first instalment follows Gladys’s own account of the journey from London to Saint Clare: the damp gloves, the Lyons tea, the spitefully packed hamper, and the slow, piercing recognition that she is returning not merely to a school but to the last place her life made any sense.

It is worth remembering, as the Rover crawls toward Oxford and tempers fray, that the true calamity of the day has not yet occurred. Gladys feels it coming—in the rustle of Gerald’s papers, in the heaviness of her own hunger, and in the sinking of her heart as the familiar silhouette of the school rises before her.

For now, though, it is enough to follow her into the motor just after nine o’clock, with Mrs Fielding watching from the doorway and thanking Providence that whatever awaits them in Wales will, at least, be elsewhere.

Gladys’s Diary

12 July, on the road to Saint Clare

We left London at nine sharp, Gerald, punctual as a firing squad, calling to me when I was still buttoning my gloves, so no breakfast nor even tea for me. St Alban’s was wrapped in mist, drizzle spotting the windscreen, my gloves clammy already. Gerald plonked himself down with his papers the instant we were in the Rover, and poor Fowler set off steady as a metronome. Judgment and disapproval rolling off Gerald like steam off a pudding. Every rustle of his notes made me feel like I’d committed a fresh crime.

By Oxford my stomach was ready to stage a mutiny. We stopped at Lyons Corner House, thank heaven,  though it was hardly salvation: tea weak as dishwater, buns hard enough to kill a pigeon, but at least something hot. Gerald read The Times while pointedly checking his watch every five minutes. Typical. I chewed gloomily and imagined eggs and bacon at the Dorchester.

I would have smoked to take the edge off, but that, too, is forbidden me. Gerald says I ought to “begin as I mean to go on”, since the Institute won’t allow cigarettes and I had better be quit of them now, mentioning that, given my changed allowance, I should refrain from setting money on fire. As if I were some horrid addict to be weaned, instead of a perfectly normal woman who likes a fag with her tea. What utter rot.

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fiction

The MP Visits Saint Clare: Part I – 8 – 12 July 1955

Posted on By Mija

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And we’re back in 1955. Sorry about the time traveling. We will get back to Ned and Honour soon.

Context is in Foreword below.

The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a constellation of documents—some official, drawn from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others more intimate, taken from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font.

Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained. But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here, and promise to respond. Moreover your ideas and reactions also join the archives, where they may quietly shape what comes next..

Foreword

From the Archivist

If the Prologue shows Miss Williams after a disastrous morning at the Institute, the present entry shows the three days that led to it—days filled with small offences, smaller triumphs, and domestic tensions that simmered steadily from the 8th to the 12th. Birchwood is not a large house, but it proves more than large enough for misadventure.

When last we left Miss Gladys Williams, it was the night of 11 July 1955, as she lay awake in a fury: raw from her first morning at the Domestic Institute, smarting under Gerald’s tight-lipped decrees, and dreading the next day’s return to Saint Clare School for Girls.

Before we press on to the events of the 12th (where the scenes in the Headmaster’s office still leave Miss Kelley wincing in her private journal), we must step back. Gladys’s bewildered anger in that entry did not spring from nowhere. It was the culmination of several small misadventures, misjudgments, and more than one melodrama by post.

Readers may wish to revisit:

The Elwood Files — the failed attempt to slip Inez’s letter past the school authorities.
The Lady and the Headmaster — in which Lady de Vries learns just enough to become dangerously perceptive.
The Secret Letters, Part I — where Gladys first involves herself in a correspondence she might have been wiser to avoid.
Melodrama by Post — ending in Clarissa’s own very revealing postscript.
Heard in the Charrington Household — Miss Gladys, hauled home from Scotland, is made to “answer for herself.”
Gladys in Trouble — Gerald’s formal terms, Gladys’s formal compliance, and the informal tears that followed.

Yet between her 7 July return and that prophetic line on the 11th — “Apparently 25 is still old enough to be spanked by circumstance” — lies a small but significant gap: three too-warm, sticky, uncomfortable days during which

  • Mrs Fielding’s patience was tested,
  • young Elsie was driven to tears (twice),
  • the milkman did not cometh,
  • the vicarage was pressed into service for stamps,
  • the Institute visit loomed like a thundercloud,
  • and Miss Gladys Williams of St Albans ricocheted between fury, sulks, and the sort of despair that leads a young woman to accuse, with more heat than prudence, a certain lady of having set the entire chain of events in motion.

The documents that follow: Mrs Fielding’s notes, Elsie Turner’s account, Gladys’s own private scribblings, and an unfortunately not-so-private letter, restore that missing chapter. Together, they illuminate why the 11th felt to Gladys like a trap snapping shut, and how the stage was set for the catastrophe of the following day.

For the most attentive readers, it may also be worth glancing back at the 1938 Honour’s Game series:

Connections grow clearer in hindsight, though none of the players in 1955 yet understand how far the past reaches into their present.

Some of the documents reproduced below are drawn from the Blue Room Archives at Saint Clare, specifically from the Lady Gwen de Vries papers and from the Charrington household files.

The Notes of Mrs Dorcas Fielding, Housekeeper
8 to 11 July 1955, St Albans

Friday, 8 July 1955

Since Mr Charrington and Miss Gladys came home yesterday, the house has been all upheaval. Miss Gladys stayed in her room most of the day, resting from her journey. Breakfast tray sent up at eight; returned at ten with only the toast disturbed. Luncheon laid in the dining room; untouched. At half past three she rang for tea and something sweet, then refused the scones as too dry.

Her untouched meals made me want to cry. It is a sin to waste good food.

Young Elsie Turner has been up and down the back stairs carrying trays that come back as full as they went up. I warned her not to show temper. It is not for us to say what a lady ought to eat. But I did begin reducing the portions. There is only so much that can be scraped into the pig bucket before it weighs on one’s conscience.

Mr Charrington kept to his study. He did not speak of Miss Gladys or ask whether she had come down to meals.

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