Inez’s Diary, 19 June 1955

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 How to Read “Inez of the Upper IV”
The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a series of documents—some official, pulled from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others are more intimate, drawn from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others will 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 them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here and promise to respond.

Forward to Inez’s Diary Entry 1

(Pinned inside the front cover, possibly written years later. Possibly not.)

The pages that follow were not meant to be shared. Not with teachers. Not with school authorities. Certainly not with Mummy (not that she would ever read another’s diary!). These are the extremely private thoughts of one Inez de Vries, age fourteen, penned under the covers at Saint Clare’s School for Girls, Summer Term 1955, using a torch that needed new batteries and her trusty, if leaky, fountain pen.

They were tucked away in a locked tuckbox, behind an embroidered handkerchief, a Latin vocab book, and three boiled sweets (two of them fuzzed). She cursed the book so no one could read them. Naturally, you may read them anyway –but on your own head be it.

You may already have seen other documents from this term — the official reports, the memos, the staff meeting minutes (oops! that’s tomorrow!), the infamous reflective essay. This document is not like those –i’s her diary, what she didn’t say, not even to her closest friend. Or perhaps especially not to her closest friend.

It’s tempting to say the diary reveals “the real Inez,” but that’s too easy. All of these posts are “real,” as Inez was “real” in all her forms: the strategist, the spark, the girl with too much cleverness and just enough conscience. Her diary doesn’t contradict the rest —-it deepens it. Complicates it. And, perhaps makes you feel ashamed for having read it.

Grown-up Inez, now an old woman of 84 –though she doesn’t look a day over 70– will likely laugh and claim it was all fiction, all drama, all performance, and perhaps it was. Still, if feminism taught me nothing else, it’s the truth that just because something’s constructed doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

— Archivist’s Note, redacted version. Not for circulation outside Form IV without permission.

Private!!!!
This diary is for me only so you Get Out! 

To Whomever Disturbs This Book:

Death shall come on swift wings to him who touches the secrets of the daughter of de Vries.¹Adapted from the tomb of King Tut. Look it up — they found the curse scratched in charcoal behind a statue. No, really.

Sunday, 19 June 1955 
(Under the covers. Torch getting dim. Note to self: Ask Mummy for batteries in next letter. Also: do Not leave this in pillowcase again, you idiot.)

Dear Diary,

I wasn’t going to go up there, truly. I’d survived the caning — medium cane, four sets of three, all very proper — and I wrote the “reflective” essay they asked for. It said what happened. It said more than what happened: it named names, explained motives, laid everything out. No one but me wanted that, but TOO BAD.

Miss Kelley said it didn’t take responsibility. But it did — it took as much as I should, as much as is mine. I’m not going to take ALL of it. I may have been the spark, but the fire came from Mr. Mean’s hot air and rage going TOO FAR. They all know it, tooo, whatever they say.
(Must stop calling him Mr. Mean. Even in here or will do it where he could hear about it. That’s the sort of thing some swot fink might tell him.)

It was amazing – Green was incandescent. Not only red, but that awful blotchy purple one sees on exploding thermometers. I rather thought he might burst. (No such luck.)

BJ didn’t say much, but when he read my essay he looked at me all soft-eyed, almost regretful. As though he wished it hadn’t come to this. That I hadn’t lied. Or hadn’t written it. Or that he hadn’t had to cane me.

He did, though. Not as many as Green demanded (that many would have killed or mamed me and BJ knew it).

It hurt — far more than I expected, to be honest. The kind of pain that makes your breath go somewhere else. I ended up breathing in hard, gasping softly rather than crying out. Fear taken as courage.
(Don’t cry while writing. Ink smudges. Lesson learned.)

But I know I’m right and that made it hurt less.

Still, I’ve felt odd all day — as if the inside of me were rattling slightly out of place. Not fragile exactly. But not quite firm either. After chapel I told myself I ought to “document the injuries.” I even said it aloud, very politely: “Matron, I think there’s some marking — would you mind checking?”
(Practised it in the mirror. I sounded calm and understated. Not tragic or dramatic, I’m sure..)

She looked, of course. Not much to see: some bruising, faint and orderly. Matron poked and prodded in her usual no-nonsense way and took my temperature while she was at it.
(She always does that. It’s like she thinks everything is secretly influenza. Or measles.)

Her verdict?  “You’ll live,” and then gave me cod-liver oil, as she said it would “help the healing.”

Okay. Matron thinks it cures everything.

She asked if my hands still stung, and I said they did even though they really didn’t. Not really really. Only in the way that pain remembers itself. Tawsing them was a nasty thing to do. More Mr. Mean unfairness and brutality.

She told me I could go, that I ought to enjoy the afternoon, but I didn’t want to go. I stayed beside her instead, silent. After a minute I asked if I could lie down.

Matron said yes. But then didn’t look at me when she said, “You can’t go back to being small, you know. Even if you want to.”

I didn’t answer. I knew she was right. I didn’t answer because — for one dangerous moment — I didwant to and knew if I said anything I’d start sobbing.

I wanted to be six again, back in the nursery at Grandmother’s, wrapped in Nanny’s arms and the rustle of her apron. I used to see her every day of my life. She was mine — mine and Father’s — a shared secret. Father says Nanny knows how to hold the world steady and she does.

Being six was better than being seven, and both were better than being fourteen.

Matron let me lie there for a while. She pretended not to notice the quiet tears sliding into the pillow. Eventually I asked if I could stay the night. Just one night. She said no.

A definite “NO” for even asking — she smacked me in case that wasn’t clear enough — briskly, without even telling me she was going to do it. I was just suddenly over her lap. She told me to stop feeling sorry for myself – that I’m not a little girl anymore and must stop acting like one.

It hurt, in a way worse than the caning. But better too –the hurt helped. It was the kind that steadies you.

No one else knows, but when I first came to Saint Clare’s, I cried every night for Nanny. Matron terrified me with her thermometer and ever-ready-tablespoon, but she smelled like starch and soap — the same as Nanny. Clean, familiar and safe. When she said, “Good night, Inez. Sleep now,” I believed her. It worked.

When I was younger, I used to cry to see if Nanny would soften. Let me stay up a little longer, curled with her by the fire. She almost never did. It felt mean to make me be in the cold nursery all alone. But now, I think it was the not-softening that made her strong. That was how she held the world still.

Matron is the same in her way — not with hymns and knitting, but with teacup rattling and brisk scoldings, evenly distributed to everyone in the school.

I used to think all women in charge of girls were built the same: straight backs, broad arms, short hair, thick shoes, no patience for drama and immune to nonsense.

Still, I cried in the infirmary far more than the sting warrented, something Matron knew. Where I am right now is scary – nothing is stable anymore.

Even so, I’m not sorry for the essay. Or for the things it made them say aloud. Tomorrow is the staff meeting, where my name will almost certainly be passed around like the biscuit tin no one wants to admit to raiding.

Tonight I am, sore and full of cod-liver oil, sleepless, nothing left to do but wait.

For now, I’ve been put back in my place. And maybe — just for now — that’s safer than inventing one of my own. (Only for now. NOTE TO SELF: Learn the boundaries before redrawing the map.)

I’ll be better tomorrow. Or at least cleverer.

Nanny used to say, “Little girls with too much cleverness often confuse it for rightness.”
I didn’t understand then. I think I do now.

Yes, I’m proud. I like feeling brave. But I’m also — quietly, privately — a little ashamed that I wanted to stay in the infirmary all day. That I wish I were still there, being made to sleep. That I wanted someone else to be in charge. That I liked it when Matron scolded me the way I’d expected.

I can be brave. I’ll be brave tomorrow. But part of me still wants her to say “goodnight.”

— Inez

(In the corner, lightly pencilled:)
Mr. J = Those Latin eyes!
(scratched out hard enough to tear the page a bit)

(Note to self: Never, ever write that again. So Mortifying. Burn this page? No. Will keep as evidence of weakness, to be overcome.)

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  Adapted from the tomb of King Tut. Look it up — they found the curse scratched in charcoal behind a statue. No, really.