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Saint Clare’s School for Girls
12 July 1955
My dear Gwennie,
You asked to be told when anything material touches Clarissa; what follows is for your eyes only. I was correcting essays at the outer desk by the Head’s study when Mr. Charrington arrived with Miss Gladys Williams. I will not pretend I did not linger. One can hear perfectly well from that chair if one is so inclined.
Gladys owned, in her truculent, defiant fashion, that she had slipped part of Clarissa’s letter into her own post so that it should reach you. Mr. Charrington pressed her to state the facts plainly (“from Inez to Lady de Vries”), which she did, though sulkily. The Head, much relieved to have the “mystery” solved, affected dignity and then fled into small talk and sandwiches while a girl was sent to fetch Clarissa.
There followed an awkward quarter-hour of weather, gardens, and the fête. I could hear the Head making host noises, and Mr. Charrington answering with that steady, clubman composure that does not trouble itself to rise for small inconveniences. Gladys said little, or nothing. Silence can be as expressive as speech when one is trapped in a room with adults.
When Clarissa was brought in and the door shut, Mr. Charrington took her through the same catechism he had exacted from Miss Williams: what she had done, what she ought to have done instead. Clarissa stumbled, then steadied; notably, she would not name Inez. When she could be led no farther, he supplied the rest himself and then, speaking first with real affection, then with authority, administered a paternal correction there and then. It was not savage, but it was inexorable; the sounds leave no doubt on that point. He told her the school was to hear no more of this, and that the matter would be concluded at home. When they emerged, she was tearful but contained; I sent her to Matron with a note and followed shortly to explain.
Before all this I took the trouble to read through Gladys’s file. It is one of the fattest in the cabinet (telegrams, letters, memoranda, marginalia in every hand), and yet not a single slip for lines, not a single record of detention or corporal punishment. Always tragedy, always indulgence, never consequence. She is, still, exactly as the early entries describe: lovely, spoilt, and unsteady, grown into her beauty but not into ballast. Mr. Charrington, meanwhile, was already the Member he is soon to be: correct, certain, and entirely blind to the patterns under his nose.
Inez will learn from this; she has the grit for it. Clarissa has learned something sooner than most, per disciplinam et lacrimas, ad astra, and will, I think, be the better for it. As for Gladys, I doubt she has learned anything at all.
Burn this, or lock it away with the others.
Yours Sincerely,
Anne Kelley