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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.
Afterwards, Clarissa disappeared with Miss Kelley, still crying. Fowler was called back over from the Crown—where he was, no doubt, partaking of his pint and pie. Everyone taken care of. Everyone fed.
Everyone but me.
By the time we left Saint Clare, the whole business sat like a stone in my stomach. We walked out into the late afternoon sun and there was the Humber, waiting, smug as only a politician’s car can look. Fowler held the door for me. Gerald followed and unfolded his papers before Fowler even shut us in.
The road back towards Shrewsbury blurred past. Fields, hedges, the odd clump of trees. None of it felt real. I wrote to keep from thinking. I could still hear the scrape of the chair as he pulled it into the middle of the Head’s study. His voice saying, “Punished at school means punished at home.” Clarissa’s, breaking on her plea “Not here, Papa, please not at school…” The steady sound of his hand falling, and falling, and falling.
I tried to tell myself it was over now and there was no point in thinking about it, but couldn’t stop so I wrote and wrote. My knees still felt hollow. Whenever I stopped writing I kept my hands pushed under my thighs to stop them shaking. Gerald rustled his papers and made neat little pencil notes in the margins. Fowler hummed to himself, some music-hall tune or other. I stared straight ahead, focused on my posture, still thinking about how it felt to stand there and do nothing.
None of it stops me feeling fifteen again, sulky and cornered, wanting to slam doors until the house rattles and shout UNFAIR at the top of my lungs. Nor does it stop the horrible certainty that if I gave in to the temptation, Gerald would drag me across his knee with as little ceremony as he had poor little Clarissa.
We stopped once at a little garage for petrol. I didn’t get out. Fowler saw to the motor. Gerald stretched his legs and checked his watch. The heat had that flat late-afternoon feel. I watched the shadow of the Humber on the ground, the dust hanging in the air, and tried not to think about Clarissa’s bare legs below her games skirt and how stiffly she’d walked out of the office.
It was past eight by the time we turned in at Bryn Derwen. The house sits on its hill as if it is always slightly offended, and that evening it looked particularly so. Mrs Hughes threw the front door open before we were halfway up the path.
“Cawl for supper,” she said. “You’ll want something hot after all that driving.”
Outside the air was fresh and cool. Inside, the smell met us in the hall. Mutton, onions, swedes, carrots, potatoes, all boiled together into one thick, steamy mass. Gerald said it was “just the thing” and sat down at the head of the table as if he owned it. Fowler was given a place too and took it without a qualm. Neither pulled out a chair or waited for me.
I tried to smile as I moved towards the table and shook my head. “Honestly, Mrs Hughes, I don’t think I could manage a bite. That long drive has made my stomach quite queer.”
She sniffed and folded her arms. “There’s cold steak and kidney pie in the icebox if you don’t care for the cawl.”
Cold pie. Kidneys. I felt a bit dizzy and thought I might be ill on the spot. Gerald raised his eyebrows the way he does when I am not behaving as he thinks a Charrington girl ought to behave, even if I am not one. I am a Williams, and this is my house. I met his gaze for as long as I dared, then poured myself a cup of tea instead and sat there, light-headed from the smell of lamb fat and suet, while he had two helpings and told Mrs Hughes it was excellent. Fowler cleared his plate as if he had never seen food before and looked as if he could go round again.
Everyone fed. Everyone happy. Everyone but me.
Once I’d escaped, I went straight upstairs to the bedroom that was mine and Margaret’s. Her bed is still there, but I can’t bring myself to lie in it. She never let me when she was here, except when she invited me in during thunderstorms. I won’t trespass in it now she’s gone, not even for one night. That’s hers.
So I sit here on my own little bed in the corner, the same one I slept in before I went away to school. It hasn’t grown in the slightest, though I have. My feet nearly touch the end now. The sheets, though fresh, smell of dust and damp wool, no doubt because the linens haven’t been aired. That’s not Mrs Hughes’s fault; if Gerald had given her half a day’s notice I know she’d have beaten them on the line and made everything smell of sun and soap. She’s house-proud. As it is, we descended with barely any warning and I am left with pillows that smell of dust and mould.
I try not to cry. When I lie down the smell of lamb seems to have sunk into my hair, but there is no question of a bath. I can hear Gerald moving about downstairs, one man and his echoes in a house that ought to belong to three women. Bryn Derwen is ours—Margaret’s and mine, and now Clarissa’s too. Gerald is, at most, a caretaker, however he sits at the head of the table and gives orders. I remind myself of this several times, in case I forget.
I might as well be twelve, sent to bed in disgrace. I have eaten nothing since yesterday’s breakfast at the Institute. I thought perhaps I could go on a hunger strike and slowly fade away until I was treated better. It was a very noble plan until I remembered the treacle sponge.
Though I had not been able to bear the sight of it downstairs, sitting in its basin and smelling of syrup and school treats, now, lying here in the dark, I find I would give my soul for one spoonful. Perhaps not my entire soul. But some portion of it.
So here I am, sulking in an undersized bed, with a hollow stomach and my head ringing with the sound of Gerald’s hand falling and Clarissa’s voice begging him to stop until it dissolved into sobs. If this is what comes of being a clever aunt, slipping letters past prefects, I might as well have stayed at the Institute and learnt to make proper sponge for Clarissa, for all the good I’ve done.
Still. Mustn’t grumble.
Afterword
With this entry, the Saint Clare record pauses once more.
The term continues; lessons resume; the summer holidays approach. At the school itself, the incident is already being absorbed into routine.
The next document follows the consequences beyond the school gates, where they prove rather harder to contain.
These last two entries from Gladys’ journal are so telling and so sad. This is a young woman of great promise, deeply engaged in reflection, but reflection in a distorted mirror pointed at the wrong things/people. This seething resentment, this frustrated entitlement—it’s a chasm into which, if she is not soon rescued (by someone else or, better, by herself) she may fall too deeply for escape. She may well turn around to find that 10 or 15 years have gone and she’s facing impending middle age with a chip on her shoulder, a shard of flint in her heart and nothing to call her own life.
What’s needed, it seems to me, is for her to find a way to really look at and assess HERSELF—her strengths, her weaknesses, her potential, her limitations, her place in her family and the world, and then to fix on a purpose and meaning for her adulthood. (Perhaps that place is back at Saint Clare’s?). Having done that, she has to take charge of her own happiness in something more substantial than smart cocktails, smart dresses and smart company. (Not that any of that is bad, it’s just that none of it is a LIFE.)
What it seems to me Gerald might be able to do is to help her concentrate her mind on doing all of that, by helping her see the need of it, and by giving her the space, support and encouragement to do so. And I think he might well get that process underway, and possibly open her ears to such good advice, by providing the very sort of prolonged and salutary spanking that all of this damnable sulking makes one’s palm simply itch to administer. (But, let’s be honest here: First, I do rather tend to think that’s more or less always the best place to start with sulky, drifting young women. And, second, I may be giving Gerald too much credit. If all he sees is rules and consequences, if he can only punish, but cannot lead, Gladys may be beyond him. One must then hope Gladys encounters someone else who can rise to that task. Because the girl needs a sharp shock and a hard turn, and soon.)
Mija, this delightful series continues to broaden and deepen in ways that draw the reader into the world you have created. What a colorful and complete cast of characters you have given us. I find myself thinking about them often, and rushing to read each new entry. More than that an author cannot wish. (Well, a seven-figure advance on a three-book deal, perhaps. But otherwise, nothing more.)
I’m delighted (and a little alarmed, or at least nervous) by how invested you are in Gladys’s moral rehabilitation! The young lady does seem to provoke that urge in readers and story characters, half pity, half exasperation.
You’re quite right that she’s looking in all the wrong mirrors and going the wrong directions at the moment, and that the clock is ticking. Whether Gerald is a saviour, a jailer, or simply another wrong mirror is something the story is still very much exploring.
As always, thank you for such a generous and lively response, and for caring about these people. I confess they feel very real to me.
Well let’s not fail to be honest. Just as everything becomes a nail when all one has is hammer, so too the solution to every (at least fictional) young woman’s ennui, funk, dissatisfaction, strop, sass or what have you seems to ME to be a spanking. I confess the obvious: my judgment may be ever so slightly clouded by my pervading interest in seeing Gladys spanked.
With that caveat in mind, though, I persist in my view: The young woman needs spanked, and soon, and it would do her a world of good.
As always, eager to see the next chapters in this rich saga.
I don’t disagree. Somehow though, at least so far, Gladys is missing someone to watch over her. Poor girl!
Happy New Year and very best wishes and more !
B 🙂
Happy New Year to you too! 🙂 It’s been a fun year at Saint Clare.