back as the first sparks ignited and crumpled, black and red-edged, spitting and snapping, blue-at-heart flames stroking the bricked inners of the fireplace.
‘I’ll do whatever I can to help.’
He placed the poker back into the fire set.
‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘then we have you.’
He turned back to her, folded his arms across his narrow, suited chest.
‘You’re only here because Miss Lott saw something in you.’
He smoothed his moustache again.
‘I never saw you as the right sort for the college. Rather too outspoken for my liking. Easily distracted. I find it hard to see you with Miss Lott’s eyes. You spent your inheritance on being trained in a profession. Noble and sensible yes, but exceptional?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not surprised it has come to this.’
‘To what?’
He kept her waiting, looked at the fire again.
‘Your dalliance with the Women’s League has sent shockwaves right to the very top of the Board of Education. There can only be one outcome. I’m sure you’ve come to much the same conclusion yourself.’
Without even trying she knew that she couldn’t speak, but he was right; she had known it would come to this.
‘How old are you?’ he pressed on.
‘How old? I’ll be thirty-five in September.’
‘Well then all is not lost. It won’t be easy at your age to find a husband. You were led off course by an unnerving display of loyalty to Miss Mulberry, but there’s still time.’
It’s not Delphi’s fault I haven’t married. They both knew that while the war had indeed left a shortage of marriageable men, it was her dedication to her teaching career that had taken her out of the husband race altogether, and the war had seen to it that it was a race. Once she’d trained as a teacher she discovered spinsterhood was part of the package. Men didn’t like to marry teachers, and if that wasn’t enough to keep her from taking the veil, there was the government’s marriage bar for teachers too. How can he say it is because of my friendship with Delphi? That is ALL I have had these past years.
But Lord Lacey was saying she needed a husband, not for love…because my teaching career is over.
‘Lord Lacey. My commitment to this college has never wavered.’
It wasn’t the truth. More and more she’d felt she was missing out on life beyond the grounds. That’s what took me to Olympia, wasn’t it? A lack of commitment. Confusion. She allowed Margaret to run amok because she wished she could do that herself. But, no matter how disillusioned she’d become, she needed this job. It was her home, her income, her pension. Even if I often wish it wasn’t the case: this job is who I am.
The room had become unpleasantly hot. Everything was to be lost over a silly mistake.
He held up his pistol-shaped hand. ‘Miss Lott has insisted we give you another opportunity to explain yourself, so go on...’
She cleared her throat and waited until she was ready to speak.
‘Lord Lacey. I am as uncomfortable about the Women’s League of Health and Beauty as you, or any official at the Board of Education.’
‘Then you’ve been irresponsible. You have allowed your views to be misrepresented.’
Shaking, she put her hands on her hips. ‘Please, Lord Lacey. I’ve made a mistake and I’m truly sorry.’
She hid her trembling hands behind her back.
‘Please.’ Whether she had said that aloud or just whispered it, she couldn’t be sure.
He took a deep breath, fondled his moustache, and then finally shook his head.
‘You know, I might have been inclined to help you if you’d done what I asked and sent down Margaret Wilkins. Instead I had to listen to her mother gloating about her daughter’s raw talent. You realise your actions have made it harder to get rid of that family now?’
That was the general idea.
‘Miss Flacker, you are dismissed from your role here.’
‘You can’t. Please,’ she said, or at least she thought she said it. She heard the words at a distance.
As soon as she’d seen that photograph and the stupid caption in the newspaper, she’d known what would happen. Yet she’d still hoped that common decency and Miss Lott’s reach would be enough to save her. That damned Stack woman was behind that caption. She must have sought out that photographer, told him Natalie’s name, position, and exaggerated about their meeting.
She realised that alongside the panic and fear of how she would survive without her job, part of her, a large part of her, was relieved that she would be leaving and free of this place after so long.
‘To keep this scandal to a minimum…’ he pushed back his suit blazer to put his hands in his pockets ‘…it would be for the best if you left quietly in the morning.’
*
Natalie jumped up so fast at the knock on her door that she banged her knee on the metal frame of her bed. It was just after midnight.
Miss Lott stood in the doorway in her flannelette nightgown, her curls drooping and her face bearing considerably less sheen than the pearls around her neck.
‘You’re still here?’ Natalie said.
Miss Lott gestured that she wanted to come in.
Natalie looked at her own bare feet, her plum-coloured satin pyjamas, and pulled the door to unhook her matching dressing gown from its peg on the door’s inside. She sat on the edge of the bed so that Miss Lott could take the desk chair.
‘I came to find you earlier, but I thought I’d missed you,’ Natalie said. ‘I’m so sad that you’re leaving.’
Miss Lott sighed and rested her hands between her open knees. ‘And I’m not the only one leaving, am I?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m afraid Miss Flacker that Lord Lacey has always rather liked the scent of your scalp. You’ve too much gumption for a woman. He doesn’t like it. I’ve always managed to talk him around but I’m afraid this time you’ve gone too far.’ Natalie swallowed hard.
‘Perhaps it’s for the best.’ She could at last be honest about it. ‘I didn’t much fancy staying on without you.’
‘It is going to be difficult for you to teach again.’
Natalie stayed quite still as she waited for Miss Lott to continue.
‘Whatever possessed you to go to the rally? Meeting that crank, Stack. I always said you and Delphi Mulberry were too close. She leads you astray.’ She shook her head.
Miss Lott would never understand what she’d seen and experienced at Olympia. Only Delphi knew what it meant to simultaneously be part of one huge uniformed mass in a hall, while having individual freedom.
‘It was a chance meeting with Miss Stack,’ she said instead, ‘and actually I left her with a flea in her ear about her methods. It’s not what Lord Lacey or the Board think at all.’ And still I can’t bring myself to tell her that I was curious and tempted by the League.
‘They need to make an example of you now. I’ll let you rest.’ They both rose, curving their upper bodies backwards to give each other a little more space.
Miss Lott glanced about her to the pile of books on the bedside table beside the photograph of Natalie’s father and three brothers, all of them gone now, except for William. The piles of belongings she’d have to pack in the morning: Women’s Weekly for the patterns, the Gray’s Anatomy and the college curriculum on the top.
Miss