The conductor hastened down the aisle as he saw Bobby reach up to the luggage rack, but she swung her big plaid suitcase down easily. “Never mind.” She smiled. Her shoulder hardly twinged now—at least her body had recovered, if her subconscious hadn’t.
“This too?” The conductor took down a long, skinny package, wrapped in layers of brown paper and string, and looked at it quizzically. “Some kind of musical instrument?”
“No, it’s a hockey stick.” Bobby snatched it from him. “For field hockey.”
Her lucky stick, a parting gift from Madge, the assistant coach her freshman year. Why, this very stick had scored the winning goal in the 1962 Women’s National Field Hockey Championship just last fall—a record third straight victory for the Elliott College Spitfires. Would it win her success in her new career?
Holding the stick in one hand and the suitcase in her other, Bobby descended from the train, almost tripping in the unaccustomed confines of her narrow skirt. Recovering her balance, she glanced about her as the two other disembarking passengers hurried away.
Tall and rangy, her wavy chestnut hair trimmed short, her face tanned and windburned from years of playing outdoors, the ex–field hockey player looked older than her twenty-three years. Green-gray eyes above high cheekbones, narrowed thoughtfully as she surveyed Adena’s main street. A drugstore, a five-and-dime, a movie theater, and a sporting goods store. Quite a change after Bay City! And she wouldn’t even be living in the town, but up on the bluff along the river.
Bobby shrugged her shoulders against the too-tight tweed jacket. The doctor had advised rest and quiet—that was one of the reasons she’d taken this job. But how much quiet could she take?
“Miss Blanchard? Roberta Blanchard?”
Bobby turned. A smiling young woman in blue gingham pedal pushers was getting out of a paneled station wagon.
“That’s me—but call me Bobby, Bobby with a ‘y.’” Bobby went through life correcting the misguided people who insisted on calling her “Bobbi.”
The two women shook hands. “Glad to meet you, Bobby. I’m Mona Gilvang, Metamora’s housekeeper. We’ve corresponded.”
Gosh! Bobby couldn’t help running her eyes over her attractive chauffeur. She certainly hadn’t imagined that the businesslike letters signed “Mrs. Gilvang” had been written by someone so young and good-looking. Wisps of dark red hair escaped from the confines of Mona Gilvang’s chignon and curled attractively around a heart-shaped face, fresh as any schoolgirl’s. Yet her lush, if petite, figure marked her as mature with a capital M. Where was Mr. Gilvang? Bobby wondered.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” the housekeeper apologized, picking up Bobby’s heavy suitcase before Bobby could stop her. She led the way to the station wagon, already crowded with bags and packages. “These last few days before term starts are always so frantic.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Mrs. Gilvang,” said Bobby, taking the bag from her and efficiently tucking it between a box of groceries and a coil of garden hose. She slammed the tailgate closed. “I just got off the train.” She paused by the passenger door, which had the words “Metamora Academy for Young Ladies” painted on it in black script. I’m a gym teacher at a girls’ boarding school, she told herself for the tenth time. It still didn’t seem real.
“Call me Mona.” The housekeeper was already in the driver’s seat, and Bobby hastened to slide into the passenger’s side. “Excuse the mess,” Mona chattered as she started the engine. “We get most things delivered, but some of the staff act as if they’re marooned on a desert island, and anyone going to town is regarded as a sort of rescue party.” They were driving along Main Street now. The housekeeper drove expertly, speeding a little. “I had to get cream of tartar for the cook, the new Math Mistress wanted a book they’d ordered for her at the Book Nook—I told her next time she should have me order it—that’s Bryce Bowles’s tennis racket back there, newly restrung, and a certain someone desperately wanted milk of magnesia—I won’t say who!” She laughed gaily.
“Oh, there’s a new Math Mistress too?” Out of the bewildering stream of chatter, Bobby seized on this reassuring bit of information. She wouldn’t be the only newcomer.
“Yes, she arrived Monday,” Mona added, as if sensing Bobby’s nervousness. “I know the both of you will feel right at home at Metamora. The staff is very friendly.”
“Oh, sure,” agreed Bobby dubiously. “And I guess you’re used to teachers coming and going.”
“What do you mean?” Mona swerved a little as she shot Bobby a sharp glance.
“Well—like Miss Fayne,” Bobby pointed out. Her predecessor had left her teaching career behind for a June wedding.
“Oh, her.” Mona was dismissive. “She was an exception. Our teachers tend to stay on at the Academy. Miss Froelich, our former Math Mistress, is more typical—she died on the job.”
“Oh!” said Bobby, startled.
“She was close to retiring anyway,” Mona reassured her. “Miss Butler, her replacement, is just out of college, like you. She arrived yesterday. A very striking girl—quite a change from Miss Froelich!”
With one hand on the wheel, Mona fished a cigarette out of her breast pocket. Automatically, Bobby struck a match, one handed, from the supply she always carried. Mona leaned over a little and cupped Bobby’s hand in hers while she drew the smoke into her lungs.
“Thanks—I didn’t know you athletic types smoked.”
“Oh, I don’t smoke, I just—just generally carry matches,” Bobby stammered. She changed the subject, asking, “And your husband—does he work at Metamora too?”
Mona exhaled a cloud of smoke before she replied, “I’m a widow. My husband died several years ago.”
“Gee, that’s tough,” Bobby murmured. She wondered if this tragedy had forced Mona into employment at Metamora.
“Oh, I’ve quite recovered from my loss,” Mona said blithely. “The merry widow, that’s me.”
Or was it possible that the pretty housekeeper had her own reasons for choosing the all-female atmosphere of the exclusive school? Bobby had heard about married women who harbored hankerings for female companionship, although she’d never actually known such a creature.
Until lately, the hockey player reminded herself grimly. This past summer it seemed like wedding invitations or engagement announcements arrived almost weekly from the girls Bobby had gotten especially friendly with at Elliott College. Sometimes she got a panicky feeling that the supply of young, nubile girls, which had seemed inexhaustible during her college days when a fresh batch arrived every fall, was inexplicably drying up.
I latched on to Elaine just in time, Bobby mused. The young candy striper she’d met at the hospital this summer was as nubile as any Elliott College frosh.
“Oh dear, I meant to give you a tour of Adena—have you ever been to Adena?” Mona’s voice recalled Bobby to the present. They were driving through the outskirts of town, the gabled Victorian houses and modern ranch-style homes rapidly giving way to farmland, fields of ripening corn, the occasional silo. Mona twisted around and glanced back at the disappearing town. “Well, that was Adena. The Bijou changes movies once a week, and the Flame Inn has what it calls a ‘ladies’ lounge.’ It’s a nice respite when you’ve overdosed on adolescent girls. And Bay City is only an hour away by train.”
Mona turned left at a deserted crossroads and the road began to climb into the woods. The fields of corn disappeared, and pine trees took their place.
“What are the students like?” Bobby asked. “Any star athletes I should know about?”
“I guess Miss Craybill didn’t mention that Metamora girls aren’t a very athletic bunch, although maybe that was Miss Fayne’s fault. They mostly think of themselves as artistic