regular.
Her childhood plans to become a prima ballerina assoluta had collapsed with a few frustrated pliés in a barn; she cantered across the moors on the ponies kept in the fields, but a precocious showjumping career had evaded her; even her novels, completed with love and great effort, had been rejected, and she had failed to provide for her family. She had not even been unwaveringly good like Thérèse of Lisieux. She sometimes thought she deserved to live as an orphan eremite in a cave in the Pyrenees, praying and self-mortifying. Now, she pledged, she would overcome her substandard early years. With her father to support, a married man to seduce, and an extraordinary career to wrest from the mud and youth that hindered her, only self-discipline and raw talent would carry her through.
Dora walked into the staffroom early the next day. She had been sick that morning; now she trembled with the empty-stomached after-effects. Jocasta, a history teacher, arrived in the staffroom balancing mugs of yogi tea whose smell currently made Dora want to gag. Elisabeth Dahl made Darjeeling instead and handed a cup to Dora, who was grateful. The headmaster, Peter Doran, arrived with a 1930s ukulele left to the school by a successful alumna. An old beatnik in crushed-velvet trousers, vaguely lecherous yet radiating a whiff of subdued misogyny, a glitter of homosexuality, he kept a series of largely blonde girlfriends in the headteacher’s house on the grounds, obscuring their existence with a nod at decorum, and ran the school at a lordly distance while his deputy attempted to impose the establishment’s comparatively few rules. Ignoring the timetable, Peter engaged Dora in an amateur musical conversation.
Cecilia made a timetable. She jogged in the mornings, or on the mornings she could force herself outside, almost retching with sleepy coldness as she rose and hobbled along the dawn-dark lanes. She ran up the steps built into the moss-covered wall that bordered the lane and led into a field high above, and there, ice sawing into her lungs, her cheeks fiery, she could see the valley, the blinking lights of others rising, catch a glimpse of Wind Tor and the moorland beyond, horses like rain in fields, thatches hunched, and here she held dialogues with James Dahl. Her hair blew behind her. She ran. Her heart thumped. She said fascinating things to him. He guided her. He was her mentor, her lover. She half twisted her ankle on frozen tussocks of horse dung; sheep clumped; cows lowed with terrible echoes and she was the only living human abroad: only she, she, a milkmaid in the fields, breathless and newly thin when she arrived back in the kitchen, where Dora sleepily stoked the Aga with Tom chatting beside her.
There was anticipation, because a miracle had entered her life. Her attachment to an admittedly unsuitable person anchored her. She went to school each day cushioned with hope, leaving behind disorder to enter a place of tampon sculptures and good-quality hash to collect symbols and evidence of glory.
‘You are looking beautiful, darling,’ said Dora one morning to Cecilia, unable to keep back the thought that came into her mind when she saw the blooming of her daughter, that period of transient splendour she had entered in which youth filled the outlines of womanhood.
Cecilia looked at the ground, her skin flooded. ‘Thank you,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m not.’
‘I think boys –’ said Dora, pausing.
There was silence.
‘ Boys what? ’ snapped Cecilia to fill it, keeping her face downturned.
‘Boys will want to go out with you.’
‘They don’t,’ muttered Cecilia.
‘I’m sure they will .’
Cecilia was silent.
‘Don’t you like anyone?’ said Dora, aware that she was taking risks.
‘No. I don’t know. No,’ said Cecilia, looking steadily to one side, frantically wishing to obscure her true attachment while unable to explain that boys showed no interest in her; that she
Her childhood plans to become a prima ballerina assoluta had collapsed with a few frustrated pliés in a barn; she cantered across the moors on the ponies kept in the fields, but a precocious showjumping career had evaded her; even her novels, completed with love and great effort, had been rejected, and she had failed to provide for her family. She had not even been unwaveringly good like Thérèse of Lisieux. She sometimes thought she deserved to live as an orphan eremite in a cave in the Pyrenees, praying and self-mortifying. Now, she pledged, she would overcome her substandard early years. With her father to support, a married man to seduce, and an extraordinary career to wrest from the mud and youth that hindered her, only self-discipline and raw talent would carry her through.
Dora walked into the staffroom early the next day. She had been sick that morning; now she trembled with the empty-stomached after-effects. Jocasta, a history teacher, arrived in the staffroom balancing mugs of yogi tea whose smell currently made Dora want to gag. Elisabeth Dahl made Darjeeling instead and handed a cup to Dora, who was grateful. The headmaster, Peter Doran, arrived with a 1930s ukulele left to the school by a successful alumna. An old beatnik in crushed-velvet trousers, vaguely lecherous yet radiating a whiff of subdued misogyny, a glitter of homosexuality, he kept a series of largely blonde girlfriends in the headteacher’s house on the grounds, obscuring their existence with a nod at decorum, and ran the school at a lordly distance while his deputy attempted to impose the establishment’s comparatively few rules. Ignoring the timetable, Peter engaged Dora in an amateur musical conversation.
Cecilia made a timetable. She jogged in the mornings, or on the mornings she could force herself outside, almost retching with sleepy coldness as she rose and hobbled along the dawn-dark lanes. She ran up the steps built into the moss-covered wall that bordered the lane and led into a field high above, and there, ice sawing into her lungs, her cheeks fiery, she could see the valley, the blinking lights of others rising, catch a glimpse of Wind Tor and the moorland beyond, horses like rain in fields, thatches hunched, and here she held dialogues with James Dahl. Her hair blew behind her. She ran. Her heart thumped. She said fascinating things to him. He guided her. He was her mentor, her lover. She half twisted her ankle on frozen tussocks of horse dung; sheep clumped; cows lowed with terrible echoes and she was the only living human abroad: only she, she, a milkmaid in the fields, breathless and newly thin when she arrived back in the kitchen, where Dora sleepily stoked the Aga with Tom chatting beside her.
There was anticipation, because a miracle had entered her life. Her attachment to an admittedly unsuitable person anchored her. She went to school each day cushioned with hope, leaving behind disorder to enter a place of tampon sculptures and good-quality hash to collect symbols and evidence of glory.
‘You are looking beautiful, darling,’ said Dora one morning to Cecilia, unable to keep back the thought that came into her mind when she saw the blooming of her daughter, that period of transient splendour she had entered in which youth filled the outlines of womanhood.
Cecilia looked at the ground, her skin flooded. ‘Thank you,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m not.’
‘I think boys –’ said Dora, pausing.
There was silence.
‘ Boys what? ’ snapped Cecilia to fill it, keeping her face downturned.
‘Boys will want to go out with you.’
‘They don’t,’ muttered Cecilia.
‘I’m sure they will .’
Cecilia was silent.
‘Don’t you like anyone?’ said Dora, aware that she was taking risks.
‘No. I don’t know. No,’ said Cecilia, looking steadily to one side, frantically wishing to obscure her true attachment while unable to explain that boys showed no interest in her; that she
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