Peter! Her friend from the year above at teaching college. They had been going to attend a concert together, The Mikado. She sank down in the opposite chair, covered her face and groaned.
“He waited right up until the last minute,” Mrs. Crawford went on. “He only left because he thought you might have gone to the concert to meet him there.”
Marion pictured Peter’s head on its long neck switching anxiously about in the foyer crowds, his pale, myopic eyes squinting through his spectacles. “Really, Marion. How can you treat him like this? He’s such a nice boy. And devoted to you, of course.”
“No, he isn’t, Mother. We’re just friends.” She was fond of Peter, but that was all. It was her mother who loved him. Earnest, polite, hardworking and trustworthy, he was perfect son-in-law material. But the thought of marrying him, of sharing his bed, no!
Her mother gave a shuddering, horrified gasp. “What’s happened to your dress? I’ve only just made it for you. Is that blood?”
“Well, yes. There was a fight, you see, and—”
“Fight?” interjected Mrs. Crawford, in a yelp.
“Not me. I was just helping someone who was hurt.” She bent over and hugged her seated mother. “Just think of it as a good deed,” she urged, smiling. “Marion the Good Samaritan.”
“You’re incorrigible,” said Mrs. Crawford, but fondly, to Marion’s relief. Her mother rarely, if ever, got angry. Since the death of her father the two of them had been everything to each other. But the encounter in the alley had been terrifying and probably a sign that seeing Valentine again was a bad idea. She had only just met him, and already he had caused her nothing but trouble.
* * *
• • •
NEXT DAY, THE world seemed somehow brighter and sharper. She felt a lightness in her heart that was almost a giddiness. This faded as she realized she now had to face Peter and apologize.
He would be wonderful about it, of course. The fact that he was wholly good and kind made it all even worse. If only she could love him as she knew he loved her. They were, as her mother never tired of pointing out, unusually well-matched.
They had met during the first term, two years ago. As well as their teaching interests, they shared a love of walking and of music, literature and art. They came from similar humble backgrounds: Marion’s father, now dead, had worked on the railways, while Peter’s was a postman. His aim was to be the first postman’s son to go to Eton, albeit in a professional capacity. He was determined to teach at the Great Public Schools, as he called them, from which poverty had barred him as a boy. Marion admired his ambition, but not his aspiration. Certainly not after the Glenlorne experience.
She headed into the college, hurrying along the green-tiled corridors with their herringbone wooden floors. She found Peter in the library, harmless in his pale blue pullover, frowning earnestly over his books. He looked delighted to see her, increasing her guilt a thousandfold.
“I’m so sorry about last night,” she began.
“Shhh!” said the librarian.
“Yes, it was a shame,” Peter whispered mildly. “You missed the most marvelous Nanki-Poo.”
“Shhhhhhh!”
“Another time,” said Marion, not wanting to linger. Miss Golspie’s class on Dr. Froebel was about to start.
“Actually, are you free later? I have something to tell you.” Through his very clean round spectacles Peter’s pale eyes blazed with uncharacteristic excitement. “Let’s go to Jenners for tea,” he added, with equally uncharacteristic impulsiveness.
Jenners was Edinburgh’s smartest department store, with restaurant prices to match. The something he had to tell must be important.
Round the corner of the book stack the librarian loomed. “Do you mind?”
* * *
• • •
MARION WAS PACKING up her books at the end of the Froebel class when Miss Golspie dipped by. “Enjoy that? You looked as if you did. Your hand was a blur throughout, making notes.”
Marion smiled at her teacher. “What an amazing man. I had no idea he invented the kindergarten. And believed that every child has an inner life, which careful nurturing brings out.” Her words were tumbling over one another in her enthusiasm. “I particularly loved his conviction that childhood is a proper, precious state in itself, not just a preparation for adulthood.” She had thought about Annie during that section of the lecture, and burned with indignation and pity for her. Annie’s childhood was already over, if it had ever happened at all.
“Froebel’s my favorite, I have to say.” Miss Golspie tossed an aquamarine scarf over the shoulder of a red velvet pinafore. “It’s all so unlikely, a German chap from the early nineteenth century having all those ideas about the importance of play, and learning through nature. There are men now, a hundred years later, who still have no idea about that.”
Their eyes met. There was no doubt as to whom she was referencing, but Marion carefully did not react. She was not to be drawn down that road again.
Miss Golspie smiled. “Could you come and see me later, in my office?” Her tone was casual. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
Marion watched the brightly clad figure leave and wondered at the coincidence. Peter too had something to tell her. Two people on the same day.
* * *
• • •
LATER, MARION ENTERED the principal’s oak-paneled realm. The scent of Lapsang souchong filled the air. “Sit down, do. Tea?” Miss Golspie waved a cup.
“No thank you. I’m going to tea at Jenners after this, as it happens.”
“At Jenners! I’d better get straight to the point, then.” Miss Golspie looked at her through a pair of outsized lime-green reading glasses. She had many artist friends, one of whom had presumably made these. Perhaps the same one who had made the new cushion shaped like a pair of red lips. Marion stared at it as she settled into the squashy depths of the orange sofa.
“Lady Rose Leveson-Gower has written to me,” Miss Golspie announced. “Her husband is the commanding admiral at Rosyth.”
Rosyth was the Royal Navy base in Edinburgh. Marion nodded in understanding of this eminence, but failed to see what it had to do with her.
“She wanted me to recommend someone to teach her daughter, Lady Mary, over the summer. I thought of you.”
“Me?” Marion stared at her. “But you know how I feel about teaching aristocrats.”
Miss Golspie did not, as her pupil half feared, display any anger or impatience at this. “Quite so,” she said briskly. “You made it perfectly clear. And it is, of course, entirely up to you whether you take the job or not. I am merely the messenger. Lady Rose asked for my best pupil, which you undoubtedly are, and I thought the money would come in useful.”