ONE
Now
Thea heard the sound first, the ghostly echo of female voices raised in song. Soprano, alto and contralto effortlessly harmonising, a clear, pure stream that drifted from the open windows and across the slate rooftops, along the old red-brick walls worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain, over the manicured playing fields and towards the wide, tree-lined path where she stood. Gooseflesh rose on her arms as the wind gusted around the corner of the building, bringing the sound closer, louder. As she glanced to her left she saw shadows, blurred shapes against square-paned windows. In the darkening gloom the effect was ethereal, other-worldly. An angelic choir. The words, ‘and give you peace …’ swirled around her, hanging in the air.
She stopped, pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and gazed up at the edifice before her. It was everything she had ever imagined an English public school to be, wearing the weight of its history in the honeyed stone, thick with ivy and wisteria, immaculately kept grass (doubtless tended by a phalanx of gardeners) bordered by neat rows of purple-faced pansies and white alyssum, the tall gates, the arched portico, the heavy oak door studded and banded with iron. The entire place reeked of tradition, privilege and money. Among such imposing buildings the feeling of being a slightly scruffy imposter was as sharp as a slap.
The singing faded, and she carried on, dragging her suitcase behind her and cursing under her breath as it caught on the gravel.
The bus had dropped her off half an hour earlier in the town’s wide, gently curving high street and she hadn’t needed directions, having made a flying visit to the college for her interview three months ago. She was nearly there, but the gravel was making the final steps of her journey more difficult than they should have been. She suspected that most visitors arrived by car not, as she was, on foot, the drive crunching pleasingly under expensive tyres.
With a final yank of her suitcase, she reached the grand stone portico. She spotted a handle and grasped it, leaning her shoulder against the door as the catch released. The smell of beeswax, sweet lilies, old books and, faintly, sweaty gym shoes – her father would have called them plimsolls – was overwhelming.
As she walked in, the door closed behind her with a thud that reverberated down the vast hallway. She found herself standing in the high-ceilinged entry room. To one side was a rectangular table, polished to a high sheen, and on it sat the lilies she could smell, arranged in a tall cut-glass vase. The blooms were exquisitely formed, petals curling outwards, creamy and unblemished, bright orange pollen balanced on each stamen. Another few days and they would have wilted, begun the journey towards decay, but for now they were perfection.
She looked past the flowers to the end of the hallway where a wide, curving stone staircase with an elaborate balustrade stretched upwards into darkness.
‘You’re late.’
The voice was low and ponderous as it boomed towards her out of the shadows. Thea strained to see where it had come from, and a moment later a tall, spare man with slicked-back hair and a face as runnelled as a dry riverbed emerged from the gloom. His old-fashioned frock coat hung on him as if it had been made for someone larger, but his tie was sharply knotted and high against a clean white collar. Heavy brows shaded his eyes, and his shoulders were hunched as if to ward off imaginary cold. He didn’t meet her eye.
‘Sorry … the bus was late leaving the station.’ She checked her watch. ‘But only by about fifteen minutes.’
‘Of course, you’re from the colonies,’ he said, as if that explained everything. ‘We were expecting you yesterday, Miss Rust.’
Thea bristled. ‘I thought the students arrived tomorrow?’
‘They do, but nevertheless we were expecting you yesterday,’ he repeated slowly, as if she were dense as well as foreign.
She went to apologise again, but he had already disappeared into the gloom.
No sooner had she opened her mouth to call out than he returned, holding a heavy iron circle on which a set of keys was strung. ‘There are three of them. One for the front door, one the back, and the other … well, I expect you’ll work it out. That’s if you’ve got anything about you.’ He held out the keys to her with one hand and rubbed his chin with the other. There was a rasp as flakes of skin drifted onto his lapels, and she suppressed a shudder.
‘The girls’ boarding house is back towards the high street, number fifty-eight.’ There was a wince in his voice as he spoke, as if even uttering the word girls caused him physical pain. ‘I have been reliably informed that you will be a guest there, for the first term at least.’
Boys – the sons of gentlemen, so the school’s website boasted – had been educated at Oxleigh College since the mid-nineteenth century. According to Thea’s reading, it had been founded as a last-ditch effort to save the town. Once a popular stop on the road to Bath, Oxleigh went into a sharp decline when the railways proved to be a far quicker and more efficient means of transport from the capital to the spa town. A former coaching inn had become, and still was, the Master’s House and the rest of the buildings grew up around it. Then, as the school thrived, so did the town once more.
This was the first year, however, that Oxleigh had deigned to admit girls. It had held out far longer than other schools of its ilk, which had begun accepting them several decades ago, but enrolments were dropping and the school had been forced to move with the times, or so Thea surmised. It was clear that this man, whoever he was, was far from happy about the situation.
She held out her left hand for the keys and then stuck out her right to shake his. ‘Thea. New history teacher.’
‘Of that I am well aware, Miss Rust,’ he said with a withering grimace – it couldn’t be called a smile – and ignoring her outstretched hand. ‘Battle. Mr Battle to you. Porter.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Thea, withdrawing her hand as he turned, dismissing her.
‘I’ll head back to the high street then, shall I?’ she said, keeping her tone deliberately light.
‘It’s the green door. Next but one to the George and Dragon. Don’t get lost,’ he muttered over his shoulder as he disappeared into the shadows again.
Instead of leaving the room right away, she took a step forward, curious to see a little more of her surroundings, for she had not had the chance to take in much on her previous visit. Her eyes had now adjusted to the dim light and she could make out several large oil paintings of learned-seeming men hanging from the wood-panelled walls. One, with a tonsure of short dark hair, was seated behind a desk and wore round wire-rimmed spectacles and sported a small moustache, a pen in his hand. Another wore an academic gown with a scarlet hood and a mortarboard atop his head. Yet another, more contemporary this time, showed a youngish, sandy-haired man sitting on a bench with a labrador at his feet, the college gardens and buildings behind him. She moved closer and read the inscriptions. All of them had the word ‘Master’ above their names, and then the dates they had served. The sandy-haired man, Dr Alexander Fox, was the present headmaster; 2011 was inscribed after his name but no end date. She had met him at her interview, and had liked his open face and unstuffy attitude.
Oxleigh College was a bastion of the British establishment in the heart of the English countryside, but Thea might as well have applied to teach on Mars, for she had no experience in such a place as this. She had been surprised to get past the first interview. There was, of course, another reason she had been looking at the college’s website in the first place, had impulsively decided to apply for the job she’d seen advertised there. But now was not the time to dwell on that.