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“Dear, dear St. Clare’s! To think we’re sixth formers, at the very top of the school -- it seems just yesterday that we all first arrived!” So said Pat and Isabel O’Sullivan, Janet and Hilary, Alison and Angela -- nearly all the girls, in fact, other than Anne-Marie, who’d arrived just one term earlier, and the two brand new girls who had arrived for Easter term and would be joining the sixth form.
“They’re both foreigners,” Janet reported to Pat and Isabel, as they moved their belongings into the larger, nicer new study they were entitled to as Head Girls of the whole school.
“Are they sisters?” Pat asked, thinking of Claudine and Antoinette.
“No,” Janet said. “They’re not even from the same country. Frida is German and doesn’t speak much English. Sophia -- I think she’s from Switzerland? But her mum is English, so she doesn’t actually sound all that foreign.”
“Well, that should keep things interesting,” Isabel said.
They found the two new girls downstairs in the common room. Frida had curly dark hair like Carlotta’s, sober eyes, and a slightly dazed air. Sophia had straight dark hair and was looking around with an interested expression. She smiled amiably when she saw them. “Hallo, Janet,” she said. “These must be the twins you told me about earlier.”
“We are,” Isabel said. “And you must be Sophia!”
“Do please call me Sophie,” the new girl said. “I like it ever so much more than Sophia.”
“We’ll certainly call you Sophie, then!” Pat said. “I’m Pat and this is Isabel. But we don’t mind if you mix us up. Most of our friends took a long time to learn to tell us apart!”
“This is Frida Beisser,” Sophie said. “She’s from Germany. You’ll have to excuse her for not being very talkative just yet. I had an English mother, so I grew up speaking English.” Indeed, her English was excellent. “Frida only ever studied English at school. Imagine how you’d feel if you were sent suddenly to school in Paris -- it would be quite difficult for you!”
“I’m sure you’ll catch on quickly,” Isabel said to Frida. “Welcome to St. Clare’s!”
Frida stared at her, her eyes big, for a long, silent moment. Then: “Thank you,” she said, in a heavy German accent. “For welcoming me.”
“Would you like a tour of the school?” Isabel asked.
“Oh, yes, please!” Sophie said, and turned to Frida and said something in German. Frida nodded, still looking very sober, and followed along.
“Are you from Switzerland?” Pat asked Sophie.
“No,” Sophie said. “I’m from Magravia -- I don’t expect you’d have heard of it.”
Pat had never heard of Magravia, despite being good at geography, and felt a little foolish, but Sophie laughed and said, “I’ll show you later where it is on the globe. It’s just a little speck!”
“There are two other foreign girls in our form,” Isabel said. “Claudine, who’s the niece of Mam’zelle, our French teacher. And Carlotta -- she’s the opposite of you, her father is English and her mother was Spanish. She grew up with a circus.”
“A circus !” Sophie was enchanted, and quickly translated for Frida, who looked up with interest. “How wonderful! I wish I’d grown up in a circus.”
“What are your people like?” Isabel asked.
“They’re quite boring, really,” Sophie said. “My mother was a secretary in London and met my father when he came to England on business. They fell in love and she went with him when he went back to Magravia.”
“What’s your father’s business in?” Janet asked.
“Drills,” Sophie said. “Industrial drills. He doesn’t make them, he talks to companies that need to buy them. Much less interesting than a circus!”
They showed Sophie and Frida all round the school, and when they finished, it was time for supper. How nice it was to spread jam on good toasted bread! Frida turned up her nose at the sausage and just ate bread and jam, but she didn’t complain, even to Sophie.
The snow cascaded down that winter like few of us had ever seen, gathering in hills and drifts, closing around us like a veil, obscuring the world beyond. Within our brick walls, all was cheerful, calm, and pleasant: we lived in a world of toast and jam, mending and boot-cleaning, sports and novels. Beyond that curtain of white, forces were gathering of which only two of us had any idea.
-- A Coming of Age in Albion, Anne-Marie Longden, 1954
Mam’zelle was delighted to discover that both the new students spoke fluent French. “You will be good company for my little Claudine,” she said. “Now she will be able to hear French spoken to her all day long, and not only when she is with me, her aunt!”
Frida was greatly relieved to have one class in which she might excel. She had studied English in her school in Germany, but had not heard it spoken much -- she was much more fluent in French. Her other real talent was in mathematics -- but there, she was so advanced that she worked with Miss Theobald rather than with Miss Ellis’s class.
Sophie was also perfectly fluent in French -- it was, she explained, commonly spoken in her home country, along with German, Ruthenian, and High Alemannic -- though no one else had ever heard of the last two. She could draw well and write essays in multiple languages, but she was a bit lazy when it came to maths. “I can never remember whether six times eight is forty-eight or fifty-two,” she said cheerfully, when she got her prep back covered in red marks. “Oh well!”
“Sophia, if you can’t fix it in your head I will have you write out sums like a primary schooler until you remember,” Miss Ellis said, grimly.
“It’s no use, Miss Ellis! That only means I remember for a day or two and then I forget again!”
Everyone liked Sophie. She was amiable and fun and always eager to share, whether she had a bag of sweets from the village or a copy of a sensational new novel.
No one quite knew what to make of Frida. She almost never spoke to anyone -- but everyone understood that she was overwhelmed and struggling with English. She told no one anything about herself other than that she was German, from Ulm -- but again, the language barrier made conversation difficult. Since Sophie spoke German, Alison asked if Frida had told her anything else about herself, and Sophie shrugged and said not really, but she was sure that in time Frida would come out of her shell.
“You must try harder to speak the English,” Claudine said to Frida, encouragingly, one afternoon. “You must not fear speaking it imperfectly. I am all the wrongness, every day! It must not stop me!”
Frida looked at her sadly and said, “Claudine, you are fearless, and I am jealous.”
“Do not be afraid, Frida! You must make your mistakes loudly, as I do!”
That made Frida laugh a little, and she said, “I will try.”
Sophie came in just then, and Claudine turned to her. “Your book,” she said. “The book you have loaned to Hilary and to Janet. May I borrow next?”
“You mean Rebecca? Doris is borrowing it next but you can have it after Doris.”
“You should let me have it first! Doris reads so slowly!”
“You can ask Doris if you want,” Sophie said. “But I have another book you might like just as well -- it’s a new mystery by Agatha Christie, about Hercule Poirot.”
“Yes, please,” Claudine said, and tucked Appointment With Death away in her handbag. “No one has yet told me who did the murder in this one, and I can read it before anyone does! How do you find so many excellent books?”
“My father works in book publishing,” Sophie said. “He’s an editor.”
Janet looked over, puzzled. “I thought you said he sold drills.”
“Oh, did I? Well, he does both. He’s done both, I mean. He used to sell drills, that’s what brought him to London that time years ago, but he got tired of that and now he works in book publishing.”
Something in her airy manner made Janet suspicious. But what an odd thing to lie about! She left it.
There were schools that pampered their students far more than St. Clare’s -- a girl at St. Clare’s was expected to manage her own mending, to clean up after herself at least up to a point, to be able to lay a fire. But it was hardly a school of hard knocks: there was an abundance of food, warmth, and comforts. Easter term began in January and ran through the coldest part of winter, and my memories are filled with food -- slices of toasted brown bread spread thickly with butter and jam. Tins of kippers and anchovies. The snap of sausages frying in a pan, and the salty rich fat from those sausages running out when they were cut, mixing with the scrambled eggs.
-- A Coming of Age in Albion, Anne-Marie Longden, 1954
One morning, everyone woke up to a knee-deep blanket of snow on the ground outside. “If only I had my skis!” Sophie sighed.
“But we don’t have any hills here,” said Angela, puzzled. She’d gone skiing in the Alps a few times with her family.
“I like to ski in the Nordic style,” Sophie said. “You don’t need any hills, just snow. Mummy always said it didn’t snow in England!”
“Of course it snows here,” Janet said. “Just not very often. Or usually this much.”
After their lessons were done, everyone went outside, and Bobby quickly packed a snowball and threw it at Claudine, who shrieked indignantly and retreated indoors. Frida scooped up some snow of her own and threw a snowball at Bobby, and soon there was a proper snowball fight going, which only ended when they all had to go in for supper. “Mind you change out of your wet clothes!” Matron said. “I don’t want anyone taking ill!”
But when they went upstairs to change, Isabel found a rent in her other clean shirt. “How tiresome,” she said. “I don’t have time to mend this properly, but I have nothing else to wear.”
“Give it here,” Sophie said. “I can mend it quickly.” And sure enough, in a minute, she had it looking good as new.
“Thank you,” Isabel said, gratefully. “Did you learn mending at your last school, like Claudine?”
“No, but my mother was a dressmaker before she married my father,” Sophie said.
“A dressmaker! But--” Isabel was going to say that she thought Sophie had said her mother was a secretary? But it was time for dinner and she let it drop, confused.
Later, in the study she shared with Pat, Isabel thought about this again. Was Sophie lying? If Sophie was telling stories about her parents, why would she tell such dull stories about them? Other than the fact that they lived abroad -- and that, Isabel knew, was true, because she’d seen Sophie’s letters arrive, with their bright foreign stamps.
“I say, Pat,” she said. “What have we heard Sophie say about her family? Because surely it can’t all be true.”
They discussed it with Janet, and Hilary, and Carlotta, and Alison. Sophie had said that her father was a drill salesman and a book editor; she’d also said he taught drawing to six-year-olds at a convent school, and that he was an accountant. She had said that her mother had been a secretary and a dressmaker. She’d also said her mother had been a librarian, a switchboard operator, and the person who re-set the pins at a bowling alley.
“Why would you make any of that up?” Hilary asked, exasperated, when they compared notes.
“If you ask me,” Alison said, “Frida’s the strange one. I don’t know anything about Frida’s parents at all.”
“Well, they live in Ulm,” Hilary said. “That’s a city in Germany. I looked it up.”
“Yes, but why did they send her here when she doesn’t even speak the language? It’s odd. Also, has she gotten any mail?”
“She did,” Pat said. “But it had an English stamp on it, not a foreign one.”
“Maybe she’s not really foreign! Maybe she’s just strange,” Janet said.
“She speaks German, though,” Hilary pointed out. “And so does Sophie. They’d have to both be in on it, if either were pretending.”
“I don’t think Frida is pretending anything,” Carlotta said. “I do think she’s keeping a secret, though. There’s something she doesn’t want anyone to know, but it’ll slip out, sooner or later. Sophie, too.” Carlotta knew a thing or two about secrets. When she first arrived at St. Clare’s, her father had made her promise to keep her old life a secret -- not to tell a soul about how she’d grown up with a circus. It had slipped out anyway -- she couldn’t bear to live as a stolid English schoolgirl, never doing cartwheels or riding horses. Everyone had known for years.
“Carlotta,” Janet said. “You’ll be of age soon -- certainly by the end of summer term. Are you going to go back to the circus?”
“I haven’t decided,” Carlotta said. “My father wants me to go to college, and then get married, and settle down and be proper. But I miss riding horses in the ring. I miss the way children laughed and clapped when I performed. I’ve been exchanging letters with the old circus-master and he says I can come back any time I like. I’ll finish at St. Clare’s, properly, like I promised my father -- but once I’m done, I haven’t decided what I’ll do.”
College, perhaps; marriage, most definitely. A respectable husband, a flock of children. That’s what most of us were being prepared for. There were a few who everyone quietly knew would have a different path -- girls who had no interest in marrying but spoke of becoming teachers themselves, perhaps, and girls like Carlotta, Doris, Felicity, the ones who had a pre-purchased ticket for another life if they chose. Carlotta, the circus; Doris, the stage; Felicity, music. For most of us, our lives were a train running along a straight, flat track; there were stations marked ‘childhood’ and ‘school’ and ‘marriage,’ and only the most determined would jump out and seek their fortune elsewhere. But for all of us, that year -- though we didn’t know it, what lay ahead was a station marked ‘war.’ The conductor would cry, ‘everyone out!” and we’d all find new paths. Our lives would never be the same.
-- A Coming of Age in Albion, Anne-Marie Longden, 1954
“Hisst,” Sophie said. “Frida! I need your help.” She spoke in quiet German, and Frida turned, her eyes wide.
“What is it?” she asked. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes -- everything’s fine. Better than fine. I’ve heard from my brother and I think he’s here.”
“Here -- you mean, in England? Or do you mean at this school?”
“I mean near the school. Frida, I need to speak with him. Find out what he’s doing, where he’s going next. But I’ll need to slip out at night -- and that means I need someone to let me back in.”
“Why can’t you ask Miss Theobald? She’s not unreasonable. She might let you go.”
“She might -- but she’d tell my mother, certainly. And if my mother shows up swanning around, everyone will know my secret.”
“You should just tell them,” Frida said. “They don’t treat the circus girl any differently. Why would anyone make things unpleasant for you?”
“Says you,” Sophie said. “You haven’t told anyone your secret.”
“I don’t speak their language.”
“Oh, is that all? I’ll write it out for you and you can read it to them.”
“You can’t possibly. To explain everything would be a novel longer than Rebecca. The girls here barely listen to the wireless -- let alone read the newspaper.”
“You don’t need to explain everything! Well, it’s fine -- you can make your own choice. Have you had any news, from your family?”
“No,” Frida said, quietly.
“I do think you might at least let me tell them that. ”
“I will consider it. In the meantime -- wake me when you need me, Sophie, and I will wait by the door to let you back in.”
The previous term, Mam’zelle had woken in the night and followed what the thought to be a pack of burglars all over the school, locking each of them in and in fact catching Alma (who’d been stealing food set aside by second-years for their midnight feast), Mirabel (out trying to catch the second years during their feast), little Jane Teal (desperately sick and trying in her delirium to go home), Felicity (sleepwalking), and Anne-Marie (pretending to sleepwalk).
It is perhaps not surprising that she had begun to have occasional insomnia. Once, she could assume that odd sounds in the night were a cat, or perhaps a girl up getting a drink of water. Now when she heard a bump in the night, she feared that it was a troubled sleepwalker, or a girl trying to leave the school in a fevered delirium. What if someone were to go outside in the deep, frigid snow? That would be a disaster!
So that night, when she was tossing and turning and heard the soft creak of a hinge, and the scrape of a door, she leapt from her bed, putting on glasses and dressing-gown, hoping she was not too late. Fortunately for Frida, Mam’zelle was not a particularly quiet person, walking around at night; she heard her huffing and puffing from half the school away, and slipped down a side corridor. Hopefully if Sophie returned, she’d trust that Frida would open the door when it was safe, and would wait patiently. If she didn’t -- well, it couldn’t be helped.
Mam’zelle didn’t see Frida -- nor did she see Sophie -- but oh, when she peered out the front door, she did see fresh footprints in the snow! And she knew that someone had gone out as the footprints were quite fresh. She started to go for Miss Theobald, the Headmistress, then hesitated -- was there time? Perhaps she should go out herself. She tightened the belt of her dressing-gown and swung open the door.
“Mademoiselle,” Frida whispered, in a panic.
Mam’zelle turned. “Ma chérie Frida, you should not be out of bed! Do you know who it is who has gone outside?”
Frida addressed her in French, because she was so much more fluent. “I heard footsteps and got up to investigate. It was a figure I didn’t recognize, but whoever it was slipped out of the school before I could do anything to stop them.”
“Last term, I thought burglars had broken into the school -- but it was students, only students! This time it is probably a student as well, and she’s gone outside into the cold and dark! I will go look for her, Frida. You stay here.”
“You should not go out in your slippers and dressing gown!” Frida exclaimed. “At least go get your own boots and winter coat! I will keep watch.”
“If it is a burglar, and he comes back, you must scream very loudly,” Mam’zelle instructed, and hurried off to get her boots and coat.
As soon as Mam’zelle had gone, Sophie came back in and Frida told her what had happened. “Why did you tell her it was a burglar?” Sophie asked. “Now there are footprints leading back in, as well.”
“Would you prefer that I’d told her the truth?” Frida scoffed. “Let’s quickly find a broom and sweep the front doorstep clean, so she won’t see your footsteps returning. I’ll think of something else before she comes back. Did you see your brother?”
“Yes,” Sophie said. “He’d come here to check on me, and to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye? Where is he going?”
“Not home.” Sophie looked bleakly at Frida. “He’s spoken with Edvard Beneš -- who’s in London now -- and the President-in-Exile of Czechoslovakia says there’s work for him, as someone who speaks perfect German.”
“I shouldn’t think he’d be very -- oh, drat, it’s Mam’zelle back.” Sophie ducked behind the door, leaving Frida to come up with a new story.
“I just remembered,” Frida said, “that I heard some of the girls speaking earlier today about work men.” She spoke those words in English, as if she’d been puzzling them over. “There was something that broke today, at the school -- and men who came to fix it -- I think what I saw was just one of those men, working late! Surely no one went out into the cold and snow! English girls do not like snow except to play in!”
“I think you must be right,” Mam’zelle said. “But perhaps I should check each dormitory, to be sure everyone is in their bed.”
“That’s so many, many rooms,” Frida said. “At least leave the sixth form to me. I will check, and come find you if anyone is missing.”
“Ah, Frida, thank you. That will do very well.” And Mam’zelle went off to check on the first years through the fifth years, and once she was out of sight, Sophie crept back out and went upstairs with Frida.
“Hasn’t your brother’s picture been in the newspaper?” Frida whispered. “How can he possibly work as a spy? He’ll be recognized!”
“He’s grown a moustache,” Sophie said. “And no one’s so much as heard of our country -- he’s really not as recognizable as you might think.”
“I hope you don’t think you’re going to volunteer for that,” Frida said. “You’re as bad at keeping your story straight as you are at remembering your multiplication tables.”
“I think if I were a spy, I might be better at it…”
They were at the top of the stairs now, and Frida stopped and stared very hard at Sophie. “The Gestapo does not play, Sophie,” she said. “If you spy in Germany, for Beneš or anyone else, you must understand that. If you make a mistake, you will die.”
Sophie grew very white, because of course she was thinking of her brother. And then she grew a bit red, because she thought about Frida’s family, and how Frida didn’t know where they were, or what had happened to them.
“I understand,” she said. “And you’re right. And my brother is much, much more careful than I am.”
We sometimes spoke of the ‘English sense of honour’ as something we took pride in -- something that Claudine, my French classmate, should learn from us and take home. It was, in fact, quite fortunate for Claudine that she never quite gave over her allegiance to that particular school of virtue. Her later work in the French Resistance was entirely dependent on her capacity for creative and at times even loquacious lying. Her ability to charm all listeners even while telling the most fantastic tales was in itself responsible for the survival of scores of stranded Allied soldiers and airmen whom she personally helped to smuggle out of occupied France.
-- A Coming of Age in Albion, Anne-Marie Longden, 1954
The next morning, Sophie had a letter, with big, colorful, foreign stamps. She looked fretful after reading it, and Isabel asked if the news from home was troubling.
“My brother ran away from home,” she said. “My parents are worried, and they haven’t been able to find him.”
Frida looked up. She was still very quiet, but her English was improving -- she understood a great deal more than she had when she’d first arrived.
“I’m so sorry to hear that about your brother,” Isabel said. “Is he older or younger than you?”
“He’s older,” Sophie said. “Properly an adult. They think he’s gone looking for work.”
“In Magravia, or somewhere else?”
“Somewhere else. They’re afraid he’s gone to Germany, actually.” Sophie’s eyes drifted over to Frida’s. “They’re terribly worried he’s in sympathy with the regime there. He isn’t, but they won’t take my word for it.” She took a deep breath, and a bite of her toast, and added, “He apprenticed as a linotype operator, but always wanted to work as a projectionist at a cinema…”
Frida choked on her tea, turned several colors, said “excuse me,” and stood up to leave.
“Frida,” Sophie said. “You don’t have to go. I’m sorry.”
“Just…” Frida said, speaking English. “Just tell them the truth. Not every detail. But stop telling stories about your family like this. Everyone knows they’re stories!”
All the girls at the breakfast table fell quiet and waited to see what Sophie would say.
“Right,” Sophie said. “I guess I might as well tell you, though I don’t much like to. I’ve been telling lies about my family because the truth is so very embarrassing. My father is the King of Magravia; my mother was Lady so-and-so here, because old Queen Victoria was her great-grandmum, and she became Queen of Magravia when she married my father. My brother is the Crown Prince. He’s really missing, though -- that story was true. My parents don’t know where he’s gone.”
Janet burst out laughing. “That’s the best story yet,” she said.
Sophie threw up her hands in disgust. “You see,” she said to Frida. “I should have told them that my mother was a fan dancer and my father owned a travelling zoo.”
“If you’d told them that from the beginning, and remembered it, perhaps that would have worked,” Frida said.
“Your English is really coming along,” Janet said. “What’s your story, then, Frida? Are your parents also royalty?”
“Germany does not have royalty,” Frida said. “Germany has a dictator. And last November he ordered a riot through the whole of Germany against Jews. I am Jewish. My family’s home was burned, and my father was arrested and taken away even though he’d done nothing wrong. I was sent to England, where it is safe -- my mother and Miss Theobald met years ago, when they were both university students, and are friends. So Miss Theobald offered to sponsor my family, but my mother stayed behind to see if she could do anything for my father. And I do not know when they might reach refuge.”
The table fell silent.
“Oh, Frida,” Alison said, softly. “That’s terrible.”
“So that’s why you never take any sausage!” Janet said.
Frida nodded agreement, because that was a perfectly polite excuse. In fact, her family didn’t keep the dietary laws; it was just that English sausage was nothing at all like German sausage, and eating English sausages made her terribly, terribly homesick.
“What do you think of Sophie’s story?” Pat asked.
“You mean Princess Sophia’s story?” Frida said with a glint in her eye.
“This is why I didn’t want anyone to know,” Sophie said.
“You can ask Miss Theobald, if you don’t believe Sophie,” Frida said. “She knows the truth.”
No one would have actually gone to pester Miss Theobald about Sophie -- the Headmistress was extremely busy, and Sophie’s stories were harmless enough -- but as it happened, Miss Theobald sent for Pat and Isabel later that same day because they were the head girls, and she wanted to ask how everyone was getting on and whether Sophie and Frida were settling in. “Especially as I know Frida is struggling with English,” she said.
“Her English is getting better,” Pat said. “I think she understands quite a bit more than she did at first, and she speaks up occasionally.”
“I hope everyone is being very kind to her,” Miss Theobald said. “She went through quite an ordeal, back in Germany.”
“She told us a little about that today,” Isabel said. “Has there been no news of her father?”
Miss Theobald shook her head. “Not yet, but many of the men arrested in November have been released -- her father may be released any day, and then perhaps her parents will be able to come to England, as Frida did. In the meantime, at least Frida is safe.”
“So about Sophie,” Isabel said. “She’s told us all sorts of strange stories about her parents. Or -- they weren’t strange, but they kept changing. All the stories she told were rather ordinary. And then today she told us an even stranger story.”
“I do believe that Sophie has always longed to be ordinary,” Miss Theobald said. “She is, in fact, a princess in her country. Her very small country that few people have heard of. But like the Sudetenland, it is very close to Germany, filled with people who speak German, and her parents believe they will soon be invaded and no one will be able to stop it. They sent her to England to keep her safe. They don’t think she’d make a very good subject of the Reich.”
“Well, we can certainly keep right on treating her like everyone else,” Pat said.
“I’m sure that’s what she’d prefer,” Miss Theobald said.
“I’m awfully glad I live in England,” Isabel said. “Where no one has to send me thousands of miles away to keep me safe.”
Miss Theobald sighed, and glanced at her wireless set, silent in the corner. “Yes, it’s quite a bit safer here. Safer for Jewish girls like Frida, but also for anyone who likes the freedom of their own beliefs -- who likes to be able to criticize the government, and demand that their government do better! But there may come a day when we have ordeals of our own to face. I know I can trust both of you to face it bravely, should that day come. I believe I can trust every girl in the sixth form.”
The arrival of two German-speaking girls -- one fleeing persecution in Germany, the other escaping an inevitable invasion -- was the first whisper of what was coming that reached into the shelter of our halls. The teachers were not in the habit of listening to the news where we could hear it; no daily paper was left on our breakfast table; our parents had told us not to worry about what was happening in Europe and to focus on our exams. Those of us who’d been paying attention the previous autumn had taken at face value Neville Chamberlain’s assurances that the Munich Agreement would provide “peace for our time.” But it was 1939, and within weeks of our final departure from St. Clare’s, the world would be at war.
We were young, unmarried, educated, capable, hardworking, and our nation needed us. By ones and twos, we volunteered for ATS, WAAS, the Wrens, factory work, the land army. Hilary returned from India: Lucy put down her paintbrush. Pat and Isabel solemnly agreed that whether they were needed separately or together, their duty was to go where they were asked, and do the work they were given.
-- A Coming of Age in Albion, Anne-Marie Longden, 1954
“We must hold a midnight feast -- one last midnight feast! -- before Hilary leaves at the end of the term,” Pat exclaimed to Isabel. “Once the big exam is over.”
“What a good idea,” Isabel said. “Come April, we’ll be off for home, and we shan’t see Hilary again! Unless she comes back for a visit, and who knows how often she’ll be able to do that?”
“We can tell everyone, and people can start laying aside food,” Pat said. “And once the exam is over we’ll make a special trip to town.”
“I say,” Isabel said. “Do you suppose they’d give us permission? ”
“They probably would,” Pat said, thoughtfully. “But I think that might be less fun.”
“Mam’zelle is up almost every night, though, since that night last year…”
“Why don’t we just quietly tell Miss Theobald,” Pat said. “Not for official permission, but just so that she can let Mam’zelle know not to fret.”
And that’s exactly what happened. Miss Theobald chuckled when they explained their plan, and told them that Mam’zelle would be spending a weekend away shortly after they all sat their exam -- they could hold their party then without fear of disturbing her. “Just mind you keep your voices down enough you don’t wake the whole school,” she added.
The weeks passed, and finally the exam was over. Everyone had laid by a stash of snacks that had come in hampers from their parents, or from trips into town, and Janet checked through the stores. There were kippers and anchovies, jars of jam, bottles of ginger-beer. “We should really have a grand party, this time, though,” Janet said. “I’d like to get some clotted cream, and scones -- we can find those fresh, in town.”
“But how to keep the clotted cream fresh?” Isabel asked.
They wound up stashing the cream and some sausages in a closed box in a drafty corner of the attic -- that would be cold enough to serve. Angela’s parents had sent her a box of lovely chocolates and she set those aside for the party. Alison’s parents had sent her a parcel of chocolate biscuits that she saved. Best of all, Sophie -- who had quite a bit of pocket money, it turned out -- bought an entire box of fresh Valencia oranges.
The day of the party, everyone was quite distracted, although none of their teachers seemed to notice, other than Mam’zelle, who was perplexed. “This is not like you, Hilary,” she said. “And Frida! Usually one of my best students!”
“I’m sorry, Mam’zelle,” Frida said. “It’s just that I got some very good news today, and I can’t think of anything else.”
Everyone turned. “Did you hear from your mother?” Carlotta asked.
“I did. It turns out my father has been out of prison for months -- only my mother was afraid to write to me, because the mail in Germany is censored. But I’ve heard from them, finally, because they are both in England, thanks to Miss Theobald! They’re looking for a flat in London, and said I should finish up the term, but they will come to get me themselves!”
“I, too, have had news,” Sophie said, when the cheering had died down. “I actually had news of my brother some weeks ago -- he was going to try to go to Germany and become a spy. Except, he was recognized almost immediately -- you were right, Frida, a crown prince isn’t much use as a spy. Fortunately he hadn’t done any spying yet, so he didn’t get in trouble -- he just packed his bags again. He was going to go home -- but our parents persuaded him to go to America, instead. I think they want him too far away to get himself in trouble, when Hitler invades our country, as he most definitely will.”
“What about your parents, Sophie?” Frida asked.
“My parents will stay and fight and do what they can, like our people.” Sophie’s eyes were bright, and her face was worried. “But they want me to stay here.”
Frida linked her arm with Sophie’s. “You must come to London with me for the holiday,” she said. “My parents would be delighted to meet you.”
“That sounds more jolly than spending it with my stuffy aunt!” Sophie said, her cheerful self again. “And in the meantime…” She bit off what she was about to say, suddenly remembering that Mam’zelle was right there. “In the meantime … lessons!”
Midnight came, and the ones who’d stayed awake woke the ones who’d fallen asleep. Carlotta crept up to the attic to retrieve the foods they’d needed to keep cool, and everyone tiptoed to the classroom with the little stove and the frying pan Bobby had borrowed. They made sausages and eggs and toast over the fire. There were kippers for the toast, and fresh butter. There were scones for the jam and clotted cream -- how good that tasted, with berry jam that was both tart and sweet, luscious with clotted cream and a crisp fresh scone. Best of all were the oranges: they were like wedges of sunshine, bursting with juice that dribbled down everyone’s fingers.
“I say,” Janet said. “What’s this?”
Tucked away in the windowsill was a box, and when they opened it there was a cake inside. “Who brought this?” Janet said. No one spoke up. Everyone looked back and forth at each other.
“If no one brought it, it’s not ours,” Pat said, finally.
“But there’s writing on the cake,” Janet said. “It says, Congratulations to the Sixth Form, Well Done! And there’s a card…”
There was a card tucked under the cake -- and it still didn’t say who it was from, but said, For your Midnight feast, so after a few more minutes of nervousness, they sliced the cake and had that as well. It was a lovely lemon cake, with thick layers of icing and roses along with the words.
“It must have been Miss Theobald,” Pat said to Isabel later. “Since she knew we’d be having a party. How kind she is!”
When they’d all eaten their fill, they laid aside a piece of cake for their form-mistress and left it in her drawer, cleaned up the classroom, and went yawning back to bed. To their surprise, when morning came, no one came to wake them, and they were allowed to sleep in quite late. “Oh, chapel was cancelled, because the rector caught a chill,” Miss Harry told them when they came down to breakfast. “We all thought you might like a lie-in.”
“Perhaps we should have been telling the teachers about our midnight feasts all along!” Pat laughed to Isabel, later.
“I don’t think they would have been quite so kind to us about it back when we were thirteen, and being naughty!” Isabel replied. “But they knew we’d worked ever so hard on that exam, and now they don’t mind us having a bit of fun!’
It’s easy to pretend, when telling war-stories to children, that the war was exciting. That we knew how it would come out. We didn’t, of course. Our lives were grueling, hungry, cold, typically very boring, occasionally shot through with absolute terror, and each day, we got through it because we had to. Because the only way out was through. Because simply surrendering was unthinkable. Because we couldn’t let the people around us down.
In the end, of the things I learned at St. Clare’s, there were two great gifts.
The first was the poetry I’d been set to memorize. During air raids, I would occupy myself -- pass the time, and distract myself a bit from the fear -- by reciting things I remembered. First just in my head, later out loud to the people near me in the shelter.
The second was the bone-deep knowledge that the people around me were worth fighting for.
-- A Coming of Age in Albion, Anne-Marie Longden, 1954
The exam results came back just before it was time for the holiday. Everyone had passed this time -- Mirabel, of course, because after her disgraceful results last term she’d worked extremely hard. But even Angela had scraped through this time, and Alma. “I am exceedingly proud of all of you,” Miss Theobald said, smiling at them.
“Just think,” Pat said, on their last day before they’d be going home. “One more summer term, with swimming and tennis! Maybe by the time we come back, it’ll be properly spring, at least.”
But Frida would not be returning: now that her parents had arrived, she’d be living with them in London. “Thank you for making me welcome,” she said, bidding goodbye to all her friends at St. Clare’s. “I will write. You will be done soon enough with your school time, and perhaps we will see each other again.”
Sophie, too, was leaving: her parents had decided she was to follow her brother to America, to live with a friend they had there. And Hilary, of course, was going to India to be with her parents. There were many tearful goodbyes as everyone packed to go home.
The last day of the term was a beautiful sunny day. Sophie was picked up in a car by her uncle, and Angela’s parents came, as well. Isabel and Pat took the train to meet their parents.
“What are you thinking about, Isabel?” Pat asked, as Isabel looked out the window, lost in thought.
“I keep thinking about what Miss Theobald said -- about how there may come a day when we have ordeals of our own to face.”
“Everyone does, though, don’t they?”
“I don’t think she meant private troubles,” Isabel said, her face grave. “I think she meant things like what’s happened in Germany, and what might happen to Magravia. I think she means things that we’ll all have to face together -- not just you and I, but all of England.”
“Well,” Pat said, sensibly. “We’ll just have to manage that when it comes. She said she trusts us -- and everyone else in the sixth form. And I trust Miss Theobald -- she knows us better than anyone.”
The memoir of Bletchley Park cryptanalyst Anne-Marie Longden, published in 1954, illustrates the veil of secrecy that lingered over their work long past the end of the war. In “A Coming of Age in Albion,” Longden shares detailed recollections of her school days, which ended just as the war was starting; she then tells a number of stories about interactions with her school friends through the war years, as they worked side-by-side on something she conscientiously never describes.
In fact, Longden and her former classmates were precisely the sort of young women recruited to work at Bletchley Park as the work expanded: bright, educated, hard-working, and from the middle or upper class. Thanks to papers declassified in 2005, we now know that the headmistress of Longden’s school, Heloise Theobald, was a long-time associate of Dilly Knox; she referred a great number of students his way. By 1942, Longden and nearly all of her classmates were working at Bletchley Park.
Due to the 1939 Official Secrets Act, the work of Bletchley Park was unknown until the 1970s, and most of the women who worked there remained obscure into the 21st century -- in many cases even their children and grandchildren did not know about their work. Longden, however, turned out to have left a codicil. Her granddaughter, sorting through papers in 2014, discovered a sealed manilla envelope with instructions to keep it sealed until 1995, fifty years after the end of the war. Inside was a collection of poems written by Longden during the war, including a number that referenced her work at Bletchley. The collection, titled Cadence, is set to be published by Bloomsbury early next year.