The Chinese Garden Read Free Page A

their private worlds, they were none the less sensitive to this unrevealed secret, as they might have been to a faint and indefinable scent. The fire of logs blazed in their adolescent, sleepy faces. The stolen chestnuts blackened on the iron bars of the grate. Occasionally one exploded, and Bisto would lean forward, lick her fingers, and hook it expertly out of the hot ashes. She always gave it to Rachel. If it was refused then she offered it to Margaret. The grate was small, and they sat round it on hard, wooden chairs, almost knee to knee. Their black stockings made a paling through which a few bars of warmth reached the younger children, who were huddled against their desks in the outer cold, reading dog-eared novels from the library – novels which told of midnight feasts, adorable games mistresses and unbelievable escapades out of school bounds. Within the fiery circle the three friends, half-stupefied with heat, waited for the mysterious news that they sensed in their midst. The hugewindows of the form-room were uncurtained. Outside, the winter evening was starless. The cold pressed palpably against the sable glass. Far away in the hollow shell of the building, the eight-thirty bell sounded. It grew nearer, and bored hungry children who had hardly felt the warmth, hurried to the door, glad to go to bed in even colder dormitories. The three by the fire stayed on, ignoring the bell, slowly chewing the last remaining half-cooked chestnuts. The brown skins littered the hearth. The pressure of imminent departure induced Margaret to speak at last.
    â€˜I have found something,’ she said. ‘I’ve found a strange place that I don’t think anyone else knows about. Maybe I’ll show it to you tomorrow.’
    Almost too hot and exhausted to reply, Rachel stretched her legs lazily towards the powdery ash and without much interest asked, ‘What is it?’
    But Margaret refused to say more. She glanced at Bisto. ‘If I feel like it I’ll show it to you, when we can get away from the mob.’
    â€˜How can you have found anything today?’ asked Rachel suddenly. ‘You can’t have gone out – it wasn’t a games afternoon. It was art. If it’s the cellars, Bisto and I found them ages ago.’
    â€˜Oh, them!’ answered Margaret scornfully. ‘Yes, I know them . They smell and are altogether beastly. It’s not the cellars. As a matter of fact, I did go out.’
    Bisto and Rachel looked at her with admiration. It was no small feat to elude the vigilance of the mistress on duty in the afternoon – or the evening, either, for at this point, the door opened and they were told peremptorily to go to bed. Early to bed and early to rise was the rule of Bampfield. But they would not obey with too great a show of readiness. Itwas not their policy. Leaving Bisto still raking the ashes for chestnuts, Margaret and Rachel wandered away from the fire to one of the windows. Angrily a hand switched off the light. Looking through the reflections of the fire in the glass, they could see beyond, darker than the darkened sky, the forms of trees, the outline of the distant hill, and the dense mass of a shrubbery.
    â€˜Over there,’ said Margaret softly, nodding her cropped head. ‘Over there.’ She looked back over her shoulder for a moment at Bisto. ‘I’ll show you tomorrow … perhaps. Depends what I feel like.’
    It was part of Margaret’s attraction that one never knew where one was with her. In a world of iron routine, in a climate almost invariable, Margaret provided an exotic eccentricity. To begin with, she did not look like a schoolgirl. She was tall and thin, with a lean, brown, saturnine face, hair cut as short as a boy’s, and heavy, often furrowing brows over dark eyes. A passionate reader and an inspired talker, she lived a life balanced between bouts of taciturn isolation, buried in books, and extreme gregariousness, when