Work Text:
September, 1928
It was a point of quiet pride to Helen Blythe that she took the fastest and most competent notes of anyone in the Infants' Class. She had not been at the Kingsport school a day when this revelation pricked at the edges of her young mind, pen nib darting across her page at incalculable rate. A fact that left her completely unprepared for the ambush of Miss Watson as she peered over Helen's shoulder, scrutinizing her exercise book.
'Helen,' she said in tones of deep consternation, 'what is that?'
'My notes, Miss,' said Helen, and meant it.
Further surprise when a red-taloned finger appeared over her shoulder to tap the page. 'Don't be cheeky,' said Miss Watson. She tapped Helen's notes for clarity and said again, 'What is that? What are you doing?'
'Copying the lesson, Miss,' said Helen, because she was.
She wondered a bit that Miss Watson couldn't tell. It was starting to uneasily occur to Helen that even Mama was occasionally defeated by Kitty's notes, when she found them lying around the table. But Helen had always presumed that was because Mama was a doctor and Kitty was a reporter, and those two things just weren't the same. A teacher though...A teacher could surely understand basic reporter's shorthand. Still, Helen really had done her best to be neat about it. It was hard, though. Her hands were so very small – tiny was Uncle Geordie's word – and there was such a lot of Annabelle Lee. It was hard, writing it neatly and quickly. She was brought back to attentiveness by a sharp, 'Don't be clever!'
'I'm not,' said Helen, and ducked her head as the unbidden heat of tears began to prick at the corners of her eyes.
She was not, Helen told herself, resolutely, going to cry. She had hardly been here hours, and the poor, maligned exercise book still smelled all new and crisp. Why, the bell hadn't even gone to signal dinner-time! The unfairness of it was immeasurable. It seemed minutes ago that she had left Larkrise, satchel in hand, new shoes pinching gingerly at her feet, puffed up with the thrill of joining Christopher at school and the smartness of her new red and white spotted dress. It was a special gift from Aunt Judith because Mama hated sewing dresses, because she said seams moved more than anaesthetized people did. And anyway, wasn't very good at making them up, a fact that still confounded Helen's keen mind. She had felt ever so much bigger than baby Sophy, who couldn't even say whole words yet. Queen of the world even. Well, second to Rachel and Tibby Carlisle, because they were Terribly Grown Up, but still. A queen in her own right. Certainly of the Larkrise fiefdom. And now Miss Watson was jabbing at the pristine newness of Helen's exercise book, accusing her of a transgression she hadn't committed.
'Well,' said that revered woman now, 'it doesn't look like note-taking. Does anyone else think Helen is taking notes?'
In a flash she had got the much-abused exercise book by the spine and was displaying it to the class. The injustice of this was too great. Helen sent a prayer skyward that God in his mercy would let the floor swallow her up, or at the very least turn her invisible. Both might be preferable.
Instead of which, there came cautious chorus of No, Miss, from all corners of the room, and one muffled groan that Helen took for Christopher. Really, this was too, too much! It was the height of disloyalty, when even Christopher wouldn't take her side. Oh, everyone knew brothers were awful, irritating things to have around, but that wasn't the point. He was meant to be her armoured knight. Not that Helen had wanted one much, when Dad and Teddy had charged him with keeping an eye on her, but that was before Miss Watson and the Exercise Book. The tears had developed a mind of their own and were even now overspilling her eyelids, leaving hot, prickly maps of their betrayal along her cheeks. Helen was sure she had never been so humiliated. Never, in all her five years of existence. Probably she would never know dishonour like this again.
A scrawny limb pierced the air, and perhaps it wasn't the end of the world after all, because there was Christopher's plucky treble, 'Please, Miss…'
'You disagree, Mr Blythe?' said Miss Watson, eyes narrowing. It was all over now; Helen saw that. Her brother was many things, but he wouldn't cross a teacher. Painfully, Helen stifled a hiccough.
'It's…no, well it's shorthand, Miss. Like what Kitty does, at home. When she writes.'
'Do you mean,' in tones of severity, 'That is how Kitty writes?'
'Yes Miss,' said Christopher, and bobbed his head.
'Then say so,' said Miss Watson. Christopher bobbed his head again, in apology this time, but it didn't register. Already Miss Watson had moved on. NShe demanded of Christopher, 'Who, pray tell, is Kitty?'
So died the glimmer of hope that had been blossoming in Helen's chest. Christopher would surely retreat now, of tactical necessity. But Christopher was stalwart. He looked evenly across the room at the formidable Miss Watson and said without the least hesitation, 'She's our sister, Miss.'
At the far end of the room, two darkly elegant eyebrows shot upwards. 'I don't recall you having a sister, Mr Blythe. Have I taught her?'
'No,' said Christopher stoically, so that this, Helen reflected, is where anyone else would have just said Kitty grew up during the war at another school. But Christopher was nothing if not painfully precise. So, of course, he pressed on, 'No, that is, you wouldn't have done. I mean Kitty isn't…'
'You're not telling stories, are you?' said Miss Watson. Christopher blanched.
Helen said, from the exposed vantage point of her front row desk, 'No! Kitty is – Mama says she's our sister of the heart. Not blood you know – '
'In fact, not family, then?' said Miss Watson.
'But she is!' said Helen, clawing mentally for a way to make this woman understand. 'Kitty is. It doesn't work like that. She's ours, and Teddy too – better than anyone could ask for.' This all in one outrush of breath. After which, Helen slunk low in her chair, jumping when the exercise book came down on the front of her desk with a thwak.
'That's quite enough of that,' said Miss Watson. 'I think,' with a hawk-eyed look at her disparate charges, 'We'd better send you home for today, Miss Blythe, Mr Blythe.'
'But – ' began Helen, but she caught Christopher's eye, and abated.
'There isn't anyone at home, Miss,' he said. 'Mama will have the surgery and Dad's on a case, so you see…'
'Then you will have to find your mother, and explain, won't you?' said Miss Watson.
There was no arguing. Anyway, Helen couldn't have born it any more. Her little soul was already peppered through with a host of grievances. That on top of these she must go before the parental court and explain the ignominy of being sent home her first day at school, and for copying out her lesson, was really too much. She got as far as the courtyard before beginning to cry in earnest. Christopher got a spindly arm around her and hugged her, awkward because of his satchel at his side, and the strap of hers, and the fact that they didn't dare stop in case anyone look out the window and wonder what they were doing, two children out of class.
'Never mind,' he said, and looped a careless hand through hers, the better to propel Helen along. 'I don't suppose it matters. Though,' and this with curiosity, 'what made you write it out like that, anyway? I mean, you know your letters.'
'I thought it's what people did!' said Helen.
'Oh,' said Christopher. It was Helen's turn to be curious. She sat down on the pavement, and inquired with a tilt of her head, 'Do they not?'
'Just Kitty,' said Christopher. 'At least,' as he sat down beside her, 'I think it's just Kitty. You must have noticed Gran and people don't write that way in their letters.'
'But that's letters,' said Helen. 'That's different. I was taking notes, so I thought…'
She shrugged, helpless. She scuffed one new shoe in the dust and little clouds rose up around them, lightly spattering their socks as it settled. There was really nothing else to say. Her nose began to run. But at least the horrible, mortifying crying had stopped. Christopher fished in his sleeve and came up with a handkerchief. Helen took it appreciatively.
There was nothing to do about the headache she had developed behind her eyes, or the fact that she wanted to crawl under the swirling eddy of autumnal leaves and never resurface. But even the leaves were disloyal,skidding around them, tickling Helen through the light cotton of her ankle-socks. Hard to believe the world could be so cavalierly beautiful on a day wrought with grievous iniquity. She rested a golden head on Christopher's bony shoulder and breathed in the new-clothes smell of him, of the soap he'd used in last night's bath, and the sharpness of the air.
'Will Mama be very angry, do you think?'
Christopher snorted. Helen thought it his best impression of St. George's dragon to date. 'I should say so,' he said.
Helen's soul slithered into her shoes. She must have looked it, because he hastened onward, 'With the teacher, not you.' He gave her a squeeze for good measure, and Helen allowed herself to breathe again.
'Oh,' said Helen. 'Well. That's all right. Are you sure?'
'Definitely,' Christopher said, and proceeded to help her to her feet.
As expected, their mother was in the throes of a surgery, when they arrived unexpectedly on the hospital doorstep. A nurse Helen thought she knew, but whose name eluded her in her distress, settled them in uncomfortable wooden chairs outside the office door and promised to fetch them in at the first opportunity. They sat, legs swinging in the too-high chairs, with their knobbed backs that forced good posture, counting the seconds as proclaimed by the too-large clock overhead. When Helen could bear it no more, she twisted round to face Christopher, hands upraised. To her immeasurable relief, he understood at once, so that there was one less thing to explain and explain. There was only the two of them, hands dancing back and forth to the imprecise rhythm, My mo-ther told me, if I was good-ey…It left Helen's palms stinging slightly, and the lyrics were less than ideal. Helen paled again. She must have, how else to explain the way Christopher gave her hands a needless press and one of his patented wry smiles?
'Why don't we play I had Scarlet Fever, instead?' he said.
In the end, Christopher proved to have the right of it. Mama, if less than pleased at finding both children on her surgery doorstep, took one look at them and said, 'That must be a record. I make that hours into the start of the school term.'
'It wasn't Helen's fault,' said Christopher at once.
Never let it be said Faith Blythe - Meredith as was - didn't give her children a fair trial. She crossed her arms and had the grace to hear the case out before passing sentence. Helen watched as her eyebrows drew together, then squirmed under the ever-narrowing caramel gaze. Would no one understand? Was she going to end up in one of the awful places Dad made people go for all eternity, never to take any notes ever again?
But then Mama said, 'All this over shorthand?' in tones of such indignation that Helen wanted to laugh and cry and jump up and down all at once in her relief.
She settled for running hard at Mama and hugging her fiercely. They overbalanced, and collapsed on the slippery linoleum floor, bright-eyed and laughing giddily. Christopher rolled his eyes and said, 'I told you so,' with that particular cadence distinct to older brothers.
'I didn't know only Kitty was allowed to write it,' said Helen, which, inexplicably, occasioned fresh spasms of laughter from Mama. 'I thought everyone took their notes that way. It's faster!' Further helpless cascades of laughter from her mother, who was still ensconced on the floor, Helen perched precariously on her knees.
'It is,' Helen insisted, still unsure of the joke. 'Mama, it is.'
'Of course it is, darling,' said Mama, beginning to clamber upright, and pulling Helen with her.
Helen's nose wrinkled in perplexity. 'Then what,' she demanded, 'is so funny?'
'Nothing, lamby,' said Mama, and pulled her close, engulfing Helen in smells of carbolic and camphor. 'Nothing at all.'
For something decidedly unfunny, even harrowing, the whole episode caused a cacophony of conversation around the spindly-legged table when, finally, Helen and Christopher were let go from a day spent playing Assistant to Mama at the surgery. There had been bandages to fetch and sutures to thread, and it was all infinitely more exciting, Helen thought contemptuously, than anything the awful Miss Watson had set them that morning. Anyone might read Annabelle Lee if so minded. She had helped Mama do vital work helping people.
'What I can't get,' said Teddy, squinting at Helen's infantine shorthand and the much-maligned exercise book, 'is how you learned to write all this, little lamb.'
Helen, worming her way up onto Teddy's lap, said, as if it were obvious, because, really, it was once you thought about it, 'I watched Kitty.'
'You…'
Opposite Teddy, Kitty's eyes widened so that they rivalled the grimmest and biggest of the dogs in Anderson's The Tinderbox. 'You got all that,' jabbing pointedly with her index finger, 'by watching me?'
Helen nodded. Really, the fuss everyone was making of it! As if Helen and Christopher hadn't spent hours craning their necks for a glimpse of Kitty's writing, with its fascinating symbols and scrawls. Once, on a rare, lazy afternoon that had been just the two of them, Kitty and Helen, Helen had made Kitty explain it. Not another language, after all, just a speeded-up version of this one with a couple of flourishes and baubles to say and or there when in a hurry.
'Have you any idea,' Kitty's tone was incredulous, 'how many hours it took me to get anywhere near good at that, lambkin?'
Helen, who had never asked, shook her head.
'Guess she had an awful good teacher, eh, Kitten?' said Teddy, and inexplicably, that reduced Kitty to helpless peals of laughter. She buried her head in her arms and laughed until tears streamed down her face.
'You've seen my shorthand, Teddy,' she said, voice muffled. 'And it isn't anywhere near deserving of that kind of a compliment, thanks all the same.' Then Kitty looked up, caught Helen's eye and said, 'It will be an absolute sin, lamby, if we don't make a journalist of you, have you got that? A sin.'
Helen nodded, but vaguely. She still couldn't see what the fuss was about. Everyone that counted agreed that shorthand made for faster notes than longhand. Helen had taken shorthand notes. The real question, if you asked Helen, was why more people didn't do it. She'd only been trying to keep up with the teacher and somehow that had got her sent home for her trouble, and now brought her under the amazed scrutiny of her family.
That prompted a recollection of the other half of this morning's incident. Helen said, carefully, so as not to hurt anyone's feelings, 'Teacher said you couldn't be family, you and Teddy, because you weren't really-truly Blythes. Because your names were different and not in Grandad's family bible. Is that right?'
There came a disgruntled 'Oh, for God's sake,' from the fire as Dad registered this inquiry, followed by a squeal from dog Tuesday as he tumbled to the floor, having supposed no one would be cruel enough to stand up once he'd settled to sleep on their knees.
There was a remonstrative 'Jem,' from Mama, mired in the kitchen, but it didn't sound like she meant it much. On the contrary, when she appeared in the doorway, the flash was back in her eyes that said she was angry, but not at him, or even at Helen for asking.
'Rubbish,' said uncle Shirley staunchly from the wingback chair, from which place he had been beating Dad at chess. 'There isn't, by any chance, another school you can send your gremlins to, Faith? I'm unconvinced by this one.'
'Believe me,' from the kitchen with grim determination, 'I'm seriously investigating the possibility. I'll drive them out to Elie myself, if need be. In the meantime,' joining the quartet at the spindly-legged table, 'I'm writing a Stern Letter to the school board. Even if you shouldn't, strictly speaking, be writing up notes in shorthand.' This last to Helen.
'But,' said Helen, 'it's faster!'
Kitty grinned at her across the table; Teddy kissed the crown of her head. Everyone else laughed, but not unkindly.
'It is,' said poor Helen, who had thought she was through explaining this most pertinent of details.
'It is,' agreed Kitty. Helen could have kissed her, but didn't dare wound Teddy by staging the escape necessary to do so.
'Absolutely,' said Dad. 'It's just…well, the thing of it is, lamby, that absolutely no one but Kitty and one or two people at The Chronicle have the foggiest idea how to read it. How many times,' as he swooped down and plucked her out of Teddy's arms, 'have you seen us pass that stuff over to Kitty to make sense of for us?'
Helen hummed against his neck, mostly because this point did her the justice of sounding fair. She had seen them hand off secretarial shorthand to Kitty before, lots in fact. It had always boggled Helen, because plainly Dad and Uncle Geordie knew everything, and what they didn't know, Mama, Uncle Shirley and the aunts did.
'So really,' said Dad, reinstalling himself in the lionshead chair and arranging Tuesday and herself so they weren't completely on top of each other, 'I reckon your teacher was mostly cross on account of you being cleverer than her.'
'Jem!' again from Mama, but no one appeared to be listening, except maybe Uncle Shirley, and he was nodding. He also sported what Gran called The Blythe Smile, which generally meant he agreed with Dad, even if he wasn't saying so. Dad's chest was solid, and smelled reassuringly of peppermint and carbolic rinse. Tuesday was peppering her in wet, velvety kisses. Christopher had undertaken to replace Dad at the chess board, and as it turned out, she and Kitty were the two people in the universe who could write fast and efficiently when called upon. It was popularly agreed that Helen's failure to realise this pertinent detail was not her fault, and all was, in fact, right with the world.