Tenterhooks. Suzannah Dunn

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СКАЧАТЬ ready to move away. ‘Fresh air will help.’

      Rachel bends fiercely into the fold of her arms: ‘I can’t, okay?’ she bellows after him, even though he has moved no more than half an inch, has swayed rather than moved. ‘I can’t go clambering over rocks all day with a swollen endometrium.’

      Endometrium is impressive; I wish that I could see Mr Stanford’s appreciation. The tone of his reply, however, is studiously bland: ‘I can’t have you lounging around here all day. So I’ll expect you to join us in five minutes.’

      I am close to his shiny back, now, but he does not know that I am here, nor, apparently, does Rachel, because her eyes do not move from his face. Behind me, I can hear someone bumping through the door.

      I try to appeal, ‘Mr Stanford …’

      But Rachel finishes, ‘You’re a pathetic wanker,’ and flops away.

      Mr Stanford swings deep into the room, silver eddies on his waterproofs, to yell, ‘I’ll have you for that, no one speaks like that to staff, you’ll be in a lot of trouble when we go back to school.’

      ‘Oh yes?’ her voice comes weary and muffled from the depths. ‘And who’ll believe you?’

      His hands rise, then slap back onto the doorframe: dismay, then emphasis, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ But I see the nervous flutter of his glue-yellow fingernails on the white-painted wood. ‘In any case,’ he swells, ‘I have witnesses.’ And his face slides around to me.

      I have to stand my ground, to tell him, ‘I don’t think that you do.’

      So his eyes widen to latch onto Lawrence. I know that it is Lawrence who has come up behind me because I can hear him wheeze, the rhythmic twang of his bronchioles. I turn and see the splayed hands of the shrug with which he places himself beyond Mr Stanford’s reach, Sorry, mate, I heard nothing. Three pairs of eyes bob behind Lawrence: Susie, Trina and Avril have arrived. Trina says, ‘In fact, none of us is feeling too good, all of us are having our periods.’

      Before I can laugh, Mr Stanford roars at us, ‘Stop it,’ the command spurting from a faceful of loathing.

      Suddenly Rachel is in the doorway again, hands high on the frame, tiny wings of cotton in her armpits. ‘It happens,’ she says to his back, and when he turns, her head inclines to one side, ‘or didn’t you know? Happens in girls’ boarding schools and nunneries, or wherever women live together in close confines; we fall into sync, our hormones mix in the air or something.’

      ‘True,’ adds Trina, who would not have known; she knows very little biology.

      Mr Stanford flings his reply around all of us, ‘Of course I know that,’ but his puffing face is squashed by a frown.

      Susie announces, ‘Mine is so bad that I need to lie down,’ and swishes on his waterproof on her way into our room. She trails her own waterproof, which whispers from the floor.

      I cannot believe that this will work.

      Mr Stanford’s gaze hops around us, from face to face, sharp, looking for a weak link; but in the meantime, he tries to seem to move towards conciliation, ‘Oh come on, girls.’

      Rachel unwinds her mouth, but this is not quite a smile. ‘Looks like you’re five girls short of an expedition.’

      He coughs up a laugh, forces himself one step further from conciliation to good humour. ‘Girls, don’t be silly.’

      ‘Oh, but we are silly, because of those silly hormones of ours,’ Rachel lowers her head so far that it comes close to her shoulder, ‘but of course, it’s part of our charm.’

      ‘Avril?’ he asks, suddenly; he has decided that she is the weak link.

      She shivers to attention. ‘What?’

      He bullies her, ‘You can’t tell me that you and all your friends here are indisposed?’

      She manages a faint echo, ‘Indisposed.’ How much of this has she missed? Someone elbows her, and with a wobble she adds, ‘Oh, yes, I’m always indisposed.’

      Trina whoops, ‘Never a truer word!’

      Rachel folds down from the doorframe, slowly, calmly, and says to Mr Stanford, ‘You’re always telling us that the only truth is science, that truth is proof and proof is science. You’re always telling us to believe nothing unless we have proof. Now you have a hypothesis, that we don’t all have our periods today. So, where’s your proof?’

      Faced with this challenge, Mr Stanford stamps away down the corridor and slams the door. The sound wave crashes into our silence.

      Trina whispers, ‘Temper, temper,’ and we scurry into our room.

      Rachel is sitting on her bed with her pillow held hard to her stomach. Suddenly she is struck, ‘Lawrence.’

      Trina echoes with, ‘Loz.’

      We turn to see him drowning in the darkness of the corridor, flapping away our concern. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’

      I am horrified, ‘It is not okay.’ We overlooked him because everything happened so quickly.

      Susie appeals to him, ‘Come in here, for God’s sake.’

      Trina calls, ‘You can say that you have prostate trouble.’ She seems serious.

      He stops.

      Rachel worries her lower lip with a sharp tooth. ‘We could try saying that we need you here to look after us.’

      Avril wants to know, ‘But what is wrong with us?’

      Trina despairs, ‘I’d like to know what is wrong with you.’

      But suddenly we are knocked back into silence by the thump of the far door.

      Frozen, we listen to the approach of Mr Stanford’s steps, but they stop short of our doorway.

      ‘Why don’t you walk around down on the shore,’ he says, presumably to Lawrence, ‘see what you can find in the rock pools, do much the same as you did yesterday.’ His voice is low, is a display of kindness and a play for conspiracy: he is wary of Lawrence, now, but has to try to win him over. The implication of this plan for Lawrence is that he can go alone to the shore, which means that he will not have to go, or not for very long.

      Suddenly there are two more steps and Mr Stanford looms close to our doorway, but remains in the corridor, from where he addresses us en masse: ‘You lot have a bug,’ these words spat and orchestrated by jabs of his index finger. And now he is gone.

      When the far door crashes, Rachel flops sideways onto her bed and whines into her pillow, ‘A bug, that’s pathetic, he’s pathetic.’

      ‘Look on the bright side,’ I tell her, ‘this could cause trouble for those caterers.’

      The end of Day Four, which is the end of the trip: Day СКАЧАТЬ