NEVER, EVER TELL

by Diana Kay

It was a shock to see her name in the newspaper after all those years. It must have been – what? Some thirty years since that incident when we were at school together which had had so dramatic an effect on my life.

It was half-term and only three girls were left behind at our small preparatory school: Mary Snow, Charlotte Fox and myself. Our relations all lived too far away or for some reason could not have us home then. It was the summer half-term and it looked as if there were going to be a heat wave. It was a desperate feeling to be left behind at school when everyone had gone but Charlotte told us it would be fun. The few remaining staff would be extra nice to us, she said, and we would have special meals and go to bed when we liked. We might be taken somewhere for a treat, like a picnic in the grounds of a castle, or to the cinema if it was raining.

There were two members of staff on duty that weekend, Miss Brown and Miss Rutherford and they were nice enough, harmless enough. But as luck would have it one of them went down with flu and had to be nursed by the other, so we were left pretty much to ourselves. There were no special treats and the food was no better than usual.

I felt apprehensive about being with Charlotte. Charlotte was a popular girl, at least I thought so at the time, but looking back I realise she was not liked so much as feared by the other girls. She had a forceful personality and could manipulate people into doing things that often they did not want to do. She was good at games and she had a quick, sarcastic tongue. She was someone to keep on the good side of, and woe betide you if you lost favour with her.

Mary Snow, on the other hand, was a timid creature. She had large, protruding eyes and a white face and her hair was so fair it was almost white. Some people think that white-blonde hair is attractive but in Mary’s case there was nothing attractive about it, it was just pale and lank, and her white eye-lashes matched her hair. She was a “nothing person” Charlotte said: hopeless at games, hopeless at lessons and thoroughly wet. I agreed with her because it was a good idea to agree with Charlotte. Charlotte always had to take sides with another against a weaker third and I was thankful to be with her against Mary, knowing that in other company I might well be the one to be left out, despised and bullied by the others. That weekend, because it was hot and we were restless and bored with nothing to do, we turned our attention to teasing Mary. We were mean and unkind and I felt ashamed but it was the law of the jungle: you had to catch or be caught, eat or be eaten. First of all we played Pig in the Middle with Mary as the pig. She ran, she leapt but she could not catch the ball. “Why do I always have to be Pig?” she asked.

“You don’t,” said Charlotte, “you just have to catch the ball.”

But Mary could never catch it because we threw it miles too high above her head. After a while it got boring, we needed something else to do.

There was a part of the school grounds that was out of bounds. It included the kitchen garden, an orchard and a piece of wasteland containing an underground air-raid shelter, disused since the second world war. We were greatly attracted by the kitchen garden and the orchard, especially now in the soft fruit season, so it did not take much for Charlotte to persuade us to go there.

“I mean, it’s the obvious time to go, isn’t it?” said Charlotte, “with everyone away and no one to notice where we are?”

So directly after lunch on the Saturday we crept out of the back door, through a small courtyard and into the kitchen garden. There we amused ourselves for a while picking the pea pods, splitting them open with a plop and scooping out the tender young peas, thence to the raspberry canes where we consumed quantities of the fruit. It was very hot: the sun beat down upon us from out of a parched sky, scorching us, the earth, the glass in the greenhouses, the great domed cloches under which fat marrows reposed like sleeping whales. We ate and ate, stopping occasionally to wipe the juice from our sticky hands, and all around us the garden was alive with the humming and buzzing of insects, bees mostly and wasps that hovered and dived at every turn.

When we had had enough we wandered on into the orchard. Presently Charlotte took hold of my arm and whispered something. I giggled. “Another thing,” said Charlotte coldly, “have you noticed that she……” whispering again into my ear. We laughed unkindly whilst Mary shuffled along in silence, her eyes on the ground.

“Haven’t you anything to say, Mary Snow?” called Charlotte.

“No,” muttered Mary.

“Why not?”

“What is there to say?”

“What is there to say?” mimicked Charlotte. “You never do say anything, do you? I bet your head’s absolutely empty inside. That does happen sometimes you know, Jane,” she said to me. “You do get people with empty heads. You don’t meet them often but if you were to split their heads open you’d find they’re just like an empty coconut shell inside. That’s what makes them a bit mental. Mary Snow is potty in the po!” she sang, “Mary Snow is potty in the po!”

I felt sorry for Mary, knowing how she must be feeling but I did nothing to help her. Together Mary and I could have stopped Charlotte before it was too late. I might have tried it if I had been sure I could trust Mary but I was afraid that she would side with Charlotte against me instead.

On we ploughed through the orchard and Charlotte made Mary climb a tree and see if there were any ripe plums, and while she was up the tree we ran away and left her. Presently we came upon the site of the old air-raid shelter. Out of breath and spluttering with laughter Charlotte said, “Here’s where we’ll hide. Come on, she’ll never find us here.”

I hesitated. “I thought we were told not to – “ I began.

“Oh, come on,” said Charlotte and thrust me down the overgrown steps ahead of her. At the bottom of the steps was a little door. We pulled away the undergrowth and pushed it open. Inside it was dark and musty, like being in a cave. There were some benches there and half a decayed bar of chocolate and a couple of mildewed cushions.

“It’s not very nice,” I said.

“Shh!” said Charlotte.

“She won’t hear us down here!”

“She might.”

“But we want her to find us, don’t we?”

“I don’t really care if she does or not.”

We waited in silence but nothing happened. After a while I said, “Well she doesn’t seem to be coming so we may as well go.”

“No, I’ve got a better idea,” said Charlotte. “You stay here and I’ll find her and bring her back.”

“She probably won’t come.”

“I’ll say you’ve twisted your ankle and she’ll have to come and help me lift you out.” So saying, Charlotte went off up the stone steps, first shutting the little door behind her.

It was dark and there was this awful musty smell and I didn’t like it at all. It seemed an age before I heard footsteps coming back again.

“Are you sure?” Mary was saying.

“Yes, go on – down those steps,” I heard Charlotte answer. I waited, holding my breath. The door opened slowly and Mary came in followed by Charlotte who closed the door quietly behind her.

“Are you all right, Jane?” asked Mary.

“Yes – that is – I’m not sure,” I mumbled.

The three of us stood silently in the musty darkness.

“It’s very dark…..” said Mary. “Charlotte, I thought you said Jane had hurt her ankle –“

“So she has,” said Charlotte.

“It’s so dark in here – I can’t see,” said Mary.

“Quick, Jane,” said Charlotte suddenly opening the door. “Go on through!”

I had a momentary feeling of shock, then I ran through the door followed closely by Charlotte who turned and slammed it shut again. “Quick,” she said, “we need something to wedge it with.”

From the other side of the door came a cry of terror.

“We’re not going to leave her there?”

“Why not, it’ll be a super joke. Pass me that big stone.”

It was a great boulder that I could scarcely lift. “That’ll do fine,” said Charlotte pushing it against the door. “She won’t get out of there in a hurry.”

I could hear Mary beating her fists against the door.

“Let me out!” she cried, “Jane! Do you hear me – Jane? Jane! Let me out!”

She kept calling me, yet I did nothing to help her. Charlotte and I simply went up the steps and left her.

Tea had been laid for us in the dining room. It was a flexible meal consisting of milk and bread and jam with a cake or biscuit on Sundays. It was a meal you could take or leave as you wished so that when Charlotte and I went in without Mary nobody noticed anything. Charlotte seemed to think it was a great joke.

“When are we going to let her out?” I asked several times.

“Not yet,” Charlotte would reply firmly, “it would spoil everything,” and weakly, if uneasily, I acquiesced.

Later on we saw Miss Brown, the Junior English Mistress. She looked harassed. “Oh there you are, Charlotte! Are you girls all right? I’m sorry I haven’t been able to spend much time with you.”

“That’s all right,” said Charlotte carelessly.

“Well, so long as you’re enjoying yourselves,” said Miss Brown. “If you don’t mind I’ll have my supper upstairs with Miss Rutherford tonight. She’s not at all well, poor dear.”

“That’s all right Miss Brown,” said Charlotte, “don’t worry about us.”

Thus another meal passed without Mary’s absence being noticed. At supper Charlotte said, “I’ve got a good idea about tonight. I’ll put a pillow in my bed so they think I’m asleep, then I’ll go into the loo and pretend to be Mary, then when Miss Brown asks where Mary is you can say – “

“You don’t mean you’re going to leave her there all night!” I gasped.

“Why not?” said Charlotte coolly. “It would do her a world of good – might toughen her up a bit – feeble creature.”

But I was getting really worried by this time. It was nearly six hours since we had locked her in the air-raid shelter, and I resolved to let her out. Straight after supper I would go.

I said nothing to Charlotte and slipped away without her or anyone else noticing me. Through the kitchen garden I sped and thence through the orchard until I came to the steps leading down to the shelter. It looked different somehow.

A couple of feet away from the entrance there was a crater of newly moved earth from which rose clouds of dust.

“Mary!” I called out in alarm, running down the stone steps. “Are you all right?”

There was no answer. I bent down and heaved the boulder away from the door and burst in. At first I saw nothing but a great wall of earth taking up all the space and the aluminium roof gaping and buckled where the walls beneath had caved in. Then I saw Mary. She was lying on the floor with a ton of rubble on her chest. Her eyes were open but even in that dim light I knew she was dead.

I screamed but no one heard me. I ran wildly back to the school building to find Charlotte.

“Mary’s dead!” I cried hysterically, “We’ve killed her. She’s dead.”

“What on earth do you mean?” said Charlotte slowly.

I told her what I had found.

“We’d better go and tell Miss Brown,” I sobbed.

“No!” said Charlotte. “We mustn’t say a word. I’m not going to say a word and neither are you, Jane. If you say anything I shall tell them you did it and you’ll be locked up in a dark cell for ever and ever and never let out until you go mad because that’s what they do to child murderers, Jane.”

I stared at her aghast.

“And I’ll tell them that you did it – so don’t forget Jane, will you? Never, ever tell. Not a word. We haven’t seen Mary all afternoon. She must have wandered off somewhere. We’ve no idea where she went. We never saw her.”

And that was what we told them. First Miss Brown and then the Police and when they searched the grounds and found the air-raid shelter with the roof and walls collapsed and Mary’s body lying half under the rubble they thought nothing but that a little girl had gone off to explore on her own when she thought no one would find her out. Nobody every learnt the truth either from me or Charlotte.

I was ill later on that term and my parents took me away from school. I went to live in the country with my grandmother and two aunts and I had a governess to teach me, but I never seemed to learn anything very much. I could not concentrate for more than a minute or two at a time before my mind jumped elsewhere. I developed a stammer – they said it was nerves. I grew up without the company of other children and continued to live in my grandmother’s house after she died. I never married, and I never saw Charlotte again.

And now thirty years later here I was reading that Charlotte Fox had been awarded the CBE for public services. Could it be the same Charlotte Fox, surely there must be other people with that name? But no, it was the same. What irony! I could not help wondering what services could possibly compensate for causing the death of one child and making another old before her time. For never a day passed without my thinking of Mary Snow and hearing her anguished cries, “Let me out Jane! Do you hear me, Jane? Let me out!”

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