Thea assumed they were named in an ironic nod to the patriotic hymn, favourite of promenaders and rugby players alike. Were the promenaders under-the-skin rugby players or was it the other way about?
Their parents were anything but patriotic. Their mother gave birth to them in an old bath tub in the field at the side of their house. She had emptied out the water and scrubbed it clean of sheep’s saliva and chewed grass. The mother had collected fallen oak leaves and filled it in the autumn of the year, which was dry for once. It would have been very awkward to give birth to them in a bath tub full of slippery leaves and in pouring rain, they would have been like eels.
They were eleven just coming up to twelve. They had been to school only the once when they were four coming up five. With inexorable logic they said they had been, and refused to go again and their parents set themselves to teach the girls at home. The natural world surrounded them. Their house backed onto woods and looked out over low fells to the Bay where there were quicksands, where cockling tractors went down under the eye of their owners, experienced cocklers at fifteen years old, and where there had been a tragedy of inexperienced cocklers.
It was a three-storey house with small shuttered windows set in the grey stone walls, and doors they could bar from the inside and an adjoining stable at the rear of the house with its own half-stable door and a cobbled incline leading up to the bank on the edge of the pine copse where a lane led to the hamlet closest to them.
It was a barn really, with wide wood panelled flooring on the second and third floors. Thea had been invited in once for coffee and Hope and Gloria had sat there looking at her sidelong. She and their mother had nothing to talk about, Thea felt very commonplace beside her, and she wasn’t asked again. Nor had Thea invited their mother.
They were advanced scholastically, though Thea didn’t know why. They were expert runners and the day when she wasn’t at work, she saw them from her cottage running away with loping, long strides, extra long considering their height, over the rocky out crops. They could calculate the elevation and the breadth of the oak trees using applied trigonometry, they had ‘swallowed a dictionary’ as their dentist remarked when they presented their perfect needle-sharp teeth to him, they had read Shakespeare. They read everything. They wrote in their notebooks observations on the seasons and the flora and fauna they encountered. When Thea asked them if they were lonely with no friends nearby, no friends at all as far as she could see, they replied that they ‘considered it an idyllic childhood’.
Now they had to go to school. Their mother wanted to return to her work as an ecologist and their father, though he had taught them rudiments of French and German, could no longer spare the time because he had been made head of languages in the local sixth form college. Dressed in uniform, and with identical rucksacks for their books, Thea saw them on the first day of the new school year walking the mile down the grassy path that led from their home to the track that began at Thea’s cottage which led to the main road where they could catch the bus to the comprehensive.
Thea drove in the opposite direction to her school. She wondered how long their obedience would last. The thought popped into her mind unbidden. Just as the open nature of the building where she taught popped into her mind on the morning of the Dunblane massacre. The caretaker with the built-up boot had come post haste to tell her in break.
During the long golden days of September and on into October, reminiscent of the year they were born, they walked composedly to and from, the request stop which had been put into the schedule especially for Hope and Gloria. After half-term for several days Thea didn’t see them but the weather had broken – just in time for Hallowe’en, she thought, spoiling the trick or treating of her pupils – and assumed their parents had taken to driving them to and from school. Then as she was leaving at the beginning of the second week, she saw them get into a taxi. She waylaid them on Friday, her day off, she was working a point-eight timetable. She asked why they were being taken by taxi instead of by bus.
They spoke in unison, ‘The girls on the school run were horrid to us. They called us weirdos.’
Thea could possibly see why they had called Hope and Gloria ‘weirdos’ but – had they done something to provoke it?
‘Did you talk to them?’
‘We didn’t talk to them. They addressed remarks to us.’
‘Perhaps you should have done’, Thea said gently. Then changing the subject briskly. ‘Are you coming down to trick or treat in my house? You did last year. If so, I will get some sweets.’
‘We don’t know.’
They didn’t come trick or treating. Thea was somewhat regretful but relieved. They were growing up. Last year they had masks they’d created themselves. Foxes masks. Thea had commented they shouldn’t let themselves be seen by the farmer because he would shoot them. They stared at her in disdain. Thea decided, not for the first time, for all their cleverness, they had no sense of humour.
She didn’t see them during the second half of term because she was directing a production at her school which involved her staying late and going in her on her day off. It was very hard work, unpaid, but it was rewarding, she was doing something creative. On the eve of the penultimate day of the autumn term, it snowed heavily and the head closed two days early, because the staff had nowhere the leave their cars.
Hope and Gloria’s school stayed open and Thea saw them equably tramping through snow up to the rim of their wellington boots. She hoped they were fleece-lined and they had got thick socks on, and a thought occurred to her, they were biding their time.
January came, and then February, then March. Thea saw the girls at the request stop in the mornings, but she didn’t see them get out of the taxi in the afternoon, because she returned later. She saw them pass on Friday when she had her day off. Did they go to school she thought? They were composed, but they weren’t lively as when they were home-schooled, and their rucksacks were suspiciously lean. Thea’s pupils had bags that were bulging with books and PE kits and ingredients for Home Skills classes.
She waylaid them again on a Friday. It was the beginning of April – Easter was late that year much to the annoyance of the council which had to plan holidays around it.
She asked, ‘Did you have a good day?’
It was Hope who answered, ‘I had a good day, but Gloria didn’t. She was called names in hockey.’
‘Do you do hockey in the spring term? We have netball.’
Gloria said, ‘Some of us do hockey and some of us do netball.’
‘Are you not in the same class?’
‘They split us up. They said we were disruptive.’
It didn’t ring true to Thea. She didn’t imagine the girls were disruptive and the PE teachers she knew were too careful of their pitches to play on them in the winter months. Also, it didn’t ring true to separate two sisters of the same age and of the same isolated upbringing. If it was true the head of year was deficient in their empathy for these particular students.
Hope and Gloria walked on quietly but Thea caught a glance between them – and she could detect no sign of games equipment in Gloria’s bag.
On the Monday of the second week in April, Thea saw them waiting for the taxi. It must be costing their parents a fortune, she thought, but no more than breakfast and after school clubs. On Tuesday she didn’t see them, on Wednesday she didn’t see them either. She supposed they’d caught some bug which was going the rounds and they were off sick. On Thursday she was off early and back after dark on a trip to Manchester.
On Friday morning there came a knock at her door. The girls’ father stood outside. He wore a worried expression. Had Thea seen Hope and Gloria? They hadn’t come home last night. They said they were poorly on Tuesday and Wednesday and they were excused school as they had settled down very well and were liking it so much.
Thea was surprised at this, but she said she hadn’t seen them, she would look out for them, and suggested they ring the year head. The parents had phoned. Hope and Gloria weren’t marked in on Thursday.
‘Then ring the police.’
They had done. Last night. Police were scouring the countryside. The RNLI and the coastguard were searching the bay.
A mountain rescue helicopter clattered overhead.
They bided their time, Thea thought.
They wouldn’t have gone down to the bay. They were mountain people, not sea people. They had escaped to their lair and would come when they were ready and they had punished their parents enough.
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