Penny nods. “In the main. Several teams have been unable to take the field after lunching with us and there was one netball game when we ended up playing against two girls.”
“How awful!” I say.
“It was. We still lost. Really, Rosie, the standard of sporting achievement at St Rodence stands navel high to a prostrate garden gnome. If one of the girl’s got athlete’s foot it would be a breakthrough.”
“So we’re going to get thrashed by St Belters?”
Penny looks round carefully before replying. “Not necessarily. We have a secret weapon.”
I suck in my breath sharply. “Not drugs?”
Penny shakes her head. “Most of the First Nine are immune to any kind of stimulant.”
“The First Nine? But, Penny. Surely there are eleven people in a hockey team?”
“There are. Now do you see the kind of problems I have? We can’t field a team unless I threaten a couple of girls with extra forestry.”
“So what’s the secret weapon?” I say. “Are you lashing hypodermics to the hockey sticks?”
Penny looks at me thoughtfully. “Damn. I wish you’d come up with that earlier. We’ll have to save it for the cricket, now.”
“What’s the idea?” I squeal.
Penny lowers her voice and leans closer. “The Saranjit sisters. Have you seen them?”
“You mean, the two Indian girls? What about them?”
“They both played hockey for the Indian youth team. Rumna was right inner and Napum, goalkeeper. You see what that means?”
“One of them keeps St Belters out while the other bashes the ball in?”
“Precisely! And the beauty of it is that St Belters know nothing about them. They’ll be expecting another 14—0 win like last year.”
“14—0! What a thrashing.”
“Yes. And they only played twenty minutes of the first half. Apparently Miss Grimshaw abandoned the match because of the light.”
“It was too dark?”
“No she’d been drinking light all the morning and swallowed her whistle.”
“Penny, you are a tease!” I know what she says can’t be true because Miss Grimshaw only drinks cold tea. Penny does like her little joke.
“All right, you don’t have to believe me. It’s all in the past anyway. All I’m worried about is next Saturday.”
I knew the Indians were good at hockey but it is not until I see the Saranjit sisters having a work out that I realise just how good.
“The ball might be glued to their sticks,” I say to Penny, admiringly.
Penny snaps her fingers in irritation. “Why do you keep having these ideas when it’s too late?”
“Never mind about that,” I say, “have you got a full team together?”
Penny looks glum. “Yes, but at a price. The only two girls who don’t brandish a medical certificate the moment you step near them are the terrible twins.”
“The terrible twins?”
“Roxane and Eliza. Don’t say you haven’t come across them?” Penny shudders. “I suppose it’s feasible. They might have been out on a bender when you came.”
Something clicks at the back of my mind. “A couple of rather pretty girls who can look a lot older than their age? I think they were on the train that first day I arrived. Funny, I haven’t seen them since.”
“It’s not at all funny,” snaps Penny. “The American Sixth Fleet has only just pulled out of Southmouth. I’m amazed they didn’t go with it.”
“You mean, they went to Southmouth?”
“Rosie, those girls spend more time out of the school than in it. They only look in occasionally to change their underwear and pick up some more pocket money.”
“But how do they get away with it?” I say. “Why aren’t they expelled?”
“Expelled!?” Penny laughs hollowly. “The only thing you can get expelled from St Rodence for is non-payment of school fees. The school specialises in what it calls ‘difficult cases’. If your child has been chucked out of every school in the country for arson you can always let it weather out its days at St R’s.”
“I know a lot of the children come from broken homes,” I say.
“Yes. And they broke them up personally. We had one girl who ran off a mail order catalogue on the school printing press and sold the contents of her father’s country house while he was abroad.”
“Roxane and Eliza don’t sound the kind of girls who will want to play hockey.”
“They aren’t,” says Penny, grimly. “There’s only one thing that makes a trip to St Belters an interesting proposition as far as they are concerned: Men!”
“Men?”
“It’s co-ed, remember. If you see anything you like—watch it! We had a lay preacher who came to the school to preach on ‘The Joys of Self Denial’. Those two damn nearly layed him before he got through the gates.”
I watch the lithe, muscular Saranjit girls sprinting up and down the hockey field. “Sounds as if it could be quite a game,” I say.
By the time Saturday arrives I am in a state of rare excitement. It is a filthy day with rain bucketing down but Penny is not worried.
“It’ll hurt St Belters much more than us,” she says. “Napum and Rumna could play hockey on a river bed and the rest of them can’t play on any surface.”
I am surprised that we have a coach to take us to the game and say so.
“It’s the only way we can be sure of keeping tabs on them,” says Penny. “If we travel by public transport it’s too easy for them to sneak off. I remember when we played Seaford. I found half the team in the queue outside Confessions of a Window Cleaner five minutes before bully off.”
I look round the coach full of girls quietly reading Forum and swopping gatefolds of Viva. They seem harmless enough. I can’t see why the driver is padlocking himself inside the cab.
“Are we going to stop on the way, Miss Green?”
“Only for calls of nature.”
“Oh, Miss Green! Miss Oliphant always used to let us stop for a drink.”
“I remember the incident well, Letitia. The saloon bar of The British Queen was gutted and the coach burnt out. There will be no stopping!”
“But Miss Green!”
“No buts—and put that cigar out, Roxane! You’re supposed to be in training.”
There are cries of “rotten shame!” and “jolly swizz!” from all round the coach.
“Why are you crying, Fiona?”
“Dunnalot stole my eye shadow!”
“Eliza! Hand it back this instant!”
“It was a fair swop, Miss Green. She’s got my foundation cream!”
“I haven’t!”
“You have!”
“I haven’t!”
“You have! Victoria Bevan saw you polishing your grass snake with it!”
“She’s lying!”
“Quiet, girls!!”