The CBB :: View topic - Chalet School and the Marlows

#1: Chalet School and the Marlows Author: nickyj, Location: Essex, England

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 8:50 pm

Wrote this ages ago but didn't know what to do with it until someone suggested here........ Be kind - it's my first time!!!
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Prologue

“Leave Kingscote?” Ann Marlow stared at her mother in stunned amazement. Her sister Ginty’s eyes widened in delight - apart from Monica and one or two others she was not passionately fond of her school - and on the hearthrug in front of the fire, thirteen yearold Nicola dropped her book and her twin Lawrie, daydreaming as usual, sat bolt upright at her mother’s words. “Leave? But why? Is it - has Miss Keith put the fees up?”
Mrs Marlow shook her head. “Nothing like that. No, Ann. Daddy has been offered a promotion - it’s a good one. But it’s in Switzerland. And with it go school fees for all of you at a big English school there.”
“Day school?” Lawrie looked glum. Of course she loved her family, but she wasn’t sure that she wanted to go back to living with them full-time after being surrounded by a crowd of girls where she could make herself the centre of attention.
“No darling,” her mother said. “The school is some way from Geneva - right up in the mountains, near lake Thun. You’d have to board. But you’d be much closer to Daddy and I than you would in England, And it’s a marvellous opportunity for you all to learn languages properly.”
“It sounds heavenly!” Ginty’s face was alight. Her mother, knowing her, knowing she was imagining herself in a select finishing school, smiled.
“It’s a big school, Gin; you’ll be expected to work just as hard as you do at Kingscote.”
Nicola, on the hearthrug, said nothing, thinking of Miranda and Esther and Tim and Crommie, of Sara Crewe, of Latimer and the big art studio.
“It’s lovely for Daddy, of course,” Ann said thoughtfully, “and of course we wouldn’t want to be that far away from you both, but - well, I suppose I always thought I’d finish my schooldays at Kingscote, go into the Sixth form.”
“I know, darling. In a way we’re asking you to give up most of all. Miss Keith is very sorry to be losing you; she tells me you would have been head-girl next year.”
“Do they do plays there?” It was Lawrie, of course, and her sisters all groaned.
“If they do they won’t be interested in a new girl,” Nicola said cruelly.
“What about you, Nicky?” Mrs Marlow asked. “We’ve heard what Gin thinks, Ann isn’t sure, and Lawrie will be happy if she can be in a play. You’ve been very quiet.”
“I don’t know,” Nicola said thoughtfully. “If Miranda and Tim could come too p’raps it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“You’ll have Lawrie,” Ann said comfortingly. “I’m sure they’d let you be together.”
Nicola said nothing, but thought that, on balance, if she had to go she would rather go by herself than have Lawrie drawing all the wrong sort of attention to them. She recalled the first weeks at Kingscote, when her twin had announced all her plans for them to the then-hardly known headmistress’s niece. Thankfully, Tim having turned out to be Tim, it hadn’t mattered. But Nicola was a cautious soul, and she knew of old how Lawrie would be.
“When, Mum?” It was Ann again. “I mean - have we left?”
Her mother smiled down at the daughter about whom, on balance, she worried most. Ginty would always make friends easily, Lawrie was self-absorbed enough to manage as long as she could get attention, and Nicky’s feet were firmly on the ground. But Ann - sometimes Mrs Marlow wondered how the adult world would treat her. “Of course not. Daddy and I have to let the house and make arrangements. You’ll go back to Kingscote for the summer term, and start at the Chalet School with the new school year.”

“Leaving?” Miranda West, on the roof on the first day of the summer term at Kingscote, regarded her best friend in a mixture of horror and disbelief. “What do you mean, leaving? You can’t leave! What about the Sixth, and being head-girl and games captain? What about form netball? And...and us?” Miranda was by no means a sentimental character, but school-life since Nicola Marlow had been so much more satisfying than before her. “Nick!”
“S’true, all the same,” Nicola kicked a stone across the roof.
“You don’t want to go?”
“Not much. Only they don’t understand that. Gin’s over the moon, apart from leaving Monica; you know Lawrie - she’s seeing all sorts of possibilities of glory; Ann’s - well, being more Ann-ish than usual, if you know what I mean. All that stuff about it being a wonderful opportunity for us, and how good it is for Daddy, and not a word about what she really thinks about it. If you ask me, she’s sick that she won’t be head-girl, but she wouldn’t actually say it, of course.”
“Head-girl! Crikey! Really?”
“So Keith told Mum when she told her we wouldn’t be coming back next year. Well, if you think about it, who else is there? They’re a really drippy crowd in Upper Fifth this year.”
Miranda nodded, seeing that. “Well, only one thing for it - I shall have to come too.”
“I wish you could!” Nicola was not sentimental by nature either, but she was totally unsettled by the coming change.
“Well, why not?” Miranda leant on the balustrade and looked down on the girls milling about below in the first day chaos of greeting friends, seeing to pets, catching up on the holiday gossip. “I’m sure if I asked Daddy, he’d see how good it would be for me to broaden my horizons, as no doubt your Ann would say.”
“Has said,” Nicola interjected. “I say, Miranda, d’you really think so? I wouldn’t mind it half so much if you could come too.”
“Come on!” Miranda headed for the fire escape.
“Where to?” although Nicola did not hesitate to follow.
“To ‘phone my father, of course,” Miranda retorted. “He’ll have to give notice here and get me into this Chalet School of yours. I’ll tell Latimer I’ve forgotten something and need to ask him to send it on.”

“Well?” Nicola had danced impatiently in the corridor outside the secretary’s office while Miranda made her call. “What did he say?”
“Not much,” Miranda admitted. “He was a little - well, dazed, I suppose!”
“Well, you can’t blame him for that!” Nicola retorted. “He dropped you off here a few hours ago and now you’re asking him to take you away and send you to Switzerland!” She herself was dazed, though, knowing Miranda, she felt she should be less surprised.
“Anyway, he didn’t say no,” Miranda told her. “He’s going to talk to your folks, and make some enquiries, and see if they have a vacancy, and things.”
“Well, what did you expect?” Practical Nicola shook her head at her best friend. “That he’d call Keith and hand in your notice just like that?”
Miranda grinned. “Maybe not. Come on, let’s go and see who else is here? Wonder if Lawrie’s told Tim?”

“Thalia, my dear, what an absurd suggestion.” Miss Keith regarded her niece across her desk in some amusement.
Tim Keith, having just put much the same matter to her Aunt Edith as Miranda had done to her father, flushed but stood her ground. “It’s not, really, Aunt Edith. It would be wonderful for my languages, and I’m sure it would broaden my horizons.”
The headmistress laughed. “My dear, I do sympathise. It’s an excellent opportunity for Lawrence and Nicola. But that’s not a good enough reason to uproot you. You’ll have to console yourself with the fact that you’ve already seen more of the world than most girls of your age. Of course, I can’t stop you appealing to your father, but...”
“But he won’t see it at all, unless it comes from you,” Tim said dismally.
“Probably not,” and Miss Keith smiled again. “Tim, you didn’t really expect me to say yes, did you?”
Tim grinned weakly. “I guess not. But I had to try. It’ll be just rotten next term!”

“She said no?” Lawrie felt the all too familiar sensation of tears welling up in her eyes. It had been easy, at home, to be excited about the great adventure and not mind too much about leaving behind her friends at Kingscote, but now that she was actually back, now that she was with Tim, she suddenly found she minded very much indeed.
She contemplated flight, but on the first day of term there was no guarantee, or even likelihood, of privacy anywhere. Nick or Gin would probably be in their bedroom, likely with Miranda or Monica in tow, and Lawrie found, inexplicably, that the only one of her sisters she could bear to see right now was Ann. Ginty’s views on the new school were well known in the Marlow household by now, and although Lawrie knew that Nicola was not particularly excited she was also aware, uncomfortably, that she would be all right once she got there. Her twin, she had begun to realise, might be quieter and less obvious than herself, but she was also, much to Lawrie’s dismay, invariably more universally popular. Ann, well, there was no chance that Ann would understand, because Ann never did understand these things, but she could be relied upon to say the right things. But Ann would be busy with the horde of infant young to whom she was dormitory prefect, with no time to spare for a youngest sister.
Tim had not known Lawrie for all their time at Kingscote for nothing; she pushed her unceremoniously into the nearest empty classroom, closed the door behind them, and wandered across to the window with mock disconcern while Lawrie ‘got over it’.

“You’re not going to cry are you, Nick?” Tim demanded, as they filed into the hall for Last Day assembly. “Lawrie’s safe to, of course.”
“Shouldn’t think so,” Nick shrugged, surprised at how little, now that the time had come, she really did feel. In fact, apart from Miranda’s cheerful ticking off of a mental list – last turn for the Minster on Sunday, last English with Crommie, last Friday night supper of fish – heartless wretch, Tim had commented, it had been just like any other end of term.
Lawrie, to the surprise of IVa and the staff, once the initial tears were over, had seemed resigned to her fate and had been her usual self, as though there were to be no crisis, as though she would be coming back to Kingscote next term, and every other one until she was ever so old, as IVa viewed the stately young ladies in Upper Sixth. Nicola, and probably Tim, knew that she had convinced herself that she would, that something would happen at the last minute to prevent the move to Switzerland – the new school being burnt to the ground, Daddy’s losing the new job before it had even begun – “Lawrie!” Ann had exclaimed at this suggestion, scandalised.
But now, somehow, it was last assembly and even Lawrie could not put off the inevitable. This was it she thought dramatically. After today there would be no more Marlows at Kingscote, ever, unless, she supposed, Kay sent the infant young someday. She would never again play the Shepherd Boy, feel the whole school looking up at her in awe and admiration. Her Prosser prize would go to someone else, someone dull and colourless, another Jan Scott perhaps. And next term Tim would…… Lawrie gulped, realising with a shock that she would miss Tim even more than the Shepherd Boy. She looked sideways to where Nick was standing in her customary place between Tim and Miranda, singing the Last Day hymn lustily, and hated her.
Then assembly was over, Miss Keith made her usual speech, they were filing out again to their formrooms for mark reading. In IVa a crowd thronged around Nick and Miranda, envying them, begging for postcards, and Lawrie dawdled in the doorway until Cromwell came up behind her.
“Come along in, Lawrie,” she said briskly, but not unkindly. She read the term’s marks in the same brisk manner, handed out reports with the usual injunction that they were for their parents and therefore not to be opened, and then sat back with a glance at her watch.
“Talk among yourselves – quietly!”
Nicola and Miranda, suddenly tired of answering questions, drifted up to the desk. The English mistress smiled at them.
“Sad to be going?”
“Would you think it awfully dreadful of us if we weren’t?” Miranda asked curiously. She and Crommie had always got on well, the mistress, perhaps, enjoying for once a pupil who was not scared of her.
“Not as awfully dreadful as your English,” that lady said with a hint of a smile. “Do I take it from that that you aren’t? Sad, I mean.”
Miranda considered. “Not in a wringing hands and wailing sort of way,” she said dryly, with a glance at Lawrie, who was looking very much like doing just that. “But I’ve been here forever, haven’t I? Feels a bit weird to know I won’t be coming back.”
Miss Cromwell nodded understanding. Miranda had come to the school as a very junior Junior Side. “And Nicola?” she asked, with a smile.
Nicola returned it. “You know, I thought I’d mind more than I do,” she said honestly. “Everyone’s always had expectations of Lawrie and me and they’ve always been disappointed.”
Crommie raised her eyebrows. “I wouldn’t say you were a total disappointment, you know.”
Miranda grinned, seeing the joke, Nicola, less certain, tried to explain. “It’s just that there always have been Marlows at Kingscote, and they’ve always been good at things. People expect, and wonder if you’re not.”
Miraculously, the mistress understood this confused statement. “You’re looking forward to going somewhere where you can sink or swim on your own merits from the start?”
“That’s it,” Nicola looked relieved.
The ringing of the bell put an end to any further talk. Nicola and Miranda shook hands with their form mistress and then turned to the rest, to be wished well on all sides.

#2: Author: Liss, Location: Harrow, London

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 8:54 pm

Hurrah! Another Marlow crossover! I can't wait for them to get to the CS - more soon, please!

#3: Author: Rachel, Location: Plotting in my lair

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 9:04 pm

This is great! The more Marlows the better!

When is the next bit getting posted? Wink

#4: Author: Carolyn P, Location: Lancaster, England

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 10:20 pm

That was great.

Look forward to hearing how the CS copes with them

#5: Author: patmac, Location: Yorkshire England

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 10:26 pm

Can't wait till the next post!

#6: Author: Vikki, Location: Sitting on an iceberg, freezing to death!!!

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 11:25 pm

That was really good!!
And welcome to the CBB!!
May we have some more soon please?

#7: Author: Ellie, Location: Lincolnshire

Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2004 1:24 am

I sometimes think I'm missing out by knowing nothing about the Marlows, but no matter, this looks like it's going to be intersting anyway.
Looking forward to seeing more.

#8: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2004 12:15 pm

Annother Marlow/CS crossover, excellent. Looking forward to seeing how Lawrie copes with the new school.

#9: Author: Peggy, Location: London

Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2004 2:29 pm

This is great! I love the Marlows so any new stories about them are very welcome with me.

One quibble - wasn't Crommie the Maths mistress not English? Or is that me hallucinating?

Can't wait for the next part.

#10: Author: Ciorstaidh, Location: London

Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2004 3:08 pm

Nicky, this is fabulous - can't wait for more - I mean, you can't leave it there!!! Very Happy

#11: Author: catherine, Location: York

Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2004 4:11 pm

More please, Nicky!

#12: Author: Susan, Location: Carlisle

Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:15 pm

This is really good. Looking forward to more soon

#13: Author: Lisa_T, Location: Belfast

Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:32 pm

This is really good. I'm tempted to dig out the AFs I have and try yet again *sigh* to get further than chapter one and or a skim of the whole book

#14: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2004 4:09 pm

Nickyj, there's no more of this! When do we get the next eisode?

#15: Chalet School & the Marlows Author: nickyj, Location: Essex, England

Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2004 1:46 pm

Absolutely right - she was! Don't know what made me write English!

Hopefully part 2 will be there by the end of this weekend....

Nicky

Peggy wrote:

#16: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2004 3:52 pm

Nickyj, where is the next episode? We want more of this, so please post some more.

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