by Kathryn Montague
Miriam's parents had decided that enough was enough. They were loving parents, if a little clueless, and had tried very hard to be modern, and to understand the mind of the teenage girl, a concept that seemed very odd to them, coming from an era where you were a child and then you were an adult, with no strange, moody in-between period. Miriam had railed against the rules of her grammar school, bringing home reports that complained of her laziness, poor attitude to staff and general unsatisfactory behaviour. One such report said, "Miriam has set herself a low standard, and then managed to fall even lower than this."
Feeling quite daring, her parents had sent her to a progressive school, one which claimed that with no uniform and no rules, young people used their own intelligence and made the right choices. Miriam, though, had made the wrong choices; with no uniform, she had copied the styles she saw in magazines, and her skirts had become shorter and shorter until her stocking tops and even her knickers were visible below her hemline. Given a choice about which lessons to attend, Miriam chose to attend none of them, and spent her days in the pupil common room, smoking, and writing poems about social justice, civil rights and pacifism. As her mother said, the poems didn't even rhyme.
Things came to a head when 16-year-old Miriam had claimed she was going to a Girl Guide meeting and then staggered home at midnight, reeking of beer and cigarettes, saying she'd seen something called 'The Stones' at 'Eel Pie Island'. Concerned that she had been using drugs and was having hallucinations, her parents decided that they'd had enough of being modern parents and were going to send Miriam to a school her Great-Aunt Florence had recommended, Carstairs Towers, in Scotland, a school renowned for being one of the strictest girls' school in Britain.
Miriam, at first, assumed her parents were joking and then, when a trunk was bought and she was taken to a department store to be measured for her new uniform, objected very strongly to this idea.
"You can't lock me up in some sort of prison," she argued. "Teenagers have rights. I have a voice that is screaming out to be heard."
"I know," replied her mother. "We've all heard that voice screaming in our ears. That's why you're going to Scotland where you can scream all you like and we won't get the neighbours complaining anymore."
Miriam tried arguing, she tried screaming, she tried crying and begging, she tried threats of hunger strike but found that too hard to continue after a couple of hours, and so the day came in January when Miriam was taken to the station to get the train to her new school. Her trunk had been sent on ahead and Miriam was supposed to travel in her new uniform but in a last minute act of rebellion, she had bundled everything up, even her new shoes, the ones she said were so square she wouldn't be seen dead in them, and had thrown it all in the stream near their house. The clothes and shoes had been rescued but were soaking wet on the morning she was due to depart so it had all been put in a bag, and Miriam had chosen her own travelling outfit. Her mother suggested that the extremely short, lurid, psychedelic patterned dress and the knee high boots did not create quite the right impression for Miriam's first meeting with her new school, but Miriam argued that everything else had been packed and she wanted people to see she looked cool.
Her mother sighed. "On your head be it," she said, thinking how glad she was that soon Carstairs Towers could take charge of her errant daughter and she wouldn't have to deal with these conflicts.
Miriam and her mother arrived at the bustling London terminal and looked for the Carstairs Towers group. They were easy enough to spot. A crowd of girls in navy blue raincoats and berets, talking quietly to each other, while watched over by several stern faced ladies holding clipboards. Miriam felt rather nervous and would have held her mother's hand, except that would be deeply uncool so she refrained. They approached the nearest lady.
"Good morning," said Miriam's mother. "This is Miriam Townson. She's a new girl."
The lady looked Miriam up and down, coldly. "Not for Carstairs Towers, surely?" she asked. "All our girls travel in uniform."
"Miriam's uniform met with an unfortunate accident this morning," her mother explained. "She has it here in a bag."
The lady looked even more disapproving. "We have certain standards to maintain," she objected. "It really wouldn't do for someone to see a girl in this sort of outfit and connect her with Carstairs Towers." She looked about then called a uniformed girl over. "Amanda Stephens?"
A slender girl, of about Miriam's height, with dark blonde hair in a neat plait came over. "Yes, Miss Hartnell?" she said.
"This new girl has arrived dressed entirely inappropriately. Perhaps you would be so kind as to lend her your raincoat so we can at least cover up that garish frock, which seems to have been designed for someone about a foot shorter than Miriam here."
Amanda took off her raincoat, and smiling pleasantly, handed it to Miriam, who growled a thank you.
Miss Hartnell clapped her hands. "Girls, it's time to make our way to the platform. You, new girl, Miriam, say goodbye to your mother now. We're leaving."
At that moment, Miriam regretted her arguments with her parents and thought that turning round and going home with her mother seemed eminently preferable to getting on a train with this harridan and her navy blue crowd of followers but her mother was walking away and Miriam was getting caught up in the navy blue crowd.
"Come on," said Amanda, putting a hand on her arm. "I'm Mandy. You're Miriam, aren't you?"
"You can call me Mimi," said Miriam, allowing herself to be drawn away.
Miriam shared a compartment with Mandy and four other girls. They seemed a friendly enough group. "It's not really that bad at Carstairs Towers," said Mandy. "You have to watch out for some of the mistresses. Miss Hartnell is one of the strictest. She can really lay it on with her cane but some of the others are quite nice."
"The cane!" gasped Miriam. "What do you mean?"
"I mean the cane, silly," replied Mandy. "If you do something wrong. There are a lot of rules at Carstairs Towers and if you break any of them, it's your bottom that pays the price."
"Your bottom?" Miriam was aghast. "You don't honestly mean they cane girls on the bottom?"
"Of course, they do," laughed Mandy. "Didn't you read the prospectus? Carstairs Towers prides itself on providing a high level of education, and a high level of discipline, designed to equip young ladies to become pillars of society. Didn't they use the cane at your old school?"
"No," answered Miriam. "It was a progressive school. We wore what we liked and there were no rules. If you didn't want to work then you didn't have to."
"Well it's not like that at Carstairs Towers," said Mandy. She reached out and touched Miriam's long hair, parted in the middle and ironed that morning to make it completely smooth and straight. "You'll have to plait your hair. No loose hair is allowed. And they're never going to let you wear those boots. They're super cool though. I love them."
"Thanks," smiled Miriam. "I had to save up for weeks to buy them, and my dad didn't approve at all. He said I looked like a woman who sells herself."
Mandy giggled. "With my raincoat and if you add my beret, I think you look French. And if you're French then Mimi is the right name for you. We'll be Mimi and Mandy, the grooviest girls in the fifth form."
Miriam smiled. She seemed to have made a friend. Maybe with a friend, Carstairs Towers wouldn't be too bad.
The journey was very long and would have been boring but the girls in Miriam's compartment regaled her with stories about life at Carstairs Towers. She wondered if they were pulling her leg some of the time, as it all sounded quite extraordinary to her yet they all seemed quite cheerful, despite the horror stories they told about the canings they'd received.
"Miss Hartnell is definitely one of the worst," Mandy said. "She takes us for Latin and she's the housemistress of Victoria House. I think she must have caned me practically every week last term. Do you know which house you're in? I hope it's Victoria with me."
"I don't know," replied Miriam. "I wouldn't listen when my mum tried to tell me about the school."
"Well, there's Victoria, Elizabeth, Mary and Anne. Any Scottish girls are usually put in Mary but nearly everyone at the school is English. Matron is Scottish, though. She's quite nice."
"Except when she whacks you on the bare bottom with a hairbrush, though," put in a chubby girl with glasses and short light brown hair. She leaned across to introduce herself. "I'm Judy, pleased to meet you."
"Pleased to meet you," said Miriam. Her head was whirling with trying to remember the names of the other girls and the stories they were telling her about the staff.
"I think the Head's the worst," said Judy calmly. "The others just give you a few whacks here and there. When you get sent up to the Head you know you're in trouble. Miss Timmins, she's called. She's quite glamorous looking really, always wears very high heels, but she's so sarcastic and you never leave her study without at least six across your knickers. Apparently, Susan Devine in the sixth form was sent to her to be told she'd got a scholarship to Cambridge but because no one ever sees the Head unless they're in trouble, poor old Susan just bent over without being told. The Head saw a bent over girl and forgot she was supposed to be congratulating her and caned her instead!"
Mandy saw Miriam's horrified face. "That's just a joke, Mimi," she said. "It didn't really happen."
"It did," retorted Judy. "My sister is a pal of Susan Devine and she saw the marks afterwards. My sister wouldn't lie."
It was getting dark by the time the train pulled in at Carstairs Halt. "Most trains don't stop here," explained Judy. "They lay on this one just for the beginning and end of term. Once we're here, we're trapped, miles from anywhere, with no trains or buses anywhere near. If you want to run away, you just have to walk and there are wolves in the woods. A girl tried once and they found her mangled body a few days later, covered in bite marks."
"Oh, shut up, Judy," said Mandy. "You're scaring poor Mimi. No one believes your silly stories." She hooked her arm through Miriam's elbow and led her to the coaches that were waiting to take the girls the final two miles to school.
Miss Hartnell stood at the door with her clipboard. She beckoned to Miriam. "Miriam Townson, you're in Victoria House, so I have the pleasure of being your Housemistress. Amanda will show you where everything is. However, before any tours of the school can happen, you need to remove that raincoat, leave your bag of damp clothes here for Matron to dry out, and then you will need to go and see the Headmistress to explain to her why you have arrived at school looking like some sort of woman of the night."
Miss Hartnell led Miriam down a wood panelled corridor to a door labelled 'Headmistress'. She knocked, then when she heard the call of, "Enter," took Miriam by the arm and led her in.
Not to be reposted, reproduced or distributed, in part or whole.