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It had to be said, after all, that the Play was not a howling success. Not that one could call it bad, thought Miranda, judicially, slipping backstage to rescue her various tapes of incidental music from the jaws of the Music Department’s stereo. Rachel Collins, borrowed from Upper Four on the strength of her being Liz Collins’ sister, had made quite a workmanlike job of pressing buttons and changing tapes at the appointed times; the lighting plan had all come off; Jennings had complimented the sets; nobody—not even Elaine or that dippy kid Joanne Minton from last year's Upper VB—had flubbed their lines. ‘Quite a nice effort,’ Miss Keith had said, in her magisterial visit backstage after the applause had died down.
Still, it hadn’t caught fire, in the mysterious way plays either did or didn’t—and Tim’s plays, taken as a category, usually did. Saint Joan hadn’t, in a way Miranda had trouble putting her finger on; as had Tim, judging by her swift departure, practically on the heels of her relative.
Which was most unlike Tim, Miranda reflected, not only not staying to brazen it out (while all the time pretending there was nothing to brazen), but leaving Lawrie in a depressed heap on a pile of Scene 1 flats.
Miranda turned back to the dressing rooms, now with the tapes safely stowed in her pockets. She thought Miss Ussher might, just poss, make better use of them than the still nebulous grown-up Miranda who was scheduled to come into being rather less than 48 hours from now; but not without fair copies of the labels, rather than the sketchy notes-to-self-and-Liz’s-Rachel that now existed. In fact, she might as well write them now (Miranda congratulated herself on a brainwave), since the dressing room was full of cast members arranged into clumps, respectively, of lumpen depression and over-cheerfulness, neither of which suited her current mood. Nor did canapés with staff and selected parents appeal, though she would probably have to make an appearance eventually.
A quick glance backstage revealed that Nicola, as expected, was still coping philosophically with Lawrie; but the small office next to the dressing rooms would be empty, and with a bit of luck equipped with pens and notecards—
‘H’lo,’ said a familiar voice from the back of the room. Pomona was perched on the filing cabinet, neatly pulling pins out of her hair.
‘Oh,’ said Miranda blankly. ‘I didn’t think—’ But there was no way to end that sentence tactfully, and equally no way to explain that it wasn’t Pomona, particularly, that she wanted to avoid just now.
Pomona, blessedly unruffled, rescued her. ‘I couldn’t stand all that woffle. Horrible post-mortems, and Lawrie bellyaching, and Tim telling everyone exactly what they did wrong, as if it matters now.’
‘Exactly,’ Miranda agreed, finding she could, just about, cope with company after all. ‘We’ll never be in another Play—’ shattering thought, as Nicola would have said— ‘and it’s not as if we’re doing it again for the Saturday matinee. But Tim’s not there, actually, and Lawrie’s being relatively quiet,’ she added, scrupulously fair. ‘Someone should explain that RADA are much more interested in auditions than whatever happens in school plays.’ Nicola, in point of fact, had, when last seen, been trying unsuccessfully to expound this doctrine. ‘You were good, though.’
She had been good as Cauchon; an air of conscientious reliability, leavened with brains, was just what the part needed, and reliability was what Pomona provided, now and throughout their school career.
‘Mm,’ Pomona said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Bobby pins arranged neatly around her sleeve, she started putting her hair back into its customary plait. Miranda, who had known occasional envy for hair that could be plaited so neatly back, gave her own short curls an approving mental pat as Pomona’s fingers caught in a hairspray-sticky tangle.
‘Wasn’t Keith beastly, though,’ she continued, after a moment, as if picking up the thread of a conversation.
Miranda nodded. ‘Practically feral, and horribly pleased with herself. You’d almost think she liked people to flop.’ Which was utterly mad, and yet—
‘She does, you know. Noticed it years ago.’’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Well, you heard her. What a lovely community effort it all was, and how much work we must have put into it—’
‘Yes, and nobody doing a better job than anyone else, just how she likes it.’ Somehow she’d never put it into words before, but a lot of things were suddenly becoming clear. Mostly, she’d enjoyed Kingscote, and Keith had always been fairly civilised to her, but definitely, there were things one wouldn’t miss...
‘And especially not Tim,’ said Pomona, with an emphatic nod.
Miranda, who was never sure exactly what relationship Tim and Pomona had at home, and thus what line Pomona was likely to take on Tim’s aunt’s Tim-suppressing policies, decided to let that one lie. ‘She doesn’t seem to mind people doing well in exams, though.’
‘Oh no,’ Pomona agreed earnestly, ‘exams are quite different.’
They grinned at one another with the heartlessness of those who had their exams behind them and no apprehensions about the results. Miranda knew herself to be blessed with an immunity to exam nerves; Pomona, having announced, to the general stupefaction of a three-years-earlier Lower VA, an ambition to be a doctor, had settled down to the sciences with a doggedness that had hauled her steadily up the form rankings.
‘What happens next for you? After we leave, I mean,’ Miranda asked, adding, as propriety demanded, ‘Assuming your results come back all right.’
‘Home first, then Daddy’s taking me to London for interviews.’
‘UCL?’
Pomona nodded. ‘It’s not the only place I’ve applied, but… What about you?’
‘Well, I still think I really ought to be helping my papa in the Shop, but he’s saying he won’t let me until I’ve done a degree or two, so I thought at least Art History would be useful. And if I do it at the Courtauld, I’m still craftily on hand and he can’t say anything.’ Suddenly, she had the oddest sense of time flowing around her like water. This term would be the last time she and Nicola kept the Tradition -- unless they had children and sent them here; then they could drop the little dears at the front door and totter arthritically up the fire escape -- come to think of it, it was probably their duty to give Crommie (who was certainly immortal) a few more chances to catch them... There were other lasts, too, and things one suddenly wanted to do before the tide ran out for the last time. ‘I say, Pippin?’
‘Hm?’
‘If we both get in… p’raps we’ll run into each other in London.’
Pomona thought this over, then nodded solemnly. ‘P’raps we will.’