The Lido Girls. Allie Burns

France and Italy Pledged to Maintain Peace

      Lord Lacey turned the pages with a rustle, thumbing through until he set the paper down on Miss Lott’s desk. Correspondingly the Principal leant away from it.

      Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Lord Lacey was watching her, not reading the newspaper. So was Miss Lott.

      Saturday Night Robberies

      She scanned the story, her eyes travelling quickly – in search of what, she wasn’t sure. She just had a feeling she’d better find it double quick. Then she saw it.

      Record attendance at the Women’s League of Health and Beauty’s annual rally

      Beneath the columns of text were two black and white photographs. The first was an aerial shot of the women seated in the Grand Hall, row upon row, indistinguishable in their white blouses and dark shorts. The second was of Prunella Stack, a shot taken from low down to capture the full length of her bare legs, as she shook hands with someone.

      Natalie snatched the page closer. Surely not.

      The photograph had been taken in Prunella’s changing room. Delphi was just a blur in the background, but her blond hair and petite figure were distinctive enough if you knew who you were looking for. But Natalie’s own image was so clear she practically jumped from the page: her heavy nose, the swept back hair, the wave reaching her jaw, the exposed legs Jack had been so quick to notice. In the Sunday Times.

      ‘Oh dear.’ Her expression made her look as though she were shaking hands with the devil, but whatever her expression, she was shaking hands with the head of the Women’s League in the Times.

      As she read the caption she lost control of her jaw.

      ‘The Women’s League’s leader Prunella Stack has a fruitful meeting with the Vice Principal of Linshatch College of Physical Education.’

      ‘Oh dear.’

      ‘Is that all you have to say?’ Lord Lacey pounced. ‘I had a telephone call from the Chairman of the Board of Education himself today. But alas, my joy was short-lived. As was his at the sight of my staff pictured in a national newspaper having a jolly nice time with the very woman the education establishment abhors.’

      She looked at Miss Lott again. Natalie was one of her staff, not his. But still Miss Lott said and did nothing. Lord Lacey waited, now holding the open page of the Sunday Times in front of him as if it were contaminated. He was directing this performance, his theatrical leanings coming to the fore. Miss Lott seemed to be present only as a witness, powerless to defend her.

      ‘I can explain… It was a chance meeting.’

      ‘You’re wearing the uniform of the Women’s League, I see.’ He held up the crumpled page. ‘How…fetching. What a chance.’

      ‘Well, yes, that is…’ She looked to Miss Lott but she still wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘It was research,’ she added, seeing a way to save her skin. ‘My friend, Delphi Mulberry…’ she pointed to the picture ‘…she’s considering becoming an instructor and I thought it would be useful. They say to keep your enemies close and…’

      ‘When you say enemy I assume you are referring to Miss Mulberry. She was a troublemaker as a student and certainly no friend of the establishment.’ He stroked his white moustache and then folded the newspaper back in half and tossed it as if forgetting that its contents were so incendiary. ‘You know the Board of Education officials have shunned these women, of course. In the last year, two of our teachers have defected to the League.’ He held up two fingers. ‘The Board is extremely twitchy. We do not want to be seen associating our highly respected teaching methods with this band of distrusted and unethical intellectual lightweights. What you’ve done is tantamount to treason to the good name of physical education.’

      ‘I’m very sorry. I’m entirely dedicated to the work we do here…’

      Lacey closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

      ‘Right after that photograph was taken I told Miss Stack that her activities were artistic poppycock.’ She widened her eyes and smirked, but neither of them joined her.

      ‘You’re to stay in your room until further notice…’

      ‘But I have the diving display tonight. The Wilkins family are here and…’ She cut herself short, but Lacey didn’t seem to notice.

      ‘Have you sent that Wilkins girl down yet?’

      ‘No, no I haven’t.’

      He looked to Miss Lott and then paced up and down the hearthrug, playing his role for all it was worth. Perhaps Mrs Wilkins had been wrong about his acting potential after all.

      ‘Wilkins is supposed to be in the display tonight, is she?’

      They both nodded.

      ‘Very well. Go ahead with it. If you give the girl enough rope she’ll hang herself. Then her mother can also experience humiliation on a public stage.’

      ‘Thank you,’ she breathed out. She needed to find Margaret right away.

      ‘In the meantime I’ll speak to the other trustees and decide on your fate.’

      So much for supporting one another in our careers. I make a bad impression for Delphi with Prunella Stack and in return I’m going to lose my job.

      As she left the room Miss Lott finally looked at her and twitched a discreet consolatory smile, but it vanished as soon as Lacey looked their way. It had been a risk on Miss Lott’s part, a small act of kindness that left Natalie scurrying back to her room before the tears could set in.

      *

      She found Margaret reading her book aloud, acting it out, with her legs hanging over a fallen trunk that extended across the river. She wasn’t in the least bit embarrassed when Natalie appeared from behind the upended roots and explained that her parents were at the college, that she needed Margaret to turn up to the diving display, prove her abilities publicly and show that she deserved her place at the college.

      ‘Could I dive to music?’ Miss Wilkins asked.

      ‘Music?’ She stood by the riverbank, hands on hips, facing Margaret on her pontoon. ‘Of course not. Who ever heard of such a thing? We’re trying to match the men at their own games. And the men aren’t diving to music, let me tell you.’ She shook her head. ‘Miss Wilkins, do you want to remain at the college?’ Because if you don’t, you’ll save me from fighting a near impossible battle when I should be thinking of myself.

      Margaret looked up from her book.

      ‘Yes. Yes, I do. I think.’ She followed a robin as it hopped from one branch to another. ‘It’s just that I’m so used to thinking and acting for myself and here, well you teachers want to do my thinking for me. I mean to say, who cares if men aren’t diving to music? What’s to say women can’t do it and can’t be good at it? And if we strike out with some ideas of our own we won’t have men telling us how we should be doing it either.’

      She had a point, but they’d always done the diving contests the same way. She couldn’t go changing it now.

      ‘You want to blow the whistle,’ Margaret continued, the wind behind her now, ‘and tell me when to dive off that board, how to dive, how to land. I want to decide for myself. And, in my lessons I want to hear a male perspective from time to time.’

      Natalie gasped at this. They all knew that most parents wanted their daughters to be taught by a man, but she’d never before heard a student agree.

      ‘Could you compromise?’ Natalie asked.

      ‘Perhaps…’ Margaret shut the book, swung her legs over the trunk. ‘Could you?’

      ‘Not today, no. You need to show you can succeed in the system as it is now, Miss Wilkins, and then perhaps you will have the