Beginning again, again.

by mrsredboots

Summary:

Con has married her Jock, and Nell is left alone. Or is she?

Notes:

• For Elennare.

“Thanks, Nell,” said Con Stewart, for the past hour Mrs Jock McKenzie. “If you could just help me get my dress into my trunk; I’m not going to want it now, probably not even in Singapore, but I’m not parting with it.”

Nell Wilson smiled at her friend, and did as she was asked, and, as they closed the trunk for the last time, Jock McKenzie banged on the door asking whether Con was ready yet? Nell hugged Con fiercely. “Be happy!” she whispered.

“I will be. Thanks for everything – I’ll write!”

Con ran off lightly holding her husband’s hand. Nell knew that she ought to go down to wave them off; she could already hear the cheers and shouts of the girls and staff as the couple went downstairs and off on their abbreviated honeymoon. In three days, they would be heading to Southampton and their home in Singapore; the carrier was coming in the morning to take Con’s trunk.

Nell sat on the trunk and finally gave in to the tears that had been threatening all day. She and Con had been very close, ever since she, Nell, had joined the Chalet School in Tirol some eight or nine years ago. Con Stewart had already been established there as a popular history mistress, and had taken the newcomer under her wing. Not that Nell, a graduate of the LSE, had needed much in the way of looking after, but she had been grateful for the friendship and support while she found her feet. Then had come the Anschluss, and Nell, after an adventure that had turned her hair white, had had to flee Austria on foot with a party of schoolgirls. Eventually she had reached England, and, with her savings, was able to buy a little cottage on the edge of Dartmoor. When what was left of the school dispersed, Con came to Nell at her cottage, and the two of them spent several happy months together, walking for hours, reading, discussing what they read, and listening to concerts on the radio. Eventually, of course, both of them got bored with no work to do, and it was a relief when the Chalet School reopened in Guernsey and Madge Bettany invited them both to rejoin it.

By this time, Con was engaged to Jock McKenzie, who she had met on holiday a year or so earlier. She had, indeed, hoped to have been married the previous year, but circumstances had forced this to be postponed. The War, only a shadow on the horizon when they had left Austria, was now a reality, although little had happened yet. However, the school decided that its refuge on Guernsey was no longer safe, and, when offered a mansion on the Welsh borders, had jumped at the offer. Nell had left a few days before the rest of the school, and while she was away, Jock McKenzie had turned up to claim his bride. And now they were married, and Con would no longer be a part of Nell’s life.

Nell genuinely wished Con happy. But oh, how she was going to miss her. They had been so close, but it seemed as though Con was happy to discard her old friendships and go forward into her new life. The tears continued.

A knock on the door was swiftly followed by its opening.

“Go away!” sniffed Nell, without raising her head.

“Oh, my dear, what’s wrong?” It was Hilda Annersley, Head Mistress of the Chalet School, and also a friend, although they had never been close.

“Go away!” said Nell again, crossly.

“No, I am not leaving you when you’re in such distress. I’m just going to sit down quietly and not talk, and when you’re ready you can tell me about it. Or not.”

Hilda was as good as her word, waiting patiently while Nell cried herself out. This did not take long, as Nell wasn’t one to give rein to her emotions longer than she had to.

“It’s Con, isn’t it?” asked Hilda, when Nell eventually mopped up and gave a watery smile.

“Yes, I’m being horribly selfish. I do hope she and Jock will be happy – but oh, how I’m going to miss her!”

“I know you will, but term is going to start in a day or so, and you’ll be busy enough not to mind quite so much.”

“Well, not during lessons, but then there is break, and she won’t be in the staffroom teasing me about taking sugar in my coffee, and lunch, and she won’t be there to chat to, and after school and she won’t be there to grin at while we’re doing our marking, or to go out to the hotel for a drink with, or…. Honestly, Hilda, I’m really not sure I can cope. Maybe I’d be better to leave and start afresh somewhere else.”

“Oh, please don’t do that,” exclaimed Hilda. “I would miss you quite dreadfully if you left, and I know the others would, too. Even, or perhaps especially, the girls.”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to see how it goes, but right now, I’m dreading it. You see, there isn’t anybody else. My parents are dead, my sister is dead, I have no family. I’m just alone.”

“Except we aren’t alone with the school. I, too, have no family – well, there may be a couple of cousins somewhere, but we’ve lost touch – and if it wasn’t for the school, I’d be very lonely.”

“But, as I said, for me school and Con are – well, almost the same thing.”

“Will it be, do you think, in a completely new area, a completely different building, new girls – did you gather we’re taking in at least one school whose owner doesn’t want to continue?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. Right now, nothing feels possible.”

“Right now,” said Hilda, “what you need is a cup of tea and your bed, and perhaps a couple of aspirin, as I’m sure you have a headache after all those tears.”

“I do, rather,” admitted Nell.

“Then come along, let’s get you to your room.”

The two women walked along the passageway, and Nell ducked into the bathroom to wash her face, before rejoining Hilda in her bedroom.

Hilda helped Nell to get undressed, and, while helping take her blouse, she accidentally brushed her hand over Nell’s left breast. Both women froze momentarily, then looked at each other. And Hilda leant down and kissed Nell on the lips, very gently.

Nell smiled. “Not now, Hilda. Not yet. Maybe – almost definitely – one day, but tonight it’s too soon.”

“I know it is. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No, don’t be sorry; I’m not sorry. But it’s too soon. Maybe at half term? We can’t do anything during term time even if we wanted to!”

“No, you’re quite right, of course we can’t. So look, I’ll go and get you that cup of tea, and then you’re to try to sleep, all right?”

That was the beginning of it. Hilda had, she admitted, loved Nell ever since she had arrived at the Chalet School the term after Nell herself had arrived, although the friendship between Nell and Con had been so exclusive she had been unable and unwilling to try to break in. “Three is a horrid number, it’s always two against one,” she explained later.

For Nell, what started as a distraction quickly became friendship and affection, but it was not until Hilda nearly died as a result of a serious accident a few years later that she realised how much she loved her, and how bereft she would be without her. And even as she hurried back to school to take over as Head in a crisis, she knew that she would be only half alive until Hilda was fit and well enough to join her again.