Doctor George : 01 - Nina and the Lodger (f/f)
Posted: Tue May 08, 2018 12:59 pm
Doctor George's stories
01 - Nina and the Lodger
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By Doctor George
by Doctor George » Tue Jul 15, 2014 6:11 am
Nina and the Lodger Part 1: Back to School...
Right through the Christmas holidays, the weather had been cold but without any snowfall. There was a coating of snow on the surrounding hills but none in the town itself. That all changed on the Sunday after New Year. Snow started to fall in the middle of the afternoon. The flakes were large and wet to begin with but, as darkness fell, the snow changed to fine icy granules driven by an increasing wind.
On Monday morning, Nina dragged herself out of bed when her alarm went off. She didn’t dare try to snatch a few minutes extra snooze as she knew full well that she would drop effortlessly back into a deep sleep and then have to rush to get ready for school when her mother eventually woke her. She staggered to the window and pushed her head between the curtains. The inside of the window was covered in condensation which Nina wiped using the sleeve of her fleece sleepsuit. It was still dark but she could see that snow was still falling hard. It was illuminated by the street light she could see, forming a fuzzy orange halo which shaded off to a yellowish haze elsewhere. Looking down, there was enough light escaping through the kitchen blind to show her that the back garden was under 10 to 15 centimetres of snow already.
Nina lifted the lid of her laptop and brought it up from standby. She clicked on the bookmark for her school’s website. She studied the home page carefully for the notice she expected to see announcing that school would be cancelled for the day, but all that was there was a banner saying Happy New Year and the date for the beginning of term.
Nina went to the bathroom and then dressed herself warmly. She put a pair of black long johns on under her purple woollen school tights and a white long-sleeved thermal top under her polo shirt. It was legitimate in severe weather to wear the school uniform purple tracksuit trousers for extra warmth. With her purple school sweatshirt on the effect was a little overwhelmingly purple, but presumably whoever had designed the school uniform had liked the colour. She pulled her purple and white striped hockey socks up over the legs of her trousers and folded them down to ankle level then went down to join her mother for breakfast.
“Morning, Mum,” Nina said, planting a kiss on her mother’s cheek.
Suzanna looked up from the piece of toast she was buttering. “Morning sweetie,” she replied, then, noticing how Nina was dressed, added, “Have you seen the snow? Surely school isn’t on today?”
“I checked the website. There’s nothing to say it isn’t on.”
“How are you going to get there? There’s no way I can get the car out with this much snow,” Suzanna pointed out.
“I know, but the traffic will have cleared the main roads by the time I leave, so I should be OK cycling if I can borrow your mountain bike for grippier tyres.”
“No problem borrowing my bike, but are you sure you can cycle at all in this weather?”
“I think so,” Nina said, taking the plate of egg on toast from her mother and heading for the dining room.
While Nina ate, Suzanna started her own laptop and brought up the school website. Sure enough, there was no indication that the school might be closed. She phoned the school, but the answering machine message simply stated the office opening hours as usual, suggesting that the school would indeed be open as usual.
It was just before quarter past eight when Nina finished her breakfast. “I’ll try to get out a couple of minutes early,” she said as she stood up.
“Take a look outside the front door and see if you really want to cycle today,” Suzanna urged.
At her mother’s insistence Nina opened the front door and looked out. The whole world seemed to be made up of blurred white shapes dimly seen through the swirling white of the falling snow. A brutal cold bit into her face, so she shut the door hurriedly. “I think I’ll be OK,” she insisted. “Bike tyres are good at cutting through soft snow and your bike has nice knobbly ones.”
* * *
When Nina came back downstairs, she had put on her school sports fleece jacket for extra warmth and was wearing a one-piece waterproof rainsuit as her top layer. The rainsuit was a startling shade of pink with purple panels on the underside of the sleeves and down the outside faces of the body and the legs. It had reflective strips across the back and down the outsides of the sleeves for visibility. Her head was completely covered in a pink and purple striped ski mask knitted by her cousin Theda which left just her eyes exposed. She also had her purple and white school scarf wrapped around her neck in an attempt to prevent too much snow getting inside her clothes. She had her heavy black winter cycling mittens in her hand ready to put on. Only her feet were relatively unprotected in the black trainers she usually wore to ride to school.
Nina paused at the hall cupboard and took out her helmet which she fastened on over her knitted mask.
“Still nothing to suggest school isn’t open,” Suzanna said, gesturing towards her laptop as she kissed her daughter’s wool-covered cheek.
Nina opened the back door and hesitated at the prospect of the swirling maelstrom of snowflakes outside.
“Do you need a pair of goggles?” her mother asked.
“Might help,” Nina conceded. “That way I won’t have to cycle with my eyes shut.”
Suzanna rummaged in the back of the hall cupboard and emerged triumphant with a pair of aviator-style motorcycle goggles. She helped Nina put the elastic over her helmet and settle the lenses over her eyes.
“Proper Snoopy goggles,” Suzanna said, admiring the overall effect.
“More like Tank Girl with this,” Nina suggested, tapping the side of her mountain bike helmet.
“I’m not sure Tank Girl is suitable reading for someone your age,” Suzanna pointed out.
“Oops,” Nina replied, not sounding particularly repentant as she headed out into the snow.
* * *
Nina’s estimation of the conditions proved to be optimistic. The fresh snow on the residential streets was hard work to ride through, but the mountain bike tyres gripped well and the snow yielded cleanly with the characteristic slightly squeaky sound of powdery snow. There was a brief respite in a narrow alleyway between two houses that, by some quirk of the wind, was almost free of snow.
The main road, which Nina expected to be cleared by traffic, turned out to be a nightmare. The traffic was crawling along in both directions in two narrow lanes in the centre of the road. This part of the road appeared to have been cleared by a snowplough, judging from the heaped up and re-frozen snow closer to the kerb on each side. Nina tried riding on the clear part of the road and found that she could easily keep up with the slow-moving traffic but soon realised that some of the cars she was sharing the road with were barely under control. After seeing a car in front of her skid nearly sideways, she realised how vulnerable she was. The heaped snow towards the sides of the road was impassible on a bicycle and there were too many pedestrians, mostly walking with their heads down, for her to ride on the footway.
With no viable alternative, Nina resigned herself to having to push her bicycle the rest of the way to school. With her one-piece rainsuit and her face completely covered, Nina was relatively warm and comfortable despite the snow and the biting wind, certainly more comfortable than many of her fellow pedestrians appeared to be. The weakness in her attire was her trainers. Although the snow was fairly dry and powdery, it still stuck to the nylon fabric uppers of her shoes and her body heat was enough to melt it so that her feet rapidly became wet and uncomfortably cold.
* * *
It was about 20 past 9 when Nina pushed her bicycle through the school gates. When she locked it to the bike rack there were only two other bicycles there instead of the dozens she would usually expect to see. She trudged across an almost-empty car park to the school entrance. As she approached it, she could see two figures standing under the canopy over the door.
One of the figures was wearing a shiny maroon hooded duvet coat which reached almost to her ankles with the feet of a pair of green wellingtons visible below. She held a clipboard in her mitten-covered left hand and a ballpoint pen in her right hand which was only protected by a red woollen glove. Her face, framed by the hood of her coat, was almost entirely hidden, with the edge of a red woollen hat coming down to her eyebrows and a jaunty tartan scarf in red, green and yellow covering her mouth and nose.
“Don’t worry, I’m not marking you late. This is registration as there are so few teachers in,” the muffled figure said.
“Mrs Buchanan?” Nina ventured, recognising her geography teacher’s Scottish accent.
“The clue is in the tartan,” Mrs Buchanan replied, pointing to her scarf with the pen.
“Sorry, I can only just about recognise easy ones like Black Watch.”
“No matter,” Mrs Buchanan said lightly. “And is that Nina Margrave under those layers?”
“That’s right.”
“Remind me what class?”
“8Kw.”
Mrs Buchanan leafed through the photocopied pages on her clipboard to find Nina’s class. “You’re down here as ‘K Margrave’,” she commented.
“I’ve always been called Nina, but I’m really Katrina Margrave for official purposes,” Nina explained. “I might well change it officially when I’m 18.”
“OK, that’s you ticked off, Nina. Miss Kowalska is one of the few teachers in this morning, so you can go up and see what she’s doing if you like.”
“Is school actually open today?” Nina asked. “I checked the website before I left and it didn’t say it wasn’t.”
“Technically, we’re closed, but it was almost 9 o’clock before any of the admin staff could get in to change the website and to answer anyone phoning in,” Mrs Buchannan explained. “You can go home as soon as you like as long as there is someone there or you can stay on here for a bit. There are free hot drinks and soup in the canteen and some of the teachers are organising activities to keep people amused.”
“Thanks – I think I’d like to warm up before I try going back home,” Nina replied.
The other muffled figure spoke for the first time. She was dressed in a pink one-piece ski-suit with the hood up and the lower part of her face obscured by a white scarf. “I want to check your temperature before you go any further, Nina. Step inside and we’ll do it under cover.”
Nina recognised the voice as Miss Holmroyd, one of the sports teachers, who was also one of the school first-aiders. She followed as the teacher pushed the entrance door open and stepped inside.
“It’s an intra-aural thermometer,” Miss Holmroyd said, “so I need to get at your ear.”
Nina took her mittens off and tucked them under one arm then lifted her goggles up onto the front of her helmet and unfastened the chin strap. She re-fastened the strap and used the helmet as a basket to carry her mittens and then her knitted mask.
Miss Holmroyd pushed the thermometer into Nina’s right ear, waited for an electronic beep and then withdrew it. “You’re well within the normal range,” she said as she examined the display.
“Some people weren’t?” Nina asked.
“Two hypothermic and a few borderline so far.”
“Badly so?”
“No, nothing that a hot drink and a blanket wouldn’t sort out,” Miss Holmroyd assured her.
“Thank you,” Nina said, turning to go up to her classroom. “Oh, and Happy New Year to both of you.”
* * *
Arriving at the bank of lockers outside Miss Kowalska’s classroom, Nina took off her soaking wet trainers then took off her rainsuit. She unwound her scarf from around her neck and was surprised to find it was almost dry once she shook off the few remaining snowflakes clinging to it. She shook the rainsuit as dry as she could and hung it in the locker. Not surprisingly, Nina’s socks were as wet as her trainers so she peeled them off. The feet of her tights were wet too, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. She hoped that a pair of clean dry white sports socks would at least allow her feet to warm up. She also put on the pair of white canvas gym shoes that she usually kept in the locker. Nina debated putting her grey school skirt on, but decided that she was much more comfortable with the tracksuit trousers on and by the same token, decided to keep her hooded fleece on as well and hung her scarf back around her neck for good measure.
Nina closed her locker, picked up her schoolbag, which was much too wet to put on her back and gathered up her trainers, socks and balaclava.
When she entered the classroom, Nina found Miss Kowalska sitting at her desk and only six girls in the room, sitting in two huddles of three, clearly studying something closely.
“Good morning, Miss Kowalska and Happy New Year,” Nina said, confident that she wasn’t interrupting a lesson. “Is it OK if I put these on the pipes to dry?”
The thick iron pipes which supplied the radiators with hot water ran the length of the room about 30 centimetres above the floor and often did service for drying clothes. Nina added her items to those already there. As she stood up again, she noticed that there was a pair of narrow skis propped up in the corner of the room and a pair of Salomon ski boots tucked under the pipes next to them. “Are the skis yours, Miss?” she asked, impressed.
“Yes,” Miss Kowalska confirmed, “hence the outfit.”
Nina had noticed the heavy sweater that her teacher was wearing, with its bold Norwegian pattern, but hadn’t taken in that she was wearing knee-length breeches with socks similarly patterned to her sweater and that had a lightweight ski jacket hung on the back of her chair.
“I’ve never had the chance to use them around the town before,” the teacher continued. “At least, not in this country.”
“More practical than my bicycle turned out to be,” Nina pointed out. “I ended up pushing it about 2 kilometres.”
Miss Kowalska winced sympathetically then said, “I’ve given the girls some crosswords to unfreeze their brains. You can join in if you like.”
“Come and join us,” Nina’s friend Vicky invited. “We’re really struggling here.”
Nina crossed to one of the groups of girls and pulled a chair into position, so that she could see the paper they were working on. “This looks like the crossword that the local paper publishes,” Nina commented, recognising the format.
“It is, but these ones haven’t been published yet,” Miss Kowalska confirmed.
“I sometimes do these with my Mum – they’re quite difficult,” Nina said.
“We’ve managed about a third of the clues, but we seem to be stuck,” Vicky explained, turning the paper so that Nina could see more clearly.
Nina read the clues in silence, then said, “This one across the top. The clue is ‘Alex went south from California, but no-one believed her’. Could that be CASSANDRA? Nobody believed Cassandra in the Trojan war story, it’s the right number of letters and we’ve already got the A on the end, but I don’t see how it fits the rest of the clue.”
“Well California would give CA and south would give an S, but I don’t see where SANDRA comes from,” Vicky commented.
“I know,” said Jo, one of the other girls in the group, “Sandra is short for Alexandra and so is Alex.”
Steph, the fourth member of the huddle, dutifully wrote it in. “Well done, Nina – that gives us lots of initial letters for down clues.”
“Group effort,” Nina pointed out modestly. “And I see why you were struggling.”
“ ‘Support for injured member’ is SLING,” Steph announced, writing it in.
The girls worked on, racking their brains against the crosswords, until about quarter past 10, Vicky said, “We’ve only got two clues left, but I think we’re stuck, Miss.”
“Us too, but we’ve got three left,” said the spokesgirl for the other group.
“Why not swap and see if you can finish each other’s?” Miss Kowalska suggested. “If you’re still all stuck at half past, we’ll call it a draw.”
“I didn’t know we were in competition,” Nina said, surprised. The other girls laughed good-naturedly.
The sheets of paper were exchanged and the concentration resumed. Two of the three remaining clues in the new crossword yielded fairly quickly but the last one was stubborn: ‘Some require a tailor-made lasso.’
“Miss, I think we’ve got the right letters for the last word, but it’s not a word any of us know.’
“Take a chance and write it down – you sometimes just have to do that with crosswords. You can check in the dictionary afterwards.”
“OK, we’ve either finished or blown it,” Steph said, writing in REATA.
“We’ve got the same problem,” the other group admitted. “We’ll take a chance too – ‘Look up a seriously toxic tree’ – UPAS?”
Miss Kowalska stood up and walked to the two groups of girls who turned their crosswords around for her to read them. “Both absolutely right, so it’s a draw.” she said. “A reata is a kind of lasso or noose and the upas tree is the Java poison tree.”
“Did you actually make these crosswords up yourself, Miss?” Nina asked.
“I did – it’s called compiling a crossword,” Miss Kowalska admitted. “That’s why I was able to give you ones that aren’t published yet.”
“And English isn’t your first language is it?”
“No, we spoke Polish and German at home. I learned English at school.”
There was a stunned silence, then Vicky summed up the group reaction with, “Wow!”
“OK, girls, I’m ready for a coffee,” the teacher said, sidestepping the implied compliment, “who else is coming down to the canteen?”
By mutual unspoken consent, all seven girls stood up.
* * *
Nina elected to have tea, not being much of a coffee drinker. After chatting with her friends in the canteen, she decided to go to the art room, one of her favourite haunts in the school.
The school had a slightly surreal atmosphere with so few staff and students there and none of them engaged in normal schoolwork. Nina was glad that she had decided to disregard the formal uniform requirements in favour of warmth as the school heating system was no match for the low temperature and fierce wind outside. The corridors were decidedly colder than Miss Kowalska’s classroom had been, so she pulled the hood of her fleece up and nestled her chin down into her scarf.
As she approached the art room, Nina was delighted to see that there was light visible behind the glazed panel above the door. Certain that she wouldn’t be disturbing a class, Nina quietly opened the door and let herself in. She stopped, rooted to the spot with her mouth open until someone said, “Shut the door, Nina – you’re letting the cold air in.”
Nina pulled herself together enough to turn and push the door shut behind her. She turned again and stared at the sight that had pulled her up short. Miss Pennywright, her art teacher was sitting securely tied to an old wooden chair which was raised on a small platform in the middle of the room.
The chair was one that Nina had seen and drawn many times before in the art room, a survivor of classroom furniture from many decades ago. It was robustly built with a solid wooden seat, slightly splayed legs which were braced by stretchers. The backrest was supported on wooden spindles. Some of the deeper recesses of the decorative turning on the legs and spindles still retained traces of the original varnish but mostly the chair was bare wood discoloured and polished to a dull sheen by the many hands that had touched it over the years.
Miss Pennywright usually wore one-piece cotton overalls for teaching, art being a messy sort of subject, but today was dressed in a startlingly atypical short dress with a flared skirt, high nipped-in waist and long sleeves, an emerald green skater dress that would look more at home on a teenager. Her legs were covered by a pair of over-knee socks in alternating light and dark green stripes. It was hard to tell from the short length of thigh visible, but Nina thought Miss Pennywright must be wearing a pair of chocolate-brown nylon tights under the socks, closely matching her skin colour. Her feet were in a pair of grey high-top converses and the tops of a pair of grey socks could just be seen inside them. The shaved brown dome of Miss Pennywright’s head was covered by a wig, styled in a short bob and in the same shade of green as her dress.
The art teacher was quite efficiently bound with smooth white cotton rope. Her hands were out of sight behind the back of the chair from Nina’s point of view. There were bands of rope around her upper arms and chest and the back of the chair both above and below her bust. Another band went around her and the chair at waist level and another over her lap and under the chair seat. Her legs were bound at the ankles and below her knees and Nina could see a rope attached to Miss Pennywright’s ankle binding, going below the braces linking the chair legs and up behind her, presumably to her wrists.
As a finishing touch, Miss Pennywright was gagged with a white cloth. It had been folded into a fairly wide band across her cheeks but pinched together to go between her teeth. When she turned her head, Nina could see that the gag was secured with a cartoonishly large knot behind her head and the ends of the cloth sticking out stiffly behind.
Two people were drawing Miss Pennywright. One was Dr Darkwood, Nina’s chemistry teacher, and the other was a girl named Monica, several years older than Nina. Both were regulars at Miss Pennywright’s after school life-drawing class.
Nina managed to remember her manners enough to say, “Good morning everyone and Happy New Year.”
“Ah-oh Mee-ma,” Miss Pennywright mumbled in reply. “Ah-ee oo ee-ah.”
“And the same from me,” Dr Darkwood said, laughing at her colleague’s efforts.
“Me too,” Monica added, trying to control her own laughter so that she could draw.
“I’ve been working on a manga,” Dr Darkwood said, swivelling round on her chair to face Nina, “and Miss Pennywright pointed out that some of the frames don’t look quite right when people are tied up. I tried tying up a Barbie doll with string as a model – I’ve got one that has properly articulated knees and ankles – but it still didn’t bend the way a real person would. I tried with an artist’s wooden lay figure, but that was even worse. Miss Pennywright offered to pose for me instead. We were going to do it one evening, but with school disrupted by the snow, we decided just to go ahead today.”
“I just came in to say ‘Hi’ and found this going on, so I had to do a drawing,” Monica explained.
“Do you want to join in too?” Dr Darkwood asked.
“Yes please,” Nina replied enthusiastically as she went in search of a drawing board, clips and paper.
Nina stalked around looking for an angle to sketch, eventually choosing an oblique view behind Miss Pennywright. She settled herself down on her favourite seat, an old-fashioned artist’s ‘donkey’, a small wooden bench with an adjustable easel built into one end of it. It was necessary straddle the donkey in order to use it, which was usually a little inelegant in a skirt, but perfectly practical in her tracksuit trousers.
Miss Pennywright glanced over her shoulder to see where Nina was sitting. Her wrists were tied side-by-side with her hands hanging relaxed with the fingers slightly curved. She clenched her hands into fists and asked, “Ow’at?”
Nina looked at her teacher’s hands, noting that she was wearing thin knitted gloves almost the same shade of brown as her skin and which were long enough that the tops were hidden by the three-quarter length sleeves of the green skater dress. She pondered the question for a moment then suggested, “Try one hand clenched and the other flat?”
Miss Pennywright relaxed her right hand.
“Other way, please,” Nina requested.
With Miss Pennywright’s hands in the position she had requested, Nina started drawing. She was aware that the pose would probably only last until Dr Darkwood had finished her own drawing, so she worked rapidly using a thick charcoal pencil, concentrating on form, light and shade rather than detail.
“I’m going to be done in about another two or three minutes,” Dr Darkwood announced, confirming Nina’s thoughts.
“Fine by me,” Monica said, “I’ll be in danger of overworking this if I do much more.”
“Fine by me too,” Nina agreed, “I’m just doing a quick impression, so I can stop any time.”
Nina and Monica actually put their drawing things down before Dr Darkwood and watched as she applied the last few touches to her drawing
“Done!” Dr Darkwood announced emphatically. “Could you two untie Miss Pennywright while I pop out and spray this?”
Murmuring their assent, Nina and Monica left their seats and set to work to release their art teacher from hers. The rattling of an aerosol can being shaken could be heard from the corridor outside, then the hiss of spray fixative being applied to Dr Darkwood’s drawing. None of the knots had been pulled especially tight, so it took only a few minutes to free Miss Pennywright completely.
“That feels better,” Miss Pennywright said as soon as the gag was out of her mouth. She rubbed her wrists briefly then added, “I think a quick comfort break is called for,” and left the room.
While Miss Pennywright was away, Nina took the opportunity to take her own drawing out into the corridor to fix it. Dr Darkwood had just finished as Nina opened the art room door. She handed over the can of fixative (actually supermarket own-brand extra-hold hair-spray). Nina laid her drawing on the old newspaper that Dr Darkwood had left on the vinyl tiled floor, shook the tin vigorously and applied a light misting of spray. She had just picked the drawing up again when Miss Pennywright came trotting along the corridor, hugging herself.
“Cold out here,” the art teacher commented as she opened the door and returned to the art room.
“We could put the heater on for a bit,” Dr Darkwood said.
“I was just about to suggest that,” Miss Pennywright agreed. She picked up the photocopied draft pages of Dr Darkwood’s manga and flipped through them. “This one next?” she asked?
“If it’s OK with you, Layla,” Dr Darkwood replied.
“It was my bright idea in the first place, Chrys,” Miss Pennywright pointed out with mock resignation. “Where do you want me?”
Dr Darkwood replied by turning to Nina and Monica. “Could you two get the glass-topped table set up?”
The glass-topped table was a piece of equipment that had been in the art room for as long as anyone could remember. It had originally been intended as a dining table, probably some time back in the 1970s. It consisted of four chubby cylindrical aluminium legs linked by rectangular-section aluminium braces at the top. Erecting this part of the table was a simple matter involving lightweight components and eight wingnuts. The tabletop was a different matter; it was a single sheet of toughened glass about 90 by 120 centimetres and over a centimetre thick. With a weight of about 30 kilograms it was an awkwardly-slippery two-person lift.
Nina had helped put up the table several times before and Monica, being older, many more times, so they both knew what to do and worked together efficiently to manoeuvre the components of the table out of the store room and assemble them. While they were doing that, Miss Pennywright and Dr Darkwood set up a large electric fan heater that was kept at the back of the same cupboard.
Although it was unwieldy, the glass-topped table had several important uses. Mostly it served as a useful lightbox, with the addition of a lamp on the floor underneath it. It occasionally appeared in drawing exercises involving transparency and reflection. Sometimes it was used in situations where the subject matter was to be lit from below and it was this latter function that Dr Darkwood had in mind. The scene from her manga that she was redrafting at Miss Pennywright’s suggestion was one where her protagonist was hogtied on top of a grating with light coming from underneath.
“All right – do your worst, Chrys,” Miss Pennywright said.
She hoisted herself onto the table so she was sitting on the edge on it. She paused to tug at her socks which had slipped slightly and then to smooth out the wrinkles that had developed at the wrists of her long woollen gloves. Satisfied, she swung her legs up onto the table and rolled herself onto her stomach. She flipped the skirt of her dress down into place before offering her hands behind her back.
“It’s getting hot in here,” Monica commented as the heater started to have an effect on the room temperature. She unwound the huge grey scarf she had been wearing wrapped around her neck and pulled up over her chin and shed the outermost of the several layers of cardigan she was wearing.
“I need to lose a layer too,” Nina agreed, removing her scarf and hooded fleece.
“I’m only just about getting comfortable,” Miss Pennywright commented.
“Me too,” Dr Darkwood agreed, hugging herself dramatically.
“You can borrow my scarf if you like,” Monica offered jokingly.
“Well...” Dr Darkwood began then hesitated, “...actually, yes please.”
The chemistry teacher was already warmly dressed in a thick navy blue sweater with an equally thick cardigan in a slightly lighter blue on top. A pair of grey tweed culottes came to just below her knees and below that could be seen the legs of a pair of navy blue woollen tights with narrow horizontal pink stripes disappearing into a pair of chunky grey socks. Presumably her outdoor footwear was somewhere else with her coat. She arranged Monica’s scarf to go over her head and then looped it once around her neck to hold it in place.
“Thank you, Monica. That feels better already,” Dr Darkwood said as she sorted out the rope that had previously been used to tie her colleague to the chair.
“Can I help?” Nina offered.
Dr Darkwood handed Nina a tangle of rope then set to work to use the length she had already straightened out. She arranged Miss Pennywright’s arms so that her forearms were parallel across her back with the fingertips of each hand just reaching the opposite elbow. She found the middle of the long length of rope she had ready and used it to form a binding around the art teacher’s wrists. Working quickly and confidently, Dr Darkwood deployed the doubled rope to form a quite complex harness going around Miss Pennywright’s arms and chest both above and below her bust, in both cases cinched between her arms and body, and over both shoulders, progressively building up a bulky knot in the middle of her back. Dr Darkwood ran out of rope several times doing this, but each time took another piece from Nina, doubled it and hitched it onto the length already in place.
Nina was fascinated by the obvious skill that Dr Darkwood exhibited tying her colleague up.
“How’s that, so far, Layla?” Dr Darkwood asked.
“OK, I think,” Miss Pennywright replied, “but I’m definitely not going anywhere until you say so.”
Dr Darkwood changed her position so that she could tie Miss Pennywright’s legs next. Nina followed so that she could keep handing her rope. From her new vantage point, Nina could see that Miss Pennywright’s skater dress was actually a genuine ice skating dress, effectively a leotard with an attached skirt worn over her opaque chocolate brown tights.
Miss Pennywright’s legs were bound at the ankles and both above and below the knees, each binding being formed as a wrap and cinch.. Dr Darkwood carefully adjusted the tension of the rope at the knee bindings so that they wouldn’t over-tighten when her legs were bent. With that done, she lifted Miss Pennywright’s feet and gently eased them towards her bottom until there was an angle of about 45 degrees between her thighs and lower legs.
“Not too tight?” Dr Darkwood asked.
“No, I should be fine like this, Chrys,” her colleague confirmed.
Nina handed the chemistry teacher another piece of rope and watched as it was deftly tied in place linking Miss Pennywright’s ankle binding with her chest harness.
“Are you sure everything’s OK before I gag you?” Dr Darkwood asked.
“I wouldn’t be able to take this all day, but I should be fine for as long as you need,” Miss Pennywright assured her.
Dr Darkwood tied the thick white cloth gag in place between her teeth much as it had been for the chair tie.
Nina glanced round at Monica, aware that she had been busy sketching while she had been helping Dr Darkwood.
“Good action sequence,” Monica said.
Nina went across to Monica and looked over her shoulder as she showed her the last few pages in her sketchbook. While Miss Pennywright was being tied up, Monica had done a series of lightning sketches of the process in black felt pen with shadows indicated using a broad grey marker pen. They were naturally lacking in detail and quite scribbly but captured the action dramatically and dynamically.
“I need to do more stuff like that,” Nina commented approvingly. “It would stop me getting bogged down in detail all the time.”
While Nina had been looking at Monica’s work, Dr Darkwood had positioned a lamp under the glass-topped table so that it uplit Miss Pennywright in the way that she wanted.
Nina pondered what she should do next and decided to go in much the direction that Monica had. She went to the art materials cupboard and selected a bullet-pointed black felt pen and a selection of broad-tipped markers in a range of useful colours. She explored various possible vantage points and eventually settled herself sitting on the floor with her back supported by the leg of a table so that she was looking up through the glass table top at Miss Pennywright. She took a deep breath and then set to work sketching directly in felt pen, knowing she had no way to correct mistakes. She filled in the colours in Miss Pennywright’s clothes and skin in solid blocks of colour with the marker pens, relying on layering to achieve the tones she wanted. Nina wasn’t satisfied with her first effort, but felt more confident in the technique having tried it out and immediately embarked on a second try. She was quite pleased with the result, especially as it was very different to any of her usual techniques.
“Success second time round?” Dr Darkwood asked as Nina stood up.
“Not bad, but it would be better with a bit more practice,” Nina replied showing her drawing first to Dr Darkwood then to Miss Pennywright, who nodded her approval.
“Does anyone know if Miss Badelaine is in school today?” Nina asked.
“I saw her in the staff room earlier,” Dr Darkwood said, not looking up from her drawing, “but I’ve no idea if she’s still here.”
“I think I’ll go along to the library and say ‘hello’, if she’s there.”
Nina thought about putting her drawings into her schoolbag but decided it was still too damp, so she settled for putting them in her personal folder in one of the big storage drawers in the art room.
“Thanks for letting us all draw you,” she said to Miss Pennywright as she put her fleece and scarf back on before heading out of the room.
Nina realised that it probably wasn’t any colder in the corridor than it had been before, but it certainly felt that way after the comparative warmth of the art room with the heater on. She paused to wrap her scarf across her mouth and zip up her fleece with its hood up.
* * *
Nina encountered no-one else on her walk to the library. She suspected that many of the few staff and students who had made it into school had already gone back home. She was therefore pleased to see that the lights were on in the library. She let herself in and announced herself: “Bonjour ma’m’selle Badelaine!”
There was no reply, but Nina could hear someone moving around, so she went further into the library to investigate. She found Miss Badelaine standing on a chair reorganising the books on a high shelf. She had a stack of books expertly cradled between her left forearm and her body and smaller piles of books were lying on a nearby table. As ever, Miss Badelaine was taking no chances with the weather. She was wearing a pair of shorts that Nina hadn’t seen before, almost knee-length with a bold Aztec-style pattern, majoring on reds, oranges and yellows. They were in a thick, rather fuzzy-looking fabric, which made Nina wonder if they had been made from a blanket. The colour was picked up by the sunset-orange v-necked sweater she wore. There was a bright red woollen scarf wrapped around her neck and tucked into the top of the sweater. A second scarf, black and enormously long and wide, was looped more loosely around her neck and hung down below her knees. A huge hooded cardigan in deep maroon offset the bright colours a little. It was open at the front and came down below knee level. The maroon of Miss Badelaine’s cardigan was echoed by the slightly brighter red of her woollen tights that were visible below the hem of her shorts and above her black knee-length socks, which had a pair of narrow yellow bands just below the top. On her head, Miss Badelaine was wearing a black open-faced knitted balaclava hood with a long tail and a pompom at the back, which Nina recognised as being in the same style as was worn the librarian’s favourite storybook heroine, Fantômette. Over the top of the hood was a pair of bright green cable-knit earmuffs. From the hiss of a bass track that Nina could just make out, it was obvious that the earmuffs incorporated a pair of headphones. Miss Badelaine was swaying gently and shelving books rhythmically to the beat of a soundtrack only she could hear.
Nina tried a louder greeting: “Bonjour ma’m’selle Badelaine! Bonne année!”
The librarian looked around, startled. “Nina!” she exclaimed, “Bonne année!”
Miss Badelaine stepped down from her chair and carefully put her stack of books down on the table. She ignored the hand that Nina was holding out in greeting and instead grabbed the girl by the shoulders and planted a kiss on each cheek.
“Bonne année!” the librarian repeated, sliding her headphones down around her neck. “Tu vas bien?”
“Très bien, merci,” Nina replied politely, a little shaken by the greeting. “Et vous?”
“Très bien aussi. C’était bien Noël? Tu as eu beaucoup de cadeaux?”
“Une nouvelle bicyclette,” Nina offered, taken aback by this onslaught of French.
“Chouette! Quelle genre de bicyclette?”
“Um...” Nina began, but her limited command of French deserted her under pressure. “It’s a hybrid bike, fitted with road tyres so it will be good for my ride to school,” she explained.
“Surely you did not cycle to school in this weather?” Miss Badelaine said, gesturing towards the window, where the snow could be seen still falling gently.
“I borrowed my mum’s mountain bike, but I still ended up pushing it most of the way here,” Nina admitted. “What about you? Did you manage on your moped?”
“Alas, no – I did not even try. I had to walk.” Miss Badelaine nodded towards her office, where Nina could see through the open door a long black PVC raincoat hanging up and a pair of black wellington boots. “And then I discovered that the school was really closed.” A very Gallic shrug followed and then she added, “But it’s an opportunity to rearrange things to make a little more shelf space before everyone comes back.”
“Would you like some help?” Nina offered.
“Yes, please,” the librarian replied, sounding genuinely grateful. “I have done most of the sorting already. If you pass the books up to me, it will save me time getting up and down off the chair.
They soon fell into a rhythm. Miss Badelaine was introducing a little space into each shelf of books by transferring books down to the next shelf. As the work proceeded, the number of books to be moved increased and part of Nina’s role was to keep them in order on the table before passing them back up to the librarian. There were also some books that were waiting to be re-shelved and their places were marked by pieces of paper inserted between books already on the shelf. Eventually, they reached a long gap between classifications.
“C’est tout – merci beaucoup!” Miss Badelaine said, jumping lightly down from the chair.
“I was glad to do something useful,” Nina said. “All I’ve done this morning is crossword puzzles and pictures.”
“What do you intend to do next?”
“I was thinking of going to the canteen for some hot soup and then going home before the weather gets any worse.”
“A wise plan,” Miss Badelaine concurred. “May I accompany you?”
Nina waited while the librarian collected her coat and boots from the office. While she was waiting, she noticed a new addition to the library notice board:
Accommodation wanted:
Female French student seeks accommodation with a family. Non-smoker, neat habits, willing to assist in household chores, can cook. Can also offer private French tuition.
If you can help, please contact Chloé Badelaine
on 07700 900 535
or +33 6 31 41 59
or email chloeb@courrielexpress.fr
“Is this you looking for accommodation?” Nina asked.
“Yes – I’m in a student hostel at the moment and it doesn’t really suit me well. It’s a bit cramped and noisy.”
Nina took out her phone and used its camera to photograph the notice. “I’ll tell my mum. She was talking about the possibility of getting a lodger in our spare room.”
“Ça serait très agréable,” Miss Badelaine commented, apparently as much to herself as to Nina.
The librarian, now wearing her boots but carrying her coat over one arm, ushered Nina out of the library and locked the door.
Nina hoisted her schoolbag onto her back and set off for the canteen with Miss Badelaine, whose rubber boots squeaked slightly with every step on the polished floor.
* * *
On their way to the canteen, Nina and Miss Badelaine took a slight detour so that Nina could visit her locker. Nina retrieved her trainers, socks, mittens and balaclava from Miss Kowalska’s now deserted classroom. The heating pipes had done their work and everything was now dry and invitingly warm, except for the trainers which were still slightly damp.
Nina paused to take off her gym shoes and sports socks. She put the socks in her schoolbag to go in the laundry basket at home and the gym shoes in her locker. She pulled her purple and white hockey socks on and up over the legs of her tracksuit trousers then put her trainers on. She used her cycle helmet as a carrying basket and put her ski mask and mittens into it, put her rainsuit over one arm and relocked her locker.
Nina and Miss Badelaine chatted about the Christmas break which had just finished as they made their way through the now almost completely deserted school to the canteen. They were relieved to discover that there were still two of the serving staff on duty and that hot soup was still available. They settled down with a bowl of chunky vegetable soup each accompanied by a hunk of crusty bread and a mug of hot chocolate.
Suitably warmed, Nina and Miss Badelaine made their way to the exit door to put their outer layers back on before braving the weather again.
__________________________________________________________________________
Doctor George's stories
Index of all stories in the "Archive for Everyone" section
01 - Nina and the Lodger
Story index at the bottom
By Doctor George
by Doctor George » Tue Jul 15, 2014 6:11 am
Nina and the Lodger Part 1: Back to School...
Right through the Christmas holidays, the weather had been cold but without any snowfall. There was a coating of snow on the surrounding hills but none in the town itself. That all changed on the Sunday after New Year. Snow started to fall in the middle of the afternoon. The flakes were large and wet to begin with but, as darkness fell, the snow changed to fine icy granules driven by an increasing wind.
On Monday morning, Nina dragged herself out of bed when her alarm went off. She didn’t dare try to snatch a few minutes extra snooze as she knew full well that she would drop effortlessly back into a deep sleep and then have to rush to get ready for school when her mother eventually woke her. She staggered to the window and pushed her head between the curtains. The inside of the window was covered in condensation which Nina wiped using the sleeve of her fleece sleepsuit. It was still dark but she could see that snow was still falling hard. It was illuminated by the street light she could see, forming a fuzzy orange halo which shaded off to a yellowish haze elsewhere. Looking down, there was enough light escaping through the kitchen blind to show her that the back garden was under 10 to 15 centimetres of snow already.
Nina lifted the lid of her laptop and brought it up from standby. She clicked on the bookmark for her school’s website. She studied the home page carefully for the notice she expected to see announcing that school would be cancelled for the day, but all that was there was a banner saying Happy New Year and the date for the beginning of term.
Nina went to the bathroom and then dressed herself warmly. She put a pair of black long johns on under her purple woollen school tights and a white long-sleeved thermal top under her polo shirt. It was legitimate in severe weather to wear the school uniform purple tracksuit trousers for extra warmth. With her purple school sweatshirt on the effect was a little overwhelmingly purple, but presumably whoever had designed the school uniform had liked the colour. She pulled her purple and white striped hockey socks up over the legs of her trousers and folded them down to ankle level then went down to join her mother for breakfast.
“Morning, Mum,” Nina said, planting a kiss on her mother’s cheek.
Suzanna looked up from the piece of toast she was buttering. “Morning sweetie,” she replied, then, noticing how Nina was dressed, added, “Have you seen the snow? Surely school isn’t on today?”
“I checked the website. There’s nothing to say it isn’t on.”
“How are you going to get there? There’s no way I can get the car out with this much snow,” Suzanna pointed out.
“I know, but the traffic will have cleared the main roads by the time I leave, so I should be OK cycling if I can borrow your mountain bike for grippier tyres.”
“No problem borrowing my bike, but are you sure you can cycle at all in this weather?”
“I think so,” Nina said, taking the plate of egg on toast from her mother and heading for the dining room.
While Nina ate, Suzanna started her own laptop and brought up the school website. Sure enough, there was no indication that the school might be closed. She phoned the school, but the answering machine message simply stated the office opening hours as usual, suggesting that the school would indeed be open as usual.
It was just before quarter past eight when Nina finished her breakfast. “I’ll try to get out a couple of minutes early,” she said as she stood up.
“Take a look outside the front door and see if you really want to cycle today,” Suzanna urged.
At her mother’s insistence Nina opened the front door and looked out. The whole world seemed to be made up of blurred white shapes dimly seen through the swirling white of the falling snow. A brutal cold bit into her face, so she shut the door hurriedly. “I think I’ll be OK,” she insisted. “Bike tyres are good at cutting through soft snow and your bike has nice knobbly ones.”
* * *
When Nina came back downstairs, she had put on her school sports fleece jacket for extra warmth and was wearing a one-piece waterproof rainsuit as her top layer. The rainsuit was a startling shade of pink with purple panels on the underside of the sleeves and down the outside faces of the body and the legs. It had reflective strips across the back and down the outsides of the sleeves for visibility. Her head was completely covered in a pink and purple striped ski mask knitted by her cousin Theda which left just her eyes exposed. She also had her purple and white school scarf wrapped around her neck in an attempt to prevent too much snow getting inside her clothes. She had her heavy black winter cycling mittens in her hand ready to put on. Only her feet were relatively unprotected in the black trainers she usually wore to ride to school.
Nina paused at the hall cupboard and took out her helmet which she fastened on over her knitted mask.
“Still nothing to suggest school isn’t open,” Suzanna said, gesturing towards her laptop as she kissed her daughter’s wool-covered cheek.
Nina opened the back door and hesitated at the prospect of the swirling maelstrom of snowflakes outside.
“Do you need a pair of goggles?” her mother asked.
“Might help,” Nina conceded. “That way I won’t have to cycle with my eyes shut.”
Suzanna rummaged in the back of the hall cupboard and emerged triumphant with a pair of aviator-style motorcycle goggles. She helped Nina put the elastic over her helmet and settle the lenses over her eyes.
“Proper Snoopy goggles,” Suzanna said, admiring the overall effect.
“More like Tank Girl with this,” Nina suggested, tapping the side of her mountain bike helmet.
“I’m not sure Tank Girl is suitable reading for someone your age,” Suzanna pointed out.
“Oops,” Nina replied, not sounding particularly repentant as she headed out into the snow.
* * *
Nina’s estimation of the conditions proved to be optimistic. The fresh snow on the residential streets was hard work to ride through, but the mountain bike tyres gripped well and the snow yielded cleanly with the characteristic slightly squeaky sound of powdery snow. There was a brief respite in a narrow alleyway between two houses that, by some quirk of the wind, was almost free of snow.
The main road, which Nina expected to be cleared by traffic, turned out to be a nightmare. The traffic was crawling along in both directions in two narrow lanes in the centre of the road. This part of the road appeared to have been cleared by a snowplough, judging from the heaped up and re-frozen snow closer to the kerb on each side. Nina tried riding on the clear part of the road and found that she could easily keep up with the slow-moving traffic but soon realised that some of the cars she was sharing the road with were barely under control. After seeing a car in front of her skid nearly sideways, she realised how vulnerable she was. The heaped snow towards the sides of the road was impassible on a bicycle and there were too many pedestrians, mostly walking with their heads down, for her to ride on the footway.
With no viable alternative, Nina resigned herself to having to push her bicycle the rest of the way to school. With her one-piece rainsuit and her face completely covered, Nina was relatively warm and comfortable despite the snow and the biting wind, certainly more comfortable than many of her fellow pedestrians appeared to be. The weakness in her attire was her trainers. Although the snow was fairly dry and powdery, it still stuck to the nylon fabric uppers of her shoes and her body heat was enough to melt it so that her feet rapidly became wet and uncomfortably cold.
* * *
It was about 20 past 9 when Nina pushed her bicycle through the school gates. When she locked it to the bike rack there were only two other bicycles there instead of the dozens she would usually expect to see. She trudged across an almost-empty car park to the school entrance. As she approached it, she could see two figures standing under the canopy over the door.
One of the figures was wearing a shiny maroon hooded duvet coat which reached almost to her ankles with the feet of a pair of green wellingtons visible below. She held a clipboard in her mitten-covered left hand and a ballpoint pen in her right hand which was only protected by a red woollen glove. Her face, framed by the hood of her coat, was almost entirely hidden, with the edge of a red woollen hat coming down to her eyebrows and a jaunty tartan scarf in red, green and yellow covering her mouth and nose.
“Don’t worry, I’m not marking you late. This is registration as there are so few teachers in,” the muffled figure said.
“Mrs Buchanan?” Nina ventured, recognising her geography teacher’s Scottish accent.
“The clue is in the tartan,” Mrs Buchanan replied, pointing to her scarf with the pen.
“Sorry, I can only just about recognise easy ones like Black Watch.”
“No matter,” Mrs Buchanan said lightly. “And is that Nina Margrave under those layers?”
“That’s right.”
“Remind me what class?”
“8Kw.”
Mrs Buchanan leafed through the photocopied pages on her clipboard to find Nina’s class. “You’re down here as ‘K Margrave’,” she commented.
“I’ve always been called Nina, but I’m really Katrina Margrave for official purposes,” Nina explained. “I might well change it officially when I’m 18.”
“OK, that’s you ticked off, Nina. Miss Kowalska is one of the few teachers in this morning, so you can go up and see what she’s doing if you like.”
“Is school actually open today?” Nina asked. “I checked the website before I left and it didn’t say it wasn’t.”
“Technically, we’re closed, but it was almost 9 o’clock before any of the admin staff could get in to change the website and to answer anyone phoning in,” Mrs Buchannan explained. “You can go home as soon as you like as long as there is someone there or you can stay on here for a bit. There are free hot drinks and soup in the canteen and some of the teachers are organising activities to keep people amused.”
“Thanks – I think I’d like to warm up before I try going back home,” Nina replied.
The other muffled figure spoke for the first time. She was dressed in a pink one-piece ski-suit with the hood up and the lower part of her face obscured by a white scarf. “I want to check your temperature before you go any further, Nina. Step inside and we’ll do it under cover.”
Nina recognised the voice as Miss Holmroyd, one of the sports teachers, who was also one of the school first-aiders. She followed as the teacher pushed the entrance door open and stepped inside.
“It’s an intra-aural thermometer,” Miss Holmroyd said, “so I need to get at your ear.”
Nina took her mittens off and tucked them under one arm then lifted her goggles up onto the front of her helmet and unfastened the chin strap. She re-fastened the strap and used the helmet as a basket to carry her mittens and then her knitted mask.
Miss Holmroyd pushed the thermometer into Nina’s right ear, waited for an electronic beep and then withdrew it. “You’re well within the normal range,” she said as she examined the display.
“Some people weren’t?” Nina asked.
“Two hypothermic and a few borderline so far.”
“Badly so?”
“No, nothing that a hot drink and a blanket wouldn’t sort out,” Miss Holmroyd assured her.
“Thank you,” Nina said, turning to go up to her classroom. “Oh, and Happy New Year to both of you.”
* * *
Arriving at the bank of lockers outside Miss Kowalska’s classroom, Nina took off her soaking wet trainers then took off her rainsuit. She unwound her scarf from around her neck and was surprised to find it was almost dry once she shook off the few remaining snowflakes clinging to it. She shook the rainsuit as dry as she could and hung it in the locker. Not surprisingly, Nina’s socks were as wet as her trainers so she peeled them off. The feet of her tights were wet too, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. She hoped that a pair of clean dry white sports socks would at least allow her feet to warm up. She also put on the pair of white canvas gym shoes that she usually kept in the locker. Nina debated putting her grey school skirt on, but decided that she was much more comfortable with the tracksuit trousers on and by the same token, decided to keep her hooded fleece on as well and hung her scarf back around her neck for good measure.
Nina closed her locker, picked up her schoolbag, which was much too wet to put on her back and gathered up her trainers, socks and balaclava.
When she entered the classroom, Nina found Miss Kowalska sitting at her desk and only six girls in the room, sitting in two huddles of three, clearly studying something closely.
“Good morning, Miss Kowalska and Happy New Year,” Nina said, confident that she wasn’t interrupting a lesson. “Is it OK if I put these on the pipes to dry?”
The thick iron pipes which supplied the radiators with hot water ran the length of the room about 30 centimetres above the floor and often did service for drying clothes. Nina added her items to those already there. As she stood up again, she noticed that there was a pair of narrow skis propped up in the corner of the room and a pair of Salomon ski boots tucked under the pipes next to them. “Are the skis yours, Miss?” she asked, impressed.
“Yes,” Miss Kowalska confirmed, “hence the outfit.”
Nina had noticed the heavy sweater that her teacher was wearing, with its bold Norwegian pattern, but hadn’t taken in that she was wearing knee-length breeches with socks similarly patterned to her sweater and that had a lightweight ski jacket hung on the back of her chair.
“I’ve never had the chance to use them around the town before,” the teacher continued. “At least, not in this country.”
“More practical than my bicycle turned out to be,” Nina pointed out. “I ended up pushing it about 2 kilometres.”
Miss Kowalska winced sympathetically then said, “I’ve given the girls some crosswords to unfreeze their brains. You can join in if you like.”
“Come and join us,” Nina’s friend Vicky invited. “We’re really struggling here.”
Nina crossed to one of the groups of girls and pulled a chair into position, so that she could see the paper they were working on. “This looks like the crossword that the local paper publishes,” Nina commented, recognising the format.
“It is, but these ones haven’t been published yet,” Miss Kowalska confirmed.
“I sometimes do these with my Mum – they’re quite difficult,” Nina said.
“We’ve managed about a third of the clues, but we seem to be stuck,” Vicky explained, turning the paper so that Nina could see more clearly.
Nina read the clues in silence, then said, “This one across the top. The clue is ‘Alex went south from California, but no-one believed her’. Could that be CASSANDRA? Nobody believed Cassandra in the Trojan war story, it’s the right number of letters and we’ve already got the A on the end, but I don’t see how it fits the rest of the clue.”
“Well California would give CA and south would give an S, but I don’t see where SANDRA comes from,” Vicky commented.
“I know,” said Jo, one of the other girls in the group, “Sandra is short for Alexandra and so is Alex.”
Steph, the fourth member of the huddle, dutifully wrote it in. “Well done, Nina – that gives us lots of initial letters for down clues.”
“Group effort,” Nina pointed out modestly. “And I see why you were struggling.”
“ ‘Support for injured member’ is SLING,” Steph announced, writing it in.
The girls worked on, racking their brains against the crosswords, until about quarter past 10, Vicky said, “We’ve only got two clues left, but I think we’re stuck, Miss.”
“Us too, but we’ve got three left,” said the spokesgirl for the other group.
“Why not swap and see if you can finish each other’s?” Miss Kowalska suggested. “If you’re still all stuck at half past, we’ll call it a draw.”
“I didn’t know we were in competition,” Nina said, surprised. The other girls laughed good-naturedly.
The sheets of paper were exchanged and the concentration resumed. Two of the three remaining clues in the new crossword yielded fairly quickly but the last one was stubborn: ‘Some require a tailor-made lasso.’
“Miss, I think we’ve got the right letters for the last word, but it’s not a word any of us know.’
“Take a chance and write it down – you sometimes just have to do that with crosswords. You can check in the dictionary afterwards.”
“OK, we’ve either finished or blown it,” Steph said, writing in REATA.
“We’ve got the same problem,” the other group admitted. “We’ll take a chance too – ‘Look up a seriously toxic tree’ – UPAS?”
Miss Kowalska stood up and walked to the two groups of girls who turned their crosswords around for her to read them. “Both absolutely right, so it’s a draw.” she said. “A reata is a kind of lasso or noose and the upas tree is the Java poison tree.”
“Did you actually make these crosswords up yourself, Miss?” Nina asked.
“I did – it’s called compiling a crossword,” Miss Kowalska admitted. “That’s why I was able to give you ones that aren’t published yet.”
“And English isn’t your first language is it?”
“No, we spoke Polish and German at home. I learned English at school.”
There was a stunned silence, then Vicky summed up the group reaction with, “Wow!”
“OK, girls, I’m ready for a coffee,” the teacher said, sidestepping the implied compliment, “who else is coming down to the canteen?”
By mutual unspoken consent, all seven girls stood up.
* * *
Nina elected to have tea, not being much of a coffee drinker. After chatting with her friends in the canteen, she decided to go to the art room, one of her favourite haunts in the school.
The school had a slightly surreal atmosphere with so few staff and students there and none of them engaged in normal schoolwork. Nina was glad that she had decided to disregard the formal uniform requirements in favour of warmth as the school heating system was no match for the low temperature and fierce wind outside. The corridors were decidedly colder than Miss Kowalska’s classroom had been, so she pulled the hood of her fleece up and nestled her chin down into her scarf.
As she approached the art room, Nina was delighted to see that there was light visible behind the glazed panel above the door. Certain that she wouldn’t be disturbing a class, Nina quietly opened the door and let herself in. She stopped, rooted to the spot with her mouth open until someone said, “Shut the door, Nina – you’re letting the cold air in.”
Nina pulled herself together enough to turn and push the door shut behind her. She turned again and stared at the sight that had pulled her up short. Miss Pennywright, her art teacher was sitting securely tied to an old wooden chair which was raised on a small platform in the middle of the room.
The chair was one that Nina had seen and drawn many times before in the art room, a survivor of classroom furniture from many decades ago. It was robustly built with a solid wooden seat, slightly splayed legs which were braced by stretchers. The backrest was supported on wooden spindles. Some of the deeper recesses of the decorative turning on the legs and spindles still retained traces of the original varnish but mostly the chair was bare wood discoloured and polished to a dull sheen by the many hands that had touched it over the years.
Miss Pennywright usually wore one-piece cotton overalls for teaching, art being a messy sort of subject, but today was dressed in a startlingly atypical short dress with a flared skirt, high nipped-in waist and long sleeves, an emerald green skater dress that would look more at home on a teenager. Her legs were covered by a pair of over-knee socks in alternating light and dark green stripes. It was hard to tell from the short length of thigh visible, but Nina thought Miss Pennywright must be wearing a pair of chocolate-brown nylon tights under the socks, closely matching her skin colour. Her feet were in a pair of grey high-top converses and the tops of a pair of grey socks could just be seen inside them. The shaved brown dome of Miss Pennywright’s head was covered by a wig, styled in a short bob and in the same shade of green as her dress.
The art teacher was quite efficiently bound with smooth white cotton rope. Her hands were out of sight behind the back of the chair from Nina’s point of view. There were bands of rope around her upper arms and chest and the back of the chair both above and below her bust. Another band went around her and the chair at waist level and another over her lap and under the chair seat. Her legs were bound at the ankles and below her knees and Nina could see a rope attached to Miss Pennywright’s ankle binding, going below the braces linking the chair legs and up behind her, presumably to her wrists.
As a finishing touch, Miss Pennywright was gagged with a white cloth. It had been folded into a fairly wide band across her cheeks but pinched together to go between her teeth. When she turned her head, Nina could see that the gag was secured with a cartoonishly large knot behind her head and the ends of the cloth sticking out stiffly behind.
Two people were drawing Miss Pennywright. One was Dr Darkwood, Nina’s chemistry teacher, and the other was a girl named Monica, several years older than Nina. Both were regulars at Miss Pennywright’s after school life-drawing class.
Nina managed to remember her manners enough to say, “Good morning everyone and Happy New Year.”
“Ah-oh Mee-ma,” Miss Pennywright mumbled in reply. “Ah-ee oo ee-ah.”
“And the same from me,” Dr Darkwood said, laughing at her colleague’s efforts.
“Me too,” Monica added, trying to control her own laughter so that she could draw.
“I’ve been working on a manga,” Dr Darkwood said, swivelling round on her chair to face Nina, “and Miss Pennywright pointed out that some of the frames don’t look quite right when people are tied up. I tried tying up a Barbie doll with string as a model – I’ve got one that has properly articulated knees and ankles – but it still didn’t bend the way a real person would. I tried with an artist’s wooden lay figure, but that was even worse. Miss Pennywright offered to pose for me instead. We were going to do it one evening, but with school disrupted by the snow, we decided just to go ahead today.”
“I just came in to say ‘Hi’ and found this going on, so I had to do a drawing,” Monica explained.
“Do you want to join in too?” Dr Darkwood asked.
“Yes please,” Nina replied enthusiastically as she went in search of a drawing board, clips and paper.
Nina stalked around looking for an angle to sketch, eventually choosing an oblique view behind Miss Pennywright. She settled herself down on her favourite seat, an old-fashioned artist’s ‘donkey’, a small wooden bench with an adjustable easel built into one end of it. It was necessary straddle the donkey in order to use it, which was usually a little inelegant in a skirt, but perfectly practical in her tracksuit trousers.
Miss Pennywright glanced over her shoulder to see where Nina was sitting. Her wrists were tied side-by-side with her hands hanging relaxed with the fingers slightly curved. She clenched her hands into fists and asked, “Ow’at?”
Nina looked at her teacher’s hands, noting that she was wearing thin knitted gloves almost the same shade of brown as her skin and which were long enough that the tops were hidden by the three-quarter length sleeves of the green skater dress. She pondered the question for a moment then suggested, “Try one hand clenched and the other flat?”
Miss Pennywright relaxed her right hand.
“Other way, please,” Nina requested.
With Miss Pennywright’s hands in the position she had requested, Nina started drawing. She was aware that the pose would probably only last until Dr Darkwood had finished her own drawing, so she worked rapidly using a thick charcoal pencil, concentrating on form, light and shade rather than detail.
“I’m going to be done in about another two or three minutes,” Dr Darkwood announced, confirming Nina’s thoughts.
“Fine by me,” Monica said, “I’ll be in danger of overworking this if I do much more.”
“Fine by me too,” Nina agreed, “I’m just doing a quick impression, so I can stop any time.”
Nina and Monica actually put their drawing things down before Dr Darkwood and watched as she applied the last few touches to her drawing
“Done!” Dr Darkwood announced emphatically. “Could you two untie Miss Pennywright while I pop out and spray this?”
Murmuring their assent, Nina and Monica left their seats and set to work to release their art teacher from hers. The rattling of an aerosol can being shaken could be heard from the corridor outside, then the hiss of spray fixative being applied to Dr Darkwood’s drawing. None of the knots had been pulled especially tight, so it took only a few minutes to free Miss Pennywright completely.
“That feels better,” Miss Pennywright said as soon as the gag was out of her mouth. She rubbed her wrists briefly then added, “I think a quick comfort break is called for,” and left the room.
While Miss Pennywright was away, Nina took the opportunity to take her own drawing out into the corridor to fix it. Dr Darkwood had just finished as Nina opened the art room door. She handed over the can of fixative (actually supermarket own-brand extra-hold hair-spray). Nina laid her drawing on the old newspaper that Dr Darkwood had left on the vinyl tiled floor, shook the tin vigorously and applied a light misting of spray. She had just picked the drawing up again when Miss Pennywright came trotting along the corridor, hugging herself.
“Cold out here,” the art teacher commented as she opened the door and returned to the art room.
“We could put the heater on for a bit,” Dr Darkwood said.
“I was just about to suggest that,” Miss Pennywright agreed. She picked up the photocopied draft pages of Dr Darkwood’s manga and flipped through them. “This one next?” she asked?
“If it’s OK with you, Layla,” Dr Darkwood replied.
“It was my bright idea in the first place, Chrys,” Miss Pennywright pointed out with mock resignation. “Where do you want me?”
Dr Darkwood replied by turning to Nina and Monica. “Could you two get the glass-topped table set up?”
The glass-topped table was a piece of equipment that had been in the art room for as long as anyone could remember. It had originally been intended as a dining table, probably some time back in the 1970s. It consisted of four chubby cylindrical aluminium legs linked by rectangular-section aluminium braces at the top. Erecting this part of the table was a simple matter involving lightweight components and eight wingnuts. The tabletop was a different matter; it was a single sheet of toughened glass about 90 by 120 centimetres and over a centimetre thick. With a weight of about 30 kilograms it was an awkwardly-slippery two-person lift.
Nina had helped put up the table several times before and Monica, being older, many more times, so they both knew what to do and worked together efficiently to manoeuvre the components of the table out of the store room and assemble them. While they were doing that, Miss Pennywright and Dr Darkwood set up a large electric fan heater that was kept at the back of the same cupboard.
Although it was unwieldy, the glass-topped table had several important uses. Mostly it served as a useful lightbox, with the addition of a lamp on the floor underneath it. It occasionally appeared in drawing exercises involving transparency and reflection. Sometimes it was used in situations where the subject matter was to be lit from below and it was this latter function that Dr Darkwood had in mind. The scene from her manga that she was redrafting at Miss Pennywright’s suggestion was one where her protagonist was hogtied on top of a grating with light coming from underneath.
“All right – do your worst, Chrys,” Miss Pennywright said.
She hoisted herself onto the table so she was sitting on the edge on it. She paused to tug at her socks which had slipped slightly and then to smooth out the wrinkles that had developed at the wrists of her long woollen gloves. Satisfied, she swung her legs up onto the table and rolled herself onto her stomach. She flipped the skirt of her dress down into place before offering her hands behind her back.
“It’s getting hot in here,” Monica commented as the heater started to have an effect on the room temperature. She unwound the huge grey scarf she had been wearing wrapped around her neck and pulled up over her chin and shed the outermost of the several layers of cardigan she was wearing.
“I need to lose a layer too,” Nina agreed, removing her scarf and hooded fleece.
“I’m only just about getting comfortable,” Miss Pennywright commented.
“Me too,” Dr Darkwood agreed, hugging herself dramatically.
“You can borrow my scarf if you like,” Monica offered jokingly.
“Well...” Dr Darkwood began then hesitated, “...actually, yes please.”
The chemistry teacher was already warmly dressed in a thick navy blue sweater with an equally thick cardigan in a slightly lighter blue on top. A pair of grey tweed culottes came to just below her knees and below that could be seen the legs of a pair of navy blue woollen tights with narrow horizontal pink stripes disappearing into a pair of chunky grey socks. Presumably her outdoor footwear was somewhere else with her coat. She arranged Monica’s scarf to go over her head and then looped it once around her neck to hold it in place.
“Thank you, Monica. That feels better already,” Dr Darkwood said as she sorted out the rope that had previously been used to tie her colleague to the chair.
“Can I help?” Nina offered.
Dr Darkwood handed Nina a tangle of rope then set to work to use the length she had already straightened out. She arranged Miss Pennywright’s arms so that her forearms were parallel across her back with the fingertips of each hand just reaching the opposite elbow. She found the middle of the long length of rope she had ready and used it to form a binding around the art teacher’s wrists. Working quickly and confidently, Dr Darkwood deployed the doubled rope to form a quite complex harness going around Miss Pennywright’s arms and chest both above and below her bust, in both cases cinched between her arms and body, and over both shoulders, progressively building up a bulky knot in the middle of her back. Dr Darkwood ran out of rope several times doing this, but each time took another piece from Nina, doubled it and hitched it onto the length already in place.
Nina was fascinated by the obvious skill that Dr Darkwood exhibited tying her colleague up.
“How’s that, so far, Layla?” Dr Darkwood asked.
“OK, I think,” Miss Pennywright replied, “but I’m definitely not going anywhere until you say so.”
Dr Darkwood changed her position so that she could tie Miss Pennywright’s legs next. Nina followed so that she could keep handing her rope. From her new vantage point, Nina could see that Miss Pennywright’s skater dress was actually a genuine ice skating dress, effectively a leotard with an attached skirt worn over her opaque chocolate brown tights.
Miss Pennywright’s legs were bound at the ankles and both above and below the knees, each binding being formed as a wrap and cinch.. Dr Darkwood carefully adjusted the tension of the rope at the knee bindings so that they wouldn’t over-tighten when her legs were bent. With that done, she lifted Miss Pennywright’s feet and gently eased them towards her bottom until there was an angle of about 45 degrees between her thighs and lower legs.
“Not too tight?” Dr Darkwood asked.
“No, I should be fine like this, Chrys,” her colleague confirmed.
Nina handed the chemistry teacher another piece of rope and watched as it was deftly tied in place linking Miss Pennywright’s ankle binding with her chest harness.
“Are you sure everything’s OK before I gag you?” Dr Darkwood asked.
“I wouldn’t be able to take this all day, but I should be fine for as long as you need,” Miss Pennywright assured her.
Dr Darkwood tied the thick white cloth gag in place between her teeth much as it had been for the chair tie.
Nina glanced round at Monica, aware that she had been busy sketching while she had been helping Dr Darkwood.
“Good action sequence,” Monica said.
Nina went across to Monica and looked over her shoulder as she showed her the last few pages in her sketchbook. While Miss Pennywright was being tied up, Monica had done a series of lightning sketches of the process in black felt pen with shadows indicated using a broad grey marker pen. They were naturally lacking in detail and quite scribbly but captured the action dramatically and dynamically.
“I need to do more stuff like that,” Nina commented approvingly. “It would stop me getting bogged down in detail all the time.”
While Nina had been looking at Monica’s work, Dr Darkwood had positioned a lamp under the glass-topped table so that it uplit Miss Pennywright in the way that she wanted.
Nina pondered what she should do next and decided to go in much the direction that Monica had. She went to the art materials cupboard and selected a bullet-pointed black felt pen and a selection of broad-tipped markers in a range of useful colours. She explored various possible vantage points and eventually settled herself sitting on the floor with her back supported by the leg of a table so that she was looking up through the glass table top at Miss Pennywright. She took a deep breath and then set to work sketching directly in felt pen, knowing she had no way to correct mistakes. She filled in the colours in Miss Pennywright’s clothes and skin in solid blocks of colour with the marker pens, relying on layering to achieve the tones she wanted. Nina wasn’t satisfied with her first effort, but felt more confident in the technique having tried it out and immediately embarked on a second try. She was quite pleased with the result, especially as it was very different to any of her usual techniques.
“Success second time round?” Dr Darkwood asked as Nina stood up.
“Not bad, but it would be better with a bit more practice,” Nina replied showing her drawing first to Dr Darkwood then to Miss Pennywright, who nodded her approval.
“Does anyone know if Miss Badelaine is in school today?” Nina asked.
“I saw her in the staff room earlier,” Dr Darkwood said, not looking up from her drawing, “but I’ve no idea if she’s still here.”
“I think I’ll go along to the library and say ‘hello’, if she’s there.”
Nina thought about putting her drawings into her schoolbag but decided it was still too damp, so she settled for putting them in her personal folder in one of the big storage drawers in the art room.
“Thanks for letting us all draw you,” she said to Miss Pennywright as she put her fleece and scarf back on before heading out of the room.
Nina realised that it probably wasn’t any colder in the corridor than it had been before, but it certainly felt that way after the comparative warmth of the art room with the heater on. She paused to wrap her scarf across her mouth and zip up her fleece with its hood up.
* * *
Nina encountered no-one else on her walk to the library. She suspected that many of the few staff and students who had made it into school had already gone back home. She was therefore pleased to see that the lights were on in the library. She let herself in and announced herself: “Bonjour ma’m’selle Badelaine!”
There was no reply, but Nina could hear someone moving around, so she went further into the library to investigate. She found Miss Badelaine standing on a chair reorganising the books on a high shelf. She had a stack of books expertly cradled between her left forearm and her body and smaller piles of books were lying on a nearby table. As ever, Miss Badelaine was taking no chances with the weather. She was wearing a pair of shorts that Nina hadn’t seen before, almost knee-length with a bold Aztec-style pattern, majoring on reds, oranges and yellows. They were in a thick, rather fuzzy-looking fabric, which made Nina wonder if they had been made from a blanket. The colour was picked up by the sunset-orange v-necked sweater she wore. There was a bright red woollen scarf wrapped around her neck and tucked into the top of the sweater. A second scarf, black and enormously long and wide, was looped more loosely around her neck and hung down below her knees. A huge hooded cardigan in deep maroon offset the bright colours a little. It was open at the front and came down below knee level. The maroon of Miss Badelaine’s cardigan was echoed by the slightly brighter red of her woollen tights that were visible below the hem of her shorts and above her black knee-length socks, which had a pair of narrow yellow bands just below the top. On her head, Miss Badelaine was wearing a black open-faced knitted balaclava hood with a long tail and a pompom at the back, which Nina recognised as being in the same style as was worn the librarian’s favourite storybook heroine, Fantômette. Over the top of the hood was a pair of bright green cable-knit earmuffs. From the hiss of a bass track that Nina could just make out, it was obvious that the earmuffs incorporated a pair of headphones. Miss Badelaine was swaying gently and shelving books rhythmically to the beat of a soundtrack only she could hear.
Nina tried a louder greeting: “Bonjour ma’m’selle Badelaine! Bonne année!”
The librarian looked around, startled. “Nina!” she exclaimed, “Bonne année!”
Miss Badelaine stepped down from her chair and carefully put her stack of books down on the table. She ignored the hand that Nina was holding out in greeting and instead grabbed the girl by the shoulders and planted a kiss on each cheek.
“Bonne année!” the librarian repeated, sliding her headphones down around her neck. “Tu vas bien?”
“Très bien, merci,” Nina replied politely, a little shaken by the greeting. “Et vous?”
“Très bien aussi. C’était bien Noël? Tu as eu beaucoup de cadeaux?”
“Une nouvelle bicyclette,” Nina offered, taken aback by this onslaught of French.
“Chouette! Quelle genre de bicyclette?”
“Um...” Nina began, but her limited command of French deserted her under pressure. “It’s a hybrid bike, fitted with road tyres so it will be good for my ride to school,” she explained.
“Surely you did not cycle to school in this weather?” Miss Badelaine said, gesturing towards the window, where the snow could be seen still falling gently.
“I borrowed my mum’s mountain bike, but I still ended up pushing it most of the way here,” Nina admitted. “What about you? Did you manage on your moped?”
“Alas, no – I did not even try. I had to walk.” Miss Badelaine nodded towards her office, where Nina could see through the open door a long black PVC raincoat hanging up and a pair of black wellington boots. “And then I discovered that the school was really closed.” A very Gallic shrug followed and then she added, “But it’s an opportunity to rearrange things to make a little more shelf space before everyone comes back.”
“Would you like some help?” Nina offered.
“Yes, please,” the librarian replied, sounding genuinely grateful. “I have done most of the sorting already. If you pass the books up to me, it will save me time getting up and down off the chair.
They soon fell into a rhythm. Miss Badelaine was introducing a little space into each shelf of books by transferring books down to the next shelf. As the work proceeded, the number of books to be moved increased and part of Nina’s role was to keep them in order on the table before passing them back up to the librarian. There were also some books that were waiting to be re-shelved and their places were marked by pieces of paper inserted between books already on the shelf. Eventually, they reached a long gap between classifications.
“C’est tout – merci beaucoup!” Miss Badelaine said, jumping lightly down from the chair.
“I was glad to do something useful,” Nina said. “All I’ve done this morning is crossword puzzles and pictures.”
“What do you intend to do next?”
“I was thinking of going to the canteen for some hot soup and then going home before the weather gets any worse.”
“A wise plan,” Miss Badelaine concurred. “May I accompany you?”
Nina waited while the librarian collected her coat and boots from the office. While she was waiting, she noticed a new addition to the library notice board:
Accommodation wanted:
Female French student seeks accommodation with a family. Non-smoker, neat habits, willing to assist in household chores, can cook. Can also offer private French tuition.
If you can help, please contact Chloé Badelaine
on 07700 900 535
or +33 6 31 41 59
or email chloeb@courrielexpress.fr
“Is this you looking for accommodation?” Nina asked.
“Yes – I’m in a student hostel at the moment and it doesn’t really suit me well. It’s a bit cramped and noisy.”
Nina took out her phone and used its camera to photograph the notice. “I’ll tell my mum. She was talking about the possibility of getting a lodger in our spare room.”
“Ça serait très agréable,” Miss Badelaine commented, apparently as much to herself as to Nina.
The librarian, now wearing her boots but carrying her coat over one arm, ushered Nina out of the library and locked the door.
Nina hoisted her schoolbag onto her back and set off for the canteen with Miss Badelaine, whose rubber boots squeaked slightly with every step on the polished floor.
* * *
On their way to the canteen, Nina and Miss Badelaine took a slight detour so that Nina could visit her locker. Nina retrieved her trainers, socks, mittens and balaclava from Miss Kowalska’s now deserted classroom. The heating pipes had done their work and everything was now dry and invitingly warm, except for the trainers which were still slightly damp.
Nina paused to take off her gym shoes and sports socks. She put the socks in her schoolbag to go in the laundry basket at home and the gym shoes in her locker. She pulled her purple and white hockey socks on and up over the legs of her tracksuit trousers then put her trainers on. She used her cycle helmet as a carrying basket and put her ski mask and mittens into it, put her rainsuit over one arm and relocked her locker.
Nina and Miss Badelaine chatted about the Christmas break which had just finished as they made their way through the now almost completely deserted school to the canteen. They were relieved to discover that there were still two of the serving staff on duty and that hot soup was still available. They settled down with a bowl of chunky vegetable soup each accompanied by a hunk of crusty bread and a mug of hot chocolate.
Suitably warmed, Nina and Miss Badelaine made their way to the exit door to put their outer layers back on before braving the weather again.
__________________________________________________________________________
Doctor George's stories
- 01 - Nina and the Lodger (f/f)
02 - Nina in Christmas Interlude (f/f)
03 - Nina in Secrets and Surprises (f/f)
04 - Nina in Aversion Therapy (F/f)
Index of all stories in the "Archive for Everyone" section