I.35 The music of hope and dreams

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"Look at it this way, Nat: You just have to survive a few more years at St. Albert's, and then you are free to live your life as you please." Nancy took another drag from her cigarette. "Whereas I am going to be stuck in a life I hate, as Lady Kerrington of Kerrington Manor."

During recess, the three of us were standing under one of the huge trees in the park that surrounded the main building of our school, smoking. I might as well admit at that point that I had started to smoke, here at St. Albert's. Though I was very much aware of the health risks, I had decided that smoking a cigarette or two a day for a year was not going to kill me.

Though smoking was strictly forbidden on school premises, virtually every girl I knew at St. Albert's smoked. Not smoking was considered uncool.

"Do you seriously believe that such outdated institutions as British royalty and nobility will still exist, a few years from now?" Natty countered.

"Fuck, no. You are right about that," Nancy conceded.

It was what they believed in. Most of my classmates did. Like in that song, the one Natty liked so much: 'The times they are a-changing.' They believed that the world was about to change in a major way. They believed in the revolution. The revolution for peace and justice and equal rights, against racism and oppression of any kind. They had hope.

I envied them and I pitied them, both at the same time. I knew that just a few years from now, most of the people they set their hopes on would be either imprisoned or dead.

Killed. Murdered. Assassinated. Gone.

Still, I envied them their hope and their optimism and their dreams, which were reflected in the raw energy and power of their music. A music I had come to love. The music of the 1960s. A music of hope and dreams.

"What do you guys plan to do after you graduate from St. Albert's?" I asked.

"Oh, I would like to travel," Nancy replied. "Visit India, perhaps. Get some first-hand experience of those ancient cultures."

"I will go and study theoretical physics, at Oxford or at Cambridge," Natalie announced. "I already have some truly brilliant ideas which I am going to work out and publish as soon as I get the chance."

'No you won't,' I thought, sadly. 'We have no idea why, but that is not what is going to happen.'

"What about you, Cathy?" Nancy asked.

I was just about to fabricate an answer when the prefect girl appeared on the scene.

Fortunately, Natty caught a glimpse of her as she approached us, which gave us just enough time to drop our cigs and step on them to put them out.

"Now, what do we have here?" The tall, blonde girl sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose. "You girls have been smoking, haven't you?"

"No, we didn't," Nancy told her.

"What's that, then?" The girl indicated the three cigarette stubs at our feet.

"It wasn't us who put them there, Cabot," Natty declared. "Somebody else must have left them here."

"Who was it, then?" the prefect demanded.

Natty shrugged. "Why do you ask me? Your guess is as good as mine."

The prefect's face turned red with anger. "Don't you dare get fresh with me, Fogg." She fixed my roommate with a glare. "One more word from you and I will make sure you won't sit comfortably for the remainder of today. Are we clear on that?"

Natty looked as if she had been about to add something, but now she thought better of it. She closed her mouth and nodded.

"Fine." The tall blonde addressed all three of us again. "If I catch you girls smoking, here in the park or elsewhere, I shall make you regret you ever as much as glanced at a cigarette. Is that understood?"

"Yes, we do understand," Nancy assured her. Natty and I nodded vigorously.

We watched her march off.

"What the fuck was that?" I asked when she was out of earshot.

"That was Lisa Cabot", Nancy told me. "She is a mean one. You better not cross her, if you know what's good for you."

In the afternoon of that day I approached Mallory Carmichael to talk to her about the Galads.

"Sure I can tell you about our school's student society," Mallory said. "In fact, I can do even better than that. I can give you a guided tour of their headquarters. How would you like that?"

"I would love that," I replied. "But I have just recently declined their invitation to their upcoming meeting, remember?"

"That doesn't matter. You would come as my guest. If you have got time, we can do that right away. Except I can't guarantee that we will meet a lot of people there, at this time."

"That's alright. I wasn't expecting to talk to anyone but you, in any case."

"Fine. Let's go, then."

Mallory led the way to the South Tower of St. Albert's. We had to climb several flights of stairs to reach the Galads' headquarters which were located on the top floor. As it turned out they occupied the entire top floor of the tower.

We entered a huge central lounge furnished with chairs, benches, sofas, easy chairs and tables of various sizes. From the hall, you had access to a large number of separate rooms, most of them with their door leaning open.

One of those rooms was a small kitchen complete with fridge, stove, cupboards and a coffee machine.

There were five girls sitting or stretched out on chairs and sofas in the lounge, each of them with a cup of coffee or some other beverage in front of her. Two of them were chatting, the rest were reading. I noticed that all five of them were smoking. So much for the high morals the Galads boasted.

One of the girls, a dark-haired senior wearing wire-rimmed glasses, looked up at us and frowned.

"What is she doing here?" she asked Mallory, indicating me.

"Hart is here as my guest," Mallory calmly replied. "Is there any problem with that, Cynthia?"

"Of course not." The other girl shrugged dismissively. "I just wanted to make sure that no outsiders come here unaccompanied."

Mallory rolled her eyes. "As you can see, I am with her. Say, have you seen Bridget around?"

"I think she is busy preparing and initiating the new pledges. Ah, here she comes."

A red-haired girl was walking up to us. She briefly hugged Mallory by way of greeting. Mallory introduced us.

"Bridget, this is Catherine Hart. One of my classmates." Bridget and I shook hands. "I was going to show her around some," Mallory added.

"Sure, go ahead." Bridget took a seat next to two other girls.

I followed Mallory into the kitchen. "Would you like a cup of coffee?" she asked.

When I said that yes, I would love to have some coffee, she prepared two glasses of cappuccino for us before we continued our tour.

Most of the other rooms turned out to be either small meeting rooms or places where you could study, with several chairs and desks as well as shelves on the walls. In one of those I saw two girls sitting at a small table, reading. 

"Those are new pledges," Mallory explained. "They are supposed to read and understand our charter."

"Oh." I raised an eyebrow. "Is there going to be a quiz about that?"

"Sort of." Mallory grinned.

"And some kind of initiation ritual, perhaps?" I prodded.

"Yes, there is also an ancient and time-honored initiation procedure. And before you start to ask for details: I am not allowed to talk about the specifics of that ritual to outsiders. But it is pretty much what you would imagine."

We walked on until we reached the wall facing south, with huge windows overlooking the park outside. Mallory and I sat down at a small table there and took sips from our cappuccinos

"So, I would like to ask you a few questions about the Galads, if you don't mind," I said.

"Sure. That's why we are here." She smiled. "Shoot."

"Right. So, Barnett and her friends tell me that the Galads have no biases or prejudices when it comes to accepting new members. How come that Ndemba's application got rejected, then?"

Mallory shrugged. "All I know is that the committee decided that she did not qualify. That does not necessarily have anything to do with where she comes from, or the color of her skin."

"Who is on that committee, anyhow? I take it that you are not on it, yourself."

"No, I am not. Members of the committee are eight girls from the Upper Sixth. They decide about applications for membership, but they do not explain their decisions."

"I see. So, you wouldn't know why Natty never was invited to any of your meetings, whereas I got an invitation in my third week here at the school?"

For the first time, Mallory looked uncomfortable. "I can't say, really. Except that Nat never made any particular effort to socialize with the upper echelons."

"Well, neither did I."

"That is not quite the same. You know, they have a file on Nat here at St. Albert's, a file that contains more pages than the file of any other student here."

"Really? Do you know where that file is kept?"

Mallory shrugged. "At the secretary's office, probably. Or, if not there, it would be in Headmistress Stuart's office."

I would need to look into that, later.

"That's interesting. But, back to the Galads. To be completely frank, they strike me as a student society designed for those students at our school whose families are wealthy. I bet all that successful fundraising done by the Galads consists of donations from rich parents whose daughters are members of the student society. Effectively, they donate money to insure their daughter a privileged position at St. Albert's."

"I wouldn't disagree with your reasoning here, Hart. Not at all." Mallory smiled.

"How do girls like you fit into that scheme, then? I mean, why would anyone other than Barnett and her friends want to join?"

"That's kind of obvious, isn't it? Even if you do not have wealthy parents – which I don't – you still can acquire all sorts of useful connections as a Galad. It's like this: you do somebody a favor, help them in some small way, and they will support you later when you need their help and support." Mallory smiled. "Not everybody can be a happy-go-lucky nerd like you or Nat."

There was something a bit off here, but I could not quite pin it down.

"You do not strike me as a conformist, or as the type of person to curry favor with other people," I observed, thinking out loud.

Mallory frowned. "Look here, Hart. You do not know anything about me, and you are certainly not in any position to judge me."

"I am sorry if I gave you that impression." I smiled apologetically. "I am not in the habit of judging people, and I am certainly not judging you. Not at all. Come to think of it, I would advise you not to judge yourself, either."

Mallory raised an eyebrow. "Actually, that is excellent advice. Once again you surprise me, Hart."

"You surprise me, too. I was expecting you to say that I am being presumptuous."

"You are. But you are not boring, which is what really counts."

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A / N :    Thanks for reading this chapter. If you have comments, ideas, suggestions, please do not hesitate to add them here.


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