The people who keep the school
A school is its mistresses, and its Matron, and the man in the garden nobody quite noticed. Here are ours.
Miss Eleanor Winthrop
Tall. Precise. Formidable. Kind in a way that catches you off guard. The voice of the school is hers.
Mrs Dorothea Cartwright
“Dotty” to nobody’s face. Trunk lists, name-tapes, the San, and an aphorism for every occasion, whether or not one was requested.
Miss Larkspur
Keeper of the Library, and, it turns out, an ally rather than an obstacle. She knows exactly where everything is, including the things nobody was meant to find.
Miss Pemberton
Brisk on the touchline, warmer off it. She would like Elm to have the Cup back, though she would never say so.
Miss Danbury
Believes, correctly, that the past is a place you can visit if you pay attention. The school’s own history rather proves her point.
Miss Townsend
Once the victim of a paper butterfly, released mid-lesson. She took it rather better than expected, which somehow made it worse for the culprit.
Madame Moreau
Insists the language is not difficult, only shy, and must be spoken to gently. She is right, and half the school will one day thank her for it.
Miss Montford
Conductor of the school song, which she has never once heard sung quietly, and no longer expects to.
Mrs Chattoway
Reads aloud so well that the class forgets to misbehave. A dangerous gift, wisely used.
Mr Wells
Three generations of Wells men have gardened at St Elowen’s. His father made a promise to the Foundress herself, as a boy, and kept it for more than thirty years, and then handed it on.
Mr Wells has now climbed the tower stair every night for sixty years, so that a light would burn for girls he had never met. He told nobody. He asked for nothing. When the school found him out, at last, he seemed mostly embarrassed at the fuss.
He said he would. So he did. For sixty years. That is the whole of it, and it is a great deal.