MORNING SERIAL

AS HE continued his search for Isolde, he saw the girls in their dormitories standing like soldiers by their beds. Hysteria was in the air. One roomful of girls was in full cry, chanting ‘Kampong’s gone! Gone Kampong!’ It was a ritual slogan, dull and strained, which seemed to express not only cruelty but the sour taste of such cruelty. ‘Cogs I have her cake at tea.’ ‘No, me. Me.’

‘Me, I want it.’

‘Don’t be so mean,’ a voice shrieked. ‘You’re disgusting, you. Rachel’s lost, and you’re after nicking her cake.’

There was a silence. Then, ‘Of course she’s not. She’s just hiding. Kampong. Kampong.’ But no one joined in and the chorus tailed off. A brawl broke out. Scuffles. A baying, which ended in a mass paroxysm of giggling while one girl cried. The children were silenced by braying orders. Inspection began.

‘Anyhow, I’m having Kampong’s cake, so!’ came a final shriek.

‘This is not,’ said the duty teacher, Miss Brierley, with a certain stately impotence, ‘the behaviour of young ladies.’

The girls stood to attention beside their beds. Mrs Meier with Miss Brierley conducted inspection, collecting laundry and dealing out starched clean linen. Michael noted the military aspect of the scene. He might have been on board training again at Murwik, the cadets having their kit inspected.

Sonia with the frizzy hair and the spectacles who had the luxury of a corner bed gazed out of the window as the English teacher bossed the German matron, who hectored the English girls. He was struck by the expression on Sonia’s intelligent face: not just absentminded but absent. She had taken a leap beyond this exile. Like Rachel she was a promising musician, a sensitive only child, and Quantz had seen her bullied too. But she had access to some other private dimension, proof against assault. Had taken shrewd leave, posting her soul way out of reach, beyond barracks and lake, like a letter on its way home; while somewhere out there the pariah Rachel was roaming lost.