The Chalet School And Richenda
Synopsis:
Richenda Fry has been sent to the Chalet School as a punishment. Her father is a specialist in historic porcelain and Richenda cannot resist handling the beautiful items, especially the rare Khang-he vase, even though she has been expressly forbidden to go near his valuable collection.
She arrives at the School sulky and determined to hate everything about it. This lasts about a day and a half, after which she decides to enjoy life to the full in order to render the punishment null and void. She teams up with the Maynard triplets, particularly Len and Con, and it is at their behest that she agrees to have her name shortened to the more friendly 'Ricki'.
As a new girl, Ricki is invited to tea at Freudesheim, and Joey Maynard quickly senses that all is not well between Ricki and her father. Being Joey, she determines to get to the bottom of the matter before Ricki goes home to England again.
Out on a ramble to the village of St Cecilie, the girls of Vb are caught in a thunderstorm while still six miles away from the school. They shelter in a hay barn until the worst of the storm is over, but then find that the way back is blocked. The rainstorm has swollen the stream into a raging torrent which has burst its banks and the girls must wade across somehow.
Uncharacteristically, Joey has been unwell. She is to go for a consultation with Sir James Talbot in England, and so wants to have the triplets at home over half term. But when Joey hears that Ricki's father expects Ricki to stay on her own at school as part of her 'punishment', Joey insists that Ricki should join the Freudesheim half-term party.
A talk with Joey over that half-term makes Ricki begin to change her attitude towards her father, but their reconciliation is only really effected by a near-tragedy when Ricki is the victim of an attack by a small boy in a dentists' waiting room.
Christina Erskine, London __ working from a paperback edition
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