Trials For The Chalet School
Synopsis:
It is not the fact that Naomi Elton "has been left slightly deformed as a result of an accident some years before" that worries the staff at the Chalet School; it is more the warning note from her guardian that her disability "has warped her mind". After some discussion the mistresses decide they can do no better than to turn Naomi over to head girl Mary-Lou Trelawney for guidance. But even Mary-Lou makes little headway at first.
Margot Maynard goes down with scarlet fever, and soon the school is in the grip of an epidemic. Matey has to turn the school san into an isolation hospital for the invalids. Rosalie Dene, in particular, is very poorly with it, and is borne off to the South of France by Old Girl Evadne Lannis to convalesce.
While Naomi's bitterness cuts across everyone who tries to be friendly, she cannot hold out against Mary-Lou's persistence. At half-term, she confides to the head girl that she has made a deal with God: if she can be cured or made better, she will believe in Him again.
Gradually, Naomi begins to integrate more with the other girls. She displays a hitherto-unsuspected sense of mischief after the naughty girls of Lower IV are discovered taking an over-zealous attitude to the rules regarding Lost Property. Naomi's imaginative punishment for the sinners ensures that this incident becomes one of the Chalet School's many legends.
Naomi has to be taken home early from the St Mildred's pantomime (Puss In Boots this year, written by Betsy Lucy). Speeding over a treacherous stretch of the road, she is flung out of the sidecar in which she is travelling. Luckily Jack Maynard is in the car behind and is able to take her straight to the San, where a major operation must be performed immediately.
Naomi comes through the operation, but she is very weak and even as the girls break up for Easter, her life is still in danger.
contributed by Christina Erskine, England __ working from a paperback edition
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giving everything away!