Girls Under Pressure Read online

  Magda looks totally incredible. And she knows it. She grins at me.

  “I hated my new look so I decided to go for an even newer one,” she says. “You were so right, Ellie. Why should I scuttle round like a colorless creep just because of those sad bastards. I want to be me again.”

  “Well, well, Magda!” says Mrs. Henderson, bustling into the classroom. “I think I’m going to need sunglasses to look at your new hairdo. That is not an appropriate color for school. If I were in a bad mood I’d make you cover it up with a headscarf but mercifully for you I’m feeling mellow.” She smiles benignly. “Did you have a good Christmas, girls?” She catches sight of me. “Oh, dear, Ellie. You did not have a good Christmas. You’ve obviously been starving yourself, you silly girl.”

  “I’m just getting fit, Mrs. Henderson. I thought you’d approve,” I say, secretly thrilled.

  Mrs. Henderson is frowning at me. “You and I had better have a private chinwag later, Ellie.”

  Then Nadine comes into the classroom—and Mrs. Henderson is diverted. Her mouth actually drops open. The entire class stares, jaws gaping.

  Nadine hasn’t changed her hairstyle.

  She hasn’t changed her weight.

  She’s changed her face.

  She stands nonchalantly in the doorway, the wintery sunlight full on her face. She has a tattoo! A long black snake starts at her temple and writhes right across her forehead and down one cheek, the tip of its tail ending in a wiggle at her chin.

  “Dear goodness, girl, what have you done to yourself?” Mrs. Henderson gasps.

  “Nadine! That is so––”

  “Amazing!”

  “Gross!”

  “Disgusting!”

  “Incredible!”

  “Supercool!”

  Nadine, the amazing gross disgusting incredible supercool snake woman, grins at us all and then puts her hand to her forehead. She pulls— and the snake wriggles right off her face and hangs limply from her fingers.

  “Father Christmas put a joke tattoo in my stocking,” she says, while we all scream at her.

  “You bad bad girl,” says Mrs. Henderson. “My mellow mood is rapidly disappearing. I feel as if I need another holiday already!”

  She’s a good sport all the same but I’m going to do my best to keep out of her way the next few days. I don’t like the sound of this private chinwag.

  We have a morning assembly as it’s the first day of term. I crane my neck looking for Zoë but I can’t see her anywhere. Maybe she’s still abroad with her family?

  Magda gives me a nudge.

  “Hey, who’s the dishy dreamboat on the stage?” she whispers.

  “He can’t be a teacher!” says Nadine.

  We have three male teachers already. Mr. Prescott takes us for history. He looks as if he’s stepped straight out of the Victorian age, and acts it too. He’s stern, stiff, uptight and ancient. Mr. Daleford is the IT teacher, with all the warmth and charisma of his own beloved computers. He even talks like a machine. And Mr. Pargiter teaches French. He’s quite sweet but very balding, very tubby and very middle-aged so he’s not exactly dreamboat category.

  The man on the stage is youngish, definitely still in his twenties. He’s got tousled dark-blond hair, which looks wonderful with his black clothes—black button-down shirt, thin black tie, black jeans, black boots.

  “This is Mr. Windsor, girls—our new art teacher,” says the head.

  Mr. Windsor shyly nods his blond head. Every girl in the hall stares transfixed. Wow!

  portrait girl

  We can’t wait for our first art lesson.

  Mr. Windsor talks for ages about art, his eyes shining (dark brown, a beautiful contrast to his blond hair). He shows us these reproductions of his favorite paintings, whizzing through the centuries so he can tell us about the different techniques and styles. He also throws in a lot of interesting stuff about the painters themselves and their lifestyles.

  “Yeah, it was fine for them, all these painter guys,” says Magda. “But what about women artists? They didn’t get a look-in, did they? I mean, you call all this lot Old Masters, don’t you, so where are the Old Mistresses?”

  “Ah! You’re obviously a fierce feminist and you’ve got a jolly good point, too,” he says, smiling at the newly gorgeous scarlet Magda.

  She’s not a feminist at all. I don’t think she cares tuppence about art, either. She just wants Mr. Windsor to take notice of her, and it’s certainly worked.

  So then he goes on about the secondary role of women artists through the ages, starting off with nuns in convents poring over illuminated manuscripts. Then he tells us about a female artist called Artemisia Gentileschi who was raped and he shows us this amazing painting she did of Judith cutting off this guy’s head, with blood spurting everywhere. Lots of the girls shudder and go “Yuck” but Nadine cranes forward to take a closer look as she’s into anything seriously gory. She’s applied her joke snake tattoo to her arm now, so that the forked-tongue snake’s head wiggles out of her school blouse and down across her hand.

  Mr. Windsor spots this and admires it. He flicks through a big book on sixties pop art and holds up this picture of an astonishing model called Snake Woman. She’s got snakes coiling round her head like living scarves, and her body is all over scales.

  “And it’s by a woman, too,” he says, grinning at Magda.

  I’m getting to feel horribly left out and let down. I’m the one who’s mad keen on art and yet I can’t think of a single thing to say. He holds up a picture of Frida Kahlo and it’s the very one I’ve got pinned up in my bedroom at home. I can’t really put up my hand and announce this—I’ll sound so wet. So I listen while he talks about Frida and her savage Mexican art. I nod passionately at everything he says. Eventually he sees this and looks at me expectantly.

  “Do you like Frida Kahlo’s work?”

  Here’s my chance. I swallow, ready to say something, anything—and in the sudden silence my tummy suddenly rumbles. Everyone hears. All the girls around me snigger. My face flushes the colour of Magda’s hair.

  “It sounds as if you’re ready for your lunch,” says Mr. Windsor.

  He waits for me to comment. I can’t. So he starts talking about another artist called Paula Rego. I just about die. My stupid stomach goes on rumbling. There’s nothing I can do about it. Why can’t it shut up? He’ll think I’m just this awful greedy girl who wants to stuff her face every five minutes. It’s not fair. I’ve been so careful recently, totally in control. I’ve only eaten a few mouthfuls at every meal. I didn’t even have breakfast this morning, or any supper last night.

  Which is why my stomach is rumbling.

  Why I feel so sick.

  Why I feel so tired I can’t think of a thing to say.

  Why I keep missing out on what Mr. Windsor is saying. It’s really interesting, too. I hadn’t even heard of Paula Rego before. She’s done all these extraordinary pictures in chalk. I can tell by the colors in his big book of reproductions that they’re just like my new Christmas present pastels. She does pictures of women unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. They are big women, ugly women, in odd contorted positions.

  “Why does she paint women like that? They look awful,” says Magda.

  “I don’t think they look awful. I think they’re incredible,” says Mr. Windsor. “Maybe they look awful to you because we’ve all become so conditioned to think women should only look a certain way. Think of all the well-known portraits of women. The women are all prettified in passive poses, the body extended so that all the bulges are smoothed out. The face is frequently a blank mask, no lines, no tension, no character at all. These are lively expressive real women, standing awkwardly, stretching, dancing, doing all sorts of things.”

  “But they’re fat,” I whisper.

  Mr. Windsor reads my lips.

  “You girls! You’re all brainwashed. They’re big women, they’re strong, they’ve got sturdy thighs, real muscles in their arms and legs