And both were young

by Madeleine L'Engle

3

After lunch, which Flip could not eat, they took her to the station. Flip's ticket said: No. 09717 Pensionnat Abelard—Jaman—Chemin de Fer Montreux Oberland Bernois Troisieme Classe, Montreux à Jaman, valable 10 jours. Eunice was very much impressed because there were special tickets for the school.

The train went up the mountain like a snake. The mountain was so steep that the train climbed in a continuous series of hairpin bends, stopping frequently at the small villages that clustered up the mountain side. Flip sat next to the window and stared out with a set face. Sometimes they could see the old grey stones of a village church, or a glimpse of a square with a fountain in the centre. They passed new and ugly stucco villas occasionally, but mostly old brown chalets with flowers in the windows. Sometimes in the fields by the chalets there would be cows, though most of the cows were grazing further up the mountain. The fields and roadsides were full of autumn flowers and everything was still a rich summer green. At one stop there was a family of children, all in blue denim shorts and white shirts, three girls and two boys, waiting for the pleasant looking woman in a tweed suit who stepped off the train. All the children rushed at her, shouting, "Mother! Mother!"

"Americans," Eunice said. "There's quite a considerable English and American colony here, I believe."

Flip stared longingly out the window as the children and their mother went running and laughing up the hill. She thought perhaps Paul and his mother were happy in the same way. She felt her father's hand on her knee and she said quickly, "Write me lots, father. Lots and lots and lots."

"Lots and lots and lots," he promised as the train started again. "And the time will pass quickly, you'll see. There's an art studio where you can draw and paint. You'll be learning all the time."

Eunice lit a cigarette although there was a sign saying NO SMOKING in French, Italian, and German. All the notices were in French, Italian, and German. DO NOT SPIT. DO NOT LEAN OUT THE WINDOW. DO NOT PUT BAGS OUT THE WINDOW. "The next stop's Jaman," Eunice said.

Something turned over in Flip's stomach. I should be ashamed, she thought. I should be ashamed to be so scared.

But she was scared. She had never been separated, even for a night, from her entire family. During the war when her father had been in Europe, her mother was still alive; and then in the dark days after her mother's death Gram had come to live with them; and afterwards, whenever her father had to go away for a few days without her, at least Gram had been there. Now she would be completely on her own. She remembered her mother shaking her once, and laughing at her, and saying, "Darling, darling, you must learn to be more independent, to stand on your own feet. You must not cling so to father and me. Suppose something should happen to us? What would you do?" That thought was so preposterously horrible that Flip could not face it. She had flung her arms about her mother and hidden her head.

Now she could not press her face under her mother's arm and escape from the world. Now she was older, much older, almost an adult, and she had to stand on her own feet and not be afraid of other girls. She had always been afraid of other girls. In the day school she went to in New York she had long intimate conversations with them all in her imagination, but never in reality. During recess she sat in a corner and drank her chocolate milk through a straw and read a book, and whenever they had to choose partners for anything she was always paired off with Betty Buck, the other unpopular girl. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays when they had gym in the afternoon, whenever they chose teams Flip was always the last one chosen; Betty Buck could run fast so she was always chosen early. Flip couldn't run fast. She had a stiff knee from the bad time when her knee cap had been broken, so it wasn't entirely her fault, but that didn't make it any easier.