Why Are You Wearing My Daughter's Earrings? by Hugh Fleetwood

The headmaster had written in March that the school wasn’t entirely satisfied with Natalia.
“She’s a lovely girl, of course, and we’re all very fond of her. Moreover, and I say this without the slightest desire to flatter or use hyperbole, she is the most intelligent girl we have in the school at the moment. Indeed, she has the finest mind of any pupil we have ever had in the school. Nonetheless, for the last few months, it has seemed to my colleagues and I that Natalia is determined to dissipate her great natural gifts. I realise this may be just the rebellious phase that all teenagers worth their salt go through. But I am afraid, precisely because Natalia is so intelligent, that she might take her rebellion further than the average teenager. She might even take it too far, and hurt not only the school but herself. So I would be grateful if, during the Easter break, you could try to have a serious talk with your daughter, and while stressing how much we value her presence, remind her what a waste it would be if she were to squander her talents.”
The letter James Nelligan wrote in June, however, was of a different nature.
“It deeply grieves me to have to write this,” he started. “But I fear we are going to have to ask you to remove Natalia from the school with immediate effect. She has become not merely disruptive, but a positive danger to herself and others. A moral danger, in that she seems determined to spread dissension and discord, plant doubts in the minds of those less equipped than herself to confront them; a physical danger, in that we believe she is distributing drugs to her fellow pupils."

"We have no proof of this; her friends are fiercely loyal to her, or perhaps are frightened of her. Nevertheless, given that a number of pupils have been found in possession of drugs or under the influence of drugs, despite their refusal to say where they obtained them, we believe Natalia is the source of these substances. What is more, she seems determined that we should believe it. For one thing, all those who have been caught form what I might call the “Kalugina inner circle.” For another, when challenged, while Natalia herself refuses to confirm she is the supplier, she equally refuses to deny it.
I really could not be more sorry; as I said in my letter of March 6, Natalia is possibly the brightest student we have ever had at Battlement. But we cannot allow even the brightest star to dim, or threaten to snuff out, the planets that circle round her. For which reason, I would be grateful if, on receipt of this, you get in touch with me at your earliest convenience, so we can discuss the matter further, and Natalia’s future can be decided. Yours very sincerely, James Nelligan.”

*

Irina Kalugina had been upset by the first of these communications from her daughter’s school. The second, however, made her cry, rage, feel sick, call her friends to ask for their advice, try - in vain - to get in touch with her husband, Natalia’s father, to ask for his advice, and finally call the school, speak to James Nelligan’s secretary, and arrange to drive down to Battlement College the following morning and meet the headmaster at eleven o’clock.
“Will you come with me?” she asked her best friend, Victoria; but Victoria said no, she was sorry, she thought it better if Irina went alone.
So, the day after she had received the hateful letter, dressed in an expensive black suit and black high heels, with her pale blonde hair tied tightly back, and wearing only a touch of make-up, Irina set off at nine o’clock from her house in Chelsea, and drove towards East Sussex.
She got to the school in good time; at 10.58 she was shown into the headmaster’s study, to find herself facing not only Nelligan himself - a tall, broad-shouldered, red-faced former England rugby player, who had an almost self-consciously open expression and smile - but the deputy headmaster - a small wiry man with bright dark eyes and a pale face made paler by the darkness of his hair and his six o’clock shadow - and James Nelligan’s sister; the school’s head English teacher and, until recently, Natalia’s greatest champion. In her last report, the woman had written, “I believe the very fact that Natalia didn’t come to England or learn English until she was ten accounts for her astonishingly fresh and inventive use of the English language. But more than that, Natalia thinks in an original and inventive fashion, and while it is always unwise to say such things, I am convinced that if Natalia wishes to be a writer, as she claims she does, she will have a bright future.”
Mary Kemp nee Nelligan was tall, grey-haired and a few years older than her brother, Irina guessed. She was also, Irina was sure, more intelligent and serious than her brother. Not for her any fake, or even genuine bonhomie. Her expression, her manner, everything about her spoke of thoughtfulness, straightness and decency; a Cambridge graduate who, Natalia said, was reputed to have worked for fifteen years in the Foreign Office before a divorce, a nervous breakdown and her brother’s entreaties had persuaded her to leave London, take a teacher training course, and join the staff of the boarding school in East Sussex that the Nelligans’ father had founded in the 1950s. A school that had a reputation for academic excellence, a liberal though not permissive attitude towards its students, and extremely high fees.
These three - headmaster, deputy and sister - stood on one side of James Nelligan’s desk as Irina came in, if Mary Kemp seemed pained at having to assume such a judgemental position. On the other side there were two empty chairs, to one of which the headmaster waved his visitor, beaming at her as if he knew exactly what she was going through and he was an old hand at comforting women in distress. Especially pale and lovely Russian women.
“Please, do sit, Mrs. Kalugina,” he said. “Would you like a coffee? A cup of tea?”
Irina shook her head. “No,” she said. “Thank you.” Her manner made it clear she wanted to cut the niceties and get on with it.
Nelligan obliged. Sitting himself, he waited till his colleagues had followed his example and began, “As I said in my letter, Mrs. Kalugina, this decision we have reached is extremely painful to us all here. Particularly so to my sister, I might say, who has always entertained the highest hopes for Natalia.” Nodding towards Mary Kemp, he paused and changed tack. “We had hoped that Mr. Kalugin might be joining you, us, today.”
“My husband is travelling somewhere in Uzbekistan, or Tajikistan, or - I have no idea where my husband is,” Irina said, sounding, she heard, more mournful than she meant to. “But he leaves me entirely responsible for Natalia. Whatever needs to be said or done…”
James Nelligan cleared his throat. His face became redder. “Normally, we would be delighted if one of our pupils started reading Strindberg, Nietszche, Dostoevsky - in the original, of course! - and would encourage such intellectual curiosity. And Bill here,” he indicated his deputy, “Mr. Birling, who teaches philosophy and religion,” mother and teacher nodded at one another - “like my sister, has enormously appreciated and valued Natalia’s - as I say - spirit of enquiry, and willingness, eagerness to discuss matters that your average fifteen or sixteen year old scarcely dreams of. Or if he or she does, tends to become earnest, pretentious about. Whereas Natalia…
“In the last year, however, Bill has remarked that Natalia has seemed determined not merely to discuss philosophy and religion, but to demolish philosophy and religion, and undermine the beliefs of her fellow pupils. And because she is intellectually more of a heavyweight than her fellows, she has achieved, if I may put it like this, quite a high knock out rate. She hasn’t just undermined her friends’ beliefs - she has in a number of cases destroyed them. The trouble is: Natalia herself has the intellectual strength to remain standing even without beliefs. Whereas her less morally sturdy companions - having had their beliefs destroyed, they tend to collapse. And in their confusion, turn to petty or not so petty crime, and general dissoluteness. What is more, having arrived at their position not by any real intellectual process, but simply because they have been let us say bludgeoned into it by Natalia, they tend to become - silly.”
“Brain-damaged,” Bill Birling said.
“As I also wrote in my letter, I believe: that in itself may not be entirely desirable in a school such as this, where we have students from many parts of the world, some of whom have parents with very strongly held beliefs. Or perhaps it may not be desirable in any school. Heavyweights delivering knock-out blows to their weaker companions smacks of bullying, even if not of the physical kind.” Somewhat apologetically, Nelligan added, “Natalia gives the impression of enjoying flooring her fellows, seeing the canvas littered with bodies. Even so - we like to believe we are strong enough at Battlement, well-trained enough in the art of picking up the fallen and helping them back on their feet, to accommodate in our midst the occasional bruiser… or let us say subversive. Particularly when that subversive is as remarkable as Natalia.
“When though it comes to physical undermining, physical destruction, drug-taking - there, I’m afraid, we have to draw the line.”
Irina, faced with the triumvirate behind the desk, had till now stayed silent; not least because she had a certain difficulty in following some of Nelligan’s boxing terminology. But she felt at last compelled to break her silence.
“Natalia does not take drugs,” she stated. “She has told me so - she tells me everything she does, whether I want to hear it or not, whether I approve of it or not, and - she has told me she does not take drugs, and I believe her.”
“All parents believe their children,” chipped in Bill Birling, who unlike his colleagues plainly had no time for melancholy Russian beauties, and still less for their unruly offspring.
James Nelligan glanced at Birling, and let it be seen he could have done without an intervention that was neither timely, nor true. He went on to Irina, pointedly, “In this case I believe you are right to believe her. And that - I was going to say, that is the trouble. But what I should say is, that compounds the trouble. You are right, Mrs. Kalugina: Natalia does not take drugs. Though no doubt,” he felt bound to say for the sake of his deputy, “she has experimented with them. But for one who does not take drugs herself, who has said on more than one occasion that only the weak take drugs - and that, therefore, drugs should be freely available so the weak can go to the wall - yet who exhorts others to take drugs and permits herself, at the age of seventeen, to decide who is weak, who is expendable - that is not just bullying, Mrs. Kalugina. That is - I’m not sure what word to use. Totalitarianism. Incipient fascism. In any case, extreme and unacceptable arrogance.
“We have spoken to Natalia on a number of occasions, of course, and whenever we have, she could hardly be more reasonable, more charming, more understanding of our attitude. She agrees herself that the deliberate destruction of a fellow student - of a fellow human - would be wrong, wicked, intolerable. She claims, with utter reasonableness, that we only cast her as the villain of the piece because of the way, in the last year or so, she has chosen to dress.”
Until she had been fifteen, Natalia Kalugina had looked like a slightly taller version of her mother: pale-skinned, pale-haired, diaphanous. The only difference being that whereas Irina had greyish-brown eyes, Natalia had remarkable pale blue eyes - like her father. From about sixteen onwards, however - more or less at the same time as she had pinned up in her bedroom at home a quotation from The Brothers Karamazov - “If there is no God, everything is permitted” - she had started to dye her fair hair black, to circle her eyes with heavy black make-up, and to dress in a variety of all-black costumes that had tested to the limit Battlement’s policy of allowing pupils to wear what they like. “Within reason,” the school curriculum stated, and Natalia was always prepared to debate the limits and meaning of reason.
Himself always prepared to see the other side of any argument, James Nelligan continued, “She may not be entirely wrong in that. Her - I don’t know how she would define her style. Post-punk, semi-goth - I can’t keep up with the young and their fashions. But I suppose her general look might have inclined us to see her as more of the Lord or Lady of Misrule than she really was, is. Nevertheless - one of our students recently attempted suicide, Mrs. Kalugina. She was one of Natalia’s closest friends.”
“Natalia told me,” Irina murmured. She thought it worth repeating, “She tells me everything.”
“The girl said she was depressed, unhappy, and upset by her parents’ recent divorce. As she may well have been. But we all” - Nelligan glanced left and right - “believe that essentially it was a case, as I say, of bullying. Madeleine, like so many teenagers, was standing as it were within sight of the edge of the cliff. But who urged her forward? Who practically shoved her over the edge?”
Before Nelligan could name her daughter, Irina said firmly, “No. I do not believe that. I will not accept that. I know Madeleine. She has come to stay with us in London. Natalia has been to stay with her in France. They are devoted to each other. What does Madeleine say?”
“What I just told you,” Nelligan said, starting to losing patience. “That she was depressed and upset about her parents.”
“So why do you blame Natalia?”
“Because we suspect that Madeleine had been taking drugs for some time before she made her attempt. Because those who are not part of the Kalugina set say that she had been taking drugs, and tell us that it was Natalia who procured them for her, and maybe even paid for them.”
“Jealous racists,” Irina snorted. “Just because she is Russian. Just because Natalia likes to go round boasting that her father is a gangster.”
“Is he?” Bill Birling enquired.
“No!” Irina almost yelled. “He is an international businessman. A financier. A trader. A - He may be,” Irina conceded. “I have no idea what my husband does. I very rarely see him any longer. He was a chemical engineer when I met and married him. And then - everything changed, and we came to England, and… But that has nothing to do with it,” the pale Russian woman roared in her quiet way. “So, maybe he is a gangster. Are we going to blame the children for the sins of their parents? Natalia may be very intelligent, but she likes to say silly things like all teenagers. She likes to boast, to shock. Where some children might say their parents are politicians, or famous actors, or - I don’t know, she likes to say her father is a gangster. And because of that you are going to take the word of a lot of silly jealous sixteen year olds who are resentful of Natalia’s popularity and prowess?”
She could feel her nostril flaring; her voice was growing shrill with indignation.
“Fine, that is enough,” she declared. “You believe Natalia is a bullying drug-dealer who systematically and deliberately sets out to destroy her fellow students. I believe she is a kind highly intelligent young woman who refuses to accept any truth unless she has tested it for herself, who wants to explore the world not just accept other people’s reports of it, and who - who refuses to be held back, held down by intellectual and moral - lightweights,” Irina said, glaring at each of the triumvirate in turn. “You want to expel Natalia? No, you shall not. I shall withdraw Natalia from this school, with, as you put it in your letter, ‘immediate effect.’ I shall not have a daughter of mine accused without reason, condemned without proof. That is totalitarianism, of which I believe I have greater experience than you. Now if you would be so good as to send for Natalia, we will leave. I would be grateful if you could pack up her things and send them on - I will of course cover any expenses. How dare you accuse my daughter of being a virtual murderer - because she reads Dostoevsky? How dare you try to destroy her?” Irina paused for breath, and got to her feet. Her parting line, however, was addressed not to Nelligan nor even to his deputy. Rather, she looked again at Nelligan’s sister, whose eyes she had not liked to meet when she had flung out the word “lightweight,” and said, with as much hauteur as she could manage, “And you, madam - why are you wearing my daughter’s earrings?”
She had hardly realised, until she spoke, that Mary Kemp was wearing Natalia’s earrings. The small blue diamond earrings that Ivan Kalugin had given his daughter for her sixteenth birthday, because they matched exactly the colour of her eyes. She must have noticed them subconsciously, Irina guessed, when she had tried to wither the threesome sitting in judgement on her, and had felt a little guilty about lumping the English teacher in with her brother and the dark-eyed deputy. But there could be no mistaking them: small though those diamonds were, they were unique.
If she had tossed a hand-grenade across the desk she could hardly have caused greater consternation. Mary Kemp went white and clasped her hands to her ears, obviously having forgotten that she was wearing Natalia’s earrings. James Nelligan stared at his sister with a combination of horror and profound, somehow metaphysical disappointment. And little Bill Birling, who in his astonishment revealed that he loathed Mary Kemp for being not only more intelligent and serious than her brother, but more so - far more so - than he, looked first at the English teacher not just with hatred, but with contempt, and then at her brother with a sort of triumph. At last, the terrier-like scrum-half in the game of Battlement, the game of life, had seen the big beefy captain of the team discomfited, humiliated. And do what he like, say what he like, James Nelligan would never again recover his authority.
As it happened, James Nelligan said nothing. There was nothing he could say. It was his sister alone who could provide an explanation, and he could merely listen - and, now, judge her.
For all her shock and embarrassment, Mary almost immediately recovered her composure. She stood, she gazed at Irina as if the two women were alone in the room. And looking now, to Irina’s eyes, noble, even magnificent, she said in a quiet, gentle voice, “I forgot I still had them on. Natalia loaned them to me. I was admiring them the other day - they match so incredibly the colour of Natalia’s eyes - and she said I should try them on, wear them. She said she hardly ever did any more. Pale blue diamonds don’t really go with her outfits… So I put them on, and Natalia told me I could keep them for a while if I liked, and - ” Apparently dissociating herself from everything her brother had said till now, Mary Kemp told Irina, “I love your daughter, Mrs. Kalugina. She is not just the most remarkable pupil I have ever had, she is, despite her age, the most remarkable person I have ever met in my life. I believe Natalia is a genius.” She paused. “I also believe, however - maybe just because she is a genius - she is a monster. What is more, I do not know whether I love her because she is a genius, or because she is a monster. But I suspect, on balance - it is more because she is a monster.”
The woman raised her hands to her ears again and removed the diamond earrings; she handed them to Irina. “Here,” she said. Then she turned to her brother and said, “I am sorry, Jim,” gave Bill Birling a look that was still more contemptuous than his own, and left the room.
Irina wanted to call out after her, “Don’t go, please, stop.” Instead, she looked back at James Nelligan and said, quietly, “Will you please call Natalia.”
Half an hour later mother and daughter were driving back to London, and Irina was asking, “Did you know she loved you?”
“Yes, of course I did, Mum,” Natalia said. “It would have been pretty difficult not to.”
“And did she ever - did you ever - ?” Irina, frank though she normally was, couldn’t finish her sentence.
“Have sex?”
Irina, her eyes on the road, nodded.
“Will you go to the police if I say yes?”
“Do you want me to?”
Natalia considered. “No,” she at length said. “I don’t think so.”
“In that case I won’t.” She waited. “Well?”
Again Natalia considered. Finally, she too staring at the road ahead, murmured, “No Mum. We didn’t.”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“Don’t I always tell you the truth?”
“Yes. But I thought maybe, just this once -”
Natalia glanced at her mother, and said, “We’ll have to find another school now, won’t we?”
They did, almost immediately; a sixth form college near the house in Chelsea to which Natalia could go as a day-girl. By the time she started at the school, however, in early September, Natalia’s hair was almost its natural colour again; she tended to wear either jeans and a white shirt or a blue skirt and a pale blue blouse that brought out the colour of her eyes; and she told her mother that once she had finished school next year, and assuming she passed all her exams, while she might go on to university, she thought it more likely that she would go abroad somewhere. To Italy, maybe, or to France. She wanted to try to write a book…
“I’m probably wrong, and I’m sure it’s arrogance or stupidity on my part, but - I feel I’ve learned enough, Mum. At least for the moment. Now, I just want to try and put down - interpret what I know.”
“You must do what you like, darling,” Irina said. “What you think is best. Maybe take a gap year -”
“I think my life is going to be a gap year!” smiled pale, demure Natalia Kalugina. “But - we’ll see.”

*

Irina did see, two and a half years later. She saw a great deal when an excited Natalia called her from Istanbul, where she’d been living for the past twelve months, to say she had just heard that her first little novel had been accepted for publication. “In England, the States, and Russia, Mum!” She saw more - she saw, she told herself, almost everything - when, only three days later, on the Brompton Road, she bumped into Madeleine Morel, who had been Natalia’s best friend at Battlement but with whom, so far as Irina knew, Natalia had not had any further contact after leaving the school. As she had not had any contact with any of her old friends, or the members of her set. “That’s all in the past, Mum. That’s over.”
Madeleine was looking well; she was in her second year at University College, London, she said. Irina invited her to have a coffee, and after the slim, elegant if somewhat nervous younger woman had asked after Natalia, and been told about the novel, Irina couldn’t resist enquiring, “How was your last year at Battlement, Madeleine? All right?”
“I suppose so,” Madeleine replied. “Though after the scandal, the whole place was in such a state of shock for about six months, we all felt in a way we were sleep-walking.”
“Scandal?” Irina echoed. “You mean about Natalia leaving?”
Madeleine flushed. “No,” she said. “Didn’t Natalia tell you?”
“What?”
“Right after she left - I mean about a week after she left - Mary Kemp, the headmaster’s sister, killed herself.”
Irina, sitting in the coffee shop on Beauchamp Place, felt faint. “Oh, that’s awful,” she said. “How terrible. Poor woman. Why?”
“No-one ever knew. But everyone said -” Madeleine hesitated. “That she was so much in love with Natalia that she couldn’t live without her.”
“Poor, poor woman,” Irina repeated.
Again Madeleine hesitated before continuing. “Though one or two people said it was because, after she left - Natalia wrote to Mary Kemp…” The young woman avoided Irina’s eyes. “She said you were going to go to the police.”
“I wasn’t!” Irina protested. “Natalia told me not to. She said there was nothing to go to the police about. She - that’s not true, Madeleine. It’s not true.”
“I said it wasn’t,” Madeleine murmured, still not meeting Irina’s eyes.
“Natalia will be so shocked when she finds out,” Irina said. “She was really very fond of Mary. She told me once, after she had left, that she owed her everything.”
Now Madeleine did at last look directly at her friend’s mother. “Natalia knew,” she said. “I wrote her an e-mail, telling her.”
“What?” Irina breathed, feeling faint again. “Are you sure? I mean - maybe she never got your message.”
“Oh she got it all right,” Madeleine said. “She wrote back.” There was a pause. “She said, ‘Well, now I’ve got the subject for my first book.’”

*

When Irina received a proof copy of Natalia’s novel, and saw the title, she was not surprised.
Part black comedy, party murder mystery, the book told the story of a teenage girl who wants to be a writer, but who believes - who has been taught by an older woman, the head-mistress of the school she attends - that to be successful in life, in any field including that of art, sacrifices must be made. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the success, and if one can offer up a human life to the gods - “Ah, how won’t they then reward you?”
The novel was called The Monster.

This story © Hugh Fleetwood.

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