The morning ablutions

At a girl's boarding school in the country, a greying house on its own within dull implacable grounds.

Now I see a young lady, slim, rotund face with a tendency to sulkiness or irritability, but also rather proud and leonine, hair a scruffy blondeish colour, eyes blue. Aged about 18 at the most.

The constraints and properness of a disciplined boarding school. Having to wake up in cold mornings and scrape hair back, and into a plain and functional uniform, on with the sensible shoes.

This particular girl seems to shine among her schoolmates, and in the dank surroundings of the school grounds. Lips a subtle mauveish colour, mascara'd eyes bringing out the grace and strength of her face. Eyes flicker holding a certain fiery naïvety.

The morning ablutions start: The girls are marched in detachments of about half a dozen to a marked-off section of lawn near the gravelled driveway.

Here the girls line up before a solid plinth of marble, on the wall of which is set four or five medium-sized sinks. In the background, the old Victorian school building. Grey early morning clouds.

At a given signal, a few girls detach themselves from the queue where they have waited rigidly hands clasped together. In this particular group marches our blonde girl. She takes the second sink.

Each girl begins immediately to fill her sink with water which after a few minutes runs from cold to tepid to decently warm. The blonde girl depresses a nozzle set by the sink and lets fall into her hand a quantity of smooth lotion. It is fragrant, viscous stuff which soon works up into a good lather.

The girls thoroughly and methodically wash their hands, as if performing a long-practised task, the blonde girl with a careful, fastidious sulkiness.

Morning ablutions are all part of the drill.