Mothers and Daughters Read Online Free PDF Page A

the missionaries in Africa from starvation. Sometimes she would practise her port de bras as she pleaded to the Holy Mother for this special favour. Then Sister Gilberte caught her prancing and there’d been trouble ever since.
    Her arms were extended and fingers outstretched. They were her best feature, for her legs were a little on the short side and her arches were not fully rounded to make her pointed foot look as good as it should. She did all her barre exercises faithfully hanging onto the banister rail at the top of the stairs, but there wasn’t enough space to extend out and stretch properly because of the pram in the hall.
    She stretched out her brown brogues to see if her ankles had shrunk. They looked awful in her grey wool socks with the gold and brown stripes at the knee. If only she could wear stockings like the sixth-form girls. Her brown serge pinafore was shaped and fitted, and a size too big, having once belonged to her cousin Marcella. Everything was handed down, shiny with wear and had hems and tucks. She felt like a cross between a wasp and a bumblebee.
    Our Lady of Sorrows liked their girls in shapeless drab uniforms the colour of a ploughed field or a ‘number-two job’, as her friend Maureen Brady had whispered to her. She lifted her skirt to examine her knees. As usual they were scuffed and pitted with ash marks from chasing her brother, Salvi, round the park.
    ‘Put that skirt down, Rosaria,’ shouted Sister Gilberte, who had eyes like radar for any fidgeting and infringement of the rules. ‘How many times do I have to drum into this numbskull that Sorrows girls do not display bodily parts except on the playingfield? Sorrows girls are ladies first and foremost, even if we do have to suffer the scruffier elements of our community from time to time. We will have no common boldness in this school, do you hear, Santini? What can you expect from Italian peasant stock!’ the nun sniffed, pulling Rosa roughly back into line.
    ‘Virtue and decorum at all times, girls. You are the Holy Mother’s little flagships sailing on a sea of wickedness and heresy.’
    Rosa hated Sister Gilberte, in her long black habit, swishing along the corridor like a black swan gliding over a polished sea of oak. She was Odile to her Odette in Swan Lake , the sorcerer’s evil daughter, all sweetness and light on the outside but a black heart at the core. How she had cried when poor Odette was denied her prince. It wasn’t fair.
    Sister Gilberte knew her every move, caught her running when she should be walking, skipping when she should be walking crocodile, told her off for singing too loud, sneezing in chapel, for having dirty hands and knees, and her hair ribbon missing.
    Mamma would sigh and find sixpence for another hair ribbon, for they could only be bought from the school. It was not fair. There must be hundreds of ribbons hidden in Sister Gilberte’s desk.
    It was a good job lessons were easy and she could do her prep on the bus home or tucked under a spare hair dryer in the salon when it was quiet. If only her exercise books didn’t end up smelling of ammoniaand bleach. Once she got hair tint splashed on her work and got the cane again. She needed all the gold stars she could get so that she might ask for the afternoon off to attend the ballet audition. A place at the Academy morning school was another rung on the ladder to becoming the next Fonteyn, Beryl Grey or Markova. She was not fussy which. She already had a good stage name.
    ‘Rosa Santini, rising star of the Royal Ballet School dances at the King’s Theatre, Grimbleton as a gesture to her home town and alma mater, the Lemody Liptrot School of Dance,’ the paper would read. The whole convent would come to see her perform and Sister Gilberte would not have a ticket but would sit alone eating her words about the Santinis being common and bold.
    For the moment she must suffer for her art; a little drone at the court of the big fat queen bee in the