Dellie Leven was expected to take to the stage to introduce the annual production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, having taught the girls for much of the year, until Leah Cedars’ departure required her to pick up the slack of the Fourth and Fifth Year seniors. But it was the handsome coycrock teacher who leapt up onto the pallets, announcing that he was to be the day’s Dionysus, leading them all in a celebration of theatre, merrymaking and ritual madness.

Raising his voice above the chatter on the harbourside, he urged everyone to settle onto the benches that Huxley had arranged before the stage in crescents. The view from these seats took in not only the performance, but the expanse of a sea neither moody nor calm – a critic reserving its judgement perhaps, until the final curtain fell.

Parents with younger ones lined the front rows to ensure the best view. Before they sat, they removed the leaflets placed along the benches at regular intervals, held down by pebbles with holes in the middle, whittled by the action of the sea.

This was a new addition to proceedings – a programme.

Some cooed their appreciation of the A5 sheet headed THE PLAYERS. On the front was the novelty of a new photograph, sharply focused, taken no doubt with one of the coycrock teacher’s fancy mainland devices. It was a group image of the Eldest Girls, the three of them leaning against the mossy wall of the graveyard, the low glow of a sunset warming their faces, the sea grey and soupy behind them. On the back of the pamphlet were individual headshots of each girl, also new and seriously posed. Beneath these were typed strange little biographies – Jade-Marie Ahearn first got a taste for the stage playing ‘third sheep from the left’ in the celebrated St Rita’s Nativity play when she was just three and a half years old. Since then, she has gone on to become Lark’s most talked about alto-contralto, turning down endless offers to appear at the Albert Hall.

Others deemed these programmes unnecessary, wasteful even, especially when the wind snatched a few, sending them swooping out to sea.

The usual suspects – the headmaster, the doctor and their respective wives; Jed and Eleanor Springer, Miriam and Frank Calder, etc. – commandeered the benches on the right. Sister Agnes led her holy comrades, Sister Sarah and Sister Clare, to sit on this side too, though towards the back so that their starched white wimples would not obstruct anyone’s sightlines.

The ‘unusual suspects’ – Rhoda and Ingrid, Martha and Ruth, etc. – took the left benches, forcing the middle-grounders to choose sides. Dellie Leven, Hope Ainsley and Sarah Devoner all opted for the relative safety of the right, immediately questioning their decision – if the angling of their necks was anything to go by – when Father Daniel took his seat on the left next to the flowing white hair and flowery skirts of Margaritte Carruthers.