The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark [22]
— is she a woman, would you say, in her prime?" "Perhaps not yet," said Sandy. "Well, Mrs. Lloyd may be past it," Jenny said. "It's difficult to say with her hair being long on her shoulders. It makes her look young although she may not be." "She looks really like as if she won't have any prime," Sandy said. "The word 'like' is redundant in that sentence. What is Mrs. Lloyd's Christian name?" "Deirdre," said Jenny, and Miss Brodie considered the name as if it were new to her although she had heard it last week from Mary and Eunice, and the week before that from Rose and Monica, and so had Mr. Lowther. Outside, light rain began to fall on Mr. Lowther's leaves. "Celtic," said Miss Brodie. Sandy loitered at the kitchen door waiting for Miss Brodie to come for a walk by the sea. Miss Brodie was doing something to an enormous ham prior to putting it into a huge pot. Miss Brodie's new ventures into cookery in no way diminished her previous grandeur, for everything she prepared for Gordon Lowther seemed to be large, whether it was family-sized puddings to last him out the week, or joints of beef or lamb, or great angry-eyed whole salmon. "I must get this on for Mr. Lowther's supper," she said to Sandy, "and see that he gets his supper before I go home tonight." She always so far kept up the idea that she went home on these week-end nights and left Mr. Lowther alone in the big house. So far the girls had found no evidence to the contrary, nor were they ever to do so; a little later Miss Ellen Kerr was brought to the headmistress by Miss Gaunt to testify to having found Miss Brodie's nightdress under a pillow of the double bed on which Mr. Lowther took his sleep. She had found it while changing the linen; it was the pillow on the far side of the bed, nearest the wall, under which the nightdress had been discovered folded neatly. "How do you know the nightdress was Miss Brodie's?" demanded Miss Mackay, the sharp-minded woman, who smelt her prey very near and yet saw it very far. She stood with a hand on the back of her chair, bending forward full of ears. "One must draw one's own conclusions," said Miss Gaunt. "I am addressing Miss Ellen." "Yes, one must draw one's own conclusions," said Miss Ellen, with her tight-drawn red-veined cheeks looking shiny and flustered. "It was crêpe de Chine." "It is non proven," said Miss Mackay, sitting down to her desk. "Come back to me," she said, "if you have proof positive. What did you do with the garment? Did you confront Miss Brodie with it?" "Oh, no, Miss Mackay," said Miss Ellen. "You should have confronted her with it. You should have said, 'Miss Brodie, come here a minute, can you explain this?' That's what you should have said. Is the nightdress still there?" "Oh, no, it's gone." "She's that brazen," said Miss Gaunt. All this was conveyed to Sandy by the headmistress herself at that subsequent time when Sandy looked at her distastefully through her little eyes and, evading the quite crude question which the coarse-faced woman asked her, was moved by various other considerations to betray Miss Brodie. "But I must organise the dear fellow's food before I go home tonight," Miss Brodie said in the summer of nineteen-thirty-three while Sandy leaned against the kitchen door with her legs longing to be running along the sea shore. Jenny came and joined her, and together they waited upon Miss Brodie, and saw on the vast old kitchen table the piled-up provisions of the morning's shopping. Outside on the dining-room table stood large bowls of fruit with boxes of dates piled on top of them, as if this were Christmas and the kitchen that of a holiday hotel. "Won't all this give Mr. Lowther a stoppage?" Sandy said to Jenny. "Not if he eats his greens," said Jenny. While they waited for Miss Brodie to dress the great ham like the heroine she was, there came the sound of Mr. Lowther at the piano in the library singing rather slowly and mournfully: All people that on earth do dwell, Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice. Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell, Come ye before him and rejoice. Mr. Lowther was the choir-master and an Elder of the church, and had not yet been quietly advised to withdraw from these offices by Mr. Gaunt the minister, brother of Miss Gaunt, following the finding of the nightdress under the pillow next to his. Presently, as she put the ham on a low gas and settled the lid on the pot Miss Brodie joined in the psalm richly, contralto-wise, giving the notes more body: O enter then his gates with praise, Approach with joy his courts unto. The rain had stopped and was only now hanging damply within the salt air. All along the sea front Miss Brodie questioned the girls, against the rhythm of the waves, about the appointments of Teddy Lloyd's house, the kind of tea they got, how vast and light was the studio, and what was said. "He looked very romantic in his own studio," Sandy said. "How was that?" "I think it was his having only one arm," said Jenny. "But he always has only one arm." "He did more than usual with it," said Sandy. "He was waving it about," Jenny said. "There was a lovely view from the studio window. He's proud of it." "The studio is in the attic, I presume?" "Yes, all along the top of the house. There is a new portrait he has done of his family, it's a little bit amusing, it starts with himself, very tall, then his wife. Then all the little children graded downwards to the baby on the floor, it makes a diagonal line across the canvas." "What makes it amusing?" said Miss Brodie. "They are all facing square and they all look serious," Sandy said. "You are supposed to laugh at it." Miss Brodie laughed a little at this. There was a wonderful sunset across the distant sky, reflected in the sea, streaked with blood and puffed with avenging purple and gold as if the end of the world had come without intruding on every-day life. "There's another portrait," Jenny said, "not finished yet, of Rose." "He has been painting Rose?" "Yes." "Rose has been sitting for him?" "Yes, for about a month." Miss Brodie was very excited. "Rose didn't mention this," she said. Sandy halted. "Oh, I forgot. It was supposed to be a surprise. You aren't supposed to know." "What, the portrait, I am to see it?" Sandy looked confused, for she was not sure how Rose had meant her portrait to be a surprise to Miss Brodie. Jenny said, "Oh, Miss Brodie, it is the fact that she's sitting for Mr. Lloyd that she wanted to keep for a surprise." Sandy realised, then, that this was right. "Ah," said Miss Brodie, well pleased. "That is thoughtful of Rose." Sandy was jealous, because Rose was not supposed to be thoughtful. "What is she wearing for her portrait?" said Miss Brodie. "Her gym tunic," Sandy said. "Sitting sideways," Jenny said. "In profile," said Miss Brodie. Miss Brodie stopped a man to buy a lobster for Mr. Lowther. When this was done she said: "Rose is bound to be painted many times. She may well sit for Mr. Lloyd on future occasions, she is one of the cr