The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark [24]
— Teddy did a splendid portrait of Rose last summer, we swathed her in red velvet, and we've called it Red Velvet." Teddy Lloyd had brought out a canvas from behind a few others. He stood it in the light on an easel. Sandy looked at it with her tiny eyes which it was astonishing that anyone could trust. The portrait was like Miss Brodie. Sandy said, "I like the colours." "Does it resemble Miss Brodie?" said Deirdre Lloyd with her near-laughter. "Miss Brodie is a woman in her prime," said Sandy, "but there is a resemblance now you mention it." Deirdre Lloyd said: "Rose was only fourteen at the time; it makes her look very mature, but she is very mature." The swathing of crimson velvet was so arranged that it did two things at once, it made Rose look one-armed like the artist himself, and it showed the curves of her breast to be more developed than they were, even now, when Rose was fifteen. Also, the picture was like Miss Brodie, and this was the main thing about it and the main mystery. Rose had a large-boned pale face. Miss Brodie's bones were small, although her eyes, nose and mouth were large. It was difficult to see how Teddy Lloyd had imposed the dark and Roman face of Miss Brodie on that of pale Rose, but he had done so. Sandy looked again at the other recent portraits in the studio, Teddy Lloyd's wife, his children, some unknown sitters. They were none of them like Miss Brodie. Then she saw a drawing lying on top of a pile on the work-table. It was Miss Brodie leaning against a lamp post in the Lawnmarket with a working woman's shawl around her; on closer inspection it proved to be Monica Douglas with the high cheekbones and long nose. Sandy said: "I didn't know Monica sat for you." "I've done one or two preliminary sketches. Don't you think that setting's rather good for Monica? Here's one of Eunice in her harlequin outfit, I thought she looked rather well in it." Sandy was vexed. These girls, Monica and Eunice, had not said anything to the others about their being painted by the art master. But now they were all fifteen there was a lot they did not tell each other. She looked more closely at this picture of Eunice. Eunice had worn the harlequin dress for a school performance. Small and neat and sharp-featured as she was, in the portrait she looked like Miss Brodie. In amongst her various bewilderments Sandy was fascinated by the economy of Teddy Lloyd's method, as she had been four years earlier by Miss Brodie's variations on her love story, when she had attached to her first, war-time lover the attributes of the art master and the singing master who had then newly entered her orbit. Teddy Lloyd's method of presentation was similar, it was economical, and it always seemed afterwards to Sandy that where there was a choice of various courses, the most economical was the best, and that the course to be taken was the most expedient and most suitable at the time for all the objects in hand. She acted on this principle when the time came for her to betray Miss Brodie. Jenny had done badly in her last term's examinations and was mostly, these days, at home working up her subjects. Sandy had the definite feeling that the Brodie set, not to mention Miss Brodie herself, was getting out of hand. She thought it perhaps a good thing that the set might split up. From somewhere below one of the Lloyd children started to yell, and then another, and then a chorus. Deirdre Lloyd disappeared with a swing of her peasant skirt to see to all her children. The Lloyds were Catholics and so were made to have a lot of children by force. "One day," said Teddy Lloyd as he stacked up his sketches before taking Sandy down to tea, "I would like to do all you Brodie girls, one by one and then all together." He tossed his head to move back the golden lock of his hair from his eye. "It would be nice to do you all together," he said, "and see what sort of a group portrait I could make of you." Sandy thought this might be an attempt to keep the Brodie set together at the expense of the newly glimpsed individuality of its members. She turned on him in her new manner of sudden irritability and said, "We'd look like one big Miss Brodie, I suppose." He laughed in a delighted way and looked at her more closely, as if for the first time. She looked back just as closely through her little eyes, with the near-blackmailing insolence of her knowledge. Whereupon he kissed her long and wetly. He said in his hoarse voice, "That'll teach you to look at an artist like that." She started to run to the door, wiping her mouth dry with the back of her hand, but he caught her with his one arm and said: "There's no need to run away. You're just about the ugliest little thing I've ever seen in my life." He walked out and left her standing in the studio, and there was nothing for her to do but to follow him downstairs. Deirdre Lloyd's voice called from the sitting-room. "In here, Sandy." She spent most of the tea time trying to sort out her preliminary feelings in the matter, which was difficult because of the children who were present and making demands on the guest. The eldest boy, who was eight, turned on the wireless and began to sing in mincing English tones, "Oh play to me, Gipsy" to the accompaniment of Henry Hall's band. The other three children were making various kinds of din. Above this noise Deirdre Lloyd requested Sandy to call her Deirdre rather than. Mrs. Lloyd. And so Sandy did not have much opportunity to discover how she was feeling inside herself about Teddy Lloyd's kiss and his words, and to decide whether she was insulted or not. He now said, brazenly, "And you can call me Teddy outside of school." Amongst themselves, in any case, the girls called him Teddy the Paint. Sandy looked from one to the other of the Lloyds. "I've heard such a lot about Miss Brodie from the girls," Deirdre was saying. "I really must ask her to tea. D'you think she'd like to come?" "No," said Teddy. "Why?" said Deirdre, not that it seemed to matter, she was so languid and long-armed, lifting the plate of biscuits from the table and passing them round without moving from the low stool on which she sat. "You kids stop that row or you leave the room," Teddy declared. "Bring Miss Brodie to tea," Deirdre said to Sandy. "She won't come," Teddy said, "