The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark [25]
— will she, Sandy?" "She's awfully busy," Sandy said. "Pass me a fag," said Deirdre. "Is she still looking after Lowther?" said Teddy. "Well, yes, a bit———" "Lowther," said Teddy, waving his only arm, "must have a way with women. He's got half the female staff of the school looking after him. Why doesn't he employ a housekeeper? — He's got plenty of money, no wife, no kids, no rent to pay, it's his own house. Why doesn't he get a proper housekeeper?" "I think he likes Miss Brodie," Sandy said. "But what does she see in him?" "He sings to her," Sandy said, suddenly sharp. Deirdre laughed. "Miss Brodie sounds a bit queer, I must say. What age is she?" "Jean Brodie," said Teddy, "is a magnificent woman in her prime." He got up, tossing back his lock of hair, and left the room. Deirdre blew a cloud of reflective smoke and stubbed out her cigarette, and Sandy said she would have to go now. Mr. Lowther had caused Miss Brodie a good deal of worry in the past two years. There had been a time when it seemed he might be thinking of marrying Miss Alison Kerr, and another time when he seemed to favour Miss Ellen, all the while being in love with Miss Brodie herself, who refused him all but her bed-fellowship and her catering. He tired of food, for it was making him fat and weary and putting him out of voice. He wanted a wife to play golf with and to sing to. He wanted a honeymoon on the Hebridean island of Eigg, near Rum, and then to return to Cramond with the bride. In the midst of this dissatisfaction had occurred Ellen Kerr's finding of a nightdress of quality folded under the pillow next to Mr. Lowther's in that double bed on which, to make matters worse, he had been born. Still Miss Brodie refused him. He fell into a melancholy mood upon his retirement from the offices of choir-master and Elder, and the girls thought he brooded often upon the possibility that Miss Brodie could not take to his short legs, and was all the time pining for Teddy Lloyd's long ones. Most of this Miss Brodie obliquely confided in the girls as they grew from thirteen to fourteen and from fourteen to fifteen. She did not say, even obliquely, that she slept with the singing master, for she was still testing them out to see whom she could trust, as it would be her way to put it. She did not want any alarming suspicions to arise in the minds of their parents. Miss Brodie was always very careful to impress the parents of her set and to win their approval and gratitude. So she confided according to what seemed expedient at the time, and was in fact now on the look-out for a girl amongst her set in whom she could confide entirely, whose curiosity was greater than her desire to make a sensation outside, and who, in the need to gain further confidences from Miss Brodie, would never betray what had been gained. Of necessity there had to be but one girl; two would be dangerous. Almost shrewdly, Miss Brodie fixed on Sandy, and even then it was not of her own affairs that she spoke. In the summer of nineteen-thirty-five the whole school was forced to wear rosettes of red, white and blue ribbon in the lapels of its blazers, because of the Silver Jubilee. Rose Stanley lost hers and said it was probably in Teddy Lloyd's studio. This was not long after Sandy's visit to the art master's residence. "What are you doing for the summer holidays, Rose?" said Miss Brodie. "My father's taking me to the Highlands for a fortnight. After that, I don't know. I suppose I'll be sitting for Mr. Lloyd off and on." "Good," said Miss Brodie. Miss Brodie started to confide in Sandy after the next summer holidays. They played rounds of golf in the sunny early autumn after school. "All my ambitions," said Miss Brodie, "are fixed on yourself and Rose. You will not speak of this to the other girls, it would cause envy. I had hopes of Jenny, she is so pretty; but Jenny has become insipid, don't you think?" This was a clever question, because it articulated what was already growing in Sandy's mind. Jenny had bored her this last year, and it left her lonely. "Don't you think?" said Miss Brodie, towering above her, for Sandy was playing out of a bunker. Sandy gave a hack with her niblick and said, "Yes, a bit," sending the ball in a little backward half-circle. "And I had hopes of Eunice," Miss Brodie said presently, "but she seems to be interested in some boy she goes swimming with." Sandy was not yet out of the bunker. It was sometimes difficult to follow Miss Brodie's drift when she was in her prophetic moods. One had to wait and see what emerged. In the meantime she glanced up at Miss Brodie who was standing on the crest of the bunker which was itself on a crest of the hilly course. Miss Brodie looked admirable in her heather-blue tweed with the brown of a recent holiday in Egypt still warming her skin. Miss Brodie was gazing out over Edinburgh as she spoke. Sandy got out of the bunker. "Eunice," said Miss Brodie, "will settle down and marry some professional man. Perhaps I have done her some good. Mary, well Mary. I never had any hopes of Mary. I thought, when you were young children that Mary might be something. She was a little pathetic. But she's really a most irritating girl, I'd rather deal with a rogue than a fool. Monica will get her B.Sc. with honours I've no doubt, but she has no spiritual insight, and of course that's why she's