The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark [29]
———" "Did she go to fight for Franco?" said Sandy. "That was the intention. I made her see sense. However, she didn't have the chance to fight at all, poor girl." When Sandy returned, as was expected of her, to see Miss Mackay that autumn, the headmistress said to this rather difficult old girl with the abnormally small eyes, "You'll have been seeing something of Miss Brodie, I hope. You aren't forgetting your old friends, I hope." "I've seen her once or twice," said Sandy. "I'm afraid she put ideas into your young heads," said Miss Mackay with a knowing twinkle, which meant that now Sandy had left school it would be all right to talk openly about Miss Brodie's goings-on. "Yes, lots of ideas," Sandy said. "I wish I knew what some of them were," said Miss Mackay, slumping a little and genuinely worried. "Because it is still going on, I mean class after class, and now she has formed a new set, and they are so out of key with the rest of the school, Miss Brodie's set. They are precocious. Do you know what I mean?" "Yes," said Sandy. "But you won't be able to pin her down on sex. Have you thought of politics?" Miss Mackay turned her chair so that it was nearly square with Sandy's. This was business. "My dear," she said, "what do you mean? I didn't know she was attracted by politics." "Neither she is," said Sandy, "except as a side interest. She's a born Fascist, have you thought of that?" "I shall question her pupils on those lines and see what emerges, if that is what you advise, Sandy. I had no idea you felt so seriously about the state of world affairs, Sandy, and I'm more than delighted———" "I'm not really interested in world affairs," said Sandy, "only in putting a stop to Miss Brodie." It was clear the headmistress thought this rather unpleasant of Sandy. But she did not fail to say to Miss Brodie, when the time came, "It was one of your own girls who gave me the tip, one of your set, Miss Brodie." Sandy was to leave Edinburgh at the end of the year and when she said goodbye to the Lloyds she looked round the studio at the canvases on which she had failed to put a stop to Miss Brodie. She congratulated Teddy Lloyd on the economy of his method. He congratulated her on the economy of hers, and Deirdre looked to see whatever did he mean? Sandy thought, if he knew about my stopping of Miss Brodie, he would think me more economical still. She was more fuming, now, with Christian morals, than John Knox. Miss Brodie was forced to retire at the end of the summer term of nineteen-thirty-nine, on the grounds that she had been teaching Fascism. Sandy, when she heard of it, thought of the marching troops of black shirts in the pictures on the wall. By now she had entered the Catholic Church, in whose ranks she had found quite a number of Fascists much less agreeable than Miss Brodie. "Of course," said Miss Brodie when she wrote to tell Sandy the news of her retirement, "this political question was only an excuse. They tried to prove personal immorality against me on many occasions and failed. My girls were always reticent on these matters. It was my educational policy they were up against which had reached its perfection in my prime. I was dedicated to my girls, as you know. But they used this political excuse as a weapon. What hurts and amazes me most of all is the fact, if Miss Mackay is to be believed, that it was one of my own set who betrayed me and put the enquiry in motion. "You will be astonished. I can write to you of this, because you of all my set are exempt from suspicion, you had no reason to betray me. I think first of Mary Macgregor. Perhaps Mary has nursed a grievance, in her stupidity of mind, against me — she is such an exasperating young woman. I think of Rose. It may be that Rose resented my coming first with Mr. L. Eunice — I cannot think it could be Eunice, but I did frequently have to come down firmly on her commonplace ideas. She wanted to be a Girl Guide, you remember. She was attracted to the Team Spirit — could it be that Eunice bore a grudge? Then there is Jenny. Now you know Jenny, how she went off and was never the same after she wanted to be an actress. She became so dull. Do you think she minded my telling her that she would never be a Fay Compton, far less a Sybil Thorndike? Finally, there is Monica. I half incline to suspect Monica. There is very little Soul behind the mathematical brain, and it may be that, in a fit of rage against that Beauty, Truth and Goodness which was beyond her grasp, she turned and betrayed me. "You, Sandy, as you see, I exempt from suspicion, since you had no reason whatsoever to betray me, indeed you have had the best part of me in my confidences and in the man I love. Think, if you can, who it could have been. I must know which one of you betrayed me..." Sandy replied like an enigmatic Pope: "If you did not betray us it is impossible that you could have been betrayed by us. The word betrayed does not apply..." She heard again from Miss Brodie at the time of Mary Macgregor's death, when the girl ran hither and thither in the hotel fire and was trapped by it. "If this is a judgment on poor Mary for betraying me, I am sure I would not have wished..." "I'm afraid," Jenny wrote, "Miss Brodie is past her prime. She keeps wanting to know who betrayed her. It isn't at all like the old Miss Brodie, she was always so full of fight." Her name and memory, after her death, flitted from mouth to mouth like swallows in summer, and in winter they were gone. It was always in summer time that the Brodie set came to visit Sandy, for the nunnery was deep in the country. When Jenny came to see Sandy, who now bore the name Sister Helena of the Transfiguration, she told Sandy about her sudden falling in love with a man in Rome and there being nothing to be done about it. "Miss Brodie would have liked to know about it," she said, "sinner as she was." "Oh, she was quite an innocent in her way," said Sandy, clutching the bars of the grille. Eunice, when she came, told Sandy, "We were at the Edinburgh Festival last year. I found Miss Brodie's grave, I put some flowers on it. I've told my husband all the stories about her, sitting under the elm and all that; he thinks she was marvellous fun." "So she was, really, when you think of it." "Yes, she was," said Eunice, "when she was in her prime." Monica came again. "Before she died," she said, "Miss Brodie thought it was you who betrayed her." "It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due," said Sandy. "Well, wasn't it due to Miss Brodie?" "Only up to a point," said Sandy. And there was that day when the enquiring young man came to see Sandy because of her strange book of psychology, "The Transfiguration of the Commonplace," which had brought so many visitors that Sandy clutched the bars of her grille more desperately than ever. "What were the main influences of your school days, Sister Helena? Were they literary or political or personal? Was it Calvinism?" Sandy said: "There was a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime."