The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark [3]
— when her first and last boy friend, a corporal whom she had known for two weeks, deserted her by failing to turn up at an appointed place and failing to come near her again — she thought back to see if she had ever really been happy in her life; it occurred to her then that the first years with Miss Brodie, sitting listening to all those stories and opinions which had nothing to do with the ordinary world, had been the happiest time of her life. She thought this briefly, and never again referred her mind to Miss Brodie, but had got over her misery, and had relapsed into her habitual slow bewilderment, before she died while on leave in Cumberland in a fire in the hotel. Back and forth along the corridors ran Mary Macgregor, through the thickening smoke. She ran one way; then, turning, the other way; and at either end the blast furnace of the fire met her. She heard no screams, for the roar of the fire drowned the screams; she gave no scream, for the smoke was choking her. She ran into somebody on her third turn, stumbled and died. But at the beginning of the nineteen-thirties, when Mary Macgregor was ten, there she was sitting blankly among Miss Brodie's pupils. "Who has spilled ink on the floor — was it you, Mary?" "I don't know, Miss Brodie." "I daresay it was you. I've never come across such a clumsy girl. And if you can't take an interest in what I am saying, please try to look as if you did." These were the days that Mary Macgregor, on looking back, found to be the happiest days of her life. Sandy Stranger had a feeling at the time that they were supposed to be the happiest days of her life, and on her tenth birthday she said so to her best friend Jenny Gray who had been asked to tea at Sandy's house. The speciality of the feast was pineapple cubes with cream, and the speciality of the day was that they were left to themselves. To Sandy the unfamiliar pineapple had the authentic taste and appearance of happiness and she focussed her small eyes closely on the pale gold cubes before she scooped them up in her spoon, and she thought the sharp taste on her tongue was that of a special happiness, which was nothing to do with eating, and was different from the happiness of play that one enjoyed unawares. Both girls saved the cream to the last, then ate it in spoonfuls. "Little girls, you are going to be the crème de la crème," said Sandy, and Jenny spluttered her cream into her handkerchief. "You know," Sandy said, "these are supposed to be the happiest days of our lives." "Yes, they are always saying that," Jenny said. "They say, make the most of your schooldays because you never know what lies ahead of you." "Miss Brodie says prime is best," Sandy said. "Yes, but she never got married like our mothers and fathers." "They don't have primes," said Sandy. "They have sexual intercourse," Jenny said. The little girls paused, because this was still a stupendous thought, and one which they had only lately lit upon; the very phrase and its meaning were new. It was quite unbelievable. Sandy said, then, "Mr. Lloyd had a baby last week. He must have commited sex with his wife." This idea was easier to cope with and they laughed screamingly into their pink paper napkins. Mr. Lloyd was the Art master to the senior girls. "Can you see it happening?" Jenny whispered. Sandy screwed her eyes even smaller in the effort of seeing with her mind. "He would be wearing his pyjamas," she whispered back. The girls rocked with mirth, thinking of one-armed Mr. Lloyd, in his solemnity, striding into school. Then Jenny said, "You do it on the spur of the moment. That's how it happens." Jenny was a reliable source of information, because a girl employed by her father in his grocer shop had recently been found to be pregnant, and Jenny had picked up some fragments of the ensuing fuss. Having confided her finds to Sandy, they had embarked on a course of research which they called "research," piecing together clues from remembered conversations illicitly overheard, and passages from the big dictionaries. "It all happens in a flash," Jenny said. "It happened to Teenie when she was out walking at Puddocky with her boy friend. Then they had to get married." "You would think the urge would have passed by the time she got her clothes off," Sandy said. By "clothes," she definitely meant to imply knickers, but "knickers" was rude in this scientific context. "Yes, that's what I can't understand," said Jenny. Sandy's mother looked round the door and said, "Enjoying yourselves, darlings?" Over her shoulder appeared the head of Jenny's mother. "My word," said Jenny's mother, looking at the tea-table, "they've been tucking in!" Sandy felt offended and belittled by this; it was as if the main idea of the party had been the food. "What would you like to do now?" Sandy's mother said. Sandy gave her mother a look of secret ferocity which meant: you promised to leave us all on our own, and a promise is a promise, you know it's very bad to break a promise to a child, you might ruin all my life by breaking your promise, it's my birthday. Sandy's mother backed away bearing Jenny's mother with her. "Let's leave them to themselves," she said. "Just enjoy yourselves, darlings." Sandy was sometimes embarrassed by her mother being English and calling her "darling," not like the mothers of Edinburgh who said "dear." Sandy's mother had a flashy winter coat trimmed with fluffy fox fur like the Duchess of York's, while the other mothers wore tweed or, at the most, musquash that would do them all their days. It had been raining and the ground was too wet for them to go and finish digging the hole to Australia, so the girls lifted the tea-table with all its festal relics over to the corner of the room. Sandy opened the lid of the piano stool and extracted a notebook from between two sheaves of music. On the first page of the notebook was written, The Mountain Eyrie by Sandy Stranger and Jenny Gray This was a story, still in the process of composition, about Miss Brodie's lover, Hugh Carruthers. He had not been killed in the war, that was a mistake in the telegram. He had come back from the war and called to enquire for Miss Brodie at school, where the first person whom he encountered was Miss Mackay, the headmistress. She had informed him that Miss Brodie did not desire to see him, she loved another. With a bitter, harsh laugh, Hugh went and made his abode in a mountain eyrie, where, wrapped in a leathern jacket, he had been discovered one day by Sandy and Jenny. At the present stage in the story Hugh was holding Sandy captive but Jenny had escaped by night and was attempting to find her way down the mountainside in the dark. Hugh was preparing to pursue her. Sandy took a pencil from a drawer in the sideboard and continued: "Hugh!" Sandy beseeched him, "I swear to you before all I hold sacred that Miss Brodie has never loved another, and she awaits you below, praying and hoping in her prime. If you will let Jenny go, she will bring back your lover Jean Brodie to you and you will see her with your own eyes and hold her in your arms after these twelve long years and a day." His black eye flashed in the lamplight of the hut. "Back, girl!" he cried, "and do not bar my way. Well do I know that yon girl Jenny will report my whereabouts to my mocking erstwhile fianc