by Muriel Spark
“Which reflects public interest,” said Chris. “I would be cautious,” said Rowland, “of a subject so very much worked on.”
“I have a unique, original theory,” Chris said. “And look, Rowland, I can see very well that you’re trying to exploit my talent and my contacts to further your own literary ambitions.”
“I should have thought that it was you who are exploiting my hospitality and my school to further your literary ambitions.”
“I pay.”
“You can get out.”
“Too simple. You have to wait till the end of term. It won’t be long. If you want to survive to that date just keep your hands off my publisher.”
“You need therapy, Chris.”
They were nearly home, and they drove on in a silence broken only once by a burst of unnecessary laughter from Chris.
Only Mary Foot and Joan Archer were to return to the school in the New Year for another term. Nina had enrolled six new students and arranged for a further year’s lease of the Ouchy premises. She had laid all this before Rowland who had accepted the situation passively. He knew that Nina would not be there. He could hardly grasp the fact that he was still married to Nina. Their separation had not been planned; it had just come about.
Nina now even confided in the students how she would go to join Israel Brown at his wonderful art gallery, a totally new life. She would study modern art. After the December dance the school would break up. Rowland would then take over College Sunrise.
“I won’t be here,” Tilly said.
“You should go home to your family. I’ll write a letter,” Nina said.
“No, I’ve got a job through a friend in Frankfurt. I’m to be a photographic model for maternity clothes at all stages.”
“And Albert?” said Joan Archer. She was anxious for something new to write to her father.
“He could also be a photo model,” said Tilly. “But he likes his gardening better. Opal is furious that he wants to marry me, but I won’t think of it.”
“You’re much too young to think of it,” said Nina.
Everyone agreed with that.
Nina proceeded with her comme il faut class which was to the effect that no one benefited from smoking pot. “The air was thick with smoke when I went up to the second floor the other day. Claire has complained that it gets on her chest. You just have to realize that the more you smoke the less you appreciate it, and you go on to stronger things. It’s up to you because you’re leaving soon and you can do what you like or whatever you can get away with. But Rowland has said I can tell you about his brother, who went from pot to the hard stuff. He robbed to get the drug and he folded up and died aged nineteen. Rowland’s father, who died recently, never got over it.”
Everyone had a story to tell, how they had heard of the drastic results of drug fancying, soft and hard. Nina knew that most of them, however, had at some time managed to obtain and smoke the stuff. She added, “It’s like smoking cigarettes in one respect, it’s dreadfully low, it’s common.”
This dubious proposition seemed to have a generally awesome effect on most of Nina’s students which lasted till teatime. Lionel Haas was an exception.
“A great many top people take cocaine and smoke cigarettes,” he said.
“Who are they?”
He had nobody on the tip of his tongue, so Nina rapidly closed the session.
It was Rowland’s creative writing class which he sometimes, like today, worked in with a poetry session. He had prepared a short lecture which he read from his book of observations:
“Art is an act of daring.”
“A marriage that can survive the ruthlessness of art is one of sacrifice on the part of the non-artist partner. If both practice the same art you should know that one of them will invariably be inferior to the other.
“If, in the course of an author’s preparing a book, his family suffers a blow or a tragedy, the book could easily come to ruin in the ensuing domestic anguish and muddle. The average author can no doubt finish the book, but not well. However the dedicated author might seem callous, not easily shattered, tough. Hence the reputation of artists in all fields for ruthless, cold detachment. Too bad. About this sort of accusation the true artist is uncaring. The true artist is almost unaware of other people’s cares and distractions. This applies to either sex.
“Once you have written The End to a book it is yours, not only till death do you part but for all eternity. Translators and adaptors come and go, but they can’t lay claim to the authorship of a work that is yours. Remember this if you ever take up the literary profession, as you all seem very keen to do.
“A lot of talk goes on about ideas. I heard a popular singer at an arts festival giving vent to his ideas about ideas. What was wanted, he said, were ideas, not just skill with words. Now, I challenge you to express any idea adequately without skill with words. Words are ideas. That great Gospel according to St. John opens: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ ”
Rowland then read a poem that the class was to study for his next lesson. “Page 738 of your book,” he said. “Thomas Hardy 1840–1928, his poem In Tenebris, meaning In the shadows. A man is in mourning for his loved one. It is about the experience of separation.
Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.
Flower-petals flee;
But, since it once hath been,
No more that severing scene
Can harrow me.
Birds faint in dread:
I shall not lose old strength
In the lone frost’s black length:
Strength long since fled!
Leaves freeze to dun;
But friends can not turn cold
This season as of old
For him with none.
Tempests may scath;
But love can not make smart
Again this year his heart
Who no heart hath.
Black is night’s cope;
But death will not appal
One who, past doubtings all,
Waits in unhope.”
Mary Foot was crying. “Oh, how sad everything is,” she said. “And just at the end of the term . . .”
“It’s not our sadness, Mary,” said Rowland. “It was Thomas Hardy’s. What I want you all to do for Thursday afternoon next, is to give me your thoughts on verse 3, line 1. ‘Birds faint in dread.’ What did Hardy mean? Do birds ever faint? And do they faint in fear? Hardy was a countryman. Perhaps he knew the answer. A strange line. See what you make of it. Cheer up, Mary my dear.”
In fact, on Thursday, Rowland was to be prevented from taking his class, and so the question of the fainting bird was never resolved.
19
It was Thursday morning, the day of Rowland’s scheduled creative writing class. It would be the last of the term. The school broke up at the end of the week, after the dance on Saturday night.
Rowland, as he lay in his bath, remembered, too, that he had arranged to play Lionel Haas at squash in the neighboring hotel.
The bathroom adjacent to Rowland and Nina’s bedroom was a cold one. The central-heating radiator hardly worked but they had put in a small electric heater which Nina had already turned on, having had her bath earlier.
Suddenly the bathroom door opened. Rowland looked round for Nina but found Chris in his pyjamas, standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing here?” Rowland said.
“You’ve been in touch with my publisher, Grace Formby. I’ve been thinking it over. You’re going to use me as a rung in your ladder,” Chris said.
“Don’t be absurd. Get out of here.”
“And write a book about living with adolescents and teenagers, the only thing you know.”
“Get out of my bathroom,” Rowland said. He sat up and reached for his long-handled bath-brush, and started scrubbing his back.
“I heard from Grace Formby. She has
confirmed my contract,” Chris said.
“Very good. I’m glad. Congratulations.”
“You have exploited me,” said Chris.
There was a rapid movement. Chris’s bright red head bent suddenly before Rowland’s eyes. If what happened in the next part-second could be described in slow motion it was this: Chris bent down and grabbed the little live heater in both hands, holding it high above his head. He approached the bath. “You’ll kill me. Put that down,” yelled Rowland. Exactly as he spoke he jabbed Chris in the groin with his bath-brush and vaulted over the bath. At the same instant, Chris, in pain from the jab, bent forward so that the live electric stove fell into the water. The lights went out, as it was discovered later all over the house. Rowland felt a quiver up his leg. His heel had been seared. The water still sizzled with the heat of the fire, where Rowland was so very nearly electrocuted.
Chris disappeared.
“This would happen today when I’m busy about the dance,” Nina said when she was trying to obtain one electrician after another on the phone. She had imagined that the electricity failure was a normal breakdown.
Rowland limped in to the office with his burnt foot, in a shocked condition. He was dripping wet. “What’s happened?” he said, so foolishly that she knew something had gone wrong. “Chris,” she thought.
She wanted to hand Chris over to the police. She found him in his room, fully dressed and writing at his desk.
“I’m going to denounce you to the police for attempted murder.”
“And how will you explain my presence in Rowland’s bathroom?”
“How will I explain . . . ?”
“Oh, yes. I’m a minor. Do you want Rowland to keep on the school? Better not get him a bad name.”
“Rowland’s foot was burnt by the fire,” she said.
“Then he can’t dance.”
Rowland could not dance but he went to the party all the same. It was a considerable success. All the students seemed to be related to, or friends with, so many prosperous people that sixty tickets were easily sold. Chris attended, with his mother and uncle.
Nina said to the uncle, “I hope you are going to take Chris back with you.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” said the uncle.
And, when supper was served, Nina found herself near Chris’s mild-looking mother. “I hope you are going to take Chris back with you.”
“What is your problem?” said the woman, fiercely.
“We don’t want him.”
“Chris is talented and you are all jealous. Especially your husband. So many people are jealous of Chris.”
Someone at the table, whose order had not yet arrived, said, “I think ‘waiter’ is such a funny word. It is we who wait.”
Rowland was to continue to run College Sunrise with some success.
After another year at Ouchy he moved to Ravenna where the school specialized in the study of mosaics. From there he moved to Istanbul where he met with many problems too complicated to narrate here. His book, The School Observed, was published satisfactorily, as was Chris’s first novel, highly praised for its fine, youthful disregard of dry historical facts.
Chris proceeded to establish himself as a readable novelist and meanwhile joined Rowland at College Sunrise as soon as he was of age. After a year they engaged themselves in a Same-Sex Affirmation Ceremony, attended by friends and Chris’s family.
Nina settled in London, married to Israel Brown and happy with her studies and his gallery. She returned with him to his villa at Ouchy from time to time. The house of College Sunrise was now a youth hostel. When she passed the house, she sometimes felt nostalgia, not at all for Rowland, but for College Sunrise itself.
Pallas Kapelas—her father had skipped bail, was wanted and always would be. Pallas married a merchant shipowner and was, so far, contented.
Nina had not heard from Lionel Haas, not a word.
Pansy Leghorn had a temporary job as an editor at the BBC.
Princess Tilly had a baby girl who, as Israel Brown had predicted, was nursed and coddled into Tilly’s family, while Tilly went her own way and became a society journalist. Albert visited his daughter from time to time, taking her a teddy bear and a bedside clock.
Opal Gross was in the process of studying for the Anglican ministry.
Mary Foot opened a shop in Cornwall where she sold ceramics and transparent scarves. She corresponded regularly with Rowland and Chris, passing on their news to Nina.
Lisa Orlando got a place at Southampton University, reading psychology.
Joan Archer got a place in a good drama school, as she had for so long desired. Eventually, she was to write television scripts.
Albert was kept on at the house as a gardener, and Claire as a domestic helper.
Elaine got a job in Geneva at a travel agency. She frequently met Albert at weekends and public holidays.
Her sister, Célestine, had a job at the restaurant of a skating rink in Lausanne, where she also progressed wonderfully at skating.
Nina, now finding herself obliged to give dinner parties at Ouchy for the sophisticated world of art dealers, would arrange with the hotel to provide the catering. And once, on her way to the hotel on just such an errand, on a summer evening, she heard once more from the open windows, the chatter of young voices, so that it seemed almost like College Sunrise again. She waved to Albert. And she heard the dear voice of Hazel forecasting the weather on Sky News: “As we go through this evening and into tonight . . .”
MURIEL SPARK
The Finishing School
Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1918. She is the author of more than twenty novels as well as collections of short stories, criticism, and poetry. Her most celebrated works include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), Loitering with Intent (1981), The Comforters (1957), The Public Image (1968), The Girls of Slender Means (1963), The Driver’s Seat (1970), and Aiding and Abetting (2001). She was awarded the OBE in 1993 and is a Dame of the British Empire. She has also been awarded the honorary degree of doctor of letters by the University of Edinburgh, as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She lives in Tuscany.
Also by Muriel Spark
FICTION
The Comforters
Robinson
Memento Mori
The Ballad of Peckham Rye
The Bachelors
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The Girls of Slender Means
The Mandelbaum Gate
The Public Image
The Driver’s Seat
Not to Disturb
The Hothouse by the East River
The Abbess of Crewe
The Takeover
Territorial Rights
Loitering with Intent
The Only Problem
A Far Cry from Kensington
Symposium
The Complete Short Stories
Reality and Dreams
Aiding and Abetting
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Curriculum Vitae
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 2005
Copyright © 2004 by Muriel Spark
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses,
organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition
as follows:
Spark, Muriel.
The finishing school / Muriel Spark.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Creative writing—Study and teaching—Fiction. 2. Teacher-
student relationships—Fiction. 3. Lausanne (Switzerland)—
Fiction. 4. Fiction—Authorship—Fiction. 5. Married
> people—Fiction. 6. Teenage boys—Fiction. 7. Schools—Fiction.
I. Title.
PR6037.P29 F56 2004
823’.914—dc22
2004045533
www.anchorbooks.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42202-6
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