Awakening of Miss Prim

by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

  “Well?” asked the man in the wing chair.

  “I was seeking a refuge,” she said suddenly.

  “A refuge? You mean, somewhere to live?” The man stared at his shoes anxiously. “Miss Prim, I apologize in advance for what I’m about to say. The question I’m going to ask is rather delicate, and it’s difficult for me to ask it, but it’s my duty to do so. Are you in trouble? The victim of a misunderstanding? An unfortunate incident? Some legal irregularity, perhaps?”

  The librarian, who came from a family strictly trained in the nobility of civic virtue, reacted strongly and heatedly to this accusation.

  “Of course not, sir, definitely not! I’m an honorable person. I pay my taxes, I pay my parking fines, I make small donations to charity. I’ve never committed a criminal act or offence. There’s not a single blot on my CV, or my family’s. If you’d like to check . . . ”

  “There’s no need, Miss Prim,” he replied, disconcerted. “Please forgive me; I obviously misinterpreted your words.”

  The applicant, perfectly composed a few minutes earlier, now looked very upset. The children meanwhile continued to watch her wordlessly.

  “I don’t know how you could have thought such a thing,” she lamented.

  “Please, forgive me,” urged the man again. “How can I make up for my rudeness?”

  “We could hire her.” The voice of the tousled boy on the porch came suddenly from somewhere on the rug. “You’re always saying that one should do the right thing. You’re always saying that.”

  For a moment the man in the wing chair seemed put out. Then he smiled at the boy, gave a little nod, and approached the applicant with a look of contrition.

  “Miss Prim, a woman who puts up with rudeness such as I’ve just inflicted without turning and leaving has my total confidence, whatever job she’s to be entrusted with. Would you be so kind as to accept the position?”

  The applicant was just opening her mouth to say no when she had a fleeting vision. She pictured the long, dark days at her office, heard the tedious chitchat about sport, recalled mocking smiles and malicious glances, remembered half-whispered rude remarks. Then she came to and made a decision. After all, he was a gentleman. And who wouldn’t want to work for a gentleman?

  “When do I start, sir?”

  Without waiting for a reply, she turned and went out through the French windows to fetch her suitcases.

  2

  Once inside the room that would be hers for the coming months, Prudencia sat down on the bed and stared out of the large window that stood open onto the terrace. There wasn’t much furniture, but what there was was exactly as it should be: an ottoman covered in faded blue damask, a huge Venetian mirror, a Georgian cast-iron fireplace, a wardrobe painted aquamarine, and two ancient Wilton rugs. “Rather too luxurious for a librarian,” she thought. Although luxurious wasn’t exactly the right word. It all looked extremely well used. It had all been lived with, mended, worn out. It exuded experience. “This would have been considered the height of comfort—a century ago,” sighed Miss Prim, as she started to unpack.

  A creaking sound made her look up, and her gaze landed on a painting leaning on the mantelpiece. It was a small board depicting three figures, painted by a child. The technique wasn’t bad; superb for a child, she reflected as she admired with pleasure the young artist’s brushwork.

  “It’s Rublev’s Holy Trinity,” said a now familiar young voice behind her.

  “Yes, I know, thank you, young man. By the way, shouldn’t you knock before coming in?” she said, and saw that the boy wasn’t alone.

  “But the door was open, wasn’t it?” he said to the three other children crowding behind him, who all nodded. “This is my sister, Teseris. She’s ten. This is Deka, he’s nine, and Eksi is the youngest, she’s only seven and a half. My name’s Septimus. But they’re not our real names,” he said with a confidential look.

  Miss Prim stared at the four siblings and was surprised at how different they were. Though little Deka had the same untidy blond hair as his older brother, the mischievous yet absolutely innocent expression on his face was quite unlike the thoughtful look of the boy who had met her on the porch. Nor was it easy to tell that the two girls were sisters. One possessed a serene, gentle beauty; the other radiated vivacity and charm.

  Teseris suddenly whispered something in her older brother’s ear before asking softly: “Miss Prim, do you think it’s possible to step through a mirror?”

  She looked at the child, dumbfounded, before realizing what she meant.

  “I remember my father reading me that story before I went to sleep,” she said, smiling.

  The little girl gave her brother a sideways glance.

  “I told you she wouldn’t understand,” said the boy smugly.

  Not knowing what to say, Miss Prim opened another suitcase and took out a jade-green silk kimono that she hung carelessly in the wardrobe. So this was dealing with children, she thought, a little ruffled. This was what the advert had been referring to, quite simply. Not pranks, or sweets, or fairy tales, but—who would have thought it?—mysteries and riddles.

  “Do you like Rublev’s icon?” asked the boy, peering at some books poking out of one of the suitcases.

  “Very much,” she said gravely, putting her items of clothing away one by one. “It’s a marvelous picture.”

  Little Teseris looked up when she heard this.

  “Icons aren’t pictures, Miss Prim. They’re windows.”

  She broke off from hanging up her dresses and looked at the girl uneasily. The man who ran this house had definitely gone too far with these children. At ten years of age you shouldn’t have such ridiculous ideas about icons and windows. It wasn’t a bad thing, of course not, it just wasn’t natural. Fairies and princesses, dragons and knights, poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, apple tart; in her opinion, this was what a child that age should take an interest in.

  “So was it you who painted this window?” she asked, trying to appear casual.

  The girl nodded.

  “She painted it from memory,” added her brother. “She saw it in the Tretyakov Gallery two years ago. She sat in front of it and refused to look at anything else. When we got home she started painting it all over the place. There are windows like this in every room.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Miss Prim briskly. “No one could paint something like this from memory. Especially not a little girl of eight, as your sister would have been at the time. It’s just not possible.”

  “But you weren’t there!” exclaimed little Deka with surprising vehemence. “How do you know?”

  Without a word, she went over to the picture, opened her handbag, and took out a ruler and pair of compasses. There they were, there was no doubt about it: the octagon formed by the figures, the inner and outer circles, the shape of the chalice at the center.

  “How did you do it, Teseris? You can’t possibly have painted it on your own, even with a reproduction to copy from. Someone must have helped you. Tell me the truth: was it your father, or your uncle, or whoever it is who looks after you?”

  “No one helped me,” said the little girl quietly but firmly. Then, addressing her younger sister: “Did they, Eksi?”

  “No one helped her. She always does things on her own,” Eksi solemnly confirmed, while at the same moment trying to balance on one leg.

  Stunned by this sisterly show of defiance, Miss Prim did not insist. If these had been adults, her interrogation skills would have exposed the deception easily. But a child wasn’t an adult; there was a big difference between a child and an adult. A child might scream, cry noisily, react in some ridiculous fashion. And what would happen then? An employee who provokes to anger the most vulnerable members of the family on her first day at work can’t count on great prospects in the job. Especially—she shuddered—when she’d had the misfortune to enter the house in such an irregular fashion.

  “And what were children as young as you doing in the Tretyakov
Gallery? Moscow is a long way away.”

  “We went there to study art,” replied Septimus.

  “Do you mean with your school?”

  The children looked at one another in delight.

  “Oh, no!” said the boy. “We’ve never gone to school.”

  This, said as if it were perfectly natural, fell like a stone into the librarian’s already agitated mind. Children who didn’t go to school? It couldn’t be true. A group of children who seemed half wild and didn’t go to school—where had she ended up? Miss Prim recalled her first impression of the man who had hired her. A strange individual, no doubt about it. An outlandish character, a hermit; who knows, perhaps even a madman.

  “Miss Prim.” Just then, the deep, cultured voice of the Man in the Wing Chair himself floated up to her from the staircase. “When you’ve finished unpacking, I’d like to see you in the library, please.”

  She secretly prided herself on the tenacity with which she strove to do the correct thing at all times. And in the present situation, she reflected, the correct course of action was to make her excuses and leave immediately. Heartened by this conclusion, she quickly shut her suitcases, tidied her hair in the mirror, shot a final glance at the Rublev icon, and prepared to do her duty.

  “Of course,” she called out. “I’ll be straight down.”

  The Man in the Wing Chair was standing in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back. While the librarian had been unpacking, he’d been rehearsing how best to explain her duties to her. It wasn’t an easy task, because what he required wasn’t a librarian in the usual sense. Following the previous incumbent’s departure, his library needed to be completely recatalogued and reorganized. The volumes of fiction, essays, and history were thick with dust, and those on theology had colonized all the rooms in the house to a greater or lesser extent. The day before, he’d found the homilies of St. John Chrysostom in the pantry, between jars of jam and packets of lentils. How had they got there? It was difficult to know. It could have been the children—they treated books as if they were notebooks or boxes of pencils; but it could just as easily have been him. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. And he had to admit that these were the consequences of his own rules.

  He vividly recalled his father’s prohibition on the removal of books from the library. This had meant that he and his siblings had had to choose between fresh air and reading. Thus, he had spent the afternoons of his childhood with Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Homer, Walter Scott. Outside, in the sunshine, the other children yelled and ran around, but he was always indoors, reading, immersed in worlds of which the others had barely an inkling. Years later, returning home after a long absence, he had abolished this rule. He loved to watch the children reading in the sun, stretched out on the lawn, perched in the comfortable old branches of a tree, munching on apples, devouring buttered toast, leaving sticky fingerprints on his beloved books.

  “I hope you’ve settled in comfortably,” he said politely, to break the ice.

  “Very comfortably, thank you,” she replied. “But I’m afraid I won’t be staying.”

  “Not staying?”

  “There are too many questions in the air,” said Miss Prim, raising her chin slightly.

  “I don’t understand,” he said amiably. “But if I can satisfy your curiosity, I’m at your disposal. I thought we’d come to an agreement.”

  At the word curiosity, her expression hardened.

  “It’s not curiosity. I just don’t know what kind of family this is. I’ve seen several children not in school. Generally, several children would be a major challenge for anyone, but several children in a wild state is, I believe, sheer folly.”

  “So you’ve been struck by the lack of schooling,” he muttered, frowning slightly. “Very well, Miss Prim, you’re right: if you’re going to work here you’re entitled to know what kind of household this is, though I must remind you that the children will not be in your charge. Their care is not part of your duties.”

  “I know, sir, but the children—how can I put it?—exist.”

  “Indeed they exist and, as the days pass, you’ll grow increasingly aware of their existence.”

  “Do you mean they’re ill mannered?”

  “I mean that the children are my life.”

  His reply caught her off guard. Despite her first impressions, there seemed to be a glimmer of delicacy in the man, much more so than she could have imagined—a strange, austere, intense delicacy.

  “Are . . . are the children yours? I mean, some of them?”

  “Are you asking if I’m their father? No, I’m not. Four of them are my sister’s children, but I’ve been their guardian since she died about five years ago. The rest are from the village, and they come here for lessons two or three times a week.”

  Miss Prim looked down tactfully: now she understood everything. Now she could see why the children were being educated at home instead of at school. This was clearly a case of what modern psychology called prolonged grief disorder. A sad situation, undoubtedly, but absolutely no excuse for such behavior. Homeschooling wasn’t good for children and, though it might be difficult or even embarrassing to talk about it, she knew it was her duty to do so.

  “I’m terribly sorry for your loss,” she said as if addressing a wounded animal, “but you shouldn’t shut yourself away with your grief. You have to think of your nephews and nieces, of them and their future. You can’t let your own sorrow lock them up inside this house and deprive them of a decent education.”

  He stared at her for a moment uncomprehendingly. Then he looked down and shook his head, smiling briefly.

  Prudencia, who wasn’t given to romanticizing, surprised herself by reflecting how an unexpected smile could light up a dark room.

  “A decent education? You think I’m a sad man who’s holding on to his nephews and nieces, not letting them go to school so as not to feel lonely, is that so?”

  “Is it?” she replied with a note of caution.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  The man went to the drinks cabinet by the window, in which a dozen fine crystal flutes and six heavy whiskey tumblers stood alongside an array of wines and liqueurs.

  “Would you like a drink, Miss Prim? I usually have one around this time. How about a glass of port?”

  “Thank you, sir, but I don’t drink.”

  “Do you mind if I have one?”

  “Absolutely not, you’re in your own home.”

  He turned and looked at her inquiringly, trying to gauge if there was sarcasm behind her words. Then he took a sip of his drink and set the glass directly on the tabletop, prompting an involuntary, barely perceptible expression of reproof to pass across her usually serene face.

  “The truth is, I have rather particular views on formal education. But if you do decide to stay and work here, all you need to know is that I’m schooling my nephews and nieces myself because I’m determined they should have the best education possible. I don’t have the romantic reasons you attribute to me, Miss Prim. I’m not wounded, I’m not depressed, I wouldn’t even say I feel lonely. My only aim is that the children should one day become all that modern schooling is incapable of producing.”

  “Producing?”

  “That’s the apposite word, in my opinion,” he replied, a gleam of amusement in his eyes.

  She said nothing. Was this house really the right place for a woman like her? She couldn’t say that the man was unpleasant. He wasn’t rude, or insulting, nor was there any sign of the lingering gaze she’d had to endure for years from her previous employer; but there was no delicacy in the way he spoke to the children, or sensitivity in the frank, if courteous, tone with which he addressed her. Miss Prim had to admit that in her heart a little resentment persisted over the clumsy insinuation about her motives only half an hour earlier. But there was something else: a troubling, hidden energy in his face, something indefinable that evoked hunting trophi
es, ancient battles, and heroic deeds.

  “So, your mind is made up to leave?” he asked, drawing her abruptly from her thoughts.

  “No, it isn’t. I wanted an explanation and I got one. I can’t say I share your gloomy view of the education system, but I understand your fear that the brutality of the modern world might crush the children’s spirits. If I could, however, speak candidly . . . ”

  “Please, go ahead.”

  “Your approach seems a little extreme, but I believe you’re guided by your convictions and that’s more than enough for me.”

  “So you think I’m going too far?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  The man went to the shelves and ran his hand over several books before stopping at a thick, ancient leather-bound volume and carefully withdrawing it.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “De Trinitate.”

  “St. Augustine?”

  “I see you live up to your CV. Or do you perhaps have some, shall we say, spiritual concerns?”

  Feeling awkward, she began playing with the amethyst ring on her right hand.

  “That’s a private matter, so if you wouldn’t mind I’d rather not answer. I consider I have the right not to.”

  “A private matter,” he repeated quietly, staring at the book. “Of course, you’re right. Again, I apologize.”

  Miss Prim bit her lip before adding: “I hope there’ll be no problem concerning my personal beliefs, because if there is it seems to me that for both our sakes you should tell me now.”

  “Absolutely none. You haven’t been hired to give lessons in theology.”