The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

by Muriel Spark

  Towards the end of the Easter holidays, to crown the sex-laden year, Jenny, out walking alone, was accosted by a man joyfully exposing himself beside the Water of Leith. He said, “Come and look at this.”

  “At what?” said Jenny, moving closer, thinking to herself he had picked up a fallen nestling from the ground or had discovered a strange plant. Having perceived the truth, she escaped unharmed and unpursued though breathless, and was presently surrounded by solicitous, horrified relations and was coaxed to sip tea well sugared against the shock. Later in the day, since the incident had been reported to the police, came a wonderful policewoman to question Jenny.

  These events contained enough exciting possibilities to set the rest of the Easter holidays spinning like a top and to last out the whole of the summer term. The first effect on Sandy was an adverse one, for she had been on the point of obtaining permission to go for walks alone in just such isolated spots as that in which Jenny’s encounter had taken place. Sandy was now still forbidden lone walks, but this was a mere by-effect of the affair. The rest brought nothing but good. The subject fell under two headings: first, the man himself and the nature of what he had exposed to view, and secondly the policewoman.

  The first was fairly quickly exhausted.

  “He was a horrible creature,” said Jenny.

  “A terrible beast,” said Sandy.

  The question of the policewoman was inexhaustible, and although Sandy never saw her, nor at that time any policewoman (for these were in the early days of the women police), she quite deserted Alan Breck and Mr. Rochester and all the heroes of fiction for the summer term, and fell in love with the unseen policewoman who had questioned Jenny; and in this way she managed to keep alive Jenny’s enthusiasm too.

  “What did she look like? Did she wear a helmet?”

  “No, a cap. She had short, fair, curly hair curling under the cap. And a dark blue uniform. She said, ‘Now tell me all about it.’”

  “And what did you say?” said Sandy for the fourth time.

  For the fourth time Jenny replied: “Well, I said, ‘The man was walking along under the trees by the bank, and he was holding something in his hand. And then when he saw me he laughed out loud and said, come and look at this. I said, at what? And I went a bit closer and I saw …’—but I couldn’t tell the policewoman what I saw, could I? So the policewoman said to me, ‘You saw something nasty?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ Then she asked me what the man was like, and …”

  But this was the same story all over again. Sandy wanted new details about the policewoman, she looked for clues. Jenny had pronounced the word “nasty” as “nesty,” which was unusual for Jenny.

  “Did she say ‘nasty’ or ‘nesty’?” said Sandy on this fourth telling.

  “Nesty.”

  This gave rise to an extremely nasty feeling in Sandy and it put her off the idea of sex for months. All the more as she disapproved of the pronunciation of the word, it made her flesh creep, and she plagued Jenny to change her mind and agree that the policewoman had pronounced it properly.

  “A lot of people say nesty,” said Jenny.

  “I know, but I don’t like them. They’re neither one thing nor another.”

  It bothered Sandy a great deal, and she had to invent a new speaking-image for the policewoman. Another thing that troubled her was that Jenny did not know the policewoman’s name, or even whether she was addressed as “constable,” “sergeant,” or merely “miss.” Sandy decided to call her Sergeant Anne Grey. Sandy was Anne Grey’s right-hand woman in the Force, and they were dedicated to eliminate sex from Edinburgh and environs. In the Sunday newspapers, to which Sandy had free access, the correct technical phrases were to be found, such as “intimacy took place” and “plaintiff was in a certain condition.” Females who were up for sex were not called “Miss” or “Mrs.,” they were referred to by their surnames: “Willis was remanded in custody ... ,” “Roebuck, said Counsel, was discovered to be in a certain condition.”

  So Sandy pushed her dark blue police force cap to the back of her head and sitting on a stile beside Sergeant Anne Grey watched the spot between the trees by the Water of Leith where the terrible beast had appeared who had said, “Look at this,” to Jenny, but where, in fact, Sandy never was.

  “And another thing,” said Sandy, “we’ve got to find out more about the case of Brodie and whether she is yet in a certain condition as a consequence of her liaison with Gordon Lowther, described as singing master, Marcia Blaine School for Girls.”

  “Intimacy has undoubtedly taken place,” said Sergeant Anne, looking very nice in her dark uniform and short-cropped curls blondely fringing her cap. She said, “All we need are a few incriminating documents.”

  “Leave all that to me, Sergeant Anne,” said Sandy, because she was at that very time engaged with Jenny in composing the love correspondence between Miss Brodie and the singing master. Sergeant Anne pressed Sandy’s hand in gratitude; and they looked into each other’s eyes, their mutual understanding too deep for words.

  At school after the holidays the Water of Leith affair was kept a secret between Jenny and Sandy, for Jenny’s mother had said the story must not be spread about. But it seemed natural that Miss Brodie should be told in a spirit of sensational confiding.

  But something made Sandy say to Jenny on the first afternoon of the term: “Don’t tell Miss Brodie.”

  “Why?” said Jenny.

  Sandy tried to work out the reason. It was connected with the undecided state of Miss Brodie’s relationship to cheerful Mr. Lowther, and with the fact that she had told her class, first thing: “I have spent Easter at the little Roman village of Cramond.” That was where Mr. Lowther lived all alone in a big house with a housekeeper.

  “Don’t tell Miss Brodie,” said Sandy.

  “Why?” said Jenny.

  Sandy made an effort to work out her reasons. They were also connected with something that had happened in the course of the morning, when Miss Brodie, wanting a supply of drawing books and charcoal to start the new term, sent Monica Douglas to fetch them from the art room, then called her back, and sent Rose Stanley instead. When Rose returned, laden with drawing books and boxes of chalks, she was followed by Teddy Lloyd, similarly laden. He dumped his books and asked Miss Brodie if she had enjoyed her holiday. She gave him her hand, and said she had been exploring Cramond, one should not neglect these little nearby seaports.

  “I shouldn’t have thought there was much to explore at Cramond,” said Mr. Lloyd, smiling at her with his golden forelock falling into his eye.

  “It has quite a lot of charm,” she said. “And did you go away at all?”

  “I’ve been painting,” he said in his hoarse voice. “Family portraits.”

  Rose had been stacking the drawing books into their cupboard and now she had finished. As she turned, Miss Brodie put her arm round Rose’s shoulder and thanked Mr. Lloyd for his help, as if she and Rose were one.

  “N’tall,” said Mr. Lloyd, meaning, “Not at all,” and went away. It was then Jenny whispered, “Rose has changed in the holidays, hasn’t she?”

  This was true. Her fair hair was cut shorter and was very shiny. Her cheeks were paler and thinner, her eyes less wide open, set with the lids half-shut as if she were posing for a special photograph.

  “Perhaps she has got the Change,” said Sandy. Miss Brodie called it the Menarche but so far when they tried to use this word amongst themselves it made them giggle and feel shy.

  Later in the afternoon after school, Jenny said: “I’d better tell Miss Brodie about the man I met.”

  Sandy replied, “Don’t tell Miss Brodie.”

  “Why not?” said Jenny.

  Sandy tried, but could not think why not, except to feel an unfinished quality about Miss Brodie and her holiday at Cramond, and her sending Rose to Mr. Lloyd. So she said, “The policewoman said to try to forget what happened. Perhaps Miss Brodie would make you remember it.”

  Jenny said, “That’s what
I think, too.”

  And so they forgot the man by the Water of Leith and remembered the policewoman more and more as the term wore on.

  During the last few months of Miss Brodie’s teaching she made herself adorable. She did not exhort or bicker and even when hard pressed was irritable only with Mary Macgregor. That spring she monopolised with her class the benches under the elm from which could be seen an endless avenue of dark pink May trees, and heard the trotting of horses in time to the turning wheels of light carts returning home empty by a hidden lane from their early morning rounds. Not far off, like a promise of next year, a group of girls from the Senior school were doing first-form Latin. Once, the Latin mistress was moved by the spring of the year to sing a folksong to fit the clip-clop of the ponies and carts, and Miss Brodie held up her index finger with delight so that her own girls should listen too.

  Nundinarum adest dies,

  Mulus ille nos vehet

  Eie, curre, mule, mule,

  I tolutari gradu.

  That spring Jenny’s mother was expecting a baby, there was no rain worth remembering, the grass, the sun and the birds lost their self-centred winter mood and began to think of others. Miss Brodie’s old love story was newly embroidered, under the elm, with curious threads: it appeared that while on leave from the war, her late fiancé had frequently taken her out sailing in a fishing boat and that they had spent some of their merriest times among the rocks and pebbles of a small seaport. “Sometimes Hugh would sing, he had a rich tenor voice. At other times he fell silent and would set up his easel and paint. He was very talented at both arts, but I think the painter was the real Hugh.”

  This was the first time the girls had heard of Hugh’s artistic leanings. Sandy puzzled over this and took counsel with Jenny, and it came to them both that Miss Brodie was making her new love story fit the old. Thereafter the two girls listened with double ears, and the rest of the class with single.

  Sandy was fascinated by this method of making patterns with facts, and was divided between her admiration for the technique and the pressing need to prove Miss Brodie guilty of misconduct.

  “What about those incriminating documents?” said Sergeant Anne Grey in her jolly friendly manner. She really was very thrilling.

  Sandy and Jenny completed the love correspondence between Miss Brodie and the singing master at half-term. They were staying in the small town of Crail on the coast of Fife with Jenny’s aunt who showed herself suspicious of their notebook; and so they took it off to a neighbouring village along the coast by bus, and sat at the mouth of a cave to finish the work. It had been a delicate question how to present Miss Brodie in both a favourable and an unfavourable light, for now, as their last term with Miss Brodie drew to a close, nothing less than this was demanded.

  That intimacy had taken place was to be established. But not on an ordinary bed. That had been a thought suitable only for the enlivening of a sewing period, but Miss Brodie was entitled to something like a status. They placed Miss Brodie on the lofty lion’s back of Arthur’s Seat, with only the sky for roof and bracken for a bed. The broad parkland rolled away beneath her gaze to the accompanying flash and crash of a thunderstorm. It was here that Gordon Lowther, shy and smiling, small, with a long body and short legs, his red-gold hair and moustache, found her.

  “Took her,” Jenny had said when they had first talked it over.

  “Took her—well, no. She gave herself to him.”

  “She gave herself to him,” Jenny said, “although she would fain have given herself to another.”

  The last letter in the series, completed at mid-term, went as follows:

  My Own Delightful Gordon,

  Your letter has moved me deeply as you may imagine. But alas, I must ever decline to be Mrs. Lowther. My reasons are twofold. I am dedicated to my Girls as is Madame Pavlova, and there is another in my life whose mutual love reaches out to me beyond the bounds of Time and Space. He is Teddy Lloyd! Intimacy has never taken place with him. He is married to another. One day in the art room we melted into each other’s arms and knew the truth. But I was proud of giving myself to you when you came and took me in the bracken on Arthur’s Seat while the storm raged about us. If I am in a certain condition I shall place the infant in the care of a worthy shepherd and his wife, and we can discuss it calmly as platonic acquaintances. I may permit misconduct to occur again from time to time as an outlet because I am in my Prime. We can also have many a breezy day in the fishing boat at sea.

  I wish to inform you that your housekeeper fills me with anxiety like John Knox. I fear she is rather narrow, which arises from an ignorance of culture and the Italian scene. Pray ask her not to say, “You know your way up,” when I call at your house at Cramond. She should take me up and show me in. Her knees are not stiff. She is only pretending that they are.

  I love to hear you singing “Hey Johnnie Cope.” But were I to receive a proposal of marriage tomorrow from the Lord Lyon King of Arms I would decline it.

  Allow me, in conclusion, to congratulate you warmly upon your sexual intercourse, as well as your singing.

  With fondest joy,

  Jean Brodie.

  When they had finished writing the letter they read the whole correspondence from beginning to end. They were undecided then whether to cast this incriminating document out to sea or to bury it. The act of casting things out to sea from the shore was, as they knew, more difficult than it sounded. But Sandy found a damp hole half-hidden by a stone at the back of the cave and they pressed into it the notebook containing the love correspondence of Miss Jean Brodie, and never saw it again. They walked back to Crail over the very springy turf full of fresh plans and fondest joy.

  4

  “I HAVE ENOUGH GUNPOWDER in this jar to blow up this school,” said Miss Lockhart in even tones.

  She stood behind her bench in her white linen coat, with both hands on a glass jar three-quarters full of a dark grey powder. The extreme hush that fell was only what she expected, for she always opened the first science lesson with these words and with the gunpowder before her, and the first science lesson was no lesson at all, but a naming of the most impressive objects in the science room. Every eye was upon the jar. Miss Lockhart lifted it and placed it carefully in a cupboard which was filled with similar jars full of different-coloured crystals and powders.

  “These are bunsen burners, this is a test-tube, this is a pipette, that’s a burette, that is a retort, a crucible ...”

  Thus she established her mysterious priesthood. She was quite the nicest teacher in the Senior school. But they were all the nicest teachers in the school. It was a new life altogether, almost a new school. Here were no gaunt mistresses like Miss Gaunt, those many who had stalked past Miss Brodie in the corridors saying “good morning” with predestination in their smiles. The teachers here seemed to have no thoughts of anyone’s personalities apart from their speciality in life, whether it was mathematics, Latin or science. They treated the new first-formers as if they were not real, but only to be dealt with, like symbols of algebra, and Miss Brodie’s pupils found this refreshing at first. Wonderful, too, during the first week was the curriculum of dazzling new subjects, and the rushing to and from room to room to keep to the time-table. Their days were now filled with unfamiliar shapes and sounds which were magically dissociated from ordinary life, the great circles and triangles of geometry, the hieroglyphics of Greek on the page and the curious hisses and spits some of the Greek sounds made from the teacher’s lips—“psst … psooch …”

  A few weeks later, when meanings appeared from among these sights and sounds, it was difficult to remember the party-game effect of that first week, and that Greek had ever made hisses and spits or that “mensarum” had sounded like something out of nonsense verse. The Modern side, up to the third form, was distinguished from the Classical only by modern or ancient languages. The girls on the Modern side were doing German and Spanish, which, when rehearsed between periods, made the astonishing noises of fore
ign stations got in passing on the wireless. A mademoiselle with black frizzy hair, who wore a striped shirt with real cuff-links, was pronouncing French in a foreign way which never really caught on. The science room smelt unevenly of the Canongate on that day of the winter’s walk with Miss Brodie, the bunsen burners, and the sweet autumnal smoke that drifted in from the first burning leaves. Here in the science room—strictly not to be referred to as a laboratory—lessons were called experiments, which gave everyone the feeling that not even Miss Lockhart knew what the result might be, and anything might occur between their going in and coming out and the school might blow up.

  Here, during that first week, an experiment was conducted which involved magnesium in a test-tube which was made to tickle a bunsen flame. Eventually, from different parts of the room, great white magnesium flares shot out of the test-tubes and were caught in larger glass vessels which waited for the purpose. Mary Macgregor took fright and ran along a single lane between two benches, met with a white flame, and ran back to meet another brilliant tongue of fire. Hither and thither she ran in panic between the benches until she was caught and induced to calm down, and she was told not to be so stupid by Miss Lockhart, who already had learnt the exasperation of looking at Mary’s face, its two eyes, nose and mouth, with nothing more to say about it.

  Once, in later years; when Sandy was visited by Rose Stanley, and they fell to speaking of dead Mary Macgregor, Sandy said,

  “When any ill befalls me I wish I had been nicer to Mary.”

  “How were we to know?” said Rose.

  And Miss Brodie, sitting in the window of the Braid Hills Hotel with Sandy, had said: “I wonder if it was Mary Macgregor betrayed me? Perhaps I should have been kinder to Mary.”

  The Brodie set might easily have lost its identity at this time, not only because Miss Brodie had ceased to preside over their days which were now so brisk with the getting of knowledge from unsoulful experts, but also because the headmistress intended them to be dispersed.