Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [21]
“Where did it go, in the end? That head? Did you get rid of it?”
“Oh, it’s still down there somewhere,” says my sister.
My Last Duchess
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,’ ” said Miss Bessie.
No one would have called her Miss Bessie to her face, but that was her name among us. It was far more respectful than our names for some of the other teachers: the Gorilla, the Crip, the Hippo. “Now, class. What does that single word, last, tell us right away?”
The windows of our brand-new schoolroom were high enough so we couldn’t see anything out of them except the sky. Today the sky was a hazy blue, a warm, drowsy colour. I wasn’t looking at it, but there it was, at the edge of eyesight, huge and featureless and soothing, rolling on and on like the sea. One of the window panels was open and some flies had come in. They were buzzing around, bumbling against the glass, trying to get out. I could hear them, but I couldn’t see them, I couldn’t risk turning my head. I was supposed to be thinking about last.
Last, last, last. Last was so close to lost. Last Duchess. Duchess was an insinuating rustle, a whispering: taffeta brushing over a floor. On a day like this it was hard to resist dozing off, drifting down into reverie or half-sleep. It was afternoon, it was May, the trees outside were flowering, pollen was eddying everywhere. The classroom was too hot; it was filled with a vibration, the vibration of its newness – the blond wood of its curved, modern metal-framed desks, the greenness of its blackboards, the faint humming of its fluorescent lights, which seemed to hum even when they were turned off. But despite this newness there was an old smell in the room, an ancient, fermenting smell: an invisible steam was rising all around, oily, salty, given off by twenty-five adolescent bodies stewing gently in the humid springtime air.
Last Duchess. There had to be more than one, then. A whole bunch of Duchesses, all in a row like a chorus line. No: it was last as in last year. The Duchess was back there in the past – gone, over with, left behind.
Quite frequently Miss Bessie didn’t wait for anyone to stick up a hand: it could be a long wait, as being too quick to blurt stuff out was ridiculous in our eyes. We didn’t want to make fools of ourselves by getting a thing wrong, or else – sometimes equally foolish – by getting it right. Miss Bessie was well aware of that, so nine times out of ten she simply answered her own questions. “Last Duchess tells us,” she said, “that this Duchess is no longer the wife of the Duke. It also implies that there may be a next Duchess. The first line of a poem is very important, class. It sets the tone. Let us proceed.”
Miss Bessie was sitting on top of her desk, as usual. She had good legs, not only for a woman of her age but for any woman, and she wore beautiful shoes – not the kind of shoes we ourselves would have worn, not penny loafers or saddle shoes or velveteen flats or stiletto heels for dancing, but we could tell they were in good taste and well taken care of. No spot or smear of dirt was ever to be seen on those softly gleaming shoes of Miss Bessie’s.
Each pair of shoes went with its own outfit, and here too Miss Bessie was exceptional. The female teachers at our school wore tailored suits to do their teaching in. It was a kind of uniform – a skirt, straight or gored or pleated, a matching jacket, a blouse underneath, white or cream-coloured, often with a floppy bow tied at the neckline, and a brooch on the left-hand lapel – but Miss Bessie’s suits had an elegance the others could not match. Her blouses were not cheesy, limp nylon but had a sheen and solidity to them, her brooches looked as if their semi-precious stones were real: her best one was amber and gold, in the shape of a bee. Her hair wasn’t grey but silver, and expertly waved; her cheekbones were prominent, her jaw firm, her eyes piercing; her nose, discreetly powdered, was aquiline, a word we had learned from her.
We pitied the other female teachers in our school – hopeless, ill-groomed