The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [178]
Turn the pages, turn the pages. Where was I? April 1936.
In April we got a call from the headmistress of St. Cecilia’s, where Laura was attending school. It concerned Laura’s behaviour, she said. It was not a matter that could best be discussed over the telephone.
Richard was tied up with business affairs. He proposed Winifred as my escort, but I said I was sure it was nothing; I myself would handle things, and would let him know if there was anything of importance. I made an appointment to see the headmistress, whose name I have forgotten. I dressed in a manner I hoped would intimidate her, or at least remind her of Richard’s standing and influence: I believe I wore a cashmere coat trimmed with wolverine – warm for the season, but impressive – and a hat with a dead pheasant on it, or parts of one. The wings, the tail, and the head, which was fitted with beady little red glass eyes.
The headmistress was a greying female shaped like a wooden clothes rack – brittle bones with damp-looking textiles draped on them. She was sitting in her office, barricaded behind her oak desk, her shoulders up to her ears with terror. A year earlier I would have been as frightened of her as she was of me, or rather of what I represented: a big wad of money. Now however I had gained assurance. I had watched Winifred in action, I had practised. Now I could raise one eyebrow at a time.
She smiled nervously, displaying plump yellow teeth like the kernels on a half-eaten cob of corn. I wondered what Laura had been doing: it must have been something, to have worked her up to the point of confrontation with absent Richard and his unseen power. “I’m afraid we can’t really continue with Laura,” she said. “We have done our best, and we are aware that there are mitigating circumstances, but considering everything we do have to think of our other pupils, and I am afraid Laura is simply too disruptive an influence.”
I had learned, by then, the value of making other people explain themselves. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said, barely moving my lips. “What mitigating circumstances? What disruptive influence?” I kept my hands still in my lap, my head high and slightly tilted, the best angle for the pheasant hat. I hoped she would feel stared at by four eyes and not just by two. Though I had the benefit of wealth, hers was her age and position. It was hot in the office. I’d slung my coat over the back of the chair, but even so I was sweating like a stevedore.
“She is calling God into question,” she said, “in the Religious Knowledge class, which I have to say is the only subject in which she appears to take any interest whatsoever. She went so far as to produce an essay entitled,‘Does God Lie?’ It was very unsettling to the entire class.”
“And what answer did she arrive at?” I asked. “About God?” I was surprised, though I didn’t show it: I’d thought Laura had been slackening off on the God question, but apparently not.
“An affirmative one.” She looked down at her desk, where Laura’s essay was spread out in front of her. “She cites – it’s right here – First Kings, chapter twenty-two – the passage in which God deceives King Ahab. ‘Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets.’ Laura goes on to say that if God did this once, how do we know he didn’t do it more than once, and how can we tell the false prophecies apart from the true ones?”
“Well, that’s a logical conclusion, at any rate,” I said. “Laura knows her Bible.”
“I dare say,” said the headmistress, exasperated. “The Devil can quote Scripture to his purpose. She does proceed to remark that although God lies, he doesn’t cheat – he always sends a true prophet