The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark [14]
passion struck upon them in the course of the evening and they were swept away into sexual intercourse? She saw the picture of it happening in her mind, and Sandy could not stand for this spoiling. She argued with herself, surely people have time to think, they have to stop to think while they are taking their clothes off, and if they stop to think, how can they be swept away? "That is a Citroen," said Rose Stanley about a motor car that had passed by. "They are French." "Sandy, dear, don't rush. Take my hand," said Miss Brodie. "Rose, your mind is full of motor cars. There is nothing wrong with motor cars, of course, but there are higher things. I'm sure Sandy's mind is not on motor cars, she is paying attention to my conversation like a well-mannered girl." And if people take their clothes off in front of each other, thought Sandy, it is so rude, they are bound to be put off their passion for a moment. And if they are put off just for a single moment, how can they be swept away in the urge? If it all happens in a flash... Miss Brodie said, "So I intend simply to point out to Miss Mackay that there is a radical difference in our principles of education. Radical is a word pertaining to roots — Latin radix, a root. We differ at root, the headmistress and I, upon the question whether we are employed to educate the minds of girls or to intrude upon them. We have had this argument before, but Miss Mackay is not, I may say, an outstanding logician. A logician is one skilled in logic. Logic is the art of reasoning. What is logic, Rose?" "To do with reasoning, ma'am," said Rose, who later, while still in her teens, was to provoke Miss Brodie's amazement and then her awe and finally her abounding enthusiasm for the role which Rose then appeared to be enacting: that of a great lover, magnificently elevated above the ordinary run of lovers, above the moral laws, Venus incarnate, something set apart. In fact, Rose was not at the time in question engaged in the love affair which Miss Brodie thought she was, but it seemed so, and Rose was famous for sex. But in her mere eleventh year, on the winter's walk, Rose was taking note of the motor cars and Miss Brodie had not yet advanced far enough into her prime to speak of sex except by veiled allusion, as when she said of her warrior lover, "He was a pure man," or when she read from James Hogg's poem "Bonnie Kilmeny," Kilmeny was pure as pure could be and added, "Which is to say, she did not go to the glen in order to mix with men." "When I see Miss Mackay on Monday morning," said Miss Brodie, "I shall point out that by the terms of my employment my methods cannot be condemned unless they can be proved to be in any part improper or subversive, and so long as the girls are in the least equipped for the end-of-term examination. I trust you girls to work hard and try and scrape through, even if you learn up the stuff and forget it next day. As for impropriety, it could never be imputed to me except by some gross distortion on the part of a traitor. I do not think ever to be betrayed. Miss Mackay is younger than I am and higher salaried. That is by accident. The best qualifications available at the University in my time were inferior to those open to Miss Mackay. That is why she holds the senior position. But her reasoning power is deficient, and so I have no fears for Monday." "Miss Mackay has an awfully red face, with the veins all showing," said Rose. "I can't permit that type of remark to pass in my presence, Rose," said Miss Brodie, "for it would be disloyal." They had come to the end of Lauriston Place, past the fire station, where they were to get on a tram car to go to tea with Miss Brodie in her flat at Churchhill. A very long queue of men lined this part of the street. They were without collars, in shabby suits. They were talking and spitting and smoking little bits of cigarette held between middle finger and thumb. "We shall cross here," said Miss Brodie and herded the set across the road. Monica Douglas whispered, "They are the Idle." "In England they are called the Unemployed. They