The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark [20]
with Miss Brodie on the previous Saturday, while the rest of the Brodie set wandered afield to sketch. "Monica used up all her book. She did the Tee Woods from five angles," said Rose Stanley in verification. "What part of the art room were they standing in?" Sandy said. "The far side," Monica said. "I know he had his arm round her and was kissing her. They jumped apart when I opened the door." "Which arm?" Sandy snapped. "The right of course, he hasn't got a left." "Were you inside or outside the room when you saw them?" Sandy said. "Well, in and out. I saw them, I tell you." "What did they say?" Jenny said. "They didn't see me," said Monica. "I just turned and ran away." "Was it a long and lingering kiss?" Sandy demanded, while Jenny came closer to hear the answer. Monica cast the corner of her eye up to the ceiling as if doing mental arithmetic. Then when her calculation was finished she said, "Yes it was." "How do you know if you didn't stop to see how long it was?" "I know," said Monica, getting angry, "by the bit that I did see. It was a small bit of a good long kiss that I saw, I could see it by his arm being round her, and———" "I don't believe all this," Sandy said squeakily, because she was excited and desperately trying to prove the report true by eliminating the doubts. "You must have been dreaming," she said. Monica pecked with the fingers of her right hand at Sandy's arm, and pinched the skin of it with a nasty half-turn. Sandy screamed. Monica, whose face was becoming very red, swung the attaché case which held her books, so that it hit the girls who stood in its path and made them stand back from her. "She's losing her temper," said Eunice Gardiner, skipping. "I don't believe what she says," said Sandy, desperately trying to visualise the scene in the art room and to goad factual Monica into describing it with due feeling. "I believe it," said Rose. "Mr. Lloyd is an artist and Miss Brodie is artistic too." Jenny said, "Didn't they see the door opening?" "Yes," said Monica, "they jumped apart as I opened the door." "How did you know they didn't see you?" Sandy said. "I got away before they turned round. They were standing at the far end of the room beside the still-life curtain." She went to the classroom door and demonstrated her quick get-away. This was not dramatically satisfying to Sandy who went out of the classroom, opened the door, looked, opened her eyes in a startled way, gasped and retreated in a flash. She seemed satisfied by her experimental renactment but it so delighted her friends that she repeated it. Miss Brodie came up behind her on her fourth performance which had reached a state of extreme flourish. "What are you doing, Sandy?" said Miss Brodie. "Only playing," said Sandy, photographing this new Miss Brodie with her little eyes. The question of whether Miss Brodie was actually capable of being kissed and of kissing occupied the Brodie set till Christmas. For the war-time romance of her life had presented to their minds a Miss Brodie of hardly flesh and blood, since that younger Miss Brodie belonged to the prehistory of before their birth. Sitting under the elm last autumn, Miss Brodie's story of "when I was a girl" had seemed much less real, and yet more believable than this report by Monica Douglas. The Brodie set decided to keep the incident to themselves lest, if it should spread to the rest of the class, it should spread wider still and eventually to someone's ears who would get Monica Douglas into trouble. There was, indeed, a change in Miss Brodie. It was not merely that Sandy and Jenny, recasting her in their minds, now began to try to imagine her as someone called "Jean." There was a change in herself. She wore newer clothes and with them a glowing amber necklace which was of such real amber that, as she once showed them, it had magnetic properties when rubbed and then applied to a piece of paper. The change in Miss Brodie was best discerned by comparison with the other teachers in the Junior school. If you looked at them and then looked at Miss Brodie it was more possible to imagine