The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark [28]
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