The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark [38]
"How many children?" said Miss Brodie, her teapot poised. "Five, I think," said Sandy. "Six, I think," said Jenny, "counting the baby." "There are lots of babies," said Sandy. "Roman Catholics, of course," said Miss Brodie, addressing this to Mr. Lowther. "But the littlest baby," said Jenny, "you've forgotten to count the wee baby. That makes six." Miss Brodie poured tea and cast a glance at Gordon Lowther's plate. "Gordon," she said, "a cake." He shook his head and said softly, as if soothing her, "Oh, no, no." "Yes, Gordon. It is full of goodness." And she made him eat a Chester cake, and spoke to him in a slightly more Edinburgh way than usual, so as to make up to him by both means for the love she was giving to Teddy Lloyd instead of to him. "You must be fattened up, Gordon," she said. "You must be two stone the better before I go my holidays." He smiled as best he could at everyone in turn, with his drooped head and slowly moving jaws. Meanwhile Miss Brodie said: "And Mrs. Lloyd — is she a woman, would you say, in her prime?" "Perhaps not yet," said Sandy. "Well, Mrs. Lloyd may be past it," Jenny said. "It's difficult to say with her hair being long on her shoulders. It makes her look young although she may not be." "She looks really like as if she won't have any prime," Sandy said. "The word 'like' is redundant in that sentence. What is Mrs. Lloyd's Christian name?" "Deirdre," said Jenny, and Miss Brodie considered the name as if it were new to her although she had heard it last week from Mary and Eunice, and the week before that from Rose and Monica, and so had Mr. Lowther. Outside, light rain began to fall on Mr. Lowther's leaves. "Celtic," said Miss Brodie. Sandy loitered at the kitchen door waiting for Miss Brodie to come for a walk by the sea. Miss Brodie was doing something to an enormous ham prior to putting it into a huge pot. Miss Brodie's new ventures into cookery in no way diminished her previous grandeur, for everything she prepared for Gordon Lowther seemed to be large, whether it was family-sized puddings to last him out the week, or joints of beef or lamb, or great angry-eyed whole salmon. "I must get this on for Mr. Lowther's supper," she said to Sandy, "and see that he gets his supper before I go home tonight." She always so far kept up the idea that she went home on these week-end nights and left Mr. Lowther alone in the big house. So far the girls had found no evidence to the contrary, nor were they ever to do so; a little later Miss Ellen Kerr was brought to the headmistress by Miss Gaunt to testify to having found Miss Brodie's nightdress under a pillow of the double bed on which Mr. Lowther took his sleep. She had found it while changing the linen; it was the pillow on the far side of the bed, nearest the wall, under which the nightdress had been discovered folded neatly. "How do you know the nightdress was Miss Brodie's?" demanded Miss Mackay, the sharp-minded woman, who smelt her prey very near and yet saw it very far. She stood with a hand on the back of her chair, bending forward full of ears. "One must draw one's own conclusions," said Miss Gaunt. "I am addressing Miss Ellen." "Yes, one must draw one's own conclusions," said Miss Ellen, with her tight-drawn red-veined cheeks looking shiny and flustered. "It was crêpe de Chine." "It is non proven," said Miss Mackay, sitting down to her desk. "Come back to me," she said, "if you have proof positive. What did you do with the garment? Did you confront Miss Brodie with it?" "Oh, no, Miss Mackay," said Miss Ellen. "You should have confronted her with it. You should have said, 'Miss Brodie, come here a minute, can you explain this?' That's what you should have said. Is the nightdress still there?" "Oh, no, it's gone." "She's that brazen," said Miss Gaunt. All this was conveyed to Sandy by the headmistress herself at that subsequent time when Sandy looked at her distastefully through her little eyes and, evading the quite crude question which the coarse-faced woman asked her, was moved by various other considerations to betray Miss Brodie. "But I