The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark [41]
She had an attractive near-laughing voice. She said: "We've got a new one of Rose. Teddy, show Sandy the new one of Rose." "It isn't quite at a stage for looking at." "Well, what about Red Velvet? Show Sandy that — Teddy did a splendid portrait of Rose last summer, we swathed her in red velvet, and we've called it Red Velvet." Teddy Lloyd had brought out a canvas from behind a few others. He stood it in the light on an easel. Sandy looked at it with her tiny eyes which it was astonishing that anyone could trust. The portrait was like Miss Brodie. Sandy said, "I like the colours." "Does it resemble Miss Brodie?" said Deirdre Lloyd with her near-laughter. "Miss Brodie is a woman in her prime," said Sandy, "but there is a resemblance now you mention it." Deirdre Lloyd said: "Rose was only fourteen at the time; it makes her look very mature, but she is very mature." The swathing of crimson velvet was so arranged that it did two things at once, it made Rose look one-armed like the artist himself, and it showed the curves of her breast to be more developed than they were, even now, when Rose was fifteen. Also, the picture was like Miss Brodie, and this was the main thing about it and the main mystery. Rose had a large-boned pale face. Miss Brodie's bones were small, although her eyes, nose and mouth were large. It was difficult to see how Teddy Lloyd had imposed the dark and Roman face of Miss Brodie on that of pale Rose, but he had done so. Sandy looked again at the other recent portraits in the studio, Teddy Lloyd's wife, his children, some unknown sitters. They were none of them like Miss Brodie. Then she saw a drawing lying on top of a pile on the work-table. It was Miss Brodie leaning against a lamp post in the Lawnmarket with a working woman's shawl around her; on closer inspection it proved to be Monica Douglas with the high cheekbones and long nose. Sandy said: "I didn't know Monica sat for you." "I've done one or two preliminary sketches. Don't you think that setting's rather good for Monica? Here's one of Eunice in her harlequin outfit, I thought she looked rather well in it." Sandy was vexed. These girls, Monica and Eunice, had not said anything to the others about their being painted by the art master. But now they were all fifteen there was a lot they did not tell each other. She looked more closely at this picture of Eunice. Eunice had worn the harlequin dress for a school performance. Small and neat and sharp-featured as she was, in the portrait she looked like Miss Brodie. In amongst her various bewilderments Sandy was fascinated by the economy of Teddy Lloyd's method, as she had been four years earlier by Miss Brodie's variations on her love story, when she had attached to her first, war-time lover the attributes of the art master and the singing master who had then newly entered her orbit. Teddy Lloyd's method of presentation was similar, it was economical, and it always seemed afterwards to Sandy that where there was a choice of various courses, the most economical was the best, and that the course to be taken was the most expedient and most suitable at the time for all the objects in hand. She acted on this principle when the time came for her to betray Miss Brodie. Jenny had done badly in her last term's examinations and was mostly, these days, at home working up her subjects. Sandy had the definite feeling that the Brodie set, not to mention Miss Brodie herself, was getting out of hand. She thought it perhaps a good thing that the set might split up. From somewhere below one of the Lloyd children started to yell, and then another, and then a chorus. Deirdre Lloyd disappeared with a swing of her peasant skirt to see to all her children. The Lloyds were Catholics and so were made to have a lot of children by force. "One day," said Teddy Lloyd as he stacked up his sketches before taking Sandy down to tea, "I would like to do all you Brodie girls, one by one and then all together." He tossed his head to move back the golden lock of his hair from his eye. "It would be nice to do you all together," he said, "and