The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark [52]
of the summer term of nineteen-thirty-nine, on the grounds that she had been teaching Fascism. Sandy, when she heard of it, thought of the marching troops of black shirts in the pictures on the wall. By now she had entered the Catholic Church, in whose ranks she had found quite a number of Fascists much less agreeable than Miss Brodie. "Of course," said Miss Brodie when she wrote to tell Sandy the news of her retirement, "this political question was only an excuse. They tried to prove personal immorality against me on many occasions and failed. My girls were always reticent on these matters. It was my educational policy they were up against which had reached its perfection in my prime. I was dedicated to my girls, as you know. But they used this political excuse as a weapon. What hurts and amazes me most of all is the fact, if Miss Mackay is to be believed, that it was one of my own set who betrayed me and put the enquiry in motion. "You will be astonished. I can write to you of this, because you of all my set are exempt from suspicion, you had no reason to betray me. I think first of Mary Macgregor. Perhaps Mary has nursed a grievance, in her stupidity of mind, against me — she is such an exasperating young woman. I think of Rose. It may be that Rose resented my coming first with Mr. L. Eunice — I cannot think it could be Eunice, but I did frequently have to come down firmly on her commonplace ideas. She wanted to be a Girl Guide, you remember. She was attracted to the Team Spirit — could it be that Eunice bore a grudge? Then there is Jenny. Now you know Jenny, how she went off and was never the same after she wanted to be an actress. She became so dull. Do you think she minded my telling her that she would never be a Fay Compton, far less a Sybil Thorndike? Finally, there is Monica. I half incline to suspect Monica. There is very little Soul behind the mathematical brain, and it may be that, in a fit of rage against that Beauty, Truth and Goodness which was beyond her grasp, she turned and betrayed me. "You, Sandy, as you see, I exempt from suspicion, since you had no reason whatsoever to betray me, indeed you have had the best part of me in my confidences and in the man I love. Think, if you can, who it could have been. I must know which one of you betrayed me..." Sandy replied like an enigmatic Pope: "If you did not betray us it is impossible that you could have been betrayed by us. The word betrayed does not apply..." She heard again from Miss Brodie at the time of Mary Macgregor's death, when the girl ran hither and thither in the hotel fire and was trapped by it. "If this is a judgment on poor Mary for betraying me, I am sure I would not have wished..." "I'm afraid," Jenny wrote, "Miss Brodie is past her prime. She keeps wanting to know who betrayed her. It isn't at all like the old Miss Brodie, she was always so full of fight." Her name and memory, after her death, flitted from mouth to mouth like swallows in summer, and in winter they were gone. It was always in summer time that the Brodie set came to visit Sandy, for the nunnery was deep in the country. When Jenny came to see Sandy, who now bore the name Sister Helena of the Transfiguration, she told Sandy about her sudden falling in love with a man in Rome and there being nothing to be done about it. "Miss Brodie would have liked to know about it," she said, "sinner as she was." "Oh, she was quite an innocent in her way," said Sandy, clutching the bars of the grille. Eunice, when she came, told Sandy, "We were at the Edinburgh Festival last year. I found Miss Brodie's grave, I put some flowers on it. I've told my husband all the stories about her, sitting under the elm and all that; he thinks she was marvellous fun." "So she was, really, when you think of it." "Yes, she was," said Eunice, "when she was in her prime." Monica came again. "Before she died," she said, "Miss Brodie thought it was you who betrayed her." "It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due," said Sandy. "Well, wasn't it due to Miss Brodie?" "Only up to a point," said Sandy. And there was