I
In the Mistresses’ Common Room news was being exchanged. Foreign travel, plays seen, Art Exhibitions visited. Snapshots were handed round. The menace of coloured transparencies was in the offing. All the enthusiasts wanted to show their own pictures, but to get out of being forced to see other people’s.
Presently conversation became less personal. The new Sports Pavilion was both criticized and admired. It was admitted to be a fine building, but naturally everybody would have liked to improve its design in one way or another.
The new girls were then briefly passed in review, and, on the whole, the verdict was favourable.
A little pleasant conversation was made to the two new members of the staff. Had Mademoiselle Blanche been in England before? What part of France did she come from?
Mademoiselle Blanche replied politely but with reserve.
Miss Springer was more forthcoming.
She spoke with emphasis and decision. It might almost have been said that she was giving a lecture. Subject: The excellence of Miss Springer. How much she had been appreciated as a colleague. How headmistresses had accepted her advice with gratitude and had reorganized their schedules accordingly.
Miss Springer was not sensitive. A restlessness in her audience was not noticed by her. It remained for Miss Johnson to ask in her mild tones:
“All the same, I expect your ideas haven’t always been accepted in the way they—er—should have been.”
“One must be prepared for ingratitude,” said Miss Springer. Her voice, already loud, became louder. “The trouble is, people are so cowardly—won’t face facts. They often prefer not to see what’s under their noses all the time. I’m not like that. I go straight to the point. More than once I’ve unearthed a nasty scandal—brought it into the open. I’ve a good nose—once I’m on the trail, I don’t leave it—not till I’ve pinned down my quarry.” She gave a loud jolly laugh. “In my opinion, no one should teach in a school whose life isn’t an open book. If anyone’s got anything to hide, one can soon tell. Oh! you’d be surprised if I told you some of the things I’ve found out about people. Things that nobody else had dreamed of.”
“You enjoyed that experience, yes?” said Mademoiselle Blanche.
“Of course not. Just doing my duty. But I wasn’t backed up. Shameful laxness. So I resigned—as a protest.”
She looked round and gave her jolly sporting laugh again.
“Hope nobody here has anything to hide,” she said gaily.
Nobody was amused. But Miss Springer was not the kind of woman to notice that.
II
“Can I speak to you, Miss Bulstrode?”
Miss Bulstrode laid her pen aside and looked up into the flushed face of the matron, Miss Johnson.
“Yes, Miss Johnson.”
“It’s that girl Shaista—the Egyptian girl or whatever she is.”
“Yes?”
“It’s her—er—underclothing.”
Miss Bulstrode’s eyebrows rose in patient surprise.
“Her—well—her bust bodice.”
“What is wrong with her brassière?”
“Well—it isn’t an ordinary kind—I mean it doesn’t hold her in, exactly. It—er—well it pushes her up—really quite unnecessarily.”
Miss Bulstrode bit her lip to keep back a smile, as so often when in colloquy with Miss Johnson.
“Perhaps I’d better come and look at it,” she said gravely.
A kind of inquest was then held with the offending contraption held up to display by Miss Johnson, whilst Shaista looked on with lively interest.
“It’s this sort of wire and—er—boning arrangement,” said Miss Johnson with disapprobation.
Shaista burst into animated explanation.
“But you see my breasts they are not very big—not nearly big enough. I do not look enough like a woman. And it is very important for a girl—to show she is a woman and not a boy.”
“Plenty of time for that. You’re only fifteen,” said Miss Johnson.
“Fifteen—that is a woman! And I look like a woman, do I not?”
She appealed to Miss Bulstrode who nodded gravely.
“Only my breasts, they are poor. So I want to make them look not so poor. You understand?”
“I understand perfectly,” said Miss Bulstrode. “And I quite see your point of view. But in this school, you see, you are amongst girls who are, for the most part, English, and English girls are not very often women at the age of fifteen. I like my girls to use makeup discreetly and to wear clothes suitable to their stage of growth. I suggest that you wear your brassière when you are dressed for a party or for going to London, but not every day here. We do a good deal of sports and games here and for that your body needs to be free to move easily.”
“It is too much—all this running and jumping,” said Shaista sulkily, “and the P.T. I do not like Miss Springer—she always says, ‘Faster, faster, do not slack.’ I get tired.”
“That will do, Shaista,” said Miss Bulstrode, her voice becoming authoritative. “Your family has sent you here to learn English ways. All this exercise will be very good for your complexion, and for developing your bust.”
Dismissing Shaista, she smiled at the agitated Miss Johnson.
“It’s quite true,” she said. “The girl is fully mature. She might easily be over twenty by the look of her. And that is what she feels like. You can’t expect her to feel the same age as Julia Upjohn, for instance. Intellectually Julia is far ahead of Shaista. Physically, she could quite well wear a liberty bodice still.”
“I wish they were all like Julia Upjohn,” said Miss Johnson.
“I don’t,” said Miss Bulstrode briskly. “A schoolful of girls all alike would be very dull.”
Dull, she thought, as she went back to her marking of Scripture essays. That word had been repeating itself in her brain for some time now. Dull….
If there was one thing her school was not, it was dull. During her career as its headmistress, she herself had never felt dull. There had been difficulties to combat, unforeseen crises, irritations with parents, with children: domestic upheavals. She had met and dealt with incipient disasters and turned them into triumphs. It had all been stimulating, exciting, supremely worthwhile. And even now, though she had made up her mind to it, she did not want to go.
She was physically in excellent health, almost as tough as when she and Chaddy (faithful Chaddy!) had started the great enterprise with a mere handful of children and backing from a banker of unusual foresight. Chaddy’s academic distinctions had been better than hers, but it was she who had had the vision to plan and make of the school a place of such distinction that it was known all over Europe. She had never been afraid to experiment, whereas Chaddy had been content to teach soundly but unexcitingly what she knew. Chaddy’s supreme achievement had always been to be there, at hand, the faithful buffer, quick to render assistance when assistance was needed. As on the opening day of term with Lady Veronica. It was on her solidity, Miss Bulstrode reflected, that an exciting edifice had been built.
Well, from the material point of view, both women had done very well out of it. If they retired now, they would both have a good assured income for the rest of their lives. Miss Bulstrode wondered if Chaddy would want to retire when she herself did? Probably not. Probably, to her, the school was home. She would continue, faithful and reliable, to buttress up Miss Bulstrode’s successor.
Because Miss Bulstrode had made up her mind—a successor there must be. Firstly associated with herself in joint rule and then to rule alone. To know when to go—that was one of the great necessities of life. To go before one’s powers began to fail, one’s sure grip to loosen, before one felt the faint staleness, the unwillingness to envisage continuing effort.
Miss Bulstrode finished marking the essays and noted that the Upjohn child had an original mind. Jennifer Sutcliffe had a complete lack of imagination, but showed an unusually sound grasp of facts. Mary Vyse, of course, was scholarship class—a wonderful retentive memory. But what a dull girl! Dull—that word again. Miss Bulstrode dismissed it from her mind and rang for her secretary.
She began to dictate letters.
Dear Lady Valence. Jane has had some trouble with her ears. I enclose the doctor’s report—etc.
Dear Baron Von Eisenger. We can certainly arrange for Hedwig to go to the Opera on the occasion of Hellstern’s taking the role of Isolda—
An hour passed swiftly. Miss Bulstrode seldom paused for a word. Ann Shapland’s pencil raced over the pad.
A very good secretary, Miss Bulstrode thought to herself. Better than Vera Lorrimer. Tiresome girl, Vera. Throwing up her post so suddenly. A nervous breakdown, she had said. Something to do with a man, Miss Bulstrode thought resignedly. It was usually a man.
“That’s the lot,” said Miss Bulstrode, as she dictated the last word. She heaved a sigh of relief.
“So many dull things to be done,” she remarked. “Writing letters to parents is like feeding dogs. Pop some soothing platitude into every waiting mouth.”
Ann laughed. Miss Bulstrode looked at her appraisingly.
“What made you take up secretarial work?”
“I don’t quite know. I had no special bent for anything in particular, and it’s the sort of thing almost everybody drifts into.”
“You don’t find it monotonous?”
“I suppose I’ve been lucky. I’ve had a lot of different jobs. I was with Sir Mervyn Todhunter, the archaeologist, for a year, then I was with Sir Andrew Peters in Shell. I was secretary to Monica Lord, the actress, for a while—that really was hectic!” She smiled in remembrance.
“There’s a lot of that nowadays amongst you girls,” said Miss Bulstrode. “All this chopping and changing.” She sounded disapproving.
“Actually, I can’t do anything for very long. I’ve got an invalid mother. She’s rather—well—difficult from time to time. And then I have to go back home and take charge.”
“I see.”
“But all the same, I’m afraid I should chop and change anyway. I haven’t got the gift for continuity. I find chopping and changing far less dull.”
“Dull … ” murmured Miss Bulstrode, struck again by the fatal word.
Ann looked at her in surprise.
“Don’t mind me,” said Miss Bulstrode. “It’s just that sometimes one particular word seems to crop up all the time. How would you have liked to be a schoolmistress?” she asked, with some curiosity.
“I’m afraid I should hate it,” said Ann frankly.
“Why?”
“I’d find it terribly dull—Oh, I am sorry.”
She stopped in dismay.
“Teaching isn’t in the least dull,” said Miss Bulstrode with spirit. “It can be the most exciting thing in the world. I shall miss it terribly when I retire.”
“But surely—” Ann stared at her. “Are you thinking of retiring?”
“It’s decided—yes. Oh, I shan’t go for another year—or even two years.”
“But—why?”
“Because I’ve given my best to the school—and had the best from it. I don’t want second best.”
“The school will carry on?”
“Oh yes. I have a good successor.”
“Miss Vansittart, I suppose?”
“So you fix on her automatically?” Miss Bulstrode looked at her sharply, “That’s interesting—”
“I’m afraid I hadn’t really thought about it. I’ve just overheard the staff talking. I should think she’ll carry on very well—exactly in your tradition. And she’s very striking-looking, handsome and with quite a presence. I imagine that’s important, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. Yes, I’m sure Eleanor Vansittart is the right person.”
“She’ll carry on where you leave off,” said Ann gathering up her things.
But do I want that? thought Miss Bulstrode to herself as Ann went out. Carry on where I leave off? That’s just what Eleanor will do! No new experiments, nothing revolutionary. That wasn’t the way I made Meadowbank what it is. I took chances. I upset lots of people. I bullied and cajoled, and refused to follow the pattern of other schools. Isn’t that what I want to follow on here now? Someone to pour new life into the school. Some dynamic personality … like—yes—Eileen Rich.
But Eileen wasn’t old enough, hadn’t enough experience. She was stimulating, though, she could teach. She had ideas. She would never be dull—Nonsense, she must get that word out of her mind. Eleanor Vansittart was not dull….
She looked up as Miss Chadwick came in.
“Oh, Chaddy,” she said. “I am pleased to see you!”
Miss Chadwick looked a little surprised.
“Why? Is anything the matter?”
“I’m the matter. I don’t know my own mind.”
“That’s very unlike you, Honoria.”
“Yes, isn’t it? How’s the term going, Chaddy?”
“Quite all right, I think.” Miss Chadwick sounded a little unsure.
Miss Bulstrode pounced.
“Now then. Don’t hedge. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Really, Honoria, nothing at all. It’s just—” Miss Chadwick wrinkled up her forehead and looked rather like a perplexed Boxer dog—“Oh, a feeling. But really it’s nothing that I can put a finger on. The new girls seem a pleasant lot. I don’t care for Mademoiselle Blanche very much. But then I didn’t like Geneviève Depuy, either. Sly.”
Miss Bulstrode did not pay very much attention to this criticism. Chaddy always accused the French mistresses of being sly.
“She’s not a good teacher,” said Miss Bulstrode. “Surprising really. Her testimonials were so good.”
“The French never can teach. No discipline,” said Miss Chadwick. “And really Miss Springer is a little too much of a good thing! Leaps about so. Springer by nature as well as by name….”
“She’s good at her job.”
“Oh yes, first class.”
“New staff is always upsetting,” said Miss Bulstrode.
“Yes,” agreed Miss Chadwick eagerly. “I’m sure it’s nothing more than that. By the way, that new gardener is quite young. So unusual nowadays. No gardeners seem to be young. A pity he’s so good-looking. We shall have to keep a sharp eye open.”
The two ladies nodded their heads in agreement. They knew, none better, the havoc caused by a good-looking young man to the hearts of adolescent girls.
[Cat Among the Pigeons -Agatha Christie] Six Early Days