The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

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Authors: Muriel Spark
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two sewing teachers, Miss Alison and Miss Ellen Kerr, seemed rather cowed by gaunt Miss Gaunt, and applied themselves briskly to the sewing machines which they were teaching the girls to use. The shuttle of the sewing machines went up and down, which usually caused Sandy and Jenny to giggle, since at that time everything, that could conceivably bear a sexual interpretation immediately did so to them. But the absence of Miss Brodie and the presence of Miss Gaunt had a definite subtracting effect from the sexual significance of everything, and the trepidation of the two sewing sisters contributed to the effect of grim realism.
    Miss Gaunt evidently went to the same parish church as the Kerr sisters, to whom she addressed remarks from time to time while she embroidered a tray cloth.
    “My brothurr …” she kept saying, “my brothurr says ...”
    Miss Gaunt’s brother was apparently the minister of the parish, which accounted for the extra precautions Miss Alison and Miss Ellen were taking about their work today, with the result that they got a lot of the sewing mixed up.
    “My brothurr is up in the morning at five-thirty … My brothurr organised a …”
    Sandy was thinking of the next instalment of Jane Eyre which Miss Brodie usually enlivened this hour by reading. Sandy had done with Alan Breck and had taken up with Mr. Rochester, with whom she now sat in the garden.
    “You are afraid of me, Miss Sandy.”
    “You talk like the Sphinx, sir, but I am not afraid.”
    “You have such a grave, quiet manner, Miss Sandy—you are going?”
    “It has struck nine, sir.”
    A phrase of Miss Gaunt’s broke upon the garden scene: “Mr. Lowther is not at school this week.”
    “So I hear,” Miss Alison said.
    “It seems he will be away for another week at least.”
    “Is he ill?”
    “I understand so, unfortunately,” said Miss Gaunt.
    “Miss Brodie is ailing, too,” said Miss Ellen.
    “Yes,” said Miss Gaunt. “She too is expected to be absent for another week.”
    “What is the trouble?”
    “That I couldn’t say,” said Miss Gaunt. She stuck her needle in and out of her embroidery. Then she looked up at the sisters. “It may be Miss Brodie has the same complaint as Mr. Lowther,” she said.
    Sandy saw her face as that of the housekeeper Jane Eyre, watching her carefully and knowingly as she entered the house, late, from the garden where she had been sitting with Mr. Rochester.
    “Perhaps Miss Brodie is having a love affair with Mr. Lowther,” Sandy said to Jenny, merely in order to break up the sexless gloom that surrounded them.
    “But it was Mr. Lloyd who kissed her. She must be in love with Mr. Lloyd or she wouldn’t have let him kiss her.”
    “Perhaps she’s working it off on Mr. Lowther. Mr. Lowther isn’t married.”
    It was a fantasy worked up between them, in defiance of Miss Gaunt and her forbidding brother, and it was understood in that way. But Sandy, remembering Miss Gaunt’s expression as she remarked, “It may be Miss Brodie has the same complaint as Mr. Lowther,” was suddenly not sure that the suggestion was not true. For this reason she was more reticent than Jenny about the details of the imagined love affair. Jenny whispered, “They go to bed. Then he puts out the light. Then their toes touch. And then Miss Brodie … Miss Brodie …” She broke into giggles.
    “Miss Brodie yawns,” said Sandy in order to restore decency, now that she suspected it was all true.
    “No, Miss Brodie says, ‘Darling.’ She says—”
    “Quiet,” whispered Sandy, “Eunice is coming.”
    Eunice Gardiner approached the table where Jenny and Sandy sat, grabbed the scissors and went away. Eunice had lately taken a religious turn and there was no talking about sex in front of her. She had stopped hopping and skipping. The phase did not last long, but while it did she was nasty and not to be trusted. When she was well out of the way Jenny resumed:
    “Mr. Lowther’s legs are shorter than Miss

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