The Finishing School (10 page)

19

It was Thursday morning, the day of Rowland’s scheduled creative writing class. It would be the last of the term. The school broke up at the end of the week, after the dance on Saturday night.

Rowland, as he lay in his bath, remembered, too, that he had arranged to play Lionel Haas at squash in the neighboring hotel.

The bathroom adjacent to Rowland and Nina’s bedroom was a cold one. The central-heating radiator hardly worked but they had put in a small electric heater which Nina had already turned on, having had her bath earlier.

Suddenly the bathroom door opened. Rowland looked round for Nina but found Chris in his pyjamas, standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” Rowland said.

“You’ve been in touch with my publisher, Grace Formby. I’ve been thinking it over. You’re going to use me as a rung in your ladder,” Chris said.

“Don’t be absurd. Get out of here.”

“And write a book about living with adolescents and teenagers, the only thing you know.”

“Get out of my bathroom,” Rowland said. He sat up and reached for his long-handled bath-brush, and started scrubbing his back.

“I heard from Grace Formby. She has confirmed my contract,” Chris said.

“Very good. I’m glad. Congratulations.”

“You have exploited me,” said Chris.

There was a rapid movement. Chris’s bright red head bent suddenly before Rowland’s eyes. If what happened in the next part-second could be described in slow motion it was this: Chris bent down and grabbed the little live heater in both hands, holding it high above his head. He approached the bath. “You’ll kill me. Put that down,” yelled Rowland. Exactly as he spoke he jabbed Chris in the groin with his bath-brush and vaulted over the bath. At the same instant, Chris, in pain from the jab, bent forward so that the live electric stove fell into the water. The lights went out, as it was discovered later all over the house. Rowland felt a quiver up his leg. His heel had been seared. The water still sizzled with the heat of the fire, where Rowland was so very nearly electrocuted.

Chris disappeared.

“This
would
happen today when I’m busy about the dance,” Nina said when she was trying to obtain one electrician after another on the phone. She had imagined that the electricity failure was a normal breakdown.

Rowland limped in to the office with his burnt foot, in a shocked condition. He was dripping wet. “What’s happened?” he said, so foolishly that she knew something had gone wrong. “Chris,” she thought.

She wanted to hand Chris over to the police. She found him in his room, fully dressed and writing at his desk.

“I’m going to denounce you to the police for attempted murder.”

“And how will you explain my presence in Rowland’s bathroom?”

“How will I explain . . . ?”

“Oh, yes. I’m a minor. Do you want Rowland to keep on the school? Better not get him a bad name.”

“Rowland’s foot was burnt by the fire,” she said.

“Then he can’t dance.”

Rowland could not dance but he went to the party all the same. It was a considerable success. All the students seemed to be related to, or friends with, so many prosperous people that sixty tickets were easily sold. Chris attended, with his mother and uncle.

Nina said to the uncle, “I hope you are going to take Chris back with you.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” said the uncle.

And, when supper was served, Nina found herself near Chris’s mild-looking mother. “I hope you are going to take Chris back with you.”

“What is your problem?” said the woman, fiercely.

“We don’t want him.”

“Chris is talented and you are all jealous. Especially your husband. So many people are jealous of Chris.”

Someone at the table, whose order had not yet arrived, said, “I think ‘waiter’ is such a funny word. It is we who wait.”

Rowland was to continue to run College Sunrise with some success.

After another year at Ouchy he moved to Ravenna where the school specialized in the study of mosaics. From there he moved to Istanbul where he met with many problems too complicated to narrate here. His book,
The
School Observed
, was published satisfactorily, as was Chris’s first novel, highly praised for its fine, youthful disregard of dry historical facts.

Chris proceeded to establish himself as a readable novelist and meanwhile joined Rowland at College Sunrise as soon as he was of age. After a year they engaged themselves in a Same-Sex Affirmation Ceremony, attended by friends and Chris’s family.

Nina settled in London, married to Israel Brown and happy with her studies and his gallery. She returned with him to his villa at Ouchy from time to time. The house of College Sunrise was now a youth hostel. When she passed the house, she sometimes felt nostalgia, not at all for Rowland, but for College Sunrise itself.

Pallas Kapelas—her father had skipped bail, was wanted and always would be. Pallas married a merchant shipowner and was, so far, contented.

Nina had not heard from Lionel Haas, not a word.

Pansy Leghorn had a temporary job as an editor at the BBC.

Princess Tilly had a baby girl who, as Israel Brown had predicted, was nursed and coddled into Tilly’s family, while Tilly went her own way and became a society journalist. Albert visited his daughter from time to time, taking her a teddy bear and a bedside clock.

Opal Gross was in the process of studying for the Anglican ministry.

Mary Foot opened a shop in Cornwall where she sold ceramics and transparent scarves. She corresponded regularly with Rowland and Chris, passing on their news to Nina.

Lisa Orlando got a place at Southampton University, reading psychology.

Joan Archer got a place in a good drama school, as she had for so long desired. Eventually, she was to write television scripts.

Albert was kept on at the house as a gardener, and Claire as a domestic helper.

Elaine got a job in Geneva at a travel agency. She frequently met Albert at weekends and public holidays.

Her sister, Célestine, had a job at the restaurant of a skating rink in Lausanne, where she also progressed wonderfully at skating.

Nina, now finding herself obliged to give dinner parties at Ouchy for the sophisticated world of art dealers, would arrange with the hotel to provide the catering. And once, on her way to the hotel on just such an errand, on a summer evening, she heard once more from the open windows, the chatter of young voices, so that it seemed almost like College Sunrise again. She waved to Albert. And she heard the dear voice of Hazel forecasting the weather on Sky News: “As we go through this evening and into tonight . . .”

MURIEL SPARK

The Finishing School

Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1918. She is the author of more than twenty novels as well as collections of short stories, criticism, and poetry. Her most celebrated works include
The Prime
of Miss Jean Brodie
(1961),
Loitering with Intent
(1981),
The Comforters
(1957),
The Public Image
(1968),
The
Girls of Slender Means
(1963),
The Driver’s Seat
(1970), and
Aiding and Abetting
(2001). She was awarded the OBE in 1993 and is a Dame of the British Empire. She has also been awarded the honorary degree of doctor of letters by the University of Edinburgh, as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She lives in Tuscany.

Also by Muriel Spark

FICTION

The Comforters
Robinson
Memento Mori
The Ballad of Peckham Rye
The Bachelors
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The Girls of Slender Means
The Mandelbaum Gate
The Public Image
The Driver’s Seat
Not to Disturb
The Hothouse by the East River
The Abbess of Crewe
The Takeover
Territorial Rights
Loitering with Intent
The Only Problem
A Far Cry from Kensington
Symposium
The Complete Short Stories
Reality and Dreams
Aiding and Abetting

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Curriculum Vitae

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 2005

Copyright
©
2004 by Muriel Spark

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses,
organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition
as follows:
Spark, Muriel.
The finishing school / Muriel Spark.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Creative writing—Study and teaching—Fiction. 2. Teacher-
student relationships—Fiction. 3. Lausanne (Switzerland)—
Fiction. 4. Fiction—Authorship—Fiction. 5. Married
people—Fiction. 6. Teenage boys—Fiction. 7. Schools—Fiction.
I. Title.
PR6037.P29 F56 2004
823’.914—dc22
2004045533

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eISBN: 978-0-307-42202-6

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