The Finishing School (9 page)

17

Elaine Valette, French teacher and secretary, had tolerated her younger sister Célestine’s affair with Chris, but was decidedly opposed to Rowland’s efforts to seduce the girl. She felt, anyway, that he was not so interested in Célestine as he was in rivaling Chris. She took ground from her professional arrangement with the school, and said she found she could not do two jobs: look after the office and teach.

Nina, to whom she had made her protest, pointed out that she and Rowland each did at least three jobs. In fact, Nina took a class in Meteorology (which was very popular, especially with aspiring weather forecasters), and a “business” class, which included her
comme il faut
sessions; she also kept in touch with the parents. Rowland, she pointed out, taught literature, art and various subjects besides helping to run the school.

But Elaine was adamant. Nina sensed something in the girl’s tone that sounded like a heavy moral judgment. There were not a great many weeks to the end of their school year, and so Nina was not unduly worried; she was only tired, already, at the thought of so much office labor to come, without Elaine’s help. But, in addition, she felt this other sensation of some moral objection.

“Is Chris bothering your sister?” Nina said.

“No, it’s Rowland. Can you blame him?”

“Yes, of course I can.”

“How can you blame him when you spend your spare energy with Mr. Brown?”

Energie
. . . The word in French made Nina laugh aloud. She said, “Where I go outside the school is entirely my business. If Rowland’s troubling you or your sister in the school I’ll give him hell.”

The girl left haughtily.

“You’ve upset Elaine,” Nina said when she saw Rowland.

“Elaine?”

“Yes, Elaine. Célestine’s sister,” Nina said.

“How absurd. What’s upset her?”

“Apparently you are pursuing Célestine.”

“As things stand . . . Well, I don’t think you can complain.”

“Elaine won’t do any more office work. Who’s going to take on her office job?”

“Me. I’ll do it if she doesn’t change her mind as she probably will, tomorrow. In any case I intend to keep on College Sunrise in the new year. I’ll move somewhere else. I don’t know what you intend to do, Nina.”

She didn’t reply, not knowing, in fact, what she intended to do. She knew that her love affair with Israel Brown was not a secret, but the happiness of her love sustained her as if a secret was shared; to talk of it now would be to break a spell. She was afraid that Rowland would appeal to her, the marriage, the partnership, the school, his need to write a novel or something.

Nina had sometimes wondered if Elaine was attracted to Rowland, or even if there was something between them. She had never thought of Célestine in connection with Rowland, and now she began to reflect that, after all, Célestine was Chris’s girl, and so Rowland continued to have Chris predominantly in mind.

She felt they had said enough for the time being. She left, got in the car and went to the hairdresser from where she phoned her lover.

“Rowland’s wearing an earring today,” she said.

“Perhaps he just forgot to take it off.”

“Are you serious about Nina?” Giovanna said to Israel.

“Yes, altogether serious. She’s wonderful.”

“And the husband?”

“I think his problem is spiritual.”

“You say that about everybody. You said it once about me.”

“Did I? Perhaps I was right.”

“No, my problems are musical.”

She got into her car and left for the airport.

So much for the red-haired genius, thought Israel.

And he pondered ahead, that the school would probably continue one more year at Ouchy and that, aged eighteen, Chris might join Rowland in another city, perhaps Rome, as a business partner in College Sunrise, specializing in creative writing, and that they would in fact live together.

It was only a speculation. Israel Brown did not take into account the eventual flamboyant literary success of Chris himself, if not entirely of his book, so that he would immediately set himself to write another. But Israel’s general prediction was near enough: Rowland would not seek to keep Nina. Her absence, like his father’s death, would bring him peace of mind.

Rowland proceeded fiercely, now, with his book of observations. Nina read his latest handwritten entry:

A perfect marriage, one partner of which is a great and successful artist, probably can exist, but very, very rarely. The difficulty lies in conflicting dedications. Most marriages, where both or one is an artist, are rickety. —Most marriages of this kind comprise one failed artist.

The dedication of an artist involves willing oblivion to everything else while the art is being practiced, and for the hours antiguous to it.

Nina looked up “antiguous” in the dictionary but couldn’t find it. She changed it to “contiguous.” Then she wrote, on the next line: “Tilly is pregnant by Albert.”

Princess Tilly, as she styled herself, apparently with some inherited right, had fallen out with her family on grounds of imputed activities unbefitting her one-time royal connections. No one seemed to know who they were, but in fact they existed in a remote estate in a mountainous republic in Eastern Europe.

“It’s so near the end of term, her pregnancy won’t be noticed at the dance,” Nina said to Israel Brown. “Albert the gardener is perhaps more of a difficulty.”

“Oh, quite. The poorer people are always affected by illegitimacy. People like Tilly don’t need to worry. Her type of family can always absorb an infant. But the young man—does he want to be a father?”

“Oh, yes, that’s the problem. He wants to marry her. Last week he wanted to marry Opal Gross but now he wants Tilly.”

“The family will never allow it.”

“No. And she herself doesn’t want to marry him. She’s going to have the baby, all the same.”

“It’s a religious problem, fundamentally.”

“I knew you’d say that,” Nina said. “If you mean just being fair, she’s much too young for marriage, but I think she should give Albert access to the baby when it’s born.”

“No doubt she would be obliged to do that if it came to a court order.”

“Oh, my God. Court order . . . could we be sued for lack of vigilance, or something? —Tilly’s only seventeen and a half.”

“Yes, I suppose you could be sued, but you won’t be.”

“She’s making no secret of it,” Nina said. “The school’s all excited.”

“She has good taste. Your gardener’s good-looking.”

18

Chris had two more publishers on his immediate list. When he had swallowed the shock of Monty Fergusson’s remarks he wrote to both of them to say his book was nearing completion. Their replies reflected separately the extent to which Monty’s reaction had or had not probably reached them. One of the publishers, a woman, was effusive as ever. The other, a man, had turned cool. Chris persuaded Nina to let him invite the woman publisher to see him, and put her up in College Sunrise’s attic bedroom. And by the following week, on the notice board of the school appeared an apparent newspaper diary cutting describing the untimely death of Monty Fergusson, publisher (51), due to a heart attack brought on by the excitement of shooting a squirrel on the lawn. As everyone in the school had now heard Monty’s name, Chris was able to put about with some plausibility that he had put the evil eye on the publisher. Rowland took down the notice and at dinner informed the school that Chris had got a local printer to produce the paragraph. Was it amusing?

“No,” said Lionel. “It’s childish.”

“It could still be amusing,” said Chris.

“What’s funny about it?” said Mary Foot.

“The death of that man would always be funny,” Chris said.

“I suppose he’s entitled to his opinion,” said Nina.

“And I to wish him death,” said Chris.

“I think,” said Rowland, “I’d feel the same. After all, I know . . . I was there.”

“Let’s hope the new one is better. Has she read any of your book?” Nina said.

“She’ll be reading it soon. I sent it by express.”

“Good luck, Chris,” said Nina.

“Good luck,” said everybody.

Grace Formby, the publisher, arrived the following week, tall, thin, well over forty and at the same time well under fifty, and in fact she would have been, and would be, forty-five for many years. She had long fingers with a lot of rings on both hands, and a few chains hanging from her neck and some bracelets. She clinked as she approached, having been relieved of her coat. Rowland had collected her at the airport and had brought her to the study to meet Nina and Chris for a private preliminary drink.

“Chris,” she said, “I’ve been up all night reading your novel. It’s great. Of course we’ll have to do some editing. I think as you say you should end it with both your endings, and the Queen going to the scaffold.”

“The block,” Chris said.

“The block. You know there are so many books and plays about Mary Queen of Scots. Never a year passes—”

“And Bonivard?” said Chris.

“Bonivard?”

“He’s the Genevan hero who was imprisoned in the Castle of Chillon. It’s near here. You know Byron’s poem—”

“Oh yes, of course. It’s a romantic place, here. Lovely view. Just right for a novel. I’m always casing for novels wherever I rove. This would be an ideal setting. I’d love to see over your school.”

“As a matter of fact,” Rowland said, “I’m writing a book about this place just at the moment. It’s provisionally called
Observations
. It’s about our school here at Ouchy.”

“I’m in editorial mode,” she said.

The upshot of the visit was a close friendship struck between Rowland and Grace Formby which was to lead to her firm’s publication of his book
The School Observed
. This incipient friendship was obvious to Chris all through the publisher’s stay. She came down to dinner even more bejezebeled around her neck and wrists, and fairly engulfed Rowland with her enthusiasm. In compensation, she told Chris she had brought with her a draft contract which he could read at leisure. But his satisfaction was dismissed by her saying that perhaps an historian should be consulted about the actual mechanics of the murder.

“Which murder?” demanded Chris, who suspected she hadn’t read his book very thoroughly.

“Well, the fifty-six stab wounds,” said Grace.

“That’s the murder of Rizzio, not Darnley.”

“Well, I only say a history scholar will have to read it. No doubt we can make any necessary adjustments, Chris. Nobody expects you to know everything at your age. Some of the TV questioners can be tough, but you’ll certainly carry it off.” She added in a high, thin voice: “Great hair. Is that it’s natural color?”

Rowland and Chris took Grace Formby to the airport the next morning. On the way back Rowland said to Chris, “If I were in your place I’d sign that contract before they change their minds.”

“It will be gone through with a tooth-comb,” said Chris. “My family has company lawyers stationed at every whistle stop. We never read our own contracts. They do.”

“Then you might easily lose this one,” Rowland said. “It’s so true that Mary Queen of Scots is very much written about. Everywhere you look is Mary Queen of Scots.”

“Which reflects public interest,” said Chris. “I would be cautious,” said Rowland, “of a subject so very much worked on.”

“I have a unique, original theory,” Chris said. “And look, Rowland, I can see very well that you’re trying to exploit my talent and my contacts to further your own literary ambitions.”

“I should have thought that it was you who are exploiting my hospitality and my school to further your literary ambitions.”

“I pay.”

“You can get out.”

“Too simple. You have to wait till the end of term. It won’t be long. If you want to survive to that date just keep your hands off my publisher.”

“You need therapy, Chris.”

They were nearly home, and they drove on in a silence broken only once by a burst of unnecessary laughter from Chris.

Only Mary Foot and Joan Archer were to return to the school in the New Year for another term. Nina had enrolled six new students and arranged for a further year’s lease of the Ouchy premises. She had laid all this before Rowland who had accepted the situation passively. He knew that Nina would not be there. He could hardly grasp the fact that he was still married to Nina. Their separation had not been planned; it had just come about.

Nina now even confided in the students how she would go to join Israel Brown at his wonderful art gallery, a totally new life. She would study modern art. After the December dance the school would break up. Rowland would then take over College Sunrise.

“I won’t be here,” Tilly said.

“You should go home to your family. I’ll write a letter,” Nina said.

“No, I’ve got a job through a friend in Frankfurt. I’m to be a photographic model for maternity clothes at all stages.”

“And Albert?” said Joan Archer. She was anxious for something new to write to her father.

“He could also be a photo model,” said Tilly. “But he likes his gardening better. Opal is furious that he wants to marry me, but I won’t think of it.”

“You’re much too young to think of it,” said Nina.

Everyone agreed with that.

Nina proceeded with her
comme il faut
class which was to the effect that no one benefited from smoking pot. “The air was thick with smoke when I went up to the second floor the other day. Claire has complained that it gets on her chest. You just have to realize that the more you smoke the less you appreciate it, and you go on to stronger things. It’s up to you because you’re leaving soon and you can do what you like or whatever you can get away with. But Rowland has said I can tell you about his brother, who went from pot to the hard stuff. He robbed to get the drug and he folded up and died aged nineteen. Rowland’s father, who died recently, never got over it.”

Everyone had a story to tell, how they had heard of the drastic results of drug fancying, soft and hard. Nina knew that most of them, however, had at some time managed to obtain and smoke the stuff. She added, “It’s like smoking cigarettes in one respect, it’s dreadfully low, it’s common.”

This dubious proposition seemed to have a generally awesome effect on most of Nina’s students which lasted till teatime. Lionel Haas was an exception.

“A great many top people take cocaine and smoke cigarettes,” he said.

“Who are they?”

He had nobody on the tip of his tongue, so Nina rapidly closed the session.

It was Rowland’s creative writing class which he sometimes, like today, worked in with a poetry session. He had prepared a short lecture which he read from his book of observations:

“Art is an act of daring.”

“A marriage that can survive the ruthlessness of art is one of sacrifice on the part of the non-artist partner. If both practice the same art you should know that one of them will invariably be inferior to the other.

“If, in the course of an author’s preparing a book, his family suffers a blow or a tragedy, the book could easily come to ruin in the ensuing domestic anguish and muddle. The average author can no doubt finish the book, but not well. However the dedicated author might seem callous, not easily shattered, tough. Hence the reputation of artists in all fields for ruthless, cold detachment. Too bad. About this sort of accusation the true artist is uncaring. The true artist is almost unaware of other people’s cares and distractions. This applies to either sex.

“Once you have written The End to a book it is yours, not only till death do you part but for all eternity. Translators and adaptors come and go, but they can’t lay claim to the authorship of a work that is yours. Remember this if you ever take up the literary profession, as you all seem very keen to do.

“A lot of talk goes on about ideas. I heard a popular singer at an arts festival giving vent to his ideas about ideas. What was wanted, he said, were ideas, not just skill with words. Now, I challenge you to express any idea adequately without skill with words. Words are ideas. That great Gospel according to St. John opens: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ ”

Rowland then read a poem that the class was to study for his next lesson. “Page 738 of your book,” he said. “Thomas Hardy 1840–1928, his poem
In Tenebris
, meaning In the shadows. A man is in mourning for his loved one. It is about the experience of separation.

Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.

Flower-petals flee;
But, since it once hath been,
No more that severing scene
Can harrow me.

Birds faint in dread:
I shall not lose old strength
In the lone frost’s black length:
Strength long since fled!

Leaves freeze to dun;
But friends can not turn cold
This season as of old
For him with none.

Tempests may scath;
But love can not make smart
Again this year his heart
Who no heart hath.

Black is night’s cope;
But death will not appal
One who, past doubtings all,
Waits in unhope.”

Mary Foot was crying. “Oh, how sad everything is,” she said. “And just at the end of the term . . .”

“It’s not our sadness, Mary,” said Rowland. “It was Thomas Hardy’s. What I want you all to do for Thursday afternoon next, is to give me your thoughts on verse 3, line 1. ‘Birds faint in dread.’ What did Hardy mean? Do birds ever faint? And do they faint in fear? Hardy was a countryman. Perhaps he knew the answer. A strange line. See what you make of it. Cheer up, Mary my dear.”

In fact, on Thursday, Rowland was to be prevented from taking his class, and so the question of the fainting bird was never resolved.