London was too small a pond in which to fish for additional students, so Miss Bentwhistle poached in the exclusive waterways of Toronto. It was a daring long shot. The nation’s navel had an ample supply of private schools, capable of conferring social status without the financial drain obliged by boarding.
Despite this drawback, Miss Bentwhistle pressed ahead. She knew from personal experience that the rich were habitually bored, and that bored rich adolescents had even more opportunity to get into trouble than their downtrodden counterparts. Consequently, she used her Toronto contacts to ferret out the names of well-heeled families with delinquent daughters. To these, she sent an illustrated brochure touting the Academy’s high moral tone and academic standards, as well as its commitment to Christian redemption and reasonable rates.
Toronto’s troubled bloodlines took the bait. At the very least, ensconced a good three hours drive from the city, their adolescents would no longer embarrass the family by rolling in drunk at 4:00 a.m., sans panties, to throw up on the shrubbery. Here was a chance to ditch their headaches while keeping their heads held high.
The Academy prospered financially. Its academic standards, however, sustained significant collateral damage. This could have been stickhandled without tears if only Miss Bentwhistle’s teachers had been as clever with their mark books as she was with her bank books. Unhappily, they were a linear lot who failed to grasp that while standards are all well and good, it’s the appearance of standards that counts.
Miss Budgie, the long-suffering English teacher, was the first to be summoned to her office. A nervous sort given to rashes, she blamed her doomed love life on Miss Bentwhistle’s edict that single female staff could only socialize with the opposite sex on Sunday afternoons, chaperoned. This had something to do with “setting an example,” though what sort of example Miss Bentwhistle refused to say. (“If it’s something I have to explain, it’s something you wouldn’t understand.”)
The moment Miss Budgie entered the office, the headmistress pounced. “The average English mark has dropped twenty percent this term. Our parents don’t pay good money to get these results.”
“Miss Bentwhistle, the students didn’t do their work.”
“Don’t make excuses. You were hired to inspire. If you’d done your job, the young ladies would have done theirs.”
“Not this lot. They’re juvenile delinquents.”
“Are you questioning the admission standards at the Bentwhistle Academy? Our young ladies come from the best Toronto homes. Homes where names such as Budgie are unknown.”
“Nonetheless, they don’t want to be here.”
“And do you want to be here?”
Miss Budgie gasped.
“These marks will be raised by this afternoon.”
Parents were thrilled to see improvements in their children’s test scores. “It’s a miracle,” they raved to friends with similarly troubled teens; enrollment rose as quickly as the marks on incomplete assignments. Nor did provincial examinations threaten Miss Bentwhistle’s shell game; teachers collared cheaters at their peril.
Thus, four years after her father’s death, the Academy appeared to flourish and Miss Bentwhistle to reign supreme, monarch of all she surveyed. “I am the Virgin Queen,” she joked with staff. Too frightened to bell the cat, they stroked in public and mocked in private, a sad packet of neutered mice.
Miss Bentwhistle didn’t care. She had no need for friends, as she commanded the company of an extensive stock of wine bottles. Ostensibly on hand for parent events, crate after crate found its way to her boudoir. They proved good friends, providing sympathy during late-night tipples, and courage on those occasions when she called upon the services of her odd-jobs man, Brewster McTavish.
Brewster McTavish. A man with the sort of essence encountered in the novels of that wicked Mr. Lawrence. Thin as a pipe cleaner and covered in boils, his face was set in a permanent leer that Miss Bentwhistle liked to pretend was facial paralysis brought on by a childhood bout of diphtheria. When he’d arrived on her doorstep, Mary Mabel in tow, she’d been looking for someone to cut her grass. McTavish swore he was aces at yard work, and would swab the floors, bully the boiler, and deal with infestations of rodents — all for room, board, and pocket money. Delighted at the bargain, the headmistress snapped him up.
He was soon her darling, not for his janitorial services, but because of his grasp of theatrical lighting, a hobby he’d picked up from a Milwaukee matron devoted to little theatre. To Miss Bentwhistle’s elation, Mr. McTavish introduced coloured gels to the auditorium’s incandescent lamps. In the past, she’d suffered through assemblies under the ruthless glare of white light. Now she was radiant, her charms enhanced thanks to the glow of a soft pink front and an amber behind.
Oh, Mr. McTavish! Oh, oh, oh! Was ever a man such as this? A hard worker devoted to his child! An artist devoted to her interests! A common man worthy of her compassion!
Soon she was looking for reasons to call Mr. McTavish to her office and to see him after hours about one project or another. She professed to be astonished at the number of things that needed to be screwed in and out, and at the surprising array of nooks and crannies needing his manly attention. How she’d managed to live without him was quite beyond her.
Londoners noticed a change in the headmistress, but refused to contemplate the obvious. The image of Mr. McTavish and Miss Bentwhistle engaged in animal husbandry was simply too grotesque. Moreover, Miss Bentwhistle wisely included Mary Mabel in their outings. “How our Horatia dotes upon that little gumdrop,” remarked Mrs. Herbert C. Wallace, secretary-treasurer of the St. James Ladies Auxiliary Bridge Club. “She’s an example to us all.”
One Sunday, inspired by the Reverend Mandible’s homily on charity, Miss Bentwhistle visited the McTavishes bearing an orange. “This orange is especially for you, my dear,” she beamed at the girl, breasts swelling with the special joy that comes from giving. “From now on, you may be pleased to call me your ‘Auntie’ Horatia.” Mary Mabel looked up sweetly. “Thank you very much,” she said, “but I have more aunties than I can remember. If it’s okay, I’d like for you to just be a grownup.” Miss Bentwhistle chewed her dentures. Determined to teach the child some manners, she set her to work in the laundry and kitchen.
Meanwhile, female teachers were not so delighted with the new janitor. The third schoolmarm to lodge a complaint was that well-known rabble-rouser Miss Budgie, she with the fetish for “standards.”
“I don’t know quite how to put this,” Miss Budgie began, “but whenever I pass Mr. McTavish he starts to play with his fly. And he leers at me.”
Miss Bentwhistle was understandably appalled. “How dare you attack a poor victim of diphtheria!”
“Miss Bentwhistle, he stares at my breasts!”
“And what do you do to provoke him?”
“Nothing! And I’m not the only one to complain. Miss Lundy has spoken to you already. Miss Brown too. He pressed them up against the broom closet and invited them down to the boiler room to see his toolbox.”
“That is their point of view,” Miss Bentwhistle acknowledged with a thin smile. “Mr. McTavish has quite another.”
“Are you saying our word can’t be trusted?”
“I’m saying that Miss Lundy is a hypochondriac, and Miss Brown a known hysteric. Everyone has an agenda, Miss Budgie. Everyone. I, however, am the headmistress. It is my duty to rise above agendas.”
For once, Miss Budgie was not to be cowed. “I have witnesses!”
“What need have I for ‘witnesses’? Are you suggesting