“I am putting old heads on your young shoulders,” Miss Brodie had told them at that time, “and all my pupils are the crème de la crème.”
Sandy looked with her little screwed-up eyes at Monica’s very red nose and remembered this saying as she followed the set in the wake of Miss Brodie.
“I should like you girls to come to supper tomorrow night,” Miss Brodie said. “Make sure you are free.”
“The Dramatic Society …” murmured Jenny.
“Send an excuse,” said Miss Brodie. “I have to consult you about a new plot which is afoot to force me to resign. Needless to say, I shall not resign.” She spoke calmly as she always did in spite of her forceful words.
Miss Brodie never discussed her affairs with the other members of the staff, but only with those former pupils whom she had trained up in her confidence. There had been previous plots to remove her from Blaine, which had been foiled.
“It has been suggested again that I should apply for a post at one of the progressive schools, where my methods would be more suited to the system than they are at Blaine. But I shall not apply for a post at a crank school. I shall remain at this education factory. There needs must be a leaven in the lump. Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.”
The Brodie set smiled in understanding of various kinds.
Miss Brodie forced her brown eyes to flash as a meaningful accompaniment to her quiet voice. She looked a mighty woman with her dark Roman profile in the sun. The Brodie set did not for a moment doubt that she would prevail. As soon expect Julius Caesar to apply for a job at a crank school as Miss Brodie. She would never resign. If the authorities wanted to get rid of her she would have to be assassinated.
“Who are the gang, this time?” said Rose, who was famous for sex-appeal.
“We shall discuss tomorrow night the persons who oppose me,” said Miss Brodie. “But rest assured they shall not succeed.”
“No,” said everyone. “No, of course they won’t.”
“Not while I am in my prime,” she said. “These years are still the years of my prime. It is important to recognise the years of one’s prime, always remember that. Here is my tram car. I daresay I’ll not get a seat. This is nineteen-thirty-six. The age of chivalry is past.”
Six years previously, Miss Brodie had led her new class into the garden for a history lesson underneath the big elm. On the way through the school corridors they passed the headmistress’s study. The door was wide open, the room was empty.
“Little girls,” said Miss Brodie, “come and observe this.”
They clustered round the open door while she pointed to a large poster pinned with drawing-pins on the opposite wall within the room. It depicted a man’s big face. Underneath were the words “Safety First.”
“This is Stanley Baldwin who got in as Prime Minister and got out again ere long,” said Miss Brodie. “Miss Mackay retains him on the wall because she believes in the slogan ‘Safety First.’ But Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first. Follow me.”
This was the first intimation, to the girls, of an odds between Miss Brodie and the rest of the teaching staff. Indeed, to some of them, it was the first time they had realised it was possible for people glued together in grown-up authority to differ at all. Taking inward note of this, and with the exhilarating feeling of being in on the faint smell of row, without being endangered by it, they followed dangerous Miss Brodie into the secure shade of the elm.
Often, that sunny autumn, when the weather permitted, the small girls took their lessons seated on three benches arranged about the elm.
“Hold up your books,” said Miss Brodie quite often that autumn, “prop them up in your hands, in case of intruders. If there are any intruders, we are doing our history lesson ... our poetry … English grammar.”
The small girls held up their books with their eyes not on them, but on Miss Brodie.
“Meantime I will tell you about my last summer holiday in Egypt ... I will tell you about care of the skin, and of the hands … about the Frenchman I met in the train to Biarritz … and I must tell you about the Italian paintings I saw. Who is the greatest Italian painter?”
“Leonardo da Vinci, Miss Brodie.”
“That is incorrect. The answer is Giotto, he is my favourite.”
Some days it seemed to Sandy that Miss Brodie’s chest was flat, no bulges at all, but straight as her back. On other days her chest was breast-shaped and large, very noticeable, something for Sandy to sit and peer at through her tiny eyes while Miss Brodie on a day of lessons indoors stood erect, with her brown head held high, staring out the window like Joan of Arc as she spoke.
“I have frequently told you, and the holidays just past have convinced me, that my prime has truly begun. One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognise your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full. Mary, what have you got under your desk, what are you looking at?”
Mary sat lump-like and too stupid to invent something. She was too stupid ever to tell a lie, she didn’t know how to cover up.
“A comic, Miss Brodie,” she said.
“Do you mean a comedian, a droll?”
Everyone tittered.
“A comic paper,” said Mary.
“A comic paper, forsooth. How old are you?”
“Ten, ma’am.”
“You are too old for comic papers at ten. Give it to me.”
Miss Brodie looked at the coloured sheets. “Tiger Tim’s forsooth,” she said, and threw it into the wastepaper basket. Perceiving all eyes upon it she lifted it out of the basket, tore it up beyond redemption and put it back again.
“Attend to me, girls. One’s prime is the moment one was born for. Now that my prime has begun—Sandy, your attention is wandering. What have I been talking about?”
“Your prime, Miss Brodie.”
“If anyone comes along,” said Miss Brodie, “in the course of the following lesson, remember that it is the hour for English grammar. Meantime I will tell you a little of my life when I was younger than I am now, though six years older than the man himself.”
She leaned against the elm. It was one of the last autumn days when the leaves were falling in little gusts. They fell on the children who were thankful for this excuse to wriggle and for the allowable movements in brushing the leaves from their hair and laps.
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. I was engaged to a young man at the beginning of the War but he fell on Flanders Field,” said Miss Brodie. “Are you thinking, Sandy, of doing a day’s washing?”
“No, Miss Brodie.”
“Because you have got your sleeves rolled up. I won’t have to do with girls who roll up the sleeves of their blouses, however fine the weather. Roll them down at once, we are civilized beings. He fell the week before Armistice was declared. He fell like an autumn leaf, although he was only twenty-two years of age. When we go indoors we shall look on the map at Flanders, and the spot where my lover was laid before you were born. He was poor. He came from Ayrshire, a countryman, but a hard-working and clever scholar. He said, when he asked me to marry him, ‘We shall have to drink water and walk slow.’ That was Hugh’s country way of expressing that we would live quietly. We shall drink water and walk slow. What does the saying signify, Rose?”
“That