The Finishing School

by Muriel Spark

  She went to see him in his room. “There’s no need to panic,” she told him.

  “Perhaps not for me,” said Chris.

  Fax to Alexander Archer:

  Dear Dad,

  I’m glad to hear you got a promotion, you are going to need the money there is this dance coming up at the end of term one of us outshining the other a five star do, and there is a boutique in Lausanne with some dresses of my choice. My shoes are worn down like a tramp and I need levis and warm tops you wouldn’t let me freeze Get the message in detail just send me the money. Your coming to the dance bring Melinda for my choice. We can go on to Rome or Paris for Xmas and N. Year what a good idea before going home, to soften the blow. Pallas Kapelases father George has been arrested in Germany for smuggling a stolen painting not el Greco but a school of. It’s all a cooked up plot because Mr. Kapelas is a spy and they know it. But Nina’s lover Israel Brown the Art gallerist knows all about it and says confidentially which is why Im telling you that Kapelas is mixed up with everything and the only solution for him is religion, he should go to a monastery. In spite of all that Israel is in love with Nina and pulling the strings to get Pallases Dad released if only on bail, then he can always get away. Rowland’s father died we held a prayer meeting for him. Now R. has got his inspiration back. A publisher came to Ouchy about Chris’s Novel sight unseen but he read it on the way and by the time he got to his hotel he regretted it and gave Chris a bad time which gave Rowland a good time as I told you that’s the way it goes and we don’t know what to think. He (Rowland) goes on with our English classes I bet you don’t know what a gerund is, also our creative writing class which I love. Chris keeps away, hes more like a lodger than a student. Of course hes very close to Pallas. Something is going on between them, not sex as Pallas says she has to be a virgin when she marries. But she looks after his private papers and scripts I still think he is a genius and hope he won’t commit suicide. Im counting the days don’t forget my cash love and kisses Joan

  Giovanna Brown arrived in Lausanne to join her nephew at Ouchy for a long weekend. She found him absorbed with Nina. She was in the way even though the house was a big one. The Browns knew few people in those parts and it seemed that all of those few were away in London, in the West Indies, New York, anywhere but in already cold Ouchy.

  “Where is that red-haired genius I played my violin to?” she said to Nina, who was about to have lunch in the kitchen with Israel.

  “He’s at the school. Rather depressed. His publisher-to-be didn’t rave over the book.”

  “Has he written a book, then?”

  “Almost,” said Nina.

  Giovanna found a plastic shopping bag and put in it some fruit juice, a tin of pâté and some biscuits. With this, she set off for the school on Israel’s motorbike.

  The school were at lunch. Giovanna put her head round the door of the dining room. Rowland stood up: “Anything wrong? Nina—”

  “Nina is lunching with Israel.”

  “Well, I know that.”

  “I’ve come for Chris. I’ve brought a picnic.”

  “No need for that. Sit down. Célestine will get you a plate.” He waved a hand toward her. “You’ve all met Giovanna.”

  There was a vacant chair beside Lionel, opposite Chris. She sat there, and when her place was laid she helped herself to some saladlike mixture out of a very large bowl.

  “You want to see me?” Chris said.

  “What are you up to?” Giovanna said.

  “But you, what are you up to?” said Chris. “Shouldn’t you be at your music school?”

  “I flew in from Vienna for the weekend to see Isy. He’s utterly engaged, so here I am. Amuse me.”

  “Read some of your book to Giovanna,” said Tilly.

  “All right. You can all listen,” said Chris.

  “We have a poetry class this afternoon,” said Rowland, “followed by a special lecture by our neighbor and Giovanna’s nephew, Israel Brown, on the modern Irish movement in art.”

  The students then fell to investigating the strange nature of young Giovanna’s relationship to Israel the elder, which she elaborately explained. Chris arranged with Giovanna to see her after lunch, promising to read her some of his book.

  She joined him in front of the fire in the school sitting room. He hadn’t brought his book, but he outlined it to her up to the point he had reached.

  “Does it sound like a lot of shit?” he said.

  “Oh no, it sounds a perfectly good story. This queen hates her beastly husband and loves the charming little Italian musician who makes her so happy. The husband gets terribly jealous and gangs up with his friends to kill the sweet musician, so the musician’s young brother gangs up with his influential friends abroad and brings them to kill that husband of the Queen. It’s a great story. There’s an opera on those same lines by Donizetti. The Queen of Scotland calls the Queen of England ‘vile bastard.’ It’s great. What’s your problem?”

  “The publisher thinks the young brother couldn’t possibly be involved. But anyway, it’s a work of fiction. Novelists can say what they like. I only have a problem with the ending. There are two alternative endings. One, we see the Queen late in life before her execution—”

  “Was she put to death?”

  “Oh yes. She plotted against the Queen of England.”

  “Yes, now I remember that in the opera.”

  “Anyway, here she is reflecting on her past life and the whole affair. I don’t know for sure if Rizzio the musician was her lover, by the way. She was so tall and he was so tiny.”

  “It could be an attraction of opposites,” said Giovanna.

  “Does that often happen?” Chris said.

  “It happens all the time.”

  “Well, I’ll think of that for my second draft. The second alternative ending is this. We see Rizzio’s brother Jacopo, who I make a musician, too, received in honor by his family in Italy. He is given a public welcome by the town, having vindicated his brother’s death. I haven’t decided which ending to close my novel with.”

  “Do both,” said Giovanna. “First, the Queen looking back on her love life full of the language of music, and second, the hero’s welcome.”

  “Well,” said Chris, “I’ll think of that, too. It does me good to talk to you. I’m hoping for a movie, you know.”

  “For a movie,” she said, “I’d put the young brother’s homecoming first with his playing some photogenic instrument. Then I’d put the Queen looking back on the romantic life as she walks to her death.”

  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—”
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br />   “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.”