best; but anything was good enough to relieve the High School of those Spanish combs stuck into greasy hair, those trodden-down pin-point heels, that complexion with blackheads blocking neglected pores. Whatever Miss Sigglesthwaite is like, thought Sarah, she can’t be much worse than our Dolores.
“Sixty if she’s a day. Calls herself forty-seven, of course. They’re all forty-seven when they get past fifty,” the classics mistress continued. “She knits her own jumpers, and dances into form with a great band of cotton camisole showing above her skirt, chirruping, ‘Girls, Girls. Would you believe it? The little chiff-chaff’s back again!’”
Miss Jameson was a cruel and clever mimic. She made Sarah see Miss Sigglesthwaite’s absurdity and guileless ineffectiveness. She did not know that she also made Sarah see her second mistress’s own vapid heartlessness.
Sarah changed the subject coldly. Whatever she wished to know about Miss Sigglesthwaite she preferred to learn without Miss Jameson’s intervention.
She doesn’t wash enough, thought Sarah cattily. Perhaps that’s her Spanish ancestry.
She turned her attention to the problem of the appalling buildings and showed Miss Jameson a letter she had written to the Chairman of Governors.
“I don’t really mind a hall the size of a cupboard, a pitch dark cellar-gymnasium and laboratories housed in a broken-down conservatory; but these beetle-hunted cloakrooms I will not have. They’re enough to constipate any child for months. I will have those altered.”
“What a hope you’ve got. You don’t know Colonel Collier.”
“Why is he Chairman of Governors if he’s not interested in education?”
“Oh, he is interested. He’s interested in seeing that the children of the working classes aren’t educated above their station.”
“I see.”
“Oh, and by the way, Mrs. Beddows called while you were at Kingsport this morning to talk about the Carne child.”
“What about her, and why should Mrs. Beddows come?”
It was exasperating to be dependent on Miss Jameson’s ten years’ knowledge of the town. Once term had started, Sarah vowed that she would be free of her.
Dolories lit another cigarette and leaned back to enjoy herself. She explained Carne—a local farmer who had ruined himself by running away with the daughter of a West Country nobleman.
“A born snob. These gentlemen farmers are. He went for blue blood and found it tainted. Serve him right, I say. They say the kid’s probably not his, but the mother’s in an asylum and the child’s mental as anything. We shall have to have her, of course. He’s a governor. So’s Mrs. Beddows. Deputy God, we call her. General undertaker. Divorces arranged, relatives buried, invalids nursed, municipalities run free, gratis and for nothing. All for the love of interference. You must have seen them both when you came up to be interviewed.”
“I remember Mrs. Beddows.”
Miss Jameson noted the omission. Wishes to suggest she didn’t see Carne. Probably a man-hater, she concluded. Her thoughts veered.
“Look here, I must rush now. The boy friend said he would call for me at seven pip emma, and it’s half-past now.”
To be martyred would be beyond Miss Jameson’s dignity, but she could be breezily self-righteous.
Sarah hailed her departure.
If she’s a specimen of my staff, she thought, Heaven help me. Yet she was not depressed by the prospect before her. The greater her isolation, the greater her glory of achievement.
She had already achieved something. By bullying the porter, slave-driving cleaners, snubbing Dolores, importuning the governors, she had reduced to some state approaching cleanliness the wretched buildings under her control. She had rented a cottage for herself on the Central Promenade, between the plebeian North and superior South sides. She had bought a second-hand car, explored the neighbourhood, and taken measure of her own position.
It was not strong, but it had, she
“Sixty if she’s a day. Calls herself forty-seven, of course. They’re all forty-seven when they get past fifty,” the classics mistress continued. “She knits her own jumpers, and dances into form with a great band of cotton camisole showing above her skirt, chirruping, ‘Girls, Girls. Would you believe it? The little chiff-chaff’s back again!’”
Miss Jameson was a cruel and clever mimic. She made Sarah see Miss Sigglesthwaite’s absurdity and guileless ineffectiveness. She did not know that she also made Sarah see her second mistress’s own vapid heartlessness.
Sarah changed the subject coldly. Whatever she wished to know about Miss Sigglesthwaite she preferred to learn without Miss Jameson’s intervention.
She doesn’t wash enough, thought Sarah cattily. Perhaps that’s her Spanish ancestry.
She turned her attention to the problem of the appalling buildings and showed Miss Jameson a letter she had written to the Chairman of Governors.
“I don’t really mind a hall the size of a cupboard, a pitch dark cellar-gymnasium and laboratories housed in a broken-down conservatory; but these beetle-hunted cloakrooms I will not have. They’re enough to constipate any child for months. I will have those altered.”
“What a hope you’ve got. You don’t know Colonel Collier.”
“Why is he Chairman of Governors if he’s not interested in education?”
“Oh, he is interested. He’s interested in seeing that the children of the working classes aren’t educated above their station.”
“I see.”
“Oh, and by the way, Mrs. Beddows called while you were at Kingsport this morning to talk about the Carne child.”
“What about her, and why should Mrs. Beddows come?”
It was exasperating to be dependent on Miss Jameson’s ten years’ knowledge of the town. Once term had started, Sarah vowed that she would be free of her.
Dolories lit another cigarette and leaned back to enjoy herself. She explained Carne—a local farmer who had ruined himself by running away with the daughter of a West Country nobleman.
“A born snob. These gentlemen farmers are. He went for blue blood and found it tainted. Serve him right, I say. They say the kid’s probably not his, but the mother’s in an asylum and the child’s mental as anything. We shall have to have her, of course. He’s a governor. So’s Mrs. Beddows. Deputy God, we call her. General undertaker. Divorces arranged, relatives buried, invalids nursed, municipalities run free, gratis and for nothing. All for the love of interference. You must have seen them both when you came up to be interviewed.”
“I remember Mrs. Beddows.”
Miss Jameson noted the omission. Wishes to suggest she didn’t see Carne. Probably a man-hater, she concluded. Her thoughts veered.
“Look here, I must rush now. The boy friend said he would call for me at seven pip emma, and it’s half-past now.”
To be martyred would be beyond Miss Jameson’s dignity, but she could be breezily self-righteous.
Sarah hailed her departure.
If she’s a specimen of my staff, she thought, Heaven help me. Yet she was not depressed by the prospect before her. The greater her isolation, the greater her glory of achievement.
She had already achieved something. By bullying the porter, slave-driving cleaners, snubbing Dolores, importuning the governors, she had reduced to some state approaching cleanliness the wretched buildings under her control. She had rented a cottage for herself on the Central Promenade, between the plebeian North and superior South sides. She had bought a second-hand car, explored the neighbourhood, and taken measure of her own position.
It was not strong, but it had, she
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