The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Read Free Page A

special happiness, which was nothing to do with eating, and was different from the happiness of play that one enjoyed unawares. Both girls saved the cream to the last, then ate it in spoonfuls.
    “Little girls, you are going to be the crème de la crème,” said Sandy, and Jenny spluttered her cream into her handkerchief.
    “You know,” Sandy said, “these are supposed to be the happiest days of our lives.”
    “Yes, they are always saying that,” Jenny said. “They say, make the most of your schooldays because you never know what lies ahead of you.”
    “Miss Brodie says prime is best,” Sandy said.
    “Yes, but she never got married like our mothers and fathers.”
    “They don’t have primes,” said Sandy.
    “They have sexual intercourse,” Jenny said.
    The little girls paused, because this was still a stupendous thought, and one which they had only lately lit upon; the very phrase and its meaning were new. It was quite unbelievable. Sandy said, then, “Mr. Lloyd had a baby last week. He must have committed sex with his wife.” This idea was easier to cope with and they laughed screamingly into their pink paper napkins. Mr. Lloyd was the Art master to the senior girls.
    “Can you see it happening?” Jenny whispered.
    Sandy screwed her eyes even smaller in the effort of seeing with her mind. “He would be wearing his pyjamas,” she whispered back.
    The girls rocked with mirth, thinking of one-armed Mr. Lloyd, in his solemnity, striding into school.
    Then Jenny said, “You do it on the spur of the moment. That’s how it happens.”
    Jenny was a reliable source of information, because a girl employed by her father in his grocer shop had recently been found to be pregnant, and Jenny had picked up some fragments of the ensuing fuss. Having confided her finds to Sandy, they had embarked on a course of research which they called “research,” piecing together clues from remembered conversations illicitly overheard, and passages from the big dictionaries.
    “It all happens in a flash,” Jenny said. “It happened to Teenie when she was out walking at Puddocky with her boy friend. Then they had to get married.”
    “You would think the urge would have passed by the time she got her clothes off,” Sandy said. By “clothes,” she definitely meant to imply knickers, but “knickers” was rude in this scientific context.
    “Yes, that’s what I can’t understand,” said Jenny.
    Sandy’s mother looked round the door and said, “Enjoying yourselves, darlings?” Over her shoulder appeared the head of Jenny’s mother. “My word,” said Jenny’s mother, looking at the tea-table, “they’ve been tucking in!”
    Sandy felt offended and belittled by this; it was as if the main idea of the party had been the food.
    “What would you like to do now?” Sandy’s mother said.
    Sandy gave her mother a look of secret ferocity which meant: you promised to leave us all on our own, and a promise is a promise, you know it’s very bad to break a promise to a child, you might ruin all my life by breaking your promise, it’s my birthday.
    Sandy’s mother backed away bearing Jenny’s mother with her. “Let’s leave them to themselves,” she said. “Just enjoy yourselves, darlings.”
    Sandy was sometimes embarrassed by her mother being English and calling her “darling,” not like the mothers of Edinburgh who said “dear.” Sandy’s mother had a flashy winter coat trimmed with fluffy fox fur like the Duchess of York’s, while the other mothers wore tweed or, at the most, musquash that would do them all their days.
    It had been raining and the ground was too wet for them to go and finish digging the hole to Australia, so the girls lifted the tea-table with all its festal relics over to the corner of the room. Sandy opened the lid of the piano stool and extracted a notebook from between two sheaves of music. On the first page’ of the notebook was written,
    The Mountain Eyrie
    by
    Sandy Stranger and