The Finishing School (3 page)

5

Tilly met her fellow students at the porch doorway of College Sunrise when they returned from their trip to Chillon.

As they entered, Tilly said, “Rowland went into Chris’s room after Claire had finished cleaning. He emptied Chris’s
zaino
and I peeped round the door. I can be so silent, oh, you wouldn’t know how silent. But Rowland saw me. I promised not to tell. Rowland examined everything closely and put it back. We had a filthy lunch.”

Chris laughed lightly. He said, “He wants my secrets. However, I like Rowland. I couldn’t manage without him in a way. He’s the yolk of an egg. The white part’s not enough. The yolk, for better or for worse . . .”

“Do you know what he said? He said, ‘Tilly,’ he said, ‘We’ve been good to you haven’t we, Tilly?’ Oh yes, you have, I said. Don’t worry, I won’t say a word. I thought he was going to make advances at me.”

“You mean ‘
to
’ you. Well, I don’t think he’ll do that, quite honestly, Tilly.”

“Why not?”

“Bad for business. That’s one reason.”

“Yes, I suppose.” Tilly took herself, tall and lonely, away to another part of the house to spread her story.

No one was particularly interested. The term was ending within the next three days and everyone was packing their soiled clothes into bags and suitcases, since Claire the housemaid refused to have her washing machine choked up with piles of last-minute laundry bundles. Chris had written to his mother: “I’m getting so used to this desk here in my room, do you mind if I stay here at least part of the holidays? There’s plenty of recreation—I can get tennis at the hotel along the road and get on with my novel. I have a thousand ideas for it.” His uncle’s next letter as well as his mother’s confirmed their desire to do anything, make any sacrifice of his company, to help him with his “project.” (They both used the same word.) The uncle had written to Rowland who was perfectly happy to keep Chris on at a special increased rate. He and Nina were not going away from home, at least not together, and not very far—so much to be done to the school in the holidays. Chris was all the more convinced that his mother and uncle were having an affair. It didn’t bother him; rather, he was relieved to have them off from his family obligations. He was decidedly contented with the news that Célestine Valette was also staying on at College Sunrise. She had been designated “temporary” as the cook in some vague honor of the fact that she was the sister of the more bureaucratically important Elaine. Célestine was a very practiced good Swiss cook. In general the two sisters were much treasured by Rowland and Nina. Célestine was twenty-four years of age. Chris sometimes slept with her. He was the oldest pupil, soon to be eighteen, and felt a certain
droit de seigneur
in this matter.

Before dinner he went along to the room Pallas shared with Mary Foot. Both girls were there, and let him in. “Give me my book, Pallas.”

She fished out a hard-covered flat suitcase from under the bed, opened it with her code and pulled out a filing box and four notebooks. Mary had his personal computer on the floor of her hanging cupboard, covered by a shawl, but Chris had no use for it just then. Mainly, he preferred to write by hand since he could do this sitting on a garden seat or on a seat in a park, or lying flat on his stomach under a tree. Chris had many favorite writing positions and places.

Tonight, he intended, after dinner to elaborate on a fictional meeting between the rising assistant diplomat David Rizzio and the elder Savoyard, generous and wise Bonivard. The more he thought about it the more possible it became that the two should have met and that after David Rizzio’s death it would be natural for David’s brother Jacopo, seething with vengeance, to approach Bonivard for support. It was a question of building up the character and filling the plausible historical moment. The more Chris thought of these questions the less he thought of Rowland. He dabbled his hands in water, brushed his hair and went in to dinner still thinking of Bonivard.

Rowland said in French, which was their mealtime language, “What did you all think of the Château de Chillon?”

“Terrific,” said Leg (Pansy Leghorn). “I’d like to own a castle on a lake. But the dungeon was grim.”

“You could marry a Scottish laird if you want a castle on a lake,” said Opal Gross. Since her parents’ finances had failed she dwelt often in her mind on her future: should she make a prosperous marriage? It was not her only hope: she could get a welfare job, train as a nurse.

They ate
pâté
, fish, salad and a creamy homemade cake. Célestine believed in the food she cooked, and the Mahlers encouraged her to feed the school well. Rowland felt it practical not to be mean, and in fact he was naturally large in his domestic habits. He didn’t bother his young people about their leaving lights on or eating second or third helpings. Célestine was encouraged to listen to their preferences however bizarre. “This is Liberty Hall,” said Rowland very often, and Célestine, though herself frugal-minded, did her best to make items such as fish-finger sandwiches look and taste like something
haute cuisine
.

They chatted about the Prisoner of Chillon all through the meal. Chris cited the dates when he as a Savoyard could well have met young Rizzio at the diplomatic court of the Piedmontese ambassador to which David Rizzio was attached. Rowland guessed that Chris was on to something in the formation and development of his novel. Rowland did not finish his dinner. He was put out, worried. Nina noticed and heard everything with the mounting alarm of one whose suspicions so far have seemed derisory but now appear to be materializing—yes, to be possible, quite probable, altogether real. Rizzio, thought Chris, born 1537, died 1566. Bonivard born 1493, died ——? He felt in his pocket for the brochure he had obtained about the Prisoner of Chillon. On it he saw that Bonivard died in 1570. When Rizzio was, say, twenty-five, Bonivard was sixty-nine, a truly old man for those days.

As Chris ate his fish and made his mental calculations, Rowland watched him closely. Lisa Orlando said, “Chris has gone off into a dream.”

“No,” said Chris, “I was thinking of something. Literally not a dream, Lisa.”

“What was the boat trip like?”

“Smooth,” said Chris.

“A stunning first mate,” said Leg.

“No, that was the captain,” said Pallas.

In 1566, thought Chris, Jacopo Rizzio was eighteen, nineteen. Bonivard was seventy-three. He would have been moved by the young man’s story of how his elder brother, the gifted young musician and diplomat, had been brutally murdered with multiple stab wounds by a savage gang of Scots.

“Make conversation, Chris,” said Rowland.

“There was a party on the boat from the Beau Rivage,” Chris said. “A group from a psychiatrist’s convention. Mixed nationalities. Men and women. Rather wrapped up in themselves.”

“They are not psychiatrists,” said Lionel Haas, “they are psychologists. I managed to talk to one or two.” Lionel was almost the brightest pupil in the school. He came near to Lisa Orlando, who, at her former school, had been an excellent exam passer. The two got on well together. Lionel was to stay with Lisa at her parents’ house on Elba for part of the summer break. The holidays were on the minds of most of the pupils, now. Princess Tilly was going to stay with an uncle in Rumania. Pallas was joining her father, but whether in Athens or elsewhere, it was impossible to discern from her various statements. (It was widely believed at College Sunrise that her father, George Kapelas, was a spy.) Opal Gross, who was rather feeling the benefit of being of a ruined family, in that offers of help came pouring toward her, was going on a luxury cruise of the Aegean, the Dardanelles and the Greek islands on the yacht of a family friend. Pansy Leghorn was going to a three-week literary summer course at Cambridge after which she would join Mary Foot for a short stay at her family home, a long, low group of bashed-together alms cottages in Worcestershire. Joan Archer was going to lie on the sundeck round a pool at Juan-les-Pins with her handsome father, his girlfriend and small brother.

Jacopo Rizzio, thought Chris, would be wearing a thick dark green wool stuff jacket as he has just come from Scotland. Maybe a shawl, not tartan, oh, God. François Bonivard would have a thick beard, gray and white. I wonder if there’s a portrait of him somewhere?

“Rowland—some salad?” Nina said.

Rowland sat on, not eating, unnoticed, while Chris thought out his new chapter and the others chattered of Chillon in the recent past and the holidays in the near future.

6

Thris was enjoying his solitary position at College Sunrise. With the view of the lake and the French Alps, it felt like a luxury hotel. Some mornings after he had worked a few hours on his novel, he wandered along the lakeshore to various hotels where he would sit in the bar observing the passing scene, listening to the chatter of English and German package tourists. He would sip white wine or Coca-Cola. In one hotel he would play chess with an old man on a lawn chessboard. He took notes. In another, once, he lolled at the bar and read carefully through their brochure; then, with his finepointed, clever Biro he changed their advertised “Fitness Room” to “Fatness . . . ,” and did so on the entire pile of brochures under the eye of the barman, who saw but simply didn’t notice. Chris was always impressed by the non-noticing faculties of people.

When he left his room at College Sunrise to go out, Chris blatantly locked the door.

“We can’t get in to clean,” Nina complained.

“Does it matter?”

“No one’s going to steal anything,” the maid, Claire Denis, said with great indignation.

“Madame Denis, come and make my bed,” Chris said. “Try to come early before I go out. All I want to protect is my work.”

“What should I want with Monsieur’s papers?”

“Nothing. Monsieur Rowland might want to see them.”

She said nothing until she had made the bed. Then “Monsieur Rowland does not write. He sits and looks at the words on the computer.”

Chris was impressed by her noticing faculty, so unlike the barman at the hotel.

“I daresay,” he said, “that Monsieur Rowland is thinking. When one writes a book one has to think. Or perhaps he’s thinking of the school. It’s an enormous responsibility.” Chris stressed the word
énorme
in a way that provoked Claire Denis to look at him sideways. “No kidding,” said Chris. This was the end of the conversation. Nina looked round the door. “Oh there you are,” she said to Claire. The students were discouraged from “fraternizing” with the domestic helpers. It could lead to difficulties.

Nina sat in the office with her lists of lecturers. It was early morning, before anyone was up. The school itself was now fairly empty. All the pupils except Chris had left. Albert, the odd-job gardener, was on holiday. The sisters Elaine and Célestine Valette were still at College Sunrise. Claire Denis did not live in the college.

Nina had her lists of scholars before her. She had the job of arranging next term’s lectures. These generally included overnight visits from a few professors or university lecturers. Nina felt they were the most attractive part of the school’s curriculum. She regarded scholars with awe, as if they were so many orders of angels, thrones, Dominations, Powers, Cherubim, Seraphim: Dr. D. Dabbler of Southampton University, lecturer in French Provincial Art, Dr. Savoie Laroche of Reading, lecturer on the English Potteries, Dr. Laura Markoff of Cambridge, lecturer on the Bayeux Tapestry. The subjects were innumerable, the sacred lecturers were equally numerous but not equally affordable. To Nina it was of course impossible that scholars could have ideas of their value above their actual worth, which was anyway priceless. It was only that some were happy to come more or less for the trip away from home, with a moderate fee thrown in, and others wanted a fat paycheck.

Then, on another set of lists came the politicians. Nina let her mind soar above the clouds to the realms of the Archangels, Tony Blair, God, but finally she returned to the realistic earth with a choice of three old pensioners, one an undersecretary of something from two governments back, a woman Liberal Party activist and a brilliant ex-politician brought low by brothel haunting revealed. Nina felt the latter would have to be passed over in the interests of the school’s morals, fascinating though he might be.

Apart from her printout lists of possible lecturers, Nina had some sets of old card indices on file from some years back when she and Rowland had first started their school. She rummaged in a drawer of her desk and found the cards, bound together by an elastic band. They were the names of older writers, lecturers, retired politicians. Nina meant to have a look through them to see if there was some name she could add to her present autumn-term list. But it seemed to her that the bundle of cards was thicker than she had remembered it to be. She flicked through them. Yes, there were the old names: Dr. Alice Barclay-Good. An interesting scholar of sixteenth-century Scottish History, she had given a monologue-type lecture to the school when it had first started in Brussels. She was dull. She was, however, docile about money and didn’t mind traveling tourist class. All these and many other factors had to be taken into account when inviting a scholar to lecture to the school. However, Dr. Alice Barclay-Good was now retired, like many others on the card index. Probably too much on the old side.

Nina flicked to another card, Alistair French, expert in city planning. Not much good for the present group of students, but she would keep him in mind. Next, Robert K. Wellington, Jr., Bath Equipment Illinois, telephone . . . e-mail . . .
“Who?”
said Nina aloud. Who is he? She noticed that the card was slightly creamier in color than the regular ones. There were other creamy cards, too, in the batch she was holding in her hands. She pulled these out: there were twenty-four of them. “M. B. Squire, M.D., B.Sc., Birmingham. Aspirin and Klear-a-kold 300 mg.,” “Mrs. Thomas A. Watchworth, Belfast, Irish Linen,” “Lord Barbouries’ Dairy Farms. Pork pies. Salted butter.” “Angélique Denis, embroidered towels . . .” A card index of merchants and merchandise. How did they get among Nina’s scholars and lecturers?

The riddle as to how these cards got among Nina’s pack upset Rowland and put him off his novel writing. “Who could have been tampering with our office material?”

“I can’t think,” Nina said.

“Could it be Chris?”

“Chris? Why should it be Chris?”

“He asked me how my novel was getting on.”

“All right, he asked you how your novel was getting on.”

“You’re right. It wouldn’t be Chris. I wonder if he’s going to feel lonely this summer all alone working on his novel.”

“It’s what he wants, Rowland.”

“We could take him to a nightspot in Geneva. I hear there’s a Japanese trio, two guitars and a singer. He’d enjoy that, with oriental food to go with it.”

“Great,” said Nina.

Rowland put on his reading glasses and looked closely at the alien creamy cards, one by one. “Somebody’s joke?” he said. “If so, I don’t appreciate it.” He sat down studiously by the phone and quizzed International Directory Inquiries about the names, one by one. “Thomas A. Watchworth, Belfast, Irish Linen dealer.” Rowland spelt it out letter by letter and waited, and waited. Finally: “No Thomas A. Watchworth in Belfast?—Don’t go away. Try Lord Barbouries’ Dairy Farms, somewhere in Cornwall, England. No, I haven’t got the name of a town, it’s a farm.”

No luck with any of them. The apparent merchants and business people on the cards evidently didn’t exist. Rowland said, “It’s a hoax. Just keep them by you.” As he turned them over to Nina he caught sight of the back of the last card. It had the number 5. Another card was 82. There was no particular sequence.

“I didn’t notice the numbers,” Nina said.

“Nor me. It’s someone playing a game. Ignore it,” Rowland said.

He didn’t ignore it. He brooded on it, convinced that Chris had put the cards there for some reason . . . No, not for some reason, he had done it
for no reason at all
. And that was the thing about Chris that left Rowland sort of mentally out of breath and completely thrown. He admired, envied, resented Chris with his easy talent and throw-away habits of amusing himself. But was he amusing himself? Whose cards had he mixed with Nina’s? But, he thought, not a word will I say. Only I’m on the watch. On the watch, but what for?

Rowland typed:

The girl with the violin. She comes to the local private school to give violin lessons. She sees, standing by the window, a tall, dark boy, who glances up. He is Robert (? George ? Trevor). Anyway, he is the Boy Who Passes the Window.

At her end of the office Nina quietly tidied away her work. She got up to go, not meaning to disturb Rowland. However, he said, “I wonder if Chris—”

“You have to get him off your mind,” she said.

Nina was tall, her dark hair hung straight to her shoulders. She had deep, dark grayish eyes with well-balanced facial features. There was something studious about her appearance that made her slightly too intelligent-looking to be a beauty.

She had graduated with honors and most of her imaginative life circled on that fact. She had married Rowland largely because of her esteem for scholarship. His thesis on the German poet Rilke had clinched the deal so far as her consent to marry him was concerned. The fact of his academic achievements stimulated her sex life. He, on the other hand, was in love, basically, with her practical dependability. It had been her idea to run a finishing school. She had wanted him to call himself Dr. Mahler, but he had sensed that the title would interfere with his main ambition: to write a wonderful novel.

Rowland, too, was tall; he was well-built, with a crop of hair neither dark nor fair and a bladelike face which he occasionally framed with a pointed beard. At the present time he had shaved his face clean, feeling more like a brilliant young novelist under this appearance.

The strain of Rowland’s efforts to cope with his novel was felt more by Nina than by Rowland himself. He confidently talked of “author’s birth pangs,” “writer’s block,” “professional distractions” (reading the school essays); he was full of such phrases, so much that Nina in her accesses of sympathy would even invent them for him. “How can you give a creative writing course,” she said, “while trying to write creatively yourself? No wonder you feel put off, Rowland.”

“Yes, it’s almost impossible,” he said, “to describe a process you are actually involved in.”

Nina said, “I could teach the creative writing class if you like.”

“No. Chris would feel let down. I want to keep my eye on Chris. Besides, for the fees we’re asking they expect a creative writer, and, I’m afraid, a man.”

Nina was aware that what he said was more or less true. As an act of will, she gave Rowland her full sympathy, but she knew it contained a built-in time limit. There is a way out, she would tell herself at times. At the end of some school year I could comfortably leave him. In the meantime let him write his novel; it might even be good.

In the meantime: “Dear Dr. Shattard,” wrote Nina. “You will recall that you gave a distinguished lecture to College Sunrise in Brussels, entitled ‘Henry James and the European Scene.’ I am writing to ask if you would come to College Sunrise where it is now situated at Ouchy, Lausanne, and give the same or a similar lecture to a new group of our students. Our term begins . . .” She looked up and saw Rowland, at the other end of the room, playing with his novel on the computer. She decided to leave him alone with his creative thoughts.