The Finishing School by Muriel Spark Page A

gone mad.”
    “He doesn’t think of you, Rowland.”
    “Then why did he put Kapelas’s missing cards among our card index?”
    “Oh, he does that sort of thing all the time. You know, it’s only a guess that it was Chris. It could have been anyone.”
    “But it’s just like Chris.”
    “Oh yes. That’s why I say it’s quite harmless. Look, Rowland, you know, we can’t afford to expel Chris from the school. We need every last fee to break even by Christmas.”
    “Do we? Why is that?”
    “Switzerland is expensive.”
    “Well, the fees are too low.”
    “No, they’re the highest we can get,” Nina said. “But don’t worry. We’ll break even with perhaps a profit, after all.”
    “You were just trying to frighten me?”
    “Well, yes, perhaps a bit. When you go on about Chris . . . It’s all so unreal. And yet, when you see him around, and at meals, you treat him quite normally, so he hasn’t the slightest idea that you have an obsession about him. It is an obsession.”
    “It is and it isn’t,” Rowland said. “I’m keen to do my writing, finish my novel.”
    Nina said nothing. He had hardly started the novel, and was apt to make a new start every now and again. Nina had a much longer-term prospect in mind, which she kept to herself, for she was convinced that sooner or later she would separate from Rowland, marry again, have children, study. But in the meantime, shrewd woman that she was, she knew there was a life to be lived as comfortably and pleasantly as possible. It was mainly, at this moment, a question of trying to keep Rowland’s state of mind from running away with itself. Chris, only Chris? Was Rowland an unconscious homosexual? It would be strange if this were so, considering the very perceptive views of life that he held in all other respects. To be sexually jealous over a man or a woman was something Nina understood, but jealousy over a book, a work of art, a piece of writing . . . That was indeed a fact she was trying to swallow. Rowland was simply going mad with jealousy about the writing of novels. It was a fact, not merely a possibility, not something new in the world, but something new to Nina as she grasped it.

10
    It was not long before Rowland told Nina he had changed his mind about the type of book he was writing. She took a vague note of this. Nina was occupied mainly with guiding her students along the paths that would lead to their future careers. So she told herself but, in fact it was the school that kept her stable. Rowland’s secretary, Elaine, who was also an excellent French teacher, seemed now to spend less of her time with Rowland and more with very handsome Albert, the garden boy. Well, after all, Elaine had always liked gardening. Albert as a close companion was out of bounds to the girl students, for the single reason that Nina was afraid that one of them might get pregnant while in her care.
    At dinner that night Opal Gross reported new developments in her family’s difficulties: “My father’s really in trouble. Mum thinks he’ll go to prison.”
    “But he’s declared himself a bankrupt, hasn’t he?” said Pallas. “That’s a great position to be in.”
    “Well, perhaps it’s not all as straightforward as that,” said Opal.
    “My father can help,” said Pallas.
    “What?”
    “I know he can help. He buys bankruptcies. He buys and sells them.”
    “Pallas,” said Nina, “it sounds a bit slippery, all that. But of course anything you can do, anything you and your family, or any of us, can do for Opal, we as a school will be very grateful—won’t we, you young people?”
    Nina had been slightly dismayed by Pallas’s cool claim, but her appeal to the dining table as a whole was being greeted with warm assent, real enthusiasm. She said, “Get a message to your father, Pallas. Let’s see what he can do. I must say I never heard of buying and selling a bankruptcy before—did you, Rowland?”
    “No,” said Rowland, “but I’ve heard of