The Finishing School

  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 acc
ount 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.

  7

  One sunny afternoon during the holidays a man in smart white casual clothes, accompanied by a young girl who hopped along with the aid of a stick, came up the path of College Sunrise. He was about thirty, she in her late teens.

  Elaine Valette opened the door. The couple introduced themselves: Giovanna and Israel Brown. It was exactly six thirty in the afternoon.

  “Mr. Mahler came to see us,” said Israel, “and so we have come to see him.”

  They were soon settled with Nina and Rowland on the terrace sipping drinks in the lovely evening air with the sun slanting over the western mountains.

  “Giovanna gave one of your students a fright with her ghostly violin,” said Israel. “In fact, she was bored. She hurt her leg and had to sit with it up.”

  “My young friend gathered so,” said Rowland. “That was his guess.”

  Giovanna was drinking a citron pressé, the others vodka tonics which Rowland had brought out to them.

  “It’s good to see neighbors,” Nina said. “We see few people who live here. Of course, the hotels are full of come-and-go people.”

  “You are listed as a finishing school. What exactly is a finishing school?” said Israel.

  “Generally,” said Rowland, “it’s a place where parents dump their teenage children after their schooldays and before their universities or their marriages or careers.”

  Giovanna said, “Polished off?”

  “Something like that,” Nina said. “We try to instruct them, though. I get scholars to come and lecture.”

  “Who is the red-haired young man who was serenaded by Giovanna?”

>   “I wouldn’t say red,” said Nina. “I’d say his hair was orange. He’s very brilliant. He’s writing an historical novel.”

  “Is it good?” said Israel.

  “So far as we know,” Rowland said. “Lately he’s being very secretive about it. I think he’s probably lost his way.”

  “Not him,” said Nina. “Not Chris.”

  “Floundering around, that’s what,” said Rowland. “What can you expect at seventeen?”

  Chris thought, when he heard of this visit at dinnertime, They might have asked me to join them. Pigs. So he said, “Today I managed to complete two long chapters. Difficult ones.”

  Rowland smiled, but put down his knife and fork definitively. “When are we going to see them, the new chapters?”

  “Oh, now I’ll wait till the book’s finished.”

  He thinks it is a game he is playing with Rowland, Nina reflected. He doesn’t realize how seriously Rowland is affected. She looked at Rowland’s unfinished supper and felt a wave of panic. She was afraid that something was happening to Rowland beyond explanation, with which she would be unable to cope.

  “Chris,” she said, “you know, that violinist is a pretty girl. You’d like her.”

  “A bit too old for him,” said Rowland. “She must be eighteen, nineteen . . .”

  “I might go round and see,” said Chris cheerfully.

  “Good idea,” said Nina. “Take a rest from your book.”

  “Oh yes,” he said, for all the world as if he were an established man of letters. He spoke English now. “One does have to pause from time to time, if only to take stock of what one has written and where one stands.”