The Finishing School Read Online Free PDF Page B

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