Chapter 5
Miss Prim had not expected to find it so difficult to say good-bye to the children.
If anyone had predicted as much upon her arrival in San Ireneo, she’d have given a dismissive smile and a look that said on your way.
She’d never been especially inclined to glow with maternal tenderness at the sight of children.
It wasn’t that she disliked them, but their charm would not be fully revealed until she was a parent herself and, even then, she would remain gratifyingly confined to her own offspring.
Miss Prim was not one of those women who stop in the street to coo over babies, or strike up conversations with toddlers swinging from their parents’ hands in a cinema queue, or joyfully improvise ball games with lively throngs of schoolchildren.
So she was shocked by how emotional she felt at the thought of leaving the four children she’d lived with for the past few months.
“Will we never see you again?” little Eksi asked after she had told them the news.
The four children were gathered around Miss Prim in the library, as solemn as a council of war.
She paused at length before replying.
“Never is rather a strong word. Who knows what might happen? Maybe we’ll see one another again sooner than you think. Maybe you’ll go to Italy to study Bernini and Giotto and we’ll meet there.”
The children looked doubtful, so she went on.
“Imagine you’re going to visit the Basilica of St. Francis, for instance. Do you know where that is?”
“In Assisi,” replied Teseris from the aged ottoman.
“That’s right,” said the librarian brightly, “it is in Assisi. Imagine you’re there to see Giotto’s frescoes.
You walk through the Upper Basilica, overawed by the beauty of the walls and ceilings decorated with scenes from the life of Il Poverello, and as you’re engrossed in admiring the paintings, you hear a familiar voice behind you say . . . ”
“ ‘Don’t even think about touching them!’ ” exclaimed Deka with an impish grin.
Miss Prim winked at the little boy as she opened a tin of apple biscuits. Then Septimus spoke from the depths of his uncle’s wing chair.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to visit you in Assisi. We already know it. We went there when we were small.”
The librarian suppressed a smile and began handing out biscuits.
“I don’t think we will ever see you again,” said Eksi sadly from the rug. “You’ll go to Italy and have adventures and never want to come back, like Robert Browning’s wife.”
Miss Prim laughed.
“I wouldn’t be so sure. My trip is nothing like hers. She was called Elizabeth Barrett, by the way. She was in love, and she left for love, remember?”
“You too,” said the little girl with conviction.
“Me?” said the librarian, taken aback. “For love? That’s ridiculous! I’m doing no such thing. What gave you that idea?”
“It’s not my idea, it’s the gardener’s,” the child replied.
“He hears everything through the library window,” her older brother confirmed. “He can probably hear us now.”
Miss Prim shot a furtive glance at the window to make sure it was firmly closed.
“The gardener couldn’t have heard something that isn’t true. Do you really think if I were going to Italy for love I’d tell anyone? Anyway, you shouldn’t snoop or spread gossip, it’s not a nice habit. I’m sure the gardener got it wrong. He wasn’t talking about me.”
“He was talking about you,” said Deka, adamant.
The librarian handed around the biscuits a second time while trying to think how to get out of this fix.
“How do you know? Did he mention my name?”
The children exchanged eloquent looks.
“If we tell you, will you be cross with him?” asked Septimus warily.
“Of course not.”
After a moment, during which he seemed to be weighing whether she meant what she’d said, the boy continued.
“What he said was: ‘She’s going to Italy to look for a husband.’ She means you. That’s what he calls you,” he explained.
Miss Prim took a deep breath but said nothing. A grave silence reigned in the room for a few minutes. Then a sound at the door made them all turn: the two enormous dogs came in, brushing against the librarian’s knees and flopping down on the rug.
“She,” muttered the librarian.
Then she addressed the children.
“Will you miss me when I go?”
“Of course, though we won’t know for sure until after you’ve left,” replied Septimus philosophically.
“We weren’t sorry when the others left,” added Teseris in an undertone. “But they weren’t like you.”
Miss Prim stared into the fire. Her eyes stung with a pleasant, watery sting.
She felt comforted by the children’s honesty, the simplicity with which they spoke of what they disliked and what they loved, the lack of duplicity in their opinions, the absence of the tangled skeins that so often complicated adult relationships.
“He likes you too. He’s sad you’re leaving,” declared Eksi, stroking the shaggy fur of one of the dogs.
Prudencia blushed and averted her eyes, staring into the fire once more.
“I’m sure he liked the previous librarian too. What he likes is for the work to be done well, that’s all.”
“He didn’t like the one before that because he kicked the dogs.”
“Really?” said Miss Prim, horrified.
The children nodded.
“I’d like to go to Italy with you,” said Eksi. “We could study things and you could look for that husband.”
For a moment Miss Prim pictured herself walking around Florence, wandering in a blissful haze into the Accademia, then standing enraptured before Michelangelo’s David.
She imagined a figure who appeared at her side and whispered mockingly into her ear: “Are you ready to take out your ruler and compasses?”
“I have no intention of looking for a husband, Eksi, really I haven’t,” she said sternly, unsettled by her vision.
“Miss Prim,” Teseris’s voice had a dreamlike quality, “I think we will see you again.”
Prudencia stroked the hair of the three children sprawled on the rug and directed an affectionate look at the little girl lying on the ottoman.
“Do you really think so?” she asked with a smile.
The child nodded.
“Then I’m sure you’re right. Absolutely sure.”
Lulu Thiberville’s note came as a surprise to Miss Prim.
The news that the old lady wanted to say good-bye to her made her feel deeply anxious.
She was an imposing personality—the librarian had been very conscious of it the afternoon they met—and Miss Prim believed that imposing personalities, like forces of nature, were dangerous and unpredictable.
As she walked through the village to the Thiberville house, she scattered greetings and salutations among shopkeepers and residents.
All responded warmly. A wave for the butcher, who had told her how to cook the Christmas turkey.
A smile for the cobbler, who had taken such good care of her shoes over the past few months.
A few words with the owner of the stationery shop, who reserved a pack of her handmade notepaper for Miss Prim every month since she had adopted the local custom of writing letters.
She went into the doctor’s surgery, to thank him for the cough syrup he’d prescribed for the children a couple of weeks earlier.
And she said good-bye to the owners of the haberdashery where she bought her underwear, since she now knew it to be of equal or superior quality to any in the city.
The hall of the large old house where Lulu Thiberville lived had a smell of birdseed and medicine, but also of cake batter baking and bread toasting in the kitchen in preparation for the librarian’s visit.
Miss Prim found the old lady reclining on a sofa by the window.
A heavy silver tea service was set out on a pedestal table beside her.
Miss Prim approached and seated herself on a little padded footstool.
“For the love of God, child, sit on a chair!” cried the old lady in her cracked voice. “You’ll put your back out on that thing.”
Prudencia assured her that she was quite comfortable on the stool. She never hunched; she’d been taught not to as a child.
“Yes, I’ve noticed you always sit properly, on the edge of your chair with a very straight back.
It’s a comfort to think that there are still some women who know how to sit correctly.
I can’t stand to see all those young things slouching along the streets with sunken chests and rounded shoulders.
I blame modern schools. Tell me, Miss Prim, did you learn to sit as you do in a modern school? ”
She explained that her excellent posture was not a product of her schooling but was thanks to an old aunt of her mother’s who had trained her from an early age to walk with books balanced on her head and to sit with the elegant rigidity of an Egyptian queen.
“They used to teach it in schools. Of course in those days they were still places where children learned something. Now they’re factories of indiscipline, hatcheries for rude, ignorant little monsters.”
Miss Prim looked uneasily at the old lady.
“I wouldn’t put it quite so strongly,” she murmured.
“Of course you wouldn’t, but I just have. You have no idea what schools used to be like, have you?”
She confessed meekly that she hadn’t.
“Then you’re in no position to compare. You simply have well-meaning opinions.
And people of an optimistic outlook, as you seem to be, not only don’t improve things but contribute to their decline.
They convey the false impression that everything is going well when in fact—don’t deceive yourself—it is going hopelessly badly.
But please explain,” she said, motioning to the cook to place two serving dishes on a side table near her, “why you’re leaving us?
Is it because of that business we discussed at Hortensia’s house? ”
Miss Prim nodded. She’d wanted to avoid this. In the past week she felt as if she’d done nothing but take her leave of people who wanted to delve over and over into the matter.