Anthony had given up on love. He preferred punctuation and expecially he conceded the deft pauses of the semi colon. Such pauses allowed time to still itself momentarily and then to procede with a calming symmetry towrds the final stage of revelation. Anthony adjusted his tie and turned with his (much remarked) on boyish charm towards the stately mirror which framed the hallway to St Ursula’s. Someone had mentioned the murky origins of this monumental tribute to a previous head and although Anthony was never one to gossip, he had to admit a certain thrill whenever he caught his profile on the way to Staff meetings and would rememeber Mrs Hardcastle’s singular passion for Charmaine. For that was the name they said of the beguling French mistress whose loose vowels had nearly brought this celebrated private school to its knees. To ruination they said, shaking their heads in wonderment at the small photograph of Charmaine hidden in the store room, with her eyebrows raised at the sight of something they could not see. She was small and very French. Marseilles her letter of aplication had stated.But that was the trouble of course. It was her very origins that had started it all and so they went on, had made Mrs Hardcastle so very progressive.
Dr Whitstable stroked her compact leather holdall and sighed in her deliberate way, counting out the breaths before reminding whoever was sat in the red window seats that Mrs hardcastle had never worn pink before her staff and that morning, when she paraded her vision for the new extensions before the assembled staff, the glimpse of the pink camisole beneath her dark grey suit was enough to confirm her own so -so very reluctant suspicions. Of course it had all started with the incident of the mexican vanilla and things had just spiralled so inevitably one had to say, that everything became out of control within days. Everthything except of course one had to say, Mme Charmaine.
For Dr Whitstable loved poetry and found the words of those long dead a strange comfort to the daily routine of school life. Whenever she had acquired another significant and excellently bound edition of a poet close to her own heart and the syllabus in question( how opportune their close relation) she would make her way to the head’s vast mahogany study and leave the crisp edged copy for Mrs hardcastle insightful persual. On this day in question it was a leather bound copy of the Complete keats( with letters) which had arrived via Sergeant at morning break. Geoffrey Miller combined just the right amount of bluff civility with humility for Dr Whistable( and she was not alone) to enjoy their two minutes discussions about the playing fields, the new cook and so on. He would always leave at just the right moment and then Dr Whitstable would open her new book and begin reading, a model of academic diligence and curiousity;something the school would rely upon in the stormy days to come when Charmaine’s effect became so very clear.