Spying on Miss Muller (10 page)

She nodded graciously.

What if I stopped right now and said, “Did you know Miss Müller's likely a German spy, and Greta Ludowski has a thought of killing her?” That would get Old Rose out of her chair in a hurry. That would take her mind off my father. I backed myself so fast, I bumped into the door.

Pat Crow was waiting her turn to go in. “Is she there?” she asked.

“Is water wet?” I asked. “She's crouched like an octopus with an ear at the end of each arm.”

I stood there in the hall for a moment, looking up at the portrait of Miss Helen Maguire, headmistress of Alveara 1911 to 1924. My chest hurt. Miss Maguire wore a dark dress with a high banded collar, almost like the one on the Nazi uniform, except that Miss Maguire had a cameo brooch pinned on the front of hers. Her face danced and dazzled through the blur in my eyes. My mother had a cameo.

My father had a medal he got in World War I when he fought in the North Irish Horse Regiment. He also had a piece of shrapnel in the palm of his right hand, so his hand didn't open all the way. I guess the doctors at the front couldn't get the shrapnel out. “They poked at it plenty,” Daddy told me. “I think the one who worked on me was a dentist.” His palm curved in a way that just fit the back of my neck when he was telling me, “I do love you, darlin'. I'm going to do better. I'm taking the pledge, so I am.”

I pressed my face to the wall, found my hanky in the pocket of my tunic, and blew my nose. At least he was alive, I told myself, not like Greta's father. And he wasn't any worse; it was just... you forgot how bad he was when you didn't see him every day. You forgot.

W
HEN I LIFTED
my head, I saw Miss Müller coming in the front door. Her long, beige raincoat was dark with wet and she had on the funny little rubber overshoes she wore instead of Wellingtons. Somehow she always looked romantic and foreign. Anyone could tell she wasn't ordinary Irish. Miss Müller was carrying one of the small white paper bags from the College Chemists that was just outside the Alveara gate. Not that we had gates anymore. The gates and railings had been taken away to be melted into bullets.

Miss Müller smiled a timid kind of smile. “Hello, Jessie.”

“Hello.” I gave my nose a last feeble blow and put my hanky in my tunic pocket.

Her face became sad. “You were calling your parents? They were worried, I'm sure.”

“Yes, very.”

I had to pass her if I wanted to go back to the dorm, which I did want to. No use trying to go back to class—last bell would be going any second. Normally, before the war, I would have been thrilled to have Miss Müller talk with me, maybe even walk along the corridor beside me. There was a sort of fairy-tale air about her. But now I just wanted to get away.

I hurried along as if I had a very important appointment.

“Jessie.” Her voice stopped me. “May I speak with you?”

“Me? Now?”

“Yes. Please wait. If you are going back to the dorm, I will come with you.”

“Well, I was...” Where else could I be going? “All right,” I muttered in a grudging, surly voice, and I stood miserably while she sat on the carved hall bench and took off her overshoes.

“There.” She shook water from them and glanced down at the College Chemists bag. “I walked down to get some aspirin,” she said, as if I needed an explanation of where she'd been. I needed an explanation of where she'd been last night, not now.

“You seem to buy a lot of aspirin,” I said.

“I have headaches,” she said.

“Maybe you don't get enough sleep,” I said. I was astonished that I was talking this way to a teacher. I reminded myself that she wasn't a teacher, she was a German. I didn't look at her as she began to walk beside me.

“You're right,” she said. “I don't sleep well at all.”

We took a few more silent steps. Then she touched my arm and said again, “Jessie.” She stopped and I had to stop too. Her dark hair curled against the paleness of her face. The rain had brought out the faint smell of apricots, the way the smell of a honeysuckle hedge is sweeter after a summer shower.

“You were in my German class today,” she said. “You saw what happened with... with...”

Sometimes still Miss Müller had trouble with an English word. We used to think it was very attractive and we'd try forgetting a word ourselves, looking puzzled the way she did. On us it just looked dumb. I supplied the word for her now. “I saw what happened with the ball bearings.”

She nodded. “Also in the dining room, there was that hissing.” She bit her lip.

“Yes.”

Her fingers folded the paper bag at the top, unfolded it, folded again. “It is hard for me,” she said. “I understand why, but it is still hard.”

Nancy Eden and Dolly McConnell came walking along the corridor toward us carrying their violin cases. They'd be on their way back from orchestra practice early. They gave us inquisitive looks as they passed, and Dolly bared her teeth wires in a semismile and said, “Guten Tag, Miss Müller.”

“Guten Tag,” Miss Müller replied.

I was wishing they hadn't seen me standing there talking to her. German lover, they'd think. Probably say it, too. I'd tell them she stuck to me like adhesive tape.

“Does it make you uncomfortable to be seen with me?” Miss Müller asked gently. “I'm sorry.”

“It's all right,” I muttered, though it wasn't.

“I wanted to ask you a favor, Jessie.”

Oh cheese! A favor from me. I edged back till I felt the safety of the corridor wall behind me.

“I have always considered you my friend,” Miss Müller said, “in spite of...” She stopped, but I didn't think it was because she'd lost another English word. In this half-light her eyes were dark blue, almost the navy blue of our uniform.

“You know, I can't help being half German. I didn't choose that my two countries should be at war.”

Pat Crow was coming out of Old Rose's sitting room now, heading along the corridor toward us in one direction, and Betsy Crawford was rushing and puffing from the other direction. Betsy passed us first. “Crumbs, I'm late,” she said. “Old Rose will have a cow. Oh, excuse me, Miss Müller. I didn't realize it was you with Jessie.” Betsy Crawford was blind as a beetroot and wouldn't admit to it because she didn't want to wear glasses. She also always had gaps at the top of her stockings. Lizzie Mag said it was because she couldn't see.

“She can
feel,
can't she,” Ada asked. It was true. We were always checking for gaps with our fingers, pulling the legs of our knickers down so they met the stocking tops.

Betsy turned in my direction, and her look said “Talking to the enemy,” plainer than if she'd spoken.

“Gaps,” I said loudly. Her face got red as fire and I was glad.

When she left I said, “I don't know what you think I can do, Miss Müller,” speaking faster than fast before Pat Crow got to us in about fifteen seconds.

“You could do a lot. You may not know this, but you're well liked and quite a leader. You could perhaps soften them toward me. Try to explain I'm not against...” She stopped as Pat Crow reached us.

Pat ignored Miss Müller entirely. “You know what my dad just told me?” she asked, looking only at me. “One of those houses on the Shore Road got a direct hit last night. The father was coming off the night shift in the shipyard. He's a welder. And he came rushing home after the siren and everything, and when he got there, there was no house, just this big hole in the ground. His wife and two children were inside.” Pat lowered her voice. “They could only find bits of them, Jessie. Isn't that awful?”

Miss Müller shifted her little rain boots from one hand to the other and kept her head lowered.

“Even their dog was killed,” Pat said. “My daddy said the man went ranting, raving mad. They had to hold him down and they had to get an ambulance and take him to Purdysburn.” She glared at Miss Müller. “In case you don't know, Miss Müller, Purdysburn is the hospital for the insane.”

“I'm sure the planes didn't mean to drop a bomb on innocent people.” Miss Müller's English was suddenly so bad I could hardly understand it.

“The RAF would
never
kill civilians,” Pat said coldly. “They're trained not to, and anyway they're too decent.”

Miss Müller bit her lip. “Lots of Germans are being killed every day and night. You think your Royal Air Force doesn't drop bombs on us?”

I stared at her, dumbfounded.

“Well,” Pat Crow said, “now we know where
you
stand.”

Pat stalked off, but my feet seemed glued to the floor.
You? Us?

“Jessie!” Miss Müller tried to put her hand on my arm again, but I squirmed away. “I was not the one who dropped the bomb,” she said.

“We know that. And we know other things, too.” The glue had come unstuck, freeing my feet, and I was running toward the dorm. An Alveara girl did not run except in case of fire or hemorrhage. We'd had that pounded into us, but who cared? I passed Pat Crow, who shouted “Jessie” also and tried to catch up. But Pat was as thick as a stump and didn't run too well. Nobody could have caught me. I ran to the dorm, jerked open the door of my cubie, and threw myself on the bed.

I was still there staring up at the ceiling when last bell rang. I heard Miss Müller come into the dorm. I heard her door open. She'd be hanging up her wet raincoat now, putting her overshoes on the high shelf, brushing her wet hair. Then sliding out the picture of her Nazi father, the two of them smiling at each other.

There was noise and shouting as everyone came back from last period. Locker doors slammed, and then Lizzie Mag and Ada and Maureen came clumping into the dorm.

“Jessie, are you here already?” Lizzie Mag tapped on my door, the others behind her. “You were right,” she said, beaming. “No tennis. It's raining as usual.”

“Look what Ada got,” Maureen said, and Ada hefted up a big cardboard box with her name in dark print across the front. “Tuck box... from home,” she said.

I sat up and brushed my hair away from my face.

“Your eyes are all red and puffy,” Maureen accused.

“So?” I asked.

“Did you make your call? Was your daddy bad again?” Lizard asked in her little sympathetic voice.

I nodded. “But there's so much more to tell you.” I kept my voice low and pointed at Miss Müller's room.

Ada slid the tuck-box string off and we leaned over the contents. Her mother had sent a barm brack loaf filled with currants and raisins, a jar of Marmite to spread on it, and a sponge cake wrapped in a tea cloth. I got my long metal nail file, sharp as a dagger, that I kept in my dresser drawer, and Ada hacked the barm brack into curranty hunks that we ate as I talked.

I told about slipping into Miss Müller's room earlier.

Lizard gasped. “You'd have been expelled, Jess, if they'd caught you.”

I told about the photograph behind the other photograph. But I didn't tell how I'd heard the maids talking about Lizard's letters. I'd never mention that. We discussed everything in low whispers. Then Maureen went to get our tooth mugs and fill them with water, because Marmite always stuck to the tops of our mouths. It was all right if we spread it on bread, but the taste by itself was gummy. Still, the salty, beef-flavored stuff was more delicious than anything else in the world.

Then Lizzie Mag said “Sh!” and put her fingers to her lips, and we listened to Miss Müller's door softly open and close as she left the dorm.

“Probably going to the teachers' lounge to act as nice as pie,” Maureen said, and Ada closed her eyes and said dramatically: “ ‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.' ”

“Exactly,” Maureen agreed.

I told them how Miss Müller had asked me to speak up for her and then how she talked of
them
and
us.
“Well, now we know,” I said, repeating Pat Crow's words.

Ada set the sponge cake on the bed and sliced it up. “Why would she think you'd be on her side?” she asked. “What a cheek!”

“Because Jessie is kind,” Lizzie Mag said, giving me one of her sweet little smiles.

We ate the cake, the dusting of sugar smudging mustaches over our lips, snow sugar dropping on my quilt. The raspberry jam inside had dried a bit, but the cake was still wonderful.

“Your mum sends the best boxes,” Lizzie Mag said.

“It's because we have the grocer's shop. She can get eggs and butter and sugar to bake with.” Ada peered into the Marmite jar. “I have to save half of everything for Jack. Good thing Mummy sends the package to me first. Those boy boarders would gorb it all down.” She began wrapping up the rest of the cake.

“My ayah used to make delicious ladoos and samosas,” Lizard said, “especially at festival times.” She lay back on the bed. “They were always so small and so perfect, filled with meat and spices, and we'd go, my daddy and mummy and I, to the festival. Ayah would come too, and she'd carry me.”

Lizard's eyes were half closed as if she were dreaming. “Diwali... the festival of lights. Everything's so beautiful. The candles flickering in the dark and the smell of incense. Sometimes my daddy and mummy would dance together, and sometimes he'd dance with me. And he was so tall and so handsome. He'd call me his little princess because that's my name, you see....” She paused.

“Of course. Elizabeth Margaret,” I said, and touched her hand, which was covered with sugar. And I thought how strange it was, all of us pretending about our fathers, me, Lizard, Miss Müller. All of us except Greta, and her father was dead. You probably don't have to pretend anymore when your father's dead. I shivered.

“Could I have one more lick of Marmite?” Maureen asked, unaware as usual of the vibrations around her. Ada said unless Maureen was hit over the head with a cricket bat, she didn't know what was happening.