"Miss Pym Disposes"

[fiefoe]

Josephine Tey's finely-wrought campus novel is perhaps only a mystery in after-thought. Interesting to learn that the author herself went to a Physical Training college as well.

• Yes, it certainly was early; the world had that unmoving just-an-apparition look of early morning.
• Miss Joliffe was the housekeeper, Lucy remembered, and appreciated the nickname for so grim a piece of humanity. (Jolly)
• Lucy's mind always worked like that. It wasn't sufficient for it to visualise one horror; it must visualise the opposite one too. She sat so long considering the rival horrors, and enjoying the sensation of doing nothing,
• The blue eye came to rest on a mule which was lying in the middle of the floor, and stayed there as if fascinated. It was a pale blue satin mule; very feminine, very thriftless, very feathery. A most undeniable piece of nonsense.
• Oh, dear, I don't know when I'm going to do that plasma. As for the coats of the stomach, they simply baffle me, my dear. I don't really believe there are four, anyhow. It's just a conspiracy. Miss Lux says look at tripe, but I don't see that tripe proves anything.'
• It was quite a business getting Gray out of College. Do you know Gray? About the size of those old family Bibles that rested on the parlour table. There was actually a rumour once that half the girls at Leys were pregnant, but it turned out that it was only the odd silhouette that everyone made with Gray stuffed up the front of their Sunday bests.'
• 'Yes, thank you,' beamed little Miss Morris, pausing to dance on one toe, 'but I think I'm in a different sort of trouble now. You see, I had my arm round George's waist, sort of steadying him after hanging him up, when Miss Lux came in. I'll never be able to explain away that, I'm afraid.'
  'Life is difficult,' agreed Lucy.
  'However, I think I really do know my insertions now,' called little Miss Morris, speeding away over the grass.
• I said 'What shall I do? What shall I do?' About my lover, you understand. And she said: 'You can blow your nose and get out of the country.' So I said I would go to Paris and live in a garret and paint pictures of an eye and a seashell sitting on a plate. But she said: 'You will not. You will go to England and sweat a bit.' So, as I always listen to my grandmother, and since I like dancing and am very good at it, I came here. To Leys.
• An illustration from a history book? A portrait in a gallery? <> Not, anyhow, the face of a games mistress at a girls' school. Definitely not. It was round faces like Mary Innes's that history was built.
• 'What you see before you, Miss Pym, is a collection of skeletons out of cupboards. There is no physical training student who is not a Secret Eater.'
• 'We have spread our dreams under your feet,' mocked Nash, covering Rouse's broken sentence. 'And a fine rich carpet of carbohydrate they are, to be sure.'
• Not inimical. Merely detached. Their eyes went to her, and came away again, expressionlessly. No one commented on what she had said. Their indifference left her marooned in the moment.
  'I think it's fun to show people what we can do,' she added, a hint of defence in her tone.
  They let that pass too. Never before had Lucy met that negative English silence in its full perfection; in its full cruelty. Her own edges began to curl up in sympathy.
• A damn silly question, thought Lucy; and wondered how a good respectable middle-class English couple had produced anything so like the original serpent as Madame Lefevre.
• Young in years a few of her acquaintances might be, but they were already bowed down with the weight of the world's wrongs and their own importance. It was nice to meet a morning-of-the-world youngness for a change.
• there had been several weeks, one spring, when she had thought quite seriously of accepting Alan, in spite of his Adam's apple. It would be nice, she had thought, to be cherished for a change. What had stopped her was the realisation that the cherishing would have to be mutual. That she would inevitably have to mend socks, for instance. She didn't like feet. Even Alan's.)
• Lucy said that she had had a success, which was not the same thing as being distinguished unfortunately;
• She moved in silence down the shaded path, a bright dragon-fly of a creature, graceful and alien; and Lucy was surprised to find that she was capable of so unbroken a quiet.
• Lucy remembered the concentration of purpose in those level brows; she had been right in her face-reading; if Mary Innes had an ambition it would not lightly be given up. Really, eyebrows were the most helpful things. If psychology ever went out of fashion she would write a book about face-reading.
• 'They like it, you know,' Lux said. 'In their heart they like the rush and the overwork. It makes them feel important. Very few of them will ever have any legitimate reason for feeling important, and so it is comforting for them to have the image of it at least.'
• It had been an up-to-some-thing look. Not a Father Christmas up-to-something, either. Quite definitely it was something she was a little ashamed of. Astigmatic enough she might be to find Rouse worthy, but not cock-eyed enough to be unaware that Innes had a prior claim.
• 'He's that weary-looking creature who looks like a moulting eagle,' Stewart said, too busy about her hostess's duties to be aware of the reaction on Lucy: that was a horribly vivid summing-up of Edward Adrian, as seen by the unsentimental eyes of modern youth.
• And if, thought Lucy pitying, you hadn't felt that backing out of this party would be put down to your being the only one present not yet to have a post. She liked the girl who had dried her eyes and thought of the bedroom slipper excuse and come gaily to the party that was none of hers.
• I boasted about it to my cousin, but he said that was most unseemly. In England one waits to be asked about one's successes.' <> 'Yes,' agreed Lucy, sadly, 'and the worst of it is so few people ask. The number of lights under bushels in Great Britain is tragic.'
• She would go away deep into the green and white and yellow countryside, and smell the may and lie in the grass and feel the world turning on its axis, and remember that it was a very large world, and that College griefs were wild and bitter but soon over and that in the Scale of Things they were undeniably Very Small Beer.
• The hedge of may was a creamy foam on her right and on her left the buttercups were a golden sea. The elms, half-floating in the warm light, were anchored each to its purple shadow, and daisies patterned the short grass under her feet. It was a lovely world, a fine round gracious world, and no day for—Oh, poor Innes! poor Innes!—no day for the world to turn over and crush one.
• 'Having your teeth kicked in,' Beau had called it. Their reactions were remarkably similar. The only difference was that Desterro saw the insult, and Beau the injury.
• Lucy, who by prayer, counting, and determination, could just get across the bath, took no part in this exercise in spite of warm invitations to come in and be cool.
• But he had come out this afternoon to Leys to see Catherine Lux, and his eyes followed her round like an eager dog's. The Catherine whose estimate of him was a little hot water added to the tea-pot. It was all very strange.
• (Richard III play:) 'A criminal libel on a fine man, a blatant piece of political propaganda, and an extremely silly play,' Lux opined.
• It was Lucy's private opinion that injustice was harder to bear than almost any other inflicted ill... It was the helpless rage that was worst; it consumed one like a slow fire. There was no outlet, because there was nothing one could do about it. A very destructive emotion indeed. Lucy supposed that she had been like Innes, and lacked a sense of humour. But did the young ever have the detachment necessary for a proper focusing of their own griefs?
• They remembered things and asked about them, referred to things she had said, and generally behaved as if she not only was of importance in their scheme of things, but was actually part of that scheme. And Lucy, used to the gushing indifference of literary parties, felt her heart warm afresh to them.
• And a great burst of applause greeted them. As always, the English were moved by a gallant failure where an easy success left them merely polite. They were expressing at once their sympathy and their admiration.
• Henrietta who had come back from West Larborough so strangely thin and old-looking. As if the frame she was strung on had collapsed and the stuffing had shifted. Like a badly stuffed toy after a month in the nursery.
• Innes heard it and struggled to her feet. 'If you'll forgive me,' she said, 'I'll go and dash some cold water on myself. That will stop it.'
  Lucy thought it remarkable that a girl so racked with sobs that she could hardly speak should prescribe for herself with such detachment; as if she were another person from this hysterical individual who had taken possession of her and was making such an exhibition of herself.
• said with her customary frankness: 'You are not a very good packer, are you? Neither am I. It is a pedestrian talent.'