When Miss Maurer remembered she had to take IVa for English at three, there was no more pleasure in looking out of the staffroom window at the bare trees etched on a winter sky. She turned away towards the fire and her hands were already cold with apprehension. I’ve got to be firm with them she said in silence, I’ve got to be, it’s not too late to start. She watched how, over a book, the science mistress bent half-smiling, fresh from IVa’s biology lesson with not a hair out of place, not a hair stirred by a breath or a movement from the class. Miss Maurer thought in desolation, if I smile they get worse than ever, and if I am stern they laugh behind the desks. A bell rang, and with
her stiff, cold fingers she picked up her books and went into the icy corridor that led to the classroom.

All the seventeen children in IVa were sitting on desks and window-sills and arguing passionately about cakes; it was Prue Leigh’s birthday and her mother was taking herout to tea. They said, 'Oh, Prue, you don't want to go to Lostriffs’; Lostriffs’ are awful.’ ‘They don’t have any with chocolate on.’ ‘The Bay Tree have jam puffs with sticky on top. Gosh, they’re absolutely –’ ‘Oh, Anna, those are foul.’ ‘Helen, they’re not foul.’ Miss Maurer heard it from the passage. ‘Shut up, she’s coming.’ ‘Oh, Lord, English.’ ‘Shelley.’ Touching the frozen brass of the handle, the lunatic desire came to her again, to walk away down the corridor and down the stairs and out of the iron gates at the end
of the path and along and away and on down the road. She held the knob for a second, and turned it, and went in.

Every time Miss Maurer faced IVa it seemed to her not possible that they should be no more than seventeen; in dozens, in scores she saw the pure immature lines of their faces turned towards her, their eyes clear or the deceiving light on glasses, scorn and amusement in their mouths and noses, hair impertinently curling or limp with approaching boredom. She touched the desk with her frozen fingers and set her books side by side on the slope. Beyond the window the hills were lighter with snow than the iron sky with the promise of it, and lighter than this malicious dusk in which thirty-four hands shuffled at notes and pencils and Things behind the lids of desks. 'Please,' she said, 'please be quiet at once.' Something in Prue's corner made a noise like a saw; but who would bring a saw to a lesson on Shelley?

Prue said, ‘Oh, please, Miss Maurer, I can't see to read.’ ‘Turn the light on, Mary; I said Mary. Helen and Susan, go and sit down.’ ‘Oh, Miss Maurer, it's awful with the light on.’ ‘Oh, shut up, it isn’t.’ ‘Shelley,’ said someone very low, ‘gives me a pain in the . . .’ ‘Anna, you are awful.’ ‘Neck.’ ‘Oh, Anna, you weren't going to –’ ‘Page eighteen,' said Miss Maurer; she felt her brows contract, her mouth stretch in a helpless disciplinary mask. 'Mary,' she said. In a quite flat and expressionless voice, as if it were a seed catalogue, Mary began to read: ‘O wild west wind thou breath of autumn's being thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead are driven . . .’

Almost before the bell had stopped ringing, Miss Maurer passed the child who held open the door; the child contrived, simply by standing on one leg and sliding a sideways glance, to convey both insolence and relief. Once in the corridor, her fingers warmed and unflexed on the books, she walked with elegance; from one hand she swung a small saw. That was over and she looked forward to Blake with the Sixth, whose hands lay quiet on their desks and who had a good maturing respect for their own language; and then, she thought, I will go out to tea by myself for once, somewhere rich and warm.

Prue went to meet her mother by the Abbey gates, running across the already darkening square in the importance of her birthday, haircurling out and speckled with snow under the round, dark-blue hat. Against the icy flakes in the wind her mother was only two oval dark eyes between the fur of her cap and the fur of her jacket; in fur-lined boots, her feet stamped an expensive pattern on the stones. Like a Czarist lady, she smelt of cold and Cuir de Russie.

When they opened the door of the teashop the warmth, the rosy light, the rich smell of cakes struck almost solid on their faces, almost pressed them back into the street. They sat on gilt chairs against the sweep of petunia curtains shutting out the snow. Prue said, ‘I’d like to live in a place like this.’ ‘Vulgar, darling, but at least warm,’ said her mother, shedding gloves and furs with the graceful assurance Prue admired but never managed to copy. ‘I wish I had a fur coat,’ she said. ‘A white one.’ She looked sideways at the cakes on the tables round them. ‘Mary said they didn’t have chocolate ones here, and look, it’s crawling with them.’ ‘Chocolate what?’ said her mother. ‘Darling, did you have a nice day at school?’

‘Lousyish,’ said Prue; ‘well, I mean it was all right. English was quite fun.’ ‘What did you do in English?’ ‘Oh, I forget; some sort of poetry, Shelley, I think. I meant we were ragging Maurer.’ ‘Dearest, I do get them so mixed up; which is Maurer?’ ‘Oh, Mamma, I've told you; the new one. She's one of those hags – well, she's quite kind and all that, I suppose, but people simply shouldn't let themselves, should they? I wouldn't, would you?’ ‘Let themselves what?’ said her mother vaguely. ‘Be ragged around with. I mean, if they didn't show it, nobody would, would they? Mamma, you aren't listening.’ ‘Darling, I'm sorry; I was staring rudely at someone very beautiful and it took my mind off. Do say it again.’ ‘Oh, where? Mamma, let me see,’ said Prue, turning inelegantly. ‘The girl over near the door, but you don't have to go into contortions; do sit down.’ Prue half-rose from her chair, the cups rocked; she peered over and around the intervening heads. ‘Oh, Lord, Mamma, there is Maurer; how awful. She couldn't hear what I said from there, could she ? She does look pretty cheesed off. What on earth do you think she's doing here? Mamma, I can't see anyone beautiful near the door.’ ‘Well, never mind; which is Maurer?’ ‘Well, that one – the hag by herself next to the pillar, with no hat.’ ‘Darling, that's the one I mean. In a black coat.’ With the overdone surprise so irritating in the very young, Prue sat down and stared speechless at her mother. ‘Mamma,’ she said at last, ‘you must be dotty, you must have made a mistake. You can't possibly mean Maurer. I mean, I told you, she's quite awful. It couldn’t –’ ‘You can't be expected to have any taste at your age,’ said her mother maddeningly. ‘I suppose you think anyone is plain who hasn't got golden curls. I suppose I did too. Maurer is very beautiful indeed, and you'll have to take my word for it.’ ‘But, oh gosh, what's she got? I mean, anyone can see she's a hag; her hair’s straight.’ ‘I know one does at your age, but do you really think people with straight hair are plain just like that?’ ‘Well, I mean I've got eyes; and, Mamma, she's so dull. What on earth can you see in her?’ ‘Choose your cake and let's stop arguing, it's no use at all. Darling, what a pity – you may never see a face like that again; by the time you’re old enough to appreciate it, she’ll be teaching some other horrid children, or having broods of her own, and getting wrinkles, not that in her case it would matter a great deal. Do you want the chocolate or the jam?’

‘Both, please,’ said Prue almost absently. ‘Couldn't you ask them to get us some more, Mamma?’ she said. ‘I still think you're dotty.’ Tilting back her chair to an angle from which she could see Miss Maurer's profile colourless in pale and dark against the gilt and petunia wall, she ate steadily through the cakes.

Miss Maurer's tea took her mind off IVa at the time, but in the cold morning she was no more inclined to teach them English grammar than she had been to face them with Shelley the day before; when she sat in the staffroom window at break she could, indeed, hardly bear the thought. Snow had fallen through the night and the glass framed in white feathers the dark trees with white plumes, the hills like swans. She could have watched them unmoving all the morning. But the bell rang; and walking up the corridor she felt the mask of horrid and impotent authority impose itself already on her face. Like ice and lead the books and her fingers froze together.

Prue was sitting on the window-sill above the class; she was saying, ‘Well, I know it's rot. It’s only what my mother thinks. I mean, she does know about that sort of thing so she ought to know what she’s talking about, but she must have had a sort of fit or something. No, but I mean, if she was so absolutely ravishing we could all see, or couldn't we?’ IVa were enchanted with sensation, united against Prue’s mother, yet pleasingly racked with doubt; they said, ‘Oh, Prue, her hair's straight; Prue, there must have been something funny about the light; well, your mother must have been looking at someone else; well, we can't all be off our rockers; I mean, she looks like nothing on earth; Prue, are you sure it was. . .’ From the corridor, Miss Maurer heard the murmur, the scuffle, the 'Shut up, she's coming'; feebled with apprehension, her fingers burning with cold stuck to the handle, but she went in to a profound silence. Thirty-four eyes were frozen on her face, and Miss Maurer was quite terrified. Oh, heaven, she thought, oh, what are they going to do today? But in this awful vacuum of calm they sat quiet at their desks, not whispering, not scraping, not sawing, only fixing their eyes on her, staring, gazing, as intent as owls. Too unnerved to have more than the dimmest notion of what she was saying, Miss Maurer began at random on the subjunctive mood, but her mind was quite taken up with what in heaven's name they could be staring at. Nothing odd about her clothes, which were the same as yesterday; her skirt was fastened, her suspenders held, both her shoes were black; and, in any case, the eyes all focused on her face. She ran fingers over her hair; it fell on her neck in some disorder of darkness, but not more than usual. It can only be, Miss Maurer said to herself, a very large smut or a smear; but if it is that, why don't they laugh? She turned away from the temptation to leave them and go and look in the staffroom mirror. She went on talking about the subjunctive tense and they went on staring in silence. The lesson dragged itself in tedium round the clock; but towards its end there was a gradual stirring among the class, as though it had slept and was slowly wakening. Miss Maurer, in her shell of fear and apprehension, watched it with the beginning of relief. When her questions were answered with a touch of impertinence, when Prue leaned from her desk and whispered to Helen, when heads turned inattentively to look out of the window, she was almost happy; at the first sign of insolence, she smiled. Oh, they're unbearable, Miss Maurer said to herself, but now they are back to normal I nearly like them; anything, anything rather than that shattering stare. And still smiling she looked over their heads to the first patches tf green on the white hills, the first melting of the snow.

‘Oh, Prue,’ said IVa after the lesson, ‘do you think your mother was pulling your leg? Oh, Prue, you don't!’ ‘Well, I can see what she means, too.’ ‘Gosh, Susan, well, you must be cracked.’ ‘Helen, I’m not cracked.’ ‘Well, you must say, Anna, when she smiled – ’

Miss Maurer stood in front of the staffroom mirror, still holding her books in both hands; without expression, her face looked back at her, nothing about it was different. Her eyes, her pallor, the disorder of her hair were those she saw every morning and night, disinterested, in her glass; only her eyes remembered the staring, her mouth the relief of its relaxation; and lifting her shoulders, shaking her head in the conviction she would never know, she moved across to the window and stood looking out at the trees and hills darkening and melting with the thaw.