Free Miss Timmins' School for Girls by Nayana Currimbhoy Page A

teachers from St. Paul’s School, and their romances were imagined in graphic detail by the girls. Two years later, they both married their young men and moved to Australia. They were nice girls, ready to have a good time, but both were grounded quite firmly in reason and responsibility.
    Miss Mathews and Miss Jacobs were Syrian Christians from South India, very conservative and pious. They had an innocent air about them; I presumed they read only romance novels and never saw movies.
    Their first names were Jacinta and Susan. Jacinta was a waif of a woman who, but for her face, could pass for a girl of twelve, playing house with her mother’s sari wrapped loosely around her. She would be reduced to paroxysms of coyness when Miss Nelson addressed her. Miss Nelson would continue the conversation, smiling faintly and condescendingly as Jacinta shook her shoulders and her head and fluttered and giggled to an extent that I was moved to feel sorry for her naïveté. Jacinta taught science to the seniors and was said to be brilliant.
    Susan Jacobs was older, a poised woman who mostly wore starched white saris. She held her head high, and moved in a calm and dignified manner. She conducted her life as an ambassador for the Syrian Christians. “We are a very small community of South Indian Brahmins, converted by St. Thomas the Apostle,” she told me.
    â€œYou mean St. Thomas as in the Bible?” I asked, trying not to sound incredulous.
    â€œYes, the very one,” she said with a quiet pride. “He landed in South India, in 52 A.D., and is buried in Kerala itself.”
    There were quite a few Syrian Christians in Timmins, both teachers and students, and if any of them failed to behave with decorum and dignity, Susan Jacobs took it quite personally. Her dark face was pitted with pockmarks, and one presumed that she was consigned to spinsterhood because of this. She talked softly and had a generally sad air about her, though she did have quite a pleasant smile when she could muster one, showing a small set of gleaming white teeth.
    The four of them gathered around me when I arrived and ushered me into their drawing room. There was no sign of Miss Prince. I had not seen her since the day I ran into the rain and looked up and saw her eyes boring into me. I had heard of the debacle with Shobha secondhand and had been imagining my next encounter with her in blurry outlines. I was quite relieved not to have it happen quite so soon.
    Sunbeam was a comfortable house halfway up the Panchgani hill, a twenty-minute walk from the bazaar. A long, enclosed veranda worked as the drawing and dining room. The side tables, piled high with papers and books, were draped in dark green tablecloths. All the teachers’ rooms opened out into the veranda. The last room was closed, though I could see the light on through the painted glass panes. I presumed that was the room belonging to the wayward Miss Prince.
    The teachers were determined to show me a merry time, and I was happy for that. We got into gossiping about the girls. I learned that night that Shobha had many boyfriends—her father even let her meet them during the holidays—and that Bindu Mathais’ mother had been sent to an insane asylum. In the staff room the teachers talked of the girls, and in the classrooms the girls talked about the teachers. It was the safest and most satisfying of topics.
    The only teacher who was fair game for both was Miss Raswani, the Hindi teacher. Miss Raswani walked straight as a ramrod, her sari always severely pinned and pleated, her thick white hair pulled back in a tight bun. Her pupils had a white rim around them. She had a loud, hoarse voice that terrorized the whole entire school. She had formed no alliances and had no champion but Miss Nelson. She sat in corners, looked at the floor when she walked, and never had conversations. If you ever taught in a class next to her, you could hear her hoarse voice roaring,