The Finishing Touch Read online

  ‘Make sure she’s left none of her appurtenances behind.’

  ‘I will indeed. And—Antonia? You must tell the girls. Or has it leaked out? You——’

  ‘I shall make a small announcement tomorrow. I shall beg for their discretion.’

  ‘I think that is very wise of you, Antonia.’

  ‘I think—I think I should be foolish not to. In my position.’

  ‘My dear.’ The grenouille voice was moved. ‘This means great things for the School.’

  It would mean, Antonia thought, but without saying so, Dame Antonia Mount and Hetty Braid, M.V.O. It would obviously be that way round, even though the Prospectus affirmed the two Persons co-equal, co-eval, co-proprietors …

  ‘When I think’, said the moved voice, descending to bass, approaching, actually laying its arm about Antonia’s stole, ‘of our years together …’

  ‘Sylvie Plash’, said Antonia.

  ‘O yes.’ The hand dropped, the voice rose to its normal baritone. ‘I suppose I’d better get it over with.’

  ‘I suppose you had.’

  ‘I never know what to say on these occasions.’

  ‘Tell her men are coarse.’

  ‘Antonia, sometimes I feel that you——’

  ‘You’re wonderful; you spare me so much’, Antonia said. ‘Have a drink, to nerve you before you go.’

  ‘I never like to go to the girls’ rooms smelling of drink.’

  ‘I think you carry your scruples too far’, said Antonia’s faint voice in the dusk.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Too far … After all, their education … I mean, to a discreet extent … We are supposed to send them away finished. Though in some cases’—trailing; barely audible—‘I prefer to think I’ve sent them away just begun …’

  ‘I shall have a cup of tea afterwards’, said Miss Braid. ‘Can I get you a drink, dear, before I go?’

  ‘My dear, if you would. It’s a night, perhaps, for Chartreuse?’

  ‘Yellow or green?’ said Miss Braid’s voice from the darkness of a cupboard. ‘I can hardly see which is which.’

  ‘Then put out both, my dear, if you would … I shall be drinking to your success.’

  ‘You’re so considerate of me, Antonia.’

  ‘I am a person’, said Antonia, ‘who all her life long has been unable to decide whether she prefers green or yellow Chartreuse.’

  *

  Twenty-six heads bent over the School’s die-stamped paper. Nineteen right hands, eight left hands (Miss Onike Rondjohns was ambidextrous) scurried along (slightly diagonal) lines. At least thirteen tongue tips protruded in concentration.

  Scurrying pens on the paper made a noise like cicadas.

  Outside, as the sun rose to zenith, cicadas made a noise like scurrying pens.

  Looking down the table between the two rows of bent heads, Antonia reflected that this Sunday there was none of the usual search for something to write home, and noted that a girl half way down the table on the left had the prettiest pink tongue tip. The tips of the pens wrote:

  ‘… de Sa Majesté la reine …’

  ‘… Mittwoch …’

  ‘… discreet, especially with the Press and sailors.’

  Girls whose parents were divorced were issued with two sheets of writing paper.

  As often as she dared, Regina Outre-Mer glanced to the top of the table: to the beautiful, spare features, the refined flesh, the skin which seemed always to be seen by moonlight, even when the sun was at zenith …

  Returning to the paper, Regina’s gaze fell on the words die-stamped at the left, in small discreet capitals:

  CO-PROPRIETORS: MISS ANTONIA MOUNT

  MISS H. BRAID

  It was almost a signature.

  Stabbed by temptation, pierced by a sudden draught of lime scent from the french windows, Regina decided to tear out the sacred three words.

  Stealthily, muffling what her right hand was doing with her left, tenth of an inch by tenth of an inch, she ripped the words free and dropped the little oblong of paper down the front of her dress. No one had noticed. The pens all round still grated like cicadas. She wondered what explanatory postscript she could add to her letter: but it came to her that, whatever excuse she made, her family must instantly guess the truth from that tell-tale little trou, that speaking wound. ‘Miss Mount?’

  ‘My dear?’

  But she called everyone my dear. Some of the girls said it was because she could not remember their names.

  ‘Might I have another piece of paper?’

  ‘Your parents haven’t divorced, my dear?’ Such a world-fatigued tenderness in the voice.

  ‘No.’ (Regina had seen somewhere an advertisement which professed to cure blushing: it could hardly be efficacious in so extreme, so fevered, a case.) ‘I’ve spoilt my first piece.’

  ‘My dear.’ Wearily the white thin hands let one another loose from their presidential clasp on top of the mound of paper, picked a sheet, passed it to the girl on their right, who passed it on …

  Regina received it, jealous of the hands which had contaminated it en route. How wise the Roman rite, she thought, to practise its communions so directly.

  They’re pretty when they blush, white peonies tinged, through some error in ancestry, with crimson, Antonia thought. Yet all the same, she was weary.

  She picked a piece of paper for herself, took up a pen; then paused, almost too weary to write.

  This heat.

  Her eyelids drooped over the paper’s heading. If she became Dame, they would need a new die-stamp.

  She asserted her pen.

  ‘Hetty, dearest——’

  Perhaps if they got a new die-stamp she could prevail on Hetty to appear as Miss Henrietta rather than Miss H. The girls all knew her name, in any case. Antonia herself positively requested certain girls to call her by her first name, and she was persuaded Hetty did the same. Perhaps even, in some cases, with the same girls …

  The thought enlivened her, and the tip of her own tongue protruded a touch as she scribbled:

  ‘I know how fiendishly busy you are, but could you come and relieve me? I think it must be the sun … Yrs, A. P.S.’, the note continued on the same line, ‘could you, when you come, count six down on the left-hand side and tell me the girl’s name later?’

  She folded the note, reached for an envelope from the box in front of her and then paused. Re-opening the note, she added:

  ‘P.P.S. Also the one on the other side, with the retroussé nose and curls, who blushes easily.’

  She put the note into its envelope and handed it to the girl sitting next to her. ‘My dear, would you seal that for me?’

  The girl’s eyes sought Antonia’s over the girl’s tongue as it moistened the flap.

  How essentially moist the girls were.

  ‘My dear, would you now take it to Miss Braid?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Mount.’

  How willing, how essentially offering they were, how convinced that the offer of their little persons could salve …

  ‘I have a slight headache’, Antonia confessed when the girl was already at the door. ‘You will probably find Miss Braid doing something with the bed linen.’

  O my dear, thought Regina Outre-Mer, mentally echoing Miss Mount’s own inflexion, stabbed by pity for Miss Mount’s headache and her own heartache because Miss Mount was clearly sending for Miss Braid to take her place, o my dear, my dear (as if praying; as if a litany), 1 will never be indiscreet with the Press, or with sailors (as if promising a votive offering on condition of deliverance from storm at sea) or in any other way (forgive also those sins I have unknowingly committed or have forgotten to confess) … Rocking to and fro, as though tossing in storm at sea, Regina wriggled the die-stamped words in such a way as surreptitiously to caress them against the flesh of her bosom.

  *

  ‘The beast’, said Eugénie Plash to her plain sister Sylvie as they walked beneath the limes. ‘When?’

  �
�Well, last night. At least, that’s when she came to me. When she knocked, I thought it was Antonia.’

  ‘Ah, yes’, said Eugénie; ‘yes, I see …’

  Veiled, veuve-like, behind the muslin Hetty Braid had tacked across the open window (‘It’s no trouble and I’m taking no risks with that headache, dearest’), Antonia looked down on her girls accomplishing that stroll before luncheon on which Hetty insisted. Hetty believed the siesta after luncheon to be an unhealthy habit for girls if not forerun by exercise before. ‘It gives them an appetite.’

  Yes, well I suppose it does, Antonia’s thoughts agreed, wondering whether she would take Tio Pepe or madeira for her own apéritif.

  The sun was still at zenith or even more so, if that was possible: as indeed it was: it was possible for this southern sun to clamp itself unmoving above an entire day—the long, long meridian du midi …

  In a sense this heat was its own apéritif. Even so, Antonia poured a glass of madeira from a decanter strangely stoppered.

  The Plash girls, she was pleased to notice, sensibly put up their parasols as they stepped from the shadow of the lime trees. Two pretty Plash parasols (such a well-dressed woman, their mother); beneath, one pretty Plash head, one plain … The girls had different fathers, of course.

  The lime vista, the staggered lapse of the terracing, the pretty cupid-fountain (Hetty had insisted on a slight alteration; it had cost her some embarrassment to explain to the plumber du midi what she wanted): Antonia’s eye was pleased. Her palate prickled likewise in a response almost erotic to the madeira, that liquid neither male nor female or, rather, both, that part-deep, part-treble glow, that viola among wines … Fortified, Antonia added; one of the strongest, most vibrant, almost bracing, of words.

  A clump of girls passed, on the narrow, gravelly path, a clump of hydrangeas. A charming sight. Which bowed?

  A butterfly sought the lavender grove …

  Antonia was not disturbed—hardly, indeed, piqued—even by the sight of the squat young Badessa di Poggibonsi, the only secular Abbess (the title had been in the female line of her family since the proto-renaissance) in all Italy and yet all sallow bare skin (bare, that was, but for its black hairs) and white—sailcloth, Antonia supposed it must be; laundered to nautical pitch, it billowed like sails over the Abbatial podge—the Badessa picking her way across the tiny plot where Hetty tried to grow grass: picking because the Badessa was wearing, of course, those white sandals of hers which pained Hetty by their stiletto heels (ultimate degeneracy into which had descended the old high Italian custom of the stiletto) but which offended Antonia rather by their open front (such sallow, rounded, wriggelly toes had the Badessa) and the fact that their fastening was a large white plastic daisy.

  And yet, thought Antonia peaceably, it was foolish of Hetty to try to grow grass in a climate so plainly non-supporting of it. ‘Where we live’, she had already told Hetty, ‘lawn means our handkerchiefs.’

  The entire view suggested to Antonia a pleasing sense of activity just sharpened by anticipation: the still, warm air hardly perceptibly quickened in expectation of the luncheon bell; bees suspended above ashy lavender flowers, the two Plash heads (with so much to discuss, of course, about the sailor and his note) buzzing together (they had settled down now, almost out of sight, behind the asparagus trenches); Hetty about to return—surely it was almost time?—from the last of her Sunday expeditions …

  Antonia’s eye discerned Fraise du Bois, the ‘lady from a southern state’ (thus her guardians had described her in their letter of application) actually in—indeed, flat in—the lower asparagus trench: alas, Fraise, only nineteen and already well advanced down the slope pioneered by her cousin Blanche … only nineteen, twice divorced, and already registered as a narcotics addict. (The authorities were not even mean, really, in what they considered an adequate quota.) ‘My dear, we must help the poor thing’, had been Hetty’s first response when Antonia informed her that the new pupil had been accepted; later, Hetty had begun to dread the responsibility; but when the ‘unfortunate child’ had been in the School a fortnight Hetty confessed that she was less trouble than all the other pupils put together. ‘Evidemment’, Antonia had calmly replied vindicating her original decision, ‘droguée as the poor creature is from dawn to dusk …’

  Only when the bi-monthly supply was late had there once been trouble.

  The Plash girls were joined by the President’s daughter of what dark republic it was Antonia could never remember; but very dark—évidemment: the black skin, blue-damson-bloomed as night heavens, dustily moved—whispered, it seemed, visually—behind the asparagus ferns.

  (‘I thought …’ Sylvie Plash was explaining all over again; ‘… and then when the door opened and it was only Braid, I burst into tears.’)

  Obviously the girl took after her mother, the President. When the girl first came to the School, Madame President had unfortunately (to judge from the daughter, Antonia would have liked to see her) been too busy to escort her child; she had sent instead a withered black man, one of her Cabinet or, was it?—Antonia could not remember—one of her husbands? One, perhaps, of the girl’s putative fathers? But the girl did not, certainly, resemble him.

  ‘A natural show-case’, Antonia had said when she first saw the bloomy skin,’ for jewels’. And at the School’s anniversary party, the girl had appeared in emeralds (of obvious value; though rather curiously placed). Even so Antonia, though éblouie in all conscience, was not satisfied that every experiment had been made. She would have liked to try sapphires (the lucid on the dusky blue); or even, throwing away value and returning, rapturous, to nature, orchids; even, she now thought from her window, an—here; or perhaps there—asparagus fern. The girl even possessed, so Hetty had reported on returning from one of her tours on affairs of ménage, dusky dusting powder …

  (But was it, Antonia prickled with the question, brown or blue?)

  (‘She thought’, Sylvie Plash was explaining, ‘I was crying because I was sorry.’)

  Such a lesson, the bloomy skin, Antonia thought, for the Poggibonsian Abbess with her sallowness. But would she, in that intimate proximity behind the asparagus trench into which she was even now sinking, learn it? Would she even carry away, on her sallowness, the faintest brushing of the dusting powder? The Poggibonsian shoulders, so tightly buttoned into the white sailcloth, and buttoned, of course, down the back, disappeared; and next the white, tight Poggibonsian bottom, also buttoned down the back; so suggestive of the girl, Antonia thought, if all her clothes back-buttoned (as they well might): and also, surely?, agony to sit on buttons; or even, behind an asparagus trench, recline on buttons …

  Horrible, square-necked white sailcloth blouse; Antonia was glad it was removed from her sight (only a white plastic daisy protruded a-botanically through the fern): a sleeveless blouse, of course: could Antonia ask Hetty to murmur to the squat little Abbess about possible treatments for ses dessous de bras? (Hetty’s moment of embarrassment with the plumber du midi was surely sufficient years ago, sufficiently lived down …?)

  Miss Jones, the Monacan heiress (but not nun-like), Antonia observed, was already in her bikini again. The child was barely out of church …

  Surely Hetty must be returning soon? It could not be that Antonia’s ease of temper was going to be spoilt by—hunger?

  Sunday morning was, for Hetty, a succession of drives, with diminishing numbers of charges. First, most sensible, most straightforward, the Catholic girls, the largest flock (quite half the pupils), with Hetty their—no, Antonia checked her fancy-rioting vision, not even the eye of affection could see in Hetty a shepherdess; but their sheepdog, sturdy, reliable, brisk: the Catholic girls, in—to the town; in—to the Catholic église; out; back to the School: such a sensible, quick religion Antonia thought it, and Mass at such a sensible hour, too, before the sun had reached its consuming height and while a little darkening dew still lay moist on the foliage. And then, while the sun did reach its height, the Catholic girls could w
ithdraw, already conscience-eased before the week was well begun, to write the Sunday letter home, each with a duty sensibly discharged to report, making agreeable reading for the parents. (In theory none of the Catholic girls should have been burdened with two letters home to write; in practice it was surprising how many of them were.)

  Not that the Catholic devoirs had always been so straightforward for Hetty to discharge. In early days, the Catholic girls had expected to be shepherded—sheepdogged—into Nice on Saturday evenings as well, to make their confessions. The parish priest had absolutely declined Antonia’s blanket assurance—even though it had been a written assurance, which surely made it official?—that none of her girls had anything to confess. Hetty had protested she could support the burden, but Antonia was determined to spare her, marbled churches striking such a dangerously sudden chill on summer evenings. Besides, Antonia was not quite secure in her mind … Hetty was indefatigably watchful, of course, and, surely, after these years, up to whatever the girls might devise. And yet: no city of the seaboard could be an easy place in which to shepherd, in which to chaperone, thirteen girls in Saturday dusk. To some of the thirteen, it was true, temptation would hardly come: ‘I quite understand’, Antonia had said about one of these, ‘if she feels impelled to implore forgiveness for her shins’. But for the others—alas if, while waiting to do so, they should acquire something to confess. And the Catholic religion was so peculiarly set against precautionary steps. There were, it was true, ‘natural’ and rhythmical methods permitted, and yet rhythm seemed not to be in the nature of girls … ‘I fear’, Antonia had sighed, uneasy in mind, ‘that we shall one day find ourselves trapped between the two kinds of irregularity to which girls are prone …’ Uneasiness was not allayed until Antonia, who permitted herself a single maxim in life (‘Go higher’—pun, as it were, on her surname), consulted the Cardinal, who readily allowed that Miss Mount’s girls might confess in the vacations only, when on their parents’ heads be it. Hetty relieved of a chore, Antonia of an anxiety, Antonia found herself quite in charity again with the Catholic religion (such a sensible institution, the College of Cardinals) though remaining a touch more insistent with the Catholic girls than the others in bidding them, if they should by chance have that capacity, satisfy themselves with the company of their own sex.