The Finishing Touches

by Browne, Hester

  “Betsy! There you are! What have you done to your hair?” said Kathleen, right on cue, when I approached. “Where are those pretty curls? Have you been ironing your hair again?”

  Kathleen thought I was making hair straighteners up. She couldn’t believe anyone could be so stupid.

  “Where’ve you been?” demanded Nancy, smacking a kiss onto my cheek even though she had to reach up. “You read so beautifully. Everyone said you were the best. We were proud as punch, weren’t we, Kathleen?”

  “We were.” Kathleen nodded. “And Frances would have been very proud of you. I said to Fenella Rickett, our little Betsy’s running her own management company up in Edinburgh, all on her—”

  “Um, listen, can I ask you two for some help?” I interrupted hurriedly. I didn’t want to get into the whole “management company” misunderstanding just yet. “They’ve run out of sandwiches.”

  “I knew it!” said Kathleen triumphantly. She seemed almost pleased. “I said Geraldine Thorne wouldn’t order enough. Right, then—we’d better crack on, hadn’t we?”

  She was more than happy to rush me into her walk-in larder of delights as an excuse to interrogate me about my eating habits, and in fifteen minutes Mark Montgomery and I were marching up the garden path with enough sandwiches to choke an elephant, just in time to meet Paulette returning with twelve boxes of after-dinner mints.

  “On sale,” she said, pouring my change into the pocket on my dress. “Better value than cupcakes, I reckoned. And no need to ration them out!”

  “Oh, well, on that basis, why didn’t you just get cornflakes—” Mark began, but I leaped in. There was no point having a row now.

  “What an unusual idea!” I said quickly. “Take them round with coffee, Paulette, and make sure everyone gets as many as they want. Ah, now here’s a man who needs some refreshment!” I said, seeing Lord P back away with some difficulty from a little knot of guests. They were all patting him like a sick dog. “Sandwich?”

  “Oh, marvelous!” he said gratefully. “Sandwiches, yes.”

  Lord P looked as if he’d just spent seven hours trapped in a lift with the entire Women’s Institute of Great Britain. His hair was ruffled, and he was definitely wearing his spectacles. In fact, I’d never seen such an emphatically worn pair of specs.

  “No crusts,” he said rather wistfully. “And cucumber too. Frances’s favorite.” He looked over at me and Mark and managed a weak smile. “Jolly good show, cucumber. Can’t beat it. Enough to go round, I hope?”

  “Everything’s under control, foodwise,” said Mark. “So long as people don’t—”

  I kicked him discreetly.

  “We’re fine,” he finished.

  “Splendid,” said Lord P with visible relief. “Good. Betsy, could I have a quiet word? In the library?” I wondered if he realized he had pearly pink lipstick on his cheek. Two different shades.

  “Of course,” I said, handing my teetering platter to Mark, who promptly swept it out of the way of some poor guest’s ambitious reach.

  I let Lord P usher me down the corridor to the quiet rooms at the back of the house and tried not to look too obviously at the walls for the missing photograph of the class of 1980.

  In his youth, Pelham Phillimore had been a dead ringer for Roger Moore: piercing blue eyes and thick dark hair, but with tweed jackets, not safari suits. Like Franny, he had the sort of aristocratic good looks that age just turns into silvery elegance, and throughout our adolescence Liv claimed she had a real older man crush on his “brooding silences” and impeccable manners.

  I’d always thought of Lord P as handsome, but today, I noted sadly, he looked handsome for his age. There were bags under his eyes and shadows where I’d never seen them before. Still, his shoes shone like glass. That was something.

  He waved me into the library, then leaned on the door for a split second, his shoulders dropping with sheer relief to be away from the noisy chatter of the hall.

  “Think today went off well?” he asked with a touching nervousness.

  “I do,” I said. “Franny would have been so thrilled at the turnout.”

  “Excellent, excellent.” He stepped nearer the empty fireplace and fidgeted awkwardly with the back of a leather armchair. “I appreciate the help, you know. It’s good of you, when you’re so busy. How are things at the moment? Expect you have a new year rush as all the Christmas bodge-ups come to light and you have to charge in and sort them out! Eh?”

  Now it was my turn to start fidgeting with a chair.

  Despite my fertile imagination, I was a terrible liar. Terrible in that I really wasn’t very good at it, having been assured from an early age by Nancy that magpies pecked out fibbing tongues. Had I been even a mediocre liar, when it came to covering up my stuck-in-a-rut shop job, I’d have made up a glamorous career that I actually understood, instead of letting Franny—and hence Lord P and Kathleen and Nancy—create their own impression that I was a hotshot management consultant.

  The only silver lining was that they had slightly less idea of what management consulting involved than I did.

  I wasn’t a management consultant. I managed the designer shoe shop in which I’d done my holiday work as a student. It was a very smart shoe shop, admittedly, but somehow, after five years, I was still there. The misunderstanding had come about because, in my very selected highlights of what I’d been up to, I’d told Franny about Fiona’s hopeless filing system and how I’d halved her tax bill and set up a loyalty card scheme. Maybe I’d overstated it a bit, because somehow Franny got it into her head that I’d stormed in, with my calculator blazing, as a professional troubleshooter, not a helpful assistant manager. She’d been so proud of me that I’d never had the heart to point out I was window-dressing shoes, not overhauling multinationals.

  The painful thing was, it wasn’t so far off what I actually wanted to do. My ambition was to have a business of my own, something that was all mine—what, though, I wasn’t quite sure. I’d really enjoyed sprucing up Fiona’s accounts, as well as her stockroom, but how can you set yourself up as a business spring cleaner when you haven’t any actual experience? Liv said I should just make up some references and go for it, but, as I say, lying convincingly wasn’t my strong suit.

  Lord P was looking at me, waiting for me to say something professional about “my workload.” I swallowed. Now probably wasn’t the best time to clear up the confusion. “I’m dealing with some very well-heeled clients,” I managed.

  “Good, good,” he said again distractedly, and rubbed his hands together as if applying invisible gel cleanser. “Good.”

  “Should we sit down?” I suggested. It was my top tactic in the shop. Once you had customers sitting down, I told the salesgirls, they relaxed and felt more inclined to try things on. And buy things.

  Lord P’s face brightened, and he sank into one of the leather armchairs across from the empty marble fireplace. I sat on the edge of the one opposite, knees and ankles somehow clamping neatly together in a proper manner, and we faced each other.

  He took a deep breath. “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about. As…family.”

  My heart bumped, and I wondered, with a thrill, if he was about to tell me Something Significant. Maybe this was going to be the moment he admitted Hector was my father. Or tell me that my mother had been in touch, seeing Franny’s obituary in the paper? Maybe there had been something in Franny’s will: “six months from my death…” or something. It was coming up to that now. From the tooth-pulling expression on Lord P’s face, it had to be something emotional.

  “Really?” I said, trying to keep calm. “Go on.”

  Lord P smoothed his silvery hair back with his left hand. “It’s about the Academy.”

  “What? I mean, oh.” My heart stopped bumping and plunged with disappointment. “What about the Academy?”

  “I need a favor, Betsy,” he said, fixing me with an honest look. “I don’t mind telling you that I sat down last night and thought
to myself, what would Frances do? And I knew she’d ask you.”

  My defenses had risen at the sheer nerve of being asked to do a favor for the snotty “not for a girl like you” establishment, but then I thought of Franny, needing me, and heard my voice say, “Of course I’ll help.”

  The expression of sheer relief on Lord P’s face, though, made me wonder if I should have waited to hear the favor first.

  “So long as I can,” I added pointedly. “I mean, I’m not exactly an expert on finishing schools, am I?”

  Lord P didn’t seem to catch my meaning. “Which is precisely why I’m asking you,” he went on. “I’d very much appreciate it if you take a look around. I think the Academy needs…what’s the right way to put this? A spring clean, if you like.”

  “You want me to clean it?” I blurted out in horror.

  Lord Phillimore’s smile evaporated. “Clean it? Good Lord, no! Whatever gave you that idea? No, it’s…I need your professional expertise, Betsy. I need some good, honest business advice. Miss Thorne’s been doing her best, I know, but enrollments are down, the overheads are terrifying, and there simply isn’t the money to keep it going as it is. If we don’t get some more girls for next term, then…”

  He raised his hands, then dropped them on his knees with an empty slap. “Place is falling down round our ears—that’s why we can’t let the guests upstairs, you see. Buckets in the ballroom.” He managed a wintry smile. “Roof’s been leaking so badly even the mice have water wings.”

  “Oh!” I was taken aback by how upset I felt, not just for Franny but for the big house itself. How humiliating to go from glamorous society beehive to a creaky old wreck. Buckets in the ballroom! Franny would be mortified. The ghosts of high-society Lady Phillimores past would be clutching their pearls in shame.

  Lord P sighed. “Between you and me, Betsy, time’s running out. What the Academy needs is something new, some…oomph. I’d get one of those fancy consultancy firms in, but I can’t bear the thought of some smart-arse Soho johnny in German spectacles running round the place, totting up the assets.” He rubbed his nose. “No offense!”

  “God, no,” I said, then remembered he was talking about me. Would it make him feel better to know he was getting a pretend consultant, for free? I thought not.

  “I know Franny would trust you,” he said solemnly, “not just to work your business magic but to set the Academy on the right lines. So we can carry on into the twenty-first century, have something she’d be proud of. Otherwise…” His voice trailed away.

  I started to nod in a wise, management-consultant fashion, but then a cold chill settled on me as the enormity of what he was asking sank in. The Academy was in real trouble, serious trouble, and I had even less idea of what to do to help than they did! Lord P needed real help. Proper advice. Not me pretending.

  I tried to backtrack as calmly as I could, given the way my insides were now twisting with guilt. Nancy was right—little liars did start big fires.

  “I’m honored that you think I could help, but I’m not a teacher,” I stammered. “I don’t know where I’d start.”

  Lord P waved a dismissive hand. “Miss Thorne can take care of any teaching. Frances wasn’t a teacher—she just had her good ideas of what young girls should be told, what they needed to know to set them up in life.”

  “I know,” I agreed, thinking of the things she’d taught me, the trade secrets of womanhood that were so much more useful than marriage proposal lessons. Prompt thank-yous written on funny postcards; Vaseline on the inner heels of stiff new shoes; apples as emergency breath fresheners. Little touches had got me jobs and good friends. Far more important than giving someone the wrong fork.

  Lord P was gazing hopefully at me. “I know you’re busy,” he said, “but I really would appreciate your view.”

  I had to give it a try, I told myself, for Franny. Maybe there was something I could do. It was just a shop, after all—one selling manners.

  And, I thought with an illicit twinge, I might find out a few more things about the 1980 girls and their outrageous boyfriends. Not that I would mention that to Lord P. Not yet, anyway.

  “What would you want me to do?” I said. “I mean, it’s not a normal, er, productivity assessment.”

  Lord P seemed impressed. “Well, no. I suppose you’d need to see some lessons, talk to the staff and the current students…” His face brightened. “I’d leave it up to your professional experience, Betsy.”

  “Oh, good,” I said faintly. “Fair enough.”

  “It’s always been a peculiar business for a chap to be involved in,” he went on, “but it’s been in the family since the year dot, and I don’t want to be the one in charge when the ship goes down. Frances poured her heart and soul into—well, I don’t need to tell you how she felt about this place, now, do I?”

  He managed a weak smile, and I suddenly saw that it wasn’t just the Academy he’d be losing if it closed but the happy days of his marriage: the glittering cocktail parties they’d thrown here for London friends, the graduations and presentations, the balmy summer evenings in the garden. The days I’d spent with Franny, playing in the roses. Up until her illness had taken hold properly, she’d spent hours and hours here during term time, guiding and advising and roaring with infectious laughter, the one unladylike thing about her. Franny was the Academy.

  “After all she did for me? Of course I’ll do what I can—for her. And for you,” I said impulsively, and leaned forward to grab his hand. It felt thin but strong, and his signet ring dug into my palm.

  Lord P’s eyes met mine, and I was surprised, as I always was, at how bright blue they were in his baggy face. They were still young, even if the rest of him looked a hundred, with stress and grief.

  “Thank you,” he said simply. “I’d be very grateful for whatever you can do.”

  We held the moment for as long as his Englishness could stand it—about five seconds—then he coughed and said, “So, when could you start? Do you have clients to postpone?”

  I thought quickly. I had quite a lot of holiday stored up, and I was off so rarely that Fiona could hardly protest if I pleaded for some compassionate leave.

  “What if I come back at the beginning of next week?” It was the third week in January, and Fiona’s sale was drawing to a close. I couldn’t leave her in the middle of the second markdowns. That was when her prices were almost reasonable and the shoving got serious.

  “Marvelous,” he said again. “Of course, you must invoice us—wouldn’t expect you to do it for nothing!”

  I started to protest, then remembered that the property tax bill was due, along with my post-Christmas credit card bills. Franny had left me enough money in her will to pay off the mortgage on my minuscule flat, but my budget still required skillful juggling each month. And doing it for nothing would totally give away the fact that I wasn’t a self-employed professional.

  “Whatever you like,” I said. “But I can’t make any promises.”

  Lord P gave me a sad smile. “So long as you do your best, Betsy, that’s all we can ask.”

  That’s what Franny would have said, I thought.

  Four

  Never economize on sushi, sunscreen, or legal advice.

  In my absence, the crowds around the refreshment table had swelled considerably, and Liv had joined Kathleen and Nancy at their gossip station by the tea urn. They were hanging on her every word, and Nancy was sewing a button back on Liv’s gorgeous, probably vintage Dior jacket.

  “And then I said, ‘Finn, please stop sending the flowers, I’ve got no more vases!’ So—this is so ridiculous—he sent me a tree. A tree. What am I meant to do with a tree? Then I realized it had this necklace on it…”

  I’d heard this one earlier in the week, but with much juicier details. It was the tale of her most recent boyfriend, Finn, the last wealthy banker in Europe, whom she’d met on the Eurostar train when her suitcase got stuck in the overhead compartment and he’d gallantly unjammed it. O
ne short Channel hop later, he was filling her sitting room with orchids for five days straight until she’d agreed to have dinner with him—in Rome.

  “Heavens above, Liv!” Nancy bit off the thread and sighed with delight. She had a terrible weakness for Regency romances. “You are just like a Regency heroine!”

  “But without the corsets,” said Kathleen pointedly. “You should be wearing a camisole under that, Olivia. You’ll catch your death.”

  Kathleen and Nancy couldn’t get enough of Liv’s endlessly entertaining romances, because she lived the kind of bodice-ripping existence that Nancy literally couldn’t hear enough about and that, if I hadn’t been witness to, I’d suspect her of making up. She’d been engaged five times, for a start. Liv looked cool but was surprisingly old-fashioned underneath, and she found it easy enough to say no to everything except a proposal, to which she felt obliged, out of politeness, to say yes. It helped that she also attracted the kind of men who could lay their hands on Cartier solitaires at short notice.

  My love life, in comparison, was more like a series of short stories. Funny stories, with some unexpected twists, but so far lacking in happily ever afters. Liv (or rather, Liv’s advice books) said I didn’t invite romance into my world, which was sort of true; I loved the idea of men dropping at my feet, like they did for her, but when it actually happened to me, I panicked. Literally panicked. I didn’t know much about my mother, but I got the feeling that I’d probably inherited a weakness for unsuitable charmers, along with whatever philanderer genes runaway Hector had donated. I wanted to fall in love, more than anything, but I was terrified of it turning into the sort of love that ended up with babies abandoned on doorsteps.

  Not that it stopped me trying. Over the last few years I’d had several short, uneasy-making flings and a couple of long, reassuring, but actually quite dull relationships, and, of course, a long-standing crush on the most unsuitable man of all—Jamie.