The Finishing Touches

by Browne, Hester

  She popped her head round the booth. It really did take a certain personality to turn a hair feather into daywear, I thought, impressed. She was wearing a long black sweater dress, with a big jeweled belt, and the boots were perfect.

  “Darling! Here you are!” she cried conspiratorially. “What an extraordinary place—I love it! Love it! I had an old date who used to come here, passed out in those very lavatories, if I remember correctly, with the Secretary of State for Wales’s girlfriend…”

  Most people had a story like that about Igor’s. Nell looked the type to have a few books’ full, though.

  Liv appeared out of nowhere with a tray. “Gin and tonic for you, and one for you too. And nuts, courtesy of the management.” She set the huge tumblers in front of us. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  “Thank you, darling,” said Nell, flashing her a brilliant smile. “Perfect!”

  I hadn’t actually ordered anything and was about to tell Liv that I really only wanted a cup of tea, then decided that when it came to drinks, she probably knew best. I needed some Dutch courage.

  “Thanks,” I said, and she crossed her fingers at me and retreated to the nearest bit of the bar, where she started polishing more glasses in a too-casual fashion.

  “So, without further ado, I found you this,” said Nell, reaching into her handbag. “Thought I should let you have it, after leaving you dangling like that at the memorial, with just half a tale told, then buggering off without a backward glance. It’s a piccy of that year above mine. It’s the only one I could find with everyone present.”

  She slid an old photograph across the table. I picked it up eagerly, and Nell sank her nose into the gin and tonic, watching my reactions over the top.

  “Wow,” I said as my eyes scanned it greedily. It must have been taken before some formal party or other: there were thirteen, no, fourteen girls grouped around two couches, with Miss Vanderbilt in the center of one and Franny in the other, and the oil painting of the buxom first Lady Phillimore in the background. All the girls had mushroom clouds of curls and tight, practiced smiles, and they were sporting the sort of ball gowns that pinned the photograph firmly around 1980: off-the-shoulder flounces the size of valances, tiny pin-tuck ruffles, black velvet bodices over taffeta skirts in royal blue, magenta, and bright green.

  Well, nearly all the girls were. Two had very nonregulation gowns. Leaning on the back of the sofa, where Miss Vanderbilt couldn’t see her sultry camera expression, was a stunning blonde in a full-length black jersey halter dress with a silver snake slithering up the side in multicolored sequins. Next to her, on the other side and equally out of eyeshot, was a mischievous brunette in shoestring straps with a tiger lily stuck in her bobbed hair.

  “I mentioned that there were some wild girls in that year—well, that’s Coralie, for a start,” said Nell, pointing to the brunette. “She was terrible. We were always being told not to be like Coralie Hendricks, but we all had raging crushes on her. She had a bonkers dachshund called Mitzi that she trained to attack the art teacher’s hairpiece, and she smoked Marlboro reds out of the loo windows.” She sighed. “Of course the boys loved her.”

  Was that like me? I wondered. Was I naughty? Was that the sort of thing that carried?

  “And that’s Sophie. Sophie Townend,” Nell went on, pointing at the blonde. “She was what we called a ten-pointer. Got herself a mini part in a Bond film, can’t remember which one, doing something mysterious and sexy with a deck of tarot cards—after she left here, of course. Not on old Vander’s curriculum, being shagged to death by a secret agent.”

  “And Hector dated her?” I asked. She looked like the prize pick—the man-eating model in a garden of sweet nannies-to-be. I didn’t feel drawn to her much, but then—would I? Should I? My eye jumped from one face to another while I monitored myself for any telltale flashes of recognition.

  “No, Hector went out with Emma-Jane.” Nell moved her red nail across to the girl sitting next to Franny, who sat with her hands folded on her pink taffeta lap and her eyes cast down beneath heavy blond bangs. “Don’t let that shy look fool you. Lady Frances had her sitting there for a reason.”

  “Which was?”

  “So she could keep an eye on her. Emma-Jane never knew when to stop,” said Nell darkly, and tapped the side of her nose.

  I stared hard at Emma-Jane, searching for any vague familial resemblances, but couldn’t see any: she had a long nose, whereas mine was turned up, and she was a pink-and-white blonde, no sign of redhead genes at all. But if she was Hector’s girlfriend, she was my best bet—unless he’d had an away day with one of the others?

  “Did Hector…just date Emma-Jane?” I asked carefully.

  “More or less,” said Nell. She took another sip of her gin and tonic. “He didn’t like to show favoritism. I think everyone had a spin in his Bentley at some point, in a manner of speaking. But Emma-Jane was his favorite. He went seriously off the rails when she got engaged to Charlie Cato. Everyone thought that was what caused the Great Bunking Off to Argentina.”

  “Emma-Jane got engaged to someone else, just before Hector left, which was just before I was born?” I felt like I should be taking notes. All these names—would I have to google everyone in London over the age of fifty?

  “Yes, I suppose that’s right. Her first of four. As I say, never knew when to stop…” Nell clucked and raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Like I can talk. Three down, and still counting! Never let it be said that the Phillimore Academy didn’t prepare you for marriage!”

  There were two redheads in the photograph, as far as I could see—one plump-shouldered strawberry blonde and one with long, Irish-red curls tumbling down her back.

  “Who are these two?” I asked, though neither of them looked particularly inspiring.

  “Caroline de la Grange and Bumps Fitzroy. Caroline’s married to Mr. Tin Foil, can’t remember his real name—Sir Tin Foil it might be by now, actually—and I think Bumps is a nun now. Convent education followed by Coralie Hendricks and her constant shenanigans can do that to a girl’s nerves.” Nell looked at me. “Is this helping, or am I just making it worse?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly.

  A silence fell between us as I studied the photograph and Nell drank her gin and tonic. In the background I could hear Igor gargling at a customer while Liv translated—it was the available single malts list.

  “’Scuse the nosiness, but do you want to find your mother?” Nell asked, without warning. “Or just know who she was? I mean, what would you say to her if she walked in right now? Would you be thrilled? Or bloody furious?”

  I opened my mouth but stopped before the usual answer could tumble out. I’d rehearsed various dramatic reunions over the years—weeping, tearing of clothes, curls of baby hair produced from matching lockets, etc.—yet, faced with someone who might actually have known my mother and might hazard a good guess at where she’d be now, that all seemed a bit, well, fake. I wasn’t actually sure what I’d say.

  “I’d say…hello.”

  Nell squinted at me. “That it? I think I’d jolly well want to give her a piece of my mind.”

  “No,” I said slowly. Somehow it was easier to be honest with this stranger. “I don’t think I’d be angry with her for leaving me, because I had a fantastic childhood with people who gave me everything I could ever want. But I’d want to know why she couldn’t keep me. If it was circumstances, or…” I hesitated. I hadn’t said this aloud to anyone before. “Or if I was a mistake that she couldn’t bear to see. If my father had been…you know, the wrong sort of man.” I took a gulp of my gin and tonic. “I’d want to know what mistakes she’d made, so I wouldn’t make them myself.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that would be the case!” said Nell quickly.

  “How do you know?” I replied. “I mean, we’re assuming she was rich, from a smart background—but it might not be any of these girls! It might have been one of the cleaners’ daughters! It doesn’t
sound like Hector operated much of a door policy on his bedroom antics.”

  “But there was the little bee in your box,” Nell pointed out. “That was a big craze that summer—all the Academy girls had them. They were from a little jeweler in Bond Street. We said that at the time, that it must be one of us.”

  I fingered the bee on the gold chain round my neck and slowly brought it out from under my sweater. Nell’s face lit up as soon as she saw it, her eyes creasing up in delight.

  “Gosh, that brings back memories! Oh, look, it’s one of the ones with diamond stripes—how swanky!”

  “Do you recognize it?” I asked hopefully, but she shook her head.

  “I couldn’t say whose it was, darling. We all had them. Sophie had five, all on a gold chain, from different chaps. Worker bees, she called them. But I do think it points to one of these girls.” She nodded toward the photograph again. “Not that it narrows it down much for you.”

  I stared at the round-faced girls, and Franny in her special-occasion diamond necklace, and Miss Vanderbilt looking like someone had shoved a broom handle down the back of her dress, and naughty Coralie and vampish Sophie and Bumps the nun. My mother did not spring out at me as a tiny part of me had hoped she would. But surely she was there? One of them?

  Franny must have known, I thought. She must have recognized the bee, and the handwriting, even though she had always batted my questions away by swearing she hadn’t. But then maybe she had just chosen not to ask: the art of never asking direct questions was an Academy specialty, after all.

  “Well, did any of them go away? Suspiciously?”

  “Hard to say,” sighed Nell. “We didn’t all do a year, you know. Some people had a term at the Phillimore, then a term at a Cordon Bleu school, then a term in Switzerland…People came and went. But I’ll dig out my diaries.”

  I blinked in the low light. I felt much nearer and yet farther away from the truth, all at the same time.

  “Can you write down the names, please?” I asked, offering her my lilac notebook.

  “Of course. So, what’s your next move, if I might be so nosy?” Nell reached into her bag for a pen, then began scrawling a list in handwriting that rambled over the lines. “Are you still wanting to meet her?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. I mean, I couldn’t exactly ring these women up and ask them if they’d got any illegitimate children they might have left in Halfmoon Street, could I?

  “There. That’s everyone who was at the Academy in the autumn of 1980, which is when, if my math is still up to snuff, you were the twinkle in someone’s eye.” She passed my notebook back.

  “’Course, she might not want to see me.” I hadn’t said that aloud before either, and it came out in quite a small voice.

  “Oh, darling!” Nell seemed shocked. “I’m sure she’d love to see you now! What an extraordinary young woman you’ve turned out to be!”

  “How do you know that?” I asked, and held her gaze. Nell didn’t look away.

  “I just know,” she said simply. “Trust me on that.”

  When I didn’t reply, she added, “Don’t be too hard on them. Coralie and Sophie might have been a bit silly, but we were all just babies, really, and totally romantic about everything—no one worried about ghastly diseases or mortgages. We didn’t know anything, we just spent all week planning the weekend and the dates and the castles we were going to marry into. Poor Lady Fran tried her best to knock some common sense into us, but we just wanted to meet our prince too, and be swept off in that carriage in a compleeetely enormous frock! Marriage junkies, the lot of us! That’s why we’ve racked up so many between us!”

  I managed a weak smile. “I’m afraid I’ve gone the other way. I don’t believe in fairy-tale weddings, just finding a reliable man. Boring, I know.”

  “God, probably much more sensible,” sighed Nell. “But whatever your mother was, she honestly believed in a fairy-tale ending. And in the end, she did what she could for you, by giving you to the one person we thought could deal with all life’s dramas: Lady Frances. I’m sure if you wanted to meet her now, she’d love to see you. Just to explain.”

  Nell’s expression was strained, as if she was trying to hold something in. I felt a tiny prickle of something in the pit of my stomach. The beginning of something new stirring. How did she know that? Was there something she wasn’t telling me—something really quite important?

  Before I could frame the question, she picked up her drink and drained it with that quick, practiced gesture I’d seen at the reception. “Darling, I’m terribly sorry to dash off, but I have to fly to Ibiza tonight. Got to turn some client’s house into a Raj paradise by the weekend. It’s what I do, before you ask—interior decoration.”

  “Wow,” I said. “How glamorous!”

  “Not really.” Nell winked again. “When you’ve got married and moved as many times as I have, you get used to tarting up new places. Plenty of friends downsizing, upsizing, nothing wrong with making your hobby into your business.”

  I thought of Jamie. That was something he’d say. Something he’d done, in fact.

  “Is there anything else I can tell you, before I go?” she asked.

  It popped out of my mouth before I could really think what I was saying. “Who was the nicest?” I asked.

  “The nicest?”

  “Yes.” I pulled the photograph back out of my notebook and put it on the table in front of her. “Not the cleverest, or the most popular—who was the nicest girl? Was there one who you’d consider a friend? Still?”

  Nell fell quiet for a moment, and when she spoke, it wasn’t with the wildly exaggerated tone she’d used before. “Well, darling, I’m in touch with all of them, at Christmas and birthdays—it’s just what you do, isn’t it? But…” She touched the photo gently. “Rosalind, she was the sweetest, no doubt about it. Look, you can tell what a poppet she was, just from her face. She let Coralie wear her pearl choker, never said a mean word to Sophie, even when she nicked her date for this dance.”

  Rosalind, in a floral strapless gown, was sitting on Franny’s other side and only giving the camera a brief glance. She had thick bangs of mousy highlighted hair that hung in her eyes like a pony’s, and barely stood out at all, apart from her beautiful white shoulders. They were like marble.

  “She’s looking like that because Miss Vanderbilt made her take her glasses off for the photo,” explained Nell affectionately. “Poor Rosie. Blind as a bat, but absolutely adorable.”

  Sadly for me, Rosalind had as many ginger genes as Nell did. Still, it proved that the possible mother pool wasn’t all rip-roaring hotties.

  “Oh, balls; look, my phone’s ringing. I have to go; that’s my driver, going crazy outside.” Nell was gathering her bag together and arranging a huge black throw around herself. “You’ve got my numbers, haven’t you, darling?” she said, fastening it with a giant diamanté cobweb that somehow looked like the only thing to fasten a huge black throw with. “Call me if anything springs to mind? And thank you so much for bringing me to this fabulous place—I love it!”

  She gave me a swooping kiss on the cheek, and then she was weaving through the small tables as if operating an invisible Hula-hoop. “Bye, Igor! Bye, Olivia!” she called toward the bar.

  Of course she’d discovered their names. She was a Phillimore girl.

  Then she was gone, and Igor’s seemed a slightly gloomier place again.

  Liv was over at my table before the door stopped swinging, with fresh drinks for us both, which was technically against Igor’s rules, but if anyone could bend Igor’s rules it was Liv, since she was the only one who could understand them.

  “So? Who is it? Did she tell you?”

  I shook my head and passed her the photo. “It’s one of them, she reckons, plus Hector.”

  Liv moved a candle closer so she could inspect the faces. “Did she confirm Hooray Hector as your father? Didn’t you ask about the other chinless wonders he ran around with?”

 
; “No, but it’s obvious, isn’t it?” I felt I could say that now that I was officially on the trail. It didn’t seem so presumptuous anymore. “Anyway, I’m not so bothered about my father. If he was worth bothering about, he’d be in the same place as my mother, wouldn’t he? Standing by her.”

  “Good point, Sherlock. Blimey, you can tell how posh this lot are, can’t you?” she said, pointing to Bumps Fitzroy the nun. “You can smell the Diorissima and ponies from here. Look at her eyes! It’s like she’s staring at her own nose. That is not your mother, Betsy.”

  “Thank you, Watson.” I sipped my drink. Liv made very strong gin and tonics, to Ken’s recipe, which started, “half fill your glass with gin.”

  “Is that her there?”

  “Is that who where?”

  “Her. Nell. There.” Liv was pointing at the photo, but I didn’t bother to look up. I was staring at the names and thinking about what I could do next.

  “No, Nell’s not in the photo. She was in the year below.”

  “Oh,” said Liv thoughtfully. “OK.”

  “I’ve got the names, so now I suppose, if I wanted to, I could invite them to this Open Day Mark thinks we should have in a few weeks’ time.”

  “Brilliant!” Liv clapped her hands. “And then what?”

  “Well…I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’ll come to me.”

  I sipped my gin thoughtfully and hoped something would.

  Fourteen

  Keep the safety pins from your dry cleaning in your handbag—you never know when something might snap.

  The new curriculum began at half past ten the next morning, and I felt I should lead from the front and take the first lesson myself.

  I’d made a list of useful ideas, but I decided to start at the very beginning, with the one thing that kept me going from bleary morning to stumbling-in night, as well as cheering me up on the bus and making me feel like a proper woman: my big red investment handbag and its family of tiny subsidiary baglets that held my life together in easy-to-reach pockets.