The Finishing Touch

by Brigid Brophy

  (Apparently the sous-officier had meant Commander Curl was coming. Qu’il vienne, then.)

  They cannot expect me to attend a Garden-Party. No party could—surely?—be the better for being held in a garden? But of course it was not meant to be. The institution was merely a British perversity (almost a sexual perversity), a flirting with the climate they did not possess, just as certain women who did not possess the figure for trousers felt compelled …

  Commander Curl.

  O dreadful, dreadful tropical kit, the white socks long and the white trousers short (men as well as women might not possess … and for them, no choice), uniform one would expect to see directing the traffic from a white tub in Morocco …

  Two fingers, two fingers only, to him … ‘You had a pleasant voyage, I hope?’

  ‘O—great fun.’

  ‘Fun?’

  ‘Lots of jolly deck games.’

  ‘How fatiguing. Do sit down.’

  How curious of him to appear disconcerted, to merely mumble there was hardly time, the royal launch …

  And yet in a way, when he blushed (reminding one of little Miss Outre-Mer), there was a charm … A charm, even, in the absurd uniform, in revealing the knees (could they be made to blush?) Pleasure could be derived from these northern complexions (so easily blushing for one thing) which took so ruddily to southern sun … Had one been unfair? too long expatriate? would one, in effect, rather welcome the complexion, the dewiness, of an English rose …?

  The royal launch: in sight: hove to: tying up …

  Now heaven send the Commander was delivering up his cargo as he had received her (did one feel safe with the Navy?) …

  She.

  (Of course he was. That was perfectly obvious.)

  She was not an English rose.

  But she—her—not dress: covering—rioted with them.

  A long, long tremor, a shuddering, a rigor passed through Antonia into Hetty’s arm. ‘My beloved … my beautiful … you’ve borne up so bravely … don’t fail now …’

  (Remember to bid Hetty, when occupied with affairs of ménage, to look for the label: C & …)

  ‘Smashing trip! Smashing to see you! Smashing …’

  But it was one of the hydrangea pots … smashed indeed … its fragments irrecoverable as the treasure ships of Phoenicians and Greeks beneath the wine-moody surface of the Mediterranean Sea …

  *

  ‘Smashing place you’ve got here. Smashing grounds. Smashing view.’

  ‘A touch, I fear’, Antonia murmured, ‘banal.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Colour photography has spoilt so many pleasures. Sometimes I wish for days together they would invent spectacles that corrected the vision to black and white.’

  For royalty Antonia herself must conduct the tour of the gardens. How long since she had actually set foot in them? But then what need, when she had her talent of long sight?

  But now—for royalty—What a clamber it was to the top of the terracing: and to be rewarded by the merely banal view. And from royalty, she supposed, one could not even expect an arm.

  Girls, it seemed to Antonia, were with them, though not accompanying them; all round them, though not visible to them: girls scuttling like lizards (and as prettily) across the path one was about to take, girls hovering like humming birds in the grove one had just left: girls naturally eager, no doubt, to catch their first glimpse of their new, their royal, companion …

  Or was it to see Miss Mount that they lurked?, Miss Mount so unaccustomedly, so actually in the gardens? Well no doubt that, too, and equally naturally, had created its furore: Miss Mount displaying the grenouillère (royal joke about frogs), Miss Mount disclosing the nectarine wall (royal knowledgeableness about pruning), Miss Mount holding erect her own parasol (for Hetty, of course, was unpacking the thirty-one pieces of royal baggage, each one yielding up, no doubt—Antonia suffered a moment’s return of her quayside rigor—its own Horror of Glamis) and remembering from time to time to correct its angle so that a little of the shade from its fringes dripped over royalty’s head …

  But though one might not expect an arm from royalty one might tactfully touch one’s own hand to royalty’s elbow and divert the gaze which had been on the point of penetrating the hibiscus and lighting on the statue of Pan. (That Hetty had not been able—or had not dared—to have corrected.)

  (But was it not down that very avenue—and not inappropriately—that Antonia glimpsed a flicker of orange and bacchic purple, strong tropical contrast that could only denote the sundress of the President’s daughter? …)

  ‘But I say——’

  (There: that jewelled flicker in the ilex leaves: was that not Regina Outre-Mer?)

  ‘——where are the playing fields?’

  ‘The playing fields?’

  ‘For games, you know.’

  ‘O, as for games, the gardens are admirably adapted to them. So many secluded corners, sunken spots, grottoes one would never guess were there …’ Antonia replied, wondering, rather, that the royal child could not see as much for herself.

  ‘Yes, but I mean to say. For rounders, you know, you need a flat bit.’

  ‘A flat bit’, Antonia echoed. ‘There is—’ she sighed, beginning to lead royalty there, ‘—a small plot which my colleague has attempted to engazonner.’

  Wearying, Antonia thought (having again the sense of girls scuttling from sight before the royal advance), this impression it makes on me of being cut off, as though the shadow of this parasol (remember to lend a little of it to royalty) were an impalpable cage, keeping me from my girls …

  ‘There’, Antonia said. ‘Miss Braid’s pelouse.’

  A flat bit, her thoughts echoed again. It seemed to express.

  ‘O, I say.’ Royalty giggled. ‘Sorry—but it is a bit of a pocket handkerchief, isn’t it?’

  ‘But one’s pocket handkerchief’, Antonia said, fatigued, ‘is lawn.’

  I am tired, Antonia thought; I am repeating my jokes; tired …

  With a premonition of headache she decided to accord royalty no more shade but to keep it all for her own incipiently pained head …

  *

  ‘My beloved must be so tired.’

  ‘It is always tiring when one fails to discern a single charm.’

  ‘I must admit she isn’t in the least——’ Rarely, rarely did Hetty fail to complete a sentence: so sturdy, so reliable she was. If Hetty becomes depressed, thought Antonia, I shall simply give up; the School must close …

  ‘—pretty’, completed Hetty. The School might continue …

  ‘Her face is a touch—no, it is quite distinctly’, Antonia pronounced, almost with vigour, ‘—oxyrhinque. Indeed, she all too indomitably does’, Antonia added, ‘keep her pecker up.’

  And after dinner (even the melon water-ice was failing now):

  ‘My poor tired beloved must go straight to——’

  ‘I have my Report to write first.’ (They expected one a day. But this task could fairly soon, Antonia thought, be passed to Hetty.)

  ‘H.R.H.’s French’, Antonia wrote, ‘is fluent, wide in point of vocabulary and of a perfection in point of accent: H.R.H.’s mind seems, however, innocent of French Literature.’

  ‘Well, what can you expect?’ commented Hetty, handed the Report for sealing.

  ‘What indeed? One can only faire son possible.’

  ‘Rest now, my beloved; try to rest.’

  ‘Tomorrow I shall start a special Literature group. A small group, I think … informal. We shall meet in my study. The President’s daughter, I think, Eugénie Plash and, perhaps, Regina Outre-Mer.’

  ‘And H.R.H.’

  ‘And H.R.H.—I was forgetting’, sighed Antonia. ‘How readily does one retire—from the stress—into one’s fantasies.’

  ‘My darling shall do no more work tonight’, whispered Hetty. ‘Can I help my darling undr——’

  ‘No, dear. You must get the Report in the Bag. I won’t det
ain you.’

  ‘Then …’

  ‘Then …’

  Strange how, even when one was left alone, the usual pleased embarras of choice in solitude had yielded place to a desert of discontent. Parched though one was, none of the springs … The Grand Marnier bottle merely grossly bulbous, worthy of cooking only, the very Bénédictine suggesting none but the schoolgirl interpretation of its ciphered D.O.M., even the green and the yellow Chartreuse bottles, so resemblant yet so disparate, sister-bottles, alcoholic Plash girls, failing to tempt … Was one, then, old? or ill?—or death-wishing? Strange this, in the ultimate reaches of fatigue, masochistic longing for oblivion, this wish to be hit, to be coshed, to be slugged, actually, over the back of the head … Had one indeed been too long expatriate? Could it be that today had stirred home thoughts, that one was wishing for one’s native …? Self-astounded, all but ashamed, Antonia poured (and added no water) a cut-glass tumblerful of Scotch …

  IV

  BY SOME oversight, although there were five persons (Antonia, her nosegay, H.R.H.), there were only four copies of the text.

  (Antonia had decided to read with them some poems of Renée Vivien.)

  Who, then, should share Antonia’s copy?

  Not H.R.H., whom Antonia had already placed in an arm chair which was in fact deeply comfortable and would therefore pass for the place of honour, but whose arms, rendering the occupant all but besieged, made unthinkable any encroachment of sharing … It was placed, this chair, at the furthest remove from Antonia’s own; even so, Antonia expected to undergo some suffering by virtue of her long sight …

  Not, Antonia decided, Eugénie Plash … Ever since Antonia’s notice had been drawn to Sylvie Plash, she could not prevent herself from remarking that there was between the two faces an extreme familial resemblance. Indeed, it would be hard to point any more than subjectively perceived distinction: no doubt if one took a measuring rod to the two there would turn out to be virtually nothing in it …

  It lay, therefore, between the President’s daughter and Regina Outre-Mer.

  Ever since Regina’s own demonstration had been reinforced by Commander Curl’s, Antonia had borne in the front of her mind the prettiness of blushes and the pleasures of provoking them. If the President’s damson daughter had a defect—and she must be allowed one; she was only human (surely?)—it was that she could not—well, one could not, naturally, expect her to …

  It was, therefore, to Regina Outre-Mer that Antonia frailly signalled a small patting gesture of the air beside her; Regina who sank (how prettily) on to the rose-pink, rose-soft carpet at Antonia’s pointed feet; Regina whose bent head indicated she was blushing already (but she must look up if she was to see the text; meanwhile, how appealing the chrysanthemum top presented to Antonia’s view).

  Royalty, of course, did not mind: did not notice. The President’s daughter noticed but seemed not to care. (I think, Antonia remarked to herself and felt sad at the thought, she was never really interested in the first place; perhaps—ah, a second’s faintness at the heart—these girls from torrid countries are, ultimately, cold …) From Eugénie Plash’s pout Antonia turned away. It put her in mind of Sylvie.

  Regina Outre-Mer’s arm lay alongside, lay almost touching, Antonia’s. Regina’s little wrist knob turned, wriggled, darting as a lizard, scintillating as a jewelled watch, this way and that, in embarrassment? in pleasure?, distracting Antonia’s eye from Renée Vivien … O, most poignant of little poignets … Yet one could not very well, beneath the staring face of royalty (deep-puzzled by Renée Vivien), lean forward to kiss it …

  V

  HETTY’S MIND became a teeming womb of royal hazards.

  Every day, every hour it seemed to Antonia (already wearied by the high summer heat), Hetty’s imagination gave phantom-birth to another catastrophe. Not alone the real dangers of press photographers (Hetty had had to throw stones at one before he would climb down from the garden wall; flapping her arms had made no effect) and sailors (both the native ones with their absurd red pom-poms on their hats and the British with their absurd naked knees twinkling—because peeling—like pink pom-poms)—though in fact Antonia judged royalty unsusceptible to the advances of sailors—or anyone else; the most far-conjured eventualities rose to frighten Hetty in the night and, in the morning, pale over Antonia’s breakfast tray (so offputting—even if the pineapple and passionfruit conserve had been of her best), she would offer:

  Suppose royalty should fall into the sea?

  Suppose royalty should contract la grippe?

  Suppose the cuisine should not agree with …

  If royalty gets la grippe, thought Antonia—a far worse hazard was that Hetty should lose hers.

  Why should Hetty now flinch from her share of the responsibility (if Hetty fails, I shall simply lay down my burden) when Antonia had borne hers? Hetty had no need to flinch: she was so perfectly competent. (Surely Hetty was so perfectly competent? One had not been entrusting one’s affairs these years to one who was not? …)

  Suppose royalty were to fling herself from the window of the rose suite?

  ‘But why should she, my dear? She is surely not in love. And I know of no other pretext.’

  ‘No, no, you’re quite right, my darling’s quite right. I’m just being a silly. I’m a little moithered these days. Perhaps it’s the Mistral coming on.’

  ‘Every emotion on this coastline’, Antonia sighed, ‘is attributed to the Mistral’s coming, being overdue or having just gone. One would take it for a function of feminine physiology.’

  Hetty permitted herself to look wounded.

  ‘There’, said Antonia delicately, ‘there. Have a drink.’

  ‘No, no, my dear’ (but kindness in Antonia’s tone was stronger stimulant) ‘I need my wits about me.’

  Of Antonia’s world-tired smile Hetty would never be certain of the import. But she chose to read it kindly.

  And yet:

  ‘And yet’, said Hetty, pausing on her way from the room (I hope, Antonia thought, she has her wits about balancing the tray), ‘supposing she fell by accident?’

  ‘My dear, the Lebanese princess managed perfectly well about staying inside.’

  As a matter of fact, the Lebanese princess had tossed several exotic objects from her window (and one or two erotic) but never, so far as Antonia knew, herself (who had been both).

  *

  ‘What do you think of her?’

  ‘I think she’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen’, said Regina Outre-Mer.

  ‘Do you?’ said all the girls, deep-surprised.

  ‘Whom’, Regina asked, suddenly égarée, ‘are we discussing?’

  ‘Royalty.’

  ‘O. O, I thought you meant——’

  ‘We haven’t all your obsession’, said Eugénie Plash.

  But her nastiness of tone went unnoticed by Regina, who simply replied, wonderingly:

  ‘Haven’t we? How strange people are.’

  *

  Suppose a lizard bit royalty?

  ‘Can they?’ Antonia replied, with scepticism enough to convince Hetty they could not.

  But a mosquito could: a hundred mosquitoes could: worst of all, the local wasp, the dreaded guêpe du midi, whose venom, if not extracted from the bloodstream within twenty minutes …

  ‘My dear, I’m less afraid’, Antonia faintly said, ‘of what she may suffer than of what she may inflict.’

  ‘Come’, said the baritone roundly, ‘she’s not exactly a breaker of hearts.’

  ‘Not of hearts’, said the soprano, tremolo (the tremolo alone tinged with alto) … ‘Did you lock up the Dresden?’

  ‘My dearest, yes, but——’

  ‘And not’ (diminuendo) ‘in the glass-fronted cabinet? …’

  ‘No, my dear, but I think you exaggerate the——’

  ‘Exaggerate!’—frail cry, like the splintering of frailest porcelain. ‘But you saw that hydrangea pot!’

  ‘My loveliest, she really and tru
ly has smashed nothing since.’

  All very well for Hetty, who (was she losing a little in reliability?) retained at least her sturdiness, but when one was oneself of a Dresden fragility …

  (Remember to push one’s chair, at the study group, to a yet further extreme from the royal chair. What matter if one’s faint voice failed to carry to royal ears? They could hardly take in less than they did …)

  *

  To remove one’s chair yet further from royalty meant to withdraw yet deeper into a recess (taking, of course, Regina Outre-Mer in one’s train).

  Here sunlight (filtered, of course, in the first place, through Venetian blinds) had scarcely the strength—or the heart?—to reach. Here one was—here two were—swathed in a veiling pénombre. Regina, if she was to see the text laid on the soft lap, must——

  ‘Lean closer, dear child’, Antonia murmured; ‘do not feel shy …’

  And Antonia, if she was to see the pretty blushes her murmur provoked, must, in her turn …

  The text, as a matter of fact, was no longer the same. Royalty making so little of Renée Vivien, Antonia had substituted something simpler (Albertine Disparue, as a matter of fact) … As it turned curiously out, there were only four copies of this, too …

  (‘Poverty’, Eugénie Plash unpleasantly commented afterwards, ‘seems to have overtaken Antonia’s library’—unpleasantness again lost on Regina Outre-Mer, who, kissing her own little wrist which, for one moment of page-turning, had actually rested on Antonia’s lap and smelt now of Antonia’s scent, clasped to herself the mental exclamation Holy Poverty!)

  Almost invisible to her pupils, almost inaudible to the further flung of them, Antonia yet presided … by the distinction of the frail silhouette, by the sighing of her frail dress, by the frail authority with which she turned the pages (when Antonia turns, we all … as though, vulgar thought!, we were all in a vast feather bed …) She looked, presidingly: from the indifferent face of Madame President’s daughter (Antonia was sure, now, such girls were cold) to the baffled face of royalty, staring straight ahead as though air rather than the text could help her understanding, to the cross face of Eugénie Plash—— Look away quickly (heaven grant I am not to suffer a headache today), look back to the text, look down at … and thus, naturally, to let one’s gaze slide off the text, slide off one’s lap (pleasing though that was to look at), to alight …