The Finishing Touch

by Brigid Brophy

  From where Antonia sat, Regina’s lovely shoulders, throat, collar bone extended themselves beneath Antonia’s vision like a model of physical geography … ah, deux collines … There was a place, whiter than the rest because only just, with the coming of extreme summer, had Regina taken to the extreme of the sundress, a place just rising, yet firm, and yet again tender … a place to which Antonia’s vision, sliding from the text, was naturally directed, to which Antonia’s lips, if Antonia herself were to slide forward—she had only to lean a little forward, a little down …

  The President’s daughter obediently if indifferently following her text; Eugénie Plash so disgruntled as to be doubled over hers: only royalty staring straight in front of her, uncomprehending. But could one rely on her uncomprehension—of everything?

  Antonia had only to bend a touch forward.

  (Invisible as I must almost be …)

  If only royalty would——

  ‘I think we should keep closely to our texts …’

  Girls bent closer to their books, even Regina (I did not mean you, my dear), chrysanthemum head obscuring the spot … no, it appeared again, tempted again …

  Only royalty made no closer application, stared still ahead. She had perhaps, remote as one had put her, not heard. But would she see? seeing, comprehend? Could one rely …?

  Ah, one could not, one could not …

  ah, ache …

  *

  Naturally, when the Palace telephoned in the middle of the night, Hetty was assured of disaster.

  ‘My dearest—ah, what a shame to wake my love—but my dearest, my loveliest, they want you.’

  Fortunate that Antonia’s nightcap had not this time been the oblivion-creating, the slugging Scotch.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘My dear, I don’t know, but I feel sure—o, be brave, my love—that it’s serious. Perhaps they want to withdraw her. Perhaps they’ve heard something …’

  ‘What’, Antonia asked, graven pale on the lilac pillow, ‘could they have heard?’

  ‘O, my dear …’ Hetty stared down at the perfect face. It sometimes seemed to her that her memories of the past did not coincide with Antonia’s, even though it was a common past. ‘My love, whatever happens, I will never desert——’

  ‘Switch it through here’, Antonia frailly interrupted. (Telephone calls in hours of darkness went to Hetty’s room.)

  ‘Yes, my love. Let me just prop my love’s pillows up before I go …’

  Antonia reached, sleep-handed, for the receiver.

  ‘Allô, allô?’

  (They are presumably knowledgeable enough not to confound me with a woman who would drop her h’s?)

  ‘Hullo? Miss Mount? Office of the Keeper of the Privy——’ (whatever it was: he mumbled the word: it could not have been privy, bis?) ‘here’. (Jolly male voice; grating, in these small silent hours, as a football-match-rattle in the ears.) ‘I say, I hope I’m not ringing too late? Thought I’d better wait till SHE was asleep.’

  ‘SHE’, echoed Antonia. (But I?)

  ‘H.R.H., you know. Just wanted to check up, you know—how you’re rubbing along?’

  ‘We’re rubbing along’, Antonia breathed (lasse, lasse …) ‘very well.’

  ‘Top hole. No worries then? First chop.’ (But I lack the stamina for this so fade slang in the small hours.) ‘Just wanted to make sure you were finding——’

  ‘I find her’, Antonia feebly loosed the words, ‘smashing.’

  ‘She is a jolly girl, isn’t she? And quite unspoilt.’

  ‘I fear only for what she may spoil.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The line … seems almost failing.’

  ‘I’ll speak up a bit, then.’ (But can you speak louder—and still be human?) ‘Just wanted to—— O, by the way. Your first Report’s arrived. Jolly good. Thought I’d just let you know it’ll be passed on tomorrow. I mean: it’ll go higher, don’t you know?’

  ‘My very own motto’, murmured Antonia, en raccrochant.

  ‘My love?’

  (Had you been lurking, then, not daring to open the door?)

  ‘My love, my poor love, I hardly dare ask …’

  ‘Calm yourself, Hetty, je t’implore—it was, by the way, nothing—and, if you would, lay my pillows flat again …’

  *

  ‘If you ask me, she’s simply dim.’ But the President’s daughter, as President’s daughter of a Republic, was perhaps ex officio prejudiced against royal persons.

  ‘Makes nonsense of Antonia’s imploring our discretion’, said Eugénie Plash. ‘She simply wouldn’t get it—if we did tell her about Antonia.’

  ‘Tell her what about Antonia?’ enquired Regina Outre-Mer.

  ‘… what about Antonia?’ mimicked Eugénie.

  ‘You don’t mean Antonia—drinks?’

  Let them giggle. Regina loved.

  VI

  THE ROYAL ARMS: embossed (making, one had to admit, quite a prettily heraldic effect against the silver breakfast tray).

  Office of the Keeper, etc., etc.: stamped.

  But, beneath that, sad degeneracy of a merely schoolboy (polite name for illiterate) scrawl with a ball point:

  ‘Just to let you know the reaction—They are jolly pleased with Report—Glad to know you find H.R.H. innocent and are not letting her read French books.’

  One is, thought Antonia, smoothing the frilled sleeve of her breakfast négligé (pale: it was not the hour for strong colour), misunderstood.

  VII

  ‘I HATE to worry my beloved when she has cares enough already——’

  ‘You have not imagined another royal catastrophe?’

  ‘No, my beloved—though it did cross my mind, now she has induced some of the younger girls to play rounders——’

  ‘So energetic, the blood royal … And your poor pelouse.’

  ‘For the School, I don’t mind—— But if a stray ball should smash——’

  ‘The boot, my dear Hetty, is surely on the other foot. Let her not, at all costs, drive the car.’

  ‘No, indeed. It wouldn’t be safe——’

  ‘Indeed, without the car we should be lost …’

  ‘—when the roads are so full of sailors …’ —‘Practising, no doubt, l’auto-stop. Yet I am more worried lest she couldn’t stop. But what …?’

  ‘It’s Sylvie Plash, my love.’

  ‘La grippe?’

  ‘The sulks.’

  ‘I feel no sympathy.’

  How indeed could one feel sympathy, when Sylvie, by the existence of her face, had spoilt for Antonia her sister’s?

  ‘She’s retired to her room.’

  ‘Then one need not see her.’

  ‘You couldn’t possibly speak? She hates me. But a word from you——’

  ‘Eugénie might be asked to reason with her sister …’

  ‘Excellent idea. My beloved is so practical. My beloved could not bear, herself, to ask Eugénie …?’

  Could one? A little private interview with the face that had once held charm? No; horrible superimposition of that other, that so resembling, face …

  Seeing the shiver which ran through Antonia’s arm, Hetty reached her hand out to calm it. ‘I’m brutal even to have suggested it. Of course my darling shan’t.’ The tremulous arm accepted the touch; shuddered into stillness.

  Hetty’s competence did, one admitted, have a certain power to calm. It always had had.

  ‘We have our memories’, said the beautiful, the Dian-pale face.

  So she did remember.

  Hetty’s touch firmed.

  ‘But I mustn’t detain you, my dear’, said Antonia, sighing with self-abnegation.

  *

  ‘She’s so dim’, pronounced Eugénie Plash, ‘she wouldn’t get it even if we told her about Antonia and Braid.’

  *

  ‘One is’, Antonia repeated, this time aloud (she had just shewn Hetty the letter with the embossed Arms), ‘misunderstood.’r />
  ‘Ah, my dearest’, Hetty responded, voice more than usually profondo, face more than usually tombstone oblong, in compassion. ‘Sometimes, my loveliest, I fear …’

  ‘What, Hetty, now …?’

  ‘That that is your doom, my love—to be misunderstood.’

  ‘How many premonitions you have these days … Well’, said Antonia, resignant, brave, ‘if it is one’s doom …’

  ‘What nonsense I’m talking.’ Hetty obliged her voice back into its normal, its jovial baritone. ‘Silly Hetty, frightening her love.’

  ‘And yet’, Antonia bravely pursued, ‘one must, in effect, face some small ironies.’

  ‘My love?’

  ‘The child—the royal child, I mean—could not well have learnt less about French Literature if it had been my intention to keep if from her.’

  ‘O my dear—and you have laboured so nobly. My dear, I do occasionally wonder—it has just crossed my mind—— My love, do you not perhaps think that for a beginner, for such an absolutely unsophisticated intellect, Albertine Disparue is just a little hard?’

  ‘Hard …?’ (Surely the hardness was to imagine a state of mind where it could be hard?)

  ‘Just a little complex? A little subtle?’

  ‘And yet’, Antonia mused, ‘it seemed to me, on re-reading it, almost too grossly blatant …’

  ‘It is so difficult for my love to come down from her heights.’

  ‘Am I then to be forced’, asked Antonia, all but failing, ‘to use a bludgeon?’

  ‘O my angel, not forced!’ (pierced, the deep voice …)

  ‘Forced’, Antonia affirmed, all but à bout de (her) forces.

  ‘O my angel!’

  ‘If I must’, Antonia breathed, ‘I must. Be so good, Hetty, as——’

  ‘My angel?’

  ‘—to put out four copies—’

  ‘Four copies, my angel?’

  ‘—of’ (let not the ultimate shudder overwhelm, quite, the words) ‘Claudine a l’École.’

  *

  And yet, before the sun had climbed, quite, to its ultimate, torridest zenith (exaggerating by contrast the cool pénombre in the depth of Antonia’s study) Antonia was reconciled to Claudine … It had made Regina Outre-Mer laugh.

  *

  And yet again, deep in the chill of the never quite completely obscure Mediterranean night,

  ‘Is my beloved still sitting up?’

  ‘I cannot sleep’, Antonia simply said.

  For there had been—although the chrysanthemum-petal hair had shaken under the impetus of an only half-suffocatable giggle, and although that tender, white, kiss-tempting, kiss-inviting spot above the bosom had quivered, like a delicate yet fleshy leaf ridding itself of a last raindrop—there had been, there had still been, no opportunity … For royalty, as uncomprehending of the comic as of everything else, had again sat, graven, staring straight ahead …

  ‘My beloved is brooding—are you not?—on her special Literature class? Tell Hetty.’

  ‘It fatigues, it troubles, I confess …’

  ‘There. Hetty knew, Hetty knew. Ah my love, what you sacrifice for royalty.’

  (What indeed.)

  ‘If only they—at the Palace, I mean—realised …’

  (If only they did.)

  ‘—it would be far, far more than Dame.’

  (So Hetty had divined what would ensue? At least, Antonia’s thoughts appended, I think my Dame will become me. It goes quite—trochee, dactyl—hexametrically with Antonia. As for the pantomimic associations of the word, few so well equipped as I to live them down—or, rather, put them clean out of court, stifled before born … Whereas, if they were to give one to Hetty …)

  ‘My love shall not be troubled. She shan’t indeed. Now climb into bed, and let Hetty tuck——’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Antonia.’

  What could one, utterly at the end of one’s strength, reply?

  ‘My Antonia …’ (but tentatively, testing out the proprietorship, as though fearful for it …)

  ‘Forgive me, my dear. I am the prey of a certain—nervosité.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s the——’ Hetty stopped, remembering what Antonia had said the last time she mentioned the Mistral. ‘Be brave, my darling. It will pass.’

  ‘Tout passe …’ (The sadness in the voice!)

  ‘My darling! Perhaps—a little nightcap?’

  ‘Even that, somehow, tonight …’

  ‘I could warm you a little milk.’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘I hate to leave you like this——’

  (Yet you must: one’s nervosité can really endure no more.)

  ‘I am so worried——’

  ‘Let me not keep you up, too, Hetty. It will, as you say, pass. A merely momentary, a really negligible, a really too petite crise. I am better to suffer it alone.’

  ‘But how can I bear——’

  ‘My dear, I am only’ (ah, devouring tiger at the heart) ‘a little under the—’ (no; even in torment let one not be betrayed into that vulgar, that characteristically meteorological English expression) ‘—à l’ombre, mettons.’

  ‘Ah, but of what?’ cried Hetty.’ ‘If only my beloved would tell me precisely.’

  ‘—des jeunes filles en fleur, je suppose’‚ completed Antonia, but only as the door was closing … closing …

  Closed. At last closed.

  Now prowl, tiger. Now lash, gnash …

  … but soundlessly. Not a moan, not a pacing, not a laceration come to the ears of the rose suite.

  Unrelenting desire …

  You are caged, tiger, au delà des grilles (desire unassuageable), prospective damehood the gaoler; as good as locked-in to your pretty, flowery, quilted boudoir (o quilted irony) …

  Howl

  … but silently.

  And yet: and yet who am I, Antonia Mount, virtually Dame Antonia Mount, to submit to a key which has not factually turned?

  Look, I can open my door (relent, tiger; you shall be assuaged). Look, I can open it as softly as dew visiting flowers, as softly as my lips will …

  *

  At least, thought Antonia, paused but a pace from Regina Outre-Mer’s threshold, if I am making (inelegant phrase!) a fool of myself, I am doing it in the most becoming conceivable nightdress. If royalty should choose at this moment to open her rose door and look out——

  But no door opened.

  The sound had been, perhaps, some child turning in her sleep. (Of what did Regina dream?)

  Then step on, silently, stealthily …

  And indeed was not one’s tread always of a pantherine stealth and elegance? Probably nothing—if one were to be observed—could be detected by way of departure from one’s usual demeanour: merely Miss Mount tirelessly going about her métier; her unrelaxing concern for her charges … Except, of course, to the eye of one of her charges who knew … But to the uncomprehending eye there was nothing to shew … Not a frill at one’s throat betrayed the pulse, the taut pulse, beneath; this tiger’s claws (were you, desire, remorseless?) had scratched not the surface of a ruffle at one’s breast …

  A door opened.

  Not Regina’s: Antonia—though her hand was on it—had not yet turned the knob.

  Royalty’s then. No. A rose still shut, sleeping undisturbed through the night. (She, surely, simply did not dream.)

  Eugénie Plash’s, in fact.

  It had stood for a full moment open: and then, just as Antonia turned towards it, closed.

  Inutile to go on, since Eugénie knew.

  Howl

  … but silently: silently tip-toe back, past royalty’s door. And then?

  To Eugénie’s door? Have with her des explications? an éclaircissement? Try perhaps, even, to perceive once again the lost charm?

  No, elle me ferait une scène, Antonia thought, hating, above all things in life, scenes …

  Or not, perhaps, above all things; merely equally with all things. I am tired. I am, even, old
.

  I am—utterly—excédée.

  Back, then … simply, back … the way one had come.

  In youth one had felt the fatigue du nord; was one now to be overtaken by the fatigue du midi as well?

  Lasse, lasse … lasse …

  VIII

  ‘SO PALE, my love.’

  Naturally: one had barely slept.

  ‘Try to take a little coffee, my love. Let Hetty hold the cup.’

  Return to consciousness: of …

  ‘Take just a little more, and then sleep again.’

  ‘But, my——’

  ‘Just for once your special class shall be cancelled, my love. No, Hetty insists. My love is not to wear herself out for royalty.’

  ‘But can you … manage?’

  ‘My love must rest.’

  ‘No new worries?’

  ‘Nothing Hetty can’t cope with.’

  ‘But … something?’

  ‘My love, only the Plash girls. So ungrateful. If they knew how you—half the night——’

  (If, rather, they hadn’t known.)

  ‘What is the matter with them?’ Antonia asked. ‘La grippe, yet?’ (As though she had it in store for them.)

  ‘No, still the sulks, but it seems contagious. Eugénie has it too, now. They have both shut themselves up in Eugénie’s room, and refuse to come out. So ungrateful.’

  ‘Qu’elles boudent’, said Antonia, lying back.

  ‘Quite so. They deserve no better. I will cook a special little luncheon for my beloved, and then she shall sleep again till after the siesta.’

  *

  Yet even after the siesta, even though one was up and, in one’s frail (but by no means careless) fashion, dressed, one still felt lasse almost à mourir.

  ‘My love …’

  ‘You seem troubled, Hetty.’

  ‘Well, principally, my dearest, about you.’

  ‘And next?’

  ‘Well, next …’