The Finishing Touch
Page 6
‘The Plash girls?’
‘Still shut in.’
‘Then one need hardly worry. They can come to no mischief, surely, renfermées.’
‘No. It is, rather, Fraise du Bois.’
‘Too deep droguée?’
‘Too shallowly. We are—o my poor Antonia—running out.’
‘The delivery not made?’
‘No … Thirty-six hours overdue.’
‘With effects, no doubt, as when the Mistral is?’
‘Exactly. My love puts it so well. I would not be worried for myself. It is—well—the presence of royalty.’
‘Ah.’ Whether or not lizards could bite, Fraise du Bois could. So she had attested, the last time she had been overextended (‘I bear her no grudge; the poor thing wasn’t herself’) on—indeed, in, to the bone même—Hetty’s hand. If it were to be, this time, royalty’s …
‘Surely, if you were to drive into town, Hetty, and interview the pharmacien——’
‘Yes, I’m sure I could—enough, at least, to tide us over. But——’
‘But?’
‘It would mean leaving my poor tired beloved in charge.’
‘If it must be …’
‘You are so brave. But you are also so tired. I can see it in your dear face.’
‘One’s strength is often greater than one imagines, when it is called upon. The girls, I presume, can occupy themselves in the gardens? Or in their rooms?’ (As well the two Plash girls, when one was so weary already, be out of sight.)
‘Yes, but the strain——’
‘I suppose I need not be precisely in the gardens? merely … available?’
‘Let us hope no need will arise.’
‘Let us hope … On the verandah, for example?’
‘If you feel strong enough——’
‘When one must …’
‘I will run and set out your chair, and pull down the sunblind.’
*
Hot, hot afternoon, air shimmering like those twisted paper stalactites which either turn or seem to turn, mazy, almost soundless, almost a mist of heat about the pelouse (even royalty had abandoned the attempt to ‘get up’ a rounders game and had sought, somewhere among the deeps of the terracing, the shade)—mist suddenly split by a running figure, chrysanthemum-haired, running, running, stumbling, running on: towards the house; towards the verandah, indeed, and the stained-glass-tinted shade of the striped blind—Regina—running for her life, hands en porte-voix: ‘Miss Mount! Miss Mount!’
What … passion, was it? bred of the torrid afternoon? what folly of publicity, then (o, this heat), but touching … One was (who had thought oneself, if not dead, vieillie)—one was stirred …
‘Miss Mount!’ (how charmingly out of breath; that spot to which my eyes and my desires have so often tended—how delicately, now, panting) ‘Miss Mount! Royalty!’
What had overtaken royalty? (I feel myself turn pale: one does feel it: a draining …) Fallen? Bitten? Had Fraise, then, not held out?
‘Dear child? What? Try to tell me.’
‘The guêpe du midi.’
The guêpe.
‘Well, then …’
Surely every head, no matter how heat-languid in what leafy retreat, must crane forward, the Plash heads crane out from their window above, Fraise du Bois, in heaven knew what extremity of need and the gardens, attend … Antonia, without parasol, without gloves, even, advancing into the gardens (had she not once already, for royalty, made the tour of them?); Antonia, the trepidant chrysanthemum-head at her side, stepping …
Royalty (for once in her life, a sensible act) ran to encounter her.
‘I say—I thought I’d better hurry—they say you’ve only got twenty minutes——’
Useless to ask where the wasp had stung: a crimson pilule, almost perceptibly enlarging, burned on the royal décolletage (thank God, nowhere more intimate): on—o, irony!—that very spot which, on Regina Outre-Mer …
Let neither one’s revulsion nor the arrow of irony render tremulous one’s aim. Staunch, hands! Grip—firmly, steadyingly—the royal shoulders; bend, lovely neck; down, proud head … And now (brave): suck, suck, suck (a bee at how plain a flower) suck (bitter tingling of venom on the tongue) suck (my mouth full) further yet … my lungs burst …
Letting royalty’s shoulders go and turning aside, Antonia (with more than ever the gesture of a paysan in a third-class carriage) spat out the poison into a pink hydrangea in the flower bed. (I have never spat in a garden before.)
‘I say—was my life really in danger?—how jolly—But I say, how frightfully decent of you.’
‘Miss Mount, Miss Mount, how brave you are.’
‘Regina, dear child, do not faint until Miss Braid comes back.’
Accept, then, the dear child’s arm to lean on, as one was without one’s parasol; return—had one thought one was tired before? (one had fortunately, and thanks to royalty’s one sensibleness, not come really very far out); play, perhaps, insofar as one was not too entirely exhausted, like a languid lizard, over the dear little wrist-knob as one leaned on it …
‘Miss Mount!’ (Was there no end?) ‘Miss Mount! Miss Mount!’
The Plash girls; precipitate; scrambling.
‘One had understood you to be sulking.’
But now all hurry; a request for permission to post a packet.
‘Miss Braid is not here to drive you to the post.’
They could, they protested, go alone; would speak to no one; ‘word of honour, Miss Mount’ (thus Eugénie; once so charming in eager mood; now one would be glad to be quit …)
What matter, when one was so weary, if their packet should be positively addressed to a sailor? (Thought too compromising to surmise what it might contain.) One could not care what assignations they might be keeping. (One gave a wearied but not unbecoming haussement.) Qu’elles partent. Hetty would be glad, at least, to have their sulks cured.
Besides, better (if one was now going to request Regina’s arm up to one’s boudoir, to rest a little; and who could say what, in the after-impress of violent emotion, might, on both sides …?) that Eugénie Plash should be out of earshot as well as sight.
So: qu’elles partent. ‘Your arm, dear child.’ (Your dear, knob-decorative arm.)
And yet, cunningly as one had arranged to give oneself, as it were, feu vert … Yet, as one frailly let oneself be helped upstairs (‘Go higher’) and looked down at the child’s summery décolletage, the memory (of that very spot, but on another breast), the re-vivified taste of the poison …
Is my whole life, then, envenomed? Am I to live in desert for ever?
Well not, perhaps, for ever.
Tomorrow, perhaps; one hoped.
But now— could one? No; one was dead, dead … ‘Leave me, my dear, here’ (at the door of my room). One was—one sank down—épuisée.
*
Hetty, returned, wept over Antonia’s bravery.
(And the other would have wept, too; and more than wept: but I feel drained, drained.)
‘But, my darling—are you sure you spat it all out?’
‘Yes, yes …’
‘And rinsed your mouth after?’
‘Yes.’ (It was too gross: like prophylactic measures after some too gross to be précisé sexual act.) ‘And then I drank a glass of ouzo.’
‘Of ouzo, my love?’
‘Since it behaves like a disinfectant when one pours in the water, let it disinfect …’
‘Ah, my love. My darling, rest. Try to rest. Heaven send you are not poisoned.’
Only my imagination, only my imagination …
IX
OVERNIGHT, unnoticed, the pink hydrangea in the flower bed—not withered: turned blue. Who should notice? A blue hydrangea is a perfectly commonplace sight. Only Antonia might have remarked the unnaturally sudden change. But she seldom went into the gardens.
No doubt in time it would gradually grow pink again.
X
WOMEN like Hetty w
ere natural believers in witchcraft (even, perhaps, involuntary practitioners: had her fears induced the guêpe …?) Now the guêpe had stung, Hetty seemed assured the désenvôutement had been performed: chance had shot its malign bolt and been—so bravely—warded off; the School could continue …
No doubt because Hetty was more détendue, a certain pleasantly subdued, a bee-like (the guêpes seemed to have retired from the heat) activity was re-established. Antonia from her window seemed to look down on the normal pleasures of a hot Sunday morning, surging, with a not unpleasing tension, towards the luncheon bell. Even in herself Antonia sensed a certain return—was that not the black President’s daughter glinting through a juniper? … The Plash girls, at whom, despite one’s long sight, one need not look too closely, restored to the gardens (Sylvie even consenting to ‘pick a side’ to play against royalty); Fraise du Bois, correctly dosed, (had Hetty remembered to counsel her not to go too headstrong at the new supply?) flat in an asparagus trench; the Badessa waddling …
Only Regina Outre-Mer, at the verge of the grenouillère, wept …
She wept, no doubt, for Antonia’s neglect.
(But could one help oneself, if one’s sensibilities were so acute?)
Yet: poor child.
She wept as prettily as a willow.
Could it be one was stirred, again, into …?
No doubt this wound, too, in time would pass: tout, after all, passe: and presently one might resume …
Meanwhile, the President’s daughter—perhaps they were not so cold but that one might provoke …? One’s imagination, stimulated by the half veiling of juniper leaves, might care to toy … Picture the girl wholly clad in juniper leaves—or, rather, not wholly clad, but clad in nothing else: or in peacock feathers? Or one would still like to try sapphires, if one could decide how to affix them. Curious how the sight of this girl always set one’s mind to experiment. Now that she appeared, by happy accident, to be dressed wholly in juniper leaves (with, here and there, a berry) one’s mind naturally wished … One would like, bref, to lay hands on her—just to make her all of a piece … to re-dress, perhaps, those two long locks (il lui faut une coiffure qui aille avec) …
Or was it not (lasse that I am of sophistication) the natural, the indeed horticultural, coiffure of Regina Outre-Mer which drew the eye?
Perhaps: well,—soon. Antonia turned (one could not always be playing) to her Sunday devoir, shook out her newspaper and—sat, médusée.
The entire front page was giving to a photograph of Antonia apparently kissing—just above the bosom—royalty.
Naufrage.
‘Étrange Affection entre Professeur et Élève’, said the gross black headline.
Étrange it would have been indeed, had it existed.
It was not hard to trace the trajectory (the word: could bullets have done worse?) of the shot to Eugénie Plash’s window.
‘Hetty——’ No: futile to enquire whether Sylvie Plash had handed in her camera. Obviously, she had not. One did not wish one’s conversation, even in extremities, to be obvious.
Étrange Affection entre … He was, in his way, this sub-editor, classical: ‘Embrassez-moi pour l’amour du grec.’ (At least one had never wasted one’s time trying to teach royalty Greek.)
Embrassez-moi … Ah, Regina, Regina …
Quelle folie.
What, then, to do?
Nothing. Nothing to do. Nothing to be done.
(One might—opportunity now lost for ever—have taught Regina Greek. A few poems of Sappho, perhaps? …)
At least the horrible child had focussed the appareil quite well (fortunate that one had not, in effect, progressed very far from the house: the child was, after all, only an amateur). One had been caught (caught!) in—that so tender stoop—a not unbecoming attitude.
But even that … (Regina, Regina.)
XI
‘I SAY. Get me some background on this Mount woman, will you?’
‘Right. I’ll look through the files.’
‘Won’t be in the files. You’ll have to tap the old boy network.’
‘Right.’
‘Find out if she’s that kind of woman.’
‘Right you are. If she’s communist, you mean?’
‘No, no, no, no, no’ (agacé).
*
The Canard Enchâiné reproduced the photograph, much smaller (less becoming: something of distinction was lost) with the comment
‘Mâitresse d’école?’
*
‘Got it?’
‘I’ll say.’
‘Well look. Let me have the salient facts in memorandum form.’
‘I don’t know that I can write them down.’
*
The Palace, as it turned out, waited for no memoranda. They telephoned immediately (‘Miss Mount is not available. She is indisposed’): orders had been radioed to Commander Curl; he was to come, in person, at once; let, meanwhile, royalty’s thirty-one bags be packed.
XII
‘MY BELOVED’ (twenty-three bags had been packed) ‘there is no need for you to sit up. There is no need for you to see him, even.’
‘It is my wish to.’
‘At least let me be with you, to support you.’
‘Mine be the interview, since mine was the—error.’
‘It is so late, my love, and you are so saddened already. Must you stay awake all night? Let me at least make you——’
‘You have the packing to do. I will see him alone.’
‘Antonia, you know I will never abandon you. I will support you through—everything.’
*
Ah, but if we have no means of support? Les Plash had been expelled, of course (I blame myself; if I had properly looked at Sylvie Plash’s face, I should never have admitted them in the first place). But would one, in time, find oneself regretting them? They were, at least, pupils. Regina Outre-Mer had been withdrawn (Howl, howl): the President’s daughter—gone in a flash of damson-blue bloom: the Badessa likewise, with a flash of daisy (though her one could not, try as one would, regret) … All, all gone … (Even Fraise du Bois—whose guardians, incontinent, had come for her at quite the wrong stage of the day—carted off, inert …)
Curiously enough there had been, by the very post that brought the withdrawals, several new applications. Antonia was confident there would be more still. Strange reversal, Antonia firm, Hetty faltering.
(‘Do you think, my belovedest, they will have quite the same—be quite the type of girl we want?’
‘I think’, Antonia had replied, ‘they will be in some ways even more the …’)
*
Hetty hesitant outside the door, a cup of warm milk in her hand: twenty-nine bags had been packed: she must be allowed (without lèse-majesté) to spare a moment to Antonia.
Yet she dared not go in.
What agonies of humiliating interview the poor beloved must be undergoing with the jolly (and my love is so delicate) Commander. Humiliation: and my poor love is so proud.
*
‘My colleague would, I feel sure, prepare some warm milk if you preferred. But, I felt, a sailor … Indeed, I, too, I confess ….’
(Tonight one seemed to be favouring—and one had been on the point of becoming certain one’s taste had permanently settled for the yellow—the green Chartreuse.)
*
Hetty descended to the kitchen, re-heated the milk and carried the cup upstairs again. (One more suitcase to go: but it was Antonia who needed sustaining …)
*
‘I say—I didn’t expect—I say, Miss Mount, Antonia—(May I call you Antonia? I mean, hadn’t I better? now?)’
‘Dear’ (is it I who from my girls or my girls who from me have caught this faiblesse for sailors?) ‘boy …’
(Those knees, so—though touchingly—absurd when they had been the only things bare, were quite vindicated now that …)
‘I must say, I never—I can’t get over it— (o, I SAY)—I mean, I was told—I didn’
t—not this kind of wo——’
‘Yet one must from time to time permit oneself’ (ah, the relief!) ‘refreshment … before …’ (before, thought Antonia, the new girls: one would like to be at one’s most relaxed to meet them) … ‘One is surely entitled to … recuperation … after …’— after, one meant, though one did not like to say so (in case the poor dear man should, however mistakenly, feel himself to be being used), after the tensions, the hysteria, the really at times too insupportable emotional fraught-ness, of these all-female institutions.
*
Ah, my poor love—if only one dared go in (Hetty skimmed another skin off the milk and tried to keep the cup cosy between her hands). What agony of a frozen interview must be proceeding behind the door one dare not broach. One could tell: the voices were stilled, now, to silence: no doubt all that could be said had been said, leaving only the embarrassment—ah, torment!—of the coarse man’s moral disapproval. Only, from time to time, a moment’s moan (of my beloved’s via crucis, no doubt): a murmur from the Commander (was he trying, had he the effrontery, to excuse himself?)
My poor darling—— Her moan, again; o, her torment; o, her humiliation.
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2013
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Brigid Brophy, 1965
Introduction © Brigid Brophy, 1987
Preface to the 2013 Edition © Sir Peter Stothard, 2013
A version of Peter Stothard’s preface first appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail, 13 February 2009, as ‘Hell is a finishing school, and vice versa’.
The right of Brigid Brophy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly