The Finishing Touch (3 page)

Yes, well I suppose it
does,
Antonia’s thoughts agreed, wondering whether she would take Tio Pepe or madeira for her own apéritif.

The sun was still at zenith or even more so, if that was possible: as indeed it was: it was possible for this southern sun to clamp itself unmoving above an entire day—the long, long meridian du midi …

In a sense this heat was its own apéritif. Even so, Antonia poured a glass of madeira from a decanter strangely stoppered.

The Plash girls, she was pleased to notice, sensibly put up their parasols as they stepped from the shadow of the lime trees. Two pretty Plash parasols (such a well-dressed woman, their mother); beneath, one pretty Plash head, one plain … The girls had different fathers, of course.

The lime vista, the staggered lapse of the
terracing
, the pretty cupid-fountain (Hetty had insisted on a slight alteration; it had cost her some embarrassment to explain to the plumber
du midi what she wanted): Antonia’s eye was pleased. Her palate prickled likewise in a response almost erotic to the madeira, that liquid neither male nor female or, rather, both, that part-deep, part-treble
glow,
that viola among wines …
Fortified,
Antonia added; one of the strongest, most vibrant, almost bracing, of words.

A clump of girls passed, on the narrow, gravelly path, a clump of hydrangeas. A
charming
sight. Which bowed?

A butterfly sought the lavender grove …

Antonia was not disturbed—hardly, indeed, piqued—even by the sight of the squat young Badessa di Poggibonsi, the only secular Abbess (the title had been in the female line of her family since the proto-renaissance) in all Italy and yet all sallow bare skin (bare, that was, but for its black hairs) and white—sailcloth, Antonia supposed it must be; laundered to nautical pitch, it billowed like sails over the Abbatial podge—the Badessa picking her way across the tiny plot where Hetty tried to grow grass:
picking
because the Badessa was wearing, of course, those white sandals of hers which pained Hetty by their stiletto heels (ultimate degeneracy into which had descended the old high Italian custom of the stiletto) but which offended Antonia rather by their open front (such sallow, rounded,
wriggelly
toes had the
Badessa) and the fact that their fastening was a large white plastic daisy.

And yet, thought Antonia peaceably, it was foolish of Hetty to
try
to grow grass in a climate so plainly non-supporting of it. ‘Where we live’, she had already told Hetty, ‘
lawn
means our handkerchiefs.’

The entire view suggested to Antonia a pleasing sense of activity just sharpened by anticipation: the still, warm air hardly
perceptibly
quickened in expectation of the
luncheon
bell; bees suspended above ashy lavender flowers, the two Plash heads (with so much to discuss, of course, about the sailor and his note) buzzing together (they had settled down now, almost out of sight, behind the asparagus trenches); Hetty about to return—surely it was almost time?—from the last of her Sunday expeditions …

Antonia’s eye discerned Fraise du Bois, the ‘lady from a southern state’ (thus her guardians had described her in their letter of application) actually
in
—indeed,
flat
in—the lower
asparagus
trench: alas, Fraise, only nineteen and already well advanced down the slope pioneered by her cousin Blanche … only nineteen, twice divorced, and already registered as a narcotics addict. (The authorities were not even mean, really, in what they considered an adequate quota.) ‘My dear, we must help the
poor thing’, had been Hetty’s first response when Antonia informed her that the new pupil had been accepted; later, Hetty had begun to dread the responsibility; but when the ‘
unfortunate
child’ had been in the School a fortnight Hetty confessed that she was less trouble than all the other pupils put together. ‘Evidemment’, Antonia had calmly replied vindicating her original decision, ‘droguée as the poor creature is from dawn to dusk …’

Only when the bi-monthly supply was late had there once been trouble.

The Plash girls were joined by the President’s daughter of what dark republic it was Antonia could never remember; but
very
dark—
évidemment
: the black skin, blue-damson-bloomed as night heavens, dustily moved—whispered, it seemed, visually—behind the asparagus ferns.

(‘I thought …’ Sylvie Plash was explaining all over again; ‘… and then when the door opened and it was only
Braid,
I burst into tears.’)

Obviously the girl took after her mother, the President. When the girl first came to the School, Madame President had unfortunately (to judge from the daughter, Antonia would have liked to see her) been too busy to escort her child; she had sent instead a withered black man, one of her Cabinet or, was it?—Antonia could not remember—one of her husbands? One, perhaps,
of the girl’s putative fathers? But the girl did not, certainly, resemble him.

‘A natural show-case’, Antonia had said when she first saw the bloomy skin,’ for jewels’. And at the School’s anniversary party, the girl had appeared in emeralds (of obvious value; though rather curiously placed). Even so Antonia, though éblouie in all conscience, was not satisfied that every experiment had been made. She would have liked to try sapphires (the lucid on the dusky blue); or even, throwing away value and returning, rapturous, to nature, orchids; even, she now thought from her
window
, an—here; or perhaps
there
—asparagus fern. The girl even possessed, so Hetty had reported on returning from one of her tours on affairs of ménage, dusky dusting powder …

(But was it, Antonia prickled with the
question
, brown or
blue
?)

(‘She thought’, Sylvie Plash was explaining, ‘I was crying because I was sorry.’)

Such a lesson, the bloomy skin, Antonia thought, for the Poggibonsian Abbess with her sallowness. But would she, in that intimate proximity behind the asparagus trench into which she was even now sinking, learn it? Would she even carry away, on her sallowness, the faintest brushing of the dusting powder? The Poggibonsian shoulders, so tightly buttoned into the white sailcloth, and buttoned, of course,
down the back, disappeared; and next the white, tight Poggibonsian bottom,
also
buttoned down the back; so suggestive of the girl, Antonia thought, if
all
her clothes back-buttoned (as they well might): and also, surely?, agony to sit on buttons; or even, behind an asparagus trench, recline on buttons …

Horrible, square-necked white sailcloth blouse; Antonia was glad it was removed from her sight (only a white plastic daisy protruded a-botanically through the fern): a sleeveless blouse, of course:
could
Antonia ask Hetty to murmur to the squat little Abbess about possible treatments for ses dessous de bras? (Hetty’s moment of embarrassment with the plumber du midi was surely sufficient years ago, sufficiently lived down …?)

Miss Jones, the Monacan heiress (but not
nun-like
), Antonia observed, was already in her bikini again. The child was barely out of church …

Surely Hetty must be returning soon? It could not be that Antonia’s ease of temper was going to be spoilt by—
hunger
?

Sunday morning was, for Hetty, a succession of drives, with diminishing numbers of charges. First, most sensible, most straightforward, the Catholic girls, the largest flock (quite half the pupils), with Hetty their—no, Antonia checked her fancy-rioting vision, not even the eye of
affection could see in Hetty a shepherdess; but their sheepdog, sturdy, reliable, brisk: the Catholic girls, in—to the town; in—to the Catholic église; out; back to the School: such a sensible,
quick
religion Antonia thought it, and Mass at such a sensible hour, too, before the sun had reached its consuming height and while a little darkening dew still lay moist on the foliage. And then, while the sun did reach its height, the Catholic girls could withdraw, already conscience-eased before the week was well begun, to write the Sunday letter home, each with a duty sensibly discharged to report, making agreeable reading for the parents. (In theory none of the Catholic girls should have been burdened with two letters home to write; in practice it was surprising how many of them were.)

Not that the Catholic devoirs had always been so straightforward for Hetty to discharge. In early days, the Catholic girls had expected to be shepherded—sheepdogged—into Nice on Saturday evenings as well, to make their confessions. The parish priest had absolutely declined Antonia’s blanket assurance—even though it had been a written assurance, which surely made it official?—that none of her girls had anything to confess. Hetty had protested she could support the burden, but Antonia was determined to spare her, marbled churches
striking such a dangerously sudden chill on summer evenings. Besides, Antonia was not quite secure in her mind … Hetty was
indefatigably
watchful, of course, and, surely, after these years,
up
to whatever the girls might devise. And yet: no city of the seaboard could be an easy place in which to shepherd, in which to chaperone, thirteen girls in Saturday dusk. To some of the thirteen, it was true, temptation would hardly come: ‘I quite understand’, Antonia had said about one of these, ‘if she feels impelled to implore forgiveness for her shins’. But for the others—alas if, while waiting to do so, they should
acquire
something to confess. And the Catholic religion was so peculiarly set against precautionary steps. There were, it was true, ‘natural’ and rhythmical methods
permitted
, and yet rhythm seemed not to be in the nature of girls … ‘I fear’, Antonia had sighed, uneasy in mind, ‘that we shall one day find ourselves trapped between the two kinds of irregularity to which girls are prone …’
Uneasiness
was not allayed until Antonia, who permitted herself a single maxim in life (‘Go higher’—pun, as it were, on her surname),
consulted
the Cardinal, who readily allowed that Miss Mount’s girls might confess in the
vacations
only, when on their parents’ heads be it. Hetty relieved of a chore, Antonia of an anxiety, Antonia found herself quite in charity again
with the Catholic religion (such a sensible
institution
, the College of Cardinals) though
remaining
a touch more insistent with the Catholic girls than the others in bidding them, if they should by chance have that capacity, satisfy themselves with the company of their own sex.

Even the prejudice against precautionary measures, so potentially deleterious to the School among the girls, militated in its favour among the parents. It afforded Antonia a happy sense of continuity to know that so many of her girls, as they grew towards leaving age, had behind them a team of little sisters growing up to take their place, little sisters perhaps even prettier … (younger children so often were …). Invited to stand godmother to the newest Cobos de Porcel girl (who made, really, one
too
many), Antonia had even proposed a name for the infant: Contracepción: rejected, however, by the Cardinal baptising, Spanish Cardinals (with the exception of Pirelli) being notoriously narrower …

Even that did not put her out of charity with the Cardinalate, whose sensibleness was all the more to be commended when one compared it to the Synod, the Archimandritehood, the
spiritual
directors of others among the girls whose rites made of Hetty’s Sunday morning, after its straightforward start, a scramble … a scramble
to deliver the Greeks in time to hear the whole of their interminable,
unaccompanied
rite and yet to collect the Armenians before some
encounter
heterodox as their faith overtake them in their mosaic-floored narthex under their jewelled dome … and yet again Hetty must hasten to convey the single Moravian to
wherever
… Antonia had lately decided to reject, with regret (one liked the exotic), on account of the difficulty of the
day,
all Jews, Hindus and Moslems unless lapsed …

(She
had
accepted an Old Catholic, difficulties though it entailed. ‘She does not seem to me’, Antonia had murmured, ‘so very old …’)

Surely, by now, even the last Moravian or Melchite must be being garnered in, somewhere, somewhere not far, along the Corniche …

In the gardens below, it seemed to Antonia, there was a restlessness. Even Fraise du Bois in her trench seemed to stir, into a kind, perhaps, of preconsciousness. The Badessa di Poggibonsi rose, still back-buttoned, from the asparagus fern and, leaving the Plash girls, began to hobble, a stiletto-heeled chèvre, up the terraces. Her breasts, Antonia thought, were vast. She could not be in milk?

Antonia must soon turn to her own Sunday duty, arrogated to herself, of searching the advice column of
Paris-Semaine
to make sure none of her girls had written. They would write,
of course, anonymously: yet Antonia was
confident
of discerning them by their plights. Occasionally Antonia’s eye would drop to the advertisements of the agences matrimoniales: ‘
Mr
sér.,
sit. 
st.,
cinq.,
allure
jeune,
agr.,
sport
….
’—the answer, could it be?, for the less finished, for the less finishable girls … even for He—— No. Impossible thought. The School could not be run without her …

Only, in the gardens, little Miss Outre-Mer, whose name Antonia had lately learnt, shewed none of the restlessness of the others but sat, as she had sat all morning, disconsolate, like a poet seeking the shade, in the moist
neighbourhood
of the grenouillère … composing,
perhaps
, a letter to
Paris-Semaine.

She was certainly in love. Heaven send it was not, Antonia deprecated, a sailor … She was such a pretty little thing …

The Badessa di Poggibonsi, having laboured to the top of the terraces, was photographing for the last time the chemical-coloured, faceted, pétillant Mediterranean, the mirages of water in the loops of the tarmac road (up which Hetty must soon drive), the distant glitter of the Armenian dome: for the last time because
tomorrow
all cameras were to be handed for
safekeeping
to Miss Braid, for the duration of royalty (‘the better part of discretion’, Antonia had decided) (‘for the duration’, one said; for
who could tell how long it would take to
finish
royalty?)