The Finishing Touch (6 page)

T
HE
R
OYAL
A
RMS
: 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:

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

‘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.’

‘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,
Alber
tine
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 …

‘S
O
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 …’

‘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
…