The Finishing Touch (7 page)

O
VERNIGHT
, 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.

W
OMEN
like Hetty were 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.)

‘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.

‘M
Y 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.