The Finishing Touches (3 page)

Now that I thought about it, I’d had a very
Brideshead Revisited
sort of childhood, though it had seemed perfectly normal at the time…

I was jolted out of this daydream by Liv nudging me.

“I said, did it take you long to get everything arranged, Betsy?” she asked in a tone that suggested I’d probably done everything in an hour. I had a reputation for organizing, which, to be honest, wasn’t 100 percent deserved.

I shook my head. “I didn’t do very much, really. I did offer, but it’s been so busy in the shop, and Lord P insisted that he’d manage it all himself. In fact, he specifically told me not to take time off work and come down.” I paused, wondering now if I’d done the right thing. “I thought it was best to let him, you know, keep busy.”

Keeping busy was my personal therapy when things were bad. Right now my flat and the shop were absolutely spotless, with every account filed and shelf spotless. A couple of days after Franny’s funeral I’d even arrived early and washed the windows, to the amazement of the assistants. I’d used vinegar and newspaper. That was one of Nancy’s
Good Housekeeping
tips, not Franny’s.

“Probably for the best,” Liv agreed. “I suppose there’d be people at the Academy to help? The headmistress?”

“Mm,” I said, distracted by the middle-aged ladies with
“good legs” already heading toward Number 34 like honey-blond bees: obviously old Phillimoras from their confident walk in high heels.

“And there’s always Kathleen and Nancy,” she went on. “I can’t imagine they’d stand by and let him undercater a party. You know what Kathleen’s like—” Liv went into a terrible impression of Kathleen’s Lancashire solidness, with her hands on her nonexistent hips. “If a party’s worth having, it’s worth having wi’ lots of sandwiches. A cake shared is a pleasure halved. Better to feed the birds after than starve the guests before.”

Kathleen and Nancy communicated entirely in pithy sayings, most of which I now suspected them of making up to suit the occasion.

“At least there’ll be plenty to eat,” I said. “That’s one thing you can be sure of. That and the three hundred thank-you notes Lord P will get in exactly twenty-four hours’ time.”

We were nearly outside the house now, and as we approached, our pace slowed as we tried to pretend we weren’t looking at the famous Doorstep of the Abandoned Child.

Over the years, Franny, Nancy, and Kathleen had told the story about the Cooper’s marmalade box left on the Academy’s front step so many times that it was sometimes hard to remember it had actually been me inside it. Obviously, I had no memory of it myself, and what I’d
really
wanted to hear wasn’t what had happened but how excited and delighted they had been to find me there and how Franny had sent to Harrods for nappies.

I’d told the tale quite often myself at school, admittedly with a few elaborations involving cloaked figures and tearstains on the blanket, and there were times when I’d even made myself cry with secondhand pathos, along with everyone around me. But as I got older and started thinking more deeply about
why
my mother might have left me and where she might be now, I wasn’t sure it was healthy to feel so detached. The sim
ple truth was that I wanted to feel something—but there was nothing there, except the little bee charm that I wore every day around my neck on a gold chain Franny had given me.

I tried to feel a flicker of something now, seeing the front doorstep where the box had been wedged against the bootscraper, but all I could see was tatty ivy clinging to a frontage that needed a lick of paint.

“Head up, shoulders back, chest out,” said Liv as she rapped the lion’s head door knocker. “Just remember the happy times, OK?”

It wasn’t quite so straightforward as that, though, I thought. Much as I had loved Franny and the graceful, white-shouldered vision of high-society elegance she had represented, there were other memories attached to the Academy for me. Painful ones that I’d thought I’d put to one side but that were now rising inside my chest like acid reflux.

The red front door was opening. The nostalgic smell of polish and high ceilings and fresh flowers rushed out to meet me, making my head spin with recognition.

“Betsy?” Liv’s voice sounded far away. “Are you all right?”

I took a half-step back away from the black-and-white tiles of the entrance hall, but then I saw a familiar face and my manners took over. Without thinking, I stood up straighter, pulled my shoulders back, and put on my best smile.

Lord Pelham Phillimore, my adoptive father and the official host, stood at the door, his wiry frame thinner than normal in his dark Savile Row suit. He’d put a crimson silk hankie in the top pocket in a melancholy attempt to comply with Franny’s cheerful dress code, but his distinguished face was gray and tight with strain beneath his white hair.

I wished I could hug him, but the only time Lord P voluntarily submitted to having anyone put their arms round him in public was when his tailor took his chest measurement. His
expression, though, softened when he saw me, and I smiled, hoping he’d read the hug in my eyes.

“Betsy,” he said, reaching out for my hands, “and Olivia, how lovely. Come in.”

There’s an irony, I thought, as he kissed my cheek and welcomed me inside. Me, being welcomed into the Phillimore Academy by the very man who’d decided, against his own wife’s wishes, that it wasn’t appropriate for me to attend, nearly a decade ago.

The day I found out that I
wasn’t allowed to join the Academy girls in their napkin-folding, prince-meeting, etiquette classes was the day my life stopped being like something from one of Nancy’s well-thumbed Georgette Heyer novels and turned into something more approaching real life.

Actually, I’m being melodramatic. I was eighteen. Real life had definitely cut in—I’d already failed two driving tests and had my ears pierced. What I mean, I suppose, is that for the first time I was forced to consider the possibility that I might not be the abandoned baby of a wronged actress/lovestruck heiress/tubercular ballerina. I mightn’t be special at all.

Till then I’d enjoyed the luxury of a mysterious past but with the comforting safety net of Franny, Nancy, and Kathleen’s absolute devotion. Franny treated me exactly as if I were her own little girl, and, to be honest, I felt as if I were. It’s hard to
miss your “real” mother when you don’t even know what color her eyes are, and Franny couldn’t have loved me more than she did.

I went to a smart little primary school behind Buckingham Palace until I was eleven, and then Franny sent me to her old boarding school in Yorkshire. I met Liv on our first night, tearfully scarfing chicken nuggets because “it reminded me of home.” Liv’s dad, Ken, was an Irish property wheeler-dealer who’d made a pile from correctly guessing which areas of London would go from scummy to trendy overnight, and her mum, Rina, was a retired fashion model who’d been the “legs” of various famous stockings. We were both outsiders, among the 24-karat posh girls: lanky Liv had a half-Irish, half-London accent that didn’t fit in with everyone else’s drawly yahs; I had carroty hair and dressed just like you’d expect someone who’d grown up in a finishing school would—pearls, kitten heels, Laura Ashley floral skirts. We clicked at once.

I tried hard at school, knowing how expensive the fees were, and was popular enough, given that my best subject was math, which I loved because everything added up; there was always a right answer and no room for mystery whatsoever. But as my final year approached and we started to talk about jobs and university, something strange happened. I started thinking about my mother, and the Academy, and that sad hope she’d written on the note:
I want her to grow up to be a proper lady
. I hadn’t really followed what was happening at the Academy since I’d been away, and from what I remembered, I wasn’t sure if I needed to learn half the stuff on offer, unless international economists also had to lay a formal dinner table. But it seemed like the only way I’d ever connect to my shadowy birth mother, even if she never knew I’d been there, as well as pleasing Franny, so I decided it’d be as good a gap year as any.

It didn’t work out like that.

At the end of the summer Franny and Lord P took me out for lunch at the Savoy Grill to celebrate my A-level grades, and after some discussion about what kind of dog would result if Lord P bred his Great Dane with their neighbor’s evil little Border terrier (a Great Derriere, we decided), the conversation turned to my “future plans.” The atmosphere till then had been quite merry, and I was sure that Franny was hinting that I should get myself a cashmere twinset in readiness for some Academy finishing.

I beamed at her over the cheese platter and said, “Liv reckons we should drive across America and make a road movie, but she’s failed her test again, so that’s not on. I thought I might have my gap year in London and learn some manners.”

Franny smiled sadly and pulled her triple string of pearls tight, and I knew something was wrong.

I followed her gaze to Lord P, who was jabbing awkwardly at the Stilton in a fashion that wouldn’t have passed muster in the Academy’s Social Dining class.

“Finishing school’s wasted on a girl like you,” he mumbled, flushing and spraying crumbs over the tablecloth. “Get yourself a degree, something useful…How about Durham? Know some people there…My old college, jolly good math faculty…”

I felt as if I’d just swallowed a wasp.
A girl like me?
What sort of girl was that?

Though we’d always had an affectionate relationship—roughly on a par with his horse but not as close as his dogs—Lord P’s personal involvement in my upbringing so far had been limited to riding lessons at five and a short lecture on credit cards at eighteen. Why on earth was he starting now? Even though I had every intention of going to uni, thank you very much, I was stunned. I tried to tell myself that it was a compliment, that he was proud of my academic achievements,
but I couldn’t get round the fact that he obviously thought there was no point wasting time or money trying to turn me into something I wasn’t.

I’d never felt more
adopted
in my whole life. I wanted to slide under the table with humiliation.

Franny leaped in at once. “Pelham, it’s up to
Betsy
where she studies!” She glanced at me, and her eyes were full of something I hadn’t seen before: frustration. “How about the London School of Economics, darling, nearer home? With your grades, they’ll be
begging
you to apply!”

But she didn’t try to talk him round, and something inside me curled up into a tight ball.

Well, I thought grimly, if he wants me to go away, I’ll
go
away.

I applied to St. Andrews—the farthest British university I could find—that afternoon and moved up to Scotland, where I turned my back on everything the Academy stood for. Manners, etiquette, twinsets, behaving like Audrey Hepburn—it hurt even to think about it. Much to Liv’s horror, I ditched my kitten heels for cargo pants and vowed I’d never,
ever
write a stupid bloody place card.

It broke my heart that I hadn’t been able to be what my mother wanted, but if she’d known what the entry requirements were, maybe she should have thought about putting a pedigree in the Cooper’s marmalade box with me, not a plea for help and some jewelry.

I got over it, of course. Franny refused to acknowledge my hurt silence and sent me Fortnum & Mason hampers and funny letters full of advice and gossip and passed on worried queries about whether I was eating enough (from Kathleen) and wearing thermals (from Nancy). In the end, as I told Liv, I was
glad
I hadn’t wasted precious time on curtseying: I learned more useful things in one freshman week than I would have
done in a year of napkin folding. I left with a first-class degree and ten different hangover cures and started my life over again in Edinburgh, where no one would have believed the “left in a box at a finishing school” story even if I’d told them. Which I didn’t.

I
thought
I didn’t care about the Academy anymore. And yet, standing there on the doorstep, a grown woman with a proper job and her own flat, I felt a weird sense that there was something waiting for me behind the door that I didn’t even know about yet. Like one of those spooky “and this is how your life
could
have gone” films.

“Come in, Betsy,” said Lord P, and I realized I was hovering, blocking his polite attempts to shake Liv’s hand. “And thank you for coming, Olivia.”

“Oh, my pleasure,” said Liv, and I could see Lord P melt under her most concerned smile.

I took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold, looking round at the reception going on beneath the old crystal chandeliers. Between the swooping staircase on one side and the table of wineglasses and teacups on the other, the hall was packed with women, all somewhere between the ages of thirty and seventy, although you couldn’t put an exact age on a single one of them. They were stylishly dressed in flattering pastel shades and engaged in animated conversation, and most were wearing nude shoes to elongate their legs.

Lord P stuck by my side, seeming a bit lost amid the female hordes. “What on earth are they laughing about?” he asked, more bemused than upset. “Half of them were in floods half an hour ago. I’m down to my last handkerchief, and I brought
four
.”

“Tea!” said Liv, who was normally very good with older men. “That’s what we need! I’ll go and get some!”

Before I could reply, two sisters beetled up and accosted us with outstretched hands to shake. Phillimore girls were not shy in a cocktail party situation.

“Betsy! It’s Marcia Holderstone!” said one of them. “You won’t remember me, but I used to braid your hair, do you remember, in Personal Grooming! You must have been about six! How lovely to see you again!”

I found myself smiling as my hand was grasped and shaken warmly. There was something effortless about confidence like that. I really envied it. Franny had taught me all the tricks about walking through a party, head high, pretending you knew everyone, but women like Marcia really did know everyone and had probably been networking since they were knee-high to a Shetland pony.

“Oh, we had such a wonderful year here, didn’t we, Kate?” Marcia turned to her sister and then suddenly turned serious and sympathetic as her funeral manners kicked in. “We’re so sorry for your loss, Lord Phillimore. And yours, Betsy. Lady Frances was
marvelous
. I still think of her every time I pack my suitcase. Shoes at the bottom, clean knicks in the…”

“I don’t think Lord Phillimore needs to know the details,” said Kate quickly.

I glanced at his frozen expression. In Lord P’s circles, the women were trained for social occasions and the men drank port and communicated about death and childbirth via grunts. It must be torture, I thought, hearing how everyone adored his wife and not having the faintest idea what to say.

“That’s the secret of a well-packed case, isn’t it?” I interjected, in a voice that sounded a bit higher than my normal one. “No one sees the details!”

“Absolutely! Oh, it’s such a thrill to be back!” Marcia’s eyes darted around. “Can we see the old ballroom, do you think?” she asked, already gazing up the curving staircase to the teaching rooms on the first floor. “Do you remember, Kate, learning the fashion catwalk?”

“Ah, no!” Lord Phillimore sprang to life with a sudden cough. “No, I rather think Miss Thorne has decided to keep the reception to one room…health and safety, you see…”

“Oh! Of course, yes.” Marcia recovered but looked disappointed. “What a shame.” She shook his hand again. “Mustn’t monopolize you; I’m sure everyone wants to share their condolences.”

I spotted the hovering line of women waiting to have similar conversations, all primed with kind things to say. Funerals, broken engagements, hairs in soup—Phillimore girls were well briefed on every awkward situation. No cringe-making silences for
them
. I touched Lord P’s arm as Marcia and Kate swayed toward the buffet and the next commiserator approached. “Would you like a moment on your own? I know it’s a strain thinking of new things to say every time. If you want to slip out to the library, I can bring some tea…”

“No, duty first.” Lord P grimaced as if he were about to be shot at dawn, then dropped his voice. “Maybe in a quarter of an hour? If you see me trapped in a corner? Frances used to wait for me to put my spectacles on, then she’d come over and save me. Subtle, you know.” He looked forlorn, and I suddenly saw what a team they’d been for forty-odd years.

“OK,” I whispered back, and he squared his shoulders and went back to his task.

I was gasping for a cup of tea, though, and my eyes darted greedily around the hall as I headed for the table. I kept seeing things I’d forgotten about—the moody painting of the first
Lady Phillimore draped on a chaise longue (her magnificent Georgian bosom painted over by a disapproving Victorian ancestor), the china bowls of potpourri on dark oak side tables, the framed photographs of each year’s class adorning the deep red walls. All just as I remembered.

Liv was deep in conversation with a flamboyant-looking granny, so I picked up a cup and drifted over to the wall of photographs, which started with postwar smiles and neat ankles and ended around 1995, in a cloud of Elnett hair spray. Automatically, I looked for the 1981 photograph, “my” year—a dozen or so girls arranged around the rose garden seats, all looking up from under their floppy Duran Duran bangs with bashful expressions and pearlized pink lipstick.

I wondered what they all looked like now—how many of them were here? And whether they would remember me, and my arrival on the steps. Whether, in fact, they knew who might have put me there.

Ever since Franny’s funeral, I’d been having the same nagging thought: who knew where my birth mother was now? Over the years I’d daydreamed various dramatic meetings with my biological parents, but I’d never thought seriously about actually tracing them. As far as I was concerned, Franny was my “real” mother, and though she’d never made a secret of my mysterious beginnings, her eyes filled with unbearable sadness whenever I asked about it, so I rarely did. But now that Franny wasn’t here to be hurt, I’d started to wonder if it mightn’t be the time to start investigating. The only trouble was, I thought, staring at the Class of ’81, I had nothing to go on but a note and a necklace. But if anyone was going to know something, surely it would be here?

I peered closer at the frilly collars and blue eyeliner. Maybe even in this very photograph…

“Oh, my God! Didn’t we all look
awful
! Look at me in that
ghastly ruffly shirt. I look like someone’s just attacked me with aerosol cream.”

I jumped as a woman in a Pucci print dress shimmered up behind me. She’d taken the “cheerful” dress code to heart and added turquoise shoes and perched a jaunty feather headpiece in her black geometric bob in case her swirly dress wasn’t cheerful enough. She was carrying it off, though. Her eyes twinkled naughtily, as if she knew me, but I wasn’t sure whether we knew each other well enough for me to agree with her about her hideous blouse.

“Oh, um, I think ruffles are coming back in,” I said vaguely.

“Only if you’re a female impersonator, darling.” She waved her hands in the air, nearly spilling her wine. “But you’re
far
too young to know how embarrassing these clothes are! If you’re who I think you are, you popped up about three days after that photograph was taken! While we were all queueing down the Mall to get a peek at Charles and Diana, the real excitement was unfolding on our doorstep! Quite literally! It’s Betsy, isn’t it? The Phillimore baby?”