The Finishing Touches (9 page)

“Oh?” I said. “How long are the terms now?”

“Eight weeks,” said Miss McGregor. “Although, in some cases, it can feel like a lot longer.”

“Tsk. God. Tell me about it,” moaned Clemmy. “People get less for nicking cars than I’ve had stuck here. It’s like community service, but with
quail eggs.
” She rolled her eyes within the thick black kohl, but the effect was more “spooky toddler” than “girl gone wild”—it was hard, I thought, to sound like a
rebel when you sounded as posh as Nigella Lawson. I admired her for trying, though.

Miss Thorne didn’t, from the acid glare she directed toward Clemmy. “Believe me, Clementine, we would like nothing more than to see you transformed into the charming young lady we all know you to be…underneath. But your father insists you’re not leaving until there’s no danger of a repeat of that unfortunate moment at your brother’s graduation parade. At Sandhurst.” Her voice went up into a scandalized hiss. “In front of the
Duke of York
.”

“Nothing he hadn’t seen before,” observed Divinity in a broad Yorkshire accent. “Him being in the Navy and all.”

“So buckle down, ditch the pentagrams, and you can ship out, is the message,” added Miss McGregor.

Clemmy set her jaw at the pair of them. “I don’t have pentagrams. I have Wiccan symbols. There’s a difference?”

“Pardon me?” Divinity waved her hand at me and pointed at my feet. “Where did you get your shoes? I
soo
want them! Are they Fiona Flemings? I saw them in
Elle
. They’re
soo
shiny!”

“Miss Thorne told us that only tarts vear patent leather, since you can see your knickers in them!” added Anastasia conversationally. “Is that true for you?”

“Um, I…” I couldn’t think what to say.

Fortunately for us all, at that point there was a knock on the door and Paulette’s head appeared, then disappeared as she remembered some distant order about knocking and waiting.

“Oh, come in, Paulette,” said Miss Thorne crossly. “You’re in now.”

Paulette reappeared, with a big smile at me and a more nervous one at Miss Thorne. “Miss Thorne? The bursar needs to see you urgently upstairs.” She consulted her notebook. “Apparently the bank’s going nuts about some unpaid bills, and he wants to know why we haven’t paid the electricity. Could
we get a secret treadmill in the cellar for the girls to power, or something…” She paused. “Actually, that might have been a joke. The wine merchant called to confirm your order for the sweet sherry. Oh, and Mark says, can you remind everyone to switch off the lights after they leave the room, please? And if they’re cold to wear an extra sweater?”

“
Thank
you, Paulette!” Miss Thorne raised a hand and looked at me in a long-suffering manner. “You probably don’t realize, but it’s not all sugar tongs and trips to the Royal Academy here. It’s one
drama
after another. Not so different from your own high-powered
business lifestyle
,” Miss Thorne went on, and I wondered, paranoid, if she could see through my pretty transparent impression.

I pulled myself together. “Absolutely,” I said with a confident smile. “But I’ll stay here, I think, and just observe for a while.”

“Oh, jolly good idea!” said Miss McGregor at once. “Do stay, Betsy.”

Miss Thorne didn’t look all that delighted, but Paulette put her head back round the door.

“And Divinity’s mother called again—she wants to know if you can get them into the Royal enclosure at Ascot this year…”

Miss Thorne looked martyred and excused herself. I could hear her nagging at Paulette down the corridor and then down the stairs. The words “lack of breeding” and “
impudent
young man” floated back, and I assumed she meant Mark.

As her voice faded away and silence fell again in the Lady Hamilton Room, I suddenly felt conscious of the scrutiny of four forthright stares as each girl made her own assessment of my outfit, my accent, my accessories, and, most important, my handbag. I looked back at them, taking in their different expressions as best I could, and felt rather underdressed, going
by the startling array of gold and diamond jewelry sparkling back at me.

Fiona’s customers were pretty well-off, and although I wasn’t exactly on the breadline myself, I’d forgotten just how rich you—or rather, your parents—had to be to believe that finishing school was a logical addition to anyone’s education. These girls were only eighteen, but among them, they were probably wearing the monetary equivalent of my flat. Even though Clemmy was picking the black varnish off her nails, and Divinity was chewing her extensions in addition to a wad of gum, they still glowed with that enviable aura of the seriously wealthy.

I reminded myself that I had practical life experience on my side, plus my own hard-earned salary and a First-class honors degree. And I knew the old social dining lesson
backward
.

“So,” I said brightly, “how about sushi?”

Miss McGregor looked puzzled. “Sushi?”

“Yes, with the chopsticks and the bowls and all that etiquette about what you dip where.” I loved sushi, but I’d had to learn how to eat it myself, via some embarrassing dry-cleaning bills. “You need to be able to handle chopsticks if you’re going to eat out these days,” I added, trying to get the girls’ attention. “Some of the best restaurants in London are Japanese now—Nobu, Zuma…”

Venetia nodded in agreement.

“We don’t do sushi,” said Miss McGregor, and I thought I saw a flicker of something behind the half-spectacles. “Miss Thorne insists we stick to dishes the Queen might serve at Buckingham Palace. For instance, next we have”—she peered under a silver dish—“artichokes.”

I blinked in surprise. No sushi? “What about juggling can
apés and wineglasses?” I asked. “Or hot curries? Or kebabs? Or olive stones?”

Miss McGregor gave me a strange, fixed look. “Miss Thorne’s rules. She doesn’t think the Queen would serve olives.”

“But Prince Philip’s Greek!” I said, without thinking. “She must have come across an olive stone at
some
point.”

“Oh, my God!” squawked Divinity, clapping both hands to her upper chest. “We could go on a field trip to a VIP party somewhere—find out what different celebrities do with their olive stones! Oh, come on,” she said, as the other three groaned. “It’s better than field trips to
art galleries
!”

“Divinity reckons we should be going round every club in London for field trips.” Clemmy’s startling blue eyes rolled heavenward, then back. I wondered if she was wearing blue contact lenses, and if so, whether the constant eye rolling was a problem. “She’s
desperate
to get photographed being thrown out of Boujis. We’ve done all the others.”

“I’m a celebrity daughter,” Divinity reminded her. “It’s
training
for my job! I’m going to be famous, and I need to know this stuff up front, like, I need to be able to act like I’m dead
bored
with it all.”

“Well, the way you dress, they’d throw you out in seconds.” Venetia folded her arms, which were tanned and toned and bare beneath her sleeveless cashmere top. Like Victoria Beckham, she didn’t seem to have enough body fat to wear so little in the depths of January, but even in the chilly house there somehow wasn’t a goose bump on her. “The fashion police are on standby for you, and the
real
police are on standby for the Vampire Bride there.”

Clemmy spun furiously in her seat. “Whereas you’ve got
the St. John’s Ambulance on standby for
your
dates, in case their pacemakers pack in while you’re unloading their wallets!”

“And me?” demanded Anastasia proudly. “I have Interpol waiting for me, no?”

No one bothered to answer that. It was clearly too, too obvious.

“Girls!” I could see weariness in Miss McGregor’s dignified face. “You’re not giving Betsy here a very good impression of our class,” she tried with a wintry smile.

The rest of the lesson carried on in the same sort of vein—mussels, snails, and other foods that tasted like “phlegm,” or worse—but I didn’t really hear any remotely useful hints about dining in or out. When I suggested ways to attract a waiter’s attention, Venetia crossed her legs in a way that made Miss McGregor cover her eyes, and Divinity banged her wineglass so hard it cracked.

It wasn’t an entirely wasted hour, though, from a research point of view. I learned about Anastasia’s parking offenses, which now ran into thousands and had the local wardens running scared, and Venetia’s frequent invitations to yachts. She was, according to Clemmy, a “yacht whore.” The girls didn’t need Conversation class: I already knew who had hair extensions and nail extensions, and if Miss McGregor hadn’t pleaded with them to stop, I would have known who’d had what work done where.

We were in the middle of a discussion about what you could politely do to dispose of a mouthful of something you didn’t like (Miss McGregor struggling manfully through the snickers) when a volley of mobile phone beeps indicated the end of the lesson. The girls immediately began shoving their chairs back, grabbing for their bags, flicking open their phones
to start conversations, and acting as if Miss McGregor and I had vanished from sight.

I was amazed at their casual rudeness and turned to Miss McGregor, expecting her to stop them with the icy glare that could turn champagne into sorbet at a hundred yards.

But she didn’t even shout above the high-pitched drone of
whatever
and
hi, Scarlett!
and
ohmygod
. She merely closed her eyes, then sighed.

“Don’t they say
thank you
anymore?” I asked. “Don’t they wait until you dismiss them?”

Miss McGregor pretended unconvincingly that she didn’t mind, but then gave up. “Times have changed, Betsy. It’s not the place you remember.”

“In what way?” I asked. “I mean, I know the lessons have to move with the times, but
politeness
hasn’t changed, surely? Franny used to say it’s manners that matter, not etiquette. Putting people at ease, smoothing the general path, that sort of thing.” I paused. “She made people feel special. That’s what I think of as good manners.”

When I mentioned Franny, Miss McGregor’s angular face softened with affection, and she leaned on her desk. “Me too. But that’s the problem, dear.” She sighed. “No one comes here to learn manners. I don’t know
what
they come here to learn. They’re certainly not interested in any of my lessons.”

The shop manager in me wondered if half the Academy’s problems could be solved simply by asking the girls what exactly they needed to know and then supplying the lessons accordingly.

“Might you consider updating the dining lessons?” I suggested.

“I’d be happy to, dear, but Geraldine Thorne is something of a traditionalist when it comes to the syllabus. If it was up to
her, they’d be doing daily needlework and wearing gloves.” She smiled. “It’s
lovely
to see you, Betsy. This must be very small fry for you! I hear you’re running an international marketing consultancy now?”

I blushed. “Um, not quite. I should really move on to the next class,” I said, before I inadvertently let her think I was being modest and was actually Trade and Industry Secretary for Scotland. “Where is it?”

“Upstairs in the Clarendon Room. Literary Appreciation with Mrs. Angell.” Miss McGregor began to tidy up the place settings and collect the fish forks. “You’ll be popping down to Kathleen’s for tea at some point, won’t you? I want to know what you’ve been up to.”

“Definitely.” I smiled, because it really was nice to see her again. She reminded me of much happier times, with Franny. Plus, if anyone would know about the class of 1980 it would be Miss McGregor. “I’d love to have a proper chat.”

“So would I,” she said. “We’ve lots to catch up on, I’m sure.”

Fish forks, I thought. Fish forks and no chopsticks. It was like being in a time warp.

I pulled back my shoulders and headed off to the Clarendon Room for the next lesson. Maybe things would pick up from there.

I used to love Literary Appreciation
from my eavesdropping vantage point in the window seat. If Nancy’s historical romances had taught me the theory of traditional Regency courtship, then the Lit class had filled in the real-life blanks.

The class was supposed to encourage the girls to read books they could talk about while The Chaps were hitting the port and cigars after dinner—Jane Austen, the less grisly Dickens, that sort of thing—but it always ended up being a potboiler by Jilly Cooper and heated debate about whether Rupert Campbell-Black was based on any of their fathers. There was usually a dog-eared Judith Krantz doing the rounds too, which bridged the gap with Biology class.

I was quite pleased Literary Appreciation was still on the curriculum. Put-together girls should read more than just ce
lebrity magazines while they were getting their roots done, I thought, slipping into the back of the room.

No one noticed my arrival—not because they were deep in heated discussion about the Orange prize shortlist, but because an elephant could have rolled in and not been heard over the shriek of gossip in full flow. A middle-aged woman with a mad bush of premakeover Camilla Parker-Bowles ashy hair was perched on the desk, unsuccessfully cajoling them into opening up their copies of
The Time Traveler’s Wife
. Clemmy was listening but pretending not to be interested, while Divinity carefully applied mini Post-it notes to
OK!
magazine’s party pages. The main event, however, was Venetia. She filed her nails and threw out tantalizing details about some new club she’d been taken to the previous evening by some lounge lizard called Milo.

Well,
I
decided that he was a lounge lizard. Venetia described him merely as “loaded” and “very,
very
connected” but didn’t mention an actual profession.

“’Course, I can’t tell you exactly where we went,” she finished with a final flick of her hair.

“Why? Because this club is made up?” demanded Clemmy.

Venetia directed a superior look down her long, perfectly straight nose. “No, because it’s members
only
, Clammy. Milo is a
member.
”

“That’s one way of putting it.” Clemmy boggled at her, and Venetia boggled back until she realized how it was creasing her forehead.

“
Please
can we talk about the book?” begged Mrs. Angell, taking advantage of the lull.

“Yes, can we?” said Divinity. Again, I noticed that she was the only one who felt obliged to acknowledge the actual les
son. “Because I was dead disappointed with it. It weren’t about Doctor Who.”

The others stared at her.

She stared back. “What?
Time Traveler’s Wife,
right? Someone told me it were about Doctor Who. And, anyway, it’s completely stupid. You can’t, like, travel backward and forward in time like that. How would you know what you were meant to be wearing? Like, flares—would you be wearing them ironically or, like, for real? Or what if trousers hadn’t even been invented?”

“It’s not
real
, Div,” said Anastasia patiently. “It is a
story
.”

I decided not to stay any longer. Maybe I was putting them off.

I meant to do some snooping around, but there was something about what I’d seen so far that drained most of my energy.

If my mother had been anything like that lot, it was amazing that I’d inherited enough brain cells to put my clothes on the right way each morning. With the Doctor Who debate still raging behind the closed door, I went over to a window on the landing that looked out over the garden. The view didn’t cheer me up. There was a takeout coffee cup stuck in the biggest rosebush, and someone had put a chips bag over the head of the stone angel.

I shut my eyes, remembering the pretty summer dresses and the inviting chink of Pimm’s glasses, then opened them again.

The chips bag was still there. So was the faint sound of Venetia insisting that only wall-eyed heifers bought their own champagne in a club. One of the others was making a mooing noise. It sounded like Clementine.

There was a group of framed photographs on the burgundy-papered wall opposite, and as I peered at them, I had the odd sensation that any moment someone was going to leap out and catch me at it. There were no class photos up here, just wartime Phillimore girls in uniforms, looking resourceful but glamorous on the steps. They had pearl earrings and can-do expressions, the sort of girls who delivered unexpected babies before heading to the Cuckoo Club for gin slings and didn’t just drop them off and run for it.

This was hopeless. What I needed was to find Nell Howard’s phone number from the records. Get some proper information instead of hunting through the history of deportment in pictures—

“Can I help you?” asked a man’s voice, and I jumped and spun round.

It was the man from the reception—the bursar. Mark Montgomery.

I only recognized him from the wire-rimmed glasses and tense expression. Instead of the formal suit he’d had on at the memorial, today he was wearing a tweedy jacket with a gray pullover underneath and a pair of dark green cords, and he looked much more comfortable. I could definitely see the wholesome porridge oats commercial now. All he needed was a faithful spaniel by his side and he’d be the perfect country vet.

Stop imagining, I told myself. I spotted a sheaf of papers in his hand, some of them bills, and my own stomach tensed. Mark seemed agitated too—his dark hair was ruffled, as if he’d been running his hands through it. Now that I looked more closely, I could see it was thick and wiry. He must have made quite an effort to get it so flat before.

“Sorry, have we met?” he asked, peering at me. “I feel like we’ve met somewhere before.”

Jamie would have made that comment sound like the
cheesiest chat-up line ever, and probably used the opportunity to lean up against the wall, but the way Mark said it, he sounded worried, as if he
should
know. His mouth twitched.

He had a good mouth for a man—quite wide, not too full, tilting down sardonically at the ends.

“Yes!” I said. “I was about to come looking for you. Betsy Phillimore? We met at the reception.”

“Of course,” he said, tilting his head with a brief smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Miss Phillimore, the famous business guru turned sandwich maker.”

At once I started to feel a bit flustered. Miss Thorne wouldn’t know a consultant if she was bitten by one, but Mark Montgomery the accountant would. “Um, yes. Well, no. Not sandwiches today, I hope! I’m just here to take a look around and advise on…” My brain went blank as he looked at me expectantly. Again, all I could think of was Fiona’s shoe shop. “Advise on getting a good fit between customer and curriculum. Polish everything up. Weatherproof it for this tricky…season.”

Mark raised his eyebrows as if I were a bit mad. “Season?”

“I mean, financial climate.”

There was a distinctly unladylike cackle of laughter from the direction of the Literary Appreciation class.

“Oh, my God, I’ll kill that tattooist! I said a porpoise! Not a tortoise!” Divinity’s anguished howl was probably audible back in Leeds.

“Shall we go to my office?” Mark sighed. “You can only hear a delightfully dull roar from the girls up there.”

I followed him up the back stairs to the second floor, where the offices were—Nancy’s old matron’s room and the other secretary’s office, now empty of course. In fact, it seemed that only Mark ever came up here, from the way it had been left to return to nature. By the time we reached the upper landing,
the wrought-iron pansies in the banisters were gray with dust, not gold gilt, and the cobwebs draped over the portraits were like something from a Halloween shop. I half expected to find crows perching on the banisters.

“When was the last time this place was spring cleaned?” I asked, unable to stop myself. “Or are you running some kind of spider sanctuary?”

“Ha ha,” said Mark. He pushed open his office door, which still had
COL. J.C.P. MONTGOMERY, BURSAR
on it, left over from his father’s time, and let me go through first. “If I had money for cleaners, do you think I’d have just spent the last hour debating with Miss Thorne about whether to pay the electricity bill or the lawyers?”

“And which did she choose?” I hoped my voice didn’t sound too ironic.

His dark eyes met mine over the edge of his glasses and his mouth turned up at one corner, as if he wouldn’t normally be sharing this particular information. “Neither, since you ask. She’d already spent the money paying the taxi company. But she’s made a list of things we can sell, so that’s OK.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “Is that up to her?”

“No.” Mark closed the door behind him and shrugged off his tweed jacket. I realized why he was wearing such an outdoorsy selection of clothes; though the classrooms were warm, it was virtually subzero up here. “So you want to stick your nose in the books, do you?”

“Please.” I tried to sound cheerful. “I always say, get the worst thing over first and everything else is easy.”

He slung his jacket over a chair, started rummaging in the filing cabinet, and said, over his shoulder, “I should warn you, it’s not a pretty sight.”

I wondered whether he was talking about his office or the accounts. If Miss Thorne’s study was an essay in elegance, no
such expense had been lavished on the bursar’s office. Files and papers were stacked on every available surface, apart from the large oak desk, which was perfectly clear except for a thin laptop, a silver vase of scarlet tulips, and a calculator on the red leather top. It gave the impression that someone had just shoved everything off with one furious sweep of the arm.

“They’re not my tulips,” he said, catching me looking. “Someone puts them there every other morning. Tells you everything you need to know about this school’s away-with-the-fairies attitude to economy, if you ask me.”

I wondered who was putting flowers on his desk. Then I wondered why he didn’t wonder. What sort of man didn’t wonder that? Well, maybe men didn’t.

“Oh, I disagree,” I said. “You only need three or four; they look cheerful and last for ages. Good value for money, for flowers.” I thought of the enormous display of fake lilies downstairs in the foyer—and the air freshener. “Better to have nice plants, though. They last longer.”

Mark snorted. “Would you like to tell Miss Thorne that? When the flower budget’s bigger than the insurance budget and no one will listen to a word a qualified accountant says, you have to wonder what the hell’s going on.” He stopped riffling through papers and looked at me. There was a directness about his expression that made me feel oddly warm in the chilly room. “Please, sit down. I think you’ll need to, if we’re going to be talking about the finances.”

He gestured toward the library chair opposite his, and I dusted it with my hand before perching on the edge and getting my notebook out to buy myself a moment to compose myself—
again
.

“So,” I said, clicking my pen. “What’s the situation? Be honest.”

Mark took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “In layman’s terms?”

I bristled at that. I’d already had my outfit and my manners assessed today. My brain wasn’t something I was worried about, though.

“If it makes it easier for you,” I said. “But I’ve got a math degree. I can do really hard sums. Often without using my fingers.”

Mark had the grace to look apologetic. More surprised than apologetic, actually.

“Sorry,” he said with a remorseful smile that made him seem younger than his tweed jacket. “I’ve gotten rather used to talking to Miss Thorne. She doesn’t think nice girls sully themselves discussing money.”

“This one does,” I said. “And I reckon the girls downstairs aren’t afraid to either.”

“Fine. Good. I won’t sugarcoat it; the Academy’s on the last lap,” he said, rustling through some papers. “There’s no money coming in for next year, because for some inexplicable reason, we have absolutely no takers for the Running a Stately Home course, and the trust is down to loose change. I’ve advised Lord Phillimore that it would make sense to sell the house and, if they absolutely have to carry on with this finishing school, buy somewhere smaller. In—I don’t know—in the suburbs or somewhere.” He found the document he was looking for and pushed it across the desk.

I picked it up, and my fingertips brushed against his. Mark pulled his hand away quickly. “But, if you want my professional opinion, and it’s amazing how little anyone cares about
that
round here, I think he should sell, period. Finishing schools have been a ridiculous anachronism since before the
war
.”

My attention was immediately distracted from the faint
tingle in my fingertips and the beginnings of a blush on his cheeks.

Sell the house? Give up the Academy, just like that? It sounded so much more real, coming from a complete stranger. And if it was sold, that was the end of my investigations, even before they’d begun! I couldn’t stop a huff of shock escaping my nose, and he spotted it at once.

“You don’t think Lord Phillimore should sell?” He looked at me in a direct way. “Or you think we should still be teaching flower arranging to grown women?”

I tried to keep my face neutral. I didn’t want him to think I was letting my emotional connection to the place cloud my professional judgment.

Supposed
professional judgment.

“Well, surely there are things we could try before selling up or moving?” I suggested. “The location is what makes a place like this. It’s
part
of old London. I bet Anastasia’s dad wouldn’t have sent her if the Phillimore Academy was in Streatham.”

Mark swung in his chair avoiding my gaze. “Listen, I understand. It’s always hard when a property like this goes out of the family. But we won’t undersell it, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll make sure you’re not done out of your inheritance.”

Was he suggesting that I was in this for
the house
? My neutral expression started to melt. “This isn’t about any
inheritance,
” I said hotly, putting my hands on the desk so he turned back to face me. When our eyes met, I flinched at how challenging his expression was, but I held my ground. “I’m not here because of any money. This is about keeping something alive that’s been in the Phillimore family for years. Something that my…my mother cared deeply about. I know it’s got its problems, but I’m sure we can put our heads together and come up with new measures to—”