The Finishing Touch by Brigid Brophy Read Free Book Online Page A

Hetty fails, I shall simply lay down my burden) when Antonia had borne hers? Hetty had no need to flinch: she was so perfectly competent. (Surely Hetty was so perfectly competent? One had not been entrusting one’s affairs these years to one who was not ? …)
    Suppose royalty were to fling herself from the window of the rose suite?
    ‘But why should she, my dear? She is surely not in love. And I know of no other pretext.’
    ‘No, no, you’re quite right, my darling’s quite right. I’m just being a silly. I’m a little moithered these days. Perhaps it’s the Mistral coming on.’
    ‘Every emotion on this coastline’, Antonia sighed, ‘is attributed to the Mistral’s coming, being overdue or having just gone. One would take it for a function of feminine physiology.’
    Hetty permitted herself to look wounded.
    ‘There’, said Antonia delicately, ‘there. Have a drink.’
    ‘No, no, my dear’ (but kindness in Antonia’s tone was stronger stimulant) ‘I need my wits about me.’
    Of Antonia’s world-tired smile Hetty would never be certain of the import. But she chose to read it kindly.
    And yet:
    ‘And yet’, said Hetty, pausing on her way from the room (I hope, Antonia thought, she has her wits about balancing the tray), ‘supposing she fell by accident?’
    ‘My dear, the Lebanese princess managed perfectly well about staying inside.’
    As a matter of fact, the Lebanese princess had tossed several exotic objects from her window (and one or two erotic) but never, so far as Antonia knew, herself (who had been both).
     *
    ‘What do you think of her?’
    ‘I think she’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen’, said Regina Outre-Mer.
    ‘ Do you?’ said all the girls, deep-surprised.
    ‘Whom’, Regina asked, suddenly égarée, ‘are we discussing?’
    ‘Royalty.’
    ‘O. O, I thought you meant——’
    ‘We haven’t all your obsession’, said Eugénie Plash.
    But her nastiness of tone went unnoticed by Regina, who simply replied, wonderingly:
    ‘Haven’t we? How strange people are.’
     *
    Suppose a lizard bit royalty?
    ‘ Can they?’ Antonia replied, with scepticism enough to convince Hetty they could not.
    But a mosquito could: a hundred mosquitoes could: worst of all, the local wasp, the dreaded guêpe du midi, whose venom, if not extracted from the bloodstream within twenty minutes …
    ‘My dear, I’m less afraid’, Antonia faintly said, ‘of what she may suffer than of what she may inflict.’
    ‘Come’, said the baritone roundly, ‘she’s not exactly a breaker of hearts.’
    ‘Not of hearts’, said the soprano, tremolo (the tremolo alone tinged with alto) … ‘Did you lock up the Dresden?’
    ‘My dearest, yes, but——’
    ‘And not’ (diminuendo) ‘in the glass-fronted cabinet? …’
    ‘No, my dear, but I think you exaggerate the——’
    ‘Exaggerate!’—frail cry, like the splinteringof frailest porcelain. ‘But you saw that hydrangea pot!’
    ‘My loveliest, she really and truly has smashed nothing since.’
    All very well for Hetty, who ( was she losing a little in reliability?) retained at least her sturdiness, but when one was oneself of a Dresden fragility …
    (Remember to push one’s chair, at the study group, to a yet further extreme from the royal chair. What matter if one’s faint voice failed to carry to royal ears? They could hardly take in less than they did …)
     *
    To remove one’s chair yet further from royalty meant to withdraw yet deeper into a recess (taking, of course, Regina Outre-Mer in one’s train).
    Here sunlight (filtered, of course, in the first place, through Venetian blinds) had scarcely the strength—or the heart?—to reach. Here one was—here two were—swathed in a veiling pénombre. Regina, if she was to see the text laid on the soft lap, must——
    ‘Lean closer, dear child’, Antonia murmured; ‘do not feel shy …’
    And Antonia, if she was to see the pretty blushes her murmur provoked, must, in her