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

turn …
    The text, as a matter of fact, was no longer the same. Royalty making so little of Renée Vivien, Antonia had substituted something simpler ( Albertine Disparue ,as a matter of fact) … As it turned curiously out, there were only four copies of this, too …
    (‘Poverty’, Eugénie Plash unpleasantly commented afterwards, ‘seems to have overtaken Antonia’s library’—unpleasantness again lost on Regina Outre-Mer, who, kissing her own little wrist which, for one moment of page-turning , had actually rested on Antonia’s lap and smelt now of Antonia’s scent, clasped to herself the mental exclamation Holy Poverty!)
    Almost invisible to her pupils, almost inaudible to the further flung of them, Antonia yet presided … by the distinction of the frail silhouette, by the sighing of her frail dress, by the frail authority with which she turned the pages (when Antonia turns, we all … as though, vulgar thought!, we were all in a vast feather bed …) She looked, presidingly: from the indifferent face of Madame President’s daughter (Antonia was sure, now, such girls were cold) to the baffled face of royalty, staringstraight ahead as though air rather than the text could help her understanding, to the cross face of Eugénie Plash—— Look away quickly (heaven grant I am not to suffer a headache today ), look back to the text, look down at … and thus, naturally, to let one’s gaze slide off the text, slide off one’s lap (pleasing though that was to look at), to alight …
    From where Antonia sat, Regina’s lovely shoulders, throat, collar bone extended themselves beneath Antonia’s vision like a model of physical geography … ah, deux collines … There was a place, whiter than the rest because only just, with the coming of extreme summer, had Regina taken to the extreme of the sundress , a place just rising, yet firm, and yet again tender … a place to which Antonia’s vision, sliding from the text, was naturally directed, to which Antonia’s lips, if Antonia herself were to slide forward—she had only to lean a little forward , a little down …
    The President’s daughter obediently if indifferently following her text; Eugénie Plash so disgruntled as to be doubled over hers: only royalty staring straight in front of her, uncomprehending. But could one rely on her uncomprehension—of everything?
    Antonia had only to bend a touch forward.
    (Invisible as I must almost be …)
    If only royalty would——
    ‘I think we should keep closely to our texts …’
    Girls bent closer to their books, even Regina (I did not mean you ,my dear), chrysanthemum head obscuring the spot … no, it appeared again, tempted again …
    Only royalty made no closer application, stared still ahead. She had perhaps, remote as one had put her, not heard. But would she see ? seeing, comprehend? Could one rely …?
    Ah, one could not, one could not …
    ah, ache …
     *
    Naturally, when the Palace telephoned in the middle of the night, Hetty was assured of disaster.
    ‘My dearest—ah, what a shame to wake my love—but my dearest, my loveliest, they want you .’
    Fortunate that Antonia’s nightcap had not this time been the oblivion-creating, the slugging Scotch.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘My dear, I don’t know, but I feel sure—o, be brave, my love—that it’s serious. Perhapsthey want to withdraw her. Perhaps they’ve heard something …’
    ‘What’, Antonia asked, graven pale on the lilac pillow, ‘could they have heard?’
    ‘O, my dear …’ Hetty stared down at the perfect face. It sometimes seemed to her that her memories of the past did not coincide with Antonia’s, even though it was a common past. ‘My love, whatever happens, I will never desert——’
    ‘Switch it through here’, Antonia frailly interrupted. (Telephone calls in hours of darkness went to Hetty’s room.)
    ‘Yes, my love. Let me just prop my love’s pillows up before I go …’
    Antonia reached, sleep-handed, for the