The Finishing Touch by Brigid Brophy

receiver.
    ‘Allô, allô?’
    (They are presumably knowledgeable enough not to confound me with a woman who would drop her h’s?)
    ‘Hullo? Miss Mount? Office of the Keeper of the Privy——’ (whatever it was: he mumbled the word: it could not have been privy ,bis?) ‘here’. (Jolly male voice; grating, in these small silent hours, as a football-match-rattle in the ears.) ‘I say, I hope I’m not ringing too late? Thought I’d better wait till SHE was asleep.’
    ‘SHE’, echoed Antonia. (But I ?)
    ‘H.R.H., you know. Just wanted to check up, you know—how you’re rubbing along?’
    ‘We’re rubbing along’, Antonia breathed (lasse, lasse …) ‘very well.’
    ‘Top hole. No worries then? First chop.’ (But I lack the stamina for this so fade slang in the small hours.) ‘Just wanted to make sure you were finding——’
    ‘I find her’, Antonia feebly loosed the words, ‘smashing.’
    ‘She is a jolly girl, isn’t she? And quite unspoilt .’
    ‘I fear only for what she may spoil.’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘The line … seems almost failing.’
    ‘I’ll speak up a bit, then.’ (But can you speak louder—and still be human?) ‘Just wanted to—— O, by the way. Your first Report’s arrived. Jolly good. Thought I’d just let you know it’ll be passed on tomorrow. I mean: it’ll go higher, don’t you know?’
    ‘My very own motto’, murmured Antonia, en raccrochant.
    ‘My love?’
    (Had you been lurking, then, not daring to open the door?)
    ‘My love, my poor love, I hardly dare ask …’
    ‘Calm yourself, Hetty, je t’implore—it was,by the way, nothing—and, if you would, lay my pillows flat again …’
     *
    ‘If you ask me, she’s simply dim.’ But the President’s daughter, as President’s daughter of a Republic, was perhaps ex officio prejudiced against royal persons.
    ‘Makes nonsense of Antonia’s imploring our discretion’, said Eugénie Plash. ‘She simply wouldn’t get it—if we did tell her about Antonia.’
    ‘Tell her what about Antonia?’ enquired Regina Outre-Mer.
    ‘… what about Antonia?’ mimicked Eugénie.
    ‘You don’t mean Antonia— drinks ?’
    Let them giggle. Regina loved.

VI

     
    T HE R OYAL A RMS : embossed (making, one had to admit, quite a prettily heraldic effect against the silver breakfast tray).
    Office of the Keeper ,etc., etc.: stamped.
    But, beneath that, sad degeneracy of a merely schoolboy (polite name for illiterate) scrawl with a ball point:
    ‘Just to let you know the reaction—They are jolly pleased with Report—Glad to know you find H.R.H. innocent and are not letting her read French books.’
    One is, thought Antonia, smoothing the frilled sleeve of her breakfast négligé (pale: it was not the hour for strong colour), misunderstood .

VII

     
    ‘I HATE to worry my beloved when she has cares enough already——’
    ‘You have not imagined another royal catastrophe?’
    ‘No, my beloved—though it did cross my mind, now she has induced some of the younger girls to play rounders——’
    ‘So energetic, the blood royal … And your poor pelouse.’
    ‘For the School, I don’t mind—— But if a stray ball should smash——’
    ‘The boot, my dear Hetty, is surely on the other foot. Let her not, at all costs, drive the car.’
    ‘No, indeed. It wouldn’t be safe——’
    ‘Indeed, without the car we should be lost …’
    ‘—when the roads are so full of sailors …’ —‘Practising, no doubt, l’auto-stop. Yet I am more worried lest she couldn’t stop. But what …?’
    ‘It’s Sylvie Plash, my love.’
    ‘La grippe?’
    ‘The sulks.’
    ‘I feel no sympathy.’
    How indeed could one feel sympathy, when Sylvie, by the existence of her face, had spoilt for Antonia her sister’s?
    ‘She’s retired to her room.’
    ‘Then one need not see her.’
    ‘You couldn’t possibly speak? She hates me. But a word from you——’
    ‘Eugénie might be asked to reason with her sister