The Finishing Touches

by Hester Browne

  Think consultant. Think professional.

  All I could think of was The Apprentice, but that would have to do for the time being.

  “I’m sure Lord Phillimore’s discussed why I’m here,” I said. “He tells me that the Academy is going through something of a low patch? He’s asked me to come in and see what I can do to help. Fresh eyes, new…” I scrabbled around for some suitable jargon. “Initiatives.”

  “And is that your field these days?” asked Miss Thorne.

  “Yes,” I said. “I specialize in…creative repositioning.”

  That was true. Literally, in the case of Fiona’s stock. I was in charge of all the window displays, thanks to my skill at both arranging shoes to their best advantage and getting a really good shine on the glass.

  “Do you indeed?” Miss Thorne looked unconvinced.

  “Yes,” I said. “I help businesses showcase their star products to their best advantage, by spotlighting key strengths and discounting outdated stock. I mean, outdated ideas. Window dressing! Which isn’t,” I added with a flash of inspiration, “unlike what the Academy does for its students.”

  “Well, I don’t claim to understand the cut and thrust of corporate life, but that sounds very…challenging.” Miss Thorne’s pursed lips curved, but she didn’t seem very amused. “But I do think Lord Phillimore is overreacting a teeny bit. We’re just going through one of our sporadic intake dips—I’ve seen it before! Often happens when the foreign money markets wobble, but there’s nothing to worry about. Good manners will never go out of fashion, now, will they, Elizabeth?”

  I wished she wouldn’t call me Elizabeth. It made me feel there was someone else in the room. “Do call me Betsy, Miss Thorne,” I said with a smile. “Everyone does.”

  “Really?” she mused. “I suppose those olde-world names are coming back into fashion. Lily, Daisy, Ruby…We used to call them parlormaid names!” She paused just long enough for me to wonder if I was supposed to take offense at that or not, then, just as I decided I could hardly take it any other way, she added, “Very fashionable now, of course!”

  “Do you think I could have a guided tour?” I asked, trying to focus on the task in hand. “To refresh my memory, you know, before we talk about what the Academy does these days?”

  Miss Thorne looked disappointed. “Is that necessary? Surely I can tell you everything you need to know.”

  She increased the wattage of her smile, but as she did, something inside me stiffened. I’d come to nose around those classrooms, and nose around I would.

  “I’m sure you can, but Lord Phillimore asked me for my professional opinion about the whole business, and I’d love to see what the Academy is offering in the twenty-first century.” I checked my watch. “Isn’t it about time for the first lesson?”

  “Oh, but my dear, we shouldn’t interrupt them! I’ll have Paulette bring us some coffee and biscuits, and we can have a nice catch-up.” Miss Thorne’s beady eyes took on a steely glimmer of resistance beneath her pastel eye shadow, and her little hand gripped her Montblanc pen. “We’re not quite the same proposition as a baked bean factory, or whatever concerns you’re used to…inspecting.”

  It suddenly dawned on me that maybe my impression was too convincing, and she thought I really was a hotshot business brain. She already knew I had a math degree—did she have a minor petty-cash/mint-imperial scam going on? That would explain the defensiveness.

  I tried a different tack: shameless flattery, which Franny used to call the secret skeleton key of conversation. According to her, “absolutely everyone” opened up with a little sweet talk.

  “Oh, gosh, no! Of course it’s not the same thing!” I raised my hands in amused horror. “It’s something absolutely unique and special. I’m not here to criticize, Miss Thorne, I’m here to see if I can help. I’m sure no one knows more about it than you do, after all your years here…”

  Miss Thorne’s pink lips pressed together, and I could tell her brain was whizzing round faster than she could spin her Rolodex of florists and emergency viscounts.

  “How long have you been teaching now?” I inquired.

  “Twenty-nine years,” she said, and her cashmere bosom puffed out as if inflated by an invisible pump. “I was very young, of course, when I arrived…”

  And the rest, I thought. If she was under sixty-five, I was the editor of Evening Gloves & Opera Glass Collector.

  “I’d love to see some of the classrooms,” I went on persuasively. “I don’t want to keep you from your schedule, but it would be lovely to see the ballroom again.”

  That was true. I really did want to see it again. Not to mention the photographs on the wall outside it.

  “Where you danced with, now who was it with…” I played my trump card as she pretended to blush. “With the Prince of Wales, was it? Wow.”

  “Yes, but it was a private ball, and I really don’t like to talk about that, as you know, Elizabeth. But, very well,” she sighed, and pushed back her chair to rise, revealing two large booster cushions. “We can make a very quick visit, but I have a great deal to do…”

  As she swept past me, Miss Thorne’s smile remained impeccable, but I didn’t miss the metallic note in her voice or the way she locked her desk drawer before we left the room.

  Either way, we were finally heading upstairs, into the heart of my childhood memories and the cauldron of possible gossip about my past.

  Six

  Only take one canapé at a time and avoid anything that requires biting in two. If you’re drinking, caviar’s a good bet, as the oil soaks up the alcohol as you go.

  My pulse galloped as we made our way up the staircase to the classrooms. Everywhere I looked were things I’d forgotten all about until that moment. There was the creepy Georgian portrait of the Phillimore twins and their three gormless pugs, whose boggly eyes followed you up the stairs. I had to stop myself from touching the heavy red velvet curtains on the long window looking onto Halfmoon Street; the polished oak banisters still made part of me long to run up all four flights of stairs and slide all the way down the center of the house.

  I didn’t, though, obviously. I was too busy keeping up with Miss Thorne, who moved very quickly for a tiny woman, while looking out for clues and noting, with despair, how the house seemed more rundown the higher we climbed.

  I’d been brought up by Nancy to “see jobs that need doing,” and there were jobs everywhere. Moth-eaten patches on the curtains and dead flies inside the windows. The picture glass needed polishing, and the woodwork needed a lick of fresh paint. I was disappointed. It felt like the house had let itself go.

  As we approached the first classroom, I heard a very familiar voice. Posh Scottish–Morningside Edinburgh, like most of Fiona’s well-dressed customers. “Can one of you tell me how we might eat asparagus?” the voice inquired with a touch of weariness. “Yes, Divinity, this is asparagus.”

  “Miss McGregor is teaching the first class this morning,” Miss Thorne said, seeing my face light up with recognition. “I’m sure she won’t mind if we pop our heads round, but we don’t want to disturb the girls too much, now, do we?”

  “Of course we don’t,” I said, still listening to see if anyone knew what to do with asparagus.

  Inside, there was a faint sound of reply, and Miss McGregor’s voice snapped, “Whatever asparagus may or may not do to a lady’s digestive system does not affect the tool with which she eats it, Clementine!”

  Miss Thorne coughed, then rapped on the door and pushed it open.

  The main classroom had once been an impressive reception room, with full-length windows stretching from red-carpeted floor to molded ceiling, offering a view of Green Park if you craned your neck sideways. School legend had it that this was where proposals were expected to take place. The last official proposal of any note made at the Academy had been by Charles, Earl Newent, in 1979, to Lady Penelope Hinton-Scott, and even when I had been there, it had been spoken of in the same hushed tones reserved for the
last woman hanged in Great Britain.

  Now, however, the Lady Hamilton Room was thoroughly stripped of any residual romance and instead held four gray desks. The windows were dressed in mold-green velvet curtains held back with elderly gold tiebacks. Three majestic crystal chandeliers were still in place, missing a few dusty drops here and there, and the swirling burgundy wallpaper was punctuated with framed oils of Phillimore Ladies of the Past. Round a table, set with white napkins and candelabras, were four teenage girls—two with their elbows on the table, one with a spear of asparagus on a fork, and one texting on her mobile.

  By the way the heads swiveled toward the door as we entered, I didn’t think the girls had been particularly gripped by the lesson, although just seeing the silver dishes on the table made me feel excited. I had loved Table Etiquette as a little girl. Oysters, lobsters, asparagus, prawns, and caviar were brought up to be scarfed elegantly—most of the Academy’s courses were covered in a term, but Table Etiquette seemed to require a lot of repeated practice.

  But they can’t really still be teaching Table Etiquette, I thought. Does anyone still care?

  Maybe it had been updated, I reasoned. Modern food was quite complicated too, what with sushi and those fiddly things that came on skewers…

  Miss McGregor, undisputed heavyweight champion of fish knives, was standing at the front with a pointer and a clipboard, squeezing her eyes tightly shut as if in silent prayer. She was rangy and sleek, but with a racehorse-gone-to-pasture slope to her bony shoulders. As Miss Thorne stepped in, her head bounced up, letting a few more gray flyaways loose from her bun.

  “Now, please don’t mind us, ladies,” cooed Miss Thorne, ensuring that everyone noticed her. “We just want to pop our heads around…”

  But Miss McGregor’s face had gone from “weary horse” to “horse seeing feed bucket” in an instant. “Betsy!” she cried, dropping her pointer and holding out her arms to me in welcome. “How lovely to see you!”

  “Hello, Miss McGregor,” I said, feeling about ten again.

  She swept gracefully across the room with a lifetime’s deportment lessons and gripped my hands. “Look at you! So grown up!”

  I felt a smile spread across my face. “You haven’t changed a bit,” I said.

  I wasn’t sweet-talking this time: Miss McGregor was absolutely no different from the last time I’d seen her—her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a bun and her red tartan maxi kilt and half-moon glasses on a long gold chain were no different. Obviously all that flower-arranging fluid was acting as a preservative.

  “Girls,” she said, turning to address the class, “this is Betsy, one of my very favorite and best pupils.”

  Miss Thorne murmured, “Not strictly speaking an old pupil…” but Miss McGregor pretended not to hear her and instead gestured toward the dining table.

  “Now, Betsy, I’m sure you can tell us—asparagus: fingers or fork?”

  “Fingers,” I said at once. “Fork if it’s an accompaniment, but if it’s an appetizer and the hostess uses her fingers, go ahead and pick it up. Debrett’s says yes to fingers, so long as you’ve got something to wipe them on.”

  “Very good. Banana?”

  The tallest and most beautiful of the four students, a long, languid honey-blonde whose hair—someone’s hair, anyway—tumbled expensively down her back, answered without taking her eyes off her phone. “You use the special fruit knives and forks provided. You peel, then cut into slices and eat with the fork.”

  “Like, not being funny,” said a girl with jet-black hair and more eyeliner than even Amy Winehouse would consider appropriate for daytime. She pointed at her own temple with a long blue nail, like someone on daytime TV. “But if I went to someone’s house for dinner, and they gave me a banana, I’d be like, what is this? Is this a joke or what?”

  The other two—a diminutive blonde in a fur vest and a doll-like girl with gorgeous coffee-colored skin—made agreeing noises, and Miss Thorne’s lips tightened with displeasure.

  “Right?” The blue nail was pointed toward me. “You’d be like, I got tarted up to empty your fruit bowl?”

  I nodded, conscious of Miss Thorne’s furious expression burning over my shoulder toward the girl. “It is a bit out of date,” I said diplomatically. “From when bananas were more exciting than they are now? I think if you’re out for dinner, and someone’s giving you a banana for pudding, you have to assume there’d been some disaster with the real pudding, in which case I don’t think your hostess would care how you ate it, so long as you looked like you were enjoying it. That’s the good manners, not the fruit knife.”

  The blonde in the vest slid her almond eyes sideways, with a sly nod toward the girl who’d first answered. “Venetia,” she said in a heavy Russian accent, “I bet you could look like you were enjoying a banana.”

  Venetia snapped her attention away from her phone and delivered the sort of venomous stare that could melt plastic. It didn’t fit very well with her otherwise superfeminine appearance. “Meaning?”

  Eyeliner Girl took up the innocent expression. “Meaning, you’re good at peeling things…off?”

  Venetia pushed back a thick hank of hair from her face. “Don’t bother trying to be funny, Clammy. The day I take advice from Dracula’s homeless sister is the day I give up altogether.”

  “Clemmy,” snapped Eyeliner Girl.

  “What did I say?” Venetia looked confused. “Oh, did I say Clammy again? So sorry. Slip of the tongue.”

  “Another of your specialties!” sniped the Russian triumphantly. “You are quite the expert today!”

  Miss McGregor clapped her hands together sharply. “Anastasia! Venetia! That’s enough!”

  “Not the sort of repartee I expect from Phillimore ladies,” added Miss Thorne, pursing up her face and folding her arms as if she were in a costume drama and her corset was pinching. She rather spoiled the effect by glancing at me to check what my reaction was. To wind her up, I opened my notebook and jotted down some scribbles.

  Really, I was noting the girls and their names and any other details I remembered, like Anastasia’s parking fines and the fact that Paulette was apparently terrified of her.

  The black girl, who seemed vaguely familiar from somewhere, turned her head so madly between her classmates that her ringlet extensions tangled in her long earrings.

  “What is it now, Divinity?” said Miss Thorne.

  “Someone tell me what I should write down, OK?” she pleaded. “Banana knives or what?”

  “Stick to grapes; you’re safer,” I said. “Pull off a clump, not single ones, and don’t spit the pits.”

  “Moving on,” said Miss McGregor. “Oysters?”

  “Oh, my God!” Divinity almost leaped out of her seat with delight. “I know this. Oysters—you should say no, right? Because he’s trying to get you into bed! It’s a sign, isn’t it? Like car keys!”

  “Divinity!” Even Miss McGregor looked embarrassed. “That isn’t what I was asking.”

  “It’s true.” Divinity nodded. “Didn’t that happen to you, Venetia? When you went out with that film producer? The one with the weird hair? He ordered oysters for your appetizer, and then you found a room key underneath your napkin?”

  “I’m sure that’s not the case,” snapped Miss Thorne.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Venetia played idly with some speckled quail eggs on the plate in front of her, then, without looking up, whispered, “Berkeley Hotel. Chelsea Suite.”

  “Wow!” Divinity looked at the other two to check their reaction. She seemed impressed, even though they weren’t. “I saw this actress have her divorce party there? It’s sooo cool.”

  “Well, all you have to do is swallow a couple of oysters and you could be admiring the Jacuzzi with Venetia,” said Clemmy. “Have you still got his number, Venetia? Can we Facebook him?”

  “That doesn’t happen every time you order oysters,” I pointed out hastily, seeing Divinity scribbling notes. “Especially
if you get a dodgy one. That can end a date pretty quickly, believe me.”

  “And how do you know if you’ve got a dodgy one?” Clemmy had stopped baiting Venetia and was peering under the silver dome that presumably contained the oysters they’d be practicing on. “How can you tell when they all smell like—”

  “You vvvomit,” said Anastasia, slapping her hands together and beetling her eyebrows. “All over the eediot who brought you to a restaurant that didn’t check their supplier. It happened to me once. Only once.”

  She sounded so terrifying that we all flinched, at which point she giggled uproariously, then resumed her fierce expression. “We laughed eventually. And then my father had the place closed down.”

  “Your father works in environmental health?” I asked rather hopefully.

  “No,” said Miss McGregor, before she could reply. “Anastasia’s father is…in oil, I think.”

  “Officially, yes,” said Anastasia with a charming smile.

  “Now then, girls—where would you find your bread roll in a formal place setting?”

  I knew the answer but didn’t say anything as the four girls searched under glasses and plates, still arguing about whether oysters made you horny or pukey, and whether that was necessarily the end of the date anyway.

  Miss McGregor turned to me and raised one of her eyebrows in silent query.

  “In the napkin?” I murmured. Sad, I know, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Oh, very good, Elizabeth,” said Miss Thorne—rather snippily, I thought. “You should be teaching the class.”

  The weird thing was, I couldn’t remember actually learning where the bread roll hid—it had all been a fascinating game to my little eyes, with Alice-in-Wonderland rules. Where to seat princesses and colonels, the family of different-sized crystal glasses, fairy-sized spoons for salt, and napkins with bread rolls hidden in them; everything polished downstairs with boring bicarb and toothbrushes until the light bounced off the glass and silver and it turned into Cinderella’s fairy-tale table.