Free The Finishing Touch by Brigid Brophy Page A

wrong stage of the day—carted off, inert …)
    Curiously enough there had been, by the very post that brought the withdrawals, several new applications. Antonia was confident there would be more still. Strange reversal, Antonia firm, Hetty faltering.
    (‘Do you think, my belovedest, they will have quite the same—be quite the type of girl we want?’
    ‘I think’, Antonia had replied, ‘they will be in some ways even more the …’)
     *
    Hetty hesitant outside the door, a cup ofwarm milk in her hand: twenty-nine bags had been packed: she must be allowed ( without lèse-majesté) to spare a moment to Antonia.
    Yet she dared not go in.
    What agonies of humiliating interview the poor beloved must be undergoing with the jolly (and my love is so delicate) Commander. Humiliation: and my poor love is so proud.
     *
    ‘My colleague would, I feel sure, prepare some warm milk if you preferred. But, I felt, a sailor … Indeed, I, too, I confess ….’
    (Tonight one seemed to be favouring—and one had been on the point of becoming certain one’s taste had permanently settled for the yellow—the green Chartreuse.)
     *
    Hetty descended to the kitchen, re-heated the milk and carried the cup upstairs again. (Onemore suitcase to go: but it was Antonia who needed sustaining …)
     *
    ‘I say—I didn’t expect—I say, Miss Mount, Antonia—(May I call you Antonia? I mean, hadn’t I better ? now ?)’
    ‘Dear’ (is it I who from my girls or my girls who from me have caught this faiblesse for sailors?) ‘boy …’
    (Those knees, so—though touchingly—absurd when they had been the only things bare, were quite vindicated now that …)
    ‘I must say, I never—I can’t get over it— (o, I SAY)—I mean, I was told—I didn’t—not this kind of wo——’
    ‘Yet one must from time to time permit oneself ’ (ah, the relief!) ‘refreshment … before …’ ( before, thought Antonia, the new girls: one would like to be at one’s most relaxed to meet them) … ‘One is surely entitled to … recuperation … after …’— after, one meant, though one did not like to say so (in case the poor dear man should, however mistakenly, feel himself to be being used ), after the tensions, the hysteria, the really at times too insupportable emotional fraught -ness, of these all-female institutions.
     *
    Ah, my poor love—if only one dared go in (Hetty skimmed another skin off the milk and tried to keep the cup cosy between her hands). What agony of a frozen interview must be proceeding behind the door one dare not broach. One could tell: the voices were stilled, now, to silence: no doubt all that could be said had been said, leaving only the embarrassment—ah, torment!—of the coarse man’s moral disapproval . Only, from time to time, a moment’s moan (of my beloved’s via crucis, no doubt): a murmur from the Commander (was he trying, had he the effrontery, to excuse himself?)
    My poor darling—— Her moan, again; o, her torment; o, her humiliation.

Copyright
    This ebook edition first published in 2013
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
    All rights reserved
© Brigid Brophy, 1965
Introduction © Brigid Brophy, 1987
Preface to the 2013 Edition © Sir Peter Stothard, 2013
    A version of Peter Stothard’s preface first appeared in the Toronto
Globe and Mail
, 13 February 2009, as ‘Hell is a finishing school, and vice versa’.
    The right of Brigid Brophy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
    This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this