Lace

by Shirley Conran

  Now that she was a successful magazine editor, nobody would ever guess that for years Kate hadn’t known what she wanted or where she was going, that she had felt as little in control of her life as a rag doll being tossed around in a washing machine. She felt she was being pushed around, all right, but she didn’t know in which direction. “Now, girl,” her father always said, “remember you’re as good as anyone, Kathreen, remember that your dad’s got the wherewithal and that’s what counts. Nothing to stop you being top of the pile, and that’s where your dad expects you to be, make no mistake about it.”

  The “wherewithal” had been the vast profits from the rows of identical small, squat red-brick houses that her father had built across central England. The “wherewithal” had paid for better clothes, better cars, better holidays and a better home than her schoolmates’, but it had not been what counted; if anything, the “wherewithal” had been responsible for unspoken resentment from some of the other girls at her London day school. Kate had never felt that she was as good as any of them, and neither was she top. She always dreaded the arrival of the end-of-term reports, anticipating her father’s rages, the punishments and—most alarming of all—her father’s attempts to coach her: the more he shouted the less she could remember.

  She had been a cowed girl. The anger that she had never dared to show had built up in layers of silent resentment. She knew she was a moral coward, but she was terrified that argument would rouse her father’s anger. So, like her mother, Kate always said as little as possible or fled.

  Once they knew her well, men were always surprised to discover how easily they could make Kate do exactly what they wanted without a word of complaint from her. But then, when they pushed her too far, she simply disappeared without a word of explanation.

  As Kate couldn’t stand her father when he was alive, she couldn’t understand why, whenever one of her books hit the best-seller list, the wistful thought came unbidden into her head, “Wish the old bugger could have seen that.” She couldn’t understand why she wanted the ogre of her youth, dead these twenty years, to be proud of her; she couldn’t understand her disappointment because her father had died before she discovered what she was top at, before she could shout, “Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’ve made it!” Kate didn’t take much notice of her success, and neither did her friends, most of whom dated from the days when she was unknown, but her dad would have relished it, he would have cut her pictures out of the newspapers, kept all her cuttings and alerted his buddies when she was about to be on television.

  Certainly this new book sounded an easy winner, another potential best-seller. Lili’s story—true or false—should hit the list a week before publication. She was beautiful, romantic, irresistibly fascinating, and the public lapped up every detail of her life; for instance, how many times had she read that Lili always wore white, whether it was satin or silk, tweed or cotton? And of course Lili was a woman with a past—and what a past!

  Before Lili had reached international status, when she had still been just another continental B-film actress who stripped in every movie, Kate had once spent some time hanging around the set in a wet wood outside London and had subsequently written the first big story to treat the teenage Lili as a potential star. Kate had not heard from Lili since the interview, but the piece had been syndicated around the world, which is why, Kate supposed, she had been summoned to the Pierre. Today, all the stars wanted an “as told to” autobiography. Nevertheless, she had been surprised when Lili had telephoned in person and asked to meet her secretly.

  Kate hurried toward the Plaza, smelled hot bagels and damp autumn mist, passed a group of blank-faced, bald-headed women, swathed in silver fox and lace, spotlit in Bergdorf’s window; stopped at the traffic light beyond which was a blue police car, with two cops inside, both as bald and blank as the plaster models in Bergdorf’s. Kate crossed the street. Dark green, elegant awnings stretched from apartment building doors across the sidewalk to where bored chauffeurs sat in spotless dark cars. Kate nodded to the blue-uniformed doorman, who saluted her as she swung between the marble pillars of the Pierre Hotel, through the revolving doors and along the wide, cream corridor.

  At the reception desk they phoned up to make sure she was expected. The guests standing beside her murmured in soft Italian, the groups beyond spoke Arabic and French. Kate couldn’t hear a word of English. It reminded her of Cairo. The elevator took her to the seventeenth floor and as she walked along the hushed gray corridor to Suite 1701, Kate pulled the back of her mulberry jacket down and fluffed up the purple silk bow of her blouse.

  Just before she reached it, the door was opened by a thin woman with gray hair that matched her dress. Beyond her, through the open door, Kate could see into a long cream room that overlooked Central Park. A waiter was setting out ice, tongs and small dishes of olives; the secretary beckoned him out, stood aside so that Kate could enter and then softly closed the door from the hall.

  Kate gasped.

  “Jesus!” said Judy.

  “Wrong again,” said Kate, who could never resist a one-liner. Astonished, she stood in the doorway, trying to decide what this was all about. Judy and Pagan were sitting on a couple of apricot velvet couches placed at right angles to each other; at either end of the couches, huge vases of madonna lilies and imported apple blossoms stood on low, smoked-glass tables and beyond, to the right, in a beige velvet armchair, sat Maxine.

  “What’s this, a surprise reunion?” asked Kate.

  Pagan fingered the delicate little green malachite butterfly that hung around her neck on a fine gold Cartier chain. Maxine said in a fast, low voice, “We’d better be careful what we say.”

  The atmosphere was tense. Kate did not have time to move over to the other women before the double doors at the far end of the room were flung open and in walked a small, gold-skinned young woman, wearing a white silk gown draped like an ancient Greek tunic.

  Star quality radiated from Lili. A cloud of black, soft hair hung to her shoulders, swept back from an oval face with high, slanting cheekbones. Her small nose had a faintly predatory hook, her full lower lip was slightly too large, but when you looked at her you only noticed her eyes. They were huge shining chestnut eyes, thickly lashed, that glistened as if a crystal tear were about to fall from each one.

  Tonight, however, Lili’s eyes did not glisten. They glared. They projected rage and fury. For a moment the star stood silent as she surveyed the four older women: Kate in her mulberry suit by the door; Pagan in pink, sprawled across the apricot cushions; Maxine poised, porcelain cup in one hand, the saucer held on her blue silk lap; Judy in brown velvet, on the edge of the sofa with shoulders hunched, hands under her chin, elbows on her knees, scowling right back at Lili.

  Then Lili spoke.

  “All right,” she said, “which one of you bitches is my mother?”

  2

  I FEEL SICK,” muttered Kate, leaning back against the headboard and fastening a new lace bra over her adolescent breasts.

  “Worth it,” said Pagan, as she licked her fingers. Wearing orange satin boxer shorts and a pink kimono, she sat cross-legged at the end of Kate’s narrow bed and looked regretfully at the white cardboard box between the two teenage girls. One chocolate eclair remained.

  “We’ll save this for after supper. Now shall I paint your toenails purple to take your mind off throwing up?”

  The English pupils always splurged their first week’s allowance on cakes, lipstick and nail polish. They had been freed from strict schools in order to be transformed into cultured young ladies by this Swiss finishing school. After years of deprivation, followed by a post-war period in which even bread and potatoes were rationed, the girls thought Switzerland in 1948 was a paradise compared to shabby, tired Britain—a paradise of cream cakes, chocolate, snow and romance.

  Pagan hunched over Kate’s left foot. A myopic, pre-Raphaelite beauty, she usually stooped to minimize her height. She rarely wore her glasses, partly because she was vain
and partly because she kept losing them.

  Lolling back on the bed, bare left foot poised in midair, Kate looked over Pagan’s head. She could see the snow-topped mountains of Gstaad, framed by the white lace curtains of her open bedroom window.

  “Let’s go into the forest before tea,” suggested Kate.

  “Keep still, you idiot,” said Pagan. “We were told to greet the new girl. We’ll go after tea if she hasn’t arrived. Poor thing, you’ve bagged the best armoire. There’s hardly any hanging space in hers; she’ll have to keep her stuff under the bed.”

  Most of the bedrooms in l’Hirondelle finishing school were for three girls, but on the top floor, under the wooden eaves of the huge chalet, the rooms were smaller. Leading off Kate’s bedroom for two was a tiny, pale blue attic, with a low, sloping pine ceiling and just enough space for one narrow blue bed, a small table and a chest. Pagan had grabbed it and she was so exasperatingly untidy that it was just as well she had a room to herself. Nothing could teach Pagan to be neat. She had been christened Jennifer, but as her nanny’s constant cry was “Pick it up, you little pagan”, or “No tea until your room’s tidy, you little pagan”, Jennifer eventually became known as “Pagan”, and the nickname stuck.

  “I’m not going to waste such a lovely afternoon!” Kate jumped off the bed and pulled on a neat beige cashmere sweater and skirt. Pagan tugged a pair of old jodhpurs over the orange satin shorts and wriggled into a gigantic Fair Isle pullover, which she yanked in at the middle with a man’s thick leather belt that almost went around her waist twice. They clattered down the wooden stairs two at a time, flung themselves out of the front door and half-walked, half-skipped along the steep path that led behind the school and up into the forest. After climbing about a mile over fallen pine needles, they found a notice stuck in the middle of the path that read “Attention! Défense de passer.”

  “Probably means that the pass is defended by attentive gamekeepers,” said Pagan, whose French was atrocious, and they continued to puff uphill until the path stopped in a grass clearing that ended abruptly on a cliff edge. Below they could see the brown chalets of Gstaad, encircled by the dark green forest, and beyond, a spectacular amphitheatre of mountains that were snow-topped even in midsummer.

  “Yoohoo . . . oooo,” yelled Pagan through cupped hands. As the sound echoed back across the valley, she turned to Kate and said, “They’ll expect us to yodel properly by the time we get back to—”

  She stopped abruptly. Suddenly they heard an answering cry, seemingly from beneath their feet. Then someone shouted, “Au secours!”

  “That means ‘help,’” Kate said earnestly.

  “And it came from beyond the cliff. Pourquoi secours?” yelled Pagan.

  The voice yelled “Parce que . . . I’m stuck.”

  “Are you English?” yelled Pagan, starting to stride forward, but Kate yanked at her belt to stop her. They were about ten feet from the cliff edge and it might not be safe.

  “No, American. Watch out. The cliff just gave way. We weren’t even near the edge . . . It just suddenly crumbled.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “I’m the only one that fell. Nick jumped back and he’s gone for help . . . aaaah!” Both girls heard the sound of slithering earth and stones.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yes, but there isn’t much ledge left. Oh, God, I’m so frightened.”

  “Don’t look down!” said Pagan, lowering herself to the ground and starting to snake forward. “And don’t shout anymore . . . Kate, I’m going to crawl to the edge and then you lie down behind me and hang on to my ankles.” Slowly Pagan wriggled to the point where the grass stopped abruptly. She peered carefully over the edge. About six feet below her, two dark blue eyes looked up, surrounded by fair, shaggy hair.

  The girl was standing on a narrow ledge, arms outspread as she hugged the cliff face. “Nick just couldn’t reach me,” she said. “He tried and tried. He took off his shirt and tried to pull me up with it but it tore, then the ledge started to crumble and so he ran to get a ladder. But the ledge keeps crumbling, there’s not enough room to sit down now. I’m so frightened.”

  At least a hundred feet below, the earth was starting to slide again. It made Pagan feel sick. “Oh, crumbs,” she gasped. “Oh, Lord, don’t look down.” She tried to reach the girl with her hands but her outreached fingertips were about two feet from the upstretched hands of the frightened girl below.

  “Look, hang on just a bit longer,” called Pagan encouragingly, as she withdrew her head and wriggled back to Kate. She started to take off her sneakers and jodhpurs.

  “These pants are tougher than the shirt,” she explained, as she tied the end of her jodhpur legs with a reef knot so that the garment formed a circle; then she threaded her belt through it, pulling the buckle tight.

  “For God’s sake hang tight onto my ankles,” Pagan hissed to Kate, as she wriggled back to the cliff face and peered over it. Some earth crumbled away beneath her breasts and she felt even sicker as she dangled the jodhpurs down to the girl below. “Can you get them over your head and under your arms like a lifebelt? Don’t look down!”

  Slowly Pagan lowered the makeshift lifebelt until it reached the girl’s outstretched fingertips. “Keep your hands together and try to wriggle the jodhpurs down under your arms . . . slowly . . . slowly . . .”

  Pagan wrapped the other end of the belt around her left hand and hung on to the end of it with her right hand. All the time she noticed little crumbs of earth were sliding down the sheer cliff face toward the red earth, snapped-off pine trees and roots that were piled so far below.

  “Now hold on to the belt,” she said in what she hoped was a commanding voice. “Slowly, try to walk up the cliff, like a fly.”

  “I can’t. I can’t!”

  A chunk of earth fell from below the girl’s left foot, leaving it dangling in space.

  “If you fall, I’m not sure that I can hold you,” Pagan said. “You’ll probably break my wrist and pull me over, so don’t think about what I say. Just do it, when I count to three.”

  Kate was now lying behind Pagan with her arms hanging around Pagan’s waist. “Now, one, two, three!” Pagan said, as forcefully as she could.

  Obediently, the thin little girl—thank God she was so small—leaned out and started to scramble up the mountain. As the belt jerked taut, Pagan felt an agonizing pain in her wrist and shoulder. She wondered whether she’d dislocated it, then the whole of her left arm was in agony as, inch by inch, the girl scrambled up.

  The leather belt started to slip in Pagan’s sweaty hand. She was gasping for breath as she slowly wriggled backward, pulled by Kate.

  Two dirty hands hanging onto the belt slowly appeared over the cliff face, followed by a frightened white face.

  “Slowly,” gasped Pagan, “slowly!” She thought she felt the ground move beneath her and experienced a moment of cold terror. Then the little girl collapsed over the top of the cliff and Kate quickly pulled her up over it and back to safety as Pagan’s bleeding fingers released the belt.

  But before Pagan could stand up, the ground beneath her fell away and suddenly she was dangling from the waist, head downward over the crumbling mountain. The ledge that the girl had been standing on had disappeared.

  Kate grabbed Pagan, and together they fell backward, panting and sobbing as they crawled to safety.

  Not until they reached the pine trees and the little path did Pagan feel safe. Then her knees gave way and she collapsed. Anxiously, Kate bent over her.

  Suddenly a look of alarm crossed the face of the girl Pagan had rescued. “Oh, my,” she said, putting both hands to her temples, “I’m going to be late. Oh, I dare not. Oh, I must go. Oh, dear, oh, thank you, oh, look, do you know the Chesa? Can you come there sometime so I can say . . . I mean, I can’t thank you enough but . . . I must go!”

  And she turned and half-ran, half-staggered down the path, then disappeared around the bend.


  “What a cow!” Kate said. “You saved her life and she just ran off! Oh, darling Pagan, your poor hands!” Pagan’s legs were filthy and her hands were bleeding. As the jodhpurs and sneakers were still on the cliff edge, she was wearing only the Fair Isle sweater and the dirty orange satin shorts.

  Suddenly, from the other side of the clearing, a group of labourers appeared carrying rope, a net and a ladder. A tall, thin young man, naked to the waist, ran in front of them, but he suddenly stopped dead, ran a hand through his floppy black hair and yelled, “Christ, it’s fallen!”

  “The girl’s all right, we got her up,” called Pagan from where she was sitting. “Are you Nick?”

  The young man came running over. His crooked nose was smeared with earth, his aquamarine eyes looked distraught. “She’s all right? Judy’s all right? What happened? How? . . . You’re sure she’s all right? Where is she? . . . Oh, God, I’ve been through such hell. . . .”

  “So has Pagan,” Kate said indignantly. “She leaned over the cliff and pulled your girl up—and then she rushed off when Pagan had just saved her life, saying that she didn’t want to be late!”

  “Well, if she’s late again, she loses her job, you see. She’s already been warned twice. Was she all right—not hurt, I mean?”

  “She must be all right to rush off like that,” said Kate scornfully, “but Pagan isn’t all right. Look at her hands!”

  “Stop making a fuss, Kate.” Pagan wobbled to her feet. She was as tall as the young man who had jumped to help her. “I’ll be perfectly fine after a bath.”

  “Just let me tell the rescue team there’s no longer a problem and I’ll see you home,” said Nick, pushing his floppy black hair out of his eyes and turning to talk in rapid German to the group of men behind him. He turned back and put a supportive arm around Pagan’s waist.