Lace

by Shirley Conran

  “I’m perfectly all right,” said Pagan weakly, wincing as he touched her left arm. “Let’s get out of here before more mountain disappears.”

  “That’s unlikely,” said Nick. “The rescue team said they’ve been dynamiting part of the mountain away because after last winter’s avalanches, a dangerous overhang was left. Unfortunately, that’s what we were walking on. . . . They’re finishing the work next week.”

  “Who’s that girl, the one who was late?” Kate’s voice was heavily sarcastic.

  “She’s an exchange scholarship student from America and she hasn’t any money, so she’s working as a waitress at the Chesa,” Nick explained as slowly they moved down the path. “I don’t know how she does it all, she works so hard, and she never seems tired, she’s always . . . oh, terrific fun.”

  Kate noticed that he blushed. “Are you . . . uh?”

  “No, we’re not, but I wish we were. She’s got some fellow in Virginia. Jim.” There was a pause. Both girls looked sideways at Nick and decided that Jim must be pretty sensational.

  “Are you a student, too?” Nick was obviously English.

  “In a way. I’m a stagiaire. An exchange waiter at the Imperial.”

  “What’s an exchange waiter?”

  “Well, my family is in the hotel business, so I’m learning hotel management.” He pulled Pagan’s arm round his shoulder. “I left school early and took the two-year course at Westminster Tech, then I was a waiter at the Savoy. I came out here on an exchange scheme; one of the Imperial waiters is taking my place in London.”

  “What was it like at the Savoy?” Kate asked, round-eyed at the thought of working in such sophisticated surroundings.

  “Hard work. Hot. The restaurant kitchen was aboveground so we had windows, but the poor bastards in the grill kitchen worked in the basement and never saw the light of day. We cooked on red-hot, old coal ranges, and there was sawdust on the floor to soak up any spilled fat so you didn’t slip on it. You sweated so much that you drank anything that came your way—water and milk as well as your beer allocation—you never stopped swigging liquid.”

  “Why did you leave the Savoy?” Pagan asked, as they stopped on the path so that Nick could support her more firmly. Her arm was horribly painful, but Nick was taking her mind off it.

  “To continue my course.” Nick staggered. Pagan was no lightweight. “I’m staying here until the end of the winter season, then I’ll be eighteen and have to do my National Service. I hate the whole idea of being in the bloody army for two years, but there’s no choice. Anyway, my father says it will teach me leadership, if nothing else. He’s very keen on leadership.”

  “Goodness, do waiters need leadership qualities?”

  “No, but hotel managers do!”

  “That’s our school,” Kate said, pointing. “Nearly there, Pagan, only a few steps more.” She and Nick were now almost totally supporting Pagan as the dirty little group staggered up to the front door.

  Nick blushed, then said apologetically, “Look, I know you think Judy was ungrateful but you’ve no idea how hard things are for her. She’s here alone and she’s only fifteen. Why don’t we meet at the Chesa for tea on Sunday, then she can thank you properly as I’m sure she wants to. . . . And—and, I’d like it too.” Pagan nodded as carefully he released his hold, said good-bye, then hurried down the street. She waited until he turned the corner, then gave a little groan and fell to the ground.

  Pagan was propped up in bed eating the last chocolate eclair with her right hand; her left hand was bandaged and her arm was in a sling. Kate was painting her toes bright orange.

  “I can’t, can’t bear it,” Pagan groaned.

  Kate looked up anxiously. “Is the pain still awful?”

  “No, I can’t feel a thing after that injection. What I can’t bear is that Paul carried me upstairs and I never knew about it! You wouldn’t lie to me, Kate; he really did pick me up in his strong arms and hold me to his manly chest and . . .”

  “No, he didn’t,” said Kate. “No normal man could carry you upstairs like that. He staggered up with you. I was afraid he might fall backward on Matron and me.”

  Pagan gave a voluptuous sigh of regret. Paul was the headmaster’s chauffeur and the unofficial school heartthrob. All the girls were fascinated by his olive face, his slanting black eyes, his sleek dark hair and his erect tight-buttocked bullfighter’s stance.

  “Tell me again what happened,” Pagan begged, as Kate dabbed Oriental Orange on her big toe.

  “You were too heavy for me to drag out of the gutter so I rushed inside. Paul was leaning against the hall table with his arms crossed and his cap in one hand—waiting for old Chardin to appear, I suppose. As soon as I explained what had happened, he dashed outside, flung his cap on the pavement and put his arms around you—you made his uniform absolutely filthy, by the way—heaved you over his left shoulder in a sort of fireman’s lift, with one arm around your back and the other around your orange satin bottom, then he carried you straight into Chardin’s study without knocking and lowered you onto the sofa and knelt by you and lifted your eyelid and . . . I’ve already told you the next bit.”

  “Again.”

  “Then he felt under . . . he pulled your sweater up and yelled at me to fetch Matron and telephone for a doctor, but I was rooted to the ground.” Kate giggled. “I suppose he was checking your heartbeat; he didn’t seem to notice you weren’t wearing a bra. Anyway, I rushed off and got Matron, and when we came in your sweater was down again and you were whispering, ‘Where am I?’ just the way you’re supposed to . . .”

  Suddenly the door crashed open and the Swedish matron stomped in, followed by the school porter dragging an old pigskin suitcase; behind him stood a plump girl wearing a navy coat. Her brown eyes looked anxious as she smiled. She had buck teeth.

  Matron scowled. “It’s forbidden to sit on the beds. It’s forbidden to eat in your rooms. It’s forbidden to apply nail polish anywhere except in the bathroom.” She turned on her heels and left.

  “Bitch,” said Pagan. “Parlez-vous anglais?”

  “A little, but I am French and come here to learn English,” the new girl said. “I am Maxine Pascale.”

  “But nobody learns English here. Or French, come to that,” exclaimed Pagan. “You’ll see. The English and American girls talk English, the South Americans speak Spanish, the Italians yell nonstop Italian and the Germans bark in German. Nobody speaks French, except one Greek girl, and that’s because nobody else speaks Greek. Mais nous pouvonspractiquer sur vous.” Pagan’s bad French proved she was right.

  “No, I shall only speak English with you,” the new girl said firmly, with a smile. She lifted her suitcase onto the bed and started to unpack, carefully pulling out and smoothing the many sheets of crisp white tissue that lay between each garment. It was more like a trousseau than a set of schoolgirl’s clothes, and as Maxine hung them up, the girls could see the Christian Dior label.

  “I say, you must be rich!” gasped Pagan. “They’re divine!”

  “No, I’m not rich,” Maxine said. “But I am lucky. I have an aunt.”

  And indeed, Maxine’s Aunt Hortense, who had made a good but childless marriage, was a shrewd realist. In her opinion there was no point in spending money on a trousseau after one had landed a man. Chic clothes were needed to set a girl up so she could make the best possible marriage. It was an investment in a girl’s future.

  So she had swept Maxine and her mother into the Dior salon, and eventually—Maxine was not consulted—the two older women decided on a midnight-blue wool coat with two huge buttons that glowed like sapphires; next, they chose a cocktail dress in blue satin covered in black Chantilly lace and a simple blue wool town suit with an alternative pleated skirt pour le weekend in blue and cream tartan. They also picked an apricot wool dress that flared tactfully over Maxine’s ample hips, and their final choice was a floor-length, strapless gown in pale-blue silk taffeta with a little matching jacket. All the waist
s were tightly nipped in, all the skirts were enormous; all the garments were exquisitely stitched and fitted. It had taken three weeks to make them, with five fittings each, and Maxine had felt faint when she heard that the price of the five outfits was 750,000 francs. She would never dare to wear them, she had thought.

  The girls missed tea because—with a secret view to future borrowing—Kate was trying on every stitch that Maxine had brought with her, and even though Pagan couldn’t try them on because her arm was in plaster of paris, she hopped around, thrilled by the glamorous clothes. Maxine was impressed by Pagan’s height, her hair and her exuberant high spirits. “I say, Kate, silver high heels! Oh, Maxine, your feet are sparrow-size, dammit,” she cried. Kate burrowed into the suitcase, sending tissue paper flying. “Look, Kate, that’s a real crepe de chine blouse—and a lace nightgown! Y’know clothes are still rationed in England, Maxine. There’s nothing so ravishing as these! Oh, how I long for something pretty!”

  Not fooled by this, Maxine could see that Pagan was used to getting what she wanted. How strange that she should be a friend of Kate, who seemed so quiet and ordinary-looking, even mousy despite the purple toes. They were obviously fond of each other, and Maxine quickly found out that they had been together at school in London since they were ten. That was not the only reason that Kate and Pagan were friends. What the two girls had in common and what had brought them together originally was that they were both, in different ways, outsiders. Kate, because her father was so very obviously rich, and Pagan because she had been brought up to live a life that no longer existed. Her world of privilege had disappeared forever, together with the wrought-iron gates of the manor, which—like the saucepans in the mining cottages—had been melted down to make guns in 1940.

  Because her speech and her background were so different from the middle-class students at St. Paul’s, Pagan tended to sound arrogant without meaning to do so. And even in a school with few uniform rules, she dressed in a most peculiar fashion. No store-bought clothes ever fitted Pagan, who was five foot ten and boyish in build. During the war, when clothes were severely rationed and brides pooled their year’s clothing coupons in order to buy one wedding dress for eight of them to wear, everyone in Britain wore their clothes until they fell to pieces and made new dresses out of old tablecloths, sheets and curtains.

  Inspired by the general example, Pagan went up to the attic and unpacked the clothes of her dead father. First she wore his cashmere pullovers and his silk scarves with a pair of jodhpurs; then she purloined his silk shirts, which she belted and wore as dresses, and Mrs. Hocken in the village turned a white-dotted navy silk Charvet dressing gown into “a best dress” for Sunday. Then Pagan plundered some of the other older trunks in the attic: she was never able to get into her grandmother’s tiny-waisted silk dress, but she wore lace blouses that were a hundred years old with similarly ancient skirts of bottle-green velvet or dark blue silk. Soon she acquired a reputation not only for eccentric opinions but also for eccentric clothes, but because of her height, her slimness and her wonderful mahogany hair, Pagan always looked carelessly marvellous.

  L’Hirondelle supper gong was rung at seven-thirty. Reluctant to leave Maxine’s wonderful wardrobe, but very hungry, the three girls joined the human stream of flying hair, bouncing breasts and perceptible underarm odour as all the pupils clattered downstairs to the dining room, where old portraits hung in heavy gilt frames and brass Dutch chandeliers were suspended from dark ceiling beams above long oak tables. Above the noise, Maxine asked about the school routine.

  “Morning bell at seven, breakfast at seven-thirty, lessons from eight to twelve,” Pagan mumbled, as Kate cut her lambchop into little pieces. “Voluntary sport from two to four-thirty and after that, study time ‘til six-thirty. Then supper and lights out at ten. No work over the weekend. Church optional. Qu’est-ce que tu penses du nourriture de l’école?”

  “It is revolting,” said Maxine with deep sincerity, “like your French.”

  “Never mind, Monsieur Chardin told my mother that my accent was excellent,” said Pagan cheerfully. “Would you please undo the top button of my pedal pushers, Kate. . . . Have you met the headmaster yet? No? Well, he’s a common little creep. Obsequious and oily, you’ll see. In London he stayed at Claridge’s and I went along to visit him with Mama. He was wearing a canary pullover and a big-checked suit that no Englishman would be seen dead in, especially not in town. I noticed that he didn’t even read my school reports. Just as well, since they were absolutely grim. . . . I got the feeling that Chardin was fishing for any pupils he could get. He’s obviously in it just for the money, don’t you think, Kate?”

  Kate nodded. She was slowly eating a chocolate biscuit. She could make one biscuit last two hours, nibbling nonstop at a steady pace, like a rat at a corpse, Pagan said.

  “I’m rather surprised my mother sent me here, except it is supposed to be the best school in Switzerland and my grandfather’s paying the bill, not her.”

  Adjusting her sling, Pagan wiped a bit of bread around her plate. “Also, dammit, I certainly need polishing up. I mean, I’m not good at being tidy or wearing clothes or knowing what to say to people at parties or doing any of the things that grown-up girls do.”

  Kate said, “We’ve been here a week and so far we’ve hardly seen Chardin; his apartment is on the other side of the chalet and it has a different front door. He seems to live an entirely separate life from the school. I’m certain he has better meals than we do, because you can sometimes smell things like roast duck coming out of the kitchen. Not my idea of a headmaster!”

  “A couple of Brazilian girls have already been here a year and they say he’s got a fearful temper,” Pagan added. “But there’s only one thing he really explodes about, and that’s if you get out of school at night. Apparently he has hysterics—and you’re expelled!”

  There was an awed silence. Being expelled was a fate worse than death. The shame would pursue you through your whole life.

  After supper, half the school squeezed into Kate’s bedroom to gaze at Maxine’s wardrobe until lights out. Immediately after Matron’s inspection to check that all girls were in and all lights were out, Pagan crept into the adjoining bedroom, clutching around her, like an overweight redskin, the bulky, feather-filled quilt that is the only covering on Swiss beds. Pagan climbed onto the end of Kate’s bed and the three girls whispered until well after midnight. Maxine told them about her three younger brothers and sister in Paris. Kate, who like Pagan was an only child, thought that a big family sounded like fun, but Maxine’s school in Paris, on the other hand, didn’t sound like fun at all.

  “We also had hours and hours of homework at St. Paul’s,” said Pagan. “Each assignment was supposed to take you only twenty minutes, and at the bottom of your work you were supposed to put how long it took you, so naturally everybody lied because they didn’t want to look dumb. If your essay on Greek architecture took three hours, you put down twenty-five minutes. All Paulinas are liars, and they all have weak eyes because they do so much of their work by flashlight in bed.”

  “My mother complained to the high mistress once,” said Kate, “and she sat Mummy in a little low chair opposite her huge commanding throne and said in her low boom, ‘Of course Kate must not work in bed, she must work in her lunch hour or leave if she cannot keep up.’”

  “The high mistress was a huge, commanding figure. She moved like a ship. You couldn’t believe she had legs,” said Pagan. “She wore pince-nez and her hair in a gray bun and very old-fashioned orange sweaters with no bra; you could see but you didn’t dare notice. Somebody described her as God in drag. She thundered at us in a low majestic voice. I once came second in a reading competition simply by mimicking her. I was afraid I’d get ticked off for insolence, but nobody noticed. They said I showed promise.”

  “Why did your mother send you to that school if she was frightened of the headmistress?” asked Maxine.

  “Not headmistress,” said Kate, “hi
gh mistress. I went because my father wanted me to have . . . the best.”

  Kate’s father had wanted her to have the sort of education he hadn’t had himself. She had been sent to St. Paul’s because Kate’s father had read that royalty went there. Kate’s father always wanted the best, so Kate’s mother always asked for it, even when shopping. When she was buying plums she would ask the grocer, “Which are the best?” When she was buying chairs she would ask, “Which are the best?” When she was buying a dress she could never decide which one suited her, so she always asked the assistant, “Which is the best?” and naturally the assistant chose the most expensive, which was all right, because the more things cost, the better they were.

  Kate’s mother was also influenced by royalty, and dressed like the Queen. Kate’s quiet, ladylike clothes came from Debenham & Freebody because the little Princesses’ clothes were bought there and “By Appointment to Her Majesty” was printed on their boxes. Kate hated the place, with its pillared, echoing marble halls and the ancient, exquisitely polite assistants, all gentlewomen who had known better days. She would have preferred to shop at Selfridge, like the other girls, for the cheap cotton copies of the New Look.

  Kate’s mother also had the best at their home, Greenways. The antiques were expensive, but somehow the ornately carved chairs, the brocade sofas and heavy-fringed, satin curtains failed to achieve the casual elegance of Pagan’s mother’s flat in Kensington, where the simple furniture had come up from their country house and every piece was interesting and well proportioned, if a bit battered. Some of the china was chipped, but if your family had been using it for a hundred and fifty years, it would be, wouldn’t it?

  Kate hated the smug perfection of Greenways. On either side of the drive, the trees and foliage were spotlit at night; Kate’s father thought this looked stylish and set off the pillared porch. Inside, on the ground floor, the chairs, sofas and tables were too big, the lampshades and pictures too small; the dining room was panelled in plastic wood, and the chandelier consisted of a circle of fake candles with little fake parchment hats. Upstairs, the bedrooms were surprisingly stark. After all, nobody ever went upstairs except to sleep, so Kate’s father saw no point in wasting money there.