Lace

by Shirley Conran

  “But, Con, you must tell me what happened.”

  “It was the driver. He had a heart attack. Only thirty-five and looked as fit a man as ever I’d seen. The police think that he slumped over the wheel with the weight of his leg on the accelerator. The car was very heavy. It simply leaped forward and smashed through the retainer wall, then went over the side of the aqueduct.”

  “But Con, you must tell me what happened to Jo.”

  “Jo was cremated three days ago,” he said quietly.

  Lili gave an anguished shriek and tried to sit up. The nurse swiftly restrained her and lifted the telephone for help. “Tell the doctor that this patient needs another shot,” Demetrios whispered. “She’s hysterical.”

  When Lili regained her senses, she waited for half an hour until her head felt clearer. Then she put her legs over the side of the bed. She felt very weak and seemed about ten pounds thinner. She hobbled to the armoire in the corner, tugged open the door and found her clothes inside. She carried them to the bed, then sat on it and slowly dressed. Then she moved to the washbasin and looked in the mirror. Her eyes were sunken, her face looked thin and her hair was flat and listless. She splashed cold water on her face and looked out of the window. The sun was almost overhead.

  The door to her room opened and a starched little nurse appeared.

  “My goodness, you shouldn’t be up and about.”

  Lili turned, the tooth glass in her hand, her only weapon. She was looking into the pleasant, surprised face of a girl of about her own age, who said, “I’d better call Sister.”

  “No, don’t yet,” said Lili. “How long have I been here?”

  “Why, ten days.”

  “But why?”

  “You were brought in unconscious, you’d had a very bad hysterical reaction to a shock and had to be treated with sedation. My, you were a difficult patient! The doctor insisted on looking after you himself.”

  “Well, I want to leave now. Would you please call a cab?”

  “Oh, my, you can’t discharge yourself like that, Madame.”

  “Get me the doctor, please.”

  “He’s out at the moment. Sister is in charge.”

  “Then get Sister, please.”

  Lili settled into the backseat of the cab. It had taken her twenty minutes to talk her way past the head nurse, but in the end they had asked her to sign a paper and she had left. Of course, there must be some simple reason for her stay. Jo would explain. . . . No, of course he wouldn’t, couldn’t. If only she hadn’t fainted when she heard that Jo was dead!

  Forty minutes later they reached the iron gates of the estate, but when the cab honked no one came running to open them. She got out and walked over to the small side door which was always open. There was nobody on duty at the lodge.

  Lili walked up the white gravel drive to the house and rang the doorbell. She rang it again, sharply. Twice. What on earth were they all doing?

  Then she heard footsteps cross the marble, a bolt was drawn back, the great door swung open and Lili found herself looking into the mournful, creased face of Socrates, Jo’s bodyguard.

  “Hello, Socrates,” Lili said, “where is everybody?”

  The burly sailor scratched the mole on his cheek. “The whole staff was dismissed, Madame, the day after the funeral. There’s only the housekeeper and me left up here now, and we have strict instructions from Mr. Demetrios not to let anyone into the grounds. Of course I know he didn’t mean you, Madame, but the photographers have been a bit of a nuisance. We all thought you were very wise to stay away until it was over.”

  “Did Mr. Demetrios tell you that was why I stayed away?”

  “Why, yes, Madame.”

  “D’you think you could ask the housekeeper to bring some coffee to my bedroom, please. I think I’d like to lie down for a bit, but first I want to talk to her.”

  “But Madame, the furniture has all been moved, it’s gone into a storage warehouse. The rooms are empty. Mr. Demetrios told us. We assumed you knew that, Madame.”

  Lili looked around the circular, domed hall and saw that it was indeed bare of furniture, curtains and carpets. As she climbed the circular staircase, her legs trembled. She still felt very weak, but her bedroom suite was just at the top of the stairs.

  The room was empty. In fact, the only thing in it was her wall safe, which was normally covered by blue taffeta curtains. She moved closer. The door to the little gray safe was ajar.

  But only she and Jo had the keys to the safe! Not that Lili’s best jewelry was kept there, that was all in the bank vault.

  She pulled the safe door open and peered inside. There was a small gleam of gold at the back. She fished it out with her forefinger—it was a charm from her bracelet, a miniature copy of the Minerva.

  No, she wasn’t dreaming.

  Then she realised that all the pictures were missing. She looked around the room at the rectangular blank where her Rousseau bicyclist used to pedal in his red striped vest, at the pale patch where the pretty Dufy watercolour of Antibes had once hung.

  She rushed into her dressing room and opened the doors. Even her clothes had disappeared. She ran to a window, threw it wide and looked out. The garden looked as usual in the low rays of the setting sun. She ran back to her bedroom, knelt by the ivory telephone on the floor and lifted the receiver. It was dead. Demetrios must have taken leave of his senses.

  And then she remembered signing the papers.

  For about an hour she remained motionless, kneeling by the telephone. Then she heard heavy footsteps climbing up the carpetless circular staircase and Demetrios appeared in the doorway.

  “The clinic telephoned to tell me you had discharged yourself. Very foolish of you, Lili.”

  Demetrios still looked the same, but now, instead of being reassuringly large and dependable, he seemed large and sinister. His dark clothes looked menacing, the heavy nose seemed predatory and the dull brown eyes were hard and cold as stones.

  “Where are my clothes, Con?”

  “They have been packed and are waiting for your instructions.”

  “You got Jo’s key to the safe, didn’t you? Did the police just hand it over to you? Yes, I suppose they did, you’re his lawyer after all. Where am I supposed to sleep tonight? I don’t even have a change of underwear.”

  “You have over fifty-three thousand francs in your current bank account.”

  “How do you know what’s in my bank account?”

  “I know you have plenty of money, so you can stay at a hotel. And you’ve got your own car to drive to one.”

  “And my pictures, Con? Where are my pictures?”

  Demetrios looked straight into Lili’s angry face and slowly stroked his beard. “What pictures?” he asked softly.

  Jo had been right. Con was fast and clever and had undoubtedly tied up every loose end, but Lili knew that Jo would have wanted her to try to regain her pictures and her jewelry, so she consulted a lawyer. He listened in silence to Lili’s story, then regretfully he said that nothing could be done, and that under French law Lili had no claim to any part of the estate of Mr. Stiarkoz. There was a silence, then he added, “It sounds as if Mr. Demetrios bribed a shady doctor to keep you sedated, then he probably offered a deal to the children of Mr. Stiarkoz. Possibly he offered to get your signature on all the necessary legal documents upon payment of—oh, perhaps ten million francs or more: that’s a fraction of what such paintings might be worth.” It was well-known that the art collection was the property of the late Mr. Stiarkoz; it was not known to be the property of Mademoiselle Lili and she had no documentation to support her case.

  Mr. Demetrios had undoubtedly removed Mademoiselle Lili’s strongbox from the bank, but he had her signed authority to do so, and nobody at the bank knew what was in the strongbox when it was removed or when it was returned. When Mademoiselle Lili eventually opened the strongbox herself, it only contained copies of Mademoiselle’s old contracts and there was no jewelry and no documentation conce
rning the origin and authenticity of the paintings, and there was no deed of conveyance specifically assigning the ownership of each picture to Mademoiselle Lili. And as Mademoiselle did not know the whereabouts of the jewelry or of the art collection, from whom could she possibly claim them?

  Lili sat silent, thinking that the jewelry and the pictures were not all that Jo had given her: he had given Lili something else of great value—her self-confidence. Instead of sheltering her completely, instead of allowing Lili to exchange one golden cage for another, Jo had encouraged her to find out what she was good at and to use her gifts. He had insisted that she make at least one film a year, so she hadn’t dropped out of sight and she wasn’t broke.

  She would sell the Rolls Royce Corniche and buy an apartment in an inexpensive part of Paris.

  Then she would ask Zimmer to recommend an agent and get back to work as fast as possible.

  PART

  NINE

  49

  THROUGHOUT 1969, LIFE + STYLE, the newspaper section Kate edited, had continued to be what Kate called “froth rather than beer.” After much argument, she was allowed to run a letters column and had hired a “Dear Abby” who visited their new consultant psychiatrist once a week with the readers’ more difficult problems.

  After Kate’s thirty-seventh birthday, she started a second book, Danger! Women at Work. Although it was based on her vast mailbag, she also interviewed many women on the difficulties of getting work, the difficulties of working, the special difficulties of working mothers and the difficulties of not working. To launch the book, her publisher and the Globe jointly sent her throughout England on a promotion tour. Once outside London, Kate became even more conscious that she was no longer really interested in the empty froth of LIFE + STYLE. She was far more interested in real women, in real situations and problems. As this seemed to be what concerned the newly formed Women’s Liberation Movement, Kate had looked it up. This was not easy, since no telephone number was listed and the directory personnel hadn’t heard of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Eventually, Kate got a telephone number that turned out to be a bookshop off Leicester Square, but the number had just been disconnected for nonpayment of account. Kate was to discover that one of the most depressing things about Women’s Liberation was that everyone in it seemed to be broke.

  Kate attended four meetings of the Women’s Liberation group, but found them all disappointing. Every woman’s experience was considered of utmost importance, however boring. There was much rapping and consciousness-raising, but not much seemed to get done. The sisters never seemed to talk about practical considerations; discussion was either directed to experience-sharing or else utopian theorizing. Kate was depressed by the muddled Marxist political thinking: “. . . The family is a basic unit of capitalism . . . system of oppression. . . . We must destroy it. . . . Women are slaves whose function is to service the male workers. . . . Before the Industrial Revolution the home was the centre of productivity with husband and wife participating equally in work and child care. . . .”

  Kate started to wonder what could be done for the women who wrote those sacks of letters to her every week. On the whole, her readers loved their men and depended on them. If they didn’t have a man, they wished they did. Kate ’s consciousness had already been raised by the lawyers after her father’s death and before her divorce. She knew society was unfair to women. However, it wasn’t about to change overnight. Women would have to tackle injustice slowly, without hate or aggression, which could frighten other women away. Kate wondered what she could do to help the situation. She didn’t think there was much point in attending any more meetings.

  For two weeks Kate brooded over an idea before she phoned Judy. “Judy, I want to launch my own monthly magazine for the new, emerging woman. Will you help?”

  “Haven’t you got enough problems?” Judy’s voice barked back. “What new woman?”

  “For heaven’s sake, you’re one of them!” Kate exclaimed. “It’s 1970 and the Sleeping Princess is waking up. She’s got her own job, her own money, she can make her own rules and run her own life. At the moment she’s tentatively groping her way, but she’s alert at last and she’s got a lot of power, because—collectively—she’s first generation money.”

  The line buzzed and faded. Kate yelled, “I want to start a magazine that will pay special attention to the psychological needs of a woman, a magazine that will help her understand her own emotions. No magazine is doing that; there’s a clear gap in the market”

  “What about Cosmo? What about Ms.?”

  “We don’t have them yet in Britain.”

  “Describe your readers again.”

  Kate repeated her idea. “Obviously I can’t give you an off-the-cuff answer,” Judy said. “I’ll talk to Tom about it and call you back.”

  “We’re interested,” Judy told Kate. “Why don’t you fly over for a couple of days. We want you to talk to a few people over here whom you already know. Griffin Lowe, my favourite publisher, and Pat Rogers, my former boss, who’s now features editor of one of our top magazines. She feels pretty much the same way as you do—fed up with the frosted pap that’s being put out for women. But we’re not thinking of starting in Britain. We ’re thinking of starting over here.”

  Kate booked a Thursday night flight and took a long weekend off. Those four days were spent in Judy’s apartment with Judy and Pat, who did most of the talking, and Griffin and Tom, who didn’t say much or do much except scribble the occasional note on their alligator memo pads. It was the first time that Kate had met both men. On her previous visit, Tom had been working with the LACE office on the West Coast.

  Griffin grilled Pat and Kate until he knew everything about their reader except her pantyhose size. Then he and Tom sat at one end of the dining table and wore out a calculator, while the three women continued to talk, argue, guess, predict and hope.

  The bulk of women’s magazine advertising lies in the multibillion-dollar beauty business. After Kate had returned to London, Griffin and Judy took Mrs. Lauder out to lunch at Orsini’s to see what she thought of the idea. Mrs. Lauder was small, quiet and extremely shrewd. Lunch for four cost three hundred and fifty dollars. Every dish had a special sauce, but nobody ate anything—they just pretended to.

  Mrs. Lauder thought the idea sounded plausible.

  After a second meeting, Mrs. Lauder agreed that if the magazine were to be as they described it, and if it hit the anticipated circulation, then she might take space. She agreed that there was a gap in the market. A definite maybe.

  One by one they lunched the other beauty-business magnates. Eyeing the bills, Tom suggested maybe they ought to go into the restaurant business. Judy called Kate again. “We’re getting a market survey, and if that looks good we’ll do it.”

  But Judy didn’t like the deal that Griffin offered. “I can’t agree to seventy percent for Orbit, Griffin.”

  “—Judy, I have to justify this to the shareholders. Our relationship isn’t the world’s best-kept secret.”

  “—And I want the staff to have some kind of participation.”

  “—A nice idea, but I’ve never known it to work. It’s an incentive that stops working as soon as they get it, because they sell their shares. Stick to bonuses based on increased profit. Don’t encourage equality on the editorial floor or you’ll never get anything printed.”

  Judy phoned Kate again.

  “I’m phoning to offer you the job of joint managing editor and to say that we’re willing to offer you two percent of the action if you can raise $170,000. Tom can arrange a five-year, back-to-back loan for you in some way that’s legal if you can put up collateral in Britain. It’ll cost you one percent extra interest, but it’s the only way that you can buy in because apparently your idiotic exchange-control regulations won’t let you take money out of Britain to invest elsewhere.”

  Kate rushed off to Barclay’s Bank. If she sold all her stock she would still be about five thousand pounds short, but her
mother agreed to guarantee an overdraft to cover it. So after another quick trip to New York, she told Scotty that she wanted to leave.

  “Agh, you bitch,” he said. “How could you do this to me after eight years together? What d’ye expect me to say? Except congratulations. Now stay out of my way for a few days, I’m too angry to talk to you.”

  Kate let Walton Street on a three-year lease to a General Motors executive, put her furniture in storage and flew to New York, where Tom had taken a short lease on an eleventh floor suite of offices on 53rd Street.

  Countless evenings were spent in Judy’s apartment, trying to decide on a name for the magazine. Eventually they decided to call it VERVE! with an exclamation point. It had an exultant, glad-to-be-alive feeling (which is how they wanted their readers to feel), and it was short and easy to remember.

  VERVE! threw its first party at the Four Seasons.

  Tom, looking like one of those suave, impeccably dressed fashion drawings in The New Yorker made a brief speech of introduction. Then Judy introduced her team and stated their editorial policy. The presentation lasted almost forty minutes.

  Kate felt oddly detached, as if she were watching her own performance from somewhere on the ceiling. “The key to self-expression is style, and every woman should learn how to develop her own. Every reader is important, because she is an individual and we want to encourage her individuality. But every reader also forms part of an enormously powerful economic force. Who are the enormous spenders of this country? Not Jackie, not Zsa Zsa, not Liz. The collective mass of American women probably form the biggest money-spending force in the world. VERVE! will not only show them how to spend it, we’ll also show them how to make it, how to earn it and how to multiply it. It’s time that women thought more about money—and had more of it for themselves. We intend to make this very clear.”