Lace II

by Shirley Conran

  Lili sensed the loneliness that Judy would have fiercely denied. Judy had achieved everything that spells success—she was a Liz Smith regular, a Page Six standby, she had expensive designer clothes, maids, secretaries, an East Side apartment, a place on Long Island, plenty of men friends and three very special women friends. But nobody … close. Perhaps that stemmed from her feelings of guilt.

  Judy had spent many years feeling guilty about abandoning her child, feeling responsible for her child’s death, feeling guilty that her life hadn’t turned out as planned, and all because she hadn’t been an instant success in The Big Apple.

  However much she justified her actions, however tenderly her friends reassured her, there was no getting away from the fact that she had—as Lili felt it—abandoned her own daughter when she was three months old. There had been plenty of justification. Judy had been a sixteen-year-old waitress, working her way through The Language Laboratory in Gstaad, Switzerland, when she had been raped. Judy’s three rich girlfriends at the nearby finishing school had all helped to pay for Lili’s birth and then for her keep. But no matter how hard Judy had tried, business success always, at first, seemed just beyond her reach, and whatever way Judy turned, she came up against an impersonal blank wall at the end of a cul-de-sac. And all the time she knew that she had to succeed as fast as possible, because—her own ambition apart—she couldn’t support her baby daughter until she was successful and made money. Judy’s lack of early success had made her feel helpless and unloved, as well as a failure.

  With the cheery arrogance of youth, Judy had expected quick success to be the result of brains and hard work. She didn’t realize that you can put all your heart and energy into your work but the opportunities you deserve just aren’t offered to people who are only moderately attractive; it can make you bitter when the other, less gifted people get the opportunities that should be yours.

  Sure, Lili had suffered, but nevertheless Lili had all the things that Judy had never had at her age: beauty, sexuality; money, and time. Time to play, time to go out in the evening without feeling exhausted, time for men. Judy remembered once wondering whether she would be successful while she was still attractive or whether she would ever be able to afford to wear a wonderful dress, to go to a wonderful place and perhaps meet a wonderful man there?

  Perhaps it would all have been much easier if only she had been a little bit more beautiful. Judy was ashamed of the fact that she was jealous of Lili’s beauty.

  On the opposite side of the water, in the Asian part of the city, the man with binoculars still slung around his neck pushed his way through the boys selling chewing gum and evil-eye beads until he reached the Galata ferry. A few minutes later, the wide wake of the flat-bottomed ferry crossed the wash of the pretty little launch that carried the three famous women, as they sped toward the shore, where richly decorated palaces and mosques crowded together at the water’s edge; the entire view rippled in the heat, so the buildings seemed to be part of the water itself.

  * * *

  “Problems, Judy, problems,” warned the photographer at Topkapi Palace. “They say we can’t shoot in the Harem. It’s impossible.”

  People with longer experience of Judy Jordan never used the word “impossible.” If you told Judy that something was impossible, she merely lifted her little nose an inch or so and said, “Only impossible people use the word ‘impossible,’ ” or simply, “It must be done.” Now Judy said, “We must shoot in the Harem; the copy has already been written, all the headlines are set and your film is going straight back to New York tonight to be developed and printed in time for Friday’s deadline.” She turned to the guide from the Turkish Tourist Board, “What’s the problem?”

  “The Harem Quarters are enormous, Mrs. Jordan…”

  “Can’t we use part of it for us to get a few shots? Everything was cleared with your office.”

  “There must have been a misunderstanding. Photography is forbidden because of the restorations.”

  “But isn’t there even one room…”

  “Please understand, Madame. The Topkapi Palace is a magnificent national treasure and the Government would be most unhappy if it were not seen at its best. All the most beautiful rooms are in the part of the Palace which is open to tourists. Let me show these to you.”

  “OK, do that,” agreed Judy. She looked at her watch and thought, an hour to set up, another hour to get the shots. Yes, there would be time for a quick tour.

  “Do you suppose they’ll let us come back and have a proper look?” Sandy asked Lili as they hurried through a library lined with carved wooden bookshelves, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tortoise-shell.

  “No.” Lili was listening to the guide’s heavily accented voice, as he told a story about some favorite concubine.

  “Is it always like this? Being on tour?” asked Sandy, still reluctant to learn that the glamorous life looked better than it lived.

  “Yes,” said Lili. “You never have enough time, except in airports; it doesn’t matter where you are, all you really see is the inside of dressing rooms and studios; you can’t go to the discotheques because you’ll have bags under your eyes tomorrow; you can’t sunbathe because you’ll look browner in some pictures than others; you can’t eat most of the food so you won’t either get fat or sick; and everyone is always late and frantic. Isn’t success wonderful?”

  “Time to get ready, girls,” said Judy. “We’re going to shoot in the Sultan’s dining room.” She led them to a tiny chamber with walls and ceilings covered in gold-embellished paintings of lilies and roses, pomegranates and peaches. The photographer looked doubtfully at his light meter. “All this interflora stuff might look like psychedelic oatmeal by the time the pictures are printed.”

  “Then let’s do a few more shots outside, by the Harem gate, where you’ll get better light,” Judy suggested.

  After the photo session was finished and the film had been dispatched to the airport, Sandy and the photographer stayed behind for a more leisurely look at the Palace. “After all, honey,” said Sandy, as they headed for the treasure chamber, “how often does a girl get a look at rubies the size of pigeon’s eggs?”

  * * *

  Judy and Lili climbed into their limousine, kicked off their shoes and asked the driver to take them to the Grand Bazaar.

  As she got out of the car, Lili’s tiny snakeskin bag slipped off her shoulder and fell onto the cobbles, spilling coins, lip-gloss and letters. Quickly, Lili snatched them up, but Judy had spotted the airmail letter.

  “Not fast enough, Lili.” Judy couldn’t stop herself saying it. “He’s still writing to you, isn’t he?”

  Lili opened her mouth and then shut it again; after all, whatever she said would be wrong.

  Still, Judy couldn’t stop herself. “Do you think I don’t know my lover’s handwriting after all these months?”

  “Judy, I can’t stop Mark writing to me. I don’t want anything to do with him, I never did.…”

  “But he wants you, Lili, doesn’t he? And he certainly doesn’t want me anymore.” Judy knew she was being destructive and knew that she should stop, but now that she had begun she could not stop; she had been suppressing this for weeks. “Lili, don’t tell me you didn’t know that Mark was falling in love with you in New York, right under my nose. You can’t pretend that you don’t know what effect you have on men—Lili, the world’s most famous sex symbol.” Judy knew Lili’s most sensitive point.

  “You’re not being fair, Judy. What kind of a woman do you think I am?”

  Suddenly, Judy’s self-control snapped as jealousy, unhappiness and fear controlled her. “The kind of woman who might seduce her mother’s lover. The kind of woman who could ruin her mother’s business—that’s the kind of woman you are!”

  Lili burst into tears of rage. “You’re impossible! I wish I’d never found you. I wish I’d never met you. I never want to see you again.” Impulsively, she turned, plunged into the jostling crowd, and vanished. Grimly
, Judy watched her go. Their raised voices, the faces twisted with anger and misery, had gone unremarked in the noisy crowd. But both women knew that their play-acting was over. Within two minutes, the fragile relationship, that both had tried so hard to establish, had been wrecked.

  The man with the binoculars watched them argue, then saw Lili burst into tears and disappear under the great stone gateway of the Bazaar. Quickly he followed her, elbowing his way through the heaving mass of people, determined to keep Lili in sight.

  * * *

  “Where the hell can Lili be? She should never have gone off alone like that.”

  “Going off alone is her idea of luxury,” Sandy reminded Judy as she tipped back her chair, crossed her feet on the balcony rail and watched heavy black clouds gather behind the minarets. “You know that Lili doesn’t like the usual star entourage. The rest of them may not move an inch without PR people, bodyguards, a couple of studio executives, two gofers and a hairdresser, but that’s exactly the part that Lili hates. Nobody can make an entrance better than Lili but, although she’s not exactly Garbo, Lili doesn’t care for all the fuss and glitter that I long for.”

  “But she knows we’re supposed to meet the agency people in ten minutes.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to meet the agency people. Why don’t we just go ahead and eat?” Sandy stood up and pulled down the zipper of her gold lamé jumpsuit. “Lili can follow us when she turns up.”

  But when Judy tried to leave a message for Lili, the clerk pointed out that Lili’s key was still in its pigeonhole. “Miss Lili went out many hours ago. No, not alone. With a man.”

  “What sort of man?”

  “Not a guest. Maybe Turkish. I don’t remember his clothes. A dark suit, maybe.” In luxury hotels in Turkey, the clerks speak impeccable English.

  “That’s odd; we don’t know anyone Turkish, except the agency people,” Sandy said as they turned toward the dining room. Judy said nothing.

  As the agency people made over-polite conversation, Judy picked her way through a series of dishes with suggestive names: Holy Man Fainted (stuffed eggplant with tomatoes, onions and garlic), Sultan’s Delight (sautéed lamb with onions and tomatoes), Ladies’ Navels (fried pastries with pistachio nuts and whipped cream). Then the lights dimmed and six plump girls in neon-pink gauze undulated across the dance floor. After the belly dancers came the fire-eaters, then the snake charmer. Not until two o’clock in the morning, when the last cobra had been re-coiled in its basket, could Judy stand up and leave.

  Back at the hotel reception desk, her anxiety increased as she stared at Lili’s key, still in its pigeonhole. “This is not the kind of town for a girl to be out with a strange man,” Judy said to Sandy. “However angry Lili was, she would have sent us a message. After all, she wouldn’t want the police looking for her, if she was just romancing.”

  Feeling increasing guilt, Judy turned to Sandy. “We’d better not call the police. We don’t want to upset the local people and we don’t want to look foolish if Lili, if she only…” she paused.

  “Exactly,” agreed Sandy.

  * * *

  As soon as Judy woke, she telephoned Lili’s suite. No answer. In her red silk dressing gown, Judy hurried down to the reception desk. The clerk, a nervous new boy on the daytime shift, refused to give her the key to Lili’s rooms. Judy demanded to see the hotel manager and, together, they hurried up the marble staircase. An anxious Sandy waited outside the double doors of Lili’s suite.

  They rushed across the empty drawing room and threw open the bedroom door. The billowing pink silk canopy of the elaborate antique bed was caught back with golden rope, but the plump velvet pillows in their lace coverings were undented and the ivory chiffon sheets were still as smooth as when the maid had turned them down the night before.

  Sandy ran into the dressing room and opened the closets. “Her clothes are still here.” She pulled open the bathroom door. The makeup was scattered on the marble counter, as Lili had left it.

  Sandy dashed back to the sitting room, to see Judy, on her knees, tearing at a cylindrical brown-paper parcel on the floor. She pulled out an exquisite silk rug. “Lili must have bought that after she left me in the Bazaar.”

  “Maybe the man she went out with was a rug merchant?” suggested Sandy.

  “Maybe she met someone in the Grand Bazaar?” Judy worried aloud.

  Sandy always told people what they wanted to hear. “Lili might have taken up with some good-looking guy and decided to have a little fun,” she soothed.

  The discreet tap at the door made both women jump, then hurry toward it. Judy was the first to reach the handle. “Lili, thank God you’re … oh!” Outside stood a hotel page boy, carrying a gigantic bouquet of red roses.

  “Who would send us flowers when we’re leaving tomorrow?” Sandy wondered, as she unpinned the tiny envelope and handed it to Judy. She pulled out the card, and read it, then gasped, “Oh, no!” and dropped the card.

  Sandy snatched up the card and read it aloud. “Wait in your hotel suite to hear from Lili’s father. He must pay the ransom.” Slowly she turned to Judy. “So now we know. Lili’s been kidnapped.”

  1

  October 15, 1978

  STANDING, DAZED, IN her hotel room, gazing at the beautiful bunch of red roses which had accompanied the kidnap letter, Judy said nothing. But she thought, this is my fault. Once again I have been responsible for a disaster in my daughter’s life. Why, oh why, doesn’t God stick up red flags when you accidentally do some little thing that’s going to lead to calamity? I persuaded Lili to come with me on this tacky trip because I never had enough time for her back home in New York; there I told myself that it wasn’t my responsibility, I hadn’t been expecting a long-lost daughter to drop in on me. I had a magazine to run and a business to run and my charity commitments, and my lover to look after. But that article on Lili in VERVE! was my idea. I should have known that article was asking for trouble—and that we’d all get it in shovelfuls. I wish I could turn the clock back to a year ago, to that first meeting at the Pierre Hotel.

  * * *

  It had been a warm October evening; nevertheless, a log fire had burned softly in the quiet, cream hotel suite, with the spectacular view across the purple dusk of Central Park. Firelight had flickered across the faces of the two women as they moved toward each other. Judy had felt the strange animal magnetism that emanated from Lili. Looking at Lili’s black, soft curls, falling to the folds of her white Grecian tunic, Judy felt a new appreciation of that world-famous oval face, with the high cheekbones that looked both innocent and predatory, the thickly lashed chestnut eyes that always glistened as if tears were about to fall. Judy found it hard to believe that her daughter, believed dead, was alive—let alone that she was Lili, the most famous professional waif since Marilyn Monroe. It was impossible to match this sensuous creature with the image that Judy had treasured, of a well-behaved six-year-old girl with braided hair.

  Judy had always imagined that her long-lost daughter would look exactly like herself, but their only resemblance lay in the slim-boned frames of their bodies. The three other women in the room sat motionless—hypnotized by the drama of the moment—as Lili took a hesitant step toward Judy. Pagan, elegant in pink wool, suddenly noticed that Judy and Lili had the same doll-like hands. She leaned across to the green-eyed woman in the mulberry suit. “Do you think we should leave?” she whispered to Kate, who was sitting next to her on the apricot-silk sofa.

  Kate Ryan shrugged her shoulders, unable to take her eyes off Lili. She found herself mentally taking notes, as if writing one of her articles, as Lili moved toward Judy, but Judy stood motionless and silent. Kate opened her mouth to say something but the third onlooker, an elegant blonde in blue silk, lifted her fingers to her lips, as all three women watched the mother and daughter hold each other in a nervous embrace. Sharing a natural impulse to dissolve the pain and embarrassment of the moment by reaching toward physical contact, they were hugging each other, but
not kissing each other, Kate noticed.

  As she held her daughter, Judy realized that this was the first time she had touched Lili since the sad moment when she had handed her three-month-old baby to her foster mother, that morning years ago, in the Swiss hospital where Judy’s illegitimate child had been born. As she held Lili close to her heart, Judy realized that, since that day, they had shared a physical need for each other that was close to hunger; their embrace was an expression of that need, rather than of warmth, of affection, even of liking; but both women realized that this was an expression of goodwill.

  This is my daughter, thought Judy, as she felt the trembling warmth of Lili’s body; this voluptuous woman once came out of my body; those wild brown eyes and slanting cheekbones—once they were a part of me, I made them. She looked down at Lili’s gold-skinned forearms and thought, that is flesh of my flesh.

  She does not feel like my mother, thought Lili, hugging the slender Judy, in her brown velvet suit. A mixture of resentment and relief swirled in Lili’s mind; she had built up her unknown mother’s identity into a romantic mystery because the alternative was to face her mother’s brusque rejection of her as a baby. When she finally met her mother, Lili had expected to feel as protected as a child, but when she looked into Judy’s eyes and saw pain, fear and guilt, Lili felt unexpectedly protective toward her mother.