Lace II

by Shirley Conran

  The driver of the green truck behind him reacted more slowly, and crashed into the back of Sir Christopher’s old Rover. The momentum slammed the Rover into the truck ahead. As if made of paper, the Rover crumpled into the back of the truck. The steering column slammed against Sir Christopher’s chest like a mallet hitting steak, smashing his ribs and heart to pulp.

  He was rushed to St. Stephen’s Hospital and hurried into the intensive care unit.

  Twenty minutes later, Pagan, in her primrose nightdress, held her husband’s limp hand.

  “I’m afraid it’s hopeless, Lady Swann.” The doctor felt that he could talk bluntly to a fellow doctor’s wife. “Even if we obtained a replacement organ, there’s nothing left to attach it to—the thorax has been completely destroyed.”

  In a daze, Pagan signed one form giving consent for the life-support system to be switched off, another giving permission for Christopher’s remains to be used for medical purposes, and a third, authorizing the undertakers to proceed. She felt very cold and, to her horror, very angry. “How could he do it?” she thought. “How dare he leave me now?” Then she thought, “How can I even think such a dreadful thing?”

  * * *

  “A mother-and-daughter conspiracy suit? What the hell is that?” Judy demanded, in the VERVE! office, wondering if she had correctly heard what Tom had said.

  “Just what it sounds like,” he told her. “They allege that you and Lili hatched a malicious plot to ruin Senator Ruskington’s political career.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” Judy protested, her heels angrily kicking up the apricot kelim rug as she paced her office.

  “Of course it is.” Tom was being patient. “But conspiracy is a bitch, Judy. It’s the vaguest, stickiest area in the whole legal code. Just talking to someone, even on the telephone, can amount to a legal conspiracy, if the circumstantial evidence stands up. The fact that Lili has now moved in with you could be disastrous if the judge decides that it’s significant. Frankly, it’s a pity that you’ve asked her to stay in your apartment.”

  “Lili and I have a lot of catching up to do. God! This is all so stupid,” Judy raged. “When Lili did this interview I hardly knew her.”

  “Can you prove it?” Tom asked patiently. “You’ll have to go through all your papers tonight to see if there’s anything that we can produce at the hearing on Friday which will substantiate what you say!”

  So Judy cancelled her entire afternoon’s program, then read through an 18-inch-high pile of legal documents. After that, she turned out her filing system, her desk drawers, her purse, and her briefcase in search of anything at all to prove her point. She finished at eight that evening, exhausted by the effort of concentration. “Damn that hypocritical old buzzard,” she said to Tom, as she shrugged on her lynx jacket. “Senator Ruskington has now lost me almost a day’s work on top of every spare cent we have.”

  Tom nodded. “This case is wrecking our budget, Judy. We’ll have to make fast compensation cuts, as many as possible, no matter how small.”

  “What do you mean by small?”

  “Do we really need an exercise instructor? Couldn’t we let Tony go?”

  “If we have to cut down, let’s switch to a cheaper printer; that would be the easiest, quickest saving.”

  “And cut the quality? You’re only saying that because you’re angry, Judy.”

  “But it would be a really big economy and I would watch the quality like a hawk. We could make the contract conditional on quality. And what we pay Tony is a drop in the ocean compared to what we’re paying the lawyers.” She jammed on her lynx hat. “The exercise class is good for morale, and it means that I’m too tired to lie awake at night, worrying about that damned Senator.”

  “You? Lie awake?” he queried. “What’s happened to the unstoppable Judy Jordan self-confidence?”

  “It was always more fragile than you thought.” Judy’s voice was unusually low. For the first time, Tom realized the depth of her anxiety, and immediately switched into reassurance. Playfully, he ruffled her hair. “We’ve been in jams before, Judy, and you’re still top of the heap.”

  “So there’s farther to fall. And you get no sympathy. You’re supposed to be invulnerable. Did Henry Kissinger stay awake at night, crying?”

  “At least you’ve got Mark,” he comforted her. “I’m finding it tough without Kate.”

  “I don’t want to burden Mark with the troubles in my life.”

  “Do you mean you’re frightened of doing so? Frightened that he only loves the glamorous Judy Jordan that the world sees, not the real woman that I know?”

  “Mark’s a lot bigger on moral issues than he is on practical ones. I can’t talk to him about business because he doesn’t understand it. And he doesn’t understand that a lawsuit is about a set of rules, not about justice.”

  Fondly, Tom put an arm around her fluffy fur shoulders. “We’ll struggle through somehow.”

  “Talking of struggling, how’s Kate?”

  “She says the problem is much bigger than she had thought. It’s not just a tribal war, it seems to be systematic genocide. The Bangladesh government has tried to settle the Chittagong hills with their own citizens, and drive out the peaceful Buddhist peasants who live there. They’re trying to take away Kate’s visa.”

  “And to think I didn’t even know where Chittagong was before Kate left.”

  Judy said good night to Tom, then walked slowly down the dark corridor. She noticed a light shining under the boardroom door and opened it. Inside was Tony, sweating in his shorts and vest as he went through a sequence of fast turns and kicks in front of the mirror.

  “Still here, Tony!”

  “Yeah! Working out the new routine for tomorrow.” He leaped across the floor. “D’ya think the girls will go for it? I think they’re ready for this. I think they’ll manage. What d’ya think?”

  Anyone who put in longer hours than she did gained Judy’s instant admiration. “Hiring you was the best decision I ever made, Tony,” she called as he whirled past her, spinning drops of sweat from his forehead each time he turned. He finished in a dramatic pose, kneeling on the floor with arms outstretched, then slowly stood up, panting. “Getting hired by you was the smartest thing I ever did. Did ya see my picture in New York magazine? My Mom’s shown it to everyone on the block.”

  “That’s great, Tony. I know they’ll love it. And the girls all really appreciate the trouble you take.”

  Tony began to towel his dripping face. “Do you mean it? They really dig the routines?”

  “Of course. And you, too, Tony. Why’s that surprising?”

  “All this female attention. Goes to a guy’s head.”

  “Oh, come on,” Judy laughed. “With that body, you must have had hundreds of girls after you.”

  “No, I was the original Charles Atlas weakling, that’s why I started working out in the first place.”

  “You’ve made up for it since, Tony.” Judy turned to leave the room. “Don’t work too late.”

  “No chance, I’m taking my Mom out tonight,” he answered.

  “What a lovely thought, Tony. Enjoy yourselves.”

  * * *

  “Can’t we turn the volume down?” Tony’s mother scowled. Carefully dressed diners were shrieking with laughter, calling greetings and gossip from table to table, while waiters clattered with laden trays across the white tiled floor.

  “The fashion crowd comes here, Momma.” Tony hoped she wasn’t going to make a scene. “I wanted to take you somewhere real nice.”

  “Nice! This old-fashioned stuff!” A scornful laugh indicated her opinion of the fawn leather and chromium interior, all of which had been salvaged from the liner Mauretania, that floating objet d’art of the thirties.

  “So now you’ve got a job, you got money to burn!” Tony’s mother picked up the elegant menu. “I could cook this stuff for a tenth of the price! Papa and I never wasted a penny. Now, there was a careful man.”

  Tony
didn’t remember his father as being careful; his earliest memories were of his father fighting with his mother, while Tony cowered beneath the cracked, checked oilcloth that covered the kitchen table.

  “What’ll you have, Momma? I’m gonna try the crab salad.”

  “Crab salad! What nourishment is that? You like chicken, Tony, remember?”

  Tony remembered the different grease stains on the kitchen wallpaper, each of which marked a spot where his father had hurled a meal against it. Roast chicken had been the easiest dish to pick off the floor. Tony hated roast chicken. “Okay, I’ll have the chicken, Momma. Now, what’ll you have?”

  Small black eyes peered at the menu, reading with difficulty. “I’ll have the hamburger. Why couldn’t you let me fix something in your smart new apartment, Tony?”

  She’d never stopped criticizing his apartment. Quickly he said, “It’s being decorated. Wet paint everywhere.” Tony wasn’t clever enough to wonder why this small, scowling woman, who was in her forties but who looked twenty years older, should turn every pleasure offered by her son into an excuse to criticize him.

  “Why aren’t you doing the decorating?” She waved the menu at his face. Tony raised one arm and ducked as if to ward off a blow, then she continued. “So now you’re too high and mighty to paint your own apartment! You always were lazy; you always lay around doing nothing.”

  They fell silent until their food was served, then Tony’s mother suspiciously prodded her hamburger with her fork. “This meat is raw!”

  “It’s continental style, Momma, underdone.” Tony felt an almost uncontrollable urge in his gut as his mother criticized on, on, on, and raised her voice until the other diners turned to look at her. This, too, had been the pattern of his childhood meals. She’d complain because Poppa was always late and, in return, he’d criticize the food. Then they were off, bickering about nothing. Voices would rise, fists would be raised, shouting would escalate into screaming, and then the food would hit the wall. Mealtimes were the only times that his family couldn’t avoid being together, and they used these occasions to attack, undermine, and casually wound, using their intimate knowledge of each other to destroy with the accuracy of heat-seeking missiles.

  “Please keep your voice down, Momma,” Tony pleaded.

  “That’s a fine way to talk to your mother!”

  “Momma, I’m only trying to give you a good time.” Once again, Tony wondered whether he would ever earn adult status.

  “Don’t interrupt me, or I’ll make you wish you’d never been born!” Tony felt sick. Inside his magnificently developed body, he felt again like a small boy, a small boy terrified of his mother’s unpredictable, sadistic rages, a small boy overpowered by the unreasoned guilt of childhood. Every day, the small Tony had heard that savage voice and moved about the apartment in terror, lest she should pick on some trifling fault—a peanut-butter stain on his shirt, unfinished schoolwork, chores skimped—as an excuse for a beating.

  * * *

  Tony unlocked his front door and crushed his mother’s bag of homemade cookies into the overflowing garbage bag. Another treat for the roaches. He fed a tape of Captain Blood into the video, threw himself on the permanently converted, never-made Murphy bed and turned to the night table, upon which stood a signed photograph of Judy in a silver frame. “I don’t take her out, I’m neglecting her; I do take her out, I’m wasting money!”

  * * *

  “Isn’t Spyros ever going to give up?” Lili picked the plain diamond bracelet from the newly delivered basket of butterfly orchids and tossed it on Judy’s blue and mauve silk sofa. “If I had kept his bracelets, I’d have enough to reach my elbows.”

  “Lucky girl, isn’t she, Mark?” Judy picked up the brilliant stream of jewels and admired it over the back of her brown hand.

  Mark shrugged his shoulders and gazed at the smoldering log fire. “That bracelet would feed an African village for years.”

  “Don’t be so smug!” Lili reached forward, grabbed the diamond bracelet and flung it at Mark. “Give it to the Africans, then,” she said. “I don’t want it, because I know it isn’t a gift, it’s a bribe.” Lili snorted. “When one of Spyros’s little gifts appears in a basket of flowers, you’re supposed to roll over on your back, and be grateful. He orders these diamond bracelets, a dozen at a time, from Cartier. To him, they’re trading stock.”

  “Like beads and mirrors?” Judy suggested. “As used by the Conquistadores to buy Aztec gold?”

  “Exactly.” Lili’s expression was offset by her bizarre makeup; she had spent the afternoon trying to copy Mistinguett’s makeup; her guide photograph lay among scattered cosmetics on the low, red marble table.

  “You’d better get that stuff off your face or you’ll be late for the concert.” Judy picked up the brass poker and prodded a falling log back into place.

  “True.” Lili stood up, stretched and headed for the bathroom. “Won’t you need this makeup?” Judy called after her, meaning get this mess out of my sitting room.

  Mark said, “She likes being untidy, you should see the state she left my place in.”

  “So what does a little mess matter? The reason Lili wanted to move in with me was so that our relationship could develop.” Softly, she touched Mark’s long, tapering, brown fingers. Gently, Mark pulled his hand away.

  “Tom told me that having Lili living here with you, Judy, could be playing with fire; it might prejudice the lawsuit.”

  Judy neatly replaced the poker on the poker stand. “We’re never going to get to know each other properly over restaurant tables and in hotels.” She turned as Lili appeared, glorious in dark-green shot silk and opal earrings. “I’m off.”

  Lili’s carnation scent lingered in the sitting room as the front door slammed. Mark wished that he, too, could leave. It’s a classic double bind, he thought miserably: if I leave, then Judy will take it as rejection, and if I stay, the whole thing will shortly explode in our faces. Here we sit, sipping Perrier on top of an emotional time bomb. Surreptitiously, he sniffed the carnations and couldn’t help imagining Lili’s gold-skinned body as she emerged from the tub.

  * * *

  Lili let herself into the apartment and unclasped her green velvet cloak. They hadn’t gone to bed yet, she could hear Judy’s earnest voice saying, “…But why, Mark? Why have you tried for four hours, in various indirect ways, to get me to ask my daughter to leave this apartment?”

  “For Chrissake, don’t you understand, Judy?” Unseen, Lili heard Mark’s weary pleading, and her hands halted on the gold clasp.

  And, suddenly, Judy did understand. “Of course! I must have been blind! You’re in love with her, aren’t you, Mark?” Her voice was hard. “I must have been blind!”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Judy.”

  “Too bad, sweetheart, you just did,” she flashed back at him. “Men always say they don’t want to hurt you, when they’ve just dealt some woman a death blow.”

  “I don’t want to hurt Lili, either. She trusts me. I don’t want to upset her life, or your life, or your life with Lili, or my life.” Mark tried not to raise his voice. “To Lili, I’m the only man she knows who isn’t trynig to get into her pants.”

  “Except that’s what you want to do, isn’t it?” Judy demanded.

  There was a pause, then Mark said in a low voice. “If you want the truth, I don’t think any man could resist Lili’s extraordinary sexuality.”

  Lili caught sight of her reflection in the dim silver depths of an elaborate Louis XV mirror. What is it, she thought, what is it that I have in me that casts this spell, this curse, on almost every man I meet? What is it? I can’t see it. Why can’t I switch it off?

  As if echoing her thoughts, in the living room Judy shouted, “I can’t see it, and neither can any other woman. That’s why it’s so maddening to see you men all making fools of yourselves over Lili.”

  Gazing at her reflection, Lili realized that she was tired of being a sex object, tired of being
considered a male plaything, tired of being idolized by both sexes—unknown men because they desired her and unknown women because they desired to be like her. Lili realized that her fatal attraction was, above all, fatal to herself.

  “Does Lili know you feel this way about her?” Judy was trying to control her voice, because she had to know the answer to her question.

  “No,” Mark answered, “and I don’t want her to know.”

  “What does she feel about you?”

  “I think she trusts me.” He paused. “I think she sees me as a brother.”

  “Are you and I living in the same century?” Judy suddenly yelled, “Brother, indeed!”

  “I’m not going to threaten the only shred of family security that Lili’s ever had.”

  Judy interrupted him bitterly. “Well, that just makes it perfect.” Her voice was vicious. “I’m losing my magazine, my money, my job; then you try to fix things so that I’ll lose my daughter and my lover into the bargain. And to top it all, you’re full of sympathy for her, not me.”

  Mark shouted back, “Look, I don’t want Lili. I want you. But I want you like you used to be.”

  Judy heard the pain behind his words and realized that Mark was telling the truth when he said that his passion for Lili was something that he didn’t want.

  “You’re difficult to sympathize with, Judy.” Mark finally found an exterior focus for his anger. “You’ve changed since I met you. You were such fun. Ambitious, hardworking, successful, and tough—sure. But fun. You were kind to people and strong. You gave me support and self-confidence.”

  “Now, I’m the one who needs support,” Judy wailed, suddenly out of control and frightened.

  Suddenly, Mark was able to crystalize his feelings and put them into words. “You seem to have lost your own self-confidence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t recognize you any more. You taught me that real self-confidence isn’t put on every morning like a silk shirt, to impress the outside world. Self-confidence is something that’s built on knowing what you can do and what you can’t do. Now, you seem to have forgotten that. What’s got into you?”