“We’ll do Paris for a week, honey,” Matty told his client, “and then the grand tour. Straight down France to the Riviera, then along the coast until we get to Italy. We’ll hit Florence, Rome and Venice and go back to Paris through Switzerland. Two months of it. Sound good to you?”
Francesca was too moved to answer.
By late August the Firestones and Francesca returned to Paris, where Margo had serious shopping to finish before their ship sailed at the end of the month. They stayed at the George V, then and now the hotel for rich tourists who don’t care that the hotel is full of other rich tourists, but who do care about good beds, room service and efficient plumbing.
In the hotel bar, on the first evening of their return, Matty was greeted by David Fox, a studio vice-president he lunched with at least once a month back in Hollywood.
“You all have to come to Deauville for the polo match next week,” David insisted. “It’s the first important one since the War.”
“Polo?” asked Matty indignantly. “A bunch of fancy no-goods on nervous little ponies? Who needs it?”
“But they’ve reached the finals—everyone will be there,” David persisted.
“How do they dress in Deauville?” Margo interrupted curiously.
“Exactly the same way you’d dress for a cruise on the largest yacht in the world,” the man replied knowingly. “And, of course, everyone changes three times a day.”
Margo barely prevented herself from licking her lips. The semi-marine mode had always been particularly kind to her.
“Matty, darling, I need to go to Deauville,” she announced, with an inflection that told Matty there was no use in further discussion.
Deauville, that timelessly chic resort, was established on the coast of Normandy by the Duc de Morny in 1866. From its inception it was intended to be a paradise for moneyed aristocrats, deeply involved in racing, gambling and golf. Because the grass of Normandy is the richest in France, its cows produce the best cheese, cream and butter. This same grass inevitably attracts Horse People, and the breeding and raising of horses takes place on the great stud farms of the surrounding countryside. The city of Deauville itself consists almost entirely of hotels, shops, cafés and restaurants, but the fresh sea air provides the illusion that enables the briskly strolling crowd on the boardwalk, the Edwardian Promenade des Planches, to imagine that the previous night, spent at the casino, must have been, in some way, good for their health.
The Hotel Normandy, in which Matty had been able to secure last-minute accommodations, is built in the English half-timbered style, rather as if someone had taken a normal country manor house and turned it into a seaside giant. In August, the Normandy, the Royal and the Hotel du Golf shelter a large portion of the people who will, inevitably, be in Paris in October, in St. Moritz in February and in London in June.
In 1951 these people were called the International Set. For lack of an engine the term “Jet Set” didn’t exist, but even then newspapers and magazines, although less preoccupied than they are now, were fascinated by the comings and goings of this gilded mob who had, somehow, escaped the mundane, workaday world.
It was all fueled by money, although money alone didn’t guarantee entry. Charm, beauty, talent—none of these attributes, even added to money, could make a person part of the International Set. What was essential was the willingness, the wholehearted intention to spend a life of a certain kind; a life in which the pursuit of pleasure and leisure could go on and on for years on end without causing any guilt, a life in which work had little meaning, and accomplishment, except in sports and gambling, had no place of honor. It was a life in which one’s best efforts were expended on the exteriors and décors of life; grooming, fashion, luxurious and exotic interiors, constant travel, entertainment and wide acquaintance, rather than deep friendships.
Integral to the life of the International Set was the man then called a playboy. The true playboy did not usually have a great deal of money himself, but he was only to be found where the money was. He had good humor, reliable charm, the capacity to acquit himself well at almost any game, the tact to drink like a gentleman, to avoid gambling debts and to give women so much pleasure that they inevitably told their friends about him.
Prince Alexander Vassilivitch Valensky was not a playboy. But since he could so often be found where playboys clustered, the press had dubbed Stash Valensky a playboy as a careless point of reference.
Stash Valensky’s vast personal fortune separated him completely from the playboy ranks. It was a fortune he had never had to question, even in his periods of wildest extravagance. Indeed, he never had to consider himself extravagant since he could afford to spend whatever he chose. The easeful relationship to wealth had been common to his ancestors, right down to his father, the late Prince Vasily Alexandrovitch Valensky. Nevertheless, Stash Valensky could never have been called a businessman. Until 1939, when polo stopped for the duration of World War II, he had devoted most of his adult life to the game. He had carried a nine-goal handicap since 1935, which made him one of the top ten players in a sport in which it was so expensive to participate that only nine thousand men in the world ever played it at any one time.
Valensky had the physical presence of a great athlete who has punished his body without pity throughout his life and the watchful, fighting eyes of a natural predator. His glance was bold and his thick brows were many shades darker than his blond hair, cropped short and as coarse as the coat of a hastily brushed dog. Valensky had never had to ask for anything. Either it had been given to him or he had taken it. His nose, broken many times, gave him the air of a roughneck. He had well-weathered, outdoorsman’s skin and strong, blunt, almost brutal features, but he walked with the gait, rapid and graceful, of a man who was in control wherever he found himself. He was considered to have the best “hands” in the world of international polo. Not only did Valensky never employ unnecessary force on the bit and reins but he had been born, as some men are, with an instinct for establishing a communication between himself and his pony which made it seem as if the animal was merely an extension of his mind, rather than a beast with a will of its own.
Nevertheless, Prince Valensky owned nine ponies, rather than the more usual five or six, because he rode like a barbarian. It is not safe to ride a polo pony, galloping and turning at top speed, for more than two chukkers in any single game. Stash rode so aggressively that he preferred to have a fresh pony for each of the six chukkers and he chose neyer to have fewer than three animals in reserve. According to the rules of the Hurlingham Polo Association, under which he played, no man is allowed to “Ride at an opponent in such a manner as to intimidate and cause him to pull out.” Stash stopped just short of that ambiguous distinction, but he never rode at an adversary without the clear mental intention of unhorsing him. There were many players who thought that the HPA Field Rules should have contained some special penalty which would disqualify Valensky, although no umpire had ever yet ordered him off the field.
It was a gala day in Deauville as the crowds pressed politely into the stands for the polo finals. When the Mayor of the city had been informed by the management of the Hotel Normandy that Francesca Vernon was their guest, he had called at the hotel in person and, with great formality, asked if she would present the cup to the winner of the day’s match.
“The honor was to have been mine, Mademoiselle,” he told her, “but it would be a great day for Deauville if you would consent.” The Mayor understood perfectly that with the participation of a film star the outcome of the play would be covered more prominently than if it were a mere sporting event.
“Well …,” Francesca said, hesitating for form’s sake, but already she saw herself clearly at the center of the competition.
“She’d love to,” Margo assured the Mayor. She owned a white silk suit trimmed with touches of navy that she hadn’t worn yet on this trip. She had suspected that it might be too formal for polo, but if Francesca had a place in the proceedings it would lo
ok entirely suitable. Margo was a great fan of pictures of royal personages presenting things to natives, something she would never have admitted, even to Matty. Sometimes Margo saw herself standing, gracious, smiling and about five inches taller than she was, being handed a huge bouquet of roses by a small curtsying child. It would never happen to her, but why shouldn’t it happen to Francesca?
The Firestones and Francesca watched the match with interest which soon turned into confusion. The play was really too fast to follow without some familiarity with its intricate rules. However, the atmosphere of the match was electric. Polo spectators are elegantly dressed, superbly perfumed and given to a kind of upper-class hysteria which balances the intense knowledgeability of the bullring crowd in Madrid with the polite, dandified excitement of Ascot. All three of them soon gave up trying to figure out what had triggered the moments of applause or groans and gave themselves up to the spectacle of eight great athletes riding fast horses. What ballet is to dance, what chess is to board games, polo is to sport.
A burst of cheering signaled the end of the match. The Mayor of Deauville approached their seats and held out his hand to Francesca. “Quickly, Mademoiselle Vernon,” he said. “The ponies are hot—we must not keep them out on the field.”
Francesca, holding the Mayor’s arm, picked her way across the polo grounds, now marred by divots which had been kicked up by the ponies’ hooves. The full skirt of her green silk dress, printed with tiny blue and white flowers, snapped like a sail in the stiff breeze. She wore a large white straw hat with an undulating brim, banded and ribboned in the silk of her dress. As she used one hand to keep it on her head, Francesca realized that at some time during the match she must have lost her hatpins. The actress and the Mayor approached the spot where the eight players, all still mounted, were waiting for her. The Mayor spoke briefly, first in French and then in English. Abruptly he handed Francesca a heavy silver trophy. Automatically, in order to receive the trophy, she took her hand off her hat. It blew off at once, and went skimming along the ground, bounding from one tuft of turf to another.
“Oh no!” she exclaimed in dismay, but as she spoke, Stash Valensky leaned down from his pony and scooped her up in one arm. Holding her easily, across his chest, he urged his mount after the wayward hat It had come to rest two hundred yards away, and Valensky, still holding Francesca to him, bent down from his saddle, picked the hat up by its ribbons and carefully replaced it on her head. The stands rang with laughter and applause.
Francesca heard nothing of the noise the spectators made. Time, as she knew it, had stopped. By instinct, she remained silent and waiting, passive against Stash’s soaking-wet polo shirt She could smell his sweat and it confounded her with desire. Her mouth filled with saliva. She wanted to sink her teeth into his tan neck, to bite him until she could taste his blood, to lick up the rivulets of sweat which ran down to his open collar. She wanted him to fall to the ground with her in his arms, just as he was, flushed, steaming, still breathing heavily from the game, and grind himself into her.
Collecting himself, Stash trotted his pony back to the other horsemen. He slid to the ground, Francesca still in his arms, and placed her gently on her feet. Somehow she was still holding the trophy and she tottered in her high heels. He took the cup from her, let it drop to the turf and grabbed both of her hands to steady her. For an instant they stood facing each other, linked. Then he bent from the waist and kissed one of the hands he was holding. Not the formal kiss that barely brushes the air above the hand, but a hard, hot imprint of his mouth.
“Now,” he said, looking right into her astonished eyes, “you’re supposed to give me the cup.” He reached down for it and handed it to her. She gave it back to him, silently. The crowd applauded again, and under that sound, she said, in a barely audible voice, “Hold me again.”
“Later.”
“When?” Francesca was shocked at her abrupt, naked voice.
“Tonight. Where are you staying?”
“The Normandy.”
“Come on, I’ll take you back to your seat.” He offered her his arm. They didn’t speak again until she had been restored to Matty and Margo. Everything essential had been said. Anything else was impossible to say.
“Eight?” he asked.
She nodded agreement. He didn’t kiss her hand again, but just bowed slightly and strode out to the field.
“Jesus Christ, what was all that about?” Matty demanded. Francesca didn’t answer him. Margo said nothing, because on Francesca’s lovely and familiar face she saw a dazed expression which, to Margo, was instantly apparent as a new expression, one that had been created by something outside the borders of Francesca’s previous experience.
“Come on, darling,” she said to the actress, “everybody’s leaving.” Francesca merely stood where she was, not hearing. “What are you going to wear?” Margo said in her ear. This time Francesca heard her.
“It doesn’t matter what I wear,” she answered.
“What!” Margo was shocked, genuinely shocked, for the first time in twenty years. “Come on, Matty. We’ve got to get back to the hotel,” she ordered, and, leaving him to escort Francesca, she led the way, muttering incredulously to herself. “Doesn’t matter! Doesn’t matter? Has she gone mad?”
Francesca Vernon was the only child of Professor Ricardo della Orso and his wife, Claudia. Her father was head of the Foreign Language Department at the University of California in Berkeley, to which he had immigrated from Florence in the 1920s. Both of Francesca’s parents had origins, centuries old, in the many-towered, once noble hill town of San Gimignano, near Florence. In each of their families there had been strikingly lovely women, too many of whom had come to dishonor or disgrace, according to the strict values of their times. For hundreds of years, many a noble Tuscan gentleman had ridden to San Gimignano, attracted by the legend of the glorious daughters of the della Orso and Veronese families. Often, too often, they had not been disappointed.
As soon as Ricardo and Claudia della Orso saw the hereditary features appear in their daughter they realized that she would, inevitably, be beautiful, perhaps unsuitably beautiful. They hoarded their one precious child, keeping her to themselves as much as possible, although Francesca needed the companionship of children her own age. Years in the battlefield of a playground sandbox, and more years in the rough and tumble of kindergarten, throwing things, building things, and playing with all manner of boys and girls, would have been far more healthy for this girl, who had inherited the wild blood of all those dark and captivating women of San Gimignano, than the hundreds of hours that were spent nourishing her fantasy life as, endlessly, her mother read fairy tales out loud.
In their effort to keep Francesca safe, her parents fed her growing mind on old stories of gallant deeds performed for love, of heroes and heroines whose lives were filled with risk and honor. They were a willing audience for the dozens of plays she soon began to perform for them with plots borrowed from the tales on which she had grown up. Her parents, innocent and proud, never understood that they had encouraged Francesca to view herself from the outside, to watch herself being someone she was not and take deep pleasure in it, to find role playing more real than anything else life had to offer.
When Francesca was six and went to school, she found her first wider audience. In the part of the crafty Morgiana in a first-grade production of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, the same “Open Sesame!” that revealed the treasure cave gave her a sure knowledge of her future. She would be an actress. From that moment on, although she seemed, to the outward eye, to be following a normal course through school, she acted in her head. When she wasn’t actually involved in the yearly class play, she would come to school in the character of the heroine of the book she was currently reading, and such was her cleverness that she was able to go through an entire school day without betraying herself to her classmates. They found her full of unexpected responses and unexplained moods, but that was just Francesca, who had, by reason of her inac
cessibility, come to occupy a high position in the pecking order of school. Everyone wanted to be her friend because so few were granted the privilege.
Year after year, Francesca was given the lead in the school plays, and no one, not even other mothers, ever complained that it was unfair, since she was so clearly better than anyone else. A production in which she played a lesser role than the central one would have been lopsided. She had only to walk out onto a stage to project an inescapable flash of aroused expectation. There was an inevitable quality in her smallest gestures. Francesca didn’t learn how to act: she merely turned her roving fancy toward the character she was playing and became that person with such naturalness that it appeared as if all she had done was to unwrap her emotions and let them appear on her face.
“Of all the occupational hazards of an agent’s life, high-school plays are my least favorite,” complained Matty Firestone.
“What about actresses’ love affairs?” asked his wife Margo. “Last week you said they were even worse than negotiating with Harry Cohn.”
Princess Daisy Page 2
