As she came back to herself, the horror was all around her, a sick whirl, yet without a name, without specifics, generalized, surrounding, stifling. She knew nothing except that something very bad had been done, something criminal. Every ounce of acting ability Francesca possessed was mustered as she slowly realized where she was and the full implications of what Dr. Allard had said, instincts of cunning she hadn’t known she possessed took over.
“I’m sorry, Doctor … it must be the reaction to coming back to the clinic. I’m perfectly all right now. No thank you, no water, I’m fine. Well! How are you?” She was gaining time settling down into a natural rhythm, her words coming from her numb lips as if she really were in full command of herself.
“I? I am a happy man today, Princess. When the Prince told me that you had decided never to see Danielle, that you refused to bring her up, I must confess that I was deeply disappointed. But I do not consider it my business to comment on such decisions, you understand, that is always a matter the parents must decide. But somehow, something told me, yes, even at the time, that when you were quite well again you would reconsider.”
“Doctor, I went through a very difficult time. I’m not sure that I really understand now, even though I’ve recovered, exactly what happened. Could you straighten it out for me, tell me just what occurred? I didn’t pay enough attention to the whole thing and I’m ashamed of myself.… I don’t want my husband to know how little I listened to him.” She smiled at him, composed, charmingly helpless.
When the doctor had finished the long recital, filling in every detail with Swiss precision, remembering with no trouble all of his interviews with Stash and all the details of Danielle’s condition, Francesca sat numbly. Every word was a heavy spiked object that fell straight on her heart, blow after blow. The foreknowledge of approaching doom was as palpable as an open casket. She wanted to scream, to scream and never stop screaming, so that she would never have to think about what the little doctor had told her. Instead, calmly, out of a cave on the dark side of the moon, she heard her voice asking, “You still haven’t told me exactly what sort of special care Danielle will need.”
“Only what you’ve given Daisy—I see that is what the newspapers call her now, our little Marguerite. At the moment, before Daisy starts to walk, the differences between them will be less than they will be in the future. Danielle will, of course, be slow and late to develop in every way, and a good deal less active than her sister, but, as I have assured you, she will look normal. Soon, very soon, it will be time for speech … the first major problem. Then, in a few years, Danielle can be tested. With luck there are many, many things the little one can be taught to do for herself, but all that’s in the future. For now it’s only love and attention that she requires.”
“Doctor Allard, I foolishly gave away her crib and all her clothes … everything that might have reminded me.… I’ll need just one more day to get ready for her.”
“But of course … one day, two days, what do they matter now?” The doctor looked at her keenly, thinking that perhaps what she really needed was time to get used to the idea, now that her difficult decision had finally been made.
When Francesca came out of the doctor’s consulting room, Masha was waiting with fiery impatience to be summoned as a witness against Soeur Anni. Francesca intercepted her before she could say anything.
“Masha, it’s all settled, our business. Come on, right away, we’ve got a lot of things to do.” She grasped the older woman’s arm and tugged her out of the door, hurrying down the clinic corridor into the street.
“Princess, did you get that woman thrown out? Why didn’t you let me tell him? You were in there so long I was worried.”
“Masha,” Francesca began and then stopped. In the space of an hour everything on which she had based her beliefs had vanished. Nothing was as it seemed. Deception, lies, cruelty, impossible hurts, a vast, confused landscape surrounded her.
“Masha, she didn’t lie to you. Danielle—she’s alive!” The strong peasant woman tottered. Francesca held her up with all her strength. “Masha, come, well sit in the park. I’ll explain it all.”
At the end of Francesca’s recital, broken as it was by incredulous cries of denial from Masha, the two women sat silently on the park bench, eyed with mild curiosity by the chauffeur who was still parked in front of the clinic.
Slowly Masha turned to Francesca. “You must understand, Princess, even as a little boy he was in terror of weakness, sickness, only that, no other failings. I’ve watched him over the years—oh, I know he pays no attention to me, but I’ve watched and watched. He has to have everything his way. He always wins, always. There is no hope, Princess. He’ll never admit the poor baby to his heart.”
“He won’t have to,” Francesca said in a voice that was almost a howl of potent, rending rage. “He’s lost every chance.”
Masha’s subservient reaction to Stash’s point of view had mobilized her as nothing else could have. The old woman was actually trying to explain what he had done, as if his actions could be accepted, had to be accepted.
“I’m going away, Masha. I’m taking my children with me. Nobody can stop me, I warn you. He lied to me. He let me think she was dead! He stole my baby. If I don’t protect her, who knows what evil thing he might do next? Think what he did, Masha. Think what he is. I never want to see him again. I’ll be gone before he gets back from London. All I ask from you is to say nothing until I’ve left.”
Masha’s eyes filled. “What do you take me for? Once I had a baby … but he died. Still, I have always had a mother’s heart, Princess. Anyway, you can’t manage without me. Just how do you think you are going to take care of two babies all by yourself? I’m going with you.”
“Oh, Masha, Masha!” Francesca cried. “I hoped you’d say that—but I would never have asked you to leave him.”
“He doesn’t need me. You do,” Masha said with stately finality.
Francesca spent one day at the U.S. Embassy in Geneva making emergency passport arrangements, assisted by a bored and incurious clerk, bought airline tickets in a Geneva travel agency, returned to Lausanne to cash a large check at their bank and hurried back to the villa to pack. For herself she took almost nothing but her traveling clothes, but she filled two big suitcases with all of Daisy’s clothes and necessary temporary supplies. She took out all her jewels and looked at them speculatively. No, she was no longer the wife of the man who had given them to her. Her garden of Fabergé crystal vases, filled with jeweled flowers? Yes, somehow they belonged to another life—a life before the lies—and they rightfully could go with her. The lapis lazuli egg with the diamond crown of Catherine the Great inside, bearing a ruby at its heart? Yes! That was undeniably hers, hers for bearing the twins. She shut the vases and the egg into their boxes and put the small packets in the bottom of her vanity case. Each of her actions, all day long, had been executed with precision, perfection and perfect ease. She had been taken over by a molten core of anger which powered her like an enormous engine. Her strength knew no limits, her brain worked at ten times its normal efficiency, she was a living fire, burning, burning toward the moment when she would take her children to safety. Should she cable Matty Firestone to meet her in Los Angeles? No. Absolutely no one must know she was leaving until she’d gone.
She answered Stash’s next phone call that evening with such a perfect imitation of the tone of the night before that, from the observing part of herself, she was astonished. But all that night she prowled back and forth in her bedroom, hurling words of loathing and bitter blame at him. A man should die for what he had tried to do—had done. How frighteningly little she had really known him, how trusting she had been, how easily she had been duped, used as if she were a figure on a chessboard. How she hated him!
The next morning she telephoned Dr. Allard. She would be sending a nurse to Madame Goudron’s to pick up the baby in two hours, she told him. Would he have the kindness to telephone the lady and ask her to have Dan
ielle ready, and warmly dressed? It was such a chilly day. Yes, yes, she was happy, very happy and very excited. The doctor was perfectly right. It was a wonderful day. Yes, she would give the Prince his best wishes for them all … how very kind.
Precisely two hours later Francesca sat hidden in the back of a taxi, holding Daisy, while Masha went into the neat little house. No one would have recognized the woman in a bulky travel coat, wearing dark glasses and a deep-brimmed hat, a woman without make-up, her hair pulled back into a tight bun, as that lyric, famous beauty, her long hair flying, who responded in such carefree, innocent delight to the cheers of her fans on her arrival at Cherbourg, just a little less than a year and a half ago.
Five minutes passed before Masha emerged, waving at the woman at the door who lifted a wistful hand. As the taxi started toward the airport, Masha and Francesca exchanged babies. Francesca lifted the hood of the carrying blanket which almost covered the child’s face. How small she was. How incredibly sweet. Silver blonde hair, curly and fine. A grave face, a bit sad, but so marvelously familiar. And the eyes—the same velvety black, the black of a purple pansy, Daisy’s eyes. But dull. Just a little dull. Perhaps only dull if you compared her to Daisy … and that was something you must never, never do, never again.
In one glance she committed herself irrevocably to protect and cherish her child, knowing that whatever happiness this attachment would bring, it would always be linked to shadows and a vast sadness that she rejected even as it was stitched tightly into her soul.
7
None of the servants dared to say a single word to their master. Stash Valensky’s face, as he went about the business of selling the huge Lausanne villa and moving them all to London, was set in lines of pain which made him almost unrecognizable. Even among themselves they only whispered a few words of speculation. The unexplained disappearance of the Princess, with Daisy and Masha, was so threatening to their sense of security that they tried to ignore it. They closed their minds to the mystery. A family quarrel, they prayed, that would be resolved as suddenly, as mysteriously, as it had sprung up.
Stash could do nothing. Any legal action to recover Daisy would instantly become public knowledge, and then the whole story would have to be revealed. He had entirely justified his actions to himself, but, armored with scorn, he accepted the fact that the great majority of people, people who allowed unfortunate accidents to control their little lives, would never understand what he’d had to do about Danielle.
They would never understand how right he had been. How right he was. He reasoned that the situation couldn’t last long. Francesca had acted emotionally, out of the shock of the moment, but she’d come to her senses soon and realize that he had merely shaped events for her sake and for Daisy’s sake, that he had taken the only rational, the only right course to ensure a happy life for the three of them.
Yet Stash had no idea where Francesca was. By the time he had returned from London and discovered that she was gone, he could only trace her as far as Los Angeles. He called Matty Firestone. Whatever further information existed, her former agent was the obvious first source.
Matty expressed his almost incredulous contempt for Stash by informing him that both of his daughters were very well; in fact, Danielle was beginning to hold her head up nicely for a second or two. Daisy? Oh, yeah, Daisy. She was sitting up and saying mama, but that little Danielle, now she was amazing. He could almost swear she’d smiled at him the third time she saw him.
Stash spoke as coldly as possible. There was nothing to be gained by rising to the bait. Would Francesca see him? Could he write to her? There had been a misunderstanding which could be worked out.
“Well,” said Matty, enjoying himself viciously, “there’s no way on earth that I’m going to let you know where they are. They’re safe and they’re well and they’re not starving and that’s all you get out of me. And it’s more than you deserve.”
Months passed. Stash went to California, but Matty was obdurate. He was acting under orders from his client. Mr. Valensky would get nothing from him. Of course, he could sue for divorce if that’s what he wanted. The newspapers would bless him. There hadn’t been any juicy scandals lately.
Stash spent New Year’s Day of 1953 alone in his great house in London. His wife and child had been gone for just over four months. He was a prisoner in his own home. He knew that if he appeared in public without Francesca the rumors would start. Already he had received telephone calls from the British press requesting interviews with Francesca. Everyone, they assured him, wanted to know how the movie-star-turned-princess was enjoying London. They all clamored to photograph her with Daisy again. The Life cover picture was many months out of date. He ran out of credible excuses. He knew that soon his postponements would be futile and that any day now the press would be watching outside the house to see if they could spot a nanny with a pram.
Stash fled to India, where the polo season was in full swing, but this year he didn’t play. There were palaces into which no reporters had ever dreamed of being allowed to penetrate, a dozen maharajas who were delighted to have their old friend as a houseguest. Calcutta was safe during all of January; February and March could be spent in Delhi, Bombay and Jaipur. But in the spring where would he go?
By April he had had enough. Stash announced that he and Francesca had separated and that she had returned to the United States. He had no plans for a divorce. And he had nothing else to add. In a week, for lack of details, the story faded, disappeared and was soon forgotten.
That summer of 1953 Stash played polo again. The thin line between riding fairly and riding to intimidate grew even more questionable than it had been before, but he still kept on the right side of it. He flung himself into the purchase of new ponies and the establishment of a stable in Kent, within an easy drive of London. He sold the British fighter jets, both the Gloster Meteor and the de Havilland Vampire, which he had bought after the war. He acquired an Argentinian plane, the Pulqui, another fighter jet of a later vintage, which was powered by a Rolls-Royce Derwent engine. He tracked down and bought the most recent model available of the Lockheed XP-80, known as the Shooting Star, a jet which for many years could outmaneuver and outperform almost every other aircraft in the world. He invented excuses to fly these warplanes: keeping his pilot’s license current, recreation and relaxation. What he never admitted to himself in the years after Francesca left him was that he would welcome another war. Only an aerial duel with an enemy, with death the inevitable outcome for one of them, would have given him the terrible release he sought. Girls, fresh desirable girls, at the peak of their youth, were everywhere he looked. There was so little struggle and even less pleasure in their capture that he sometimes wondered why he bothered.
Anabel de Fourment was a member of a unique, little-known breed of woman, the great modern courtesan. Few women other than her own kind ever managed to comprehend her ruinous charm. She was not a great beauty, she lacked chic and she was close to forty. Yet, stretching from her nineteenth year there existed a history of notable men who had spent fortunes for her favors. One brief, youthful marriage had convinced her that the role of lover was far more agreeable than the role of wife. Ravishing young women anxiously asked each other what her secret was, but only a man who had lived with her could have told them.
Anabel wrapped a climate of utter comfort around the man who possessed her. With her possession—and it could belong only to the very rich—came entry into a hitherto unknown country of harmony, ease and a level of good humor which seemed Edwardian in its mellow patina. She made it her business to find and keep the best cook in London. Her home was arranged with such art that no man ever managed to analyze why it was so supremely relaxing: all they felt was that the problems of their world stopped at her door. Anabel didn’t know what a neurosis was. She had no complexes, no phobias, no obsessions. She was never depressed or out of sorts or annoyed or short-tempered. She had iron health and no one had ever heard her complain of so much as a broken
fingernail. In fact, she had never been known to speak in anger, yet she managed her domestic affairs with absolute dispatch. Below Stairs she was a benevolent dictator who maintained absolute rule.
She was never, never boring. She was rarely witty, but she was often just plain funny, with a fresh felicity of phrase. She couldn’t remember the punch lines of even a single joke, so she laughed as much the tenth time as the first time she had heard the same man tell one—a laugh that might alone have ensured her fortune, a laugh so generous, so full-bodied, so admiring that to hear it was to sit at a fireside and expand in its welcoming warmth. She was not shrewd but she understood instinctively why people acted as they did. Anabel was not outstandingly clever nor particularly intellectual, but she had a way of looking at people as she spoke to them which invested the straightforward, uncontrived things she said with significance and grace. She always asked precisely the questions a man was most anxious to answer. Perhaps it was her intensely personal voice, perhaps the rhythm of the words themselves, that explained the sense of utter agreeableness men found in the way she expressed herself. They looked forward to a peaceful chat with Anabel as they never looked forward to a tête à tête with women known to be far more brilliant and sparkling.
Anabel de Fourment had a bounty which made her only average prettiness seem like beauty. Her skin was flawless, and so were her teeth. Her hair was straight and Titian red and always incredibly clean. She had a wide, happy mouth, a rather long nose and nice gray green eyes, remarkable only for their kindness. Her body was so soft and supple, so subtly perfumed, so well-tended, that it was unimportant that she was always just a little too plump. Her breasts were sumptuous and her bottom was full and dimpled and no man ever noticed that she was short-waisted and just a bit dumpy.
Anabel had been born to an improvident French portrait painter, Albert de Fourment, the black sheep of a good, old provincial family of minor nobility. Her mother, a fey, rebellious daughter of a stuffy English lord, was an art student at the Slade who had hung around the fringes of Bloomsbury, trying wildly to be let into that feverish, incestuously tangled circle, but found herself only marginally accepted as an artist’s model, valued for her beauty but judged of little talent. She married the first real artist who asked her, only to discover that his was merely a small talent, too, scarcely greater than her own.
Princess Daisy Page 12
