“Why the hell not? Remember ‘She’s engaged, she’s lovely, she uses Ponds’? Nothing basic has changed since then, Mr. Hammerstein. Nothing in human nature. I didn’t promise to be original—just different.” Shannon grinned, with a larky bandit’s look in his eyes, that freebooter gleam that told everyone from Supracorp that his mind was made up.
For a few seconds Luke was stunned into silence as he pictured his wonderful girl of the future being watered down into a simpering deb with white satin draped around her privileged shoulders, selling drugstore cold cream to the masses. His voice stayed reasonable but it demanded an effort. “Don’t you think that there’s a danger in an approach that might be perceived as snobbish—and outmoded?”
“I’m not talking debutantes, Hammerstein—Ponds was merely an example. I’m talking star. People still love stars, today more than ever. I want you to make a star or find a star to be the Elstree Girl. Just remember—she cannot be one of the boys.”
Until this minute, Hilly Bijur had refrained from interrupting, although he was president of Elstree. Let Helen Strauss take the heat. But now he sought to regain the control he had lost by Patrick Shannon’s intervention.
“You’re on the money about natural blondes,” he said to his boss, overriding Luke who was about to speak. “I managed to sneak a look at the new, top-secret Clairol report that says the trend toward blondes is hotter than ever—not the streaked blonde but the total blonde, the blonder-than-ever blonde.”
Luke and North looked at each other in disgust. The meeting was being taken over by report-quoting, image-crazy civilians, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it. Nick-the-Greek sat squirming in frustration in his seat. Everybody was putting his two cents in and he hadn’t said a word yet He didn’t like being ignored. Since North had insisted that he come to this asshole hassle, he was going to add something to it. In spite of his tailored-to-the-eyeballs exterior, Nick had never abandoned one habit that he’d learned in his childhood in Spanish Harlem. In each of his startling suits there was a special pocket in which he always kept a sharp knife which, had he cared to give it its precise name, was a switchblade. It kept him from feeling nervous. Now he reached for his dangerous security blanket and quietly snapped it open. All this pissant talk about blondes … they wanted blonde, they’d get blonde—from Nick-the-Greek.
In one fast movement, he turned his powerful body, snatched off Daisy’s sailor cap, pulled her braid out from its hiding place and cut the ribbon which bound it so tightly. Before she could move, using both hands he rapidly unplaited the braid until her masses of hair were firmly held in his hands. Daisy struggled and gasped in disbelief, but he’d moved so quickly that she wasn’t even sure of what was happening. Nick stood up, bringing Daisy with him since he had grabbed her by every hair on her head, and said loudly, “This what you mean, Mr. Shannon?” He waved Daisy’s hair triumphantly, as if he were raising the flag on Iwo Jima.
“Damn it!” Daisy sputtered. “Nick! Let go! Stop it!”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” North snapped.
“What’s going on?” asked Hilly Bijur, while Wingo Sparks was doubled up in malicious laughter.
“You guys don’t know shit from a real blonde, that’s all,” Nick insisted loudly, without releasing Daisy. “You think they’re so easy to find?”
“Nick, put her down!” Luke said, crisply cutting through the confusion. Nick looked around with indignant righteousness, but let Daisy loose so that she could regain her seat. She kicked as hard as she could at his ankles, wishing she were wearing pointed shoes instead of sneakers. “You bugger!” she hissed at him, looking for her sailor hat without success.
“Excuse me, but could I just see the young lady again?” Patrick Shannon asked as the tumult died down.
“No!” said Daisy.
“Mr. Shannon, the young lady is my producer, Daisy Valensky. She works here, she works for me and she happens to be blonde. Could we just go on with this discussion and get something settled before you have to leave for Japan?” North said impatiently.
“I want another look at her, North,” Shannon demanded.
“Daisy?” North asked. “Would you mind?”
“Yes, I would,” she said wrathfully. “Get yourself some other blondes to look at—call the model agencies, leave me alone.”
“Daisy, cool it. Take it easy, it’s no big deal. Mr. Shannon just wants to see you again—a look won’t kill you,” North insisted in annoyance. Sponsors—all clients when it came to that—were a law unto themselves—idiots one and all—but there were times when you had to humor them.
“See what, damn it!” Daisy muttered, trying to make her hair less conspicuous by pushing it behind her ears. She glared at Shannon, her skin flushed as much with fury as embarrassment.
“I remember you,” he said flatly.
“How nice,” she said, forcing herself to speak with cool politeness. Even in her anger, the incident of their meeting had been enough to warn her that this high-flying, risk-taking, master builder of the world of big business did not take kindly to what he might perceive as an affront.
“She has an unforgettable face,” Shannon said to the room at large, in an uninflected voice.
“Very pretty,” Hilly Bijur said busily. “Very pretty … thank you, Miss … ah … thank you very much.”
“I said,” Patrick Shannon repeated quietly, but in a way that brought every one of them to instant attention, “that she has an unforgettable face.”
“Of course, Pat, you’re absolutely right,” Hilly Bijur, flurried, hastened to agree. “Now that we know what you have in mind, it won’t take Helen more than a day or two to find a dozen girls who are suitable. She’ll contact every agency in town, won’t you, Helen? Or Luke will be in charge of it … or …” He floundered and subsided, not entirely sure into whose department casting fell.
“Wait a minute—just wait a minute—she’s also a princess.” Now Shannon spoke rapidly, his face concentrated in sudden excitement.
“You can forget it, Shannon. I’ve just told you, she works for me,” North burst out, popping like a dry log on a brisk fire. He had become a bad-tempered redhead, his above-the-battle manner quite abandoned.
“A blonde … a face … a title,” Shannon repeated to himself. “Princess Daisy … yes … yes … I like the sound of that.”
“Mr. Shannon, this is not another remake of A Star Is Born,” North said with escalating asperity.
“She might just do—might do very well,” Shannon said, as if he were alone in the room.
“Hey, that’s not fair—it was my idea!” Nick-the-Greek exploded harmlessly into preoccupied ears.
“Helen,” Shannon directed, “send her to be photographed immediately so that this time we know what we have. She looks like what I want but I won’t be sure till I see the actual pictures.” He rose, ready to leave the meeting.
Hilly Bijur hastened to join himself to Shannon’s point of view before his employer could leave. As Shannon put on his jacket, Bijur spoke quickly. “I like it, Pat, you’re absolutely right. Princess Daisy? … Didn’t North say Daisy Valensky? Valensky? Wait a minute! That means her mother was Francesca Vernon. And for Christ’s sake, her father was Stash Valensky—doesn’t anyone here remember? Holy shit, but this little lady’s going to move merchandise!” He subsided, pleased at a chance to exhibit his memory even as he dissociated himself from the unfortunate ad campaign he had approved.
“Tell them you want a hundred grand a year,” Nick whispered to Daisy, who still sat speechless in her chair. “And don’t say I never did anything for you … plus, you bruised my socks.”
“We’ll have to change the packaging,” worried Jared Turner, obsessed, as usual, by marketing considerations. “Princess Daisy doesn’t sound like a modern line.”
“It’s going to postpone our distribution date by almost a year!” Patsy Jacobson complained. “Meanwhile, what do I tell the stores?” This was a
product-line manager’s nightmare.
“Could I have some quiet!” North shouted and then stopped as he saw Daisy jump out of her seat and stride rapidly around the table. She stood just behind Luke’s art director, who had already lettered in the words “Princess Daisy” with Magic Markers on a piece of paper. She snatched the paper from the table, tore it in four pieces, and jammed them in one of her pockets. “Mr. Shannon,” she said in a voice which rang with clear outrage, “I am not for sale! I have absolutely no intention of letting you use my hair or my face or my name to sell your products. How dare you treat me as if you own me? You’re crazy, rude and totally insensitive—all of you—and … and …” Swiftly, she gathered up the battery of Magic Markers the art director had arranged in a neat row and flung them on the marble table where they scattered loudly like small firecrackers. “I suggest that each of you goons take one of these and—stick it where the sun don’t shine!” She slammed the door behind her.
“I didn’t know Daisy even knew that expression,” Arnie Greene marveled.
“She doesn’t usually talk that way unless something goes wrong on location,” Nick agreed, still aggrieved at the theft of his inspiration.
“She’s awfully touchy,” brooded Candice Bloom. If she were going to have to work with that girl, public relations were not going to be easy.
North sat back, smiling nastily at Shannon. He enjoyed vindication. “I told you that Daisy was just a working girl. She doesn’t seem to want to be a model, does she? You’ll have to excuse her.”
“I have absolutely no intention of excusing her,” Shannon answered with confidence. “She’ll be the Elstree Girl.”
“Daisy’s not in the habit of changing her mind. You’d better not count on it,” North retorted smugly.
“Oh, but I do,” said Shannon. “Hilly, hold all Elstree decisions until I get back from Japan. We’re going to get it right this time.”
“Daisy’s invaluable at my studio, Shannon,” North said hotly. “You can’t try this.”
Patrick Shannon gave North his buccaneer’s smile, that big, reckless Irish grin that everyone in Supracorp had learned to watch out for.
“Would you care to bet?”
Just before Christmas of 1976, Ram decided that it was time to get the matter of Sarah Fane settled. She’d had her fill of the Season by now and was not yet engaged to be married, but soon she’d be leaving for a round of country house visits and, just to be on the safe side, he judged it a good idea to arrive at an understanding before she left.
“I want you to dine with me tomorrow,” he said on the phone. “But alone, none of your friends coming along.”
“But Ram, I’m invited to Lucinda Curzon’s little cocktail tomorrow.”
“It’s one or the other, Sarah,” he said in a level voice.
Her sense of timing whispered urgently in her ear. “Since you put it that way, and since I can, after all, go to Lucinda’s first, before meeting you, why not?” she said with a tiny hint of delicate reluctance.
“Why not indeed?” he said, admitting to himself that one had to admire her nerve.
They dined the next night at Mark’s Club on Charles Street in Mayfair. Behind the tall unmarked door of the thin townhouse which houses Mark’s, lie several dining rooms. Ram had reserved a table in the first and largest dining room from which they could see everyone who came and went. He had deliberately not chosen a quieter corner of this supremely exclusive dining club, owned by Mark Birley. Ram preferred to spend the first part of the evening in the richly appointed candle-lit room with its turquoise cut-velvet banquettes and deep terra-cotta walls whimsically covered by realistic Victorian paintings of animals, framed in gold scrollwork, square, oval and round, which almost hid the walls entirely.
Although Sarah had heeded him and arranged for them not to be joined by any of her friends, between them they knew almost everyone who was at Mark’s that night, and their dinner was interrupted dozens of times by greetings, something Ram had anticipated. After they had finished their coffee, he asked, “If one more person comes by to tell you that you are the deb of the year, what will you do?”
“I shall howl,” she announced, managing to look both fragile and charmingly modest. “I shall get up from my seat and howl until they have to send for the police to take me away.”
“Then shall we go to my house for a brandy?” There had been the strain of a balanced, formal minuet tinkling in their ears all evening, a minuet to which they had both been dancing for many months. Abruptly, with Ram’s invitation, the music came to a stop. Something wavered, hesitated in the air between them. Sarah’s mind jumped to memories of the many beautiful and courted girls she knew he went out with. Whenever she saw him with them he looked as seriously watchful of them as he had ever been of her. She looked at him thoughtfully. If she went to his house with him now, she had no question of what he would expect.
“I’d love a brandy but …”
“Does that mean yes or no, my dear Sarah?”
“Well … we can’t stay here forever … so I suppose … again, why not?”
“It’s an absolutely marvelous house, Ram,” she said, after he had shown her the first floor.
“Let me show you the upper floors.”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said sharply, drawing inviolability quickly around her shoulders like an invisible cape.
He smiled somberly. “Are you playing the prude?”
She was stung. “How ridiculous! I’m just tired, Ram. Will you take me home please? It was lovely brandy.”
“No, Sarah, darling, I won’t take you home. I love you, Sarah.”
She stood quietly by the fireplace, watching him, without responding to his words.
“I want to marry you,” he continued. Still she was silent. There was, she thought, something inaccessible about his mouth. “Sarah,” he repeated, coming close but not touching her. “Will you marry me?”
It had taken him long enough to get to the point, she said to herself. Should she put him off and wait until the next time he asked? No, it was best to cap her Season with the engagement of the year. Next year another debutante would be in the spotlight—but if she were Princess Valensky, what difference would a mere debutante make to her? She curved her perfect lips in her perfect meaningless smile and inclined her perfect head. She didn’t move toward him until he leaned down to her.
As he kissed her he sighed, “The first time …” She well knew that indeed it was the first time they had kissed like this alone and on the lips. Only occasionally had she given him the smooth skin of her cheeks before, in impersonal public thanks. She had played a hard, long relentless championship game.
He kissed her again and again, with increasing hunger, and the Honorable Sarah Fane couldn’t tell whether what she was feeling was excitement because she had achieved her victory and caught Ram Valensky, or whether the excitement was that sensuality she had never had any trouble dismissing.
“Come upstairs with me now, my darling, come with me,” he urged against her mouth.
“No … Ram, please … I can’t … I never have …”
“Of course you haven’t, Sarah, my lovely Sarah … but you’re going to be my wife—it’s all right now.”
“Ram, no. I couldn’t … I couldn’t possibly …”
He let her go so abruptly that she teetered slightly and had to catch the mantel. He backed away from her and stood frowning at her with scornful eyes.
“You haven’t even said you love me, Sarah … did you realize that? Perhaps you don’t love me, perhaps you’re not yet ready to make up your mind? I’ve been watching you, my dear—do you think I don’t know the kind of flirt you are? Does it amuse you to make a man propose, and then not even give him an answer except a tiny gracious nod of your head? I’ve rather enjoyed seeing you play the innocent coquette, the untouchable and pure aristocrat, every single calculating second of it, everything you do orchestrated to the greatest glory of Sarah Fane.” His accu
sing, sardonic eyes began to frighten her a little, but at the same time, she felt a thrill at seeing Ram lose his composure. Oh, yes, it was exciting to be able to do this to a man. She could not prevent a shadow of a complacent smile from touching her mouth. Ram saw it and took a swift, angry step forward and grasped her arm.
“So you do think you can make a fool out of me,” he said, suddenly furious in a way that took her by surprise. “So that’s your little plan, so that’s what goes on inside that manipulative, self-centered mind of yours—another conquest for Sarah, another contest you’ve won—probably you’ll be boasting about it tomorrow.” His fingers tightened on her arm and the triumph that had been hers a moment ago seemed about to disappear. She knew she had to play her last coin. Still, wasn’t it for exactly this moment that she’d guarded it?
“Ram, stop it! You didn’t even give me a chance to say I love you. You’re not being fair, you’re wrong about me …”
“Am I? Am I?” he whispered, in a hot, maddened voice, as if her words had meant nothing to him. “A common tease, that’s what you’ve been all along … a common tease, right out of the schoolroom.… ” He let go of her arm and stood wrathfully in front of her. Everything she would get if she married Ram Valensky formed one great ball in Sarah’s mind, a great golden ball studded with precious jewels. She stretched out her hands to it and to him.
“Upstairs …” she whispered, in a faltering voice. Ram grasped her in strong hands and led her stumbling toward the staircase. He was hurting her arms again, but in her mixture of greed and confusion and dread and excitement, all Sarah could remember was an American friend at school who used to say, “Always pour cement over a bargain.” Suddenly Sarah knew exactly what that meant.
Oh, God, why did it take him so long, Sarah Fane wondered in agony. No one had ever told her it would be like this, long and painful—so disgustingly painful—and labored and utterly ignominious. And so silent, so wordless. Where was the romance she had expected, where the pleasure? There was only shame. She was plunged into a revolting dream, the kind that went senselessly on and on, captured under the weight of a man who was so far out of control that there was nothing she could possibly do about it. His hard lips and hard hands never allowed her a second’s respite, but all she could hear above her was the sound of his tormented breathing. In her hideous misery she tried again and again to protest but he didn’t, wouldn’t hear her. His breathing grew louder and louder until it seemed to her that it must finally burst into a shout, but then it would start all over again, on a lower note, and rise to another crescendo. His eyes were tightly closed in the low light of the room, but he had his hands in her hair and was pulling at its golden strands until he made her cry out in pain. Oh … oh, now it was surely going to end … no one could gasp and labor like that for long and live. Please, please, let it happen quickly, quickly …
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