“Daisy! Daisy!” Ram screamed into the dimness, “Daisy, I love you!”
Finding strength in her violent outrage, Sarah Fane flung herself away from Ram and stood, huddled in a mixture of humiliation, growing rage and incredulous, but certain knowledge, looking at the creature on the bed, a mad, sobbing loathsome creature who had buried his disgraced head in the pillow, a creature she would have to destroy for what he had done to her, done to Sarah Fane.
21
When the Valarians had invited Daisy to join them on their chartered yacht in early January of 1977, she had refused. The idea of spending five days cooped up with Robin and Vanessa and their cronies, cruising the Caribbean, sounded like going to a very expensive jail. She could almost hear the worldly, self-important exchanges of gossip and hidden spitefulness, count the never-ending games of backgammon, imagine the cases of white wine and Perrier that would be consumed, estimate the number of changes of costume and jewels that each woman would be making during the day. It was everything she hated, but Vanessa had been relentlessly insistent and Daisy had finally not known how to get out of it without becoming truly offensive. Vanessa had come as close to anger as Daisy had ever seen her.
“I won’t take no for an answer again,” she’d finally said. “I’ve invited Topsy and Ham Short—he happens to be a fan of yours, and there will be several other people aboard who have children who need painting—among the other guests—but I don’t see why the devil I have to lure you with the possibility of commissions. Really, Daisy, you’re making me feel very much as if you’ve been using me. When I say that Robin and I are counting on the pleasure of your company don’t you feel that’s enough of a reason to accept?”
Remembering what she indeed now owed Vanessa, Daisy had hastily agreed. The studio could get along without her for a few days, in fact her last vacation had been so long ago that she couldn’t remember it Most important of all, she couldn’t risk allowing a source of income to disappear, as Vanessa was clearly threatening.
Now, as she sat with Ham and Topsy in their Aero Commander, on the flight to Nassau, where they would all join the yacht the Valarians had chartered for the holidays, transforming it with their own possessions into a floating approximation of their New York apartment, Daisy reflected that it was, after all, a good time to get away. Since that scene when she had rebelled against the idea of becoming the Elstree Girl, she had felt at odds with almost everyone in the studio. North seemed to think that she had gone out of her way to insult an important client, and the atmosphere at work was tense and heavy. As the plane began to descend, Daisy thought that it was no longer anger she felt, nor even genuine annoyance at the way the men from Supracorp had treated her, at the cavalier way in which they had simply assumed that she was a blonde thing for them to use to sell products. After all, without her consent they were powerless and they knew it. No, what still made her feel a deep stab of warning, a warning that still reverberated throughout her, was the idea of becoming Princess Daisy in that horrifyingly exposed position called the “public eye”; a profound fear of being perceived as a particular personality who was called Princess Daisy and who would be photographed and manipulated to sell Elstree in commercials, in ads and on display counters, until her Princess Daisy-ness would be burned permanently into the consciousness of the consumers of the Western world. So far, in her adult lifetime, she had managed to slip by, to soft pedal, to hide out.
No one at Santa Cruz had ever thought of her as anyone but a girl named Valensky; at North’s studio any vague interest anyone might have had in her title or her background had long ago vanished and only occasionally reappeared as a joke. To all her coworkers she was Daisy-the-producer who knew where everyone was supposed to be and when—and why—and raised hell if they didn’t perform as expected. Only in the well-guarded enclaves of the Horse People was she Princess Daisy, and there she was protected by their associations with her father, whose name was still well remembered and honored. Horse People were safe.
Patrick Shannon’s proposal to make her a public figure, to exploit her as Princess Daisy, touched on a vital nerve—it aroused terrors she had fought in the shadow, year after year, without being able to explain to herself why they had such a hold over her. All she knew was that they planned to tag her, to label her something called A Princess Daisy, and if she allowed them to do it, she would be giving up something more precious than the relative anonymity she had preserved for so long. As well as privacy, she would be giving up something Daisy could only think of as safety. The public eye was a dangerous place in which to conduct her life—she didn’t need to search for any logical explanations to be certain that she was right.
A launch brought Topsy, Ham and Daisy out to the yacht where Vanessa was waiting for them all. After she had had the Shorts shown to their quarters, she led Daisy to a medium-sized stateroom done in yellow-and-white striped canvas. Vanessa’s mood was cheerful.
“Everyone’s on board now, thank heaven. I’ll tell the captain he can get underway as soon as he’s ready,” she said. “We’re all getting some sun on deck—no? Too sleepy? Well, then, drinks in the main saloon at seven o’clock. Good to have you aboard, love bug.” Vanessa squeezed Daisy in an impersonal way. Like all accomplished lesbians, she had never in her life committed the mistake of making the slightest sexual gesture toward another woman unless she was convinced that it would be welcomed. Daisy wouldn’t have been importuned by Vanessa if they’d been cast away together on a desert island … at least not until a month had passed without rescue.
The gently rocking motion of the ship, the escape from New York, the subtle freshening of air in the room as the yacht’s distance from the shore grew greater, all combined to make Daisy’s nap as relaxing and refreshing as a short voyage in itself. She woke to the reddening light of a tropical sun, a light so pure in its clarity and the intensity that came from its refraction on open, blue water, that it seemed to be actively resisting the approach of twilight She lay on her bed, a mock four-poster, with the bed clamped to the floor and the curtains firmly anchored to the ceiling, and, in a ruminative mood, decided that she was well off here, away from the city where she would have been alone all week. Kiki was spending two weeks of winter vacation with Luke, at his little place in northern Connecticut. She had looked like an untamed powder puff as she flung clothes into her suitcase with the abandon of one who knows that a possible potential mother-in-law will not be around to observe her. Theseus, impossible on a yacht, had been left for these few days with Daisy’s landlady, whom he had grown to accept peevishly.
Daisy showered and dressed, but it was still too early to join the others. Thank heaven they’d all be in their staterooms, intently adjusting their resort dinner clothes, caparisoned for the delectation of each other.
She made her way to the prow of the yacht and stood there alone, blending and losing herself in a breeze that danced with her. The rays of the sun crystallized her hair, turning it into a spun-sugar forest, like some treat from a children’s Christmas. The large ship rose and fell comfortingly as it chopped through the water, already many marine miles from the harbor in Nassau. The thought of Patrick Shannon, that presumptuous, impossible man, touched Daisy’s mind and she found that it barely annoyed her. She had, after all, shown him that he couldn’t command her life, no matter how everyone else deferred to him. And what about North, who, as surely as Shannon, had treated her as if she had no more humanity than a chess piece in his confrontation with the sponsor—a piece of property that belonged to the studio, a parcel he wasn’t inclined to part with? Daisy shrugged and smiled. She found that she didn’t care about North either. To hell with all of them. Her eyes filled with the sea and the sky, Daisy was at peace.
She stayed on deck until she knew she was unquestionably late for cocktails, and then, as reluctantly as she had done her Maths at Lady Alden’s, but knowing that there was no way to avoid them, she went in search of the main saloon. She passed one large room in which crew members we
re laying tables for dinner. Next to it was an even larger room in which Daisy could see the silhouettes of more than a dozen people. On the opposite side of the yacht, a wall had been opened up with great glass windows, and the gory, blinding pyrotechnics of the sunset backlit the guests so that Daisy couldn’t make out their faces. As she pushed open the door, Vanessa materialized out of the glare and took her by the hand, leading her, blinded, into the room. A man’s figure walked toward them and Vanessa put Daisy’s hand in his, and immediately drifted away.
“Hello, Daisy.”
Ram’s voice.
She staggered backward. Ram steadied her swiftly, catching her by the arms as he tried to kiss the top of her head, but even as Ram’s lips reached for her, she had lunged backward. She was beyond words, beyond screams, beyond any movement except retreat. She stepped back again, turning to run, but as she did so a strong arm grabbed her around her waist. Vanessa, clutching her in a jailer’s grip, pressed her forward insistently. The pulse of time, like a power line struck by lightning, dimmed, lurched, flickered until it almost went out and then, as Vanessa’s voice began, time began to beat again, but slowly, without assurance. The other guests were watching, not understanding, but suddenly curious and listening. Vanessa’s voice, that charmingly ardent voice, was raised to address them all, covering Daisy’s silence, distracting attention away from the brute fear in her eyes.
“See, Ram, I told you she’d come,” Vanessa said triumphantly. “I’ve always said family quarrels are utterly silly, haven’t I, Robin, darling—and when Ram told us he hadn’t even seen his little sister in years I just said to myself, well, that’s too ridiculous—just totally absurd. I knew my Daisy would never carry a childish grudge that long, no matter what the spat was about, and Ram certainly has no hard feelings, so we all planned this surprise together, this family reunion, when Robin and I were in London for New Year’s Eve. And now, love bug, aren’t you pleased that I did? After all, how many brothers does one have in a lifetime? You and Ram are all that’s left of the Valenskys, and I promised myself I’d make you friends again. Everybody! Let’s all drink to the end of misunderstandings and to all good things—come on, Ham, Topsy, Jim, Sally, the rest of you … a toast!” Releasing Daisy, she raised her glass and moved toward the others. The hearty clinking of their glasses broke the circle, like an evil enchantment, in which Daisy had been locked in frozen black terror.
“Why?” she hissed under the sound of the toast
“Just a reunion,” Ram answered, his gaze, set and hungry, denying his social smile.
“How? What does that bitch owe you?”
“Nothing,” he lied easily. Ram had persuaded his partners to loan the Valarians the money to launch an entirely new dress line, priced for the average woman, an expensive undertaking on a large scale.
“I don’t believe you!”
“It just doesn’t matter what you believe. You’re here … you can hardly run away.” His eyes scavenged her face. He was as quiveringly rapacious as a miser alone in King Solomon’s mine. He spoke without knowing what he said and without caring. He didn’t have to placate her. She was weak, weaker than she yet knew, and he was strong, and that was all that mattered.
Swiftly Daisy turned to walk away. He put a restraining hand on her arm. She turned back in a frenzy of disgust. Pure contempt flooded her as she looked straight into his avaricious eyes.
“Never, never touch me, Ram. I warn you,” she spat at him. Acid black hatred poured from her eyes. She went rigid in a passion of revulsion. Slowly he released her arm, but his eyes refused to let her go. For an instant they stood locked in the intensity of their emotions.
“Daisy! Ram! Dinner’s served … didn’t you two hear the steward?” Vanessa gestured toward the general surge in the direction of the next room. Automatically Daisy found herself following the others.
Two round tables had been laid, not in Robin’s marine manner, all silver-mounted conch shell, chunks of rare coral and blue and white Chinese Export ware, that he reserved for particularly snowy winter nights in the city, but in his grandest Chinese form. At each place was a round red lacquer tray set with a rare K’ang Hsi plate, inlaid black and silver chopsticks and a single green and white orchid in a black porcelain bud vase. Between the trays were artfully scattered a collection of ancient Oriental weapons, dirks and daggers, mixed fetchingly with eighteenth-century Famille Noire cats in various sizes. In the center of each table was a low Famille Noire bowl filled with the heads of enormous orange tiger lilies from the pistils of which Robin had carefully cut the dark rust pollen heads that, if touched, left a stain that was almost impossible to remove.
Vanessa had not pushed her audacity so far as to seat Daisy and Ram at the same table. Daisy’s dinner partner on her left was Ham Short Stunned into immobility by shock and growing panic, she found she couldn’t begin to eat the first course of ginger-flavored minced squab. Ham attempted to distract her with an account of his own worthless passel of relatives back in Arkansas, but he might as well have been talking to a dead girl, propped up beside him. She sat with her eyes fastened on the bowl of tiger lilies, until Ham, in embarrassment, turned to the woman on his left When the second course was served, Daisy made a half-hearted attempt to pick up her chopsticks, but before her hand touched them she realized that she wouldn’t have the coordination to be able to use them, and that even if she could, the taste of any food would make her vomit. Her dinner companions, who had been forced into a general conversation by her silent presence, tacitly agreed to pretend to ignore this fascinating phenomenon even as they covertly watched her, storing away all their deliciously scandalized impressions for the stories they’d tell once they got off the yacht. As course after course of exquisite food was presented, prepared by the chef the Valarians had hired for the cruise, who cooked in five different cuisines, Daisy touched nothing and talked to no one. Ham Short, who admired her, dominated the conversation and kept it flowing, so that no one turned to her with any questions. At one point he sought her hand, as it lay still on the table, and squeezed it to show his support. Although she returned a tiny pressure, she didn’t remove her unseeing eyes from the tiger lilies.
Vanessa had certainly gone too far tonight, more than one of the women in the room managed to signal delightedly to another during the endless dinner, which proceeded as if Daisy were invisible. Ram, habitual diner-out that he was, presented to them all his normal, handsome, unbendingly correct, indisputably gentlemanly surface. He ate with polite relish and discussed Henry Moore with the lady on his right and the merits of various saddle makers with Topsy, on his left There was well-concealed malevolence as, from time to time, he scanned the room for a split second, searching for his prey like a carrion bird, but no one noticed. To Daisy, the walls of the dining saloon pressed in like those of an echo chamber. The voices of memory, ugly and dangerous, clamored at a distance, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, and the other guests seemed as distant and indistinct as large fish languidly waving their fins behind the wall of an aquarium.
After dinner, Vanessa led the way back to the main saloon. Daisy had been waiting for this moment, and, as soon as Vanessa rose, she flew up from her chair and darted out of the door which led to the deck. Although she moved quickly she felt as if her body were numb and incapacitated, with that helplessness, that slowing down and impairment of all the faculties that appear in a nightmare. She had passed the main saloon, running in the direction of her own stateroom, when Ram caught up with her.
“Stop! We have to talk. It’s important!” he shouted, but he didn’t try to touch her.
Daisy stopped. It was so impossible that he could imagine that they had anything to say to each other that sheer incredulity overcame her other emotions. She felt safe enough, with a steward in sight, carrying a tray of brandy and glasses, and the door to the main saloon only feet away. She could see people inside, buzzing away like flies in a bottle, but on deck it was quiet and the breeze was warm. She held on to the rai
ling of the yacht with both hands and turned to face Ram, creating a distance between them merely by the way she stood.
“Nothing is important enough for us to discuss, ever again,” she said through dry lips.
“Anabel,” he said quietly, with vulturine watchfulness, “Anabel.”
“Anabel? She has nothing to do with you. Do you ever stop lying? I had a letter from her only a week ago.”
“And of course she didn’t tell you.” Ram was sure of his ground. It wasn’t even a question.
Daisy went white and clutched the rail. He knew something she didn’t know. She recognized the unmistakable expression of repressed pleasure on his face.
“What about Anabel?” she whispered, as if a whisper could soften his answer.
“She has leukemia.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“Yes, you do. You know I’m telling the truth.”
“Why didn’t she tell me? Why should she tell you?” Daisy demanded automatically while the shock of his words went inward, surrounded her heart like an explosion of fragments of pointed glass.
Princess Daisy Page 43
