Lace (16 page)

So Kate, a striking sight in her cream taffeta, the neckline of which was cut lower for every dance, went over to where François was sitting. He looked up and gave her a little frown.

“Ah, good evening, Kate. May I present Anna and Helena Stiarkoz?” Kate smiled at the two girls, who both inclined their heads toward her about one-eighth of an inch. One of them
carefully fitted a cigarette into a long, gold holder and François snapped his lighter under it almost as a reflex movement.

Kate said, “I’m sitting in that far corner, François.”

“So I noticed. I look forward to dancing with you later, perhaps.”

Bewildered, Kate recognised his note of dismissal and clumsily bumped her way back through the tables to her seat.

Later? . . . Perhaps. . . .
This was the St. Valentine’s Day Ball!

“What’s wrong?” Maxine asked.

Kate couldn’t speak. She was afraid she’d cry. An unbecoming dull flush crept up from her neck and over her face.

“Come to the cloakroom,” Maxine said quickly, tugging at her hand.

Once there, Kate burst into tears. “I think perhaps you exaggerate,” Maxine said soothingly. “Perhaps they are old friends of his. I’ll go over and say hello. You wait
here.”

So Maxine went over and greeted François. Again, he introduced the two girls and made it clear that he didn’t wish to speak to Maxine.

Poor Kate, thought Maxine as she hurried back. Across the dimly lit room, Maxine saw Judy and jerked her head toward the cloakroom. Judy joined them a few minutes later. Maxine was saying,
“Kate,
chérie,
you must stop these tears. There must be some reason for his behaviour.” But even as she spoke, Maxine knew that there were indeed
two
reasons, one
sitting on either side of François.

“Look, he’s a rat and you’re well rid of him,” said Judy, too inexperienced to know that a friend should never denigrate a jilted woman’s lover. “There are
two things you can do,” Judy continued, taking Kate by the shoulders and shaking her. “Either have a scene with him out there—which you will lose—or refuse to let him see
that he’s humiliated you. Men don’t like weeping, snivelling, clinging women. You’ve simply
got
to summon up your pride. Get back in there smiling.”

“You mustn’t let him know that he has hurt you,” Maxine agreed. “You must deal with it properly and at the correct time when you face him with it so he can’t avoid
it.”

“Look, François has been having lunch at the Chesa all last week with those two Greek lumps,” said Judy. “They’re heiresses to a shipping fortune, and don’t
think that François doesn’t know it. So you can either snivel on or be brave and not show that he’s dumped you.”

Unfortunately, this conversation was overheard by another Hirondelle pupil who was in one of the toilet booths. She gleefully sped out to spread the whispered news. Miss Gstaad had received her
comeuppance at last. When Kate emerged, freshly made-up, she instantly recognised that her humiliation was common knowledge. It brought out the Irish in Kate and she beckoned to the waiter.
“Nick, get me a double something,” she said, “there’s a darling.”

Nick, who also knew about the Greek twins, produced a forbidden double brandy. Kate choked and spluttered over her drink, then asked for another, but Nick wouldn’t let her have one.
However, he kept bringing her ridiculously colourful, nonalcoholic drinks full of sliced-up fruit, for which he paid, and he kept up a cheerful stream of chat that needed no reply. It comforted
Nick to comfort Kate. He knew how she felt because that was how he felt about Judy, whenever he had time to think. Why didn’t Judy feel the force of his love? Why didn’t it
force
her to love him? Why did she constantly refuse to treat him as anything but a friend? For both Nick and Kate, part of the pain of their love lay in not realising that it was not the only love of
their lives, but only the first love of their lives.

“Look, there’s the bunch from Le Mornay,” Nick whispered to Kate, “all waiting to fall in love with you.”

A group of dinner-jacketed adolescents had just come through the glass entrance doors. They were remarkably cosmopolitan, two Persians with arched dark eyebrows that met above their noses, a
sallow Indian Rajah and a thin blond Scandinavian boy, who carried himself as if he were used to everyone else walking behind him. The group also included two current gems of Le Mornay—the
immensely rich Hunter Baggs and Prince Saddrudin, the younger son of the Aga Khan.

As they sauntered over to their table, a sudden unmistakable hush fell—it was that moment of anticipation that always precedes the entrance of royalty. All heads turned toward the door
where Prince Abdullah, the guest of honour, stood as stiffly as if he were reviewing a parade. Demure on his arm, Pagan floated down the steps in a cloud of sparkling, mist-gray tulle.

Kate now openly flirted with Nick, with whom she felt safe. At midnight pink-and-white balloons fell in a cloud from the ceiling and all the women guests were presented with golden heart-shaped
powder compacts and a single long-stemmed pink rose. Silver streamers were hurled around the ballroom, and all formality was abandoned.

Kate could no longer bear the gaiety and headed for the cloakroom, but she was waylaid by Nick, who had been drinking although he was on duty. “Look, we’re both unhappy,” he
whispered, “Judy won’t have anything to do with me except as a friend, and she won’t even
talk
to me tonight. I’m so lonely and miserable. Kate, I need you,” he
said simply. “Come to my room, darling Kate.”

To her surprise, Kate considered it. She longed for the reassuring warmth of a man’s arms after the pain of rejection. “Well, I don’t know,” she said, “I mean, how
do we fix it?”

“Be one of the first to be counted into the front of the school bus and then nip out the back door while Mademoiselle is still busy counting at the front. Get Pagan to let you in
later.” Kate looked so forlorn and miserable that Nick risked a quick hug.

“All right, I’ll try, but I can’t promise. It depends on Pagan.”

She went back to discuss possibilities with Maxine, who was slightly tipsy after two glasses of champagne. “Pierre wants me to stay, too,” she said, obviously longing to do so.

“Is he going to take you to the team chalet?”

“No, he’s booked a room upstairs, just in case.”

Kate was impressed. “Goodness, on the off chance. How expensive!”

“Well, why shouldn’t we?” The two girls looked across at Pagan pretending to be a princess as she danced around the floor. “You don’t think Pagan will want to stay
out?”

“I don’t think she’d dare.” They signalled across the room to Pagan and again rushed to the cloakroom.

“Stay?”
Pagan exclaimed. “How can I possibly stay? Everyone would
know.
I’ll let you in at five. But for heaven’s sake, don’t be
late.”

At one o’clock Kate and Maxine climbed into the bus. They were just ahead of Pagan, who created a diversion by fussing loudly as she lifted her Hartnell skirts over the grimy steps and
nearly managed to knock Mademoiselle into the gutter as Kate and Maxine slipped out the other door.

Kate fled back into the Imperial and up the backstairs, slowing down as she reached the sixth floor where Nick was waiting. They hurried down the passage to the servants’ stairs. Once in
the security of his room, he hugged her, then unbuttoned her bulky tweed coat. Kate perched gingerly on the edge of the bed, which creaked. Nick gently pulled her head against his chest and stroked
her hair for a long time until he felt her relax against his body. Then he started to kiss her hair, then her cheeks, although he didn’t touch her mouth. That was still his private measure of
treachery. But later Kate reached up and pulled his lips down to hers and then, with a gasp, all thought was forgotten as he kissed her with all the pent-up ardor of his eighteen years and the
accumulated anxiety and pain of the last eight months. That kiss seemed to last for half an hour. He couldn’t bear to leave her mouth, he felt himself drowning in her fragrance and the soft
feel of her body, warm through the increasingly creased cream taffeta.

Then the taffeta was thrown on the floor and he was softly kissing her breasts. “Under the blankets,” he murmured, but oddly that was Kate’s measure of treachery, so they lay
in a tangle of half-shed clothes, limbs entwining, writhing, gradually discarding garments and inhibitions, until at last Nick lay, triumphantly naked, on top of Kate’s yearning body.

But something wasn’t quite right, thought Kate, as she slid one arm down Nick’s body to caress him with her hand. It was as if he had done it already. As she touched him, Nick
flinched, then kissed her with renewed ardor, moving himself away from her hand.

Ten minutes later Kate again felt for him, eager to caress him as François had shown her, anxious that she should not fail some unexplained test. She felt soft little pouches and limp
flesh against the palm of her willing hand, which Nick again removed. They both felt embarrassed. They neither of them knew what to do next. In a frenzy of misery, they threw their arms around each
other and cuddled tenderly, as friends, warm and comforted by each other’s arms.

But they both felt sad.

Maxine crunched down the snow-covered, blue-shadowed street toward Kate, who was shivering under the street lamp. Without a word they held mittened hands, ran down the road to
the back door and gently tapped on it.

The door was flung open by a wrathful Matron, fully dressed in her navy uniform. “A fine pair you are,” she shouted, “you should be ashamed of yourselves. You’re to go to
the headmaster’s office immediately.”

Wearing a maroon silk dressing gown, Monsieur Chardin was pacing up and down in a rage. Pagan, wrapped in her shabby, camel’s hair Jaeger dressing gown—cut on the lines of a
monk’s habit but yanked around her waist by a purple satin sash—was sitting pale and silent, nervously picking at the arms of her chair. She looked unhappy. She had been awakened at
three o’clock that morning by Matron, whose white hair hung in a long plait over her dressing gown. Pagan’s mother had been on the telephone—her grandfather had suffered a massive
heart attack that afternoon, had collapsed in the stables and died shortly after midnight. Pagan was to return to England immediately.

As Matron passed through Kate’s room to reach Pagan’s inner room she had noticed that neither Kate nor Maxine was sleeping in her bed. Dazed by the news of her grandfather’s
death, Pagan nevertheless admitted nothing and—as if to indicate this to them—she looked up as the two girls were hustled into the study and said, “Where
have
you been? To
Gringo’s?”

Now suddenly Kate and Maxine faced reality. Shivering in their overcoats in the unheated study, they trembled in front of Chardin, terrified of facing their parents. The soft, pink petals of
Kate’s wilting rose floated to the floor, leaving only the long, thorny stem in her hand.

Then Chardin exploded. He hurled every insult at them from ingratitude to whoredom, until he finished by pointing a chubby finger at Kate and shrieking, “And
you
, you
putain
,
you chase every pair of pants in town!”

At which the Irish in Kate rose again and she replied, “So do you, Monsieur.”

There was a nasty silence, then Chardin said with venom, “You will both be expelled from this school tomorrow.”

“No they won’t,” said Pagan in a tired, oddly disinterested voice.

Chardin turned to her, “And who are you, miss, to tell me what to do?”

“I am a friend of your friend, Paul. He took me to his house and showed me lots of photographs. I didn’t think he’d miss them so I stole a few and left them with a friend in
town. But here’s one.”

She felt in her dressing gown pocket and produced a photograph of Paul in bed with the two little South African girls who had left so suddenly after Christmas. Pagan showed the photograph first
to Matron, then to Chardin, then she put it back in her pocket and produced her trump card—a photograph of Monsieur Chardin himself, plump and naked as a baby, poised above the naked body of
Paul.

“Happy snaps,” said Pagan with disinterested weariness. Yesterday this scene would have been dramatic and terrifying. Today, it was trivial compared to her grandfather’s death.
“I can’t help thinking that your scheme only works if you play one father at a time. If any father had seen photographs of more than one girl, it would have been apparent that you are
in fact a cheap blackmailer, Monsieur Chardin, and that you deliberately set those girls up to be photographed with Paul. Anyway, he told me all about it.” Nobody spoke or moved. “I
think he said the going rate for fathers is six thousand francs every three months. I don’t really know what to do about it, but if you take any action against Maxine and Kate, I’m
going straight to the police with my story and the other photographs. So it’s your decision, Monsieur Chardin.”

Chardin stood silent for a moment. Then smiled. In a forced voice, he said, “Miss, you are no doubt overwrought because of your grandfather’s sad death, therefore I shall take no
notice of your ridiculous accusations. And because I do not want to bring disgrace upon my school, I will not punish these two foolish girls.”

He cleared his throat and paused to regain his authority. “But I trust that they realise the seriousness of their folly. It is just lucky that none of your set is pregnant. Now get to bed,
all of you.”

The exhausted, frightened girls stumbled off to bed, weak with relief. There was no need for further anxiety, they thought, as they wearily undressed.

But they were wrong, and so was the headmaster.

Because one of the set
was
pregnant.

PART
TWO

C
ONCIOUS OF HER
shabby overcoat, Judy suddenly felt like a hick. She longed for the fragile, beautiful clothes, so artfully
displayed in the windows of Paris, that Maxine pointed out, chattering nonstop until they reached the corner where Hermes stood. Timidly, they pushed through the glass door, whereupon Maxine
adopted a haughty, nose-in-the-air attitude, examining the most expensive silken scarves and handbags in the world as if none of them were quite good enough for the two teenage girls. Intoxicated
by the smell of rich leather, Judy bought a Hermes diary, a beautiful calfskin appointment book with its own gold pencil stuck in the side.