Princess Daisy (24 page)

La Marée
itself proved that magic still existed. It had grown out of an ancient farmhouse, little by little over the centuries, and by the time Anabel became its owner it possessed thirteen different levels of roof, each covered with thatch, from which, in the spring, seeds left in the straw would sprout and send up wild flowers. Some parts of the house were three stories high; the kitchen wing, which was the oldest part of the house, was a single story; but all the various parts of the structure were unified by being built from exposed wooden beams and plaster, most of which wore a rippling mantle of the big-leaved ivy called
la vigne vierge
, which turned bright red in the autumn. The enormous house looked more like a growing thing than a building, and the feeling inside of it was that of being part of a living, breathing space which belonged as much to the outdoors as the indoors. All day long the tall windows were thrown open to the sun and Anabel went out early to gather the basketsfull of columbine, coreopsis, roses, asters, lupines, delphinium, dahlias, heather, baby’s breath and the
pied d’alouettes
, an old-fashioned flower that appeared in Breugel’s paintings, from which she filled vases even more imaginatively and abundantly than she did in London where she was dependent on her florist’s stock to choose her blossoms.

Although Anabel expected her guests to live at
La Marée
in an informal, holiday way, the house itself was well-staffed and decorated with a certain formality. Each bedroom had walls of finely pleated damask, color on color, woven in flower motifs and hanging from floor to ceiling. The same fabric that covered the walls was draped on the four-poster beds and at the tall windows. Daisy’s room was all sea-green, Anabel’s rose and cream and Ram
had the blue bedroom. The main salon of the house was enormously high and, in one corner, a circular staircase led up fourteen feet to the balcony that surrounded the room on three sides. The back of the balcony was lined with bookshelves and there were many recesses, invisible from below, in which one could spend all day on comfortable loveseats, reading from the slightly musty volumes which had been there when Stash acquired the house as a surprise for Anabel. It had suited him well because of its nearness to Trouville, where he had still owned the stables to which he had once taken Francesca. He had also been attracted by the legend of the house in which, as everyone in Honfleur knew, its former owner, Madame Colette de Joinville, had hidden eleven British soldiers after Dunkirk. Unable to reach the evacuation beach, they had been guided to her by the Resistance, of which she was a member. At great personal risk, she kept them safe in her attic for nine months until they were all able, one by one, to make their way to Spain, through the Underground, and return to England to fight again.

Soon the routine life of
La Marée
established itself: late breakfast at the long wooden table in the big kitchen, to which they all drifted when they pleased, dressed in bathrobes or peignoirs, after which, Daisy and Anabel, with sturdy market baskets on their arms, went shopping for fresh produce in the port of Honfleur. Lunch was preceded by sherry on the terrace, lasted for two hours and was followed by coffee, again on the terrace. After coffee each followed his own pursuit: antique hunting, sightseeing, napping or rambling in the countryside. Finally cocktails, dinner, a few games of poker or liar’s dice, and an early bedtime ended the lazy day.

Daisy found that she was least unhappy when she was alone with her sketch pad, drawing the unforgivably picturesque houses of Le Vieux Bassin in Honfleur, a favorite painter’s subject for the last hundred and fifty years, or in trying to capture on paper the three umbrella pines that guarded the ocean side of
La Marée
.

When Daisy took her bath she saw that day after day in the open air had tanned her to the color of a freshly baked croissant She was not used to looking at herself naked she realized, as she studied with fascination the interesting contrast between her white breasts and her tan shoulders, marked with white only where the straps of her jerseys covered them. Then she was white again right down to the
place where her tennis shorts ended and from then on, her legs were even tanner than the rest of her. She turned around and around in front of the mirror, half amused by the comic effect of being colored like a piebald horse, and half admiring the new high fullness of her well-separated breasts and the sleek, long curve of her flanks. Daisy was sexually backward for her age of fifteen and a few months. She had led a severely protected life dominated by a father who had not allowed her contact with boys of her own age. Her friends at school had been those whose sexuality was still invested in horses and dogs. She had often been restlessly aware of physical desires but they had been either suppressed or released in sports. She rubbed her hand questioningly over her white-blonde pubic hair and hastily removed it when she saw what she was doing in the mirror. It was softer than the hair on her head, Daisy thought, oddly embarrassed, and she quickly dressed herself in her summer uniform: worn, tight tennis shorts from the year before that she hadn’t bothered to replace and one of the sleeveless striped fishermen’s jerseys she had bought in Honfleur. She wore her hair loose, and often, after one of her rambles in the woods, a twig or a bud would be caught in the tangled excess of her curls.

Ram was violently critical of the way she looked. “Christ, Anabel, can’t you speak to her about the way she goes about? She’s like some sort of savage. It’s not only disgraceful, it’s damned near indecent. I can’t stand to look at her! You’re not doing the job you should be with that girl—I’m surprised at you letting her get away with being such a pig!”

“Ram, come on, relax. Honfleur’s a resort—everyone dresses like Daisy,” Anabel chided him gently. “You’re the one who should let down a bit and get into the spirit of things—do I see the playing fields of Eton around your neck, my dear?” Ram refused to even smile but stalked off, stiff with outrage. Hurt, Anabel shook her head sadly as he disappeared. Every time Daisy tried to talk to him, she thought, Ram found something about her to comment on in an unpleasant way, until the girl had almost stopped trying to include him in her conversations. Still, there was nothing Anabel could do except try to reach Ram through gentleness … she thought that this was probably his own strange way of reacting to Stash’s death, this anger, this … almost … cruelty.

A few days later, at breakfast, as Ram unwisely tried to
take a glance at the newspaper before he’d started his bacon and eggs, Theseus gobbled down everything on his plate. Ram lashed out at the dog with his fist but Theseus was long gone. “Damn it to hell, Daisy, that goddamned verminous mongrel of yours has got to go!” Ram’s face was knit in thundering fury. “I’ll kill that creature when I catch him!”

“If you touch him, I’ll kill you!” Daisy shouted.

“Children, children,” Anabel murmured ineffectively.

“I’m warning you, Daisy—I won’t stand for that filthy animal,” Ram continued. “He’s not a joke anymore.”

Daisy held out her own plate at him. “Look, take my breakfast, it’s just the same as the one Theseus had—Ram, you put temptation in his way—you ought to know him by now. And he’s
not
dirty! Here. Don’t be mad.”

Ram thrust away the proffered plate. “I’m not hungry anymore. And I’m sick of your excuses for that filthy beast. Just keep him away from me.” Abruptly he got up from the table and went to his room.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” sighed Anabel. If only people would be kinder to each other. Of all human sins, the only one Anabel really found unforgivable was unkindness.

Toward the end of the first week in July, Anabel awaited with particular anticipation the arrival of her friends Guy and Isabelle de Luciny, who were bringing their children; Valerie, who was a little over a year younger than Daisy, and Jean-Marc, who was almost eighteen. She hoped that their company might entice Daisy away from
her solitary expeditions
. She remembered Jean-Marc as a sturdy lad of fifteen, rather short and plump, but pleasant and well-spoken.

She scarcely recognized the tall, attractive Frenchman with fine brown eyes who got out of the car and came toward her as she stood, welcomingly, in the circular entrance hall of the house. His manners were as polished and suave as only those of an almost adult, well-bred French youth can be, and it amused Anabel wickedly to see this self-possessed and rather lordly young sprig fall for Daisy as acrobatically, as dramatically as if he’d been hit over the head in a silent movie. He followed her around more closely than Theseus; he literally couldn’t move his eyes away from her, which made him difficult at meals since he ate without looking at his food and he never heard a word anyone else said, not even a request to
pass the salt. At first Daisy seemed more interested in his sister Valerie than in Jean-Marc, who insisted on accompanying them into Honfleur each morning for their shopping, carrying Daisy’s basket, but eventually she began to respond to the smitten youth, with a kind of mischievous pleasure, the first she’d shown in many weeks.

“Honestly, Jean-Marc, I think I’m going to have to take legal measures. There’s something curiously adoptable about you,” she told him after lunch one day as the whole houseful of guests lay lazily on the terrace, except for the young man who was busily dragging his striped canvas deck chair closer to Daisy’s. Her clear voice was heard by all the others, and Isabelle de Luciny and Anabel exchanged hopeful glances.

Under the influence of Jean-Marc’s admiration, a new Daisy appeared at dinner, a Daisy who had taken the time to change into a mini-skirt and a thin summer sweater and offered to pour the coffee after dinner, a grown-up duty which she had occasionally attempted with a lack of interest, but which she now accomplished with finished grace. When this new Daisy was complimented by Guy de Luciny she received his words with the poise of a much older woman, sliding her black eyes toward Jean-Marc with a look that seemed both insolent and alluring, as if to ask why he had left it to his father to say the things he was thinking.

Now Daisy permitted Jean-Marc to go with her on her trips into Honfleur to sketch, and several times the two of them were late for lunch, returning flushed with the sun and still trembling with laughter over jokes they assured the others they wouldn’t understand.

On the night of Bastille Day, the
Quatorze Juillet
, there is dancing in the streets in every city in France. In Honfleur the square in front of the town hall is turned into an outdoor ballroom and everyone, townspeople, tourists and the owners of the houses in the surrounding countryside, all come and dance with anyone who asks them, stranger or not. Daisy wore her best dress, from a London boutique called Mexicana, a long, demure, fragile white dress. The closely fitted bodice and full milkmaid sleeves were both made of bands of lace alternating with bands of finely tucked cotton. The lace and cotton formed a high, frilled collar. A hot pink satin sash with a big bow at the side was tightly clasped about her waist and below it fell a tucked cotton skirt with a wide lace hem which swept the
floor. She had taken just the top layer of her hair, divided it into six sections and braided each section with white silk ribbons which ended in bows at the end of each braid.

The innocence of the covered-up white dress and the beribboned braids contrasted strongly with Daisy’s straight, thick brows and excited pansy-centered eyes. Her full mouth was endowed with a new maturity as she felt for the first time in her life the intoxicating bone-deep assurance that tonight she was the unquestioned center of the group, the key to the romance of the evening. She had become an enchantress; in one stroke, she had absorbed and embodied the spirit of
La Marée
. None of the guests could stop looking at her. It was, thought Anabel gleefully, as if they had all turned into a band of besotted Jean-Marcs—all but Ram, whose disapproval of his half-sister seemed to have been accentuated by her success. He stood aside, an unpleasant expression crossing his aquiline features, his gray eyes colder than those of his father had ever been.

Anabel was glad that Daisy had always had courage. It takes courage to be a beautiful woman, she thought. Beauty, in Anabel’s estimation, is the female equivalent of going to war, bound, as beauty is, to put a woman in hundreds of unwanted situations that otherwise she could have avoided. And Daisy was almost a beautiful woman—she had only a year or two of girlhood left, Anabel thought, with pity … and a little envy.

The entire house party, some fourteen people, drove down to town to dance and watch the fireworks. Daisy, as conspicuous as a bride, and as lively as the traditional
guinguette
music which demands no other knowledge of dancing than whirling, passed rapidly from the arms of a fisherman to a local painter to the Mayor of Honfleur to Jean-Marc; from the arms of the butcher to the arms of the sailors from the French Navy vessels moored in the port and then back to Jean-Marc again. She held herself as proudly as a young tree in its first season of spring bloom, her silvery hair flew and flew and even the braids couldn’t prevent it from getting tangled as she danced. Her lips were parted in a smile of pure, unthinking, undirected pleasure. Her cheeks were flushed a deeper pink and the punctuation of her black eyes made the vivid, flying figure in its white dress elementally alluring. As the music went on and on far into the night, Daisy danced with every man in Honfleur except Ram, who had danced not at all, preferring
to stand aloof on the edge of the crowded circle of jostling figures, arms crossed, eyes baleful, watching the merrymaking with an oddly malevolent expression on his face. Finally, Anabel and Isabelle de Luciny persuaded everyone that it was time to drive home, if only out of pity for the band, which was starting to look as if they would be glad to stumble back straight into the Bastille if only they didn’t have to play another tune.

The next morning everyone was late for breakfast. Jean-Marc missed the meal completely. It wasn’t until after he’d also been absent for lunch that his mother finally went to his room to wake him. She found his bed empty and a note addressed to her on the pillow.