Lace

by Shirley Conran

  On the evening before the St. Valentine’s dance Kate burst into the bedroom. “Pagan, you slut, you didn’t clean the bath after you, there’s a grubby ring around it.”

  “But surely a bath is for cleaning oneself,” said Pagan, puzzled. “One does not clean it.”

  “One hasn’t up to date, but one damn well will in the future,” said Kate. “You really are the slut of the school.”

  “O rage, ô désespoir.” Pagan yelled her new curse words and threw a tattered exercise book at Kate. “I’m sick to the withers with both of you. Kate’s always criticizing and Maxine doesn’t keep her promises.”

  “I do keep my promises, you beech!’

  “You promised to lend me ten francs.”

  “Merde, I mean sheet, why don’t you ask your rich little Prince for ten francs? He can afford it better than I.”

  “Only because you spend all your money on diet food to get skinny for a stupid ski bum who likes skiing more than he likes you.” Pagan pounced on Maxine and pummeled her.

  “Ow, merde, sheet, ferk, dammit, bloody beech.”

  “Stop that sexy scuffling,” Kate cried. “You know Matron already suspects that the whole school is a seething mass of lesbians. Ppppplease don’t quarrel, I can’t bear it. Pagan didn’t mean what she said about Pierre. Of course he really loves you.”

  “Of course he does. I know that, because of it,” Maxine said with dignity. She had wound up her hair in twists of toilet paper to curl it for the St. Valentine’s Ball on the following night. “Especially because of the afterward, that golden glow like fireworks dying in the sky.”

  There was a pause, then Kate said timidly, “Afterward is the awful part for me. I feel so jittery and weepy and sort of apart from François.”

  “Mon Dieu, I feel much closer to Pierre.” Maxine frowned thoughtfully at her hairbrush and speculated. “Maybe you haven’t done it enough. I didn’t like it the first time with Pierre, but I didn’t want to upset him so I said nothing. I wanted him to stay with me, that’s all I felt at first.”

  “That’s the only thing I feel with François,” Kate worried. “I’ve been doing it longer than you have, Maxine, but the last thing I feel is deep peace. When I really feel sexy and utterly marvellous and glowing is before we start. The afterward is just a letdown. I mean you cling to someone for hours and hours on the dance floor, you can feel his body against yours, you can smell it, and you rock to the music, wrapped around each other, and every time he moves you almost swoon, and you finally go the whole way because you know that it will be even better. Then he puts the thing in you and suddenly everything goes flat. He’s in seventh heaven and going wild, but I’m suddenly looking down on the scene from the ceiling and that marvellous, melting-knees feeling is gone. I want to hit him and cry.”

  Perplexed, Maxine suggested, “Maybe you should relax more, Kate. Maybe you worry too much about what you should be doing, instead of what you feel like doing. I always feel wonderful afterward.”

  “It must be because you’re French,” Kate said, gloomily.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Pagan. “Maybe François hasn’t had enough practice, or maybe he’s never been told what to do. When Abdullah was sixteen, he was sent to a special doctor to learn about love—for three weeks! Imagine! I didn’t like to ask him if he was given tests or exams.”

  There was a sudden, polite, interested silence. Pagan immediately said, “You’re wrong—we never have, and I’m not going to say another word.”

  “How do we know that story isn’t just an upmarket brand of old Arabic bullshit if you won’t talk about the consumer tests?” demanded Kate. “We’re coming out with our secret sexual experiences in the interests of further education, and if you won’t join in, then you can’t listen. This is serious for me. Maybe I’m a freak, I’m worried.”

  There was another long pause, then Pagan said, “Well, if you’re a freak, then I am too, because I felt the same way as you did. . . . But it wasn’t with Abdi, it was with Paul, and if you dare tell anyone, I’ll kill you.”

  “So you did.”

  “Yes,” said Pagan gloomily, “and it was beastly. I think sex is overrated.”

  “I suspect it’s addictive,” offered Maxine, “like oysters.”

  There was a bang on the door. “I don’t like them either. Entrez!”

  The ancient porter carried in a huge box addressed to Pagan. The other two girls peered over her shoulder as she opened it. This time there was no tissue paper. The box was full of soft, dark Persian lamb. There was an awed silence as Pagan lifted it out and draped it around her shoulders and pulled the hood over her tangled mahogany hair. The wonderful cloak reached to the floor.

  “Oh, Christ, I mean mon Dieu,” said Pagan, “this isn’t what Mama expected. I’ll have to check with her or she’ll give me hell.”

  After the girls had each tried on the cloak, Pagan went to the telephone to call her mother. She came back half an hour later looking vexed.

  “She says that as she agreed I could have it, I can keep it, but as the cloak is valuable, I can’t wear it. I can wear it to the St. Valentine’s Ball because to do otherwise would be discourteous, but after that I’m not to be seen in it.”

  “Well, at least it will be warmer to wear at night than that rotten old bed quilt.”

  So for the rest of her time at school, after lights-out, Pagan sat cross-legged on the end of Kate’s bed, wrapped from head to toe in priceless Persian lamb.

  6

  MAXINE HAD DRESSED her frizzed hair up in a topknot for the dance; it had taken nearly two hours to skewer it into place so that it stayed up. Almost painfully excited, she immediately spotted Pierre.

  Kate couldn’t see François. In fact it had been over a week since she’d seen François. Judy had slipped her a note in which he explained that he had to cancel their rendezvous because his father insisted that he have extra ski coaching. Kate wished that his father wasn’t so ambitious for François, but it was understood that skiing took priority over anything else. His father wanted him to try for the Swiss team. Kate shut her eyes to François’s faults and wouldn’t hear a word against him. She had gone All The Way because she was in love with him. Or was it the reverse? She wished she knew.

  As Pierre moved purposefully toward Maxine, Kate suddenly saw François. He was seated between two plump, dark girls with identical heavy-lidded, somnolent eyes. Kate waved at him but François didn’t seem to notice. Someone asked her to dance so she fox-trotted around the floor and waved as she passed his table, but again François didn’t seem to see her.

  At the end of the dance Judy slipped over to Kate’s table. She was wearing a traditional Swiss costume with white blouse, tightly laced black corselet and voluminous scarlet skirt. “I’ll be glad to stop wearing this cuckoo-clock outfit—I can’t stay long because I’m helping behind the bar. What’s up, Kate?”

  When Kate explained, Judy said, “You’ve got two legs and a tongue in your head. Don’t just sit there, go over to him and say hello.”

  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 u
p 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.”