Lace II

by Shirley Conran

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  FOR PETER

  WITH LOVE

  Prologue

  August 31, 1979

  THEY ARE THE most expensive breasts in the world, thought Lili, as she soaped them. Lace rivulets of foam slipped over her rounded flesh and, as she touched one cinnamon-tinted nipple, Lili shivered with sensuous pleasure. She stretched one rose-tipped toe to push the old-fashioned, ivory-handled dial which released hot water; then she stroked her other nipple with the sea sponge, and again her body quivered in response. It was as if the tips of her breasts were part of an electrical circuit of sensation which connected directly with the sensual core of her body, Lili thought, as she watched the two cinnamon buds grow hard, then break through the carnation-scented foam.

  Everything was in perfect working order; Lili’s body was fully practical, as technicians said when they checked props on the set. But the satin slopes that started to swell immediately below her collarbone were considerably more than practical; Lili’s breasts had been her passport, her work permit, her meal ticket, and now they were her fortune. Currently, those two impertinently rounded breasts were insured for a seven-figure sum by Omnium Pictures, which had just negotiated a record fee for Lili to play Helen of Troy.

  Nowadays my breasts are worth far more to other people than they are to me, Lili reflected wistfully; but, for almost fifteen years, whatever power she had possessed over her destiny had been derived from these two pounds of flesh which, to Lili, were as familiar as her knees and hardly any more remarkable.

  Lili sighed, threw the sponge aside, slowly rose from the over-full bath and carelessly splashed a lake of water over the pink marble floor. She wrapped herself in a buttercup-yellow towel and wandered into the sitting room. A bowl of figs stood on her breakfast tray, each fruit cut in quarters to expose the red flesh; Lili nibbled at a segment as she glanced at the newspaper: 1979 was not proving a good year for President Carter, she thought, as she read about the siege of the American Embassy and the hostages held in Iran. Lili knew what it felt like to be suddenly confronted by violence.

  Born in Switzerland, Lili had never known her mysterious mother, but when she was six years old, she had been on holiday with her foster family in Hungary. They had been trapped by the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Communists, and Lili had seen her beloved foster parents shot by border guards before she had managed to escape. From an Austrian refugee camp, she had been sent to Paris where she had been adopted by an aging, childless couple. By the age of seven, she had virtually become the unpaid servant of Monsieur et Madame Sardeau, a skivvy who longed for the love, peace and happiness that she had once known and still hoped for.

  It had been easy for the rich American playboy to seduce Lili, and easier still for him to abandon her when she found herself pregnant. Thrown out by the Sardeaus, Lili had paid for her abortion by posing naked for a truck drivers’ calendar. Overnight she became famous as a lewd, baby pinup. Terrified, helpless and dependent on her exploitative manager, Lili had eventually been rescued by Jo Stiarkoz, a Greek shipowner who had encouraged Lili’s natural acting and painting talents and who gradually changed her from a suspicious, wary child of the gutter, unable to equate sex with love, into a cultured, discerning beauty.

  When Jo was killed in a car accident, Lili sought oblivion in her film career, and then had flung herself into a notorious year-long affair with Abdullah, King of Sydon, a tiny oil-rich state on the Persian Gulf. But eventually Lili could no longer tolerate her position, described by some as an unofficial concubine and others as the Western Whore. Lili then returned to her home in Paris to search once more for dignity, love, and peace. And, so far, she had not found them.

  Sighing, Lili threw aside the Herald Tribune and slowly walked through the carved cedarwood shutters onto her balcony, which hung over the grape-green water of the Bosphorus. Around the balcony, the domes and sharp minarets of Istanbul sparkled in the hazy morning sunlight of August. The sounds of the city, muted and distorted, traveled over the waters of the Bosphorus as shouting voices, bicycle bells and the occasional goat bleat blended with the roar of the traffic. Lili hugged the golden bath sheet around her as she absorbed the sights and sounds of Turkey. There were worse places to want love, peace, and happiness.

  * * *

  Across the Straits, on the Asian side of the water, the sun also warmed the stubby gray barrel of a Smith & Wesson Magnum .357, a UZI 9mm, a Kalashnikov, and two hand grenades. They lay on a rickety table in a small room that smelt of stale marijuana smoke.

  He hadn’t been able to risk bringing the hardware through customs, but when he’d arrived in Istanbul, he’d obeyed instructions and everything had gone smoothly. He’d ordered two cups of coffee, simultaneously, in the small Bazaar café, then he’d sent them both back, complaining that the coffee wasn’t strong enough. After a few minutes a dark-suited, dark-featured man had appeared before his table, and he had followed the dark stranger as they walked through a maze of narrow streets, then up a dirty staircase to a small dark room, where he had shown his passport. From the poor selection of guns that he had been offered, he’d picked three, realizing that he had very little choice in the matter.

  He’d hoped for a .44 Magnum, because that stopped anyone close-up; even a big man would be thrown, dead, on his back. The UZI submachine gun was easy to get anywhere in the Near East, because it was used by Israeli infantry. It weighed seven and a half pounds and was the shortest submachine gun (twenty inches folded), which made it not impossible for you to strap it inside your trouser leg. It could fire 600 rounds a minute, as well as single shots, and used 9mm ammunition, which was easy to get hold of because it was a common size for pistols, as well as SMGs. He’d also chosen the Kalashnikov because it was handy and reliable. It was slower than the UZI but the longer barrel made it more accurate. God knows how it had ended up in Istanbul, because it was a Chinese ’56 model with a wooden stock and a permanently attached folding bayonet, which might well be useful.

  Beside the hardware lay an untidy heap of bullets, two ammunition clips, a coil of nylon rope, 500 milliliters of clear solution in a glass bottle, a roll of three-inch-wide white surgical tape, two maps of the city, a water pipe with a few crumbs of half-burned resin in the bowl and a copy of People magazine.

  The man moved to the rusting, metal-framed window and swept the opposite shore with high-powered, army field glasses. He saw low hills wooded with cypresses and pines; too high, he thought, and corrected. He saw a blurry mass of buildings pierced by the decorated spires of minarets; he was still too high. Then he was focused at the correct level, but the jumbled, dirty-brown houses were confusingly similar and only the larger shapes of a mosque, shrine or palace offered directions to the watcher. Impatiently, the man picked up his tourist’s map and peered at a photograph. Again, he raked the distant shore with the field glasses, this time slowly tracking along the water’s edge.

  At the point at which Galata bridge spanned the Golden Horn, the man fiddled with the focus until the image was so sharp that he could see the faces of the passengers on the ferry, which was pulling away from the landing. Carefully he watched the laden boat begin its journey toward him, then he swept the binoculars further to the right and saw the gleaming facade of a palace, a small park shaded by Judas trees, and the ruined shell of a fortified tower. Finally, with a grunt of satisfaction, he was focused on a large terra-cotta-colored building directly on the edge of the water. Systematically, h
e checked each window, beginning with the square casements of the top floor and working down to the tall French doors of the first floor, some of which opened onto small domed balconies, suspended over the water like white birdcages. While the man watched, a pair of shutters was pushed open and Lili, wearing her golden towel, walked out on the balcony.

  The man dropped the field glasses and grabbed the copy of People magazine. Those tawny, almond-shaped eyes, the mass of black curls, the provocatively out-thrust breasts were unmistakable. He had found more than he had expected.

  * * *

  Lili wandered back into the sitting room of her suite, squashed another fig segment into her mouth and moved into the dressing room, where she stepped into a loose white-linen shift, the only thing which offered her any hope of navigating the Grand Bazaar without being pinched black and blue by lecherous fingers. Yesterday she had spun round after a particularly insulting nip, to find that the fingers had belonged to a ten-year-old boy. Lili slipped her feet into snakeskin sandals, pinned up her mass of dark hair with antique tortoise-shell combs and applied as little makeup as possible because, thank Heaven, she wasn’t the photographic target for today. Leaving clothes and cosmetics scattered all over her suite, she left it, then knocked on the next door.

  “That you, Lili? Come on in, honey, I’m waiting for this to dry.” The preoccupied voice held a hint of Louisiana. Sandy Bayriver (born Flanagan) was finishing a delicate job of restoration. The area on which she was working had been cleaned and rubbed down, and she was draping a minute web of strengthening gauze over the fingernail crack. In Sandy’s business, a girl could not afford to be seen without a perfect set of ten matched talons.

  Lili wandered around the opulent, brocade-furnished drawing room, picked up a tawdry diamanté crown slung rakishly over the marble ear of a bust of Alexander the Great and held it on her head. “How d’you keep this thing on, Sandy?”

  “Bobby pins, honey. Once, when I was Lake Pontchartrain Oyster Queen, I clean forgot to pin it on and the damn thing fell off halfway across Churchill Plaza.” She looked up. “It really suits you, Lili—maybe you should take over as Miss International Beauty and I’ll just go shopping today.”

  “You won it, you wear it,” Lili threw the coronet back on the statue’s head. Sandy never missed an opportunity to say something sweet, the way some people never missed an opportunity to say something nasty. It was easy to forget that she was in the piranha pool of competition for these gaudy crowns, Lili thought, as Sandy wriggled her toes into scarlet sandals.

  “Four-inch heels would cripple me,” said Lili.

  “Hell, honey, I’m used to them.” Sandy tripped into the bathroom where she carefully removed the heated rollers from her wild tawny hair which curled naturally, but Sandy preferred a disciplined cascade of shiny ringlets. “Let’s go find your mamma,” Sandy giggled, ever conscious of the two notorious women with whom she was traveling.

  At the top of the immense double staircase which swept down to the foyer of the Haroun al-Rashid Hotel, Sandy hung onto Lili’s arm as, carefully, she moved sideways down the slippery marble steps. Waiting at the bottom of the ornate staircase was a small, delicately boned woman in a red silk dress.

  Judy Jordan, founder of VERVE! magazine for working women, was not sure that she was enjoying her role as traveling companion of two of the most beautiful women in the world—one of whom happened to be her long-lost daughter.

  The guide in baggy black trousers led them to the water gate of their elegant rose-washed hotel, which had once been the summer palace of a sultana, built at the water’s edge for coolness.

  “Where are we going today?” asked Lili, as the three women settled into the canopied private launch.

  Judy pointed. “Over there. The Topkapi Palace, where the Ottoman sultans lived. That enormous pile of buildings on the hill; you’re both being photographed in the Palace Harem.”

  “Surely not me, too?” exclaimed Lili. “I’m not made-up.”

  Judy looked at her, thinking now that patience was the outstanding quality required by any mother, as she said, “Lili, last night I told you that we needed shots of you, as well as Sandy. Anyway, you look fine.”

  Of course Lili looked fine, Lili always looked fine, thought Judy wistfully. I always looked fine when I was her age. Now, if I watch my diet and work out every day and only drink wine at Christmas, I can still look good, but not as good as I did when I was Lili’s age. Judy knew that in her red Chloë dress, with its rippling bias-cut skirt, her figure was still girlishly slim; she still had the waiflike appeal of an exhausted Little Orphan Annie, in spite of her present problems. Judy thought, I wouldn’t have to be involved in anything as tacky as a beauty queen competition if I wasn’t so broke, and Lili hadn’t been so indiscreet, and Tom hadn’t taken one business risk too many.

  And there was one other problem. After almost a year as Lili’s mother, and a week traveling with eighteen-year-old Sandy, Judy was forced to acknowledge that she was of a different generation, and that made her feel uneasy. Not jealous, of course, just uneasy. If Jordan felt uneasy, by now she knew that millions of her women readers felt the same way about the same things. Putting her life into her magazine, and knowing when to trust her gut instincts, had made Judy her first million dollars.

  She found Lili the more disturbing of her two traveling companions because elegance, to Judy, meant neat hair and formal clothes, not expensive garments that were intended to look crumpled and hair that had been carefully dressed to look untidy. Nevertheless, since gaining a daughter, Judy had stopped arguing with her fashion editor when spreads were proposed on street-chic or models swathed in knotted muslin.

  Sitting with her back to the Bosphorus, Lili dearly wished she had not forgotten about today’s photographic session. Eventually, she leaned toward her mother and said, “I’m sorry I forgot. I’m so glad you persuaded me to come on this trip, Judy.”

  Judy smiled politely, recognizing the peace offering. It was the politeness that came between them, thought Judy, but she didn’t know how not to be polite. A real mother isn’t polite; she yells at her kids, hollers when her daughter pinches her pantyhose, then goes without a new winter coat so that her daughter can have a really pretty first formal. A mother washes your clothes, and her time and her love are the ingredients that go into every stack of lunchtime sandwiches she cuts. A mother’s always at you about your galoshes (putting them on, taking them off, putting them away) and you ignore her or groan theatrically, but her scolding is comforting because you know it means that she cares. Every day, between a daughter and the mother she’s grown up with, there are a thousand unspoken reference points which add up to the feeling of comfortable, affectionate intimacy, the feeling that a puppy has for the blanket in its basket. Without discussion, a mother knows that you like goat’s milk cheese and don’t like Aunt Bertha. A mother knows your temper tantrums, and where they come from, and how to stop them before they start. Between Lili and Judy there was liking, respect, and even the start of a touching friendship, but both of them were silently aware that there should have been love, and there was no love—yet. They both pinned their hopes on that “yet.”

  From the other side of the boat, Lili watched her mother’s short blond hair ruffle in the breeze. Lili had always expected her unknown, mysterious mother to be a quiet, kindly madonna, an apron-covered, ample figure, always stirring something delicious on an old-fashioned kitchen range. But when, almost a year ago, Lili had finally tracked down her mother, she had found this glamorous, lonely public figure instead of the comforting creature of her daydreams.

  Both Lili and Judy were alone in life and they both longed not to be; so they tried to behave as they imagined a mother and her daughter should behave. They made odd little stabs at what they thought was the appropriate way to act. But, although she had made such a great effort to discover her real mother, Lili was suspicious of her own feelings. Lili was an instinctive actress; her fame was the result of having the ra
w talent, then slowly acquiring the craft, then polishing the talent. She had always had to play her life by ear, so her impulses were important, but she was suspicious of her facility to take on a mood when she wanted to act it. Lili did not want to act love. She wanted the real thing. She wanted what she had always felt she had been deprived of—mother love. Lili knew she was not getting the real thing, she felt it deep in her heart and her bones and her being, but she did not want to face it; so she continued hopefully to grope for it.

  Lili also feared that something else might sabotage the relationship with her mother that she was trying so hard to establish. Lili knew from her acting work, and from watching other people’s stage work, that when a coach or a director asks an actor to play affection, what sometimes unconsciously comes up is bitter rage, always followed by sudden tears and breakdown. This was another reason why Lili feared that she might unconsciously be acting the love for her mother that she so longed to establish with Judy. Lili did not want suddenly to cause an unforgivable showdown with Judy because of Lili’s forgivable but unforgettable resentment of her mother’s abandonment.

  The pink fringe of the canopy swayed in the breeze as their little launch darted over the gray-green water. Lili leaned over to Judy. “After the photo session, can I go shopping? I want to buy a carpet in the Grand Bazaar.”

  “I’ll come with you, it’s better to bargain with two people, you’ll get a lower price if I stand behind you looking grim. Offer one third of what they ask and settle for half.”

  “That’s not really the way I hoped to do it. I want to buy you a present, Judy. I want to buy you the most beautiful carpet in the Bazaar.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Lili, but you know it’s not necessary.”

  Without realizing it, Lili had expected her real mother to be a duplicate of her beloved Swiss-peasant foster mother, Angelina, and Lili had expected her mother to be poor, like Angelina. Lili had expected to be able to show her love by helping her mother financially. She had had a little fantasy of taking her mother to the best store in town and buying her mother her first fur coat. But then her mother had turned out to be a millionaire. So Lili kept trying to buy Judy expensive presents, which embarrassed Judy. Any show of affection embarrassed Judy, especially touch. Her strict, Southern Baptist parents had never touched each other; they had not kissed or cuddled their children or each other and, consequently, there was a distance in all Judy’s relationships, because, to her, touch was related to sex, not affection.