Lace II

by Shirley Conran

  Lili asked, “What about Sri Lanka?”

  Several judges shook their heads. “She’ll never make it on talk shows.”

  “My vote goes to Italy,” said the Hollywood agent.

  “Italy is just a little bit adult for us.” The Mirabelle man meant that, at the age of twenty-three, Miss Italy’s skin had already lost the childlike smoothness that made massproduced cosmetics look good in a high-definition color photograph. He added, “and United States has the look that Mirabelle will promote next year.”

  After another twenty minutes of argument, the judges marked their prepared ballots and tossed them into the wire basket held by the organizer, who announced with satisfaction, “United States it is, with Sudan second and Italy third.”

  When the prerecorded trumpet fanfare blasted and the host announced that Miss International Beauty of 1979 was Miss United States, Miss Sandy Bayriver from Louisiana, Sandy looked suitably astonished and elated, then wiped an imaginary teardrop from the corner of her eye, and allowed the host to lead her to the winner’s throne. Gotcha, she thought, as yet another diamanté crown was placed upon her head.

  * * *

  Judy signed the hotel bill for two glasses of freshly squeezed lemon juice and turned over on her yellow sunbed, to let the Florida sun toast her back. Lili sat up and poured both packets of sugar into her glass. Lili’s sweet tooth and Judy’s taste for bitter drinks were both satisfied if they ordered two freshly squeezed lemon juices and Lili used all the sugar before adding water to both glasses. In ten months, this was the nearest they had come to a family custom.

  Lili wriggled on her sunbed. “This heat! I’m going for another swim.” She jumped up and ran toward the blue sea.

  After a bit, Judy noticed that Lili’s small red snakeskin purse lay between their two yellow sunbeds. The catch wasn’t closed and the contents were spilling over the sand. Judy leaned forward and carefully shook sand from the lip gloss, the tissue and the unwritten postcards. Then she picked up the airmail envelope and froze as she noticed the Nicaragua stamp, Mark’s familiar handwriting and his name on the back.

  The envelope was still sealed, but it was badly sealed and only stuck down at the tip of the flap. Furtively, Judy started to raise the side of the envelope. She couldn’t help herself. Peering into the envelope, she could just make out the words “love” and “helpless,” then she heard Lili’s voice behind her. Quickly she stuffed the letter back in the purse.

  “It’s no use. You’d think they’d leave me alone when the place is stuffed with beauty queens. I’m going inside to the air conditioning.” Lili picked up the red snakeskin purse, stuck her sunglasses on, and walked toward the hotel.

  Judy turned on her stomach and buried her face in her beach towel, to hide the tears which prickled her eyelids. Thank God Lili was flying back to Europe tomorrow.

  * * *

  Thank God this race was only five hundred kilometers, thought Lili, as the Riviera sun blazed down upon the raw, white-painted concrete of the pits, and hurt Lili’s eyes with its savage glare.

  This sun was almost as fierce as Miami’s had been, last week. The only difference between the Paul Ricard circuit and the British tracks seemed to be that the grandstands were flanked with dusty tubs of oleanders, the French spectators were not quite so badly dressed as the British ones, and the car park was littered with empty wine bottles, rather than empty lager cans. Apart from these points, the tawdry souvenir booths sold the same tasteless BMW baseball caps, Ferrari bomber jackets and Lancia T-shirts as they did in Britain; the competitors were the same, they drove the same cars, the noise and the smell were exactly the same. Only the wording on the billboards was different—Michelin instead of Dunlop and Elf instead of Mobil.

  Wistfully, Lili looked at the purple smudged hills in the distance and longed to be in the dappled shade of the pine forests instead of by this stinking, sunbaked racing circuit.

  The low black Spear snarled past, hugging the ground like a sinister giant insect. Lili checked her stopwatch. Two seconds faster than his best practice time. With any luck, they’d be back in time to have a swim before dinner.

  The PA droned on. “And halfway through this 400 km race, it’s Werner Hentzen’s Porsche in the lead, followed by the Dinetti, then Gautier in the Lancia … and the Spear has just overtaken the Lancia and it’s pulling ahead.…”

  Lili yawned, stuck her ear protectors back on and pulled the script for her next movie out of her leather hunting bag. It had arrived that morning, from Omnium Pictures. She would have some terrific outfits as Helen of Troy and, after the Mistinguett role, she was in good shape for another musical.

  A blue airmail letter fell from the leather hunting bag. Lili sighed. She’d stuffed it in there this morning before Gregg saw it. Mark knew and used the secret code that was used to bypass Lili’s fan mail, so she always received his letters. And she always tore them up, unread. It was the least she could do, she thought sadly, as she tore the pale blue envelope into strips, and threw it away. Then she turned her attention to the script.

  By the time King Agamemnon had pitched his tent in sight of the walls of Troy, the Spear was challenging the Porsche for the lead, as the PA shrieked “…and with only three laps to go, the Spear is lying behind the Porsche and Werner Hentzen is fighting off the challenge.…”

  By the time Paris wished that he had listened to Cassandra’s prophecies, the PA was ecstatically screaming, “and now the Spear is neck and neck with the Porsche … and Eagleton has passed the Porsche! With only one lap to go, the Spear is in the lead.…”

  Insulated from the noise by her earmuffs, Lili did not know that Gregg had gained the lead. Neither did she know, as the triumphant Hector wearily unstrapped his gleaming breastplate, that Gregg had lost the lead and fallen back behind the Porsche.

  But after the giant wooden horse, its belly full of soldiers, had crossed over the plain toward the walls of Troy, the other spectators started to jump up and down and this distracted Lili from the script.

  Lili pulled off her ear protectors, to hear the PA gabble “…and the Spear has taken the Porsche on the inside … now they’re coming down the final straight toward the flag and it looks as if … yes … IT’S THE SPEAR … with the first win for Gregg Eagleton!”

  Gregg was hauled out of the car, weighed down with a laurel wreath, soaked in champagne, kissed by half-a-dozen girls promoting a new cocktail mix, carried shoulder high to the grandstand, awarded a silver rose bowl, then more champagne, then photographed with his arm round Lili in a crush of champagne-drenched admirers.

  Gregg posed for one last picture, then they stumbled away to the trailer park. The Spear, its wings coated with red dust, was being wheeled into its trailer by two mechanics. Gregg climbed into the driver’s cab to change and shower in the tiny compartment behind the seat. The mechanics walked back to the pit to pack up their tools. Lili sat on the edge of the transporter, swinging her legs and waiting for Gregg.

  Five minutes later, he climbed into the back of the trailer, his hair still damp from the shower.

  “Give her a rest, darling!” Lili jumped up and picked her way into the dark, petrol-smelling interior, knowing that Gregg could not pass the Spear without wanting to lift the engine housing and fiddle with something. She didn’t notice the elated gleam in his eyes and the urgency in his manner, as he pulled the lever that closed the back doors of the trailer.

  “Gregg. Stop playing around! It’s dark in here.” Lili crossly felt her way forward in the dim, hot trailer and blundered into his arms. He kissed her hard, then pulled her up the ladder, to the driver’s bunk above the seats.

  “Stop it, Gregg. And it’s as hot as hell in here!”

  “Can’t stop, I want you now.” He kissed her harder, as he pulled off Lili’s white linen shift, under which Lili was naked. The stink of oil and petrol normally made Lili feel faintly sick, but now it seemed erotic. Sweat poured from Gregg’s body, as their flesh met and Lili felt a hot rush of war
m pleasure.

  “What’s got into you?” murmured Lili.

  Gregg said, “Winning. That’s the real turn-on.”

  * * *

  “This is such a wonderful view!” Pagan jumped onto the parapet of Abdullah’s turreted chateau, and waved her arm at the lavender hills of the French Riviera. Her loose red cotton dress blew behind her like a flag in the breeze, as she turned to Maxine and said, “Aren’t you glad you came? Who’d have thought all those years ago in Gstaad, that we’d still be friends today.”

  Maxine shrugged. “Perhaps we wouldn’t be such friends if we all lived next door in each other’s pockets. As it is, we’re not round each other enough to demand more closeness or support than we’re able, or want, to give.”

  “Maybe the secret of friendship is not being too friendly.”

  They left the roof and started to walk down the elaborate wide staircase of the sumptuous chateau, passing richly colored tapestries, suits of moorish armor and crimsonbrocade curtains. What a pity, Maxine thought. The tapestries were nineteenth century fakes, lacking the delicate color, the rat-nibbled charm of the real thing.

  Pagan wondered what the servants would think if she slid down the banister, then said, “It was easy to be friends at school, when all our lives were pretty similar but, later on, friends travel down different roads, and some of them are marked ‘No Entry.’ ” She lifted the elaborate metal visor of a medieval helmet, and said, “Boo!”

  “I don’t know where Abdi got the decorator,” said Maxine, “but he’s gilded everything from the light switches to the banisters. All the furniture legs have claws, and look as if they’re about to stagger across the floor.”

  “I knew you’d hate it,” said Pagan, as they passed a green-malachite table edged with ormolu and supported by two overweight gold cherubs. “It gets worse.”

  For once, Maxine was speechless, as they walked through the salon and out onto the terrace.

  Abdullah waved from the side of the pool. How much older Abdullah looks, Maxine thought, noticing the frosting of gray hairs among his strong black curls, and the deeply etched lines of his forehead.

  That evening, in the darkness, on the terrace, Abdullah pulled Pagan to him and kissed her. She could smell the vanilla-scented bougainvillea bushes and the old-fashioned cologne Abdullah wore and the faint odor of his Turkish cigarettes and the starch of his shirt.

  “Have you decided, Pagan?”

  Nervously, she said, “I need time to get used to the idea. I’m worried because it could be so difficult, not only for you and me, but for your country—if it didn’t work out. I wondered, that is … would you mind if … we have a six-month secret engagement?”

  He released her so abruptly that she almost fell over the parapet. “Secret! Are you ashamed of me?”

  Pagan’s mellow happiness dissolved, leaving her with a stomachful of anxiety. “No, I’m afraid of the future, Abdi.”

  “You can’t be ruled by fear in life. Who doesn’t dare, doesn’t win.” Abdullah was an angry silhouette against the blue-black sky. “I’m sorry, Pagan, but you can’t have me on approval.”

  “But I want to be certain.” Pagan thumped her knee with her fist.

  “Oh, Pagan, you can never be certain.” Abdullah sounded exasperated and sad. “Life is a series of risks, Pagan. You either open the door marked ‘risk’ or you stay in the cabbage patch forever.”

  “But, Abdi, you’re asking for a lot. You’re asking for my whole life.”

  “Yes, Pagan, I am asking a lot. I am also offering a lot. I am sorry that you can’t accept it.” He strode away, leaving Pagan alone on the empty terrace.

  14

  September 1, 1979

  IN HIS PHILADELPHIA office, Curtis Halifax watched his family attorney read the telegram. Telling Harry hadn’t been as hard as he’d expected, in fact Harry hadn’t batted an eyelash as, haltingly, Curtis had told him of the long-kept secret; but attorneys were accustomed to hauling family skeletons out of the closet. Curtis leaned back in his leather wing desk chair, feeling relieved. At last he had told somebody.

  “‘Dear Daddy, unless you pay them ten million dollars within fifteen days, they will kill me. Stand by for payment in Istanbul. Directions will be sent to Mommy at the hotel. Love—Lili,’” Harry read and then raised his eyebrows. “Curtis, this telegram reads like something from an Andy Hardy movie.” He read the telegram aloud. “Are you sure this isn’t some crazy joke?”

  “No, I’ve already spoken to her mother.”

  “And this Lili is the movie star?”

  Curtis nodded.

  “You’re sure … that is … there’s no doubt in your mind that you are the father?”

  “No doubt at all, Harry.” Curtis shook his head. “I’ve known about the child since she was born. She lived with foster parents in Switzerland, and her mother and I were told that she’d died at the age of six.”

  Slowly Harry sipped his highball. It wasn’t unlikely that a childless man of Curtis’s age should be proud of fathering an illegitimate child, but the Halifaxes were an illustrious Philadelphia family and everyone knew what Debra was like; a scandal like this might push her over the edge.

  “Curtis, are you sure you want to go to these lengths? You’re really prepared to fly to Istanbul? How are you going to explain that to Debra?”

  “No problem. I fly to Europe on business quite often. Debra won’t mind, unless I’m not back in time for Ceezee’s Thanksgiving party.”

  Harry glanced up at the portraits of Curtis’s father and grandfather hanging against the paneled walls. “My advice would be to consider that other issues might come to light, as well as your paternity of an illegitimate child.”

  Curtis knew that his attorney was hinting at the long series of loans the bank had made to Judy Jordan’s group of companies, as Harry continued. “Curtis, it all happened a long time ago. Why not just forget it?”

  “It may have been a long time ago, Harry, but I’ve always regretted the way I treated her mother.” Curtis reached across his desk and held out his hand for the telegram. “It’s simple. My family raised me to be responsible, and I’m going to be responsible for my daughter, who’s in danger.”

  “But you say you’ve never even met this woman!”

  “I wanted to meet Lili.” Curtis remembered the previous October and his meeting with Judy in the dim, discreet, New York restaurant. Angrily, he had brandished a copy of the New York Times and pointed at the story of Lili’s search for her mother. Wrathfully, Curtis had asked Judy why she had invented the story that Lili’s father was a dead soldier when he, Curtis Halifax, was the father of Lili. Reproachfully, Judy whispered that she had lied to protect Curtis’s marriage. How would Debra feel, if told that Curtis had an illegitimate child? How would an ex-porn star fit into Debra’s social life in Philadelphia? How would such a beautiful stepdaughter affect Debra’s anxiety about her external appearance; if she didn’t starve herself to death, Debra would be in constant surgery having her body and face restructured and lifted.

  “You must protect Debra.” As usual, Judy had gently played on his guilt. “Leave Lili alone.”

  Curtis had hesitated. “But she’s my…”

  Judy had interrupted. “After all, you once left me alone, didn’t you? You made your choice twenty years ago. You didn’t know that you were choosing loneliness when you married Debra, but I knew that loneliness was what you were choosing for me.”

  Curtis’s attorney looked at the silver-framed photograph on the banker’s mahogany desk and, as if reading his client’s thoughts, he said, “Well, you know what’ll happen to Debra, if any of this leaks out.”

  “Look, Harry, I asked you to drop by to check my legal position, not to hand out marriage guidance.” Suddenly Curtis looked like the portrait of his grandfather.

  “Curtis, if you admit paternity of this child, you could lay yourself open to…”

  Curtis impatiently cut him short. “Harry, I hear what you’re sa
ying, but I’ve made my decision. Now, can we get on with the logistics? How can I raise the money?”

  “Even if we could raise that much fast, Curtis, there’s no way you could pay kidnap ransom, because it is against government policy to pay kidnap ransom. So, for a start, remember that you’ll be up against the law, if you transfer the money out of the country.”

  Again, Curtis showed his grandfather’s drive. “What about our Bahamas operation, Harry, what can we raise there? And we’ve got the properties in Rio, as well as the Tokyo development. There’s enough security there. You’re not going to tell me that we can’t raise a lousy ten million bucks outside the country!”

  Harry looked doubtful. “My advice is to play this one for time. Both Lili and her mother are influential people with influential friends. By the time you get to Istanbul, you may find that the Turkish police have already found her.”

  Curtis propped his neatly groomed gray head on one hand. “I hope you’re right, Harry, but in case you’re wrong, I want you to raise as much as you can on those Brazilian leases and transfer it to Istanbul. Nothing you say is going to stop me from flying out there tonight. I feel so fucking powerless, sitting behind this fucking desk when my daughter is in danger.”

  In twenty years, Harry had never heard Curtis swear. “Okay, Curtis.” The attorney stood up. “But try to stay within the law. I don’t want to be part of your defense team.”

  September 2, 1979

  * * *

  “Stop throwing plates, Maggie, I’ll explain!” Angelface Harris ducked behind the closet door of the all-black kitchen, as his wife hurled another handful of expensive, handmade pottery at him.

  “I’ve had enough of your bloody lies,” Maggie screamed, as she grabbed a yellow Italian soup tureen from the black worktop and threw it at her husband. A pile of ceramic shards was building up in front of his hiding place, and the gleaming black kitchen shelves were almost bare. “You’ve lied to me every day of our marriage, why should I believe you now?” A scarlet meat plate followed the yellow tureen.