Lace II

by Shirley Conran

  “It serves you bloody right for going through my pockets!”

  “I was only looking for grass. And if I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have found that telegram.” Maggie flung a Carol McNicholl teapot. “Dear Daddy, unless you pay them ten million fucking dollars within fifteen days, they’ll kill me.” Maggie picked up the food processor, then changed her mind and went for the coffeemaker. “You ain’t going to Istanbul, Angelface, and you ain’t sending any money to that fucking porn queen.”

  “Maggie, I told you, I’ve no idea what this is about.”

  “I never knew you had ten million dollars,” Maggie shrieked, “or I’d never had signed the fucking premarital agreement.” Maggie had now thrown everything she could lift and the kitchen shelves were almost bare.

  “Maggie, be reasonable!” Angelface looked round the closet door. “Of course I don’t have ten million dollars! What’s more, I intend to hang onto every penny I got.”

  With difficulty, Maggie picked up the food processor and pitched it. The machine hit the door, scraped the paint off and flew apart as it hit the floor.

  Angelface knew that Maggie had no ammunition left. Warily, he stepped out. “I got no intention of paying ransom for Lili or going to Turkey or getting involved with the fucking Turkish police.” He picked his way across the seventh set of crockery to be broken since their marriage. “Now, will you swear not to tell about that telegram?”

  Maggie scowled at him. “I might and I might not.”

  “You better not, you stupid bitch.” Angelface looked down at her and glared. She reached up and slapped his face. He grabbed her hand and pushed her back against the black worktop. Maggie was not intimidated, she was gasping with excitement, and Angelface’s eyes were glittering as he tore her shirt open and lunged at her breasts. “I’ll teach you a lesson,” he panted, feeling his cock start to harden. Maggie tried to knee Angelface in the crotch, flailed frantically at him with her free hand, then she pulled a heavy cast-iron saucepan from the sink and smashed her husband over the head with it.

  With a roar of rage, Angelface smacked her face.

  Maggie’s head cracked against the wall, and she collapsed into a screaming heap on the floor.

  Angelface jumped to the far side of the black table, as if he wanted a solid barrier between himself and his wife.

  “You shouldn’t have bopped me with that iron pot, that wasn’t playful,” he muttered.

  Maggie continued to weep, blood streaming from her split lip.

  “It wasn’t funny, Mags.”

  Piteously, Maggie looked up; mascara, blood, and lipstick streaked her face.

  “Oh, shut yer face and come ‘ere,” Angelface ordered, out of the side of his mouth. He wasn’t going to pick her up.

  Maggie picked herself up and tottered toward his grudgingly opened arms. Angelface licked the blood from her split lip and whispered hoarsely, “I’m sorry, baby, but you shouldn’t provoke me that way.” He gently pulled off what remained of Maggie’s silk shirt and used it to wipe the tears from her red-and-black streaked face. Cheekily, he pinched one of her nipples and she gave a mollified sniff.

  “For all I know, Maggie, I might have hundreds of kids around the world,” said Angelface, reproachfully, “but I’d be daft to own up to any of ‘em.” He thought, I am tickled fucking pink to think that my kid’s turned out to be one of the most beautiful chicks in the world, but I’d better not tell Maggie, or she might really try to hurt me.

  Slowly, Angelface pulled down the zipper of her jeans. “You know how the chicks come after me, Maggie. Knickers off and legs up in rows outside me dressing room door. It was before you come along, darling.” He slid his hands inside her jeans and comfortingly squeezed her ass. Maggie was so tiny that one of her buns was hardly a handful. “You know I got me appetities, Maggie.” He grabbed her hand and thrust it down his pants, where she could feel his growing affection. “And you know you love it, baby.”

  Entwined, they tottered upstairs to the bedroom, then hurled themselves at each other, on the unmade, blacksheeted bed.

  Two hours later, when their Filipino houseman had cleaned up the kitchen and Angelface had locked himself in the recording studio with his band, Maggie leaned back against the black sheets, lit a joint, reached for the Mickey Mouse telephone and called her best friend. “I dunno what I’m going to do, Joanie,” she moaned, with no preamble. “He busted me lip again and I’m sure he’s broken me wrist. D’you think I should leave him this time?”

  Joanie asked what had started it, after which, they discussed the ongoing tragedy, and the proper etiquette for an upgraded groupie when faced with an illegitimate stepdaughter who was far more beautiful than Maggie, and famous.

  By eight o’clock the next morning, when Angelface crashed on his bed, reeking of brandy, and Maggie was deep in barbiturate-assisted sleep, Joanie had called the rock column of London’s evening newspaper. By eleven in the morning, the editor had decided to splash the story and, by one o’clock, billboards all over the city screamed: LILI—KIDNAP SENSATION.

  * * *

  La Divina stretched her ripe, red mouth as wide as if she were projecting a perfect high C to the dome of La Scala, then firmly clamped her lips around the penis. Slowly, she pushed her mouth over the smooth flesh. With satisfaction, La Divina thought that no younger woman, however beautiful, could do this as well as she. Twenty years of practice kept the rhythm steady and helped her to sense if she was going too slow, too fast, or too gently (the most frequent male complaint) as Spyros rubbed against the roof of her mouth. Oops! Spyros twitched and La Divinia nearly gagged, as her uvula made an involuntary movement. That’s what happened if you lost your concentration. It should feel, to the man, as sensuously satisfying as having a hand sucked by a newborn calf.

  Suddenly the thought of calves and kittens and puppies came into her mind, and La Divina seemed to see a view of herself on the bed from a corner of the ceiling. Oh, Heavens, why was she doing this? It really wasn’t an act of love, mouthing this bratwurst with such care. It was a wellpracticed, pathetic act of desperation, a sensual bribe, her last resort, inspired by despair at the thought of losing Spyros and all that he stood for. Her love was no longer love, it was fear; the fear of being abandoned, of public humiliation, of being alone. La Divina sucked harder. How much longer was he going to take? She would start counting the thrusts. Ten … twenty … forty … She started to get cramp in her jaw.

  The fey young men who had formed La Divina’s entourage when she was the world’s most adored diva now sniggered that her mellifluous voice had failed because of the damage done to laryngeal tissues by her bedroom practices. But La Divina no longer cared about the gossip, which rustled through the opera houses of the world, about her affair with the Stiarkoz brothers. She was deathly tired of that demanding circus, the adoring audiences who would shout for blood as readily as for the thirtieth curtain call. Buenos Aires had been a nightmare. She had adequately performed the first half of the recital, then halfway through the aria from Norma she had failed to reach high C and an almost crowlike harshness had crept into her lower notes.

  There had been catcalls, jeers and howls of laughter. On the following day, when she read her notices, La Divina had cancelled the rest of her tour and fled back to Europe and the sanctuary of the yacht Persephone which was cruising the Greek Islands. Last night, she had been reunited with Spyros. Now, all that she cared about was hiding from the world with this man in one of their private places—on his island or his yacht. She wanted to forget that she had ever been a prima donna, to forget the anxiety, the responsibility, as well as the honeyed applause. She wanted only to pass her days in sensual reverie and her evening hours feeling him move into her hungry body, thrusting a reason for living back into her immaculately maintained shell.

  “I had forgotten how good it feels to be with you.” Spyros slowly drew his blunt fingertips down the fullness of her left breast until he reached the hard dark peak.

  But I h
ave forgotten nothing, thought La Divina. She remembered living in a mist of unhappiness after Jo Stiarkoz, as if hypnotized, had abandoned her for that bitch, Lili. It had happened overnight, and La Divina had at first felt numb with misery, then suspended in a miasma of pain and loss. For weeks that grew into months, La Divina lived in a trance of shock, sorrow, and humiliation. Finally, she became apathetic; she couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed, to get dressed, to go out, or to see anyone. When Jo Stiarkoz had been killed in a car crash, La Divina did not (as everyone expected) become hysterical upon hearing the news, because she had been mourning Jo for years.

  And then, one day, shortly after Jo’s death, her maid had brought to her bedroom a willow basket planted with spring flowers. Twisted between the miniature cyclamen and wood anemones La Divina had found a delicate eighteenth-century diamond collar of rose-cut stones linked by fine bows of smaller brilliants. The card read “Spyros Stiarkoz.” She smiled. This would only be the beginning, she knew. He would not expect her to thank him, but to wait for his next move.

  The next morning she had unwrapped the warm croissant on her breakfast tray and a pair of matching diamond earrings fell from the pink napkin. As she held one, dangling to the light, her bedside telephone rang. “I’ve just finished my calls to Hong Kong—may I see you?” asked Spyros Stiarkoz, without introducing himself. La Divina guessed what Spyros meant, because his older brother, Jo, had always preferred to make love in the early morning, after the Hong Kong trading had finished or late at night, after the American markets had closed.

  Two hours after receiving the earrings, La Divina had been standing on the deck of the Persephone. The tang of the sea had mingled with Spyros’ faint odor of starch, cigar smoke and clean, warm flesh. That night, before she had a chance to undress, he had quietly appeared in her stateroom. Without a word, he had moved forward and silently held her against him, for a long time.

  Then, with care, he had softly pulled at the shoulder of her topaz satin gown. She had not moved as he pulled the dress down to her waist, then bent his lips to her large, dark nipples and kissed them lightly, feeling the buds grow hard. Then he had sucked hard at them, and fierce stabs of pleasure had shot, almost painfully, between her legs as he held the tips of her breasts softly between his teeth, then teased them with his tongue, and La Divina had shuddered as life washed into her body once more. Although she had scarcely begun to moisten, she had pulled Spyros close to her, hungering for his vital hardness, feeling the warmth of his erection through the thin silk of his navy dressing gown.

  They had fallen back on the bed and she had felt his hand softly, slowly, stroking her inner thighs, higher and higher. Still, he made no sound but, as he reached her mound of Venus and started to softly stroke it, she rose eagerly against the rhythm of his hand, feeling no anxiety, no necessity to hurry, just the certainty of her eventual orgasm. When she climaxed, her whole body arched in ecstasy, then she felt for the head of his penis and guided it into her; their mouths were together and their fingers entwined.

  Later, she had sobbed with gratitude as Spyros held her to his hairy damp chest.

  Slowly, La Divina’s confidence, career, and greedy appetite for life had revived and now, six years later, she knew the responses of Spyros Stiarkoz’s body better than the power of her capricious voice.

  Yes, I have forgotten nothing, La Divina thought, as she lay against the body of Spyros Stiarkoz. She would always remember what he had done for her. Why, when she had telephoned two days ago from Buenos Aires, after cancelling her tour, he had comforted her and told her to fly straight back to Athens.

  She had only arrived this morning but his helicopter had been waiting to carry her to the Persephone, which was anchored off Aegina.

  That afternoon, they had made love for over an hour, until both were exhausted and sweating, but Spyros had been unable to have an erection. Afterward, La Divina had, silently, considered all the possible reasons. Of course, Spyros would never see sixty again. Perhaps he had a health problem; ten different sorts of tablets and capsules stood on the tray beside the gold dolphin faucets in his bathroom.

  This evening La Divina was determined to arouse him. Now, as her throat accepted the flesh she loved so much, she ran her fingers lightly up his thighs, softly raked his buttocks with her fuchsia nails, then plunged her fingers into his dense pubic hair. But, as she massaged the sensitive area behind the base of his testicles, she felt his balls begin to slacken away from his body and realized that she was not getting the usual response.

  La Divina hollowed her cheeks and sucked harder. But it was no good. Spyros’s erection had faded.

  Finally she pulled away, and looked at him, her eyes filling with anxious tears. Spyros seemed completely unconcerned as he said, “It will be fine later, darling, I promise you.”

  “No, no!” She broke into noisy sobs. “It’s different, isn’t it? What have you done with that creature, that now you can’t make love to me?”

  Spyros did not reply, because there was no point in saying anything to her when she was determined to make a scene. And, in fact, he was extremely worried about his lack of response. Nothing like this had happened since he had started taking the serum.

  “It’s not enough for you to have Zeus Air! It’s not enough for you to have more tankers and bigger tankers than Jo had in his fleet!”

  La Divina started hitting the cream linen sheets with her clenched fists, and crying louder. “It’s not enough that the Persephone is ten meters longer than Jo’s yacht! It’s not enough that you have me!”

  Spyros sighed. The first tantrum after twenty-four hours of peace. Ashtrays would be flying within five minutes.

  “It’s not enough that I love you, Spyros, more than I ever loved your brother! Don’t you realize that nothing will ever be enough to make you feel you’ve beaten Jo?” La Divina started to hit his hard, gray-haired chest with her clenched fists. “But now I know what you want. I didn’t think it was true, but it is. You want Lili as well. Don’t try to deny it. I saw that photograph of you two in the New York Post, last November, at the opera. Dozens of kind friends sent me the clipping. You remember, I was singing in Sydney. The press was on my neck the next day. Had I any comment, they wanted to know? I had to smile pleasantly, say no, no comment, and then step out on that stage!”

  So she had known about Lili. And for ten months she had not mentioned it. Such emotional self-control was rare in La Divina.

  “I promise you, darling, I haven’t spoken to Lili for months.” No, Spyros thought, but Lili had been on his mind every day since he had touched her. La Divina’s instinct was uncanny.

  Spyros had wanted Lili’s succulent body for added reasons that he did not care to acknowledge. Certainly, Lili had rejected him, but Spyros never gave up. When anyone opposed him in business, Spyros single-mindedly concentrated on destroying that person. When Spyros wanted something for his collection of Greek antiquities, he was prepared to wait for it—sometimes for years—and he was prepared to pay far, far above the market value for something he really desired. He was very rich, and because he was growing old, there was very little in life that he wanted.

  But he wanted Lili.

  Now, he briefly kissed the hand of La Divina and returned to his cabin, pausing to admire the purple silhouette of Aegina against the darkening Greek sky.

  Back in his own suite, Spyros telephoned for the ship’s doctor and then showered. Afterward, one milliliter of serum was injected into his muscular left buttock, which was then respectfully swabbed. The serum was provided by the Swiss clinic that Spyros attended every winter for a week. The precious drug was cultured from the gonadal tissue of embryo pigs; within an hour it would make the sixty-eight-year-old as virile as a fifteen-year-old, Spyros hoped as he dressed. By midnight, La Divina would have dried her tears; she would be exhausted and contented and, he hoped, as his valet fastened his platinum cufflinks, she would also be quiet. Thank God she didn’t know about the telegram, which had arriv
ed that morning.

  There was a knock at the door and a white uniformed aide entered, holding a paper. “Just came over the radio, sir. They’ve located Judy Jordan’s hotel in Istanbul. Mr. Menecik at the Turkish Foreign Ministry has radioed back to you, offering his services and Mr. Vlassos of Interpol will be available in twenty minutes.”

  September 3, 1979

  * * *

  Across the road from the Sydonite Embassy, the ducks sailed serenely on the pond in St. James’s Park. Abdullah stared at them, then looked up in surprise as Pagan, wearing a blue Japanese kimono and no makeup, burst into his library, brandishing the Daily Mail.

  “Abdi, this is terrible!”

  Abdullah, who had already signed a thick folder of decrees and state instruments, used the peaceful morning hours to read his most important reports. Now, he put down the précis of his Intelligence Department’s Washington report.

  “Look what it says in the Daily Mail!” Pagan read aloud, “‘Angelface Harris and Lili, Kidnap drama.’” She looked up at Abdullah. “Lili’s been snatched in Istanbul! Judy’s still there. I must telephone her straightaway.”

  Abdullah waved his bodyguard out of the room. “Does anyone know the identity of the kidnappers or what they want?”

  “No idea who they are, but it says here that they’ve demanded ten million dollars from Angelface Harris. Judy will be frantic!” Pagan loped around the large library, her untidy hair unbrushed, her kimono flying out behind her. As she passed Abdullah’s desk, she caught her kimono sleeve on a silver tray and impatiently tugged at it. The filing tray fell to the floor, scattering a pile of papers and a telegram. Adbullah jumped up, picked up the telegram and stuffed it in his pocket, then started to shove the papers back onto the silver tray. Pagan was so distraught that she did not notice this strange action. Normally, Abdullah would have pressed a button on the floor beneath his desk, whereupon a blackrobed secretary would have entered and picked up the papers.