Princess Daisy

by Judith Krantz

  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 bale
ful, 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.

  Dear Maman,

  I had a discussion with Ram last night which makes it impossible for me to remain here one minute more. I’ll be back in Paris by this afternoon. I have a key to the apartment so don’t worry. Please make my apologies to Anabel and thank her for the time I’ve spent here. I’d rather not explain any further, but I couldn’t stay. Don’t be upset.

  Love,

  Jean-Marc

  Astonished, Isabelle took the note to Anabel.

  “Ma chérie, does this make the slightest bit of sense to you?”

  “Ram? I don’t understand it at all. What on earth could Ram have had to do with it? If he’d had a fight with Daisy I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if poor Jean-Marc disappeared—but Ram?”

  “I’m going to ask him,” said Isabelle, with serious maternal irritation. She and Anabel began to search the house.

  Before lunch that day, Daisy had taken her sketch pad and gone to one of her favorite, secret places in the woods, a sweet-smelling eucalyptus grove thickly carpeted with aromatic leaves, from which there was a clear view of a small farmhouse. She often spent long hours drawing there, listening to the faint sounds of the barnyard far below, completely hidden from the world. Her triumph of the night before had left her languid, too lazy to get down to work, and she had stretched out on the leaves and slept for hours. She woke to hear footsteps crashing through the wooded trails. Curious, she peered out from her hiding place and saw Ram walking at a fast pace.

  “Ram, I’m here,” she called, sleepily.

  Ram entered the grove and stood directly in front of her, without a greeting. Daisy looked up at him and laughed. “If you’ve come to see my view, you happen to be blocking it.”

  He threw himself down at her side, on the leaves, and roughly, silently, knocked the sketch book out of her hands. Then he took all her precious pencils and broke them in two and threw the pieces away furiously. Daisy watched him, speechless, incredulous.

  “I’ve gotten rid of Jean-Marc so you needn’t bother to go dangling yourself in front of him like a slut anymore!” he burst out in a strangled voice. “That exhibition last night was the last straw—I’ve never seen anything so disgusting, so degrading in my life—the way you slobbered over every sailor, every fisherman, every damned farmer—they must be calling you the cock tease of Honfleur!”

  “What?” Daisy didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Don’t pretend that you don’t understand exactly what I mean—all dressed up, pressing yourself against the local idiots—everything for everybody! And as for your love, your precious Jean-Marc, I told him that maybe it’s done in France to come to visit and seduce the daughter of the house, but only a filthy, rotten swine would be such a shit.”

  “Seduce? But you’re insane. Oh, Ram, I only let him kiss me on the cheek—he’s fun, that’s all, I swear it. How could he be my love? You’ve got it all wrong,” Daisy said, gazing indignantly at Ram, her voice ringing with truth and surprise. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, stubbornly holding on to his jealous anger, his face set in disbelief. “Ram, look at me,” Daisy commanded. “Do I look as if I’m lying to you?” She put out her hand and tried to turn his head toward her, but, at her touch, he flinched away, making an animal sound of protest. “No, no, Ram, that’s just not fair!” Daisy cried out. And innocently, out of her lack of sophistication, moved by an impulse to heal the hurt she saw on his beloved, sullen face, with fatal simplicity, she kissed him full on his stern mouth.

  The gesture obliterated sanity for Ram. Groaning, he took her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. He kissed her hair over and over again, shaking in every limb with repressed emotion, half-rage, half-desire. He tried, for one brief moment, not to kiss her lips but a red wind of passion drew him to them.

  He gave up the struggle and devoured her lips with his own, kissing her as if he were dying of thirst and her mouth were a moist fruit. Daisy, amazed, innocently and awkwardly returned his kisses giving herself up to the joy of realizing that Ram, whom she had never stopped loving since she first saw him, Ram who had always been the secret hero of her dreams, Ram from whom she had hopelessly begged a smile or even a mere word, was holding her tight, being kind to her, good to her, kissing her.

  She abandoned herself to the comfort of this fulfillment of years of yearning, all thoughts blotted out. Daisy, who had never been kissed on the lips before, made the discovery of the mouth of another, of the roughness of his shaven cheeks, of the hardness of teeth, the wetness of his tongue. She kissed him back as if each kiss could bring back the life she had carelessly romped and reveled in, bring back happiness, kiss it into returning.

  Daisy gave herself so completely to the happiness of being—after so many years—held and kissed by Ram, that she didn’t realize that he had opened the buttons of her thin shirt until she felt his mouth move down to the nipples of her breasts. The feeling was the most exquisite she’d ever known—his beloved mouth tugging on the tender, sensitive buds—a feeling too new, so rapturously new and good that tears stung her eyes. In a flash Daisy felt all the intimations of physical passion she had never localized before, this girl to whom a gallop on a bright morning had been the height of pleasure of the body. Her pale, pale pink nipples grew firm and pinker as he kissed them, holding her breasts in each of his hands, and her head fell back on her willing neck as she surrendered to his lips and his fingers, feeling his hair against her shoulder, unhearing, unthinking, a creature of feeling only. She was dazed, almost paralyzed by the electric flashes of desire which were whipping through her body, when suddenly she returned to reality. Ram was fumbling at the waistband of her shorts, trying to take them off. She pushed him away as hard as she could, but he used all his strength against her sudden panic, her belated realization. She struggled with him, her mind a jungle of confusion. What had happened? How had it happened? What was going to happen? Soon, in spite of all her efforts, she was naked, her brown and white body revealed in all its terrified beauty.

  “No! No!” she panted, “please, no!” But Ram was deaf to her pleas, deaf to her sobs. His face was as inhuman as a spear as he bent over her body. Nothing, no one could stop him now. In an ecstasy of lust he pried open her thighs and quickly, pouncing, found the opening he had to find, and drove himself into her, pounding brutally through the tender flesh because she was a virgin and he had to have her or die of anger and need.

  Daisy’s mind stopped working. Spangles of red and white and black exploded in her brain like the fireworks of the night before. Even as she groaned, even as she grunted in violent protest, she clung to his plunging body because, more than anything, she was desperate for reassurance that this cruel stranger was Ram, her Ram—only that knowledge would prevent her from being annihilated.

  Afterward it was the man who sobbed and the girl who held and comforted him, kissing his dark hair and whispering, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” clinging to him like the survivor of a vast tempest, eucalyptus leaves sticking to her back, the mingled smell of sweat and sperm rising to her nostrils for the first time in her life, her thighs stained with blood which she blotted away with pages of the broken sketch pad. When Daisy looked at Ram, his head hidden in her arms, prodigal flares of dark light came from her eyes. Although, instinctively, she tried to reassure him, she was herself drowning in a murky pool of feelings, totally foreign in a life in which she had always seen her way clearly and cleanly. Daisy
was filled with her awakened knowledge of physical desire but it was mixed with a kind of shame she had never known before. Her whole mind and body ached with acute conflict and resentment. She wanted to bite, to kick, to shriek to high heaven, to faint, to run away. She wanted to go back to where she had been only an hour ago, but she knew already that there was no return. Deep within her something sounded, as if the string of a great cello had been plucked, a note of remote, mysterious but unmistakable warning.

  When they finally returned to the house, the sunset was so brilliant that it partially blinded the eyes of anyone looking toward the woods which lay between the house and the horizon. The rest of the de Luciny family, having been unable to find Ram or come to any satisfactory explanation of the mystery of Jean-Marc’s departure, had hastily packed and left for Paris. Anabel was in the salon, as Ram and Daisy materialized out of the woods, several feet separating them from each other. Daisy turned quickly and disappeared, entering the house, almost running, but Anabel was able to collar Ram before he started up the stairs.