Daisy was wearing a dress from Gene London’s Gramercy Park Shop made of antique Victorian panels. It had cost four thousand dollars to rework the rare material into a dress that didn’t look like a costume, a dress that floated almost transparently from her half-bare shoulders, with wide, long sleeves, like wings. The color of the frail, old ivory lace against her skin was entrancing, and the hairdresser had pulled her hair up and away from her face with a twist of silk ribbons, as green as the color of the meadow, and then let it fall down simply at the back.
“No helicopter here,” North decreed, when he saw the Traquair location. “The rotors would blow the grass and flowers flat. There’s only one way to get this shot right Mary-Lou, get me a Hovercraft”
“Who is she, when she’s at home?” asked Wingo.
“Mary-Lou,” North rapped out. “Hovercraft”
“As large as the ones that cross the English Channel or a smaller version?” she intoned, expressionlessly.
“As small as you can get Since it rides on a cushion of air, a few feet above the ground, or above the water, as the case may be—are you listening, Wingo, you ignorant lout—it’ll look as if we’re lighter than air. What I want in this entire scene is the viewpoint of a butterfly, not a bird, not a bee, but a dipping, gliding, lazy, fucking butterfly.”
“What keeps it up?” Wingo asked suspiciously.
“Keep your eyes open. Maybe you’ll find out,” North answered.
As Mary-Lou went off, looking quietly pleased with herself, to conjure up a Hovercraft, North said, loudly enough so that Wingo and Daisy could hear him, “Damn that broad.”
“North, she’s only being efficient,” Daisy protested.
“Yeah. But why does she have to be so fucking surreptitious about it?”
“That’s not fair. She’s just doing her job.”
“Daisy, do me a favor, will you? Try not to explain my prejudices to me?”
When Patrick Shannon made a deal, he liked to understand both sides of it. He always knew what he intended to gain, but the other man’s motives, the reasons behind his agreement, were more fascinating. Shannon realized that he had no idea why Daisy Valensky, a rich society girl, who worked to keep from being bored, who insisted that she cherished her anonymity, would have consented to the ordeal of becoming the linchpin of an entire company’s efforts to put themselves back on the map through exploitation of her personality and persona. “Private reasons,” she had said when he’d asked. What private reasons? Why did she want a million dollars during the next three years? It didn’t make sense if she was what she was, and he couldn’t believe she was not.
For months, these questions occurred to him from time to time as he spent weeks in California, dealing in Supracorp’s entertainment division, as he flew back and forth twice to Tokyo and once to France. This gap in his understanding bothered him like a grape skin stuck between his teeth. He suspected that he’d fallen into some sort of trap, that something was going on over which he was not quite in control, but the never ending pressures of running a conglomerate had prevented him from digging into the matter.
He had no trusted second-in-command with whom to discuss this unusual state of affairs, nor was he the kind of man who could speculate with a chosen cohort. At Supracorp, either the employees accepted the fact that, at any time, Shannon might step personally into their domains, or they quit. But they never had to worry about a court favorite screwing things up between themselves and the man at the top. Problems, pressures, tensions, the cat’s cradle of thrust and counterthrust of corporate politics were pure joy to Shannon and he had no urge to share them. But he hated operating in an unclear area and, as Patrick Shannon inspected the folder of publicity material Candice Bloom had built up on Daisy, now a respectable pile of photographs and interviews, he decided to fly to England to see what the hell was going on.
As the chauffeur-driven Daimler carried him from Heathrow to Bath, where North and company were staying during the shoot of the final commercial at Berkeley Castle, Shannon realized that he was attaching a unique importance to the Elstree problem. He’d never visited the locations of any of the dozens of commercials which were made yearly for various Supracorp products. He paid people well to do just that. When had this begun, he asked himself. When had Elstree stopped becoming a worrying trouble spot on the conglomerate balance sheet and turned into something almost personal? Damned if he knew. But he’d soon find out. He instructed his chauffeur not to stop at the hotel in Bath, but to continue on to the location.
“Where are the commercials being shot?” he asked the man who sold him his three-shilling ticket in front of the gray stone keep which dated from 1153.
“Beg your pardon, Sir?”
“Americans, with cameras,” he said.
“All over the place, Sir.”
“No, I mean big cameras—lights—for television,” he explained impatiently.
“Oh, them, Sir—yes, they’ll be in the Bowling Alley, I believe.”
“Could you tell me where it is and I’ll …”
“Straight through the Castle, Sir. Here, Mildred, you attend to the tickets. I’ll show this gentleman to the Bowling Alley,” the man said, glad of a chance to get a glimpse of the goings-on. “Right up these stairs, Sir,” he said, as Shannon followed him into the vast pile of stone. “Now here, Sir, you have the room in which Edward the Second was murdered,” he said proudly, pausing for effect “And that hole in the corner goes down to the dungeon!”
“Could we just keep going?” Shannon said, without hiding his impatience. His guide sniffed in surprise. All visitors like to linger in the infamous chamber and peep into the dungeon. However he went on, old and walking at his own pace, through a narrow door into the later parts of the huge savage building, leading Shannon as quickly as he could through the Picture Gallery and the Dining Room and the fourteenth-century Kitchen and Buttery—the only way to get to the other side of the Castle.
“Sinks of solid lead, Sir?” he said, hoping for a pause. Patrick Shannon groaned to himself as, silently, he navigated the Buttery, which led to the China Room, and the China Room led to the Housekeeper’s Room and eventually to the Great Hall.
“Are we getting nearer?” he finally asked, surveying the unexpected immensity of the Great Hall.
“Ah, well, there’s still the Grand Stairs, and the Long Drawing Room and the Morning Room and the Small Drawing Room—we’re a bit more than halfway, Sir,” said his guide encouragingly, beginning to walk the sixty-two feet of the Great Hall with an air of proud possession, wondering why this strangely uninquisitive visitor didn’t want to know more of the history of this most famous of castles that had been and still was inhabited by the very same family that had built it eight hundred years ago. Why, he thought, indignantly, Berkeleys had lived at Berkeley since before the Magna Carta. Twenty-four generations of them.
Since his guide was obviously neither inclined nor able to hurry, Shannon resigned himself to following, feeling at each step a plucking in his chest that refused to go away, a queer, peevish, nervous twanging of some chord of impatient longing. Damnation, why couldn’t the man walk faster?
Eventually, they came out on the south front of the Castle and there, below them, Shannon recognized the clutter of cables and equipment he had been waiting so expectantly to see. There it all was at one end of a long rectangle of close-cropped lawn flanked by a tall, creeper-covered wall on one side and great old yews on the other. But no people were visible. “Where are they?” he asked his guide.
“I should expect they’re having tea, Sir.”
“Christ! Oh, sorry—but I’m in a hurry.”
“So I gathered, Sir.”
“Well, then, where would they be having their tea?” Shannon asked, biting out each syllable politely.
The old man pointed out a charming country house at a little distance, surrounded by trees. “The Berkeley Hunt stables and kennels, Sir. That’s where they parked those great lorries of theirs.”
Pat wheeled on him. “Then I could have come the way they came?”
“Ah, certainly—but then you would have missed the Castle, Sir,” the man reproached him.
Shannon left him standing without another word and strode hurriedly down the terraces which would lead to the stables. Below the deserted Bowling Alley lay a lily pond on the other side of which was a stone staircase that he hoped would open out onto the meadows and the trees. He was almost running as he crossed the lawn to the lily pond.
“Are you looking for someone, or just lolling about?”
He spun around. Daisy was sitting on a low stone wall, barefoot, a mug of tea on the grass beside her. She laughed at him with the lavishness of one who knows her beauty is inexhaustible. He stopped and looked at her.
“I was in the neighborhood …”
“So you thought you’d drop by,” she finished. “Here, have my tea.” She held the mug up to him and he took it, automatically sitting down on the wall. “Anyone who makes it through that Castle needs a stimulant—I wish I had some brandy for you.”
He drank the entire mug of sweet, still-hot liquid. That strange, unnerving, nagging tugging in his chest had gone, dissolved into a feeling he couldn’t identify or name, a feeling which brought with it a rush of pure gladness.
“Your tea’s all gone,” he said, struggling to repress what he knew would be an idiotic grin.
“Not a hundred yards from us is an entire trailer filled with people completely devoted to brewing tea, day and night, night and day—not to worry,” she said.
“Okay—how’s it going?”
“Very well. We should be finished by tomorrow. Today I was working with the dogs, walking them on that lawn you just came over—it might have been easier if the story board hadn’t specified lurchers.”
“Oh, damn—that was my fault.”
“I knew it was—we had to send them back—too excited—and now we’re waiting for some dogs who don’t go crazy every time they smell a bird or a rabbit They almost pulled my arm off. They just wouldn’t listen to North.” She started to laugh again and he joined in. The idea of two skulking, criminal lurchers daring to disobey North’s commands struck them both as the most irresistibly agreeable thing they had heard of in their lives.
“Oh … oh …” Daisy gasped, “nobody else thought it was a joke, let me tell you … he kept saying, ‘I’ll kill the person who wrote that story board, kill.’ But don’t worry … I didn’t tell.”
Shannon suddenly stopped laughing. “Your arm … is it all right?”
“Of course.”
He took her hand and turned it over. The palm was hot, red and swollen where she’d been gripping the leashes for hours. He stared at it for a moment and then lifted it and pressed her palm gently, remorsefully, to his cheek.
“Forgive me,” he muttered.
“It doesn’t matter … really,” she said in a low voice. Her other hand reached out and touched his dark hair, lifting the lock which lay on his forehead. He raised his head and looked at her. He kissed her feverish palm. They drew apart, still looking at each other.
“And just what the fuck are you doing here?” North demanded in furious surprise, coming around the corner.
23
Five days later, North and Luke sat wordlessly in North’s screening room. They had just finished seeing the rough cut of all three Elstree commercials.
“What can I say?” Luke asked finally, pushing his words through the wall of North’s frosty, unfamiliar indifference.
“You’ll think of something.”
“I don’t have to tell you it’s the best work you’ve ever done?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t have to tell you these will be the best fragrance commercials ever made?”
“Nope.”
“Can I just thank you?”
“I consider myself thanked. Could you just stop gushing, Luke? I’d take that as a favor.”
“Right! Oh … Kiki wanted to ask you if you had any idea when Daisy’ll be coming back—she hasn’t heard a word.”
“No idea.”
“Well, I’m going to call Shannon.” Luke turned away from the uncomfortable atmosphere his friend had created. “Christ, wait till he sees these!” he said eagerly, picking up the phone and dialing Supracorp’s number. He spoke to one of Shannon’s secretaries briefly and hung up, disappointed.
“Apparently he’s in England on business—his secretary didn’t have any idea when he’ll be back.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Huh? Oh. OH! Oh, my God, wait till Kiki hears … so that’s what’s wrong with you … oh, shit! I’m sorry, North, that was totally stupid and tactless of me …”
“It could not possibly matter less,” North said, spitting out each word venomously.
“No, no, of course not. I don’t even know what made me say it.” Luke was as close to dithering as he’d ever come. “I’ve got softening of the brain, probably coming down with Chinese flu, everyone in the office has it” Hastily he returned to business. “When will you have an answer print? Until these spots are completely edited and scored I don’t want anyone to see them. The whole cosmetic industry is rip-off city.”
“Two—two and a half weeks.”
“Well, I’ve got to get back to the shop. Let me know the instant they’re ready—okay? The sooner the better—put as many people on it as you have to. They’ve got to start to run well before Thanksgiving. And North—thank you again. There’s no way anyone but you could have pulled it off.”
“You can do me a favor, Luke. Next time you want a job done with a fucking amateur, give it to somebody else. I don’t need the hassle,” North said viciously.
“Right. You’ve got it. Talk to you soon? Take care of that flu,” Luke said, getting out of the room as quickly as possible and ignoring North’s roar that Luke was the one who was sick, not him. It just didn’t seem like the appropriate time to remind North about being best man at the wedding. And he could hardly call Kiki and tell her how magnificent, how wonderful, how preposterously perfect Daisy had been, and he seriously doubted that North would have appreciated his using the studio phone for that. On second thought, wouldn’t Kiki be more interested in the news about Daisy and Shannon in England? Where was the pay phone, damn it?
During the last day of the shoot at Berkeley Castle, Shannon had been unable to stay away. Although he removed himself as far as he could from the scene of the action, he kept edging closer and closer, without realizing it until a look or a word from one of the crew, or a cable grazing his foot would remind him that he was in their way. He watched, in a trance, as Daisy and an actor walked the length of the Bowling Alley with two well-trained miniature collies, the gray-lavender walls of the great keep visible on their left.
He was in a most peculiar state, Shannon told himself. Most peculiar. It would seem, he thought, trying to analyze himself, that he felt something that could certainly be called a decided preference for Daisy. She seemed to be the person he most wanted to be with. All the time. Just why this was so, he didn’t yet understand. It wasn’t as if she’d done anything to make this so. She simply was. That was what puzzled him so mightily.
Patrick Shannon had, from the time he was a young man, been able to spot the inner truths of other people the way a stag could sense a doe in the forest. He moved on instinct, intuition and an inner knowledge based on a hundred perceived clues that had proven, time after time, to be reliable and valid. Ambition, talent, fear, goodness, pettiness, honesty—he could sniff them in the air. If he’d been a mystic he would have said he could see them like auras around people’s heads. And because he so firmly believed in the accuracy of his senses, he used them. In the corporate power world this ability translated itself directly into action.
But today he felt as if his sense of the realistic had been switched off and his instincts were as unstable as King Arthur’s had been when he’d wandered into the charmed circle of M
organ le Fay. What, after all, did he know about Daisy? He discarded as worthless evidence their meeting in Middleburg and the time he’d seen her in North’s studio. Dinner at Le Cirque? The laughing girl he’d sat with on the wall yesterday just was not the same grandly reticent woman he’d dined with at Le Cirque no the pleasant, proper, aloof young princess he’d introduced to the Supracorp division heads from time to time during the last few months. Last night, when everyone had eaten together at the Toad in the Hole in Bath, she’d been very silent, exhausted from the day perhaps, or just quiet. And now, today, she was different again.
Daisy was wearing the same dress she’d worn yesterday, a simple turtleneck dress made from the softest wool woven in shades from pale fawn to rich brown, with rust and bark and berry mixed into a subtle woodland conspiracy. It just brushed her high breasts and was lightly caught by a chain of woven gold at her waist. Daisy called it her Maid Marion dress and wore it with boots of thin, russet leather. Shannon thought it looked like a dress of spicy feathers. Each time she came to the line, “I wear it every day,” she pulled the brown velvet ribbon off the one heavy braid which lay over her right shoulder and shook free the silver of her hair. As she did this, time and again, he could think of no other word to express what he saw: she was a star. Everyone there, every single person on the location, had no reason for existence except to record her walking on that centuries-old lawn. Yes, North told her what to do, but he couldn’t tell her how to do it—that spirited, natural grace had to come from her. No one could make her up to look so virginal and yet so fruitful. No one could bestow on her that combination of gentle approachability just touched with an air that said, unmistakably, that she was far, very far, from the girl next door.
Princess Daisy Page 49