Lace (15 page)

After her next meeting with Abdullah, Pagan returned somewhat more subdued. “I asked whether he had a ten-year-old fiancée. He looked rather displeased and pointed his chin at me
and said he did, but that it was entirely a matter of diplomacy and nothing to do with
us.
He was a bit odd for about ten minutes, then he went into his bedroom to make a telephone call
and—can you imagine—about twenty minutes later there was a knock on the sitting room door and one of those grim bodyguards came in with a little man from the Cartier boutique. He handed
Abdi a box and backed out of the door very fast. Then Abdi turned to me and gave me this blissful crimson velvet box lined with white satin, and in it, sparkling frantically at me, was an utterly
divine diamond necklace. If I hadn’t promised Grandfather, I’d have accepted it on the spot. So I told him I couldn’t accept anything from him. I don’t think he’s used
to people turning down diamond necklaces or saying no in general.”

On the following four occasions when Pagan turned up at teatime in Prince Abdullah’s suite, he tried to give her gifts of jewelry. Always a crimson velvet case was produced, but Pagan
would never so much as try on the emerald earrings, the tiara of golden birch leaves, the bracelet of aquamarine or the enormous uncut sapphire ring. But the only thing Pagan accepted, with her
mother’s permission, was Abdullah’s offer of his grandfather’s old riding cloak, which he made her reluctantly promise to wear to the ball, as a penance for not accepting his
valuable gifts. Pagan wasn’t sure that she wanted to wear a smelly old Arab horse blanket to the ball, but, she thought, she could take it off in the school bus before entering the
Imperial.

The following night there was another small dance, this time at the town hall. The girls from l’Hirondelle, wearing clumsy
après-ski
boots and tweed
overcoats over long dresses, carried drawstring cotton bags for their dancing shoes as they climbed onto the little green school bus. As usual, Mademoiselle counted each head as they got on, as she
would again when they reentered the bus to return after the dance.

Pagan had coaxed Maxine into lending her the pale-blue taffeta Christian Dior dress, although she couldn’t shed the bolero because she couldn’t pull the zipper completely up. Maxine
had tacked up the hem a couple of inches to make it ankle-length for Pagan. As she and her partner whirled around the dance floor to the music of a gypsy band, Pagan was tapped on the shoulder by
one of Abdullah’s bodyguards, ill at ease in a Western dinner jacket that was at least two sizes too large for him. “My master, the Crown Prince Abdullah, wishes to dance with
you,” he said.

“Well, he’ll have to wait,” said the Danish student who was dancing with Pagan, and moving his arm more firmly around her back, he started to dance again. The bodyguard took a
swift step forward and suddenly the Danish student was sprawled on the floor.

Pagan turned around indignantly and saw Abdullah standing in the doorway. Slowly, with a small smile, she moved over to him, propelled by his bodyguard’s iron hand in the small of her
back. Still smiling she said, “May it please your Royal Highness to tell your thugs
never
to touch me again. And remember that I’m
not
one of your subjects. You
don’t own
me
, and I shall dance with whom I please.”

Suddenly she dropped her hauteur and said in a quiet voice, “Oh, Abdi, why bother to humiliate Hans and draw attention to me?”

There was a pause, then Abdullah said stiffly, “Most regrettable. My servant was overzealous.”

“Oh stop talking like an Indian Raj phrasebook,” said Pagan crossly. “Of
course
I want to be with you, but you really can’t push people around as it suits you and
expect them to
like
you. I hate it when you’re suddenly imperious. This is just an ordinary dance, and if you didn’t want to be treated in an ordinary manner, you shouldn’t
have come.” Wickedly she added, “I hope you aren’t going to be as bossy with your poor little ten-year-old fiancée.”

Abdullah’s mouth tightened and his eyes blazed with anger. For a moment Pagan thought he might hit her, but instead he put his arm around her and they danced off in silence. Unseen by
Abdullah, Pagan blew a kiss over his shoulder to Hans, who scowled back at her.

Suddenly, Pagan found that she was trembling as she leaned against Abdullah’s muscular body—closer to him, suddenly more physically aware of him in that crowd of dancers than she had
ever been when alone in his suite. Tonight, Pagan felt different, reckless, as she felt his warm breath on the side of her neck, then the tip of his tongue against it, erotic and inviting.

For the rest of the evening Pagan moved around the dance floor in an erotic trance. As the midnight curfew approached, Abdullah looked straight into her eyes and murmured persuasively,
“Come back with me and let me show you what love is. I’ll make you feel as you’ve never felt before.”

“Mmmmm,” sighed Pagan, as his hand lightly touched the nape of her neck. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because when I was sixteen I spent three weeks in Cairo with the
hakim
Khair al Saad, who taught me how to make love, to think only of your pleasure.”

“You had lessons in
love
for
three weeks?
You studied it, like geography?” Pagan was astounded, impressed, intrigued. She longed to ask what he had learned and how it
was taught. Were there real live women or a blackboard and chalk, and what was the homework and what difference had it made? Instead, she simply blurted, “How?”

He nibbled at her earlobe and purred, “Come back to the Imperial and let me
show
you.”

Fascinated, Pagan couldn’t stop staring into those self-assured black eyes. She found herself following Abdullah toward the main door. But then she remembered her cousin, her mother, the
fiancée and the
paparazzi
, and stopping, she said with real regret, “I can’t, I simply
can’t
, Abdi. Look, Mademoiselle is waving us all to the
cloakroom.”

Aching with desire, Abdullah pulled her to him as Pagan tried to break away.

“What do you expect a man to do?”
he growled. “You arouse me and then you vanish into the night. In my country we have a name for such a woman.”

“Oh, in my country too.” Then Pagan couldn’t resist adding, “but after all, you
are
engaged to be married.”

Abdullah’s black eyes blazed again, as an impatient Mademoiselle waved a beckoning finger at Pagan. Prince or no Prince, she wanted to get to her bed. Once more Abdullah pulled Pagan tight
against his body and she felt his throbbing arousal. Then Abdullah turned on his heel and stalked angrily out of the room.

On the evening before the St. Valentine’s dance Kate burst into the bedroom. “Pagan, you slut, you didn’t clean the bath after you, there’s a grubby
ring around it.”

“But surely a bath is for cleaning
oneself
,” said Pagan, puzzled. “One does not clean
it.”

“One hasn’t up to date, but one damn well will in the future,” said Kate. “You really are the slut of the school.”

“O rage, ô désespoir.”
Pagan yelled her new curse words and threw a tattered exercise book at Kate. “I’m sick to the withers with both of you.
Kate’s always criticizing and Maxine doesn’t keep her promises.”

“I do keep my promises, you
beech!’

“You
promised
to lend me ten francs.”

“Merde
, I mean sheet, why don’t you ask your rich little Prince for ten francs? He can afford it better than I.”

“Only because you spend all your money on diet food to get skinny for a stupid ski bum who likes skiing more than he likes you.” Pagan pounced on Maxine and pummeled her.

“Ow,
merde
, sheet, ferk, dammit,
bloody
beech.”

“Stop that sexy scuffling,” Kate cried. “You know Matron already suspects that the whole school is a seething mass of lesbians. Ppppplease don’t quarrel, I can’t
bear it. Pagan didn’t mean what she said about Pierre. Of course he really loves you.”

“Of course he does. I know that, because of
it,
” Maxine said with dignity. She had wound up her hair in twists of toilet paper to curl it for the St. Valentine’s Ball on
the following night. “Especially because of the afterward, that golden glow like fireworks dying in the sky.”

There was a pause, then Kate said timidly, “Afterward is the awful part for me. I feel so jittery and weepy and sort of apart from François.”

“Mon Dieu,
I feel much
closer
to Pierre.” Maxine frowned thoughtfully at her hairbrush and speculated. “Maybe you haven’t done it
enough.
I
didn’t like it the first time with Pierre, but I didn’t want to upset him so I said nothing. I wanted him to
stay
with me, that’s all I felt at first.”

“That’s the only thing I feel with François,” Kate worried. “I’ve been doing it longer than you have, Maxine, but the last thing I feel is deep peace. When I
really feel sexy and utterly marvellous and glowing is
before
we start. The afterward is just a letdown. I mean you cling to someone for hours and hours on the dance floor, you can feel his
body against yours, you can smell it, and you rock to the music, wrapped around each other, and every time he moves you almost swoon, and you finally go the whole way because you know that it will
be
even better.
Then he puts the thing in you and suddenly everything goes flat. He’s in seventh heaven and going wild, but I’m suddenly looking down on the scene from the
ceiling and that marvellous, melting-knees feeling is gone. I want to hit him and cry.”

Perplexed, Maxine suggested, “Maybe you should relax more, Kate. Maybe you worry too much about what you
should
be doing, instead of what you
feel
like doing. I always feel
wonderful
afterward.”

“It must be because you’re French,” Kate said, gloomily.

“Don’t be silly,” said Pagan. “Maybe François hasn’t had enough practice, or maybe he’s
never
been told what to do. When Abdullah was sixteen,
he was sent to a special doctor to
learn
about love—for three weeks! Imagine! I didn’t like to ask him if he was given tests or exams.”

There was a sudden, polite, interested silence. Pagan immediately said, “You’re
wrong
—we never have, and I’m not going to say another word.”

“How do we know that story isn’t just an upmarket brand of old Arabic bullshit if you won’t talk about the consumer tests?” demanded Kate. “
We’re
coming out with our secret sexual experiences in the interests of further education, and if you won’t join in, then you can’t listen. This is
serious
for me. Maybe I’m a
freak, I’m worried.”

There was another long pause, then Pagan said, “Well, if you’re a freak, then I am too, because I felt the same way as you did. . . . But it wasn’t with Abdi, it was with Paul,
and
if you dare tell anyone, I’ll kill you.”

“So you
did.
”

“Yes,” said Pagan gloomily, “and it was
beastly.
I think sex is overrated.”

“I suspect it’s addictive,” offered Maxine, “like oysters.”

There was a bang on the door. “I don’t like
them
either.
Entrez!
”

The ancient porter carried in a huge box addressed to Pagan. The other two girls peered over her shoulder as she opened it. This time there was no tissue paper. The box was full of soft, dark
Persian lamb. There was an awed silence as Pagan lifted it out and draped it around her shoulders and pulled the hood over her tangled mahogany hair. The wonderful cloak reached to the floor.

“Oh, Christ, I mean
mon Dieu
,” said Pagan, “this isn’t what Mama expected. I’ll have to check with her or she’ll give me hell.”

After the girls had each tried on the cloak, Pagan went to the telephone to call her mother. She came back half an hour later looking vexed.

“She says that as she agreed I could have it, I can keep it, but as the cloak is valuable, I can’t wear it. I can wear it to the St. Valentine’s Ball because to do otherwise
would be discourteous, but after that I’m not to be seen in it.”

“Well, at least it will be warmer to wear at night than that rotten old bed quilt.”

So for the rest of her time at school, after lights-out, Pagan sat cross-legged on the end of Kate’s bed, wrapped from head to toe in priceless Persian lamb.

M
AXINE HAD DRESSED
her frizzed hair up in a topknot for the dance; it had taken nearly two hours to skewer it into place so
that it stayed up. Almost painfully excited, she immediately spotted Pierre.

Kate couldn’t see François. In fact it had been over a week since she’d seen François. Judy had slipped her a note in which he explained that he had to cancel their
rendezvous because his father insisted that he have extra ski coaching. Kate wished that his father wasn’t so ambitious for François, but it was understood that skiing took priority
over anything else. His father wanted him to try for the Swiss team. Kate shut her eyes to François’s faults and wouldn’t hear a word against him. She had gone All The Way
because she was in love with him. Or was it the reverse? She wished she knew.

As Pierre moved purposefully toward Maxine, Kate suddenly saw François. He was seated between two plump, dark girls with identical heavy-lidded, somnolent eyes. Kate waved at him but
François didn’t seem to notice. Someone asked her to dance so she fox-trotted around the floor and waved as she passed his table, but again François didn’t seem to see
her.

At the end of the dance Judy slipped over to Kate’s table. She was wearing a traditional Swiss costume with white blouse, tightly laced black corselet and voluminous scarlet skirt.
“I’ll be glad to stop wearing this cuckoo-clock outfit—I can’t stay long because I’m helping behind the bar. What’s up, Kate?”

When Kate explained, Judy said, “You’ve got two legs and a tongue in your head. Don’t just sit there, go over to him and say hello.”