Lace (41 page)

When the car drew up before the famous and now familiar tombs there was no moon. Kate looked across the car expectantly, waiting to be pounced upon. Robert thought he might as well get it over
with. Adopting a pained expression, he said, “Darling, uh, I’ve been thinking a lot about
us
—and, darling, I hope this isn’t going to hurt you dreadfully—but I
don’t think it’s a very good idea.”

Kate didn’t absorb what he was saying. “What isn’t a very good idea?”

“Us getting married, that is. You’ve been here two months now and I felt—almost as soon as you arrived—I felt that I’d made a mistake. Although at first I thought
that I should go through with it.” He looked sideways at her.

She was stunned. “You mean wait longer? To get married you mean?”

Slowly, firmly, Robert shook his head. “I mean, call it off, darling.”

Kate was bewildered, disbelieving. “What have I done? What’s different? What’s happened?”

“It’s nothing that you’ve done or that I’ve done, darling, it’s just that, well, the
chemistry
isn’t there,” he said looking at her with rather
theatrical regret, a touch reproachful almost.

Kate was stunned. She was also ashamed and humiliated. She didn’t know what to say or do.

“I’ve already spoken about it to my father some time ago,” Robert continued with smooth sorrow, “and he suggested that I wait until I was
quite
sure before talking
to you about it. I know it’s hard on a girl when a man changes his mind, but it’s just as well I found out
before
we got married. Dad says he’ll do anything he can to help.
He was awfully decent about it, awfully thoughtful. He said you might find it humiliating to stay in Cairo when everybody knows that we’re . . . well, that we’ve both . . . that I . . .
that I don’t want . . . that we’re not. . . .” He didn’t have to continue.

“I want to go home,” said Kate in a whisper. “I want to go home as fast as possible.” Suddenly Kate longed to be with her mother, someone simple, loving and undemanding.
She felt soiled, rejected.

The next morning Robert came to Kate’s bedroom. Her face was white and she lay limp on the bed. Robert was calm but concerned, rather as if Kate had flu. He had no idea that it would be so
easy. Once again, Dad had been right. “Dad’s been able to pull a few strings and he’s arranged for you to fly back today if that’s really what you wish,” he said,
“but there was only one seat on the plane, so perhaps it’s just as well if you let Pagan stay here until the end of the week. After all, this isn’t
her
fault. . .
.”

Oh, he
does
know that I faked, thought Kate, he knows I’m frigid.

“And it won’t look as odd as if you both suddenly disappeared. We don’t want people to talk. Pagan can say her good-byes and explain that you were suddenly called back on a
personal matter.”

Home. Oh, God. Kate dreaded breaking this news to her father. She could already hear him—“So you made a mess of it? Let him make a bloody fool of you! You went
all that way
just to be made a bloody fool of, eh? I hope you realise that everybody’s going to think you’re a bloody fool.”

All she could think about on the long plane journey back to Britain was how her father was going to take the news. Her dread of his reaction even outweighed the misery and shame she felt as a
result of Robert’s behaviour. And Kate was right.

Both her parents were standing waiting at the airport barrier, her mother looking sad and her father scowling. He barely said anything to Kate until they had climbed into the Rolls, when he
slammed the glass panel shut so the chauffeur couldn’t hear, turned to Kate and said, “I hope you realise you’ve made a bloody fool of yourself!”

But for once Kate’s mother stood up to him. “Don’t you dare say another word to that poor girl,” she said quite loudly.

And for the first time since she’d heard Robert’s news, Kate burst into tears.

T
O HER ASTONISHMENT
,
Pagan returned from Alexandria to find that not only had Kate disappeared but that she had left no message. Robert was
looking desolate. “She’s chucked me,” he said. He unclenched his fist to show the marquise diamond ring. “She even insisted on giving me the ring back.”

Pagan gasped at it. “I can’t
believe
that Kate did that, it’s not like her at all to be so hasty and unkind. Did you have a row?”

“No, it came as a total surprise. She just coolly told me over a drink that she’d decided the whole thing was a mistake and that she wanted to leave immediately.”

“And she didn’t leave a letter for me?”

“No (sigh), and although I’m
deeply
hurt, I can’t help thinking that if this is the way she behaves, then it’s just as well she did so before we were married,
rather than after.”

In fact, Kate had left a letter for Pagan, but Robert had opened it and read her painful, unhappy, accurate account of what had happened between them. He tore up the letter.

“And she didn’t want me to go back to London with her?”

“No, she said she was sorry she had to hurt me, but she didn’t want to spoil your holiday. She said that she had deliberately waited to tell me until you were out of the way.”
He put his head in his hands and his shoulders shook. Pagan felt wildly embarrassed and walked to the edge of the terrace. She couldn’t stand seeing men cry.

Robert’s father thought it might be more tactful if Pagan didn’t telephone England; Kate would telephone if she wished to do so. It would perhaps be better to
respect her wishes and leave her alone as she had asked. He thought that Pagan ought to wait for a letter from Kate before writing to her. So Pagan waited, but no letter arrived.

At the end of the week Pagan wrote to Kate as tactfully as possible telling Kate how upset Robert was and asking Kate to reconsider her decision. Robert offered to post the letter for her at the
bank. After a bit, Pagan wrote more letters to Kate and one worried scrawl to Kate’s mother, but she received no reply because, of course, instead of posting the letters, Robert tore them up.
It never occurred to Pagan that when Robert offered to post her letters from his office—which meant that they would go by special express courier—he did this in order to check her
correspondence; and it certainly never occurred to Pagan that her letters were being destroyed. With calm ruthlessness, Robert also intercepted Kate’s letters to Pagan and tore
them
up; this was a simple matter of getting up in the morning before Pagan, who was always served breakfast in bed.

At first, Pagan was puzzled by Kate’s refusal to write to her or even to send a postcard acknowledging the letters that Pagan wrote in her large, generous, long-looped scrawl. Then Pagan
felt hurt by Kate’s neglect of her and—finally—she felt worried. As Pagan was totally straightforward and honest, she never dreamed that Robert would suppress her letters and trap
her in a net of lies. When Pagan asked again whether she shouldn’t perhaps telephone to make sure that Kate was all right, Robert gave her a pained look and asked her whether it had occurred
to her that Kate might be ashamed of herself? Otherwise, she would surely have replied to at least
one
of Pagan’s letters.

From the moment Kate left, Robert made a determined play for Pagan, subtly supported by his father. Wherever they went they had the maximum attention, the best service and the best seats;
flowers were showered upon her, and whatever Pagan wanted, Pagan had. She appreciated these attentions and tried to forget Abdullah in this leisurely round of pleasure. Cairo was as heavily
romantic as a magnolia blossom and she was being delightfully spoiled. Pagan couldn’t think of anything that urgently needed her attention in England, unless it was to work as a shop
assistant in Peter Jones’s department store: she wasn’t academically qualified, she wasn’t trained to do any job, she was too tall to be an air hostess, she wasn’t thin
enough to be a model.

Not only was Pagan bewitched by the luxurious life of Cairo, but Robert-in-Cairo was a much more beguiling proposition than Robert-in-London, where there was plenty of competition from other
men. Cairo lacked eligible young European bachelors and the few who found themselves in the city were fiercely fought over by hostesses and flattered in the most outrageous way. Women hung on
Robert’s every word and responded to every joke he made with tinkling laughter. Pagan started to look at Robert with more appreciative eyes.

Robert bided his time until one evening after they’d been to a Christmas dance at the Semiramis. The creamy moon hung like a lotus in the sky. He had ensured that Pagan’s champagne
glass was never empty, and she was definitely giggly as they drove home. She swayed slightly as they walked toward the elevator, and Robert put his arm around her in protective fashion as they
waited.

“Merry Night! Happy Night! Good Christmas!” chortled Pagan, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss him goodnight. Then she went to her room, threw all her clothes
on the floor, fell on the bed, and immediately went to sleep.

Farther along the passage Robert adjusted the Japanese kimono that he affected as a dressing gown, pulled the sash firmly into place, then moved purposefully into Pagan’s bedroom.

Pagan woke up the next morning wondering, as many had before her, “What
have
I done?”

Robert then concentrated all his attention on a classic, whirlwind courtship, with his benevolent father beaming in the background. He brought Pagan charming little gifts—dangling golden
bell earrings, a square-cut purple amethyst as large as her thumb, a darling little pet monkey in a scarlet jacket that Pagan immediately took off the delightful little creature.

Two months later, somewhat to her surprise, Pagan and Robert were married at the British Embassy. Robert’s father gave her a pale blue Rolls Royce as a wedding present.

Almost immediately after the wedding reception, the marriage started heading for the rocks.

Pagan had never been passionately interested in sex, so at first she merely thought that all Robert needed was a bit of practice. She was wrong. A couple of months after their
marriage, she tentatively said, “Could you possibly wait for me?” He immediately stiffened, said he didn’t know what she meant and accused her of being frigid. Amiably, Pagan
agreed that she might be. “It’s just that I haven’t been so far,” she added. Robert turned purple with rage. Quoting the
Kinsey Report
, he said the average man took
two and a half minutes to climax, which meant that she was getting thirty seconds
more
than average, didn’t it?

Pagan longed to talk to somebody about it, but she felt too shy. She dearly wished she could talk to Kate to ask if it had been the same with her. Pagan wouldn’t mind asking Kate, because
she was too desperate to be embarrassed, and she thought that if Kate knew how agonised Pagan was, then Kate wouldn’t mind talking about it. But Kate hadn’t answered one of her
letters.

In fact, Kate had written a violent letter to Pagan when she heard her friend had married Robert, but Robert spotted Kate’s handwriting and fished the letter from the silver salver in the
hall. Slitting it open with his forefinger, he gave a sniff as his eyes flew over the five pages of accusation in Kate’s little, neat handwriting, every letter clear and separated, with no
loops on the down strokes or any sort of flourish, and pain in every line. Robert put the letter in the inside pocket of his suit and later tore it up in his office.

That evening—wearing his pained look—he told Pagan that he’d had a short letter from Kate, saying that she hoped he could forgive her and let bygones be bygones, that she was
now in love with a Twelfth Lancer called Jocelyn Ricketts and hoped soon to be a soldier’s wife. Pagan eagerly asked to be shown the letter. Robert looked in his inside pocket and said dash,
he seemed to have left it at the office, he’d bring it back tomorrow evening. The following evening he said, with irritation, that he’d forgotten the damn thing, and surely Pagan
realised that he had more important things to think about than a couple of scrawled lines from a woman who’d hurt him so deeply.

Pagan never again asked to see the letter, but after a few days—although Robert had distinctly told her not to do so—she locked herself in her pale blue bathroom as soon as Robert
had left for the office and booked a call to Walton Street. After a four-hour delay, her call was put through but there was no answer. All that Pagan heard was the little quiet hiccup of that
old-fashioned heavy black telephone, thousands of miles away in London. She immediately booked another call and again there was a four-hour delay and again no answer; Pagan didn’t dare book
another call because Robert was due home, but she telephoned again on the following morning.

There was no reply from Walton Street.

On the third day Pagan booked a call to Kate’s mother. This time there was only a two-hour delay and Kate’s mother answered the phone herself on the fourth ring. Oddly stiff and
formal, she said that Kate was staying in Scotland with friends. Yes, perfectly well. Yes, she and Mr. Ryan were also perfectly well, thank you.

“D’you think you could get Kate to write to me, then, or telephone?” asked Pagan.

There was a pause. The line crackled. Then, in a rush, Mrs. Ryan said, “I don’t think Kate ever wants to hear from you again. Or Robert. Kindly leave her alone.”

Then Mrs. Ryan carefully put down the receiver with no intention of upsetting her Kate by telling her daughter that Pagan had telephoned to beg forgiveness. What a nerve the girl had!

By Pagan’s first wedding anniversary, the
Kinsey Report
had been quoted at her so much that she thought perhaps she had better check if she
was
frigid. So she had an affair
with her tennis coach, a cheerful Italian with good legs, gentle hands and a voluptuous appetite. They weren’t in love, so for Pagan there was a strange, embarrassing, impersonal feeling
about the relationship at first, but Alfonso was a skillful lover and he adored everything about women.