Princess Daisy (27 page)

“Then I have a great notion. I’ve always wanted to try that spa near the boardwalk—it’s supposed to make you feel marvelous—rejuvenation therapy. First they pound you with sea water from a giant hose and whip up your circulation, then you soak in a hot tub full of bubbling sea water, then a long massage and finally they wrap you up in towels like a baby and make you rest in a deck chair for half an hour. It’s all over by tea time, and, afterward, we’d go directly out to tea and chocolate eclairs. Why don’t we try it?”

“It sounds like water torture to me,” Daisy said indifferently.

Anabel, not defeated, proposed a drive to Pont-l’Evêque to buy the cheese that has been prized since the thirteenth century, or even just lunch at the Ferme St. Siméon, at the bottom of their hill, where the Impressionists used to meet, a favorite treat for Daisy in former years. But Daisy refused all of Anabel’s suggestions, on one pretext or another. She didn’t want to be alone with her secret and Anabel. She was afraid that Anabel, always so sensitive to mood, might divine the truth. She was even more afraid that she might
tell
Anabel. And then—what would Ram do to her?

One afternoon, disconsolate and restless, Daisy secluded herself in one of the deep recesses of the balcony of the salon, intending to attempt to read Balzac in French, something the honorable Miss West, French mistress at Lady Alden’s, had suggested for all the girls’ summer vacations. Before she was more than three pages into the dusty volume, barely understanding a word of what she read, Ram discovered her hiding place.

“I looked for you in the woods,” he said, with reproach in his voice. “Why are you stuck away up here—it’s
gorgeous out.
”

“I wanted to be alone.”

“Well, I want to talk to you. I’ve decided what to do with the house in London. It’s far too big for us—Father never needed all that space—and the real-estate market’s never been better. I’m going to sell it and buy a house that makes sense; one that doesn’t need more than three or four servants to run. I think we should live in Mayfair, Upper Brook Street or South Audley Street—somewhere in that general area.”

“You mean—live together?” She gaped at him.

“Obviously. You have to live somewhere. Do you think you’re old enough to live alone?”

“But, I thought, I assumed—I’d be living with Anabel, Ram, not with you,” Daisy said with all the grown-up dignity at her command.

“Impossible. I won’t permit it. Anabel will have found another man to keep her within a few months and you can’t be exposed to that sort of thing.”

“Ram! That’s a beastly, stinking thing to say—Anabel’s like my mother!”

“That only proves I’m right—you’re too much of a baby to understand that Anabel lives off rich men—always has and always will.”

“It’s not true! How can you be so awful?”

“Then why did Father never marry her?”

Daisy faltered, unable to answer his question. Frantically she turned to another objection. “What about the servants? What are you going to do with them?”

“Pension them off, of course,” Ram said in an indifferent voice. “They’re far too old—every last, decrepit one of them—and there’s no good in thinking that we’re doomed to keep them doddering about until they drop dead one by one in the pantry—they were all just another of Father’s crazy extravagances, like putting all his money into Rolls-Royce
for sentimental reasons. I’m getting out of Rolls, Daisy, and I’m taking your money out, too. It’s high time we put that money to work—and time to get as much of it out of England as possible!”

“Ram, no! You can’t sell my stock … Father left it to me and I’
m
not going to sell.”

“Daisy,” Ram said reasonably, “the market’s no place for emotional attachments. I’m the legal trustee of your money and if I want to sell your stock I can.”

“Would you do that to me? Against my will?” she blazed at him. The stock in Rolls-Royce suddenly seemed all she had left to cling to, a real and tangible relic of her father’s concern, of his caring protection, of the fact that she still possessed a link to the past that Ram was so abruptly dismantling.

“Oh, to hell with that,” he barked. “Keep the stock if it means so much to you.”

“And my horse? Where will I keep her?” Daisy asked, struggling to find another fixed element of her life that Ram couldn’t wipe away with a word.

“Well find another stable, nearby our new house—don’t worry. You can have two dozen white horses if you want, Daisy, and a kennel full of lurchers,” Ram said, relieved that Daisy seemed to be running out of reasons why they could not live together.

“But your flat,” she said feebly, “you were so pleased with it.”

“It’s far too small for the two of us. I can get rid of it in a flash, and at a profit Father’s pictures will fetch a fortune at Sotheby’s, even though I’m going to keep at least two Rembrandts and the furniture—my God, do you have any idea what signed French pieces like that are going for these days? To say nothing of the icons—that will be a major sale just in itself.”

“So you’re going to sell
everything
—everything I love, everything I grew up with,” she gasped, with stricken eyes. She wanted to writhe and tear at Ram, but she knew he could do whatever he wanted with his own property. He took her in his arms and crushed her body to him.

“Well be together, just the two of us, and no old servants around to poke and pry and treat you like a child—you want that, don’t you?” She didn’t answer, gasping in outrage, and taking her silence for agreement, he thrust his hand under her shirt and cupped one of her breasts firmly, his thumb making circles around her nipple.
Furious as she was, her nipple hardened and he pulled her shirt higher and fastened his mouth on it, sucking with a desperate, hasty need. His other hand was reaching under her shorts, searching for the downy hair, fingertips blindly reaching for her special warmth. Daisy froze as she heard a light footstep mounting the staircase to the balcony, but deaf to everything, Ram pulled on her nipple harder than ever, as if he wanted to inhale her all in one mouthful. Daisy, with a terrified force she didn’t know she possessed, pulled away and flung herself as far from him as she could on the loveseat, pointings frantically in the direction of the footsteps while she pulled down her shirt. Dazed, Ram finally understood, and when Anabel appeared with a vase of flowers, she found the two of them sitting several feet apart, Daisy apparently engrossed in Balzac.

“Children! Oh, you frightened me! I thought I was alone up here. Just look—aren’t these Queen Elizabeth roses marvelous? Daisy, they’re for your room. The Kavanaughs are coming tomorrow early and I’m filling the house with flowers for them.”

“Christ! Not more people. This is becoming a boarding-house,” Ram said in disgust.

“You’ll like them,” Anabel said lightly, not, at the moment, really caring if he did or he didn’t. She supposed they’d been fighting again from the way they looked. Well, they’d have to work it out between them, whatever it was.

That night, as soon after dinner as possible, Daisy went upstairs to her room and locked herself in. Later Ram knocked several times, each time a little louder, and whispered her name. Defiantly she glared at the door and neither opened it nor answered him. Only when she heard him stride off did she allow herself to whimper in fear.

Daisy fled
La Marée
at dawn the next morning, putting a big chunk of bread and an orange in her pocket. She roamed the country lanes of Honfleur with Theseus, keeping him firmly attached to a leash so that he didn’t take off for any of the kitchens or farmyards of the neighborhood.

She felt that she could somehow, in solitary companionship with her dog, retreat into a time when life was simple, when rules were made for her, when she knew the guidelines and lived within them happily. But as hours passed and the sun rose high overhead she realized that Anabel
would be expecting her back for lunch. This was the day of the arrival of the new guests, Eleanor Kavanaugh and her daughter, with some sort of silly name, the one Anabel thought she’d like. The idea of meeting new people was an almost unbearable complication right now, yet the girl would be sharing her bedroom, and that was a profound relief to Daisy, a respite she couldn’t have arranged herself.

The Kavanaughs’ arrival at
La Marée
was announced from the driveway by an enormous, dark burgundy Daimler, parked in front of the door, with a dozen suitcases still being carried inside by their uniformed chauffeur. “Oh, bloody hell!” said Daisy to herself, as she contemplated the scene. It was the most violent expression of disgust she knew. Anabel hadn’t said they were on an official tour of the native islands. Did they think they were royalty? She looked down at her dusty tennis shoes, her outgrown shorts, and her worn jersey. Her hair, she imagined, must look like a vulture’s nest With luck, she judged, they might all be outside drinking sherry and she’d have time to make herself presentable before she met them.

Seeing no one, Daisy slipped up the staircase and quietly approached her room. She heard no noise inside, no sounds of unpacking, so she entered briskly, and then stopped, almost falling over her feet, at the sight of a girl curled up on her window seat, looking out at the sea. Too late. The girl turned and looked at Daisy with an expression of amazement.

“You can’t be Daisy!”

“Why not?”

“Daisy’s a little girl—fifteen or something.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m almost seventeen.”

“Huh—you don’t look it.”

Kiki Kavanaugh drew herself up impressively. Five feet, two and three quarters of an inch of audacious female. She had frolicsome eyebrows, the face of a kitten who knows she’s the pick of the litter and a short, fluttering mop of once brown hair which she had just had streaked in Kelly green, à la Zandra Rhodes. Her big eyes were umber, a dark, dusky brown with yellow lights in them—the eyes of a waif—spawn of a devil—and her beautifully shaped head was adorned with a pair of small, perfect, almost pointed ears. She was wearing what might have been either a Ukrainian wedding dress or something invented by a
newly rich Afghanistani princess, made of red pleated linen, largely embroidered, appliqued in gold lace, fringed, wrapped, and tied here and there with multicolored beads. She lacked only anklets of bells.

“You’re absolutely sublime, whoever you are,” this apparition told Daisy. “I tried to convince Mother it was time to get back to classics but she never listens—after all, what could I know compared to the Queen of Grosse Pointe? Wait till she sees you—will she be sorry she let me keep this hair.”

“Can’t you have it, ah … put back?” Daisy suggested.

“Try that and it falls out—I’ll just have to wait till it grows. Oh, balls! I can’t go out there and meet all those people like this. Will you lend me something to wear—shorts and a shirt? And some of your hair?” Kiki circled Daisy in rapt admiration. Even Daisy’s old shoes seemed to her to be the ultimate in throw-away chic.

“But they’d be way too big … of course, I would, but you’d swim in them,” answered Daisy, enthralled by this gypsy who had camped in her bedroom.

“Oh, never mind, I’m always like this when I see someone divinely tall and naturally silver-blonde and absolutely, incredibly beautiful—it gives me a swift rush of shit to the heart but I’ll be okay in a few minutes. I mean, I actually have a fairly healthy ego but bugger it all, wood nymphs set me back to square one. Do you like ‘bugger’? I just learned it in England and I think it’s an awfully useful word.” She looked at Daisy, her raffish smile inquiring.

“Lady Alden disapproved of ‘bugger’—very strongly—so it must be a good word. We got the ruler if we ever used it.”

“The ruler! Capital punishment? No, corporal punishment—or whatever. They’d do that to you? How dare they? But then … you
must
be Daisy.”

“Well, what would I be doing in this room if I weren’t?”

“I thought … well … never mind. No, scratch that. I made a resolution never to say ‘never mind’ again. It drives people crazy and they always get it out of you anyway. I thought Daisy was a perfectly dumb name, so sickeningly pristine, an anachronism. But now it’s just right for you, since you’re she … or her?”

“She.”

“Lord have mercy, I just guess at grammar. You realize, I had this mental picture of a little girl called Daisy, a princess no less, and what do I find but a fucking
goddess—I tell you, it’s enough to make me try to be mean—but who could be mean to you? Listen, do you know what I hate the most in the world?” Daisy never took her eyes off Kiki. She had just realized that Kiki had on green nail polish, green mascara, and green eyeshadow. “It’s those frantically well-dressed people in
Vogue
who say they live in only three wonderful old skirts they had made to order fifteen years ago—by Main, of course, who else?—and just two plain black cashmere sweaters and then they add one perfect jewel of an accessory every year, like a pair of priceless, antique Chinese slippers—you know it’s a filthy lie but how can you prove it? Shit, I’ll never get it right.” She slumped despondently in the middle of her elaborate costume.

“Don’t change, don’t move, don’t despair,” said Daisy, suddenly restored to her role as the leader of Lady Alden’s. “I’m coming right back.”

She returned in five minutes, her hair all pulled up on the top of her head, skewered by pins into which she’d tucked some of the purple bougainvilla which grew on the walls of the house. She wore a mini-dress of flashing silver paper which she’d bought for three pounds at Biba. It could only be worn once and she hadn’t dared to take it out of her wardrobe until today.

“Do you have any Paco Rabanne jewelry?” she asked Kiki.

“Doesn’t everyone? Just a minute.” Kiki rummaged in one of her seven suitcases and pulled out a space age, cast-metal neck sculpture which looked like a large, elaborately framed mirror, a chastity belt for the upper body. She clasped it around Daisy’s neck. “Earrings?”

“No—I think that might be too much. I’ll just wear bare feet—same effect but less fuss.”

“You can’t be fifteen,” said Kiki flatly, admiringly.