Lace Read online

  Also by Shirley Conran

  FICTION

  Lace 2

  Savages

  Crimson

  Tiger Eyes

  The Revenge

  CHILDREN’S FICTION

  The Amazing Umbrella Shop

  NON-FICTION

  Superwoman

  Superwoman Yearbook

  The Magic Garden

  Down with Superwoman

  This paperback edition published in 2012 by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  www.canongate.tv

  Copyright © Shirley Conran, 1982, 2012

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  First published in 1982 in the USA by Simon & Schuster

  and in Great Britain by Sidgwick & Jackson

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on

  request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 0 85786 390 4

  Export ISBN 978 0 85786 800 8

  eISBN 978 0 85786 536 6

  Book design by Mary Austin Speaker

  This digital edition first published in 2012 by Canongate Books

  This book is for

  my sons,

  SEBASTIAN CONRAN and JASPER CONRAN,

  with love.

  CONTENTS

  PRELUDE

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  PART TWO

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  PART THREE

  14

  15

  PART FOUR

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  PART FIVE

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  PART SIX

  31

  32

  33

  PART SEVEN

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  PART EIGHT

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  PART NINE

  49

  50

  51

  52

  PART TEN

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  PART ELEVEN

  58

  59

  PART TWELVE

  60

  61

  62

  63

  EPILOGUE

  LACE: THE TRUE STORY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PRELUDE

  Paris, 1963

  SCRAPE . . . SCRAPE . . . SCRAPE . . . The cold, hard metal dug deep into the child’s body. She forced her knuckles into her mouth and bit against the bone as hard as she could to fight pain with pain. She didn’t dare scream. She just mumbled, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” as she bit her hand.

  Tears ran down her cheeks and onto the paper pillow. Her body was trembling and clammy with cold sweat. Outside she could hear the cheerful noise of a busy Paris street, but in this small brown room there was no sound except the scraping and her mumbling and the occasional clink of steel against steel. She would count to ten and then she’d scream! Surely it couldn’t go any higher, whatever he was pushing up inside her? It felt like a dagger, persistent, cold, merciless. She wanted to vomit, to faint, she wanted to die. She couldn’t bear it to go on and on and on. . . .

  The man was intent on what he was doing as she lay on the hard table, her knees forced high and apart by the steel surgical stirrups. It had been horrifying from the moment she entered this place, the dark brown room with the hard, high table in the middle. A line of silvery instruments and a few odd-shaped bowls lay on another table; there was a camp bed and a cloth screen in one corner of the room. A white-aproned woman had pointed to the screen and said, “You can take off your clothes behind that.” Naked, she had shivered behind the screen, not wanting to leave its protection, but the woman had taken her briskly by the wrist and tugged her to the table in the centre of the room. She had been positioned on her back so that her narrow hips rested on the edge of the table, while her legs were pulled apart by the woman and lifted into the cold surgical stirrups. The shivering child felt unbearably humiliated as she gazed into the powerful overhead light.

  There had been no anesthetic. The man wore a crumpled green surgeon’s gown. He had muttered some instruction to the woman and then he had inserted two fingers into the child’s vaginal canal; he held the cervix with his fingers as he placed his other hand on her abdomen to feel the size and position of her uterus. Then she was swabbed with antiseptic, and he pushed in a chill speculum shaped like a duck’s bill, which kept the walls of the vagina apart and enabled him to see the opening of her uterus. The speculum didn’t hurt, but it felt cold and menacing inside her small body. Other instruments were also inserted and then the pain started as the cervix was opened slowly with the stainless steel dilators until it was wide enough for the operation to start. The man picked up the curette—a metal loop on the end of a long thin handle—and the excavation began. The curette moved in and around the uterus, scraping the life out of her; it took only two minutes, but the time seemed endless to the suffering child.

  The man worked quickly; occasionally he muttered to the woman who was helping him. Hardened though he was, he carefully avoided looking at the child’s face; her little feet in the stirrups were reproach enough as he swiftly finished the job and removed each bloodied steel instrument.

  As the uterus was emptied it gradually contracted back to its original size, but the child’s body was jerked with agonizing cramps until the contractions stopped.

  Now she was wailing like an animal, gasping as each new pain clawed her. The man abruptly left the room; the woman swabbed her; the cloying smell of antiseptic filled the air. “Stop making such a noise,” hissed the woman. “You’ll feel fine in half an hour. Other girls don’t make such a fuss. You should be grateful that he was trained as a real doctor. You haven’t been messed up inside; he knows what he’s doing, and he’s fast. You don’t know how lucky you are.” She helped the thin, thirteen-year-old girl off the table and onto the camp bed in the corner. The child’s face was gray, and she shook uncontrollably as she lay under a blanket.

  The woman gave her pills to swallow, then she sat and read a paperback romance. For half an hour there was no sound in the room except for the child’s occasional stifled sob. Then the woman said, “You can go now.” She helped the girl to dress, gave her two large sanitary towels to put in her pants, handed her a bottle of antibiotic tablets and said, “Whatever happens, don’t come back here. You’re not likely to hemorrhage, but if you start bleeding, call a doctor immediately. Now get home and stay in bed for twenty-four hours.” For one moment the woman’s carefully controlled, impersonal toughness weakened. “Pauvre petite! Don’t let him touch you for at least a couple of months.” Awkwardly she patted the child’s shoulder and led her through the passage to the heavy front door.

  The child paused outside on the stone steps, wincing in the sharp sunlight. Slowly, painfully, Lili walked along the boulevard until she came to a small café where she ordered a hot drink. She sat and sipped it, feeling the sun and the warm steam on her face as a jukebox pumped out the new Beatles hit, “She Loves You”.

 
PART

  ONE

  1

  IT WAS A warm October evening in 1978 with the distant skyscrapers sparkling in the dusk as Maxine glanced through the limousine window at the familiar New York skyline. She had chosen this route for that view. Now, in the discreet, hushed comfort of the Lincoln Continental, they stood stuck in traffic on the Triboro Bridge. Never mind, she told herself, there was plenty of time before the meeting. And the view was worth it—like diamonds sprinkled across the sky.

  Her neatly folded sable coat lay beside the maroon crocodile jewel case. The nine maroon-leather suitcases—all stamped in gold with a tiny coronet and the initials M de C—were stacked beside the chauffeur or stowed in the trunk. Maxine travelled with very little fuss and at enormous expense, usually someone else’s. She took absolutely no notice of luggage allowances; she would say, with a shrug of the shoulders, that she liked comfort; so one suitcase contained her pink silk sheets, her special down-filled pillow, and the baby’s shawl, delicate as a cream lace cobweb, that she used instead of a bed jacket.

  Although most of the suitcases held clothes (beautifully packed between crisp sheets of tissue paper), one case was fitted as a small maroon-leather office; another carried a large medicine box packed with pills, creams, douches, ampoules, disposable syringes for her vitamin injections and the various suppositories that are considered normal treatment in France but frowned on by Anglo-Saxons. Maxine had once tried to buy syringes in Detroit—mon Dieu, could they not tell the difference between a drug addict and a French countess? One had to look after one’s body, it was the only one you were going to get and you had to be careful what you put on it and in it. Maxine saw no reason to force terrible food on the stomach merely because it was suspended thirty-five thousand feet above sea level; all the other first-class passengers from Paris had munched their way through six overcooked courses, but Maxine had merely accepted a little caviar (no toast) and only one glass of champagne (nonvintage, but Moët, she observed with approval before accepting it). From a burgundy suede tote bag she had then produced a small white plastic box that contained a small silver spoon, a pot of homemade yogurt and a large, juicy peach from her own hothouse.

  Afterward, while other passengers had read or dozed, Maxine had taken out her miniature tape recorder, her tiny gold pencil, and a large, cheap office duplicate book. The tape recorder was for instructions to her secretary, the office duplicate book was for notes, drafts and memos of telephone conversations; Maxine tore them off and sent them on their way, always retaining a copy of what she had written; then when she returned to France, her secretary filed the duplicates. Maxine was well organised in an unobtrusive way; she didn’t believe in being too well organised and she couldn’t stand bustle or hustle, but she could only operate when things were orderly; she liked order even more than she liked comfort.

  When Madame la Comtesse booked a reservation for a business trip, the Plaza automatically booked a bilingual secretary for her. She sometimes travelled with her own secretary, but it was not always convenient to have the girl hanging round one’s neck like a pair of skates. Also, as the girl had now been with Maxine for almost twenty-five years, she was able to keep an eye on things at home in Maxine’s absence; from the condition of her sons and her grapes to the times when Monsieur le Comte returned home and with whom.

  Mademoiselle Janine reported everything with devoted zeal. Since 1956, Mademoiselle Janine had worked hard for the Château de Chazalle and she shone in the reflected glory of Maxine’s success. She had first worked for the de Chazalles twenty-two years ago, when Maxine was twenty-five and had opened the château as a historical hotel, museum and amusement park, before anybody (except the locals) had heard of de Chazalle champagne. Mademoiselle Janine had fussed around Maxine from the time her three sons were babies, and she would have found life intolerably dull without the family. Indeed, she had been with the de Chazalles for so long that she almost felt like one of the family. But not quite. They were—and always would be—separated by the invisible, unbreakable barriers of class.

  Like New York, Maxine was glamorous and efficient, which was why she liked the quick pace of the city, liked the way that New Yorkers worked with neat, brisk speed whether they were serving hamburgers, heaving garbage off the sidewalk or squeezing fifty cents’ worth of fresh orange juice for you on a sunny street corner. She appreciated these fast-thinking people, their tough humour, their crisp jokes, and privately thought that New Yorkers had all the joie de vivre of the French, without being nearly so rude. She also felt at home with New York women. She enjoyed observing, as if they were another species, those cool, polite, impeccable women executives as they operated under the merciless pressure of the grab for power, the lunge for money, the lusting after someone else’s job. Like theirs, Maxine’s self-discipline was colossal, but—at the age of forty-seven—her grasp of people-politics was even better. Had it not been so, she would not have been travelling to meet Lili.

  That gold-digging slut!

  But Maxine was undoubtedly intrigued by Lili’s offer and it was partly her curiosity that had brought her all the way across the Atlantic. Again she wondered whether she would accept the job. She would have thought that Lili—who must be about twenty-eight years old by now—would never have wanted to see Maxine again. Maxine remembered that long-ago expression of startled pain in the flashing chestnut eyes of the troublemaker whom the press had nicknamed “Tiger-Lili.”

  She had been amazed to receive the telephone call, to hear that low, sensual voice sound so astonishingly humble, as Lili had asked Maxine to meet her in New York to decorate Lili’s new duplex on Central Park South. Lili wanted her new home to be a showpiece, a conversation-stopper, and she knew that Maxine could supply the correct blend of erudite elegance and spirited style. The budget would be as large as was necessary, and of course all expenses for Maxine’s trip to New York would be paid whether or not she decided to accept the commission.

  There had been a pause, then Lili had added in a penitent voice, “I would also like to feel that something no longer has such painful memories for you. For so many years I have lived unhappily with my conscience, and now I dearly wish to do whatever is necessary to be at peace with you.”

  After this apology there had been a thoughtful pause, then the conversation had turned to Maxine’s work. “I understand you’ve just finished Shawborough Castle,” Lili had said, “and I also heard about the stunning job you did for Dominique Fresanges—it must be wonderful to have a talent such as yours, to rescue historic houses from decay, to make so many homes beautiful and comfortable while they still remain a heritage for the world. . . .”

  It had been a long time since Maxine had enjoyed a holiday in New York by herself, so eventually she had agreed to make the journey. Lili had asked Maxine to tell nobody of the meeting until after it had taken place. “You know the press won’t leave me alone,” she had explained. And it was true. Not since Greta Garbo had there been an international movie star who so intrigued the public.

  As the limousine started to crawl forward, Maxine glanced at her diamond wristwatch—there was plenty of time before the six-thirty meeting at the Pierre. Maxine was rarely impatient; she disliked being late, but assumed that everyone else would be. That was life today—undependable. If a situation could be improved, Maxine would generally do it with a slight, one-sided smile, a look that combined conspiratorial charm with a hint of menace. If a situation could not be improved, then she folded her hands in her lap and imperturbably accepted la loi de Murphy.

  She happened to catch sight of herself in the back mirror of the limousine and leaned toward it, lifting her jaw above the cream lace jabot and poking it sideways at her reflection. It was only five weeks since the operation, but the tiny scars in front of her ears had already disappeared. Mr. Wilson had done an excellent job and it had only cost a thousand pounds, including the anesthetist and the London clinic bill. There was no tautness, no pulling at the mouth or eyes; she simply loo
ked healthy, glowing and fifteen years younger—certainly not forty-seven. It was sensible to have it done when you were still young, so that nobody noticed, or, if they did, they couldn’t pin you down; today you never saw an eyebag on an actress over thirty, or on an actor, come to think of it. Nobody had noticed her absence; she had been out of the clinic in four days and had then spent ten days in Tunisia where she had lost seven pounds, a satisfying bonus. She simply could not understand why some people went all the way to Brazil and paid heaven knows what for their lifts.

  Maxine was a firm believer in self-improvement, especially surgical. One owes it to oneself, was her justification; her teeth, eyes, nose, chin, breasts, all had been lifted or braced until Maxine was a mass of almost invisible stitches. Even so, she was no great beauty, but when she thought back to her girlhood and remembered the prominent nose, the horselike teeth and her painful self-consciousness, she was grateful that years ago she had been persistently urged to do something about it.

  It had not been necessary to do anything about her legs. They were exquisite; she stuck out one long pale limb, rotated an elegant ankle, smoothed the blue silk skirt of her suit, then opened the window and sniffed the air of Manhattan, oblivious to the strong carbon monoxide content at street level. She reacted to New York as she did to the champagne of her estate—with happy delight. Her eyes sparkled, she felt high and ebullient. It was good to be back, despite the traffic jam, in the city that made you feel as if every day was your birthday.

  Judy Jordan looked like a tiny, blond, exhausted Orphan Annie, although she was forty-five years old. In her Chloë brown velvet suit, and a fragile, cream silk blouse, she sat in the crowded bus as it crawled up Madison Avenue. Impatient by nature, Judy always took what came first, a bus or a cab. She had in fact recently been photographed by People in the amazing act of getting on a bus. This had given Judy a great deal of satisfaction, because there had been a long period in her life when she couldn’t afford anything but a bus.