Lace Read online

  This was such an unusually long speech for Mademoiselle Janine that Maxine looked up sharply. What on earth was the girl talking about? Some copywriter’s scent? Wasn’t de Fortuny the woman who was working on the new champagne labels and literature? she wondered idly, then pushed the thought aside as she switched on her dictaphone and started to sort through the mail. Nevertheless, she took particular notice of pretty little Madame de Fortuny at the luncheon. She was wearing a new Chanel suit—un vrai Chanel, not a Wallis copy—in cream wool banded with narrow cream satin—impractical and extravagant. And Mademoiselle Janine was right, the woman did reek of carnations. Still, she was an intelligent and amusing guest, told particularly droll stories about her job and was generally charming to everybody.

  Maxine’s attention was abruptly distracted by the arrival of Sir Walter and Lady Cliffe. After Nick’s memorial service, Maxine and Kate had several times visited his parents at their London home; sadly, Nick’s mother clung to his friends—especially the last ones to have been with him—as a last link with her dead son.

  After the other luncheon guests had departed to visit the champagne caves, Lady Cliffe asked to meet Maxine’s children. As the two women sat in the sunny, yellow nursery, watching Gérard wrestling with Oliver, Lady Cliffe said wistfully, “For me, the saddest thing is that I shall never have grandchildren.” She paused, then added, “Of course Walter’s also concerned that there’s no one to inherit the title, so it will die out, but he’d already come to terms with that long before Nick died.” Maxine looked mystified. “Because when Nick was fourteen, he caught mumps, complicated by orchitis. Twice we were told he wouldn’t live, but then he recovered, although the medical specialists told us that Nick would never be able to have children.”

  “Did Nick know?” Maxine asked, astonished.

  “Yes, of course he had to be told, but I don’t think he ever really accepted it—I think he always secretly hoped that somehow he would be cured.”

  “Poor Nick. Just as well for Judy that she didn’t want to marry him,” Maxine said to Charles that evening, as they were dressing for dinner. “Although,” she added, “I’m not all that keen on children at the moment.” She patted her heavily pregnant stomach.

  Charles laughed. “Patience,” he said, “you haven’t long to wait.” He bent and kissed the back of her neck and, as he did so, Maxine smelled the faint but unmistakable fragrance of carnations. She swept the thought to the back of her mind. After all, Charles had been with the woman for the whole day.

  Two weeks later, Christina said casually to Maxine, “I saw Monsieur Charles yesterday evening at Le Grand Véfour. I must say, Maxine, he gets handsomer every year in that pale, charming way.”

  “At Le Grand Véfour? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. With that woman from his advertising firm. Jack Reffold was over here with a new delivery and I thought I’d take him somewhere nice. Charles was at the other side of the restaurant. I waved to him, but I don’t think he noticed me.” She bent over her work and chattered on about the latest consignment of furniture from Reffold’s. Maxine felt as if someone had thrown a glass of cold water in her face. Her fingertips were tingling and she couldn’t breathe properly. She knew what Christina was telling her, that she had chosen her words so the subject could be ignored if Maxine chose to do so. Maxine had spent the previous evening quietly at home eating supper on a tray, watching ballet on television, because Charles had to entertain a group of Canadian buyers. He would have to take them out on the town, probably the Folies Bergere, then perhaps to a nightclub, both of which, as he correctly said, would bore Maxine rigid. . . .

  Christina looked up. “Are you all right, darling? Maybe you’d better lie down. Is the baby kicking? Poor darling. We all expect you to carry on as if nothing is happening, simply because you always do. Come and lie down on the deck chair in the back room.”

  “No, no,” said Maxine faintly. She felt as if she were hearing herself from a great distance. She had to talk to someone about her suspicions. She would telephone Aunt Horse-Sense, as Judy always called her.

  From the tone of Maxine’s voice, so carefully casual, Aunt Hortense immediately knew that something serious had happened. “Come around straightaway, dear child. You know I’m always here.”

  Once inside her aunt’s front door, Maxine burst into tears. Aunt Hortense led her niece to a chaise longue and held both Maxine’s hands in hers.

  “Now, what’s the matter, is it Charles?”

  “Yes,” whispered Maxine, “how did you know?”

  “Well, it is your third baby, my dear, and you have been married eight years. I cannot tell you what to do, my child, because I know no details and I do not wish to know them. Is Charles trying to deceive you? . . . Yes? . . . Good! In that case, what I caution you to do is to ignore the situation, if possible, until the emotions have calmed down. Now is not the time to have the showdown.”

  Maxine nodded as her aunt continued, “Charles is no doubt besotted with some lady, in which case he is not thinking logically. You, my child, are suspicious and jealous so you cannot see things calmly. So you must—at all costs—not provoke an argument while emotion, rather than common sense, is possessing your head and his.”

  Maxine looked rather surly, but Aunt Hortense spoke firmly, as if Charles were merely a car that needed its engine tuned. “You do not want to clash with Charles. You never know with men. He might run off with this lady merely as an act of defiance. Charles obviously loves you, otherwise he would not want to hide this alliance from you. Men who no longer love their wives don’t bother to hide anything, you know.”

  Maxine said sadly, “She’s beautiful and slim.”

  “My poor child, it would be worse for you if she were not beautiful. Then you would worry endlessly as to what invisible magic she might possibly possess.” Aunt Hortense released Maxine’s hands and pulled the bell to order coffee. “At the moment her attraction is perfectly obvious—good looks combined with the novelty of a forbidden liaison.” She shrugged her shoulders. “However much he loves you, Charles has grown used to you. It’s a pity that brides are never warned that they will undoubtedly fall in love again with someone else, and so will their husbands. But sometimes life is too painful to explain to the young, and anyway, they would never believe it.”

  She turned aside to give instructions to the manservant who had appeared. “So leave Charles alone, my dear, and notice nothing. My child, you must behave like an angel.”

  She took Maxine’s hands in hers again. “There is only one further thing that you should think about,” said Aunt Hortense gently, picking her words with care. “A good husband is more important than a business. That is not to say that your business is not important. I’m saying that a good husband is much, much more important.”

  So Maxine behaved like an angel and found it very difficult, as daily she became more tense and clumsy. Charles was frequently away from the château, and when he was present he seemed preoccupied. Sometimes Maxine would glance up and catch him looking at her with a frustrated, accusing stare that made her heart fall sickeningly.

  She felt ruthlessly jealous and possessive. In her head she constantly checked Charles’s timetable, although she dared not question him too sharply about his movements. She tried not to nag him—she didn’t want him to feel that he was hemmed in to the point where he might be tempted to run away. Sometimes her mood abruptly switched and Maxine felt violently resentful of her husband’s treachery, the smoothness with which he lied to her—day after day and month after month—seemingly untroubled by conscience. Maxine suffered terribly from the strain of playing a part, of hiding her pain from her husband, of lying to him, as he did to her.

  Charles was supposedly in Lyons when their third son was born, a week before he was due and after a far easier birth than Maxine had expected. She clutched her baby to her and wanted to keep him by her all the time. The tiny Alexandre was her hope for the future, her link with her husband.

&n
bsp; This time there was no possibility of Maxine’s being pregnant four months after the birth. Four months after the birth Charles had still not returned to her bed from the lit Napoléon in his dressing room.

  By 1963, Charles and Maxine had been estranged for three years and Maxine continued to ignore her husband’s infidelity. Invariably, she was only able to do this by repressing her natural instincts and relying on the formal good manners that she had acquired from her strict French bourgeois upbringing. From time to time she fled to Aunt Hortense for reassurance and sympathy.

  Maxine was still behaving like an angel, but she found it a great strain. She no longer slept well, her face was gaunt, and even when she switched on her confident little smile, her brown-fringed eyes betrayed her anxiety. Sometimes she snapped at her children and at her staff, because the only alternative was to burst into tears or scream. Maxine was suffering from the intolerable strain of living a false life, of playing a false part while she waited and waited and wished she could put back the clock. “If only” became her favourite game.

  If only the cobwebs of time could be swept away and they could return to that lovely warm summer before she was last pregnant.

  If only she’d chosen a different advertising agency.

  If only the agency hadn’t assigned that homewrecker to the Chazalle account.

  If only she were thinner, taller, younger, more enchanting.

  If only Charles could see in her what he used to see!

  Her self-confidence dissolved. She alternated between dull clothes that were too old for her and outré clothes that didn’t suit her. Her vendeuse despaired and grumbled to her assistant, “If Madame de Chazalle can’t put up with the competition then she shouldn’t have married an attractive man; it’s too shaming to see one of my clients lose her dignity in front of the whole of Paris. She should give Monsieur le Comte a taste of his own medicine, there are plenty of attractive young men in Paris who would adore to pluck such a ripe peach.”

  In May 1963, Judy was staying at the château for a working weekend. Looking at Maxine’s sad, mechanical smile, and thinking of her busy but lonely life, Judy came to a sudden decision. Charles was her client but Maxine was her friend. She chose her moment carefully and the following morning, as Charles drove Judy to the champagne office, Judy said, “Aren’t you happy that both the businesses are doing so well?”

  Charles nodded, absently.

  “And aren’t you proud of those three handsome boys of yours?”

  Again he nodded casually.

  “And isn’t Maxine a wonderful hostess? Doesn’t the whole of France know it?”

  Another mechanical nod.

  “And how much longer do you think she will stand this present situation, Charles? I think she’s almost at the breaking point. I know divorce almost never happens in France, that husbands and wives have discreet affairs which never threaten their marriages. But Maxine loves you, she doesn’t want some other man. So I think that eventually she won’t be able to bear the duplicity of the life she’s leading—and she’ll leave you and live in Paris, preferring to live with loss than with pain. Then think what you’ll lose, Charles.” Judy was extremely careful not to appeal to Charles’s better instincts, but to his Gallic instinct for self-preservation. “You’ll lose your easy, comfortable life, you’ll lose your children, you’ll lose the hostess you’re so proud of and who is such an asset to your business. And what will you have gained? That calculating little cow of a copywriter and a number one scandal.”

  Judy turned to look at him. Outraged and silent, Charles concentrated on the road ahead. She continued.

  “Oh, Charles, nobody can have everything they want. You’re risking so much unhappiness for such a stupid reason. In God’s name, what has happened to your well-known appreciation of family, comfort and money!”

  Charles’s hands tightened on the wheel and he said nothing. His first feeling was shock that Judy should discuss such a personal topic with him, and his second was fury that she had dared to do so. But by the time they reached the office, Charles was already starting to consider what she had said, to imagine life without Maxine.

  A week after Judy’s departure, Maxine was sitting at the white lace wrought-iron table under the copper beech tree beyond the terrace. She was keeping an eye on eight-year-old Gérard, who, with a set of yellow and orange building blocks, was building a fort on the grass for two-year-old Alexandre. Maxine was idly checking the guest list for a big party they were about to give to celebrate the newly modernised champagne company’s first great vintage year.

  Suddenly Charles appeared on the terrace. Maxine looked up. It was odd to see him in midafternoon.

  Suddenly, as Charles moved toward her, her life seemed to lapse into slow motion. He looked so purposeful.

  She waited, her heart pounding.

  When he reached his wife, Charles bent down and kissed her ear.

  The way he used to.

  Maxine turned her head sharply and looked into his eyes. Seeing his expression she felt weak with hope and joy, then she sprang to her feet and into his arms, as her chair crashed backward to the ground.

  Charles hugged her tightly. Then he leaned over Maxine’s shoulder, picked up her pen and crossed the name de Fortuny off the guest list. Maxine grabbed his hand and kissed it. She couldn’t let go.

  Some time later, Maxine lay back on her bed, her thick blond hair streaming over the blue silk spread. It had not been the same mad, passionate frenzy as when they first made love—it had been better, a sensual, sexually charged and shared experience, in which wordlessly Charles had asked forgiveness and wordlessly Maxine had told him that it didn’t matter, nothing mattered but now.

  Charles murmured, “Feel under the pillow.” Maxine felt beneath the pillow and drew out a small, scarlet box.

  “It’s from Cartier! But it’s not my birthday!”

  “No, it’s not for a birthday. It’s forever,” said Charles, looking guilty. Inside the small velvet box was a blazing band of square-cut diamonds.

  “You got the finger size right,” cried Maxine. Again Charles took her into his arms, murmuring fondly into her ear.

  “You’re not the only one in the family who is efficient,” Charles said. And he smiled at her—just the way he had when they first made love together.

  PART

  FIVE

  22

  SOON AFTER HER grandfather’s death, Pagan—who had immediately returned to England from her Swiss school—realised that her mother’s protracted grief was not because he had died, but because he had died poor. His business affairs were in chaos. The big Cornish estate was in perfect order, but it didn’t seem to belong to them. It belonged to the bank—everything was mortgaged to the hilt. When searched, the Queen Anne desk in the study revealed a moth-eaten rabbit’s foot and an anonymous wedding ring in the secret drawer; other drawers contained only torn-out newspaper cuttings, a cigar box full of letters home written by Pagan’s father when he’d been at Eton, a few heavily marked, ancient copies of Horse & Hound and a heap of yellowing letters and documents. There were no bills because bills were always automatically handed to the agent and paid immediately against the vast overdraft at the bank, guaranteed by the manor house.

  The chaos took a long time to sort out. Just before Christmas 1949, Pagan and her mother visited the lawyers’ office in St. Austell.

  They were given the bad news straight: there was no money. Couldn’t they perhaps sell the house for use as an institution of some sort, a school, perhaps?

  “Impossible,” said Pagan’s mother. “We only have twenty-three bedrooms.”

  In gloomy silence the two women drove back toward the low, stone Tudor house. Pagan’s mother went straight to her bedroom and telephoned London. Seventeen-year-old Pagan wandered through the house as if it had already been sold and she were saying good-bye. All over the house innumerable clocks softly ticked in different rhythms, all collected by the grandmother she had never known: marble cl
ocks, bronze clocks, china and brass clocks, an indigo enameled bedside clock, given to Pagan’s grandmother by Queen Alexandra, glittered with rhinestones around the face. Every now and then the clocks rustled and chimed.

  For a week, the two women mourned their loss. Pagan never cried in the house, only in the comfort of the woods, or on top of the granite cliff, sitting with her legs stuck out in front of her like a wooden doll. Then Selma came for the weekend.

  By now Pagan’s mother shared her London flat (“So lonely while you were away darling”) with Selma, a severe-looking woman in her early fifties who lived on a meagre maintenance paid by an ex-husband who lived in Hull. Selma was a big-boned woman with cheekbones that curved down like scimitars and a rectangular mouth that also bent down above a stringy neck. She was not a woman that Pagan would have expected her mother to befriend; you couldn’t imagine Selma in pearls and a little black dress. She was not chic, not at home in London society, but gruffly imperious when away from it.

  One evening after Selma’s departure, as the sea wind shook the windowpanes of the library, Pagan lolled against the desk, remembering the hands that last had touched the maroon-leather stationery-holder and the paperweight carved from a whale’s tooth. Mrs. Trelawney, sitting by the log fire, took a quick, neat sip from her glass of sherry and said, “Do stop fiddling, Pagan, I want to talk to you seriously. About money. Selma thinks it would be possible to turn Trelawney into a health farm.”

  “A what?”

  “A place where people go to get thin. Selma once worked at one in the New Forest. Actually, they specialised in drying-out socially acceptable alcoholics. Selma says it wouldn’t be very expensive to set up that sort of thing at Trelawney.”

  “Mummy, you must be dotty if you’re planning to entertain a bunch of alcoholics on the edge of a cliff,” was all Pagan said.