Lace Read online

  Shortly afterward, Mrs. Trelawney packed Pagan off to visit Kate at Greenways; it would cheer her up, she explained. “It also got me out of the way,” Pagan told Kate, as they were walking the Scottie dogs over the common. “I’ll bet Selma moved in as soon as I’d moved out; they’re both totally engrossed in this batty project.”

  But Kate’s father didn’t think it was such a foolish idea and made Pagan explain it to him. “It might work,” he said thoughtfully, “I can see the advantages.”

  “The only advantage to me is that, as there’s no money, I won’t be able to be a debutante as planned,” said Pagan. “It costs about two thousand pounds to do the London season, if you’re going to give a dance, that is. Thank heaven Mama can’t manage it. I don’t fancy whooping around London from dusk to dawn in pink net ball gowns.”

  Kate’s father said nothing, but in due course he telephoned Mrs. Trelawney and offered to sponsor Pagan’s London season if Mrs. Trelawney would also launch Kate into society. He intended to give his daughter the best possible chance to meet the right sort of man, by which he meant rich and, who knows, perhaps with a . . .

  Pagan’s mother was delighted at the idea of having a season at somebody else’s expense.

  “What your papa doesn’t realise,” said Pagan to Kate one evening, as they sat on the floor in Pagan’s London bedroom sipping mugs of cocoa, “what he doesn’t seem to understand is that we aren’t aristocracy. We’re only landed gentry, and I’m not even sure about that. There might not be any land left by now.”

  “He doesn’t care so long as I get married. Now, how many ball gowns d’you think we can manage on?”

  The year 1950 provided an idyllic British summer. By the time Maxine arrived in London, Pagan and Kate were whirling in a scintillating social Catherine wheel. They were both presented at Court. You could only be presented to the King and Queen by a lady who had herself been presented (in this case, Mrs. Trelawney), so the three of them—wearing elbow-length white kid gloves and silk dresses with the obligatory below-calf hem, high neckline and covered shoulders—sat for hours in the Mall in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce with a special X label on the windscreen, as all the other cars containing all the other debutantes slowly inched up to Buckingham Palace, then crawled through the ornate black iron gates and into the courtyard. Once past the impressive stone columns of the front entrance, they queued in a red-carpeted antechamber until their name was called. Pagan might have been waiting for school tea, she was so unconcerned, but Kate felt very nervous as she mentally checked her curtsy. In a squad of about ten girls, she and Pagan had taken the necessary three curtsying lessons from the famous Madame Vacani.

  Kate shot upright as her name was called. She was ushered into another red-carpeted antechamber—rather like a very wide corridor—beyond which the Royal Couple sat on a red-carpeted dais. One step forward on right foot, one step forward on left foot, right foot move to side, then swing left leg behind and down you go with your head bowed in front of His Majesty King George the Sixth. Straighten up, then right foot to the side, left foot across in front, right to the side in front and that got you in front of Queen Elizabeth, then repeat curtsy and move off to right. . . .

  Kate wobbled into a palatial, chandelier-hung room in which all the girls ate cucumber sandwiches with their tea and talked to each other in unusually subdued voices.

  Every day there was a plethora of different entertainments. Months before, the dates of these occasions had been anxiously checked and coordinated with Betty Kenward, the pace setter of modern London. Mrs. Kenward wrote “Jennifer’s Diary” in the Tatler and was the unofficial arbiter of the Season. Nobody dared offend Mrs. Kenward: everybody wanted to appear in “Jennifer’s Diary.”

  Kate and Pagan held endless lunches to entertain other debutantes and they always had tea at Gunter’s or the Ritz or Brown’s. They attended at least two cocktail parties a night, unless they were going to a private dinner before an important ball, when Pagan’s mother would not allow them to attend a cocktail party because they might get “overexcited.” After a month there were permanent bags under their eyes, but with the relentless stamina peculiar to a debutante, they managed on very little sleep and a ludicrous diet. By the end of the summer, neither girl could face another glass of champagne, another cucumber sandwich, another cold slice of ballet-slipper-pink salmon, another chicken glistening in mayonnaise, another vanilla ice cream or silver dish of strawberries.

  They went to the races at Ascot and Goodwood, they watched rowing at Henley, yachting at Cowes and cricket at Lord’s; on none of these occasions did they pay much attention to the sport in question—except for tennis at Wimbledon—because, like most of the other debutantes, they were busy checking each other’s clothes with satisfaction or dismay. They went to the Oxford Commem-Balls and the Cambridge May Balls, when dignified and ancient college courtyards echoed to the swing music of Tommy Kinsman or someone else especially imported for the occasion. And on weekends the girls did the rounds of British country houses.

  Kate’s father footed all the bills, and Kate’s mother kept well out of the way so that she didn’t make fatally shaming mistakes, such as saying “appointment” instead of “engagement,” or holding her knife so that the handle showed. Courtesy of Kate’s father, Mrs. Trelawney gave lobster lunches at her apartment for all her old friends, who were also launching their daughters. Meanwhile, Selma directed activities at Trelawney. She had been right. Converting Trelawney into a health farm wasn’t going to involve much work. Lobster lunches were also available for beauty editors who might mention the new health farm in their columns, and bottles of vintage champagne were sent to gossip writers who might mention the girls. Pagan exasperated her mother by carelessly ignoring the gossip writers, while cultivating friends that her mother thought unsuitable.

  Both girls had a group of presentable escorts: smart young army officers, crow-dressed fledgling bankers, stockbrokers and insurance men from Lloyd’s—all learning to be men-about-town, sometimes on a very limited income. Nice girls were careful not to order expensive dishes, it was back to the old gin fizz routine when you went to nightclubs after a dance (especially with the young army officers), and it was best not to take too much money in your handbag or it might be borrowed and not returned (especially by the young army officers).

  As in Switzerland, purity was at a premium. All the debs pretended to adhere to severe propriety, but in reality there was much panting and gasping in taxis, much exploring under pink net and burrowing under pale blue twin sets. However, all the girls knew that too much passion would result in your name being bandied around the mess, around the clubs, even around the all-night Turkish baths in Jermyn Street, for none of the chaps liked That Sort of Girl in theory, although in fact, they all seemed to want one. How Far You Went was again endlessly discussed. Pagan still insisted that she hadn’t let Abdullah go too far. Well, not below the waist. Neither Kate nor Maxine believed her. “What’s the point of going to a love school for three weeks,” yawned Kate, “if they don’t teach you to get below the waist?”

  During the summer of 1950, Kate was in Tatler twice and Pagan was in seven times, twice with Prince Abdullah. Normally Pagan didn’t seem to give a damn about anything or anybody; thirty percent of her seemed to be absent. But when Abdullah was in London, she became excited and alive, and although she swore to Kate and Maxine that she wasn’t in love with him, privately they agreed that this was a face-saver. Pagan rarely knew in advance when he was going to dash into the Dorchester for a day or two; sometimes the other girls saw him, sometimes they didn’t. At this time Abdullah was obsessed by the possibility that he might be assassinated, and going out to dinner with him meant pretending to get into one car and then suddenly hopping into another one that swiftly drew up behind it at the curb; it meant being told that you were going to one restaurant and then being ushered in to a quiet table at the back of a totally different one. “Don’t you think Abdi’s a bit paranoid?” asked
Kate. “Don’t you think it’s a bit melodramatic, all this cloak-and-dagger stuff?”

  Two days later, Abdullah’s equerry climbed into his official staff car, turned the ignition on and the vehicle exploded. Bits of the car and bits of the equerry were flung all over Kensington Square in front of the house that had been rented for Abdullah’s stay in London. After that, Maxine and Kate weren’t so keen on acting as Pagan’s unofficial ladies-in-waiting, and Pagan never again complained about unexpected changes of plan when she was with His Royal Highness.

  Together with three hundred other guests, Abdullah came to Pagan and Kate’s coming-out dance, held in the ballroom of the Hyde Park Hotel. Kate and Pagan shone with excitement, Pagan in white satin, embroidered with pale green lilies of the valley, Kate in primrose tulle. Naturally, they were the stars of the evening as they danced under the proud gaze of Kate’s father, her mother—looking nervous in gray taffeta—and Mrs. Trelawney, whose skinny, birdlike, dieted-to-the-bone body was sheathed in bronze silk, courtesy of Kate’s father.

  As she waltzed Kate suddenly stumbled: for one heart-lurching moment she watched as Frangois, her Swiss seducer, sauntered into the ballroom, accompanied by a girl in a white silk gown. Then Kate realised that the man wasn’t Frangois, although he had the same sort of Cary Grant face, the same brown eyes and quizzical mouth. However, this man was even better-looking than Frangois, taller and with broader shoulders. Kate couldn’t stop looking at him out of the corner of her eye. She longed to meet him and yet at the same time she wanted to rush as far away from him as possible. Casually, she asked who the dark fellow was and was told that he was a banker’s son named Robert Salter, studying at Cambridge.

  For the rest of the evening Kate felt an irresistible attraction, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to walk up and introduce herself—although it was her dance.

  But the following morning, an orange tree was delivered to Walton Street. Attached to it was a note that said Kate had been the star of a wonderful evening. It was signed Robert Salter. Although he hadn’t had a chance to dance with Kate, his girl had told Robert that Kate was an only child, her father was very rich and that they lived in a castle in Cornwall.

  Robert started to shower Kate with gifts. He knew that he’d have to buckle down to work in his father’s bank when he returned to Cairo, where he had grown up knowing all the pampered, eligible girls in that city. Better to choose a wife in England, he thought, and, as he watched Kate swirling happily in primrose net, he decided to have a try for her.

  Though he discovered on their first date there was no castle, he experienced, close up, Kate’s invisible, oddly irresistible, sexual allure. She wasn’t nearly as good-looking as her friend but it was Kate he desired, Kate who filled his dreams.

  Kate told nobody about their meetings except her mother, who she knew would keep her secret. Kate was dazed by Robert’s good looks and his masterful sophistication. “He just seems more grown-up than the Hooray-Henrys on the stag line,” she confided one morning as she and her mother were getting ready for yet another trip to Harrods for silver dancing shoes.

  “I must admit that Robert knows how to treat a girl in public, which is more than those Henrys do,” her mother agreed.

  “There’s nothing unusual about having lunch at the Savoy,” Kate said wistfully, as she pulled on kid gloves, “but when you go with Robert every waiter in the place flutters around you. With Robert it’s always limousines at the door and great bunches of lilies from Constance Spry every morning, and jeweled trinkets from Asprey’s in those regal purple boxes, delivered with a salute by an impressive uniformed chauffeur.”

  She snapped open her purse and revealed a gold cigarette case and lighter, a matching compact, a platinum lipstick holder, a little jeweled pencil and a crocodile notecase. “It isn’t as if Daddy couldn’t have bought these for me, but to be showered with gifts like this—well, it’s like Christmas every day.”

  “I hope you’re being sensible,” said her mother, meaning prudent.

  “Oh, yes,” Kate lied, snapping shut her purse.

  23

  AFTER CHRISTMAS, PAGAN refused Kate’s father’s offer of skiing at Saint Moritz, cheerfully explaining, “I’d rather break my leg falling off a horse, and no man born will ever be attracted by the sight of me on skis.” She stayed in Cornwall. Kate didn’t want to leave Robert, so she stayed in the snug little basement apartment in Walton Street and idled the day away shopping or chatting on the telephone. She occasionally toyed with the idea of going to art school, and when this mood fell upon her she would wander off to the Victoria and Albert Museum to look at the Elizabethan jewelry or the Persian miniatures.

  Maxine was surprised by the recent change in her flatmate. When not on the telephone or wandering around the Victoria and Albert Museum, Kate just lay on the carpet listening to records or else flopped on the sofa doing nothing for hours on end. Maxine couldn’t comprehend how a person could spend the whole week doing nothing. Every Friday, Kate caught the train to Cambridge and reappeared on Monday, either looking wildly happy or in tears. However much she was questioned and teased, Kate refused to discuss these trips, but obviously there was a man involved—and obviously Kate didn’t want her friends to meet him. It must be serious, therefore, Maxine concluded.

  In the late spring the social round started again, and Kate became a little more animated, surrounded by her usual cluster of lovesick swains. But she spent Easter among the floodlit joys of Greenways, either in gales of tears or else writing letter after letter. In early summer, Kate was off again to Cambridge every weekend, but in July her interest in that ancient university town suddenly lapsed and letters with a Cairo postmark started arriving at Walton Street twice a week. “If you don’t tell me about him I’m going to open the next one,” said Maxine. “Why won’t you tell us about him? I know why, because you want to marry him and you think that if you tell us he won’t ask you.”

  “Bitch.”

  Then one September morning a radiant Kate burst into her bedroom, her dressing gown unbuttoned, an open letter in her hand. “He does, he does, he does want to marry me. Robert . . . Kate Salter . . . Mrs. Robert Salter . . . Mrs. Salter.”

  “You mean it’s really it this time? I thought you were already engaged to be married to about fourteen men,” said Pagan, who was spending a few days in Walton Street while Maxine was working at a house in Wiltshire.

  “Only if they leave the country; only if their ships are posted abroad or their regiments go to Malaya; and I only say maybe, it’s practically a patriotic duty.”

  “Yes. And look at all the scent you get and boatloads of brocade from Singapore.”

  “Oh shut up! He’s going to phone me this evening. Robert’s going to phone! Of course I’m going to say yes. So now I can tell you. He’s been reading economics at Cambridge, but his father’s a banker in Cairo, and he’s going back to work there. Just imagine! Living in Egypt! Pyramids, rose water and a great desert moon above the sail of a felucca on the Nile!”

  Kate then produced a sheaf of photographs of a rather portentous-looking young fellow. In none of the photographs was he smiling, and in all of them he looked as if he were about to pronounce on something important “He looks marvellous,” said Pagan politely. She wondered why Kate had been so secretive about Robert, he looked such a pompous old prodnose, not worth stealing, even if he was as handsome as Cary Grant.

  Kate sat by the telephone from six o’clock in the evening until two in the morning, when Robert got through. The line was faint and indistinct and Kate had to bellow. From the next room Pagan could clearly hear the conversation. “Yes, I love you too, oh, darling Robert, yes, yes. . . .” This went on for about twenty minutes. Jolly good thing his father is a banker, thought Pagan. Then there was silence.

  Pagan padded into the room to find Kate in tears. “Cheer up, you’re the first one of our set to get engaged, that’s nothing to cry about. Remember the pyramids and the moonlight over the Nile. When’s t
he wedding?”

  “Not until summer. Robert has just started to work at his father’s bank and he can’t leave for a honeymoon as soon as he starts. Bad example, he says. But we can’t wait nine whole months. He wants me to go out there. He said why don’t I go with Mother, but honestly I don’t think that would be much fun and she’d hate it.” Neither of them could imagine Kate’s mother on the pyramids under a desert moon or floating down the Nile in a felucca.

  “Why don’t you come with me, Pagan?” Kate asked. “If Dad stumps up for your fare.”

  “Well, he certainly won’t let you go to Cairo on your own.”

  Babbling with joy after a sleepless night, Kate phoned her parents at seven in the morning. “Thought something was up,” her father said, “you haven’t been home for weeks.”

  Kate decided to fly out to Cairo immediately after Christmas. Just before they left, Kate returned from a shopping trip to find Pagan lying on the living room floor, exhausted by her determination not to cry. Kate already knew the reason. She had seen the headlines in the evening papers: “Abdullah and Marilyn—Film Star Declares Love for Prince—Marilyn Says They’ll Wed.”

  “Is it true, Pagan?”

  “Don’t know about the bloody ‘wed,’ but I’ve known about the love bit for some time.” She kicked the brass fender. “I thought she was like the rest, you know. I mean there’s always some busty wench in the background. Marilyn was just more famous than the rest.”

  She hesitated. Pagan hated to confess humiliation. “I know he’s at the Dorchester. The happy couple was photographed in front of their damned fountain, so I’ve been telephoning all afternoon—using our secret code—but he won’t take my calls. Utter hell.”

  “Be reasonable, Pagan, he might be doing something else—ordering a destroyer, or having a cup of tea at Buckingham Palace.”

  “No, Kate, I can tell by his secretary’s voice—a certain nasty smoothness. I know the absolutely grim way he talks to anyone who’s on the blacklist.” She sighed. “It’s easier for Abdi not to talk to me, so he won’t. Frantically convenient, being royal.”