Lace (37 page)

But although the child was small and thin, although she wasn’t nearly as strong as a fully grown worker, she ate as much as a maid would. Worse yet, unlike a maid, she was often not there
when required because she was at school or dawdling over her homework. Certainly, for the moment, she did not justify the cost of her keep. And she couldn’t be trusted; she told lies. The
child obviously had bad blood; they hoped she was not Jewish.

A docile, obedient, pale-faced schoolchild, Lili had indeed started to tell little lies in self-defense, in order to have some time to herself in which to dream of what might have been. She lied
about the time she left school and whether she’d been in the park—where she wasn’t supposed to wander; whether she’d been to church; whether she’d done the dusting or
finished the ironing. As the Sardeaus forced Lili’s imagination along this gray path of self-preservation, she turned secretive, living a life of inner fantasy in which the lonely child was
always adored and a scintillating heroine. Lili became increasingly subdued and withdrawn. Increasingly, she built up her mother’s identity into a romantic mystery—because the
alternative was to face her mother’s brusque rejection.

The apartment on the seventh floor was small, dark, uncomfortable and spotlessly clean. Every ugly china knickknack had its preordained place, as Lili discovered when she dusted them daily. Lili
lived in a cupboard-sized room off the dark kitchen that faced onto the inner courtyard.

Although her schoolwork at the lycee was hard, Lili soon realised that she preferred the cheerful, noisy school atmosphere to the claustrophobic, funeral-parlor atmosphere of the Sardeau home.
Certainly, she had to work far harder at school than ever before.

Madame Sardeau had no intention of letting Lili have time off. In the holidays, she not only had to do all the light housework, but she also had to prepare the vegetables, wait on the table and
do the ironing and sewing. Madame Sardeau soon discovered that Lili’s sewing was exquisite and piled more work on the child. After all, she thought to herself, watching Lili swiftly stitch,
the devil makes work for idle hands.

After two years Lili understood—possibly better than they did—that the Sardeaus regarded her as a poor investment, which unfortunately couldn’t be liquidated
in favour of something more promising. They were not unkind to the child; she was dressed, fed and given suitably improving gifts on anniversaries—a book on the lives of the saints, a sewing
kit, a new vest—but the girl was never grateful.

Just before her ninth birthday, Madame showed her a newspaper picture of a huge-eyed, stick-limbed African orphan and said, “See what we saved you from!”

Lili was silent for a long time, then she said, “My mother wouldn’t have let me starve.”

“You know perfectly well that your mother is dead.”

“My other mother would have come for me.”

Madame Sardeau lost her temper. “You little liar, your fairytale stories of your other mother and sleighbells in the snow are just fantasy. The priest told me that many children have them,
especially if their parents have to beat them for bad behaviour. You would do better to be more dutiful to
us
. You owe a duty to
us
. It is
we
who feed you, shelter you and
spend money on you. Your mother and father are dead! Get
that
into your head.”

“But not my Kovago grandparents. They didn’t come with us that night. When I’m old enough, I shall go back to them.”

“You ungrateful little idiot! Even if they’re still alive, they are now behind the Iron Curtain. You will
never
see them again.”

Lili was silent, struggling with emotion and frustration. Then her anger and long-suppressed resentment surfaced and, with a glare of hatred, she spat at Madame Sardeau. There was a shocked
moment of silence then—outraged—the woman yelled, “Such guttersnipe manners merely betray your low origins! I shall report your behaviour to my husband this evening and he will
discipline you. Now get in your room!”

Lili fled, tears falling down her school pinafore. Lying face down on her lumpy bed, she longed for Angelina, Felix and Roger. Now she had nothing. No brother, no grandma or grandpa, no uncle,
no father. And instead of two mothers, she had none at all. How would her
vraie maman
even know that she was in Paris? How could she now know where to find her, when the time came?

Lili felt as if an unseen, vindictive spirit was punishing her, crushing her, in this joyless apartment. Although she was only nine, she knew that her childhood had passed and that she now had
to mark time through the gray days that lay ahead until she was old enough to run away.

M
AXINE WORKED ALMOST
NONSTOP
for three years after the château opened. By 1959 she had discovered that business
progress zigzagged, with one step backward for every three steps forward. The staff of the Château de Chazalle were learning their jobs day by day and Maxine—who was in charge of
them—found it hard to cope with business problems that were on a far larger scale than those to which she had been accustomed in the rue Jacob shop.

In the first year they had 92,000 visitors and they grossed 30.8 million francs. In other words, they suffered a loss.
O rage, ô désespoir,
thought Maxine, grimly remembering
Pagan’s oft-repeated schoolgirl wail. More days were spent with accountants, there were more anxious visits to the bank and—worst of all—more borrowing, which brought more
sleepless nights.

In the second year they had 121,000 visitors and grossed 48.4 million francs. Success!

But would it last?

In the third year over 174,000 people visited the château, and in the fourth year they passed the magic figure of 250,000 visitors.

Yes,
it was going to last
. But could Maxine? Guy, worried, privately told Charles that he thought she was like someone running too fast downhill, forced on by her own impetus and unable
to stop. Charles agreed, and repeated his original, overall instruction to Maxine’s executive secretary. Mademoiselle Janine was to keep as much work as possible away from Madame la Comtesse.
She managed this so efficiently that eventually Maxine was able to delegate nearly everything except the weekly business meeting on Monday with the estate accountant, and her weekly Friday meeting
in Paris with Christina to go over the design work.

Maxine no longer stayed at her desk until past midnight in order to clear it, only to be greeted by a new pile of mail the following morning. Instead of getting up at six in the morning, Maxine
now had a leisurely breakfast in bed, went to her office at nine and had finished the serious business of the day by lunchtime. To her relief, she was able to see far more of her children; it was
one of the advantages of living over the shop, she thought, as every cold afternoon she played in the firelit nursery with her two charming little boys and every warm afternoon they all romped
around the park with the dogs. Maxine had never expected to find such simple happiness with her children, and sometimes, looking at her sons, she felt a sudden pang of guilt; she felt that perhaps
she didn’t deserve them, it was all too good to be true; she sometimes shivered as the thought crossed her mind that perhaps Fate was going to demand some dreadful penalty for her almost
ruthless practicality and success.

Partly because of the huge success of the château, Paradis was also steadily building a reputation for rescuing and converting historic houses. After the Château de
Chazalle had opened in a blaze of publicity that proved what Paradis could do, potential clients streamed into the office. Maxine had successfully restored twenty-six buildings since then.

Paradis converted historic buildings into showplaces for the public, into hotels or small apartments for several families to live in. It now employed four full-time designers. Although Maxine
expected everybody to work hard, she saw to it that her designers enjoyed their jobs and frequent bursts of laughter would issue from the main studio when she was working there; but Maxine still
approved every scheme at the sketch stage before it was presented to a client. Nothing, no matter how minor, could escape her eye for detail.

Maxine was also irreplaceable in one other very important area. Sometimes the investment needed for the Paradis projects could be as high as fifty million francs, sometimes it was considerably
less. Maxine’s expertise lay in presenting a scheme to a possible source of finance. “You go off with your eyes lit up, like a bullfighter about to go into the ring,” observed
Charles.

To Maxine, work was fun, but this was partly because she had never had a major setback.

Then, in spite of knowing that Charles would be furious, Maxine did something that she’d been secretly wanting to do for a long time. For years she had hated her breasts.
They
hadn’t
diminished when the boys were born, so one day, without telling Charles, she slipped anonymously into a hospital for breast reduction.

Maxine and her Dior
vendeuse
hoped that she would emerge with the silhouette of Audrey Hepburn, but although her breasts were resited four inches higher, they still remained ample. As
always, the operation was very painful and Maxine was left with a semicircle of blanket stitches under each breast and another jagged little row from beneath the breast up to the nipple. They were
ugly. They would never disappear.

Charles was furious. He had particularly
liked
her breasts. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me what you were going to do? You know that there’s always some danger with a
full anesthetic!”

“Because I thought you might stop me.”

“Damn right! They’re not
your
breasts, they’re
our
breasts. How would
you
like it if
I
decided to have an inch or two snipped off?”

But on the whole, Maxine’s life passed excitingly and successfully until she was nearly thirty years old, when two things happened—Maxine became pregnant again and
Charles fell in love with another woman.

At first Maxine knew only of the first event and not the second. She was not pleased to be pregnant again. Two sons were enough. She had just got on top of her job again and for the first time
in years she was enjoying her position. She felt in charge of what was happening, rather than just keeping up with the daily treadmill of work. Her organization was now highly efficient, and she
was paying off the château bank loan much faster than anticipated.

Then one morning, as she handed Maxine her mail, Mademoiselle Janine said, “I noticed that Madame de Fortuny was here again yesterday. For a copywriter, that one is certainly devoted to
her job. She’s always on the telephone to Monsieur le Comte, and I notice that she’s on the list of guests for lunch today. Myself, I find that she always smells too strongly of
carnations. Too much perfume can be overpowering.”

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. . .
.