Lace (39 page)

“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.

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.

A
FTER
C
HRISTMAS
, P
AGAN
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.