Lace (49 page)

“So what
happened
?” demanded Kate.

“Someone started off by saying that willpower was about as effective a cure for alcohol addiction as it is for cancer. If your system can tolerate ethyl alcohol, then alcohol can give you
harmless pleasure, the way it does for you, Kate. But if you can’t tolerate it, like me, you gradually become
dependent
on alcohol. I tell you, it was oddly cheering to know that I was
merely addicted, not just an old soak.”

She was lolling on the hearthrug, cuddling the sheepdog, Buster, who had been out in the rain and smelled like a damp blanket. “It’s amazing that the government allows the stuff to
be plugged on TV when they know that drink is the third highest
killer
in the country.”

“Did anyone talk to you?”

“Nobody asked me anything, I just sat, watched and listened. One thing I learned—you just try not to drink for one day at a time.” Pagan paused. For the first time she felt
hopeful and not hopelessly weak-willed. “And you’re never cured. Once you’re an alcoholic, you’re
always
an alcoholic, just as a diabetic is still a diabetic,
although he controls his illness with insulin.” She was high on hope.

“Pagan, you’re too damn enthusiastic about it,” Kate said. “It worries me. You’re not to talk to Christopher until you’re calm. Otherwise, he won’t
realise that you’re serious.”

But Christopher did. “Oh, I guessed just before we were married,” he said. “There seemed no other reason for the reek of mouthwash on your breath every night when I came home,
so I marked the bottles—not the ones in the drinks cabinet, I knew you’d be too crafty to take those. I marked the cooking stuff in the kitchen. I was waiting for you to tell me. I
hoped I could help you.”

When he was able to return to work, Christopher took Pagan to the laboratory to meet his associates. “I’ve told everyone to explain things to you in words of one
syllable,” he murmured, kissing Pagan on the ear just before they got out of the car.

She was shown around the lab building as if she were visiting royalty, but the scientists might as well have been speaking Swahili for all she understood of her two-hour tour. She gazed at the
machines, at the computers, at the racks of glass containers where human cancer cells were growing in tissue that would be used in the preparation of the cancer vaccine. Then she asked the least
unnerving of the lab technicians to lunch on the following Sunday, because she was determined to understand Christopher’s work, if she could. She’d get this black-bearded Peter to
explain it to her.

In the car, on their way home, Christopher said, “Look, if you’re really interested, Pagan, why don’t you help us to raise money? I think you’d be good at it. Perhaps
Kate could help you.”

“Not Kate,” said Pagan thoughtfully, “but Judy might.”

A few months later Pagan accompanied Christopher to New York, where he was giving a lecture at the Sloan-Kettering Institute. For the first time in thirteen years she saw Judy.
They rushed to hug each other in the oak-panelled gloom of the Algonquin lobby.

“But Pagan, you look exactly the same, except you don’t wear glasses anymore. Contacts?”

“Yes. You look extremely different, darling. You always looked a child, but now you look a
rich
child.” Pagan eyed the blond-streaked, geometric Vidal Sassoon haircut flopping
over one eye and the creamy, raw-silk safari suit, worn with vanilla suede pumps.

“This is one of my working outfits—Guy’s, of course. Must look like a success if you want to be a success. Pagan, that’s the first thing you’ve got to remember when
I get around to giving you the concentrated course in public relations that you talked about on the telephone.”

“I asked Kate to tell you and Maxine the truth about what had happened to me. It’s all right, you don’t have to order Coke just because I’m here. . . . Kate saved my
life. And as soon as she told Maxine where I was, Max insisted that Christopher and I come over to stay with them. She was simply terrific. It was as if we’d last met a week ago. Now
you’ve offered to show me how to help publicise the Research Institute. You’re all being wonderful friends—I simply don’t deserve it after ignoring you for all these years.
It makes me feel even more ashamed.”

“Listen,” Judy said, “guilt is the most useless bit of baggage. You don’t want to clutter your head with it. It can’t do any good and it only makes you feel
awful.” She offered an olive to Pagan and grinned. “Real friends aren’t people you joke and have a drink with. You don’t need to see
real
friends, you just know that
they’re there when you need them. We formed our own little support system, remember, back in Gstaad? Through sick and sin, as Maxine used to say.”

She firmly interlaced her fingers. “Like
that
, we’re interlinked, we’re our own best safety net, so don’t you forget it. Now keep your ears open and prepare for
instruction.”

As usual Judy was bubbling over with ideas. Pagan took notes and hoped that she’d be able to sort them out later. Her head was spinning.

Pagan went back to London and set to work. At first she was so embarrassed by the idea of telephoning strangers that she had to lock herself in her bedroom, and she blushed
before dialing the numbers. But her background and fact sheets were fresh and interesting, her determination was formidable, and picking up her old network, she found that she knew a few rich
people and quite a lot of influential ones. One person led to another. Pagan quickly discovered the charms and rewards of work. Every fortnight she wrote a report to Judy, who returned two closely
typed pages of criticism and suggestions.

Pagan started by writing an article for her old school magazine in which she asked for money and helpers. She sweated over this for four days and worried about it for weeks afterward, but she
was delighted by the positive response. She found herself with £43.20 and two part-time assistants. Since drawing attention to the Research Unit was as important as raising money for it,
Pagan started a pyramid letter. “Please send me £2.00 and pass on a copy of this letter to two friends. Don’t break the chain—it’s a lifesaver.” This brought in
£4,068—far more than she had expected.

Some months later Pagan was standing in a small private room at the Savoy, hoping that her pale gray velvet suit with silver fox at the wrists wasn’t too formal for the
buffet luncheon she was about to give for twenty influential journalists. It was an expensive way to start, but she wanted nothing to be skimped at her first press party. She couldn’t help
feeling anxious. She wanted to be able to provide the right information for each journalist rather than give general information to a crowd. She had not invited medical journalists, who were
informed on the subject, only mass-circulation writers. Nobody present wrote for less than a million readers.

Much to her relief the women were not particularly tough or aggressive. Most seemed to know each other and chatted quietly until Christopher started to speak. Then they jabbed at notebooks and
asked questions that were ruthlessly to the point.

“My wife has specifically asked me to use simple language,” Christopher began, “because when I first explained my work to her, she didn’t understand a word I said. I hope
that I won’t oversimplify—later I shall be delighted to be as technical as you wish. First I’ll give you a few facts, but I’d like to start answering questions from you as
quickly as possible. I’m here to tell you about the work that we’re doing at the Anglo-American Cancer Research Institute. I’m also here to ask you to help us to raise money to
continue with our work. Already one in three cancer victims recovers: we want to improve that figure.”

His small audience looked politely interested until, at the end of his short speech, Christopher announced, “In our South London laboratory we have produced a very crude form of vaccine,
which I shall refer to as Vaccine X; I am sorry if that makes it sound a bit like a washing powder. We cannot speak with certainty until our findings have been checked, but Vaccine X seems to
stimulate the body’s defense forces to attack and beat off the viral invader and prevent the formation of those particular cancer cells.”

Now they were sitting up and taking notice. “In a recent experiment we took two groups of mice and injected one group with Vaccine X. We then implanted tumour cells that are associated
with the virus in all the mice. After two months the tumours in the treated mice had either not grown or had disappeared completely, while the untreated batch of mice all showed considerably
enlarged tumours.”

There was a burst of questions and a rustle of notebooks. Pagan felt she was off to a good start.

PART
SIX

L
ILI STARED LONGINGLY
at the burning Atlanta skyline, at Vivien Leigh shooting a soldier with rape written all over his
face, at Olivia de Havilland in a crinoline and at all the other colour posters in front of the cinema. Although she was now thirteen, Lili had only been to the movies twice. She bit her lower lip
and thrust her hands deeper into the pockets of her raincoat, wondering how she could manage to get in.

“Have you seen it?”

She turned to see a young man grinning at her. He was blondish, tall and at least twenty-four. “No, but doesn’t it look wonderful? Have you seen it?”

“No,” he lied. “Look, why don’t we see it together? I’m all alone in Paris.”

Lili hesitated. She wasn’t even supposed to be on the Champs Elysees that afternoon, but Madame Sardeau was away on her annual visit to her mother in Normandy, and Lili had invented an
extra math lesson for the benefit of Monsieur Sardeau, who wouldn’t notice her absence anyway, since he was at his office. Monsieur Sardeau was a boring little pedagogue, but he had long ago
stopped lecturing, correcting and reprimanding Lili—or, indeed, taking any notice at all of her—because the child’s well-formed breasts and her gawky, sprawling legs aroused in
him a physical response that at times he was afraid his wife might notice. He had once gasped Lili’s name aloud as he imagined himself lying between those slim, firm thighs, when in fact he
was writhing upon the bony body of his wife, clutching at the sagging breasts of Madame Sardeau. He’d managed to convince her that he hadn’t said anything, that she had merely heard a
voluptuous gasp of pleasure, but he couldn’t risk trouble so close to home. Conscious of the danger, he prudently avoided Lili whenever possible.

Lili gazed up at the young man who had just spoken to her. He looked a bit like Leslie Howard gazing down at her from that photograph; he had the same limpid look. He sounded foreign as
well.

She’d never get another chance.

“Yes, please,” she said. It was as easy as that. They moved past the box office into the darkness, into the previous century and the Civil War.

When the lights went up for the entr’acte, Lili was still in a state of romantic ecstasy. “Isn’t Scarlett beautiful?”

“Not more than you,” the young man said.

Lili’s face was no longer childish. A tangle of dark hair was held back from her face by a velvet hairband; she had huge brown eyes that seemed to radiate a very adult sensuality; but what
gave her face its most arresting quality was the elegant, slightly hooked little nose above lips so voluptuously chiseled that they might have been carved by Michelangelo. At thirteen, her figure
was no longer childish. Her legs were still a trifle thin, but her body had filled out and her breasts were well developed—perhaps, in fact,
too
developed. Sometimes she thought that
Monsieur Sardeau was furtively looking at them, and when they walked out of church on Sunday, his hand always grasped her upper arm, his knuckles quivering unnecessarily hard against her
breast.

Lili’s new friend bought her an ice cream, and she learned that his name was Alastair and he lived in New York. It was clear that he thought Lili older than she was, because he
didn’t treat her like a schoolgirl.

The lights dimmed again and Alastair reached over and took her fingertips. His hand felt warm and firm and almost unbearably thrilling, not like Monsieur Sardeau’s furtive hand, which
frightened her. Lili felt a shortness of breath, an eerie excitement, as if the fine down on her arms was standing on end like a cat’s. She felt a dreamy yearning to have this stranger stroke
more than just the inside of her palm and the back of her wrist.

As they shuffled out with the dark, swaying mob that moved toward the exit, Alastair asked, “Would you like something to eat?”

Lili tossed her hair, summoned up her courage and said yes. They splashed through the drizzle to a restaurant, and by the end of the meal Alastair knew a good deal about Lili, although she had
learned nothing about him. Toward the end of the meal Lili suddenly became anxious. It was nearly eleven o’clock—she had never been out so late before, she explained.

Without argument he snapped his fingers for the check and took her home. As the taxi splashed toward home, Alastair put one finger under her chin and gently turned her eager, anxious face toward
him. Then, just like Rhett Butler, he bent over and kissed her. Trembling with this new tingling feeling, thirsty for love and warmth, Lili put her arms around Alastair’s neck and lifted her
head. By the time the taxi splashed to a halt, she was in love.

Creeping up the staircase, she trembled for a different reason, terrified of her reception, never imagining that she might be able to reach her room without being challenged. But Monsieur
Sardeau hadn’t yet returned; he had no intention of staying at home on the rare occasions when his wife was absent for a fortnight.

Lili now got up at five in the morning in order to do the sewing that ought to occupy her summer afternoons, because Alastair now occupied those hours. Never again did she dare
stay out so late in the evening, but his working hours seemed conveniently elastic, so at midday Lili always ran to meet him in a café for lunch and afterward, holding hands, they would
wander along the trees in the Bois de Boulogne, stroll among the exquisitely dressed children in the Parc Monceau, take a
bâteau mouche
on the Seine or window-shop.