Lace (66 page)

There was a muffled yell of fury from Griffin.

“No! I’m going to fix myself a highball!”

She padded away, leaving Griffin jerking at his bonds, and returned with a large Scotch-on-the-rocks. She took a swig and rolled it around her tongue like mouthwash. The she stretched out beside
Griffin, took two ice cubes in her mouth and bent down again. He gave a muffled yelp, because the stinging sensation was totally different from the normal inside of somebody’s mouth; instead
of being warm and soft and wet it felt freezing and dangerously lumpy.

Judy sucked away until the ice in her mouth had melted and Griffin had lost his erection. Then she curled her forefinger inside him and wriggled around a bit, feeling for his prostate, and when
she found it she pushed against it until Griffin quickly jerked to a climax.

She stood up and poured the rest of the highball over his head—the bed was now covered in a revolting mixture of olive oil and melting ice—then she nipped out to the icebox. Saying,
“This always looks so
humorous
on film,” she returned with a lemon meringue pie, which she carefully ground in Griffin’s face. She pulled the tinfoil base away, stood up
and surveyed the scene.

“My
God,
what a mess!” she said disapprovingly, then turned on her heel and headed for the shower.

Ten minutes later she reappeared, immaculately dressed in a buttercup, sleeveless, short linen tunic with matching pumps. “I’ve got an appointment, Griffin, so I have to go
now,” Judy said in a polite voice. Then she picked the shears off the floor and placed them on the bed, about a foot from Griffin’s head. He tried to yell his indignation at her, but
only muffled sounds came through the gag in his mouth as he struggled furiously.

“
You
were in the Boy Scouts, Griffin, you work it out,” she said, and walked out of the apartment.

Griffin couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe that she’d really left him. He couldn’t believe that he wasn’t able to free himself. He jerked and struggled with
his ridiculous silken bindings, gradually getting very cold on the unpleasantly sticky, damp bed, which stank of Scotch.

Eventually he found that by curling his right hand carefully around, he was able to pick at the knot of the dressing gown sash. It took him about half an hour, but then with one bound he was
free—and telephoning Carter to bring around a fresh set of clothes.

Griffin was furious.

But he was also impressed. He—Griffin Lowe, the big-dealer, the lover and leaver, who kept his women neatly organised in a private emotional filing system that never overlapped with office
hours or impinged on his domestic comfort—had been faced with a situation that his power, charm and savoir faire were unable to resolve. There had been real fury behind what Judy
did—and she hadn’t weakened. She had also demonstrated the physical power she had over Griffin. She understood his body so well that she had kept him at the point of orgasm for an hour
and a half, teasing him almost beyond endurance until his nerves were raw.

He had been humbled, if not humiliated.

From that moment, the pattern of their relationship shifted, and Griffin treated Judy with a great deal more care and respect, not because he was afraid of her, but because she had done exactly
what she said she would do—she had punished him!

But Griffin knew that he had to risk her pain and fury once more. He knew he had to spell their future out to her—it was only fair. One evening, a week after she’d
tied him up and slashed his clothes off, they both lay naked on her bed, in the soft, final rays of the setting sun. They were both voluptuously tired after making love, and Griffin didn’t
really want to talk, but he knew he had to. He held her hand hard, knowing that he had to make it clear to her, knowing that it was going to hurt her. Eventually, he simply said, “Delia knows
I’d never leave her or the kids, Judy. I’ve fought too hard for what I’ve got to dump my family or to hurt them.” There was a long silence. He felt ill at ease and Judy
looked so closed off and remote that he slid off the bed and padded, naked, to the kitchen, returning with a bottle of Dom Perignon in one hand.

“I can’t think why she puts up with you,” Judy said.

“Delia knows there’s an odd kind of security about a man who’s always falling in love.”

Judy projected anger as he untwisted the wire and eased out the champagne cork with his thumbs. He had to be straight with her. “Fact one, Judy—I meet a lot of beautiful women and I
enjoy them. Fact two—I also have a family. For me these are two entirely different areas of interest, and I hope you realise this.”

She stretched one arm from the tousled, cinnamon silk sheets and took the glass of champagne he offered. “I mean, Judy, I’m
underlining
it. I don’t want to hurt you and
I don’t want you to get any wrong ideas, but I want you to understand
I will never, never leave my wife.
It would hurt her too much and I could never live with myself
afterward.”

There was a long pause.

“That’s what they all say.” Judy carefully tipped her glass over his head. “And anyway, who asked you? A long time ago, I decided I was never going to marry. I
didn’t see the point of making unrealistic promises I wasn’t sure that I or anyone else could keep.”

Griffin put down the champagne bottle and headed for the bathroom. At least she hadn’t smashed it over his head. And he
had
—finally and clearly—said it.

Judy continued in a dreamy voice: “I keep telling myself that I shouldn’t
want
to marry you and I don’t think I really do. It’s just that I hate your being married
to somebody
else.
” She raised her voice so that, in the bathroom, he could still hear what she was saying. “I don’t want to be
dependent
for my happiness on someone
else, and I can’t help feeling that way.”

Griffin padded back, and she thought how handsome he looked as he stood in the doorway towelling his hair. He tried a tentative grin.

“Goddamn it, Griffin,
listen,
please. I’ve always valued my independence, but now I notice in myself a sudden painful urge to tell you
everything,
Griffin, every secret
of my life.”

She looked up at the ceiling. “Now I know that you don’t feel that way about me, because men
don’t.
And suddenly
I want to be with you all the time.
But
intellectually I know I don’t
want
that.” She thumped the bedspread with her small fists. There was a short silence. Suddenly she sat up and he couldn’t help looking at her
small rosy nipples. He threw the towel on the floor, moved toward her and bent to her breasts, but she pushed him aside.

“Griffin, I want to keep my own privacy. If you laugh at this, I’ll kill you, but I want to be alone, quite often.”

She slid down the bed again and pulled the covers up to her neck. “Even if you
can’t
keep your eyes off my tits.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and said seriously, “Why? Why do you want to be alone quite often?”

“Because so many people are frightened of solitude, instead of valuing it. I was, once—and I never want to be like that again.”

Slowly she pulled herself up to a sitting position against the pillows and said, “There’s a world of difference between being alone and being lonely.”

He looked skeptical. She hesitated, then added, “Sure, it’s sometimes lonely to come home at night after a hard day’s work to a dark, empty apartment. But I’d rather be
down in the dumps occasionally than trapped with someone I don’t really want to be with.”

She scowled. “And I don’t want to play that part in some man’s life.” She clasped her hands behind her head and her nipples again tilted upward. “Are you listening
to me, Griffin? Once upon a time if a man told me he was lonely I used to melt with sympathy. But now I run a mile.”

“Sounds as if you want to have your cake and eat it.”

“Neatly put, for a cake.”

Laughing, he lunged at her.

On her next trip to New York, Maxine was charmed by Griffin. “At last our lives seem to be sorting themselves out,” she said, as she stood in Judy’s kitchen,
arranging an armful of arum lilies and pink roses that she’d brought in with her. “No, thank you, Francetta, I like doing the flowers. Pagan and I are happily married, with babies as
well as jobs. Kate’s happily divorced and a successful writer. And
at last
you’ve fallen in love.”

Reflectively, she sniffed the rounded, pale pink tip of a rosebud. “We all hoped it would be Nick, then we all hoped it would be someone nice.” She finished the vase and stood back
to admire it “And then we didn’t care
who
it was, so long as he made you happy. Darling, what’s all this Dom Perignon in your refrigerator? . . . Well, tell Griffin you
prefer
our
champagne. And now listen, because I have a little surprise for you.”

L
ONDON LIFE AND
the afternoon traffic were totally disrupted, and Pagan and Judy were one of the reasons for it. Outside
the gates of Buckingham Palace stood a very smart line of women in large, flowered, floppy hats and men in pale gray top hats and black suits. They were the honoured guests of H.M. the Queen at the
annual Royal Garden Party. Pagan saw Kate, who had just been nominated woman of the year by the Association of Professional Women, so Pagan waved her invitation in the thick, cream envelope with
the dark red, royal crest stamped on the back. It listed the time as four to six
P.M.
, but you could enter through the magic gates at three-fifteen
P.M.
and a lot of people seemed to want to do it. Kate wore a cream Tuffin and Foale crepe suit with a flounced jacket, Pagan wore a trumpet-shaped silk dress with leg o’mutton
sleeves in Jean Muir’s latest pink and gray art-nouveau pattern, and Judy looked unusually demure in a lemon linen suit from Guy’s summer collection, with slightly darker shoes and a
big-brimmed straw hat.

The best part was walking past the scarlet-coated sentry, through the big black curlicued gates beyond the barriers that held back summer tourists. Once inside the gates the three of them walked
across the gravel and under the arch of the quietly elegant, pale gray facade. Then they were in the inner courtyard and climbing the wide, red-carpeted stairs to the Queen’s own
doorstep.

“It certainly was a surprise, Pagan. I still can’t believe I’m actually
inside
Buckingham Palace,” said Judy. “And I still can’t understand how you
fixed it.”

“Nobody can fix Buckingham Palace,” said Pagan. “Christopher suggested about a year ago that you might be welcome, because of the voluntary work you’d done for cancer
research.”

They found Maxine, the guest of the French Ambassador, in the main drawing room, which was decorated in gold and scarlet, like the entrance hall, and lined with glass cabinets containing
priceless porcelain. Looking unmistakably Parisienne in light green chiffon, Maxine winked and moved toward them. The four women greeted each other in an unusually subdued manner.

“Let’s go outside in the sun,” suggested Kate, so they moved onto the balustraded terrace that runs across the back of the palace. Beyond the vast lawn was a lake, and beyond
the lake was a wood. It was difficult to believe this garden was hidden in the middle of London, it was like being in the country. On a circular bandstand the Band of the Royal Maxines was thumping
out a selection from
Oklahoma!
as they’d done for the last twenty years. On the left of the balustraded terrace was the green-and-white-striped tea tent. Waitresses in pearl-buttoned
black silk dresses already bustled around small circular tables set with cakes and teacups. Over to the right of the terrace was the small red-carpeted royal tea tent, with sumptuously gilded
Regency chairs and a golden tea urn on the table.

Everyone looked happy as they strolled over the lawn. It was like being at a favourite cousin’s wedding, but with no drunken uncles. Half the women were dressed like the Queen and the
other half were dressed like Princess Anne. One guest wore black goggle sunglasses with a topless, shocking-pink sheath; among the white kid gloves and the rose-trimmed straw hats she stood out
like someone from another planet. Considering that 1969 was the year when fancy dress was fashionable, it was odd to see nobody dressed as a flower child, no wealthy gypsies, no outrageously
embroidered Afghans, no buckskin-fringed Indians or other ethnic oddities, although there were quite a lot of expensive-looking milkmaids, romantically ruffled by Laura Ashley.

Toward four o’clock everyone suddenly moved toward the terrace as the band struck up the anthem, then everybody froze to attention. A small figure in turquoise stood out from the group
that had appeared on the terrace. The Beefeaters leaped into action in a surprisingly sprightly manner to clear the royal path.

The Queen wasn’t in turquoise—that turned out to be a lady-in-waiting. H.M. wore a red silk dress over a cream petticoat that the wind revealed quite often. She and Pagan were the
only women who wore low-heeled shoes, but then it was Her lawn. Under a big-brimmed red straw hat, Her Majesty’s face was pale, neat and animated as she talked to guests whom the ushers
beckoned forward at random, as she slowly moved toward her tea tent. Red-liveried footmen with white stockings served tea as Her Majesty chatted to the diplomatic corps.

It was a perfect Edwardian tea: white-iced layer cake, pale-orange layer cake, chocolate cake, plates of bread and butter thin as vellum, cucumber rounds covered with cream cheese and minced
gherkin. No liquor was served, but there was plenty of iced coffee, tea and fresh orange juice.

“A neat place to have a reunion,” said Judy from beneath the brim of her huge straw hat. “None of us expected
this
twenty years ago.” She waved a hand at the
resplendent scene as they sat at a table.

“We never expected
any
of the things that happened to us,” said Kate, smoothing her cream lace ruffles as she sat down. “And we never got any of the things that we
did
expect, like Prince Charming.”