Lace (8 page)

“If the blackmail stories are true, then Chardin is playing a dangerous game, but it isn’t as dangerous as it might seem. He picks his victims carefully. And there are plenty to
choose from. You don’t suppose for one minute that he couldn’t
stop
girls from getting out at night if he wanted to, do you? The parents of the girl are always a long way off in
another country, and they’re rich. Chardin never asks for sums they can’t easily afford. I believe the lowest rate is an extra year’s tuition. On the whole, the parents can easily
afford to pay their way out of a minor scandal, and because they’re all from different countries, none of them are in touch with each other, so there’s no danger of their meeting
up.”

The girls hung on his words, fascinated by these awesome, wicked possibilities. “So for heaven’s sake be careful,” Nick continued. “Just in case any of these rumours are
true. I know it’s gossip, but I
keep
hearing the same thing on the hotel grapevine. And that’s not all. Some fellows say that Paul is bisexual.”

There was a pause while Nick explained what bisexual meant. By now he was blushing fiercely and wished he hadn’t started, but he was also enjoying this flattering attention.
“It’s said that if a very rich girl gets out at night and she’s caught by Chardin, then she might be . . . deliberately
seduced
by Paul and photographed in . . . er . . .
compromising positions. The barman at the Imperial told me that last year the father of one of the Brazilian girls had a few too many and started cursing Chardin. He said he’d flown over only
because the headmaster was blackmailing him, and he couldn’t go to the police because his daughter was involved and if the scandal leaked out, his wife would never forgive him. . . . He had
to protect the family name and his daughter’s reputation or she’d never make a good marriage, and so forth. . . . Then he said that he was never going to forgive his daughter for
putting him in such a position, because he couldn’t risk calling Chardin’s bluff. There were photographs of his daughter with Paul.”

Nick smiled. “They must have been pretty unusual pictures. He told the barman that he paid thirty-six thousand Swiss francs for them. Cash.”

For Pagan, Maxine and Kate, life at l’Hirondelle passed in a charming haze of sentimental naivety. Although disguised in the bodies of women, the pupils were still
children. Exuding puppylike exuberance and energy, they giggled and tittered, scampered and shrieked, and were, on the whole, rather silly. Lessons bored them, love fascinated them, passion was
what they longed to study and their only ambition was to fall in love. There was a heady air of anticipation as they prepared to be—
women!
Hours were passed with magazine instructions
and diagrams in one hand, costly tubes of makeup in the other, as girls decided whether their faces were oval, round or square. Much time was spent discussing, trying on and swapping clothes. All
the girls yanked their waists in to minimal with wide elastic belts, they wore low ballet dancer’s slippers, huge full skirts and pale pink or blue sweaters with a small strand of small
pearls. The bras of the American girls divided their breasts into circular stitched cups that thrust skyward like twin ice cream cones. On their second Saturday, every new, non-American pupil
rushed out and bought a French lace bra. After that, the girls endlessly compared their new bouncing breasts, measured them and worried about them. “One of mine’s larger than the other.
. . .” “Why are mine lower than yours . . . ?” “Serena’s got
hairs
on her
nipples. . . .
” “You can get more cleavage in the middle if you
stuff socks down the side. . . .” “I wish I had more. . . .” “I wish I had less.”

Maxine tried hard to avoid mammary emphasis. She had large, rather low breasts, and she hadn’t yet become accustomed to them. They still embarrassed her, so she pushed as much of them as
possible under her armpits and gradually acquired a round-shouldered stoop. Nothing that the other girls said could convince Maxine that her splendid protuberances were an asset. She would turn
scarlet as soon as she saw a group of workmen in the distance, knowing that when she drew level with them, the men’s mesmerised eyes would follow her breasts as she passed. To comfort Maxine,
her mother had told her that her
embonpoint
would disappear when she breast-fed her first baby, but the thought of carrying those footballs around for years until they were battened on by a
baby that hadn’t yet been conceived did nothing to console Maxine, who, when not wearing her expensive Dior clothes, hid under enormous, shapeless sweaters.

Maxine was wearing one of these short woolen shrouds as, one evening, she taught Kate to dance
un slow.
Humming “Slow Boat to China,” she grasped Kate as they solemnly
shuffled around the narrow space, between the two beds. “It’s better that there’s no space, because that’s how it feels in a nightclub,” explained Maxine, who had
never been to one. None of the three girls had ever had a date with a boy, wouldn’t know what to talk about if they did, desperately envied all the girls with older brothers and worried
endlessly about where you put your nose when you were kissed.

They talked about such matters every night. After lights out, Pagan would creep from her room, clutching her heavy goosefeather quilt as a wrap, and sit cross-legged on the end of Kate’s
bed while they discussed all aspects of being a woman. Always it was unanimously agreed that they would dare
all
for true love, which would instantly be recognizable as such. Next, they
decided what sort of man they were going to marry and sketched their personal Prince Charming to each other. They discussed what their wedding dress would look like, and then the honeymoon was
described. In the cozy darkness they would draw deep breaths and discuss the fascinating mystery that none of them had yet encountered . . . sex. This was invariably romantic and never left you
sleeping on the damp patch. They never imagined Prince Charming with an erection and certainly not wearing a rubber.

The universal lack of accurate sexual knowledge in the school was surprising, but all girls at l’Hirondelle lied through their teeth about their sexual experience—which, on the
whole, was nil—in order to avoid looking unsophisticated. Hitherto, Kate and Pagan’s only sexual experience had been furtively fantasizing about tampons. To date, neither of them had
used tampons, but Pagan had stolen the brochure from her mother’s box and she and Kate had pored over the perplexing illustrations.

None of them had explored, felt or seen the area between their legs. None of them had heard of masturbation or knew that they had already experienced it. The fourteen-year-old Maxine, bored and
wriggling on a chair during Scripture class, thought she had experienced religious ecstasy. Pagan, hunting on a borrowed mount with an unusually high-fronted saddle, had once felt exulted with what
she thought was the divine thrill of the chase. Kate had always loved climbing ropes at gym class because of the lovely tickly sort of itch you got when, having pulled yourself up arm-over-arm, you
slid down the rope with your legs crossed around it, thighs tensed and descent controlled by your feet acting as brakes. Once she’d had this feeling right at the top of the rope and had hung
there swaying, blissfully frozen, unable to move and heedless of the cross, clipped voice of Miss Haydock, the instructress (who was used to girls being frozen on top of the ropes), telling Kate to
come down immediately.

Maxine, being French and seventeen—a year older than Kate and Pagan—was their unquestioned and respected authority in sexual matters, especially as she had been
instructed.
Boys were all the same, Maxine’s priest had explained, tomcats. They were only after one thing and you weren’t to let them get it, because once they had got it, they despised you for
letting them get it. Even if a boy swore that he loved you, after getting it he would spurn you (both privately and—worse—in public) because then, obviously, he wouldn’t respect
you anymore. If a really serious boy really loved you, and tried to insist, well he was just testing you—the priest didn’t say for what. In some mysterious way a man couldn’t
control himself, so if he went berserk with sexual passion, it was your fault for being so attractive, which was called “leading him on.” This might easily lead to disaster, for then
what would you tell your husband on your wedding night? Were you not to save yourself for your husband, the marriage would be a disaster from the start, and therefore your life would be ruined.
Because the man could always tell.

It was strange that not one of the girls queried the sexual double standard. They accepted that a boy could be driven uncontrollably mad by passion, but it never crossed their minds that it was
understandable if a girl felt the same way. They accepted that setting the sexual limit was the responsibility of the girl, not the boy; it was
her
job to control
his
lust. So girls
would learn to chop off their own erotic urge, a behaviour pattern was formed, and after years of cutting off their natural feelings, many of these girls later found it difficult to
proceed—or even be aroused—
beyond
that permitted sexual cutoff point. Their sexuality had been programmed and warped.

Maxine insisted that Italian girls saved themselves for their husbands and at the same time let a man go all the way by using an alternative route for the journey.

“Ugh! You’re inventing it, you revolting creature,” said Pagan. “Anyway,
how
can a man tell?”

“If he can’t get his thing in, that’s proof that you are a virgin,” said Maxine, “unless you are very sportive, or ride on the horse or the bicycle or do
gymnastics.”

Even if you had a serious beau who you thought might metamorphose into a fiancé, there were definite rules of sexual etiquette. Luckily, Maxine knew them all and shared her information
after lights-out. “Nothing on the first meeting—the rendezvous,” she said with authority, “except a significant look when you say good-bye.” There was a pause while
they all practiced significant looks in the darkness.

“Then after the second meeting you would permit him to kiss you on the cheek. And the next time, a real kiss at the farewell.”

“French kiss, with the tongue?” asked Kate.

“Not until the fourth rendezvous.”

Maxine had to admit that she hadn’t done it and hurried on to the fifth rendezvous, where, if the boy was serious, you might wish to go to the waist, a category that had two subdivisions:
over clothes and under them. Personally, Maxine would never permit either. She intended to be prudent until she was married.

A certain sort of girl allowed the man to go below the waist, in which case the two subdivisions were (1) above and (2) below the underclothes, but with his thing firmly zipped up, you
understand.

“But what
happens
under the underclothes?”

“The boy strokes the fur.” There was a further silence while in the dark they all furtively stroked their pubic hair and felt nothing.

The seventh stage of wickedness was letting the boy go all the way. Going all the way would be ecstasy, of course, but it would also be dreadfully dangerous.

Considering that every girl in l’Hirondelle was terrified of getting pregnant, it was surprising, when it came to the point, that they all felt a firm, almost religious conviction that
pregnancy couldn’t be inflicted upon them, especially not the first time. God wouldn’t let it happen to you, and anyway, statistics proved it. Unless, of course, you touched . . . the
stuff. All the girls were terrified of semen. It only took one microscopic egg, from all those millions, to get you pregnant and the damn things could stay alive for four days, invisibly creeping
up your panty legs. So it was better to take no risks at all, and vital for the boy to take a precaution. But how revolting if he used the rubber thing!

“It’s called a French lettuce,” said Pagan with authority.

“No, it’s called a
capot anglais,
” corrected Maxine coldly.

Whatever it was called, it led to another etiquette problem. Did you look away while he was putting it on? Did you pretend not to notice? Or did he put it on before he arrived? In which case it
would
prove
that he had not been carried away by your beauty, but that he’d really meant to do it all along. Anyway, how was it put on? “I think they smooth it on when the thing
is pointing upward,” said Pagan, “like a glove with only one finger.”

Not very romantic, they thought. But they had to admit it was better than being pregnant. Being pregnant was, well, inconceivable. Any unfortunate girls at whom fate pointed the finger had to
sit in a scalding hot bath and drink a whole bottle of neat gin. A true friend would sit beside her in the steam to cheer her up, stop her fainting, drowning or making loud drunken noises that
might be heard by Matron. Alternatively, you had to find a relatively large sum of money and visit an old woman in a back street, who would lay you out like a plucked chicken and pull your legs
apart on her grubby kitchen table. Then,
without washing her hands,
she would push a knitting needle up you. If you were rich you could go to a private clinic and have an anesthetic, and the
knitting needle would be made of stainless steel and sterilized and everybody would pretend that you were having your appendix out.

Kate woke before the bell sounded and immediately realised that something odd had happened overnight. The street sounds were muffled and the room seemed unusually light. She
dashed to open the window and push aside the lace curtain. The frost pressed white flowers against the glass. Barefoot in her blue nightgown, she leaned out. The trees were sprinkled with snow, the
roofs of the chalets below were covered with thick white blankets that glistened in the early sun, the turrets of the Imperial Hotel shone white like a child’s frosted birthday cake. Beyond
the town, the pine forests looked ghostly, like gray lace.

Snow fell heavily for several nights and in a week the little town was transformed. The ski-rental shop hardly ever closed; skiers slid along the streets; children wrapped like bulky parcels
pulled little coloured sleighs, the milk was delivered by dog sleigh and the local stable immediately brought out its magnificent horse-drawn sleighs. It was, at last, The Season.