Princess Daisy (65 page)

“How do you feel,
really?
” Daisy asked, at last.

“Now? Not really all that much different The first few months were a bit nasty—drug therapy isn’t much fun, but now I only have to see the doctor once a month and I’m over the sticky part. I’ve lost weight, which I rather like, but my energy is low … still, I can’t complain, darling. It could have been much worse. I promise you I’m telling the truth.”

“I know you are.” Daisy bit her lip before she spoke again. She didn’t want to use Ram’s name. “Did you let him know you didn’t need him?” she asked.

“The instant I got your letter. I told him that I wouldn’t trouble him again, ever, and I told him why, or he’d never have believed me.”

“What did you say?” Daisy asked anxiously.

“I simply said that you’d been picked to do some commercials and that you were going to make enough money to take care of both me and Dani.”

“And thank God for that,” Daisy said, gazing into the fire.

“Yes. Ram is truly evil. I wish I could have helped him, but it was too late when I met him. Yet he was only twelve or so.”

“Who was to blame?” Daisy asked.

“I’ve often wondered. He was always unhappy, always envious, always an outsider, a child of divorce, of course, but that can never be the whole explanation. He was also your father’s son and your father was a hard and selfish man. Often he was a cruel man. Perhaps Stash could have helped Ram, but he never even bothered to try.”

“You’ve never said that to me before,” Daisy said, astonished.

“You weren’t mature enough to hear it … to hear it and understand it, and know that I still love your father even as I say it Now I think it important that you know. That day Stash left Danielle at the school, I almost left him, too.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because he needed me to keep him human … and, as I said, I loved him … and perhaps, even then, a little bit, I stayed for you. At six you know, you were quite irresistible … before you grew so old and ugly.”

“Flirting again, Anabel. I’ll tell Shannon.”

“Ah, that Shannon. Since you have finally asked me, I approve. You’ve begun to show a little sense. I’ve been worried about you, Daisy, for years. You have a truly incredible talent for staying out of trouble—it wasn’t normal. Now, with Shannon—ah, well, I have to admit that I envy you …”

“Anabel! I hardly know hi
m!
”

“Indeed! Then, if I were only thirty years younger … or even twenty … you wouldn’t have a chance! I’d take him right away from you.”

“You would, too, wouldn’t you, Anabel? You really would,” Daisy marveled. “No sense of fair play at all?”

“Where a man like that is concerned? You must be joking. What does ‘fair play’ have to do with it? Your British education has given you some very odd notions. No wonder they lost India.”

Soon afterward, Anabel declared that she felt tired and she was going to bed. She had given Daisy her old room, the walls still covered in green silk, now faded and even frayed in places, and she had put Shannon in the brown and white room, the most comfortable of her guest rooms, all the way at the other end of the house.

After they’d said their goodnights, Daisy sat on her window seat in the dark and looked out over the spangled estuary of the Seine to the lights of Le Havre. There must be ghosts here, she thought, watching the beloved silhouettes of the three umbrella pines, listening to the rustle of the long-leaved eucalyptus trees, smelling the wood-brown ivied fragrance of the walls of
La Marée
, hearing the occasional lowing of cows from the dairy farms at the bottom of the hill. There
are
ghosts, but tonight I’m free of them, tonight I’m safe from them, tonight nothing can hurt me … I could even walk in the woods and feel no fear. Abruptly, she remembered Ram, stretched out in a familiar pose in one of the striped deck chairs, looking at her intently through his half-closed eyes, beckoning to her with a careless, owning hand. No, you have no power over me, mad ghost, Daisy thought, none at all—and you know it.

Shall I walk in the woods, she wondered as she brushed her hair. Sparks of static electricity like a flock of indignant fireflies crackled in the night air. She wandered over
to the chest of drawers in which she kept a store of old clothes for her visits to
La Marée
. She was wearing a pair of much-washed cotton pajamas which she’d owned since she was sixteen. The jacket had missing buttons and the pants had shrunk.

Or, Daisy asked herself, shall I go and see if Pat Shannon is quite comfortable in his room? Standing with the hairbrush still clasped in her hand, she thought of how he had looked rushing down the terraces of Berkeley Castle. What urgent errand had brought him there? She remembered how quickly he had brought her back to Claridge’s last night, understanding that she was so tired that even an arm around her shoulders would have been a burden to her, of how tactfully he had left her alone to talk with Anabel earlier that evening. And yet I do believe he finds me attractive, she told herself, smiling in the dark, remembering the wordless moment when he had kissed the palm of her hand. Yes, unquestionably attractive. He’s almost
too
considerate. Wouldn’t it be hospitable to see if he’s comfortable? Truly and deeply hospitable? Thoughtfully, Daisy took off her pajamas and searched rapidly in her suitcase for the good-luck present Kiki had given her before she’d left for England. Daisy pulled out of the tissue paper a nightgown such as she’d never owned, a slithery gown the color of apricots, made of two shining pieces of satin held together at the sides only by tiny bows which linked one piece to the other at eight-inch intervals. Daisy dropped it over her head, gasping as the fall of satin touched her naked skin with its coolness. Then she put on the matching robe that closed with a bow at the base of her throat. She considered looking in the mirror to see how she looked, but she didn’t want to turn on the light.

Daisy opened her door as silently as a somnambulist but there was nothing of the sleepwalker about her steps as she walked, on her hospitable mission, quietly, but with eager determination, down the entire length of the house to the door of Pat Shannon’s room. She knocked at the door and waited, hardly breathing, for it to open. There was no response. She knocked again, rather louder this time. It was, of course, possible that he was asleep, she thought. But it was also entirely possible that he wasn’t comfortable. There was only one way to make sure. Daisy opened the door and saw him, sound asleep in the wide, double bed. She padded silently across the room and knelt
on the floor next to his dreaming form, throwing off the long robe as she leaned over him. There was enough moonlight for her to study his face. In sleep the lines on either side of Shannon’s mouth softened and their relaxation lent his characteristic expression of purposeful banditry a youthfulness at which Daisy peered tenderly. His hair, always tousled, fell more carelessly than he would have permitted in a waking moment, adding to his unguarded look. He seemed trapped in a savage solitude, Daisy thought, wondering what he was dreaming about. Shannon, so often seen in action, swift, set apart, beyond self-doubt or failure, the powerful conductor of the great conglomerate orchestra, was sleeping the sleep of childhood, his wide mouth vulnerable, somehow beseeching, a look on his face as if he’d lost his way. She pressed her lips softly to his. He slept on. Again she kissed him and still he slept. This is not at all gallant of him, thought Daisy, and kissed him once more. He woke up gasping.

“Oh, the
best
kiss …” he mumbled, still half-asleep.

She kissed him again, fleetingly, before he could say more.

“The sweetest kiss … give me another …”

“You’ve already had four.”

“No, impossible, I don’t remember, they don’t count,” he insisted, finally awake.

“I just came by to see if you were comfortable. Now that I see you are, I’ll go back to my room. I’m so sorry I woke you—go back to sleep.”

“Oh, Lord, don’t! I’m not! It’s freezing here and the mattress is lumpy and the bed’s too short and too narrow and I need another pillow,” he grumbled of Anabel’s luxurious guest accommodations, as he adroitly lifted Daisy from the floor where she was still kneeling and tucked her under his covers.

Shannon cradled her in his arms as gently as a cherished child and they nestled quietly, each tentatively experiencing the warmth of the other’s body, the sound of the other’s breathing and the beating of the other’s many pulses—a communication without words, so full of a sense of the extraordinary that neither of them dared to speak. Little by little they sank deeper, and surrendered themselves, with their whole sentient beings, becoming immersed, enlaced in awareness of the life force of the other, until, without voices or motion they had attained a trust that had been waiting to be born.

It seemed a long time before Shannon began to imprint a blizzard of tiny kisses at the point where Daisy’s jaw joined her throat, that particularly warm curve, spendthrift with beauty, that he had not allowed himself to realize had haunted him for weeks. Daisy felt fragile and rare to Shannon, as if he’d trapped a young unicorn, some strange, mythological creature. Her hair was the most intense source of light in the room since it reflected the moonlight creeping through the windows, and by its light he saw her eyes, open, rapt and glowing; twin dark stars.

It seemed to him now as if they had never kissed before. The kisses she had awakened him with were so chaste, so tentative that they were only the memory of a kiss. Now he pressed her mouth with a rain of kisses like blazing flowers.

Oh, yes! she thought, opening her lips to him, tumbled and craving and daring. She arched her body toward him, nudging his hands toward her breasts until they were clasped and claimed. It was she, not he, who raised her nightgown over her head in one swift impatient movement and tossed it on the floor. It was she who guided his hands down the length of her body, she who touched him wherever she could reach, as playfully as a dolphin, until he realized that her fragility was strength, and that she wanted him without reserve. He bent to the glorious task, dimly aware that never before had life flowed through him without the static and interferences of thought, never had he been so close to drinking the elemental wine of life. He tasted it on her lips and on her nipples and on her belly, his whole skin drank thirstily of her and when he thrust into her, he knew he had arrived at last at the source, the spring. Now, Daisy lay quietly, invaded, filled, utterly willing. She felt as if she were floating down a clean, clear river with birds singing in green trees on the bank. But there was more; more than this blissful peace and together they quickened, panted, quested as eagerly as two huntsmen after an elusive prey, plunging through the forests of each other until they came at last to their victories, Daisy with a sound that was at least as much a cry of astonishment as it was of joy. She had experienced fulfillment before, but never with this excellence, this plenitude.

Afterward, as they lay together, half asleep, but unwilling to drift apart into unconsciousness, Daisy farted, in a tiny series of absolutely irrepressible little pops that seemed to her to go on for a minute.

“Termites riveting,” observed Shannon lazily. She lunged out from under the covers and almost managed to jump off the bed before his long arms pinned her on the mattress.

“Minuscule termites, midget Rosie the Riveters. You get an E for effort.”

“Let me go!” she cried, humiliated.

“Not until you realize that if you fart, you fart—and that’s fine … farting’s part of life.”

“Oh, please stop repeating that word!” Daisy begged, more embarrassed than ever.

“You’ve never lived with a man.” He stated this rather than asking.

“What makes you think that?” she said quickly. Of course she hadn’t, but at twenty-five, what woman would admit it?

“Because of how you reacted to … ah, giving a salute to the queen … does that sound better?”

“Yes, much,” she murmured, pressing her face into his shoulder. “Is that your idea of a romantic declaration?”

“The circumstances were not of my choosing. I think I can do better.”

“Go right ahead.”

“Dearest, darling, adorable Daisy, how can I convince you of the profound chivalry and absolute tenderness and devotion which lie in my heart of hearts?”

“You just have.” She trembled with laughter. “Now, go to sleep, Shannon, or it will be morning. I’m going back to my room and you’ll have to make the best of the terrible lumpy bed.”

“But why? Sleep with me. Don’t go. You can’t leave me here all alone,” he protested.

“Yes, I can. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know.” He sat up, watching as she wrapped her robe around her naked body, all shadows and secrets in the moonlight. “Goodnight, sleep tight, and don’t let those termites bite,” she whispered, kissing him on the lips with the speed of a hummingbird, and was gone.

At breakfast Anabel serenely offered Shannon a choice of five kinds of honey to go on his buttered brioche while she managed simultaneously to watch Daisy, incendiary with joy, yet limpid as dawn and dressed like a ruffian.

“And what are your plans for today, children?” she asked.

“Children?” Shannon grinned at her.

“A generic term,” responded Anabel, “for anyone not of my generation.”

“You don’t have a generation,” he assured her.

“And you grow more charming every day.”

“We were going to walk into Honfleur to show Shannon the port, but perhaps I should just leave you two alone together,” Daisy suggested. “You could spend the time doting on each other.”

“No, much as I would like that, there’s a long list of things for you two to pick up for dinner. When you’re ready to go, it’s on the kitchen table. I’m going to cut some flowers,” Anabel said tranquilly.

“I’ll go get it now—I’m all set,” Daisy said.

“Like that?” Shannon asked.

“Naturally.” Daisy looked down at her costume. When she woke that morning she had jumped into a pair of jeans with holes in the knees which dated from her freshman year at Santa Cruz, a sleeveless jersey equally dilapidated, and tennis shoes that had weathered almost a decade. Around her neck she’d slung a moth-eaten navy cardigan which had been part of the detested uniform at Lady Alden’s School, worn when the girls had marched into the park to play rounders. She’d made two long, absolutely simple braids which hung down her back, and she wore no make-up at all. “Not chic enough for you?” she asked him with a grin which should have told him that she knew exactly what she was doing and that she had prepared this new metamorphosis of herself just to further enchant and befuddle him. However, she doubted that he was in any fit condition to figure it out—hers were hardly Supracorp tactics.