The Last Princess (45 page)

Tears welled anew in Lily’s eyes. At that moment she felt a wave of love for Ellis which went beyond anything she had ever felt for Harry.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for that. You don’t know how much it means to me. I’ve been so alone—”

Ellis was overwhelmed by her confession. But steeling himself, he said, “Now, listen to me. I want you to come back to Manhattan.”

“But—”

“No buts. Pack your bags. You know that the farm is just a step into the past, and however wonderful that past might be, you can’t live your life there. Look at you—thin and pale and miserable. You’re not solving your problems out here. If anything, you’ll create more.”

The wisdom of Ellis’s words was not lost on her. She decided in an instant. “Can you wait for me while I pack my bags?”

He held out his arms and pulled her into a comforting embrace, murmuring to the top of her head, “I have all the time in the world for you, Lily.”

U
PON HEARING THAT LILY
had moved back into the apartment, hope sprang up in Harry. Perhaps she had reconsidered. But she quickly disabused him of his illusions. “This has nothing to do with us, Harry. The reason I’ve come back is to try to salvage some kind of sense of myself—but I’m going to do it by myself. I’m sorry.”

Harry finally realized that she meant what she said. Their marriage was over. In flat-out despair, he turned back to the only solace he knew—his writing. For once, he was devoid of ideas. The first day he sat down to his typewriter again, he stared at it as though it had brought him all the unhappiness he had ever known. But after an hour of gazing blankly at the white paper in the carriage and smoking an endless chain of Camels, he finally found himself typing out the words “Chapter One.” It was a time of sheer agony. Never had writing been such a process of grinding it out. But finally an idea began to take shape. This time his story was set in Ireland, the green and lovely land torn by three hundred years of Irish passion and British arrogance.

As the familiar routine of research and writing began to reestablish itself, he began to find, if not solace, at least a measure of forgetfulness.

The year that followed was a strange one for Lily. She had expected to be lonely, unhappy, without a sense of purpose. But surprisingly, her new life began to give her both peace and fulfillment. Harry stopped his pleading calls, so she was spared that torment. Drew still refused to go back to Harvard, but he had found a job as copyboy on a newspaper. Lily didn’t object, thinking he would do well to have a little experience of the real world. Melissa, on the other hand, had ignored her parents’ counsel. She had dropped out of her Swiss school in the middle of the year to move to Paris. “I’ve had enough of school; I’m going to be a model,” she announced flatly.

“But darling,” Lily said. You’re much too young to live on your own.”

“I’m going and you can’t stop me!” she had returned defiantly—and they had been forced to admit she was right.

If Melissa was determined to have it her way, Lily was equally determined to see that she fared well. Lily flew to Switzerland and helped Melissa move to Paris, even going so far as to help her find a room in a respectable pension on the Left Bank. Before bidding her daughter farewell, Lily dropped in on her old friend Colette, who agreed to keep an eye on young Melissa.

Upon her return, Lily threw herself into volunteer work with renewed vigor, thanks largely to Ellis’s gentle prodding. She helped at the March of Dimes and at Ellis’s pet organization, the Historical Landmarks Society. Soon Lily branched out to a few special areas—she volunteered at a home for unwed mothers, she read to the blind.

Lily was back in the thick of things. She had blossomed again, just as Ellis had hoped. Even more important, she became a crucial figure in the groups in which she became involved. It should have come as little surprise when, over lunch with Joan and some of her other friends, Joan broached the subject of the upcoming Spring Ball.

“Lily, there’s something we want to ask you. The Spring Ball has never been so successful as the year you were in charge. Is there any chance you’d sign on as chairman again?”

Lily instantly demurred. “Oh, Joan, you flatter me.”

But Joan persisted. “Now, Lily, you know perfectly well that Alicia made a perfect botch of last year’s affair. We’re really looking for someone to revive our success. Please at least consider it.”

“Yes, Lily, do,” the rest of them chorused, and she held up her hands in mock dismay.

“Okay, okay, I’ll think about it.”

That afternoon, she called Ellis to invite him for dinner.

They had slipped into the old relationship, an easygoing friendship, and saw each other several times a week, for lunch or dinner, an occasional theater production, or the ballet.

Ellis was once again her best friend and confidant, and tonight, after they had finished their dinner and adjourned to the living room for their coffee, she asked his thoughts on the chairmanship.

“What do you think? They really seem anxious to have me.”

He looked at her, thinking what a difference so little time could make. Last time this subject had come up, he had practically had to browbeat her into accepting. Now she seemed to require only his gentle nod.

Soon her divorce from Harry would be final. At that point, maybe she would at last be ready to close that chapter in her life.

Ellis, as ever, cheered her on. “I think that you would be magnificent, my dear. It’s true what they said, the Spring Ball was never more successful than the year you were in charge.”

She smiled at the memory of it. “So you think I should accept?”

“Absolutely.”

She took a deep breath and said, “Okay, then, I’ll do it.”

Leaning forward, he kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Wonderful.”

For once he truly felt things would be, and not just for Lily alone, but for the two of them.

L
ILY THREW HERSELF INTO
her job as chairman to the exclusion of all else. She wanted this Spring Ball to be even better than the one she had chaired before. Soon everyone was marveling at the miracles she began to accomplish. The champagne was to be the finest, and the door prizes were being donated from establishments including Tiffany, Cartier, and Maximilian Furs.

But the real coup was snagging Frank Sinatra as the star entertainer. The skinny singer had engineered one of the most spectacular comebacks in show business history through his performance in
From Here to Eternity,
and even now no one could have been a hotter draw. It didn’t hurt that his tempestuous relationship with Ava Gardner was still making headlines. When it was announced that he would be the headliner, tickets began to sell at an unprecedented rate.

As further icing on the cake, Skitch Henderson’s band was to perform, and Robert Merrill agreed to sing an aria from
Rigoletto.
When he suggested that he and Sinatra sing “Some Enchanted Evening” as a duet, Lily thought she would faint.

She had arranged for hundreds of potted palms, anthuriums, and hibiscus to be flown in from Hawaii. Set designers were busy at work on a Tahitian theme. In the sketches, the colors were magnificent. The entire ballroom would be transformed into a scene by Gauguin.

It seemed that the Spring Ball might prove to be the event of the year, if not the decade.

As the date grew nearer, Lily became increasingly obsessed with the plans. She drove herself relentlessly. Late into the night she sat up checking her lists and organizational charts. Even after finally turning in, she would often switch on the light and hop out of bed because she had remembered something else.

She seemed to exist on no sleep at all, dropping off at one only to rise at five. By seven in the morning, she was already on the phone, attending to the myriad details.

The Spring Ball was a tremendous responsibility, yet she found herself thriving on it all. She loved the feeling of being needed, of being involved. And finally, after all the hours of work, the headaches, the skipped meals, and the agonizing, it was the day of the ball.

The weather could not have been better. The sky was blue and cloudless, the flowers were in bloom. Lily felt newly born. Ellis had been so right. She was a fool not to have come down to the city sooner. Finally it was just a matter of checking last-minute details. Her sandwich sat untouched as she remembered “just one more thing” a hundred times.

At two o’clock in the afternoon she gave up. Whatever was done was done. She slipped into a pair of trousers, a silk shirt, and a sweater and left Mary to answer the phone.

Once outside, she hailed a cab.

“Elizabeth Arden, please,” she told the driver. Two hours later, Lily was a new woman. She emerged from the salon feeling radiantly alive. She had been coiffed and made up and manicured and now there was nothing to do but look forward to the wonderful evening ahead. She almost skipped as she walked up Fifth Avenue to Fifty-eighth, crossed the street and entered Bergdorf’s to pick up her gown in the Fine Dress Salon.

Back at the apartment, she went to her dressing room, ripped off the tissue paper, and exclaimed with delight. Monsieur Givenchy had certainly outdone himself. This was indubitably the most glorious dress ever to come from his magic hands.

A seeming cloud of white chiffon billowed out from the tiny waist. The bodice was encrusted with pearls and crystal beads that shimmered in the light.

Lily laughed out loud; she was as excited as a young girl going to her first party.

She shed her street clothes and picked up the white satin chemise from the chaise, admiring its thick border of Alençon lace. It felt satiny against her skin as she slipped it on. She shivered slightly, feeling as radiant as she looked. She pulled up sheer silk stockings and slipped into a pair of dainty silver evening pumps. Then she put on the gown.

Standing in front of the three-way mirror, she gave herself the onceover. Even under her own unforgiving scrutiny, she had to admit, she almost looked twenty-one again, standing in the hall the night of her engagement to Roger Humphreys.

Funny, she hadn’t thought of him in a million years. Poor Roger. His had been a strange and tragic story, which his family had tried to suppress. But inevitably it had leaked out. He had moved to Paris shortly after their broken engagement. The word had been that he was pursuing an artistic career. But the truth was that he had moved there with his lover, the former chauffeur on his father’s estate. Apparently, the two of them had found happiness together for a time, for Paris was tolerant of such relationships.

But when Hitler’s troops had rolled in, they were rounded up along with numerous other homosexuals and taken to concentration camps; Hitler’s mania for extermination had extended to homosexuals as well as Jews. Roger had not survived the camps. His bones were presumed buried somewhere in Poland, along with those of his lover. Lily shuddered at the thought. She almost wished that Randolph had not told her.

Next her thoughts turned to Harry. It was still strange not to have him in his own dressing room, struggling into his tails and asking for help with his cuff links. Old habits died hard, she told herself. But different though it was, she found herself thrilled to hear the doorbell ring and then Ellis’s deep voice in the foyer saying, “I’ll show myself in. Please tell Mrs. Kohle that I’m here.” Maybe the best way to break old ways was to develop new ones.

Tonight, for the first time, it felt as if she and Ellis were truly going out as a couple. The thought made her stomach go to butterflies.

She resolved not to dwell on the notion. Time to put on the last touches of makeup—a dab more rouge, a bit more lipstick. Then, after clipping on her emerald-and-diamond earrings, she drew the matching necklace about her throat. As she was fumbling with the clasp, the phone rang.

“Mary, will you get it?” she called.

But it rang and rang again. In exasperation, Lily dropped the necklace and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

There was a burst of static on the line, and then a foreign voice said, “Allo?”

Puzzled, Lily said, “Hello? Who is this?”

“Allo, allo,” the male voice repeated, amid another crackle of static.

“I can’t hear you,” Lily said again.

She heard the voice say, “
Je voudrais parler avec la mère de Mademoiselle Melissa Kohle, s’il vous plait.”

Anxiously Lily cried, “
C’est moi. Je suis sa mère. Qu’est-que c’est?”

Suddenly the line cleared and the voice on the other end began speaking, now in heavily accented English.

“This is the American Hospital at Neuilly. Your daughter was admitted here this morning. She has given birth to an infant and she is gravely ill. We found this number in her handbag; there appears to be no one else to call.”

Melissa? Given birth to a baby? But that was impossible! Melissa wasn’t even married! She was modeling, and her last letter had said that she was getting lots of assignments. How could she be pregnant?

But the voice on the other end had a ring of certainty to it. And how else would they have gotten Melissa’s name, and her number?

Feebly she cried, “Melissa Kohle? A short, dark-haired girl?”

“
Oui, madame
. There is no mistake.”

Lily’s knees almost buckled under her. She sank dizzily into her dressing-table chair. Somehow she managed to speak. “Thank you so much for calling me. I will be there as soon as I can get on a plane.”

As soon as she hung up, she picked up the phone and dialed Harry’s number with a trembling hand. Harry’s butler answered. “Mr. Kohle’s residence.”

“This is Mrs. Kohle,” she cried. “Where is Mr. Kohle?”

“Mr. Kohle is in Palm Beach, madam. He doesn’t wish the number given to anyone.”

“Now you listen to me!” Lily almost screamed into the receiver. “This is an emergency, concerning our daughter, who is deathly ill! I’m telling you that you’re going to give me that number this minute!” The butler instantly acquiesced. “I beg your pardon, madam. I will find the number for you.”