Fancy Pants (4 page)
The contents shone against the white porcelain of the bowls, six mounds
of glistening wet caviar in various shades of red, gray, and beige. Her
hand touched the end bowl, which held a generous heap of pearly red
eggs. "Salmon roe," she said, pushing it away. "Not worth considering.
True caviar
comes
only from the sturgeon of the Caspian Sea."
Onassis laughed and one of the movie stars applauded. Francesca quickly
disposed of two other bowls. "These are both lumpfish caviar, so we
can't consider them either."
The decorator leaned toward Chloe. "Information gleaned at the breast,"
he inquired, "or through osmosis?"
Chloe gave him a wicked leer. "At the breast, of course."
"And what glorious ones they are,
cara
."
Giancarlo ran his hand over
the front of Chloe's bare-midriff top.
"This is beluga," Francesca announced, not pleased at having the
attention slip from herself, especially after she'd spent the entire
day with a governess who kept muttering terrible things just because
Francesca refused to do her boring multiplication tables. She placed
the tip of her finger on the edge of the center bowl. "You'll notice
that beluga has the largest grains." Shifting her hand to the next
bowl, she declared, "This is sevruga. The color is the same, but the
grains are smaller. And this is osetra, my very favorite. The eggs are
almost as large as the beluga, but the color is more golden."
She heard a satisfying chorus of laughter mixed with applause, and then
everyone began congratulating Chloe on her clever child. At first
Francesca smiled at the compliments, but then her happiness began to
fade as she realized that everyone was looking at Chloe instead of at
her. Why was her mother getting all the attention when she wasn't the
one who'd done the trick? Clearly, the grown-ups would never let her
sit on the afterdeck with them tomorrow. Angry and frustrated,
Francesca jumped to her feet and swept her arm across the table,
sending the porcelain bowls flying and smearing caviar all over
Aristotle Onassis's polished teak deck.
"Francesca!" Chloe exclaimed. "What's wrong, my darling?"
Onassis scowled and muttered something in Greek that sounded vaguely
threatening to Francesca. She puffed out her bottom lip and tried to
think how to recover from her mistake. Her small problem with temper
tantrums was supposed to be a secret—something that, under no
circumstances, could ever be displayed in front of Chloe's friends.
"I'm
sorry, Mummy," she said. "It was an accident."
"Of course it was, pet," Chloe replied. "Everyone knows that."
Onassis's expression of displeasure did not ease, however, and
Franceses knew stronger action was
called for. With a dramatic cry of
anguish, she fled across the deck to his side and flung herself in his
lap. "I'm sorry, Uncle Ari," she sobbed, her eyes instantly filling
with tears—one of her very best tricks. "It was an accident, really it
was!" The tears leaked over her bottom lids and trickled down her
cheeks
as she concentrated very hard on not flinching from the gaze of
those black wraparound sunglasses.
"I love you, Uncle Ari," she sighed, turning the full force of her
pitiful tear-streaked face upward in an expression she had gleaned from
an old Shirley Temple movie. "I love you, and I wish you were my
very
own daddy."
Onassis chuckled and said he hoped he never had to face her over a
bargaining table.
After Francesca was dismissed, she returned to her suite, passing by
the children's room where she took her lessons during the day at a
bright yellow table positioned directly in front of a Parisian mural
painted by Ludwig Bemelmans. The mural made her feel as if she'd
stepped into one of his Madeline books—except better dressed, of
course. The room had been designed for Onassis's two children, but
since neither was on board, Francesca had it all to herself. Although
it was a pretty place, she actually preferred the bar, where once a day
she was permitted to enjoy ginger ale served in a champagne glass along
with a paper parasol and a maraschino cherry.
Whenever she sat at the bar, she took tiny sips from her drink to make
it last while she gazed down through the glass top at a lighted replica
of the sea complete with little ships she could move with magnets. The
footrests of the bar stools were polished whales' teeth, which she
could just touch with the toes of her tiny handmade Italian sandals,
and the upholstery of the seats felt silky soft on the backs of her
thighs. She remembered one time when her mother had screamed with
laughter because Uncle Ari had told her they were all sitting on the
foreskin of a whale's penis. Francesca had laughed, too, and told Uncle
Ari that he was silly— didn't he mean
an elephant's peanuts?
The
Christina
held nine
suites, each with its own elaborately decorated
living and bedroom areas as well as a pink marble bath that Chloe
pronounced "so opulent it borders on the tacky." The suites were all
named after different Greek islands, the shapes of which were outlined
in gold leaf on a medallion fastened to the door. Sir Winston Churchill
and his wife Clementine, frequent visitors on board the
Christina
, had
already retired for the night in their suite, Corfu. Francesca passed
it, then looked for the outline of her particular island—Lesbos. Chloe
had laughed when they were put in Lesbos, telling Francesca that
several dozen men would most definitely disagree with the choice. When
Francesca had asked why, Chloe had said she was too young to understand.
Francesca hated it when Chloe answered her questions like that, so she
had hidden the blue plastic case containing her mother's diaphragm, an
object Chloe had once told her was her most precious possession,
although Francesca couldn't really see why. She hadn't given it back,
either—at least not until Giancarlo Morandi had pulled her from her
lessons when Chloe wasn't watching and threatened to throw her
overboard and let the sharks eat out her eyeballs unless she told him
what she'd done with it.. Francesca hated Giancarlo Morandi now and
tried to stay far away from him.
Just as she reached Lesbos, Francesca heard the door of Rhodes opening.
She looked up to see Evan Varian walk out into the corridor, and she
smiled in his direction, letting him see her pretty, straight teeth and
the matching pair of dimples that indented her cheeks.
"Hello, princess," he said, speaking in the full, liquid tones he used
whether playing the rogue counterintelligence officer John Bullett in
the recently released and phenomenally successful Bullett spy film, or
appearing as Hamlet at the Old Vic. Despite his background as the son
of an Irish schoolteacher and a Welsh bricklayer, Varian had the sharp
features of an English aristocrat and the casually long haircut of an
Oxford don. He wore a lavender polo shirt with a paisley ascot and
white duck trousers.
But most important to
Francesca, he carried a pipe—a wonderful brown daddy's pipe with a
marbled wooden bowl. "Aren't you up a little late?" he inquired.
"I stay up this late
all
the
time," she replied, with a small shake of
her curls and all the self-importance
she could muster. "Only babies go
to bed early."
"Oh, I see. And you most definitely aren't a baby. Are you sneaking out
to meet a gentleman admirer, perhaps?"
"No, silly. Mummy woke me up to do the caviar trick."
"Ah, yes, the caviar trick." He tamped the tobacco in the bowl of his
pipe with his thumb. "Did she blindfold you for the taste test this
time, or was it a simple sight identification?"
"Just by sight. She doesn't ask me to do the blindfold trick anymore
because the last time we did it, I started to gag." She saw that he was
getting ready to move on, and she acted quickly. "Don't vou think
Mummy's looking awfully pretty tonight?"
"Your mummy always looks pretty." He cupped a match in his palm and
held it over the bowl.
"Cecil Beaton says that she's one of the most beautiful women in
Europe. Her figure's nearly perfect,
and of course she's a wonderful
hostess." Francesca cast about for an example that would impress him.
"Do you know that Mummy did curry before absolutely anyone else thought
of it?"
"A legendary coup, princess, but before you exert yourself any further
in extolling your mother's virtues, don't forget that the two of us
despise each other."
"Pooh, she'll like you if I tell her to. Mummy does everything I want."
"I've noticed," he observed dryly. "However, even if you managed to
change your mummy's opinion, which I think highly unlikely, you won't
change mine, so I'm afraid you're going to have to cast your net
elsewhere for a father. I must tell you that even the thought of being
permanently shackled with Chloe's neuroses makes me shudder."
Nothing was going right for Francesca that evening, and she spoke
pettishly. "But I'm afraid she's going
to marry Giancarlo, and if she does, it'll all be your fault! He's a
terrible
shit, and I hate him."
"God, Francesca, you use the most awful language for a child. Chloe
should spank you."
The storm clouds gathered in her eyes. "What a beastly thing to say! I
think you're a shit, too!"
Varian tugged on the legs of his trousers so he wouldn't crease them as
he knelt down beside her. "Francesca, my cherub, you should consider
yourself lucky that I'm not your daddy, because if I were, I'd lock you
up in the back of a dark closet and leave you there until you
mummified."
Genuine tears stung Francesca's eyes. "I hate you," she cried as she
kicked him hard in the shin. Varian jumped up with a yelp.
The door of Corfu swung open. "Is it too much to request that an old
man be allowed to sleep in peace!" Sir Winston Churchill's growl filled
the passageway. "Could you conduct your business elsewhere, Mr. Varian?
And you, missy, get to bed at once or our card game is off for
tomorrow!"
Francesca scampered into Lesbos without a word of protest. If she
couldn't have a daddy, at least she could have a granddaddy.
that even Francesca accepted the fact that her mother would never
settle on one man long enough to marry him. She forced herself to look
upon her lack of a father as an advantage. She had enough adults to
cope with in her life, she reasoned, and she certainly didn't need any
more of them telling her what she should or shouldn't do, especially as
she began to catch the attention of a bevy of adolescent boys. They
stumbled over their feet whenever she was near, and their voices
cracked when they tried to talk to her. She gave them soft, wicked
smiles just so she could watch them blush, and she practiced all the
flirtatious tricks she had seen Chloe use—
the generous laughter, the
graceful tilt of the head, the sidelong glances. Every one of them
worked.
The Age of Aquarius had found its princess. Francesca's little-girl
clothes gave way to peasant dresses with fringed paisley shawls and
multicolored love beads strung on silken thread. She frizzed her hair,
pierced her ears, and expertly applied
makeup to enlarge her eyes until they seemed to fill her face. The top
of her head had barely passed her mother's eyebrows when, much to her
disappointment, she stopped growing. But unlike Chloe, who still held
the remnants of a pudgy child deep inside her, Francesca never had any
reason to doubt her own beauty. It simply existed, that was all—just
like air and light and water. Just like Mary Quant, for goodness' sake!
By the time she was seventeen, Black Jack Day's daughter had become a
legend.
Evan Varian reentered her life in the disco at Annabel's. She and her
date were leaving to go to the
White Tower for baklava, and they had
just walked past the glass partition that separated the disco from
Annabel's dining room. Even in the determinedly fashionable atmosphere
of London's most popular club, Francesca's scarlet velvet trouser suit
with its padded shoulders gathered more than its share of attention,
especially since she had neglected to wear a blouse beneath the deep
open V of the wasp-waisted jacket, and the insides of her
seventeen-year-old breasts curved enticingly above the spot where the
lapels joined. The effect became all the more alluring because of her
short Twiggy hairstyle, which made her look rather like London's most
erotic schoolboy.
"Well, if it isn't my little princess." The sonorous voice rang out in
perfect pear-shaped tones designed to be heard in the far reaches of
the National Theatre. "It appears she's all grown up and ready to take
on the world."
Except for watching him in the Bullett spy films, she had not seen Evan
Varian for years. Now, as she spun around to face him, she felt as if
she were confronting his on-screen presence. He wore the same
immaculately fitted Savile Row suit, the same pale blue silk shirt and
handmade Italian shoes. Silver had threaded his temples since their
last encounter on board the
Christina,
but now his hair lay
conservatively tamed to his head by an expert razor cut.
Her date for the evening, a baronet home on holiday from Eton, suddenly
seemed as young as milk-fed veal. "Hello, Evan," she said, giving
Varian a smile that managed to be both haughty and bewitching.
He ignored the obvious impatience of the blond fashion model draped
over his arm as he surveyed Francesca's scarlet velvet trouser suit.
"Little Francesca. The last time I saw you, you didn't have so many
clothes on. As I remember, you were wearing a nightgown."
Other girls might have blushed, but other girls didn't have Francesca's
bottomless self-confidence. "Really? I've forgotten. Amusing of you to
remember." And then, because she had quite made up her mind to catch
the grown-up interest of this most sophisticated Evan Varian, she
nodded at her escort
and permitted him to lead her away.
Varian called her the next day and invited her to dine with him.
"Certainly not," Chloe shrieked, jumping up from her lotus position in
the center of the drawing room carpet where she dabbled at meditation
twice a day, except on alternate Mondays when she had her legs waxed.
"Evan is more than twenty years older than you, and he's a notorious
playboy. My God, he's already had four wives! I absolutely won't have
you involved with him."
Francesca sighed and stretched. "Sorry, Mummy, but it's rather a fait
accompli. I'm smitten."
"Be reasonable, darling. He's old enough to be your father."
"Was he ever your lover?"
"Of course not. You know the two of us never got on."
"Then I don't see what possible objection you could have."
Chloe begged and pleaded, but Francesca paid no attention. She had
grown tired of being treated like a child. She was ready for adult
adventure—sexual adventure.
A few months beforef she had made a great show out of insisting that
Chloe take her to the doctor for birth control pills. At first Chloe
had protested, but she had quickly changed her mind when she had
stumbled upon Francesca in a heated embrace with a young man who was
pushing his hand under her skirt. Ever since, one of those pills
appeared on Francesca's breakfast tray each morning to be swallowed
with great ceremony.
Francesca had told no one that the pills had so far proven unnecessary,
nor had she let anyone see how her continued virginity upset her. All
of her friends spoke so glibly about their
sexual experiences that she was terrified they would find" out she was
lying about her own. If anyone discovered what an absolute infant she
was, she was absolutely certain she would lose her standing as the most
fashionable member
of London's trendy younger set.
With stubborn determination, she reduced her youthful sexuality to a
simple matter of social position. It was easier for her that way, since
social position was something she understood, while the loneliness
produced by her abnormal childhood, the aching need for some deep
connection with another human being, only bewildered her.
However, despite her determination to lose her virginity, she had hit
upon an unexpected stumbling block. So much of her life had been spent
with adults that she didn't feel entirely comfortable with her peers,
even those worshiping boys who followed her around like well-trained
lapdogs. She understood that having sex would involve placing a certain
amount of trust in her partner, and she couldn't imagine trusting those
callow young boys. She had immediately seen an answer to her dilemma
when she set eyes on Evan Varian at Annabel's. Who better than an
experienced man of the world to escort her through those fragile final
portals into womanhood? She saw no connection at all between her choice
of Evan to be her first lover and her choice of him, years earlier, to
be her father.
So, ignoring Chloe's protests, Francesca accepted Evan's invitation to
dine at Mirabelle the following weekend. They sat at a table next to
one of the small hothouses where the restaurant's fresh flowers were
grown and dined on rack of lamb stuffed with veal and truffles. He
touched her fingers, angled his head attentively whenever she spoke,
and told her she was the most beautiful woman in the room. Francesca
privately considered that rather a foregone conclusion, but the
compliment pleased her nonetheless, especially since the exotic Bianca
Jagger was nibbling at a lobster souffle in front of one of the
tapestried walls on the opposite side of the room. After dinner, they
went to Leith's for a tangy lemon mousse and glace strawberries, and
then on to Varian's Kensington home where he played a Chopin mazurka for
her on the grand piano in the sitting room and gave her a memorable
kiss. Yet when he tried to lead her upstairs to his bedroom, she balked.
"Another time, perhaps," she said breezily. "I'm not in the mood." It
didn't occur to her to tell him that she would like it very much if he
would just hold her for a while or simply stroke her hair and let her
cuddle up against him. Varian didn't like her rejection, but she
restored his good mood with a saucy smile that promised future
pleasures.
Two weeks later, she forced herself to make the long trek at his side
up the curving Adam staircase, past the Constable landscape and
recamier bench, through the arched entry-way, and into his lavishly
decorated Louis XIV bedroom suite.
"You're luscious," he said, coming out of his dressing room in a maroon
and navy silk dressing robe with J.B. monogrammed in elaborate script
on the pocket, obviously a costume he'd appropriated from his last
film. He approached her, his hand going out to stroke her breast above
the towel she'd wrapped around herself after she'd taken off her
clothes in the bathroom. " 'Beauty like the breast of a dove—soft as
down and sweet as mother's milk,'" he quoted.
"Is that from Shakespeare?" she asked nervously. She wished he weren't
wearing such heavy cologne.
Evan shook his head. "It's from Dead Men's Tears, right before I pushed
the stiletto through the Russian spy's heart." He ran his fingers along
the curve of her neck. "Perhaps you'd go over to the bed now."
Francesca didn't want to do any such thing—she wasn't even certain she
liked Evan Varian—but she'd come too far to turn back without
humiliating herself, so she did as he asked. The mattress squeaked as
she lay down upon it. Why did his mattress have to squeak? Why was the
room so cold? Without warning, Evan fell on top of her. Alarmed, she
tried to push him away, but he was muttering something in her ear while
he fumbled with her towel. "Oh .. . stop! Evan—"
"Please, darling," he said. "Do as I ask. . . ."
"Get off me!" Panic pounded at her chest. She began shoving at his
shoulders as the towel gave way.
Again he muttered something, but in her distress she caught just the
last part of it. "... make me excited," he whispered, pulling open his
dressing gown.
"You beast! Get away! Get off me." As she screamed, she curled her
hands into fists and began beating
at his back.
He pried her legs open with his knees. "... just once and then I'll
stop. Just once call me by name."
"Evan!"
"No!" An awful hardness probed at her. "Call me— Bullett."
"Bullett?"
The instant the word left her lips, he thrust inside her. She screamed
as she felt herself being consumed by a hot stab of pain, and then,
before she could release the second scream, he began to shudder.
"You swine," she sobbed hysterically, beating at his back and trying to
kick at him with her pinioned legs. "You awful, filthy beast." Using
strength she hadn't known she possessed, she finally pushed his weight
off her and jumped from the bed, taking the coverlet with her and
holding it over her naked, invaded body. "I'll have you arrested," she
cried, tears rushing down her cheeks. "I'll see you punished for this,
you bloody pervert."
"Pervert?" He pulled his dressing gown closed and got up from the bed,
his chest still heaving. "I wouldn't be so quick to call me a pervert,
Francesca," he said coolly. "If you weren't such an inept lover, none
of this would have happened."
"Inept!" The accusation startled her so much that she nearly forgot the
throbbing pain between her legs and the ugly stickiness leaking onto
her thighs. "Inept? You attacked me!"
He knotted the sash and looked at her with hostile eyes. "How amused
everyone will be when I tell them the beautiful Francesca Day is
frigid."
"I'm not frigid!"
"Of course you're frigid. I've made love to hundreds of women, and
you're the first one who's ever complained." He walked over to a gilded
commode and picked up his pipe. "God, Francesca, if I'd
known you were
such a dreadful fuck, I wouldn't have bothered with you."
Francesca fled into the bathroom, shoved herself into her clothes, and
raced from the house. She forced herself to suppress the realization
that she had been violated. It had been a dreadful misunderstanding,
and she would simply make herself forget about it. After all, she was
Francesca Serritella Day. Nothing truly horrible could ever happen to
her.
of glistening wet caviar in various shades of red, gray, and beige. Her
hand touched the end bowl, which held a generous heap of pearly red
eggs. "Salmon roe," she said, pushing it away. "Not worth considering.
True caviar
comes
only from the sturgeon of the Caspian Sea."
Onassis laughed and one of the movie stars applauded. Francesca quickly
disposed of two other bowls. "These are both lumpfish caviar, so we
can't consider them either."
The decorator leaned toward Chloe. "Information gleaned at the breast,"
he inquired, "or through osmosis?"
Chloe gave him a wicked leer. "At the breast, of course."
"And what glorious ones they are,
cara
."
Giancarlo ran his hand over
the front of Chloe's bare-midriff top.
"This is beluga," Francesca announced, not pleased at having the
attention slip from herself, especially after she'd spent the entire
day with a governess who kept muttering terrible things just because
Francesca refused to do her boring multiplication tables. She placed
the tip of her finger on the edge of the center bowl. "You'll notice
that beluga has the largest grains." Shifting her hand to the next
bowl, she declared, "This is sevruga. The color is the same, but the
grains are smaller. And this is osetra, my very favorite. The eggs are
almost as large as the beluga, but the color is more golden."
She heard a satisfying chorus of laughter mixed with applause, and then
everyone began congratulating Chloe on her clever child. At first
Francesca smiled at the compliments, but then her happiness began to
fade as she realized that everyone was looking at Chloe instead of at
her. Why was her mother getting all the attention when she wasn't the
one who'd done the trick? Clearly, the grown-ups would never let her
sit on the afterdeck with them tomorrow. Angry and frustrated,
Francesca jumped to her feet and swept her arm across the table,
sending the porcelain bowls flying and smearing caviar all over
Aristotle Onassis's polished teak deck.
"Francesca!" Chloe exclaimed. "What's wrong, my darling?"
Onassis scowled and muttered something in Greek that sounded vaguely
threatening to Francesca. She puffed out her bottom lip and tried to
think how to recover from her mistake. Her small problem with temper
tantrums was supposed to be a secret—something that, under no
circumstances, could ever be displayed in front of Chloe's friends.
"I'm
sorry, Mummy," she said. "It was an accident."
"Of course it was, pet," Chloe replied. "Everyone knows that."
Onassis's expression of displeasure did not ease, however, and
Franceses knew stronger action was
called for. With a dramatic cry of
anguish, she fled across the deck to his side and flung herself in his
lap. "I'm sorry, Uncle Ari," she sobbed, her eyes instantly filling
with tears—one of her very best tricks. "It was an accident, really it
was!" The tears leaked over her bottom lids and trickled down her
cheeks
as she concentrated very hard on not flinching from the gaze of
those black wraparound sunglasses.
"I love you, Uncle Ari," she sighed, turning the full force of her
pitiful tear-streaked face upward in an expression she had gleaned from
an old Shirley Temple movie. "I love you, and I wish you were my
very
own daddy."
Onassis chuckled and said he hoped he never had to face her over a
bargaining table.
After Francesca was dismissed, she returned to her suite, passing by
the children's room where she took her lessons during the day at a
bright yellow table positioned directly in front of a Parisian mural
painted by Ludwig Bemelmans. The mural made her feel as if she'd
stepped into one of his Madeline books—except better dressed, of
course. The room had been designed for Onassis's two children, but
since neither was on board, Francesca had it all to herself. Although
it was a pretty place, she actually preferred the bar, where once a day
she was permitted to enjoy ginger ale served in a champagne glass along
with a paper parasol and a maraschino cherry.
Whenever she sat at the bar, she took tiny sips from her drink to make
it last while she gazed down through the glass top at a lighted replica
of the sea complete with little ships she could move with magnets. The
footrests of the bar stools were polished whales' teeth, which she
could just touch with the toes of her tiny handmade Italian sandals,
and the upholstery of the seats felt silky soft on the backs of her
thighs. She remembered one time when her mother had screamed with
laughter because Uncle Ari had told her they were all sitting on the
foreskin of a whale's penis. Francesca had laughed, too, and told Uncle
Ari that he was silly— didn't he mean
an elephant's peanuts?
The
Christina
held nine
suites, each with its own elaborately decorated
living and bedroom areas as well as a pink marble bath that Chloe
pronounced "so opulent it borders on the tacky." The suites were all
named after different Greek islands, the shapes of which were outlined
in gold leaf on a medallion fastened to the door. Sir Winston Churchill
and his wife Clementine, frequent visitors on board the
Christina
, had
already retired for the night in their suite, Corfu. Francesca passed
it, then looked for the outline of her particular island—Lesbos. Chloe
had laughed when they were put in Lesbos, telling Francesca that
several dozen men would most definitely disagree with the choice. When
Francesca had asked why, Chloe had said she was too young to understand.
Francesca hated it when Chloe answered her questions like that, so she
had hidden the blue plastic case containing her mother's diaphragm, an
object Chloe had once told her was her most precious possession,
although Francesca couldn't really see why. She hadn't given it back,
either—at least not until Giancarlo Morandi had pulled her from her
lessons when Chloe wasn't watching and threatened to throw her
overboard and let the sharks eat out her eyeballs unless she told him
what she'd done with it.. Francesca hated Giancarlo Morandi now and
tried to stay far away from him.
Just as she reached Lesbos, Francesca heard the door of Rhodes opening.
She looked up to see Evan Varian walk out into the corridor, and she
smiled in his direction, letting him see her pretty, straight teeth and
the matching pair of dimples that indented her cheeks.
"Hello, princess," he said, speaking in the full, liquid tones he used
whether playing the rogue counterintelligence officer John Bullett in
the recently released and phenomenally successful Bullett spy film, or
appearing as Hamlet at the Old Vic. Despite his background as the son
of an Irish schoolteacher and a Welsh bricklayer, Varian had the sharp
features of an English aristocrat and the casually long haircut of an
Oxford don. He wore a lavender polo shirt with a paisley ascot and
white duck trousers.
But most important to
Francesca, he carried a pipe—a wonderful brown daddy's pipe with a
marbled wooden bowl. "Aren't you up a little late?" he inquired.
"I stay up this late
all
the
time," she replied, with a small shake of
her curls and all the self-importance
she could muster. "Only babies go
to bed early."
"Oh, I see. And you most definitely aren't a baby. Are you sneaking out
to meet a gentleman admirer, perhaps?"
"No, silly. Mummy woke me up to do the caviar trick."
"Ah, yes, the caviar trick." He tamped the tobacco in the bowl of his
pipe with his thumb. "Did she blindfold you for the taste test this
time, or was it a simple sight identification?"
"Just by sight. She doesn't ask me to do the blindfold trick anymore
because the last time we did it, I started to gag." She saw that he was
getting ready to move on, and she acted quickly. "Don't vou think
Mummy's looking awfully pretty tonight?"
"Your mummy always looks pretty." He cupped a match in his palm and
held it over the bowl.
"Cecil Beaton says that she's one of the most beautiful women in
Europe. Her figure's nearly perfect,
and of course she's a wonderful
hostess." Francesca cast about for an example that would impress him.
"Do you know that Mummy did curry before absolutely anyone else thought
of it?"
"A legendary coup, princess, but before you exert yourself any further
in extolling your mother's virtues, don't forget that the two of us
despise each other."
"Pooh, she'll like you if I tell her to. Mummy does everything I want."
"I've noticed," he observed dryly. "However, even if you managed to
change your mummy's opinion, which I think highly unlikely, you won't
change mine, so I'm afraid you're going to have to cast your net
elsewhere for a father. I must tell you that even the thought of being
permanently shackled with Chloe's neuroses makes me shudder."
Nothing was going right for Francesca that evening, and she spoke
pettishly. "But I'm afraid she's going
to marry Giancarlo, and if she does, it'll all be your fault! He's a
terrible
shit, and I hate him."
"God, Francesca, you use the most awful language for a child. Chloe
should spank you."
The storm clouds gathered in her eyes. "What a beastly thing to say! I
think you're a shit, too!"
Varian tugged on the legs of his trousers so he wouldn't crease them as
he knelt down beside her. "Francesca, my cherub, you should consider
yourself lucky that I'm not your daddy, because if I were, I'd lock you
up in the back of a dark closet and leave you there until you
mummified."
Genuine tears stung Francesca's eyes. "I hate you," she cried as she
kicked him hard in the shin. Varian jumped up with a yelp.
The door of Corfu swung open. "Is it too much to request that an old
man be allowed to sleep in peace!" Sir Winston Churchill's growl filled
the passageway. "Could you conduct your business elsewhere, Mr. Varian?
And you, missy, get to bed at once or our card game is off for
tomorrow!"
Francesca scampered into Lesbos without a word of protest. If she
couldn't have a daddy, at least she could have a granddaddy.
* * *
As the years passed, Chloe's romantic entanglements grew so complexthat even Francesca accepted the fact that her mother would never
settle on one man long enough to marry him. She forced herself to look
upon her lack of a father as an advantage. She had enough adults to
cope with in her life, she reasoned, and she certainly didn't need any
more of them telling her what she should or shouldn't do, especially as
she began to catch the attention of a bevy of adolescent boys. They
stumbled over their feet whenever she was near, and their voices
cracked when they tried to talk to her. She gave them soft, wicked
smiles just so she could watch them blush, and she practiced all the
flirtatious tricks she had seen Chloe use—
the generous laughter, the
graceful tilt of the head, the sidelong glances. Every one of them
worked.
The Age of Aquarius had found its princess. Francesca's little-girl
clothes gave way to peasant dresses with fringed paisley shawls and
multicolored love beads strung on silken thread. She frizzed her hair,
pierced her ears, and expertly applied
makeup to enlarge her eyes until they seemed to fill her face. The top
of her head had barely passed her mother's eyebrows when, much to her
disappointment, she stopped growing. But unlike Chloe, who still held
the remnants of a pudgy child deep inside her, Francesca never had any
reason to doubt her own beauty. It simply existed, that was all—just
like air and light and water. Just like Mary Quant, for goodness' sake!
By the time she was seventeen, Black Jack Day's daughter had become a
legend.
Evan Varian reentered her life in the disco at Annabel's. She and her
date were leaving to go to the
White Tower for baklava, and they had
just walked past the glass partition that separated the disco from
Annabel's dining room. Even in the determinedly fashionable atmosphere
of London's most popular club, Francesca's scarlet velvet trouser suit
with its padded shoulders gathered more than its share of attention,
especially since she had neglected to wear a blouse beneath the deep
open V of the wasp-waisted jacket, and the insides of her
seventeen-year-old breasts curved enticingly above the spot where the
lapels joined. The effect became all the more alluring because of her
short Twiggy hairstyle, which made her look rather like London's most
erotic schoolboy.
"Well, if it isn't my little princess." The sonorous voice rang out in
perfect pear-shaped tones designed to be heard in the far reaches of
the National Theatre. "It appears she's all grown up and ready to take
on the world."
Except for watching him in the Bullett spy films, she had not seen Evan
Varian for years. Now, as she spun around to face him, she felt as if
she were confronting his on-screen presence. He wore the same
immaculately fitted Savile Row suit, the same pale blue silk shirt and
handmade Italian shoes. Silver had threaded his temples since their
last encounter on board the
Christina,
but now his hair lay
conservatively tamed to his head by an expert razor cut.
Her date for the evening, a baronet home on holiday from Eton, suddenly
seemed as young as milk-fed veal. "Hello, Evan," she said, giving
Varian a smile that managed to be both haughty and bewitching.
He ignored the obvious impatience of the blond fashion model draped
over his arm as he surveyed Francesca's scarlet velvet trouser suit.
"Little Francesca. The last time I saw you, you didn't have so many
clothes on. As I remember, you were wearing a nightgown."
Other girls might have blushed, but other girls didn't have Francesca's
bottomless self-confidence. "Really? I've forgotten. Amusing of you to
remember." And then, because she had quite made up her mind to catch
the grown-up interest of this most sophisticated Evan Varian, she
nodded at her escort
and permitted him to lead her away.
Varian called her the next day and invited her to dine with him.
"Certainly not," Chloe shrieked, jumping up from her lotus position in
the center of the drawing room carpet where she dabbled at meditation
twice a day, except on alternate Mondays when she had her legs waxed.
"Evan is more than twenty years older than you, and he's a notorious
playboy. My God, he's already had four wives! I absolutely won't have
you involved with him."
Francesca sighed and stretched. "Sorry, Mummy, but it's rather a fait
accompli. I'm smitten."
"Be reasonable, darling. He's old enough to be your father."
"Was he ever your lover?"
"Of course not. You know the two of us never got on."
"Then I don't see what possible objection you could have."
Chloe begged and pleaded, but Francesca paid no attention. She had
grown tired of being treated like a child. She was ready for adult
adventure—sexual adventure.
A few months beforef she had made a great show out of insisting that
Chloe take her to the doctor for birth control pills. At first Chloe
had protested, but she had quickly changed her mind when she had
stumbled upon Francesca in a heated embrace with a young man who was
pushing his hand under her skirt. Ever since, one of those pills
appeared on Francesca's breakfast tray each morning to be swallowed
with great ceremony.
Francesca had told no one that the pills had so far proven unnecessary,
nor had she let anyone see how her continued virginity upset her. All
of her friends spoke so glibly about their
sexual experiences that she was terrified they would find" out she was
lying about her own. If anyone discovered what an absolute infant she
was, she was absolutely certain she would lose her standing as the most
fashionable member
of London's trendy younger set.
With stubborn determination, she reduced her youthful sexuality to a
simple matter of social position. It was easier for her that way, since
social position was something she understood, while the loneliness
produced by her abnormal childhood, the aching need for some deep
connection with another human being, only bewildered her.
However, despite her determination to lose her virginity, she had hit
upon an unexpected stumbling block. So much of her life had been spent
with adults that she didn't feel entirely comfortable with her peers,
even those worshiping boys who followed her around like well-trained
lapdogs. She understood that having sex would involve placing a certain
amount of trust in her partner, and she couldn't imagine trusting those
callow young boys. She had immediately seen an answer to her dilemma
when she set eyes on Evan Varian at Annabel's. Who better than an
experienced man of the world to escort her through those fragile final
portals into womanhood? She saw no connection at all between her choice
of Evan to be her first lover and her choice of him, years earlier, to
be her father.
So, ignoring Chloe's protests, Francesca accepted Evan's invitation to
dine at Mirabelle the following weekend. They sat at a table next to
one of the small hothouses where the restaurant's fresh flowers were
grown and dined on rack of lamb stuffed with veal and truffles. He
touched her fingers, angled his head attentively whenever she spoke,
and told her she was the most beautiful woman in the room. Francesca
privately considered that rather a foregone conclusion, but the
compliment pleased her nonetheless, especially since the exotic Bianca
Jagger was nibbling at a lobster souffle in front of one of the
tapestried walls on the opposite side of the room. After dinner, they
went to Leith's for a tangy lemon mousse and glace strawberries, and
then on to Varian's Kensington home where he played a Chopin mazurka for
her on the grand piano in the sitting room and gave her a memorable
kiss. Yet when he tried to lead her upstairs to his bedroom, she balked.
"Another time, perhaps," she said breezily. "I'm not in the mood." It
didn't occur to her to tell him that she would like it very much if he
would just hold her for a while or simply stroke her hair and let her
cuddle up against him. Varian didn't like her rejection, but she
restored his good mood with a saucy smile that promised future
pleasures.
Two weeks later, she forced herself to make the long trek at his side
up the curving Adam staircase, past the Constable landscape and
recamier bench, through the arched entry-way, and into his lavishly
decorated Louis XIV bedroom suite.
"You're luscious," he said, coming out of his dressing room in a maroon
and navy silk dressing robe with J.B. monogrammed in elaborate script
on the pocket, obviously a costume he'd appropriated from his last
film. He approached her, his hand going out to stroke her breast above
the towel she'd wrapped around herself after she'd taken off her
clothes in the bathroom. " 'Beauty like the breast of a dove—soft as
down and sweet as mother's milk,'" he quoted.
"Is that from Shakespeare?" she asked nervously. She wished he weren't
wearing such heavy cologne.
Evan shook his head. "It's from Dead Men's Tears, right before I pushed
the stiletto through the Russian spy's heart." He ran his fingers along
the curve of her neck. "Perhaps you'd go over to the bed now."
Francesca didn't want to do any such thing—she wasn't even certain she
liked Evan Varian—but she'd come too far to turn back without
humiliating herself, so she did as he asked. The mattress squeaked as
she lay down upon it. Why did his mattress have to squeak? Why was the
room so cold? Without warning, Evan fell on top of her. Alarmed, she
tried to push him away, but he was muttering something in her ear while
he fumbled with her towel. "Oh .. . stop! Evan—"
"Please, darling," he said. "Do as I ask. . . ."
"Get off me!" Panic pounded at her chest. She began shoving at his
shoulders as the towel gave way.
Again he muttered something, but in her distress she caught just the
last part of it. "... make me excited," he whispered, pulling open his
dressing gown.
"You beast! Get away! Get off me." As she screamed, she curled her
hands into fists and began beating
at his back.
He pried her legs open with his knees. "... just once and then I'll
stop. Just once call me by name."
"Evan!"
"No!" An awful hardness probed at her. "Call me— Bullett."
"Bullett?"
The instant the word left her lips, he thrust inside her. She screamed
as she felt herself being consumed by a hot stab of pain, and then,
before she could release the second scream, he began to shudder.
"You swine," she sobbed hysterically, beating at his back and trying to
kick at him with her pinioned legs. "You awful, filthy beast." Using
strength she hadn't known she possessed, she finally pushed his weight
off her and jumped from the bed, taking the coverlet with her and
holding it over her naked, invaded body. "I'll have you arrested," she
cried, tears rushing down her cheeks. "I'll see you punished for this,
you bloody pervert."
"Pervert?" He pulled his dressing gown closed and got up from the bed,
his chest still heaving. "I wouldn't be so quick to call me a pervert,
Francesca," he said coolly. "If you weren't such an inept lover, none
of this would have happened."
"Inept!" The accusation startled her so much that she nearly forgot the
throbbing pain between her legs and the ugly stickiness leaking onto
her thighs. "Inept? You attacked me!"
He knotted the sash and looked at her with hostile eyes. "How amused
everyone will be when I tell them the beautiful Francesca Day is
frigid."
"I'm not frigid!"
"Of course you're frigid. I've made love to hundreds of women, and
you're the first one who's ever complained." He walked over to a gilded
commode and picked up his pipe. "God, Francesca, if I'd
known you were
such a dreadful fuck, I wouldn't have bothered with you."
Francesca fled into the bathroom, shoved herself into her clothes, and
raced from the house. She forced herself to suppress the realization
that she had been violated. It had been a dreadful misunderstanding,
and she would simply make herself forget about it. After all, she was
Francesca Serritella Day. Nothing truly horrible could ever happen to
her.
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