Lace (62 page)

“You’re very lucky,” Abdullah commented curtly, when she had finished. “And so am I, to tell you the truth. The damned Saudis haven’t made a move for the past few
days, so all we’re doing is waiting for them, and that’s a boring business. A surprise visitor is very welcome. . . . Although you’re not looking quite your usual soignee self,
Kate.” He grinned at Kate’s dirty khaki jacket and trousers, her grubby sneakers and her tousled hair.

“You realise, of course, that this is a private and personal visit,” Abdullah continued. “I can’t discuss the war or politics or there would be trouble from the press
corps. You may describe this place vaguely and say that I am firmly confident and looking forward to victory. And we will, of course, check your copy.” Then, looking out into the night, he
casually asked, “How is Pagan?”

Kate told him all her news, including the fact that Pagan was expecting and that the baby was due in a few months. Abdullah gave a curiously grim smile. “Yes, I knew about that.”

There was an uneasy pause. “How old are
your
children?” Kate asked.

“Mustapha is four and looks just like me. He’s a naughty little devil, always up to some wicked trick—lots of guts.” There was another pause. “Of course, I’m
sorry I haven’t more sons.” He corrected himself: “
Legitimate
sons. After all, I’ve been married ten years. But I’m lucky to have Mustapha. My wife had a
miscarriage shortly after we were married, followed by a stillborn daughter the following year. Then in 1957 she had a premature son who died two weeks after he was born.” He scowled.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you.”

Kate could only stare at him, remembering her own miscarriages.

“Then nothing happened for four years. In fact, I thought of taking a second wife—as a Moslem, you know, I’m allowed four wives. I realise that in the West this would be
thought barbaric: your menfolk prefer several wives in succession instead of simultaneously, as we are allowed in the East. Anyway, I eventually took my wife to a clinic in Lausanne where they
found she had a malfunction in the fallopian tubes. Fifteen months after the operation, she gave me a son, an heir.”

Abdullah suddenly remembered that as the child was placed in his arms, it gave a lusty yell, and much to Abdullah’s surprise, he felt a flood of warmth, a choking feeling in his throat.
Instinctively, at that moment, he had known that he would do anything for this imperious, tiny creature. The baby’s crumpled face had turned from white to pink to an odd lavender shade as it
cried. Abdullah had roared with laughter, hugged the tiny creature to him, gently kissed the soft black down on the top of the fragile head, and for the first time in his life, he felt love.

“Now I pray for more sons,” Abdullah continued. “I visit Serah’s quarters regularly. She’s had another checkup at the clinic and apparently there’s no reason
why she shouldn’t have more children. But she hasn’t. . . . Anyway, let’s stop talking like a couple of midwives!”

So Mustapha is the only person on earth that Abdullah really loves, Kate thought.

“What exactly are you doing out here, Abdullah?” Kate asked.

“You’d better say that it’s one of my routine visits to the Hakem tribe,” he said. “I’m going to tell you nothing of value to the enemy. But I regularly visit
the more important sheikhs. We recruit our toughest soldiers from the desert tribes, not from the cities.” He gestured toward the tent opening. “Tonight those men will sleep on the sand
protected only by their cloaks. Bedouins are tough, they scorn comfort, they have only contempt for the outside world and its mechanical marvels.”

“Except for pistols, rifles and transistor radios,” suggested Kate.

“Agreed, but they like to live with the minimum of possessions. A family might have a couple of camels, perhaps a few goats, a tent, a rug, knives, leather buckets and a rope. That’s
all they need and all they want.” He grunted. “I promise you, Kate, I often wish I could spend my whole life among tough, simple men like these, in the desert.” He looked across
at her and grinned. “Now you’d better get back to your tent. You know what a fearful reputation I have, and you’re going to have a tough day tomorrow.”

Kate didn’t realise that she had achieved the impossible—which apparently included riding a camel through a minefield—until the following evening after she
had been returned by jeep to Fenza. As she walked into the Majestic bar, the other journalists clapped quietly. Just as well nobody told me it was impossible, thought Kate, or I’d never have
tried to do it.

She started her article “A Day of War” with a description of the battlefield after the fighting had finished.
“A sea of white papers fluttered over the ocher sand. Even
before the vultures could get at them, Arab scavengers had looted the dead bodies, ripped off the watches and torn through the wallets, looking for money. Pay books and other documents had been
thrown out on the sand. Love letters that yesterday were precious, photographs of girls, wives, children, parents—all smiling up at no one.”

Scotty was delighted with her copy. “I
said
we’d get something different from her and she comes up with an exclusive on the bloody King!” He turned to his secretary.
“Send her a cable straightaway.
Congratulations Abdullah Scoop Big Kiss Scotty Globe
.” He continued to read Kate’s copy. “Jesus! I didn’t tell her to kill
anyone! Better rewrite it in the third person. Correspondents aren’t supposed to carry weapons. Maybe we’d better recall her before she gets into trouble.”

The article was syndicated worldwide. It told a receptive audience, quite simply, that war was about killing people.

W
HEN SHE RETURNED
to England, Kate found herself something of a curiosity, if not a minor celebrity. Christ, she looks
awful; she’s lost a lot of weight, thought Scotty, and gave her a two-week leave. She decided to spend it in New York with Judy.

Judy had now started to publicise books and celebrities, as well as fashion, and she had obviously prospered in the past couple of years. Kate looked around the airy living room of Judy’s
new apartment, which hung high over East 57th Street: that Bokhara rug must have set her back about seven thousand dollars, she thought. Opposite her, Judy leaned back with her arms behind her head
in a bronze upholstered chair with curving serpent arms, the wood inlaid with ivory. She said, “The next thing you’ve got to do, Kate, is a book. You’ve achieved a certain fame,
but it won’t last long unless you keep it going. A book is always good for prestige, if not always for the bank account. Did you keep a diary during the war? And all your notes? Well, turn it
into a book—something slim—say around sixty thousand words. You stay in bed tomorrow and write the synopsis, then I can look at it when I get back in the evening. . . .
Of
course,
you can write a synopsis! Sit down right now and write three simple sentences saying what the book is going to be about.”

After a moment’s thought, Kate fished a notebook out of her cigar-brown Gucci tote bag, did as Judy said, then tore off the page and handed it to her.

Judy beamed. “Great. Now just expand those three sentences into a synopsis and split it up into chapters. And I’ll let you practice being a famous author by taking you to
supper.”

Kate had the talent all right, thought Judy, but she couldn’t seem to channel it by herself. She needed someone to give her that push
up
instead of the push
down
that the men
in her life seemed to have given her, although Judy had to admit that Kate sat up and begged to be kicked in the teeth. Still, she seemed a lot more positive than on her previous visit.

The following evening Judy fiddled around with Kate’s synopsis, altered the pagination slightly and then said, “Fine. This I can promote. We’ll call it
One Woman’s
War.
” She pulled a little gift-wrapped parcel from her purse and tossed it to Kate. “A present.” Kate caught it with one hand, opened the Tiffany box and saw a two-inch-square
navy-blue leather case, inside which was a small, square, golden alarm clock.

“That’s so you can start writing the book the morning after you get back to London.”

“But I don’t have time,” protested Kate, “and my job takes all my energy.”

“Set that thing for five in the morning, fix yourself a cup of instant coffee and type for two hours before going to the office
every single day.
. . . No, not when you get back at
night, because you’ll be stale. . . . All right, all right, you can have Sundays off. But if you knock out a thousand words a day you’ll have finished it, allowing for the rewrite, in
about four months.”

Starting a book wasn’t easy, because upon Kate’s return to Britain Scotty worked her hard. One morning she answered his summons to find him standing in front of his
work shelf, scowling as he groped around with one hand for his heavy, black-framed glasses; he never wore them for reading or writing, but he couldn’t think without them. In intensely
cerebral moments he polished them, so when you saw Scotty whip his glasses off his nose, fish out his grubby handkerchief and start to rub his glasses, then you knew that he was about to say
something that would shake you.

“I want you to stop being a bloody celebrity and get down to interview work again. I don’t want you typecast in khaki battle jacket. Go and see this woman who’s just been found
not guilty of murdering her transvestite husband. Seven hundred words.”

Aghast, Kate looked at Scotty. “I
can’t.
”

“Why not?” Scotty turned his attention to the page in front of him. Kate supposed that she had no real reason for not covering the story—it might even help to get it out of her
system.

Kate’s book was published in June 1967. There were simultaneous editions in Britain and in the United States, where Judy was going to promote it.

Kate turned up late one night at Judy’s apartment in New York. She headed for the tub and disappeared in a warm fog of Chamade, snorting, “Those swine at the airport! When I told
them they’d lost my special television wardrobe, they merely handed me a form to fill in and then presented me with a toothbrush and two pairs of paper panties. Not really enough for
‘Today’.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Judy, pulling a notebook from the pocket of her purple Courrèges pants suit as Kate submerged completely and lewd-sounding bubbles rose from the
tub. When the dripping head reappeared, Judy started to scribble a list. “While we’re making life miserable for those incompetents at Kennedy, let’s buy you some stuff for the
road. We’ll go shopping tomorrow, and remember, the less you buy the better. A couple of lightweight dresses for the South and for evenings: one good suit with at least seven blouses because
you won’t have time to wash one out every night. Make sure they’re polyester, not silk, so you can hand-wash them in the hotel basin. And get some junk jewelry and scarves. Margot
Fonteyn tours with hardly any baggage, just one black suit. In between interviews, she sits in the back of the limo, turns the collar up or down, undoes a couple of buttons, pulls some pearls or a
scarf out of her tote bag and manages six entirely different looks in one day.”

There was an anguished cry from the tub. “Are you trying to make me feel inferior before I start? I am not a prima ballerina. I’m here to talk about a war. People won’t expect
me to look like a fashion plate.”

“Yes, they will,” said Judy earnestly. “All those women are going to remember what you wear. If you can’t get your act together, why should they listen to you?” She
shook more Chamade into the tub and added, “As for feeling inferior, wait until you get out West to the body-beautiful belt—perfectly capped smiles and twenty-four-hour immaculate
hairstyles. We don’t want confidence to melt at that point, do we?”

Kate scowled and slicked her hair back, reaching for the shampoo. Judy squinted at her. “Hold your hair back again. At least when your hair is wet we can see what you look like. Kenneth
can cut it tomorrow. Tell him to get the hair off your face so that we can see those green tiger eyes.” She dodged a wet sponge. “Christ, it’s just like being back at school. You
should also take one comfortable pair of low pumps and a large box of Band-Aids. On tour you have to look after your feet like an infantry man.”

“Anything else?”

“Vitamin pills, some eyedrops if you don’t want bloodshot eyes after long flights, and a stick of men’s deodorant. Those studios can get really sweaty.”

“Well, you needn’t bother to get my suitcase back from Mombasa or wherever it’s gone,” said Kate clambering out, “because there’s nothing like that in it. I
brought rather stately, royal-tour-type clothes. I’m glad I lost them.”

“What you’ve got to realise,” Judy said, handing her a towel, “is that you’ve really got to make a constant effort to look good for every goddamn minute of this
tour.” Kate scowled, and Judy yelled, “It costs a minimum of two hundred bucks a day to keep you on the road, so you better look like a million dollars.”

On June 5 Kate left on tour. At home, Judy suddenly stopped brewing her breakfast coffee and turned up the radio. “Lightning attack by Israel caused severe Arab losses and capture of
territory, mainly from Egypt and Jordan.”

It was the first radio report of what turned out to be the Israeli-Egyptian Six Day War.

Judy immediately realised that
One Woman’s War
was going to be a best seller.

“Just to bring you down to earth,” scowled Scotty, when Kate returned to London, “let’s see how you tackle a tits-and-ass story.” So Kate was sent
to interview a continental teenage starlet who was making a film in Britain, an updated fairy story that was being shot in the New Forest, Hampshire.

At first light, Kate was waiting on the set in the damp autumnal forest clearing, heavily wrapped up against the cold, sniffing the autumn reek of wet leaves. A yellow trailer was parked under
the trees, and suddenly, in the doorway, stood the most ravishing little creature Kate had ever seen. Lili’s hands were pushed deep into a dark fur coat with upturned collar, under which she
wore picturesque rags that had been carefully slashed to show as much of her body as possible.