Princess Daisy (15 page)

She looked up in annoyance when Masha returned, an hour before she was expected. The Russian woman clumped into Daisy’s room, her broad, kind face flushed
with anger, her mouth working silently, every inch of her sturdy, reliable body conveying an imminent explosion.

“Masha—what’s wrong with you?” Francesca whispered. “Daisy’s just gone to sleep—hush, now.”

Masha was so disturbed that she could only keep her voice low with difficulty.

“She—that nurse—Soeur Anni—I saw her in the store—that, that
creature
had the nerve to say to me—I’ve known her for years, mind you, and she, oh, it’s not to be endured … to
me …
ach, I can’t even say it myself, it’s disgusting, the gossip, the things people will say …” Masha stopped abruptly and sat down squarely in the yellow rocking chair, unable to continue for sheer anger.

“Masha, what exactly did Soeur Anni say?” Francesca asked quietly. She knew that in the nine weeks of her depression she must have been worse than bizarre, strange in ways of which Masha couldn’t be aware. It was unprofessional of the nurse, to say the least, to discuss a former patient, but her years in Hollywood had hardened her to the blows of gossip mongers.

“She told me … she said … she … 
ach
—the things these crazy people believe! She said that our poor little baby who died—that the baby wasn’t dead at all!”

Francesca went gray. Gossip was one thing, but this was of such vileness, such palpable evil, to speak of her tragedy as if it hadn’t happened, to use her grief as material for a rumor. One look at Masha’s face told her there was more.

“I want every single word Soeur Anni said. She’s a dangerous woman—the whole story, Masha, out with it!”

“She said that little Danielle, that our baby, was in the clinic for months—months—after you left, until she got big enough and then they sent her away to be boarded at that Madame Louise Goudron’s, a woman who takes in children …”

“ ‘They?’ Did she say who ‘they’ were?”

“No, she didn’t know, but the worst of it, Madame, the worst was what she said to me when I told her it was the foulest lie I’d ever heard. She said I could say what I liked but she knew some people who are so rich and high and mighty that if they don’t like the baby they have, if something’s wrong with it, they just get rid of it! I damned her to burn in hell, Princess, right to her face!”

“Masha! Now just calm down … you’ll wake Daisy.… It’s not possible that Soeur Anni—of course, I was rude to her, but still, to be so vicious, to dream up a story like that.… She’s mad, utterly mad. I’ve got to do something about her. She must
never
be allowed around sick people again. She’s crazy, Masha, don’t you see, really and truly insane.”

“Oh, Princess, Princess … the wickedness of it. What if she’s told other people, what if they believe her?”

“Nonsense. No one in his right mind would listen to her. The Prince would strangle the woman if he even heard—is that everything she told you?”

“Yes, every word. I left the store and came right back to tell you.”

“I’m going to call Doctor Allard right away.… No … wait. I’ll sound as mad as Soeur Anni. You’ll have to be my witness. We’ll go into town and see him tomorrow morning, first thing. That way she can’t deny what she told you. That bitch. That utter bitch!”

Stash’s valet knocked at the door.

“What is it?” Francesca said, angrily.

“Princess, you’re wanted on the telephone. It’s the Prince, from London.”

“I’ll be right down, Mump.”

The telephone was in the library of the villa. Francesca rushed down the stairs and picked up the receiver.

“Darling, I’m so glad to hear your voice! Why? Oh, I was just feeling terribly lonely for you, that’s all. It’s been a whole day.” As she spoke she thought that there was no reason to tell Stash about Soeur Anni. He would go into one of the cold, devil-sent rages she had seen overcome him when someone or something challenged his power over his life, and heaven knows what he would do to that crazy woman. She was perfectly capable of handling this nasty incident herself. “Daisy?” she continued. “She just went to sleep. We had a wonderful afternoon, all alone together. No, darling, nothing new … two more days … maybe three? So, it’s not that easy to find the perfect princely residence. Just don’t rush it.… I’m being well taken care of. Goodnight, my dearest heart. I love you.”

The next morning Francesca and Masha were driven by the chauffeur into Lausanne. Francesca told Masha to stay in Dr. Allard’s waiting room while she went into his
consultation room. As the receptionist ushered her in, the little doctor bounced up from behind his desk at the sight of her.

“Ah, ha,
Maman
, you’ve had a change of heart! I was sure of it! I knew it! I knew it! I was certain you’d never really give up your baby, not a woman like you! Of course, at the time—but, my dear, what’s wrong?” Dr. Allard caught Francesca just as she stumbled to a chair. He busied himself reviving her from her faint, murmuring, “Naturally, the emotion, the emotion …”

As she came back to herself, the horror was all around her, a sick whirl, yet without a name, without specifics, generalized, surrounding, stifling. She knew nothing except that something very bad had been done, something criminal. Every ounce of acting ability Francesca possessed was mustered as she slowly realized where she was and the full implications of what Dr. Allard had said, instincts of cunning she hadn’t known she possessed took over.

“I’m sorry, Doctor … it must be the reaction to coming back to the clinic. I’m perfectly all right now. No thank you, no water, I’m fine. Well! How are you?” She was gaining time settling down into a natural rhythm, her words coming from her numb lips as if she really were in full command of herself.

“I? I am a happy man today, Princess. When the Prince told me that you had decided never to see Danielle, that you refused to bring her up, I must confess that I was deeply disappointed. But I do not consider it my business to comment on such decisions, you understand, that is always a matter the parents must decide. But somehow, something told me, yes, even at the time, that when you were quite well again you would reconsider.”

“Doctor, I went through a very difficult time. I’m not sure that I really understand now, even though I’ve recovered, exactly what happened. Could you straighten it out for me, tell me just what occurred? I didn’t pay enough attention to the whole thing and I’m ashamed of myself.… I don’t want my husband to know how little I listened to him.” She smiled at him, composed, charmingly helpless.

When the doctor had finished the long recital, filling in every detail with Swiss precision, remembering with no trouble all of his interviews with Stash and all the details of Danielle’s condition, Francesca sat numbly. Every word was a heavy spiked object that fell straight on her heart,
blow after blow. The foreknowledge of approaching doom was as palpable as an open casket. She wanted to scream, to scream and never stop screaming, so that she would never have to think about what the little doctor had told her. Instead, calmly, out of a cave on the dark side of the moon, she heard her voice asking, “You still haven’t told me exactly what sort of special care Danielle will need.”

“Only what you’ve given Daisy—I see that is what the newspapers call her now, our little Marguerite. At the moment, before Daisy starts to walk, the differences between them will be less than they will be in the future. Danielle will, of course, be slow and late to develop in every way, and a good deal less active than her sister, but, as I have assured you, she will look normal. Soon, very soon, it will be time for speech … the first major problem. Then, in a few years, Danielle can be tested. With luck there are many, many things the little one can be taught to do for herself, but all that’s in the future. For now it’s only love and attention that she requires.”

“Doctor Allard, I foolishly gave away her crib and all her clothes … everything that might have reminded me.… I’ll need just one more day
to get
ready for her.”

“But of course … one day, two days, what do they matter now?” The doctor looked at her keenly, thinking that perhaps what she really needed was time to get used to the idea, now that her difficult decision had finally been made.

When Francesca came out of the doctor’s consulting room, Masha was waiting with fiery impatience to be summoned as a witness against Soeur Anni. Francesca intercepted her before she could say anything.

“Masha, it’s all settled, our business. Come on, right away, we’ve got a lot of things to do.” She grasped the older woman’s arm and tugged her out of the door, hurrying down the clinic corridor into the street.

“Princess, did you get that woman thrown out? Why didn’t you let me tell him? You were in there so long I was worried.”

“Masha,” Francesca began and then stopped. In the space of an hour everything on which she had based her beliefs had vanished. Nothing was as it seemed. Deception, lies, cruelty, impossible hurts, a vast, confused landscape surrounded her.

“Masha, she didn’t lie to you. Danielle—she’s alive!” The strong peasant woman tottered. Francesca held her up
with all her strength. “Masha, come, well sit in the park. I’ll explain it all.”

At the end of Francesca’s recital, broken as it was by incredulous cries of denial from Masha, the two women sat silently on the park bench, eyed with mild curiosity by the chauffeur who was still parked in front of the clinic.

Slowly Masha turned to Francesca. “You must understand, Princess, even as a little boy he was in terror of weakness, sickness, only that, no other failings. I’ve watched him over the years—oh, I know he pays no attention to me, but I’ve watched and watched. He has to have everything his way. He always wins, always. There is no hope, Princess. He’ll never admit the poor baby to his heart.”

“He won’t have to,” Francesca said in a voice that was almost a howl of potent, rending rage. “He’s lost every chance.”

Masha’s subservient reaction to Stash’s point of view had mobilized her as nothing else could have. The old woman was actually trying to explain what he had done, as if his actions could be accepted,
had
to be accepted.

“I’m going away, Masha. I’m taking my children with me. Nobody can stop me, I warn you. He
lied
to me. He let me think she was dead! He
stole
my baby. If I don’t protect her, who knows what evil thing he might do next? Think what he did, Masha. Think what he
is
. I never want to see him again. I’ll be gone before he gets back from London. All I ask from you is to say nothing until I’ve left.”

Masha’s eyes filled. “What do you take me for? Once I had a baby … but he died. Still, I have always had a mother’s heart, Princess. Anyway, you can’t manage without me. Just how do you think you are going to take care of two babies all by yourself? I’m going with you.”

“Oh, Masha, Masha!” Francesca cried. “I hoped you’d say that—but I would never have asked you to leave him.”

“He doesn’t need me. You do,” Masha said with stately finality.

Francesca spent one day at the U.S. Embassy in Geneva making emergency passport arrangements, assisted by a bored and incurious clerk, bought airline tickets in a Geneva travel agency, returned to Lausanne to cash a large check at their bank and hurried back to the villa to
pack. For herself she took almost nothing but her traveling clothes, but she filled two big suitcases with all of Daisy’s clothes and necessary temporary supplies. She took out all her jewels and looked at them speculatively. No, she was no longer the wife of the man who had given them to her. Her garden of Fabergé crystal vases, filled with jeweled flowers? Yes, somehow they belonged to another life—a life before the lies—and they rightfully could go with her. The lapis lazuli egg with the diamond crown of Catherine the Great inside, bearing a ruby at its heart? Yes! That was undeniably hers, hers for bearing the twins. She shut the vases and the egg into their boxes and put the small packets in the bottom of her vanity case. Each of her actions, all day long, had been executed with precision, perfection and perfect ease. She had been taken over by a molten core of anger which powered her like an enormous engine. Her strength knew no limits, her brain worked at ten times its normal efficiency, she was a living fire, burning, burning toward the moment when she would take her children to safety. Should she cable Matty Firestone to meet her in Los Angeles? No. Absolutely no one must know she was leaving until she’d gone.

She answered Stash’s next phone call that evening with such a perfect imitation of the tone of the night before that, from the observing part of herself, she was astonished. But all that night she prowled back and forth in her bedroom, hurling words of loathing and bitter blame at him. A man should die for what he had tried to do—had done. How frighteningly little she had really known him, how trusting she had been, how easily she had been duped, used as if she were a figure on a chessboard. How she hated him!

The next morning she telephoned Dr. Allard. She would be sending a nurse to Madame Goudron’s to pick up the baby in two hours, she told him. Would he have the kindness to telephone the lady and ask her to have Danielle ready, and warmly dressed? It was such a chilly day. Yes, yes, she was happy, very happy and very excited. The doctor was perfectly right. It was a wonderful day. Yes, she would give the Prince his best wishes for them all … how very kind.

Precisely two hours later Francesca sat hidden in the back of a taxi, holding Daisy, while Masha went into the neat little house. No one would have recognized the
woman in a bulky travel coat, wearing dark glasses and a deep-brimmed hat, a woman without make-up, her hair pulled back into a tight bun, as that lyric, famous beauty, her long hair flying, who responded in such carefree, innocent delight to the cheers of her fans on her arrival at Cherbourg, just a little less than a year and a half ago.

Five minutes passed before Masha emerged, waving at the woman at the door who lifted a wistful hand. As the taxi started toward the airport, Masha and Francesca exchanged babies. Francesca lifted the hood of the carrying blanket which almost covered the child’s face. How small she was. How incredibly sweet. Silver blonde hair, curly and fine. A grave face, a bit sad, but so marvelously familiar. And the eyes—the same velvety black, the black of a purple pansy, Daisy’s eyes. But dull. Just a little dull. Perhaps only dull if you compared her to Daisy … and that was something you must never, never do, never again.