Princess Daisy (23 page)

Both the girl and the woman were surprised at the sound of the doorbell on the floor below. Anabel expected no visitors until Stash that evening. In a minute Ram entered the drawing room and Daisy rose to her feet in delight. Now that he had his own flat and was working in the City she rarely saw this twenty-two-year-old half-brother.

“What’s that God-awful fancy dress you’ve got on?” he asked. He looked annoyed. He’d dropped by unannounced, hoping to find Anabel alone, so that they could have a chat, and here she was closeted with Daisy. He didn’t even notice that Daisy’s expectant look of joy, her open smile at the sight of him, a smile that had such completeness to it, faded and shrank with hurt at his careless words.

“You don’t know one damn thing about fashion, Ram,” Anabel snapped in an irritated voice he’d rarely heard her use. “Daisy looks divine, as any fool would know.”

“Only if you say so, Anabel darling,” he said absently, ignoring Daisy. “I’ve got to get home,” Daisy said hastily. She couldn’t wait to take off the velvet knee breeches and ruffled shirt she’d been so proud of. Now this ravishing pageboy, this festival of a girl felt ashamed of the way she looked. Ram’s approval, which she had sought so fruitlessly for the last nine years, meant almost everything to her, no matter how often she told herself that for reasons she couldn’t understand he didn’t like her and would never like her. He had the power to hurt her as no one else could. Ram, unattainable, detached, withdrawn, undemonstrative Ram, who showed so little emotion on his dark, haughty face, made her helpless with love and passionate with the desire to please.

At Lady Alden’s, where Daisy was in her next to last year, she was the acknowledged leader of her class, the champion jacks player of the school, one of the only girls who had never been reduced to tears by the application of Lady Alden’s ruler, and the center of a group of special friends who were as physically daring and as horse-mad as she. They formed a potentially revolutionary society within the docile body of the school, which, had Lady Alden known of it, would have caused the dreaded ruler to fly as it had never flown before.

Now Daisy, still smarting with the reception her first venture into grown-up clothes had drawn from Ram, contemplated taking out her feelings with a devilment which would exceed anything in the annals of the school. Her emotions were almost adult but she still only knew childish ways to relieve them.

Even her best friends were aghast at her proposition.

“A gymkhana! Daisy, you’re bonkers. You know as well as I do a proper gymkhana’s got to be a field day, with horsemanship, exhibitions and all sorts of pageantry. Lady A would never hear of it.”

“Lady A doesn’t own Belgrave Square.”

“Oh, Daisy! Oh, how perfectly awful! Oh—could we really do it?”

“Why not? If you’re all with me, that is. It’s merely a question of organization.”

The Metropolitan Police were never able to explain the Great Belgrave Square Gymkhana to their superiors. How were they to know of the cunning resources of two dozen fiery young equestrians, who stole into that august park in the early morning hours and set up jumps and flags and brilliantly colored pennants and all matter of gates and fences? By the light of dawn in their beige breeches and polished boots and stocks and tweed jackets, looking like all the other proper young ladies who ride in London, these she-devils quietly collected their horses from various stables all over Mayfair and assembled at the entrance to that beautifully groomed square of turf and trees onto which face the embassies of Portugal, Mexico, Turkey, Norway, Germany, Austria and, appropriately enough, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and the Imperial Defense College.

One of the fearless number lived on the Square and had a key to the high iron entrance, and before the police had collected their wits not only had the Gymkhana started,
but the entrances to all the main streets which led to the Square—Upper Belgrave Street, Belgrave Place, Wilton Terrace, Wilton Crescent and Grosvenor Crescent—were blocked with cars, abandoned by their passengers who had flocked out to see what was going on. And what were a handful of policemen to do with a horde of whooping, hurrahing wild teenagers, veterans of dozens of horse shows, as tough as cavalry and twice as tenacious, all mounted on swift horses, galloping madly about in the vernal sunshine as if a troop of Amazons had suddenly materialized from another time in history? Led by Daisy, her bright braids flying behind her, they jumped fence after fence in a bacchanalian circle, holding their pennants high in the air and brandishing them at the London sky with no lack of pageantry. Yet there was discipline in their ranks and Daisy’s whistle could make them all slow to a canter or form into a double line at a trot. The police could no more have arrested them than if they’d been a Guards’ Regiment, coming to Troop the Colors. Nor could they be caught. The Gymkhana ended only when the sound of police sirens started to get close to Belgrave Square. At that moment, Daisy raised her arm and shouted—and all her inspired band scattered, jumping their horses over the railings and fleeing into the friendly, cheering carnival crowds who had surrounded the square.

It was perfectly true, as Daisy had said, that Lady Alden didn’t own Belgrave Square. The Earl of Grosvenor did, just as he owned almost every square inch of Mayfair and Belgravia. The Grosvenor family is the wealthiest private landlord in England, with these three hundred acres in the heart of London representing only one of their holdings all over the world. The Earl of Grosvenor most certainly owned Wilton Row … Stash only leased his house from the Grosvenor Trust.

In the offices of the trustees of the Grosvenor Trust there was little amusement concerning Daisy’s Gymkhana. The gardeners of Belgrave Square had reported that the turf was damaged to the tune of hundreds of pounds. However, that wasn’t their chief objection … it was the principle of the thing. A typical sign on a typical park in Grosvenor territory reads like the one which adorns the entrance to Wilton Crescent’s semi-oval green space. Some of the injuctions written thereon forbid any game involving noise, prohibit any children under the age of nine who
are unaccompanied by adults and outlaw all dogs. Although tricycles and scooters may be used by accompanied children, they must be ridden only on the paths, no flower beds may be trodden upon or dug, and, in particular, organized groups of children cannot be admitted to the park at all.

The tradition of these sedate and quiet parks had been violated—shaken to its depths—by Daisy, who had been recognized and identified by one of the Grosvenor traffic wardens who had helplessly observed the Great Gymkhana. She was, he reported in an outraged voice, a young lady who owned … a lurcher! That news alone was enough to cause a hush and raise the eyebrows of the trustees, landowners all and therefore victims, down to their last remembered ancestor, of poachers and their dogs. A lurcher indeed! Just what kind of young lady could possibly own a lurcher?

It was not, as one of the trustees soon explained to Stash, that they wished to punish his daughter, but if she was capable of such insurrection, what might she do next? Stash thought about his lease, which had only three years to run before it would revert to the Grosvenor estate, and agreed with the trustee that certainly he would have to do something serious about the discipline of his daughter. In addition, Stash was genuinely shocked at Daisy’s behavior. It was more daring than anything he remembered ever having done himself, at her age, even making allowances for the fact that she was a female.

After the trustee had left, with a check for the damages and Stash’s assurances that the matter of Daisy would be attended to, he sat alone for a long time, thinking about his foolhardy daughter. How was she to grow up properly with, as adult examples, only himself and Anabel? Neither of them was immoral, it was true, but they were certainly amoral, both of them heedless of the laws of ordinary society. Eton had turned Ram into a sober, unemotional, hard-working young man, but Lady Alden’s had missed having a salutory taming effect on Daisy. What would happen to Daisy when she no longer lived under his roof? This matter of the Gymkhana went far beyond an irresponsible childish prank, Stash thought, feeling every one of his fifty-six years. He blamed himself. There was no doubt in his mind that he had spoiled Daisy. But what to do about the future? He would not always be there to get her out of trouble.

During the rest of April and May Stash considered the problem of Daisy as he attended to his affairs. Eventually, he sent for his solicitor and made certain thoughtful changes in his will, and then forgot about the matter, satisfied that he had acted prudently. A great deal of his fortune was now invested in Rolls-Royce and Stash watched with deep interest as the company attempted to break into the American-dominated manufacturing of airplane engines. In 1963 his faith in Rolls had been bolstered as their Spey turbofan engine was being widely bought and now in 1967 they were going after a contract with Lockheed to produce the engine for its TriStar Airbus, the RB. 211. His investments had always been made on an emotional basis rather than on that of cold financial judgment, and Stash poured even more capital into the company he loved.

However, the training of his stable of polo ponies occupied most of Stash’s time. He flew less and less now, having lost the need for the release from fury he had found in the air after Francesca had left him, fourteen years ago. All that seemed very far away and unimportant. Still he kept his jet license current and occasionally he flew aerobatic exhibitions in the many air shows which were so popular all over the country, returning for a few nostalgic hours to the cockpit of a lovingly preserved relic of a Spitfire or a Hurricane, with their Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, still as trustworthy as ever.

On a fine Sunday in May, there was no fault in the engine of the Spitfire he was flying at the Essex Air Show. The undercarriage of the twenty-seven-year-old plane stuck and the landing gear could not be released. Stash headed for the woods beyond the runway, hoping that the trees might cushion the crash. Many a fighter pilot had crash-landed in these planes and lived to tell the tale. He did not.

10

I
n the weeks right after Stash’s death, Anabel, who grieved for Stash in her own way as she had never grieved for anyone before, Anabel, who had a premonition that Stash would be the last man in her life, pulled what was left of the family together.

She insisted that Daisy and Ram spend the summer at the house near Honfleur that Stash had bought for her seven years before. Seeing Ram so unlike himself, functioning without his usual effectiveness, she persuaded him to take a leave of absence from his job in the City for all of June, July and August. However, with her great virtue of good sense, Anabel realized that three mourning people should never be alone together and she arranged for a constant stream of houseguests to come and stay in the large house; friends from both her London life and her French summer world, people who would distract and beguile the sad household.

Daisy, Anabel realized, was feeling the loss much more than Ram. It was she who was absolutely orphaned now—even Masha had died two years ago. When Daisy went to visit Dani for comfort, her twin, with uncanny intuition, seemed to smell her grief even though Daisy smiled as she hugged and petted her. Dani became so upset that she was reduced to silent tears. “Day, no
do
,” she said, drawing away, and finally Daisy sent her running gladly back through the gardens to her own friends.

Ram was
the
Prince Valensky at last. Not only had he inherited the London house and its valuable antique contents, with the exception of the Fabergé animals which had been left to Anabel, along with a certain amount of
Rolls-Royce stock, but he had inherited all the polo ponies and the stables in Trouville and Kent and one half of Stash’s fortune, both in Rolls-Royce stock and all that remained of the Swiss gold. Stash had left Daisy the other half of his fortune, all of it invested in Rolls stock. Several weeks after the Belgrave Square Gymkhana had convinced him that Daisy shouldn’t be in charge of her affairs until she turned thirty, he had made Ram, that dependable, clever boy, co-trustee of her inheritance, along with the Bank of England.

Ram was rich and he was in charge. Yet he had a nagging sense of incompletion, as if his father, in dying so suddenly, had remained intact, as if Stash were still
the
Prince Valensky. There was a sense of unfinished business about the whole thing—something not done, something not finished, something not
won
.

That summer, at Anabel’s house,
La Marée
, there were never fewer than eight people at any meal, and often more than a dozen. Anabel’s invitations were eagerly accepted by everyone she knew. As she had grown older—she was now almost forty-eight—she collected around herself an atmosphere more filled with intimacy than ever before, as more and more people found her the perfect confidante. She wore their secrets like priceless pearls tucked inside the neckline of a thin dress so that only a faint glimmer of them showed that they were there, but they added constant new depth to her ageless charm and the comfort of her presence. One of her friends, a recently lapsed Catholic, had told her that he felt as cleansed of sin after he’d talked to her as if he’d been to confession, only—and this was the best of all—he had not had to promise never to sin again.

La Marée
was a house which could be described by no other word in the language except
enchanted
. There must be in the world many great houses on the top of thickly wooded hills overlooking the sea, but no one who had ever spent any time at
La Marée
had failed to be marked for life by its strange, poetic, nostalgic, tenderly mysterious atmosphere.

It stood behind high walls and acres of overgrown gardens, on the Côte de Grace, the thickly shaded, narrow road that mounts up steeply from Honfleur in the direction of Deauville. From the windows of the house, on all but the front façade, there was a high view over the entire estuary of the Seine, with Le Havre clearly visible in the
opalescent distance. Behind the house was a wide gravel terrace from which tangled, fragrant woods led steeply down to the boundaries of two small farms. These woods were crisscrossed by a maze of hidden paths. Beyond the farms was the sea and on the sea was a constantly changing, gay armada of fishing and pleasure boats going in and out of the port of Honfleur. Farther out, great ocean liners and cargo ships passed back and forth. The terrace faced due west, and in the evening, when the sun was finally eaten by the horizon and the lights of Le Havre became visible, there was an almost unbearable poignancy about the moment which caused people to speak in lowered voices, or not at all.