Princess Daisy (4 page)

Although the events that followed the production of
Milestones
startled Ricardo and Claudia, Francesca was not surprised. She had long lived in the world of dreams in which wondrous happenings took place predictably, and her ranging imagination had always whispered to her that she was not destined to lead the life her friends would
lead. Nothing could have prevented her from reaching out for everything life offered.

Francesca Vernon, nee della Orso, became a star in her first picture. Her reputation grew with astonishing speed in those lush days when studios could use the same actress in three or four major pictures a year. From the age of eighteen to the age of twenty-four Francesca went directly from one film to another, for she had been born to play the great romantic roles. More than ten years younger than Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Ava Gardner or Rita Hayworth, she reigned alongside them, capturing parts which might normally have gone to English actresses, because there was no one in Hollywood who could match her as a heroine on the grand scale; the noble, the star-crossed, the stuff of tragic legend.

Francesca lived with the Firestones for a year before she bought herself a small house next door to them. Although she went to San Francisco to visit her parents on her rare, brief vacations, by 1949 they both died. Since Francesca didn’t plunge into the Hollywood social scene she was soon typed by movie magazines as a mystery woman, an approach which wily Matty encouraged, knowing how tantalizing it is to the press. The studio’s publicity department cooperated completely in the screen of secrecy which surrounded Francesca, for they realized, as well as Matty, that the truth about her would have been totally unacceptable to the prudish public of the 1950s. Francesca fell dangerously in love with almost every one of her leading men, and her discreet but full-blown affairs only ended when the final scene of each picture was shot. This amorous habit of hers might have killed Matty from sheer weight of aggravation if he hadn’t learned that each affair had a finite end. She had never loved a man, a real person. She had loved the Prince of Denmark and Romeo and Heathcliff and Marc Antony and Lord Nelson and a dozen others, but once the ordinary mortal actor stood before her, she grew cold. It was wild, theatrical passion or cold porridge when Francesca’s emotions were involved.

Margo Firestone, concerned with Francesca’s succession of intense affairs, often with married men, asked her finally why she didn’t try to have more
fun
, like other young actresses of her age.

Francesca turned on her indignantly. “My God, Margo, what the hell do you think I am—a Janet Leigh, or a
Debbie Reynolds, with their cute
little
movie-magazine romances? And who the hell wants to have
fun
—what a silly word that is. I insist on
more
—and I know perfectly well how corny that sounds, so you don’t have to bother to lecture me. Oh, I’m fed up with actors! But they’re all I ever meet.”

She had just turned twenty-four when she said this, and that evening Margo Firestone decided that Francesca needed a change of scenery. She was too caught up in the artificial world of the sound stage, too restless, too vulnerable. And the deaths of her parents during the last few years had left her depressed.

“If she were my daughter,” Margo said reflectively, “I’d be damn worried.”

“Still, last year she won the Oscar,” Matty mused.

“I’d worry even more. Remember Luise Rainer?”

“Please! Don’t even say it.” Matty knocked on wood to fend off the memory of what he considered the mishandled career of the fragile Austrian actress who had won two Oscars in a row and then virtually disappeared from film importance in the late 1930s. God forbid such a thing should happen to Francesca. Or to him.

“Let’s ask her to go with us to Europe next month,” Margo suggested.

“But I thought you wanted a second honeymoon,” Matty objected.

“I don’t really believe in honeymoons, first or second,” Margo said firmly. “As soon as Francesca finishes
Anna Karenina
have your office arrange to put her on the next boat—we can meet her there.”

By seven-thirty of the evening after the polo match, under Margo’s feverish direction, Francesca was ready. She wore a floor-length rosy-white chiffon evening gown designed by Jean Louis. The strapless bodice was held up by tiny bones and draped softly over her bosom. The first layer of chiffon was a dark pink, the next a lighter shade of pink, until the fifth and final layer, which was pure white. Around her bare shoulders she flung a chiffon stole of five layers like the skirt. Yards long, it was ornamented here and there by delicate sprays of palest pink silk flowers. The entire effect was eighteenth century and as fanciful as if she had stepped from a portrait by Gainsborough. Francesca’s long hair, which she had refused to
sacrifice for the new poodle cut, was caught up in a huge chignon at the back of her neck, and tiny curls of hair escaped just in front of her ears and lay on her smooth forehead.

Margo surveyed her with admiration and envy. Matty had wandered into the sitting room of Francesca’s suite to inspect his client “I hope that guy’s dressed up too, hon.”

“Matty, in Deauville they won’t even let you in the gambling rooms at the Casino unless you’re in evening clothes,” Margo said, dismissively. She knew what was proper for a first date with a prince. She’d been planning one for herself since she was fifteen.

“Listen, hon,” Matty continued, undeterred, “this fellow is a genuine prince. I’ve checked up on that. But he’s got quite a reputation as a ladies’ man. He’s been divorced once. So keep that in mind. You’re a big girl now—I know, I know, so don’t tell me again.”

As they sat waiting, there was a knock on the door. Matty opened it to find the hotel bell captain standing with a stiff white pasteboard box in his hands.

“Flowers for Miss Vernon,” he announced. Matty took the box and tipped the man. “At least he knows all the gimmicks,” he observed sourly. Francesca opened the box and found that it contained a triple circle of white rosebuds that she could twine around her wrist. Then, sharp-eyed Margo spied another smaller, black velvet box, tied in blue ribbon, which had been tucked under the roses. Francesca opened it quickly and drew in her breath in amazement Fitted precisely into the velvet interior of the box lay a crystal pot, three-quarters filled with water. In the pot were three sprigs of thickly clustered flowers on stems of gold. Each flower was made of five round petals of turquoise with rose-cut diamond centers and leaves of jade. She took it out and set it on the table. The entire magical object was three inches high and the illusion of water was due to the clarity of the rock crystal.

“What …? What is it?” she asked.

“Artificial flowers,” said Matty.

“Fabergé … that’s Fabergé … it couldn’t be anything else,” Margo breathed. “Read the card!”

Only then did Francesca tear open the card concealed in the old velvet box which bore the double-headed eagle, mark of the Royal Warrant.

These forget-me-nots belonged to my mother. Until this afternoon I had lost hope of finding someone to whom they should belong
.

Stash Valensky

“He knows gimmicks they haven’t even invented yet,” Matty said, his face dour. But even to his unsentimental eyes the little vase was an extraordinarily precious object. Whatever else this bozo was, he certainly wasn’t handing those out by the gross.

As Francesca finished twining the rosebuds around her wrist, the front desk rang announcing Prince Valensky. “Listen, hon, just remember that pumpkin can turn into a coach,” Matty said hastily, but Francesca had left the room so quickly that she didn’t hear him. He turned to Margo with an expression of dismay. “Hell, I meant the coach into a pumpkin—do you think she got it?”

“You might as well have been speaking Chinese,” said Margo.

Valensky and Francesca Vernon, by unspoken accord, moved quickly through the crowded lobby of the Normandy where people had stopped to look at them the minute she stepped out of the lift, her beauty unfurled above the great float of chiffon. His open, white Rolls-Royce convertible was waiting at the door, and within seconds they were driving through the almost deserted streets of a city in which most people were either drinking or still dressing for the evening.

“Do you realize that this is unfashionably early?” he asked.

“But you did say eight.”

“I don’t think my nerves could last till nine.”

“So you suffer from nerves?” Her famous voice, deep and gentle, came with difficulty, through lips that were suddenly dry.

“Since this afternoon, yes.” Her tone of badinage had evaporated. He took one hand off the wheel and laid it over hers. The sudden, simple contact left her incapable of responding. None of her many lovers had, even in their most intimate moments, touched her in such a way. There was ownership in his fingers.

After a minute he continued. “I had planned to take you to the Casino for dinner … there’s the polo ball tonight
… it’s the peak of the Season. Would you mind missing it? We could go to a restaurant I know on the way to Honfleur—Chez Mahu. It’s good and it’s quiet, or at least it will be tonight with everyone in Deauville.”

“Oh, yes—please.”

They drove in renewed silence through the lambent evening of Normandy, an evening of vast gray-blue skies covering a landscape cosily patterned by fields, orchards and farmhouses, seen in that last light of day, which for ten minutes makes everything look greener than it really is.

At Chez Mahu they found that they were able only to talk of unimportant things. Stash tried to explain polo to Francesca but she scarcely listened, mesmerized as she was with the abrupt movements of his tanned hands on which light blond hair grew, the hands of a great male animal. For his part, Stash hardly knew what he was saying. Francesca played straight into the heart of his deepest, most thoroughly concealed dream. For years he had had as many women as he chose to reach out for, sophisticated, clever, practiced and decorative women of great beauty, women of the International Set. He was a hardened man of the world who was, at last, experiencing the
coup de foudre
, the thunderclap of unreasoning, instant infatuation.

She was so young, he thought, and luminous in her majesty. Her dark and blushing beauty could have been as Russian as it was Italian. She reminded him of the miniatures of young princesses, framed in jewels and gold, the princesses of St. Petersburg that he had seen, when he was a child, in dozens of frames set in a nostalgic profusion on the tables around his mother’s fireplace. The flesh of her shoulders, when she threw back her stole, had an almost impossible polish and freshness. The curve of her jaw where it approached her ear was of such a heart-breaking purity that he knew it would remain in his memory forever.

Francesca listened to Valensky’s low voice, which had traces of an English accent, a brutal man’s voice which seemed to vibrate with an underlying tenderness, as if he were talking to a newborn foal, and thought that this man was as far from the sort of man she knew as if he had sprung from another species. Every time she dared to look directly into the fighting gleam of his gray eyes she felt as if she had taken another step into a foreign land. He told her that he was forty but about him there clung an air of
strength and purpose which made youth seem an awkward dream. Matty was forty-five. Stash made him seem seventy-five.

As they finished their coffee he asked her if she would go with him to visit his horses.

“I never turn in without checking the stables,” he explained. “They expect to see me.”

“And do they like female visitors?”

“They have never seen any before.”

“Ah!” She shivered at the stern simplicity of the compliment. “Yes, I’ll come.”

They drove back toward Deauville, and, just outside of Trouville, took a road which branched off into a country lane which wandered through half a mile of ancient apple trees until it stopped at a gate set into a wall of irregular stones. At the sound of the horn a man appeared quickly and opened the gate so that they could drive through. Inside the courtyard was a substantial stone farmhouse and a number of farm buildings.

“My manager, Jean, lives here with his family,” Valensky said. “The stableboys live in the village and ride their bikes over every morning.”

He took Francesca’s arm and led her toward the stables which were at some distance from the farmhouse. At the sound of their footsteps some of the ponies immediately whinnied and started to move around in their boxes.

“They don’t get much to look at, poor beasts,” Valensky laughed. “I’m their nightly floor show.” He walked slowly from box to box, stopping to name each pony to Francesca, to tell her something of the animal’s peculiarities while he observed, with a quick, keen eye, the health and mental condition of each one of them.

“Tiger Moth here is spending the week out to grass. He has a cut mouth—nothing serious, but I won’t ride him until it’s completely healed. Gloster Gladiator has a bad habit of eating his bed so I’ve had it changed from straw to peat moss. Good; Bristol Beaufighter is sleeping. He had a hard afternoon.”

“Bristol Beaufighter, Gloster Gladiator?”

“I know they’re odd names for horses. They’re the names of planes … great planes. Some day I’ll tell you more about them.”

“Tell me now,” she demanded, not really caring. His
careless phrase, “some day I’ll tell you” was all she’d heard.

“The Tiger Moth was a trainer … de Havilland. The Gladiator was a fighter, the Bristol a night fighter … there were many, now forgotten, unless you’ve flown one. Then you can never forget.”

His voice trailed off as he saw she wasn’t listening. The moonlight on her ball gown turned it into a sculptural mass of white marble.

“Come,” he said reluctantly, “I should take you back. The gala isn’t over yet and we can be at the Casino in less than fifteen minutes.”

“The Casino? Certainly not I want to hear more about the Tiger Moth.”