Princess Daisy (71 page)

With the first genuinely pleasant look he had seen on her face in months, Vanessa put down the phone very softly. “Robin, perhaps I’ll have a little wine after all.”

“Feeling better darling?” Robin asked anxiously.

“Infinitely!”

The pain Ram had felt ever since he had crept away from
La Marée
, leaving Daisy bleeding on her bed, had been a pain of such need, of a wanting so great that it lived in a place where no one knew about it but himself, a place so far inside that his sanity was unquestioned because his outward appearance was correct, impeccable. He was to continue to live and function without Daisy because
no one else had her. But she had always lived on in his fatally obsessed mind as if she still belonged to him lived on in a cage of hopeless, endless longing from which he had neither the will nor the desire nor the power to escape, a cage which contained no images but those of Daisy and himself. True, she turned away from him, in the cage, but she did not turn toward anyone else. How could she, since she was his possession?

Ram had not been jealous because there was no one to be jealous of, no actual threat, no embodiment of a third person between him and his fantasies.

Now, with a few insinuating words, chosen with her infallible instinct for weakness and vulnerability, Vanessa had aroused a literally unbearable sense of impotence, of mutilation. There was no place left for Ram to stand, no inner core in which to take refuge from the pain. Jealousy was born, ravening and gibbering, as old and as mad as if it had had a million years in which to reach hideous, unendurable, acid-drenched maturity.

He dressed quickly, and within half an hour after Vanessa’s phone call he was at the mews garage in which he kept his Jaguar.

Ram had always known where Danielle was. The directors of the school were accustomed to his occasional phone calls as he checked up to find out if Daisy had been able to continue to pay for Danielle. For years he had waited for the day, the inevitable day on which she would be unable to shoulder the burden and would be forced to come to him for help.

Within twenty minutes Ram was headed out of London, speeding in the direction of Queen Anne’s School, by a route that had been clearly mapped out in his mind for many, many years.

25

O
h, my God, NO!” Candice Bloom screamed. Jenny, her assistant, whirled around. Her boss had turned the color of a Kleenex and on her desk was an advance copy of
People
which had just arrived by messenger, a magazine that would be on every newstand in America twenty-four hours from now.

Jenny rushed over to Candice’s desk, almost afraid to look at the cover. She was sure they’d been bumped for another story … Candice had been dreading that all along. She’d always said it was too good to be true. But no, there
was
Daisy … obviously rebellion was one way to inspire Danillo … it was a marvelous picture. On the side of the cover a copy line, in red, shouted “PRINCESS DAISY: Her life isn’t just sweet scents; the strange, secret story of Francesca Vernon and Prince Stash Valensky’s daughter.” Jenny’s hands fumbled as she tried to find the page on which the story appeared.

“Page thirty-four,” Candice gasped.

Jenny finally found the double spread with which the cover story began. The entire right-hand page was one huge black-and-white photograph. She stared at it, read the caption and then looked again at the picture. The world was reduced to that page, that photograph, those two girls, two girls with blonde hair and black eyes, two girls with the same faces, two girls with their arms around each other, two smiling girls of about twenty-three, so alike,
so impossibly alike
. The caption read: “Princess Daisy on a recent visit to her identical twin sister, Danielle, in the home for permanently retarded children in which she has been secreted since she was six.”

The two women stood frozen, staring, staring, unable to speak, struggling for comprehension of something that just could not be.

Finally, in a white voice, Candice said, “She … she’s a little shorter.”

“Her eyes … they’re the same … but her look is … vague?” Jenny’s words stumbled. She could only absorb the shock detail by detail.

“And her hair, it’s just shoulder length and it’s not as, not as … bright … but it grows in just the same way, exactly the same way.” Candice sounded as if she were speaking from another room.

“Her features are different, no, not
different
really, but just not quite as … clear, not as fine. She looks, oh, younger, as if she doesn’t have a sense of humor,” Jenny said wonderingly. “But it
is
the same face … Daisy’s face.”

“No!” Candice said. “Not the
same
—you wouldn’t look
twice
at her!”

“No, no … you would
not.
” Jenny agreed in horror. “My God, look at that other picture,” she said, pointing with a finger that shook. It was a reproduction of the
Life
cover of twenty-five years before … Stash and Francesca, and the laughing baby on Merlin’s back. She read the caption out loud. “No one knew, when Prince and Princess Valensky posed for
Life
that another child had been born to them, a child they hid away from the eyes of the world.”

“Jesus God!” Jenny whispered. They both started to read the story, flipping through the five pages, skimming and reading out loud.

‘In an exclusive interview with Prince George Edward Woodhill Valensky, half-brother of Princess Daisy,
People
learned of the existence of … sister … I.Q. of a four-year-old …’ My God, Candice, a
four-year-old!
”

Candice stopped Jenny firmly. “Shut up, Jenny—there’s more. Listen to this, just listen! ‘Prince Valensky violently opposes the commercialization of his ancient family name by his half-sister whose endorsement of a new line of cosmetics he termed “a vulgar and unseemly action.” ’ That son-of-a-bitch!” She continued reading in a voice that grew progressively louder. “ ’In his opinion, if Francesca Vernon had not abandoned his father and kidnapped the twins, they might have had a normal childhood, but by the time his father regained the children, it was too late to help Danielle … Prince Valensky, seven years older than
Princess Daisy, is a highly respected investment adviser. Bitter toward his sister, who has been paid one million dollars for her endorsement, he said, “She inherited ten million dollars and let it slip through her fingers because she was too foolish to take any advice. She’ll go through this money just as quickly.” ’ ”

“My God,” said Jenny, “do you think she did?”

“Wait! Here’s the worst. ‘Daisy Valensky has been called “one of a kind” by Patrick Shannon, the sometimes controversial president of Supracorp’—Jesus, Jenny, ‘o
ne of a kind’
—‘who is betting many millions that her face and name will lend prestige to the line of.… Last year Elstree’s losses were reported at over thirty million … unparalleled media blitz to promote the newest face in the beauty business including …’ That’s it, I can’t read one more word.” Candice sat down. “Get Mr. Bijur on the intercom, Jenny, and tell him I’ve got to see him immediately.”

In spite of the urgency of Candice’s order, both she and Jenny stood for another minute looking at the photograph of Daisy and Danielle. Neither woman could take her eyes off the haunting picture of the twins. They were unable to stop comparing the slight but all-important differences in their faces which made of one a glorious beauty and left the other unformed, unfinished, uninteresting, with a muted little smile, pathos in her big black eyes.

“ ‘One of a kind,’ ”
Candice murmured. “God—we’ve had it—by tomorrow this picture will be seen all over the world.”

“Do you think
People
knew about this stuff when they decided on the cover story?” Jenny asked.

“No way. They angle stories in a special way, but not as bad as this. I can tell by the way the text reads that it must have come in at the last minute—it’s hasty, reads more like a newsmagazine piece than a
People
story.”

“But then how could it have happened?” Jenny asked.

“God knows, and I don’t care. When something this bad happens, ‘how’ just doesn’t matter any more. Get me Bijur’s secretary.”

“May I make a suggestion?” Jenny asked.

“What?”

“Fix your eye make-up before you see him. You’ve been crying.”

“So what? So have you. Oh, okay, okay.”

Daisy woke late on the morning that Candice and Jenny were reading
People
, and considered her day. At lunch she was going to be interviewed by Jerry Tallmer of the
New York Post
for a feature article, at 2:30 she had another interview with Phyllis Battelle of King Features and at 5:00 a date for drinks and an interview with Lammy Johnstone of Gannett for their national wire service. Candice would be with her at all these interviews, somehow disappearing into the background as Daisy answered questions, yet listening carefully and sometimes stepping lightly into the conversation to amplify a statement or suggest a new line of discussion. Even though that skinny, swaggering, terse young publicity woman was only three years older than Daisy, she managed to convey a faintly maternal feeling; that of an accomplished and socially secure matron introducing her daughter to the ladies who run the debutante cotillion. She was able to gently point to Daisy’s qualities in a way that Daisy would never have been able to do for herself.

Nevertheless, as a veteran now of at least a dozen interviews, Daisy realized that each reporter, no matter how pleasant or charming, was looking for an edge, waiting for her to say the one thing she shouldn’t say, probing, in a seemingly random and innocent way, for the stray remark that would make news. Just the day before, one of them had actually asked her if she liked the way the new perfume smelled. My God, did he actually think she’d say no? But it was all part of doing his job, she realized—and if she had said no, it would have made a much better story.

She dressed carefully in one of her new things. That was another part of her job. Everytime she was interviewed, she was closely scrutinized; every detail of what she had on went into the reporter’s notebook. The
image
, the absolutely essential image was being created day by day, interview by interview, dress by dress, question by question. Perhaps eventually, Daisy thought, she’d get hardened to it, accustomed to the process, but she still had to remind herself of that million dollars before she could get started on the morning metamorphosis. But it went with the job, and, by God, what went with the job, she did. Daisy brightened as she realized that she could save all the new clothes she was being given and then, thirty or forty years from now, bring them out again and really enjoy
wearing them. She’d be the most originally dressed sixty-year-old in the world.

She looked at her watch. She just had time to feed Theseus, get him settled on his pillow, and rush down the street to the Café Borgia II for a quick cup of espresso before she had to start uptown for her lunch interview. It had taken her a full hour to dress, put on her make-up and do her hair. This patient triangulation of her obligations to the image had, in the past, taken only seven minutes, or less. Being a princess just took too much time, Daisy thought, as she grabbed her mail without looking at it and hurried out.

At the café on Prince Street, she found an outside table. She sat there and basked in the September sun while her sense of smell leaped in response to the odor of freshly made bread from the bakery across the street. But she wouldn’t have anything to eat now. She’d learned it was important to eat heartily at lunch interviews because the excuse of a mouthful of food gave her time to consider her words, before she had to speak. She finished her espresso and ordered another. With Kiki gone, there was very little mail. Why had she brought along this manila envelope? Now she’d have to carry it around all day. She looked at it again. It had been delivered by hand and the name of the researcher from
People
was written on the left corner. In dismay, she thought that she hadn’t planned on facing
that
until tomorrow. She supposed they meant to be nice, but an advance copy was the last thing she wanted. However, she might as well get it over with. She opened the envelope and drew out the magazine. A smile of pure delight spread over her face as she saw the cover photograph. She knew she’d been right to take off all that awful make-up. As she read the cover line, her smile stopped. “The strange, secret story?…” She turned to the inside pages in a sudden fright, the slippery paper evading her fingers. What editor could have turned the detailed, exhaustive, but resolutely cautious interviews she’d given the researcher into a “strange, secret story,” she asked herself as the chill of what she still did not know, except in some part of her brain that had always, always, always, been alert to attack, began to creep over her.

She turned another page.

The cruelty exploded inside her heart and spilled into her entire chest cavity. She screamed and shut the magazine. A waiter approached and she waved him away,
covering the copy of
People
with her handbag. A violent burst of pain, like steel knitting needles driving their points into her breasts, made her clasp her hands tightly to them in an incredulous attempt to protect herself. It couldn’t continue to hurt like this for long or she wouldn’t be able to breathe. A sharp, rippling feeling of breakage and rupture made her pull her head down to her hands as if to doubly protect her heart, yet it would not stop. She felt lacerated, attacked from all sides, by gratuitous evil, utterly exposed to the tearing and crushing of the teeth of nameless beasts.

The waiter came back, an expression of concern on his face. In another second he’d speak. Daisy got up, clutching the magazine and handbag and staggered, with the cautious, clumsy movements of an old woman, to a table
inside
in the corner of the empty café where she couldn’t be seen from the street. Panting with savage pain, streaming with the sweat of utter panic, she hunched over the table and opened the magazine and read the entire article. Then she read it twice again. There were no tears, just as there were no words in her mind. Nothing existed except the article and the need to stop the feeling that she was being cut apart, opened up, her insides torn out. She could not believe that the floor wasn’t covered with her blood. Daisy folded the magazine and hid it in her handbag. She wrapped her arms around her body and bowed her head, trying to become as small as possible.