Bloodline (11 page)

Mlle. Harriot moaned, “Oh,
chérie,
I want to fuck you.”

And all Elizabeth could think of to say was, “There’s a problem. One of us has the wrong accessories.”

And she began to laugh and cry hysterically, weeping for the beautiful candlelit vision that had died, and laughing because she was a healthy, normal girl who had just learned that she was free.

The next day Elizabeth tried the shower nozzle.

At Easter vacation, in her final year at school, when she was eighteen, Elizabeth went to the villa in Sardinia to spend ten days. She had learned to drive, and for the first time she was free to explore the island on her own. She took long drives along the beaches and visited tiny fishing villages. She swam at the villa, under the warm Mediterranean sun, and at night lay in her bed listening to the mournful sound of the singing rocks, as the wind gently blew through them. She went to a carnival in Tempio, where the entire village dressed up in national costumes. Hidden behind the anonymity of domino masks, the girls invited the boys to dance, and everyone felt free to do things they would not dare do at any other time. A boy might
think
he knew which girl he made love to that night, but the next morning he could not be certain. It was, Elizabeth thought, like an entire village playing
The Guardsman.

She drove to Punta Murra and watched the Sar-dos cook small lambs on open fires. The native islanders gave her
seada,
a goat cheese covered in a dough, with hot honey over it. She drank the delicious
selememont,
the local white wine that could
be had nowhere else in the world because it was too delicate to travel.

One of Elizabeth’s favorite haunts was the Red Lion Inn at Porto Cervo. It was a little pub in a basement, with ten tables for dining, and an old-fashioned bar.

Elizabeth dubbed that vacation the Time of the Boys. They were the sons of the rich, and they came in swarms, inviting Elizabeth to a constant round of swimming and riding parties. It was the first move in the mating rite.

“They’re all highly eligible,” Elizabeth’s father assured her.

To Elizabeth they were all clods. They drank too much, talked too much and pawed her. She was sure they wanted her not for herself, because she might be an intelligent or worthwhile human being, but because she was a Roffe, heiress to the Roffe dynasty. Elizabeth had no idea that she had grown into a beauty, for it was easier to believe the truth of the past than the reflection in her mirror.

The boys wined and dined her and tried to get her into bed. They sensed that Elizabeth was a virgin, and some aberration in the male ego deluded each boy into the conviction that if he could take away Elizabeth’s virginity, she would fall madly in love with him and be his slave forever. They refused to give up. No matter where they took Elizabeth, the evenings always ended up the same. “Let’s go to bed.” And always she politely refused them.

They did not know what to make of her. They knew she was beautiful, so it followed that she must be stupid. It never occurred to them that she was more intelligent than they. Who ever heard of a girl being both beautiful
and
intelligent?

And so Elizabeth went out with the boys to please her father, but they all bored her.

Rhys Williams came to the villa, and Elizabeth was surprised at how excited and pleased she was to see him again. He was even more attractive than she had remembered.

Rhys seemed glad to see her. “What’s happened to you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you looked in your mirror lately?”

She blushed. “No.”

He turned to Sam. “Unless the boys are all deaf, dumb and blind, I have a feeling Liz isn’t going to be with us much longer.”

Us!
Elizabeth enjoyed hearing him say that. She hung around the two men as much as she dared, serving them drinks, running errands, for them, enjoying just looking at Rhys. Sometimes Elizabeth would sit in the background, listening as they discussed business affairs, and she was fascinated. They spoke of mergers and of new factories, and products that had succeeded and others that had failed, and why. They talked about their competitors, and planned strategies and counter-strategies. To Elizabeth it was all heady stuff.

One day when Sam was up in the tower room, working, Rhys invited Elizabeth to lunch. She took him to the Red Lion and watched him shoot darts with the men at the bar. Elizabeth marveled at how much at home Rhys was. He seemed to fit in anywhere. She had heard a Spanish expression that she had never understood, but she did now as she watched Rhys.
He’s a man easy in his skin.

They sat at a small corner table with a red-andwhite
tablecloth, and had shepherd’s pie and ale, and they talked. Rhys asked her about school.

“It’s really not too bad,” Elizabeth confessed. “I’m learning how little I know.”

Rhys smiled. “Very few people get that far. You finish in June, don’t you?”

Elizabeth wondered how he had known. “Yes.”

“Do you know what you want to do after that?”

It was the question she had been asking herself. “No. Not really.”

“Interested in getting married?”

For one quick instant her heart missed a beat. Then she realized that it was a general question. “I haven’t found anyone yet” She thought of Mlle. Harriot and the cozy dinners in front of the fireplace and the snow falling, and she laughed aloud.

“Secret?” Rhys asked.

“Secret.” She wished she could share it with him, but she did not know him well enough. The truth was, Elizabeth realized, that she did not know Rhys at all. He was a charming, handsome stranger who had once taken pity on her and flown her to Paris for a birthday dinner. She knew that he was brilliant in business and that her father depended on him. But she knew nothing about his personal life, or what he was really like. Watching him, Elizabeth had the feeling that he was a many-layered man, that the emotions he showed were to conceal the emotions he felt, and Elizabeth wondered if anyone really knew him.

It was Rhys Williams who was responsible for Elizabeth’s losing her virginity.

The idea of going to bed with a man had become more and more appealing to Elizabeth. Part of it
was the strong physical urge that sometimes caught her unaware and gripped her in waves of frustration, an urgent physical ache that would not leave. But there was also a strong curiosity, the need to know what
it
was like. She could not go to bed with just anyone, of course. He had to be someone special, someone she could cherish, someone who would cherish her.

On a Saturday night Elizabeth’s father gave a gala at the villa.

“Put on your most beautiful dress,” Rhys told Elizabeth. “I want to show you off to everyone.”

Thrilled, Elizabeth had taken it for granted that she would be Rhys’s date. When Rhys arrived, he had with him a beautiful blond Italian princess. Elizabeth felt so outraged and betrayed that at midnight she left the party and went to bed with a bearded drunken Russian painter named Vassilov.

The entire, brief affair was a disaster. Elizabeth was so nervous and Vassilov was so drunk that it seemed to Elizabeth that there was no beginning, middle or end. The foreplay consisted of Vassilov pulling down his pants and flopping onto the bed. At that point Elizabeth was tempted to flee but she was determined to punish Rhys for his perfidy. She got undressed and crawled into bed. A moment later, with no warning, Vassilov was entering her. It was a strange sensation. It was not unpleasant, but neither did the earth shake. She felt Vassilov’s body give a quick shudder, and a moment later he was snoring. Elizabeth lay there filled with self-disgust. It was hard to believe that all the songs and books and poems were about
this.
She thought of Rhys, and she wanted to weep. Quietly, Elizabeth put on her clothes and went home. When the painter
telephoned her the next morning, Elizabeth had the housekeeper tell him that she was not in. The following day Elizabeth returned to school

She flew back in the company jet with her father and Rhys. The plane, which had been built to carry a hundred passengers, had been converted into a luxury ship. It had two large, beautifully docorated bedrooms in the rear, with full bathrooms, a comfortable office, a sitting room amidship, with paintings, and an elaborately equipped galley up front. Elizabeth thought of it as her father’s magic carpet.

The two men talked business most of the time. When Rhys was free, he and Elizabeth played a game of chess. She played him to a draw, and when Rhys said, “I’m impressed,” Elizabeth blushed with pleasure.

The last few months of school went by swiftly. It was time to begin thinking about her future. Elizabeth thought of Rhys’s question,
Do you know what you want to do with your life?
She was not sure yet But because of old Samuel, Elizabeth had become fascinated by the family business, and knew that she would like to become a part of it. She was not sure what she could do. Perhaps she could start by helping her father. She remembered all the tales of the wonderful hostess her mother had become, how invaluable she had been to Sam. She would try to take her mother’s place.

It would be a start.

The Swedish Ambassador’s free hand was squeezing Elizabeth’s bottom, and she tried to ignore it as they danced around the room, her lips smiling, her eyes expertly scanning the elegantly dressed guests, the orchestra, the liveried servants, the buffet heaped with a variety of exotic dishes and fine wines, and she thought to herself with satisfaction, It’s a good party.

They were in the ballroom of the Long Island estate. There were two hundred guests, all of them important to Roffe and Sons. Elizabeth became aware that the Ambassador was pressing his body closer to hers, trying to arouse her. He flicked his tongue in her ear and whispered, “You’re a beautiful dancer.”

“So are you,” Elizabeth said with a smile, and she made a sudden misstep and came down hard on his toe with the sharp heel of her shoe. He gave a cry of pain and Elizabeth exclaimed contritely, “I’m so sorry, Ambassador. Let me get you a drink.”

She left him and threaded her way toward the bar, making her way easily through the guests, her eyes moving carefully around the room, checking to see that everything was perfect.

Perfection—that was what her father demanded. Elizabeth had been the hostess for a hundred of Sam’s parties now, but she had never learned to relax. Each party was an event, an opening night, with dozens of things that could go wrong. Yet she had never known such happiness. Her girlhood dream of being close to her father, of his wanting her, needing her, had come true. She had learned to adjust to the fact that his needs were impersonal, that her value to him was based on how much she could contribute to the company. That was Sam Roffe’s only criterion for judging people. Elizabeth had been able to fill the gap that had existed since her mother’s death. She had become her father’s hostess. But because Elizabeth was a highly intelligent girl, she had become much more than that. She attended business conferences with Sam, in airplanes and in foreign hotel suites and factories and at embassies and palaces. She watched her father wield his power, deploying the billions of dollars at his command to buy and sell, tear down and build. Roffe and Sons was a vast cornucopia, and Elizabeth watched her father bestow its largesse on its friends, and withhold its bounty from its enemies. It was a fascinating world, filled with interesting people, and Sam Roffe was the master of it all.

As Elizabeth looked around the ballroom now, she saw Sam standing at the bar, chatting with Rhys, a Prime Minister and a Senator from California. Her father saw Elizabeth and waved her over. As Elizabeth moved toward him, she thought of the time, three years earlier, when it had all begun.

Elizabeth had flown home the day of her graduation. She was eighteen. Home, at the moment, had
been the apartment at Beekman Place in Manhattan. Rhys had been there with her father. She had somehow known that he would be. She carried pictures of him in the secret places of her thoughts, and whenever she was lonely or depressed or discouraged, she would take them out and warm herself with her memories. In the beginning it had seemed hopeless. A fifteen-year-old schoolgirl and a man of twenty-five. Those ten years might as well have been a hundred. But through some wonderful mathematical alchemy, at eighteen the difference in years was less important. It was as though she was growing older faster than Rhys, trying to catch up to him.

Both men rose as she walked into the library, where they were talking business. Her father said casually, “Elizabeth. Just get in?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. So school’s finished.”

“Yes.”

“That’s fine.”

And that was the extent of her welcome home. Rhys was walking toward her, smiling. He seemed genuinely pleased to see her. “You look wonderful, Liz. How was the graduation? Sam wanted to be there but he couldn’t get away.”

He was saying all the things her father should have been saying.

Elizabeth was angry with herself for being hurt. It was not that her father did not love her, she told herself, it was just that he was dedicated to a world in which she had no part. He would have taken a son into his world; a daughter was alien to him. She did not fit into the Corporate Plan.

“I’m interrupting. She moved toward the door.

“Wait a minute,” Rhys said. He turned to Sam. “Liz has come home just in time. She can help with the party Saturday night.”

Sam turned to Elizabeth, studying her objectively, as though newly assessing her. She resembled her mother. She had the same beauty, the same natural elegance. A flicker of interest came into Sam’s eyes. It had not occurred to him before that his daughter might be a potential asset to Roffe and Sons. “Do you have a formal dress?”

Elizabeth looked at him in surprise. “I—”

“It doesn’t matter. Go buy one. Do you know how to give a party?”

Elizabeth swallowed and said, “Certainly.” Wasn’t that one of the advantages of going to a Swiss finishing school? They taught you all the social graces. “Of course I know how to give a party.”

“Good. I’ve invited a group from Saudi Arabia. There’ll be about—” He turned to Rhys.

Rhys smiled at Elizabeth and said, “Forty. Give or take a few.”

“Leave everything to me,” Elizabeth said confidently.

The dinner was a complete fiasco.

Elizabeth had told the chef to prepare crab cocktails for the first course, followed by individual cassoulets, served with vintage wines. Unfortunately the cassoulet had pork in it, and the Arabs touched neither shellfish nor pork. Nor did they drink alcoholic beverages. The guests stared at the food, eating nothing. Elizabeth sat at the head of the long table, across the room from her father, frozen with embarrassment, dying inside.

It was Rhys Williams who saved the evening.

He disappeared into the study for a few moments and spoke into the telephone. Then he came back into the dining room and entertained the guests with amusing stories, while the staff began to clear the table.

In what seemed no time at all, a fleet of catering trucks drove up, and as if by magic a variety of dishes began appearing. Couscous and lamb
en brochette
and rice and platters of roast chicken and fish, followed by sweetmeats and cheese and fresh fruits. Everyone enjoyed the food except Elizabeth. She was so upset that she could not swallow a bite. Each time she looked up at Rhys, he was watching her, a conspiratorial look in his eyes. Elizabeth could not have said why, but she was mortified that Rhys should not only witness her shame but save her from it. When the evening finally ended, and the last of the guests had reluctantly departed in the early hours of the morning, Elizabeth and Sam and Rhys were in the drawing room. Rhys was pouring a brandy.

Elizabeth took a deep breath and turned to her father, “I’m sorry about the dinner. If it hadn’t been for Rhys—”

“I’m sure you’ll do better next time,” Sam said flatly.

Sam was right. From that time on, when Elizabeth gave a party, whether it was for four people or for four hundred, she researched the guests, found out their likes and dislikes, what they ate and drank, and what type of entertainment they enjoyed. She kept a catalog with file cards on each person. The guests were flattered to find that their favorite brand of wine or whiskey or cigars had been stocked
for them, and that Elizabeth was able to discuss their work knowledgeably.

Rhys attended most of the parties, and he was always with the most beautiful girl there. Elizabeth hated them all. She tried to copy them. If Rhys brought a girl who wore her hair pinned up in the back, Elizabeth did her hair the same way. She tried to dress the way Rhys’s girls dressed, to act the way they acted. But none of it seemed to make any impression on Rhys. He did not even seem to notice. Frustrated, Elizabeth decided that she might as well be herself.

On the morning of her twenty-first birthday, when Elizabeth came down to breakfast, Sam said, “Order some theater tickets for tonight. Supper afterward at ‘Twenty-one.’”

Elizabeth thought, He remembered, and she was inordinately pleased.

Then her father added, “There’ll be twelve of us. We’ll be going over the new Bolivian contracts.”

She said nothing about her birthday. She received telegrams from a few former schoolmates, but that was it. Until six o’clock that evening, when an enormous bouquet of flowers arrived for her. Elizabeth was sure it was from her father. But the card read: “What a lovely day for a lovely lady.” It was signed “Rhys.”

Her father left the house at seven o’clock that evening on his way to the theater. He noticed the flowers and said absently, “Got a beau, huh?”

Elizabeth was tempted to say, “They’re a birthday present,” but what would have been the point? If you had to remind someone you loved that it was your birthday, then it was futile.

She watched her father leave, and wondered what she would do with her evening. Twenty-one had always seemed such an important milestone. It signified growing up, having freedom, becoming a woman. Well, here was the magic day, and she felt no different from the way she had felt last year, or the year before. Why couldn’t he have remembered? Would he have remembered if she were his son?

The butler appeared to ask her about dinner. Elizabeth was not hungry. She felt lonely and deserted. She knew she was feeling sorry for herself, but it was more than this uncelebrated birthday she was regretting. It was all the lonely birthdays of the past, the pain of growing up alone, without a mother or a father or anyone to give a damn.

At ten o’clock that night she dressed in a robe, sitting in the living room in the dark, in front of the fireplace, when a voice said, “Happy birthday.”

The lights came on and Rhys Williams stood there. He walked over to her and said reprovingly, “This is no way to celebrate. How many times does a girl have a twenty-first birthday?”

“I—I thought you were supposed to be with my father tonight,” Elizabeth said, flustered.

“I was. He mentioned that you were staying home alone tonight. Get dressed. We’re going to dinner.”

Elizabeth shook her head. She refused to accept his pity. “Thank you, Rhys. I—I’m really not hungry.”

“I am, and I hate eating alone. I’m giving you five minutes to get into some clothes, or I’m taking you out like that”

They ate at a diner in Long Island, and they had hamburgers and chili and french-fried onions and
root beer, and they talked, and Elizabeth thought it was better than the dinner she had had at Maxim’s. All of Rhys’s attention was focused on her, and she could understand why he was so damned attractive to women. It was not just his looks. It was the fact that he truly liked women, that he enjoyed being with them. He made Elizabeth feel like someone special, that he wanted to be with her more than with anyone else in the world. No wonder, Elizabeth thought, everyone fell in love with him.

Rhys told her a little about his boyhood in Wales, and he made it sound wonderful and adventurous and gay. “I ran away from home,” he said, “because there was a hunger in me to see everything and do everything. I wanted to be everyone I saw.
I
wasn’t enough for me. Can you understand that?”

Oh, how well she understood it!

“I worked at the parks and the beaches and one summer I had a job taking tourists down the Rhosili in coracles, and—”

“Wait a minute,” Elizabeth interrupted. “What’s a Rhosili and what’s a—a coracle?”

“The Rhosili is a turbulent, swift-flowing river, full of dangerous rapids and currents. Coracles are ancient canoes, made of wooden lathes and waterproof animal skins, that go back to pre-Roman days. You’ve never seen Wales, have you?” She shook her head. “Ah, you would love it.” She knew she would. “There’s a waterfall at the Vale of Neath that’s one of the beautiful sights of this world. And the lovely places to see: Aber-Eiddi and Caerbwdi and Porthclais and Kilgetty and Llangwm,” and the words rolled off his tongue like the lilt of music. “It’s a wild, untamed country, full of magical surprises.”

“And yet you left Wales.”

Rhys smiled at her and said, “It was the hunger in me. I wanted to own the world.”

What he did not tell her was that the hunger was still there.

Over the next three years Elizabeth became indispensable to her father. Her job was to make his life comfortable, so that he could concentrate on the thing that was all-important to him: the Business. The details of running his life were left entirely to Elizabeth. She hired and fired servants, opened and closed the various houses as her father’s needs required, and entertained for him.

More than that, she became his eyes and ears. After a business meeting Sam would ask Elizabeth her impression of a man, or explain to her why he had acted in a particular fashion. She watched him make decisions that affected the lives of thousands of people and involved hundreds of millions of dollars. She heard heads of state plead with Sam Roffe to open a factory, or beg him not to close one down.

After one of those meetings Elizabeth said, “It’s unbelievable. It’s—it’s as though you’re running a country.”

Her father laughed and replied, “Roffe and Sons has a larger income than three quarters of the countries in the world.”

In her travels with her father Elizabeth became reacquainted with the other members of the Roffe family, her cousins and their husbands or wives.

As a young girl Elizabeth had seen them during holidays when they had come to one of her father’s
houses, or when she had gone to visit them during brief school vacations.

Simonetta and Ivo Palazzi, in Rome, had always been the most fun to be with. They were open and friendly, and Ivo had always made Elizabeth feel like a woman. He was in charge of the Italian division of Roffe and Sons, and he had done very well. People enjoyed dealing with Ivo. Elizabeth remembered what a classmate had said when she had met him. “You know what I like about your cousin? He has warmth and charmth.”

That was Ivo, warmth and charmth.

Then there was Hélène Roffe-Martel, and her husband, Charles, in Paris. Elizabeth had never really understood Hélène, or felt at ease with her. She had always been nice to Elizabeth, but there was a cool reserve that Elizabeth had never been able to break through. Charles was head of the French branch of Roffe and Sons. He was competent, though from what Elizabeth had overheard her father say, he lacked drive. He could follow orders, but he had no initiative. Sam had never replaced him, because the French branch ran very profitably. Elizabeth suspected that Hélène Roffe-Martel had a great deal to do with its success.