Princess Daisy (28 page)

“I’m wise beyond my years. Come on—let’s give the old people a shock they won’t forget.”

During the week of the Kavanaughs’ visit, Ram, for the first time in his life, found his generalized bitterness against the world turning to actual fantasies of murder—Kiki’s murder.

Her mother could have told him that it couldn’t have been done without a silver bullet. Kiki, a brisk, practiced and roguish prankster, stood for having fun in a way which, in spite of her intelligence, had caused four of the
best girls’ boarding schools in the United States to fail to “invite” her to reregister for the following year. She had survived the inestimable damage of immunity enjoyed from earliest childhood, the damage which might have been caused by knowing, almost from the playpen, that she was a member of the only local aristocracy worth belonging to in Grosse Pointe, that of the motor industry; as well as the damage which could have occurred as a result of being the longed-for daughter in a family of three older brothers—she had survived because of a stern, inborn, incorruptible honesty. Kiki told the truth, to herself and to others, a trait so rare as to make her seem eccentric. Her honesty went hand in hand with her impulsiveness, and she and Daisy, separated in age by little more than a year and a half, fell into instant complicity. They were a match in their love of a dare, their fancy for the improbable project. If Kiki was far more worldly and sophisticated, Daisy was the braver and more stalwart of the two; where Kiki was spoiled—or as she liked to put it, “divinely rotten”—Daisy was merely stubborn. The greatest difference in the two girls was in their emotional attachments. Kiki admitted to many, none of which troubled her—she took her father, her brothers and especially her mother for granted and found them, all of them,
amusing
—an attitude which puzzled and entranced Daisy.

However, during the week Kiki and her mother spent at
La Marée
, the two girls spent little time in serious discussions. Like fillies let loose in a pasture, they were busy exploiting their new camaraderie. Daisy, after a long night of uninterrupted sleep, suddenly felt full of her old laughing vitality, as if she’d had her youth returned to her, an unquestioning, untormented youth which led the two of them on expeditions into Honfleur to banter with the fishermen, to fill themselves with the Coca-Colas Anabel wouldn’t have in the house, to buy coarse garlic sausages that they ate on the street, taking huge bites and talking with their mouths full. They hired a taxi and went to Deauville at teatime and paraded slowly through the lobbies of the great hotels, like strolling players in their rich-hippie rig-outs, enjoying the outraged looks of the middle-aged women in their safe, laughably expensive Chanel suits. They kept a score of how many women they could stare down in any given lobby on any given day. They exchanged clothes avidly, finding that Daisy’s shorts
and shirts would fit Kiki if she hitched them up with a belt and folded over the waist bands. Dressed alike, they ran up and down the beach at Trouville treating placid family groups to rude shouts. From a rented cabana they swam in the cold, northern waters, often arriving back late for meals at
La Marée
, with barely an excuse except to Anabel who didn’t need one, since she was so delighted with the success of her hopes for a friend for Daisy.

Kiki had only one complaint. “That brother of yours must simply loathe me,” she said to Daisy. “I’ve been flirting with him like crazy. I’ve invited him to come with us and I’ve been getting absolutely nowhere with him—and that, I promise you, is something that doesn’t happen to me a whole lot. If at all! Does he have something against Americans? Or is it my green hair? Is he queer? I just don’t get it.”

“Oh, Ram’s hopeless—forget him, it’s that Etonian superiority of his. He doesn’t mean to be rude … it’s just his way,” Daisy answered evasively. Couldn’t Kiki see how jealous he was, she wondered? Of course not—how could Kiki imagine that she, Daisy, was clutching at her companionship in an effort never to be alone with Ram. She watched him at the dinner table staring at her, his eyelids hooded like those of a sculpture of a knight, killed long ago on a Crusade. Just the thin slivers of pupils peered out from his closed face, but she could feel Ram pulling at her across the table.

Several times he’d trapped her alone on the staircase, and had been about to fall on her with kisses but the sound of Kiki, faithfully following her, had forced him to let go. Ram was both malignant and reckless in his powerlessness but Daisy managed to never be far from Kiki, admitting to herself that this shield couldn’t last for long, but using it to the full while it did. She needed this time apart from Ram, she needed it so much that she was willing to risk the punishment she knew she’d have to face when it was over. Every night, for long after Kiki had fallen asleep, Daisy lay awake thinking, trying to put her emotions in some sort of order, but not succeeding. She sorted over and over the facts of her long love for Ram, her need for Ram, and her conviction, which grew every day, that what Ram did to her was utterly bad, utterly wrong, no matter what he thought. She once toyed with the idea of consulting Kiki, but the mere realization of the words she’d have to use
convinced her that it was impossible. The burden was one she had to bear alone, in shame. Dreadful, inescapable shame, shame unending.

Finally the day came when the Kavanaughs had to leave for the Côte d’Azur, where they were to meet Kiki’s father, who was flying there from Detroit, via Paris. They planned to break the trip at Limoges and drive the distance in two long days on the roads. In a few weeks Kiki was going to enter the freshman class at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Although she hadn’t officially graduated from any of her various schools, her college boards had been good enough for Santa Cruz and she had been welcomed by that most liberal and free-spirited of universities. Her parents had carefully coordinated this summer’s trip so that they could spend time with their daughter before, as Eleanor Kavanaugh almost tearfully put it, “we lose her to higher education.” There was no question of her disappointing her father and staying on at
La Marée
as Daisy and Anabel had asked her to do.

“Daisy, I promise you that, at Christmas, you can go visit Kiki in the United States,” Anabel told the miserable girls.

“Christmas is a million years away. Why can’t Daisy come to Santa Cruz, too?” Kiki asked rebelliously.

“She has another year at Lady Alden’s before she even takes her university examinations,” Anabel said, patiently.

“Oh, balls, balls and bugger! Excuse me, Anabel. I feel like a star-crossed lover or something,” said Kiki.

“You don’t quite sound like one,” Anabel laughed kindly. She had taken a great liking to this unlikely creature, such a strange daughter for her old friend Eleanor, who had been, before her great automotive marriage, a conservative and well-bred American miss.

That night, when Ram rapped on her door, Daisy opened it immediately. The departure of Kiki had made her realize that, in the course of their tomboy week, she had made a decision about her future she wasn’t conscious of having reached. But now she felt a need, as sharp as thirst after a long day on an empty boat, to return to her lost girlhood, to become again as chaste as she had been on the
Quatorze Juillet
. She was calm, determined and possessed by the certainty that everything must be sacrificed to that end. Her confusions had fallen away. She could do without Ram. His protection was infinitely worse than being alone
in the world. All the corners of her mind seemed clear and in focus for the first time since her father had died.

Ram came in and locked the door behind him. Hurriedly, he tried to take Daisy in his arms but she retreated to the window seat. She hadn’t changed from the yellow cotton dress she wore at dinner and the lights in her room were all on.

“Sit down, Ram. I have something to say.”

“It can wait.”

“No. Not another second. Ram, what we’ve been doing is over—finished. I’m your sister. You’re my brother. I won’t do it ever again because it’s wrong and I don’t like it.”

“It’s that bitch, Kiki—you told her, didn’t you?” he said in a voice of white revenge.

“Not a word. No one knows and no one will ever know, I promise you. But it’s over.”

“Daisy, you sound like some little bourgeoise—‘it’s over’—how can it ever be over? We love each other. You
belong
to me, little idiot, and you know it.”

“I belong to no one but myself. You can do whatever you like, you can sell everything Father ever loved, you can live any way you choose to live, but I intend to stay with Anabel in Eaton Square—I’m sure she’ll have me—and that’s the end of it. I don’t need you anymore!”

Ram came closer and put one large hand around the top of her arm, just below the shoulder, hurting her with his fingers. She sat as silent as a marble girl. There was enough light for him to look right into the velvet centers of her eyes and what he saw there, utter, indomitable conviction, clear and hard, maddened him.

“Ram, take your hand off my arm,” she ordered him.

Her words, still delivered with the calm and composure she was hanging on to desperately, only acted as goads. He fastened both his strong, bony hands on her arms and jerked her sharply to her feet, as if she were a mere beast who had to be taught a lesson in discipline. Still she stood fearlessly in his grip, looking him straight in the eye. With relentless force he pulled Daisy close to him and kissed her lips. Her mouth didn’t move under his. She scarcely breathed. He appropriated her mouth, consuming it with calculated skill, and held back his anger. He gave her the long, delicious, unthreatening kisses she had craved only a week ago. But she remained passive and detached, her lips closed and cool under his skillful mouth. He stroked her
hair with a hard, possessive, demanding hand and whispered in her ear, “Daisy, Daisy, if you don’t want more than this I won’t do anything else … just kissing and being close—I promise … I swear.” Yet, as he clutched her to him and battered her cheeks with scorching kisses, she felt his penis rise and press dangerously against her belly. With a violent summoning of her energy Daisy flung herself away from him.

“No good, Ram. I don’t trust you. I
don’t want you!
Nothing of you—no kisses, no hugs, no more lying words. Just get out of my room.” Her voice was low, because of the others in the house, but tense with a wounding distaste.

She had backed away until she reached the far wall of her room and now he came at her, his features blunted and swollen with lust, his eyes dulled by the intensity of his need to possess her. Ram was out of control. He pressed Daisy against the wall with all of his weight, lifted her skirt with a brutal hand and ground the hard butt of his penis against her underpants. With his other hand he snatched at her breasts in a frenzy, viciously bruising the young nipples.

“You wouldn’t
dare
if Father were alive, you filthy coward!” Daisy gasped.

Ram hit her on the face with his open hand. She felt her teeth cut into the inside of her cheek. She felt the blood begin to flow onto her tongue. He hit her again and then again, and while she was trying, in a panic, to get the breath to scream, he put a hand over her mouth and dragged her to the bed. With every bit of force she possessed, Daisy wasn’t able to pull his hand away from her mouth during the brief, hideous minutes which followed. As she swallowed her own blood to keep from choking, Daisy felt him rip off her underpants. He had to hit her twice again before he could wrench her legs apart with his knees and then there was the searing, rasping eternity of a nightmare as he stabbed his penis into her, again and again, with the inhumanity of a madman, dry and closed as she was. Then he was finished, and gone. Daisy lay inert, blood seeping from her mouth, so extinguished, so obliterated, that it was many minutes before the tears she longed for finally came. After the tears, painfully, resolutely, Daisy got off the bed and went to wake up Anabel.

Anabel gave Daisy warm water and soft towels and stopped the bleeding and listened, holding her close, as Daisy told her the entire story, again and again, until she had finally calmed down enough to fall asleep on Anabel’s bed. Only then did Anabel give way to the sobs which were more piteous, more tormented and far more furious than those Daisy had shed. She had failed Stash, she had failed Daisy. Ram’s crime had to remain secret, depriving her of the revenge she would have taken. She would never speak to him again—he was dead to her forever—but there was no way to bring him to justice. What was done was done—she cursed herself, her blindness, her assumptions, her trust.

As soon as daylight appeared, Anabel telephoned to the hotel in Limoges where the Kavanaughs were spending the night on their trip south.

“Eleanor, it’s Anabel. Don’t ask me any questions but do you think that Daisy could possibly get into Santa Cruz?”

“This year? Isn’t she too young?” Eleanor Kavanaugh answered with her habitual direct approach to the fundamentals.

“Age isn’t the question now—it’s whether she could pass the exams. It’s
very
important, Eleanor, or I wouldn’t let her go so soon.”

“I’m sure she could pass the college boards, Anabel. Her education is already beyond an American girl’s of seventeen, thanks to our atrocious high-school system. Look, I’ll find out if there’s still room and where she can take the exam—all right?”

“Could you do it tomorrow—today, I mean. Don’t wait till you get home,” Anabel pleaded.

“Count on me.” Eleanor had never been a person who asked unnecessary questions. “Whenever that admissions office is open in California I’ll telephone them—and then I’ll call you, and you can send them Daisy’s records.”

“Bless you, Eleanor.”

“Anabel, we’re old friends, remember? I haven’t forgotten and don’t worry. Daisy’ll get into Santa Cruz, I guarantee it. After all, I made them take Kiki, didn’t I? Just realize, it’s not exactly Harvard.”

But it is six thousand miles away from Ram, thought Anabel, as she hung up the phone.