"God, Francesca, you use the most awful language for a child. Chloe should spank you."
The storm clouds gathered in her eyes. "What a beastly thing to say! I think you're a shit, too!"
Varian tugged on the legs of his trousers so he wouldn't crease them as he knelt down beside her. "Francesca, my cherub, you should consider yourself lucky that I'm not your daddy, because if I were, I'd lock you up in the back of a dark closet and leave you there until you mummified."
Genuine tears stung Francesca's eyes. "I hate you," she cried as she kicked him hard in the shin. Varian jumped up with a yelp.
The door of Corfu swung open. "Is it too much to request that an old man be allowed to sleep in peace!" Sir Winston Churchill's growl filled the passageway. "Could you conduct your business elsewhere, Mr. Varian? And you, missy, get to bed at once or our card game is off for tomorrow!"
Francesca scampered into Lesbos without a word of protest. If she couldn't have a daddy, at least she could have a granddaddy.
As the years passed, Chloe's romantic entanglements grew so complex that even Francesca accepted the fact that her mother would never settle on one man long enough to marry him. She forced herself to look upon her lack of a father as an advantage. She had enough adults to cope with in her life, she reasoned, and she certainly didn't need any more of them telling her what she should or shouldn't do, especially as she began to catch the attention of a bevy of adolescent boys. They stumbled over their feet whenever she was near, and their voices cracked when they tried to talk to her. She gave them soft, wicked smiles just so she could watch them blush, and she practiced all the flirtatious tricks she had seen Chloe use- the generous laughter, the graceful tilt of the head, the sidelong glances. Every one of them worked.
The Age of Aquarius had found its princess. Francesca's little-girl clothes gave way to peasant dresses with fringed paisley shawls and multicolored love beads strung on silken thread. She frizzed her hair, pierced her ears, and expertly applied makeup to enlarge her eyes until they seemed to fill her face. The top of her head had barely passed her mother's eyebrows when, much to her disappointment, she stopped growing. But unlike Chloe, who still held the remnants of a pudgy child deep inside her, Francesca never had any reason to doubt her own beauty. It simply existed, that was all-just like air and light and water. Just like Mary Quant, for goodness' sake! By the time she was seventeen, Black Jack Day's daughter had become a legend.
Evan Varian reentered her life in the disco at Annabel's. She and her date were leaving to go to the
White Tower for baklava, and they had just walked past the glass partition that separated the disco from Annabel's dining room. Even in the determinedly fashionable atmosphere of London's most popular club, Francesca's scarlet velvet trouser suit with its padded shoulders gathered more than its share of attention, especially since she had neglected to wear a blouse beneath the deep open V of the wasp-waisted jacket, and the insides of her seventeen-year-old breasts curved enticingly above the spot where the lapels joined. The effect became all the more alluring because of her short Twiggy hairstyle, which made her look rather like London's most erotic schoolboy.
"Well, if it isn't my little princess." The sonorous voice rang out in perfect pear-shaped tones designed to be heard in the far reaches of the National Theatre. "It appears she's all grown up and ready to take on the world."
Except for watching him in the Bullett spy films, she had not seen Evan Varian for years. Now, as she spun around to face him, she felt as if she were confronting his on-screen presence. He wore the same immaculately fitted Savile Row suit, the same pale blue silk shirt and handmade Italian shoes. Silver had threaded his temples since their last encounter on board the Christina, but now his hair lay conservatively tamed to his head by an expert razor cut.
Her date for the evening, a baronet home on holiday from Eton, suddenly seemed as young as milk-fed veal. "Hello, Evan," she said, giving Varian a smile that managed to be both haughty and bewitching.
He ignored the obvious impatience of the blond fashion model draped over his arm as he surveyed Francesca's scarlet velvet trouser suit. "Little Francesca. The last time I saw you, you didn't have so many clothes on. As I remember, you were wearing a nightgown."
Other girls might have blushed, but other girls didn't have Francesca's bottomless self-confidence. "Really? I've forgotten. Amusing of you to remember." And then, because she had quite made up her mind to catch the grown-up interest of this most sophisticated Evan Varian, she nodded at her escort and permitted him to lead her away.
Varian called her the next day and invited her to dine with him. "Certainly not," Chloe shrieked, jumping up from her lotus position in the center of the drawing room carpet where she dabbled at meditation twice a day, except on alternate Mondays when she had her legs waxed. "Evan is more than twenty years older than you, and he's a notorious playboy. My God, he's already had four wives! I absolutely won't have you involved with him."
Francesca sighed and stretched. "Sorry, Mummy, but it's rather a fait accompli. I'm smitten."
"Be reasonable, darling. He's old enough to be your father."
"Was he ever your lover?"
"Of course not. You know the two of us never got on."
"Then I don't see what possible objection you could have."
Chloe begged and pleaded, but Francesca paid no attention. She had grown tired of being treated like a child. She was ready for adult adventure-sexual adventure.
A few months beforef she had made a great show out of insisting that Chloe take her to the doctor for birth control pills. At first Chloe had protested, but she had quickly changed her mind when she had stumbled upon Francesca in a heated embrace with a young man who was pushing his hand under her skirt. Ever since, one of those pills appeared on Francesca's breakfast tray each morning to be swallowed with great ceremony.
Francesca had told no one that the pills had so far proven unnecessary, nor had she let anyone see how her continued virginity upset her. All of her friends spoke so glibly about their sexual experiences that she was terrified they would find" out she was lying about her own. If anyone discovered what an absolute infant she was, she was absolutely certain she would lose her standing as the most fashionable member of London's trendy younger set.
With stubborn determination, she reduced her youthful sexuality to a simple matter of social position. It was easier for her that way, since social position was something she understood, while the loneliness produced by her abnormal childhood, the aching need for some deep connection with another human being, only bewildered her.
However, despite her determination to lose her virginity, she had hit upon an unexpected stumbling block. So much of her life had been spent with adults that she didn't feel entirely comfortable with her peers, even those worshiping boys who followed her around like well-trained lapdogs. She understood that having sex would involve placing a certain amount of trust in her partner, and she couldn't imagine trusting those callow young boys. She had immediately seen an answer to her dilemma when she set eyes on Evan Varian at Annabel's. Who better than an experienced man of the world to escort her through those fragile final portals into womanhood? She saw no connection at all between her choice of Evan to be her first lover and her choice of him, years earlier, to be her father.
So, ignoring Chloe's protests, Francesca accepted Evan's invitation to dine at Mirabelle the following weekend. They sat at a table next to one of the small hothouses where the restaurant's fresh flowers were grown and dined on rack of lamb stuffed with veal and truffles. He touched her fingers, angled his head attentively whenever she spoke, and told her she was the most beautiful woman in the room. Francesca privately considered that rather a foregone conclusion, but the compliment pleased her nonetheless, especially since the exotic Bianca Jagger was nibbling at a lobster souffle in front of one of the tapestried walls on the opposite side of the room. After dinner, they went to Leith's for a tangy lemon mousse and glace strawberries, and then on to Varian's Kensington home where he played a Chopin mazurka for her on the grand piano in the sitting room and gave her a memorable kiss. Yet when he tried to lead her upstairs to his bedroom, she balked.