you…”
Unable to speak, and unable to put down the telephone, hypnotized by Paul’s disgusting, detailed story of lust and treachery, Lili listened with tears falling down her face until Simon’s wet forearm reached over her shoulder and snatched the telephone from her. Without saying a word, he, too, listened. Then he shouted, “Shut up, Paul, you’re drunk … because I can tell … you’ve wrecked everything, you stupid idiot.” Simon slammed the phone down and stared defiantly at Lili. “Paul doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Lili knew that Simon was lying.
* * *
The massed narcissi and pink rosebuds of La Grenouille defied the November mist outside; the cheery buzz of the lunchers—mostly elegant women, was a counterpoint to the white strained face of Lili, as she leaned across the restaurant table to Pagan and said, “I never meant to tell you about Simon, but I’m so miserable that I haven’t been able to think about anything else for the last few days. I didn’t want to tell Judy because … it would just make our situation more complicated, when I want it to be simplified.”
“Lili, your reactions are understandable,” Pagan soothed her. “That would have been a devastating experience for anyone. It was a rotten way to learn the news, and Simon did a rotten thing in walking out on you.”
“I suppose he was forced to choose. I suppose he was being honest with himself at last. We didn’t have a row, you know. We both just sat on the bed crying. But after the things that Kroll had told me, I couldn’t bear for Simon to touch me. And as well as his homosexuality, there’s his deception; the thought that I would have been used as camouflage; that we would have had children—just to make Simon look normal.…”
“Be fair, Lili, he may really want children.”
“I can’t be fair. I feel so … humiliated.”
There was a pause, then Pagan leaned across and pressed Lili’s hand. “There is life after humiliation, Lili, I promise you. As you get older, you’ll find out. You have to learn to overcome humiliation, to live through it. And although you never want anyone to know about it, it’s always much easier for you if you tell somebody, because everybody has known the bitterness of humiliation at some time; everyone’s experienced it, and that’s why any sensitive person sympathizes with someone who’s been humiliated.”
“I certainly know about humiliation, but I don’t believe that any of you four rich, successful women really know the meaning of the word.”
After another pause, Pagan said, “Yes, I do.” Even after all these years, Pagan still felt a twinge of jealousy as she remembered the nineteen-year-old Prince Abdullah and the happy intimacy they had shared, until he had contracted apolitical marriage at the command of his grandfather, then assumed the role of Sydon’s ruler and embarked on his philandering career as the Playboy Prince of the Western World.
When his father died, Abdullah’s time was fully taken up with the political problems of his country, and the gynecological problems of his wife, who had a series of miscarriages, a stillborn child and a son who died two weeks after birth. King Abdullah, as a Moslem, could have four wives. Four childless years later, he was on the point of taking a second wife to provide him with heirs, when his son Mustapha was born and, from the moment his father held the tiny body in his arms, Mustapha was the only person in the world that he loved.
In 1972, Abdullah, piloting his own helicopter, was flying his wife and ten-year-old Mustapha to their hunting lodge in the eastern, mountains of Sydon. Because of faulty servicing, the engine failed, the helicopter had crashed, and the 150-pound propeller blade roughly slashed the Queen’s head from her body; then the helicopter had exploded, throwing Abdullah through the air and across the desert sand, where, severely injured but not unconscious, he watched the
Unable to speak, and unable to put down the telephone, hypnotized by Paul’s disgusting, detailed story of lust and treachery, Lili listened with tears falling down her face until Simon’s wet forearm reached over her shoulder and snatched the telephone from her. Without saying a word, he, too, listened. Then he shouted, “Shut up, Paul, you’re drunk … because I can tell … you’ve wrecked everything, you stupid idiot.” Simon slammed the phone down and stared defiantly at Lili. “Paul doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Lili knew that Simon was lying.
* * *
The massed narcissi and pink rosebuds of La Grenouille defied the November mist outside; the cheery buzz of the lunchers—mostly elegant women, was a counterpoint to the white strained face of Lili, as she leaned across the restaurant table to Pagan and said, “I never meant to tell you about Simon, but I’m so miserable that I haven’t been able to think about anything else for the last few days. I didn’t want to tell Judy because … it would just make our situation more complicated, when I want it to be simplified.”
“Lili, your reactions are understandable,” Pagan soothed her. “That would have been a devastating experience for anyone. It was a rotten way to learn the news, and Simon did a rotten thing in walking out on you.”
“I suppose he was forced to choose. I suppose he was being honest with himself at last. We didn’t have a row, you know. We both just sat on the bed crying. But after the things that Kroll had told me, I couldn’t bear for Simon to touch me. And as well as his homosexuality, there’s his deception; the thought that I would have been used as camouflage; that we would have had children—just to make Simon look normal.…”
“Be fair, Lili, he may really want children.”
“I can’t be fair. I feel so … humiliated.”
There was a pause, then Pagan leaned across and pressed Lili’s hand. “There is life after humiliation, Lili, I promise you. As you get older, you’ll find out. You have to learn to overcome humiliation, to live through it. And although you never want anyone to know about it, it’s always much easier for you if you tell somebody, because everybody has known the bitterness of humiliation at some time; everyone’s experienced it, and that’s why any sensitive person sympathizes with someone who’s been humiliated.”
“I certainly know about humiliation, but I don’t believe that any of you four rich, successful women really know the meaning of the word.”
After another pause, Pagan said, “Yes, I do.” Even after all these years, Pagan still felt a twinge of jealousy as she remembered the nineteen-year-old Prince Abdullah and the happy intimacy they had shared, until he had contracted apolitical marriage at the command of his grandfather, then assumed the role of Sydon’s ruler and embarked on his philandering career as the Playboy Prince of the Western World.
When his father died, Abdullah’s time was fully taken up with the political problems of his country, and the gynecological problems of his wife, who had a series of miscarriages, a stillborn child and a son who died two weeks after birth. King Abdullah, as a Moslem, could have four wives. Four childless years later, he was on the point of taking a second wife to provide him with heirs, when his son Mustapha was born and, from the moment his father held the tiny body in his arms, Mustapha was the only person in the world that he loved.
In 1972, Abdullah, piloting his own helicopter, was flying his wife and ten-year-old Mustapha to their hunting lodge in the eastern, mountains of Sydon. Because of faulty servicing, the engine failed, the helicopter had crashed, and the 150-pound propeller blade roughly slashed the Queen’s head from her body; then the helicopter had exploded, throwing Abdullah through the air and across the desert sand, where, severely injured but not unconscious, he watched the
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