Free Lace by Shirley Conran

deliberately
seduced
by Paul and photographed in . . . er . . .
compromising positions. The barman at the Imperial told me that last year the father of one of the Brazilian girls had a few too many and started cursing Chardin. He said he’d flown over only
because the headmaster was blackmailing him, and he couldn’t go to the police because his daughter was involved and if the scandal leaked out, his wife would never forgive him. . . . He had
to protect the family name and his daughter’s reputation or she’d never make a good marriage, and so forth. . . . Then he said that he was never going to forgive his daughter for
putting him in such a position, because he couldn’t risk calling Chardin’s bluff. There were photographs of his daughter with Paul.”
    Nick smiled. “They must have been pretty unusual pictures. He told the barman that he paid thirty-six thousand Swiss francs for them. Cash.”
    For Pagan, Maxine and Kate, life at l’Hirondelle passed in a charming haze of sentimental naivety. Although disguised in the bodies of women, the pupils were still
children. Exuding puppylike exuberance and energy, they giggled and tittered, scampered and shrieked, and were, on the whole, rather silly. Lessons bored them, love fascinated them, passion was
what they longed to study and their only ambition was to fall in love. There was a heady air of anticipation as they prepared to be—
women!
Hours were passed with magazine instructions
and diagrams in one hand, costly tubes of makeup in the other, as girls decided whether their faces were oval, round or square. Much time was spent discussing, trying on and swapping clothes. All
the girls yanked their waists in to minimal with wide elastic belts, they wore low ballet dancer’s slippers, huge full skirts and pale pink or blue sweaters with a small strand of small
pearls. The bras of the American girls divided their breasts into circular stitched cups that thrust skyward like twin ice cream cones. On their second Saturday, every new, non-American pupil
rushed out and bought a French lace bra. After that, the girls endlessly compared their new bouncing breasts, measured them and worried about them. “One of mine’s larger than the other.
. . .” “Why are mine lower than yours . . . ?” “Serena’s got
hairs
on her
nipples. . . .
” “You can get more cleavage in the middle if you
stuff socks down the side. . . .” “I wish I had more. . . .” “I wish I had less.”
    Maxine tried hard to avoid mammary emphasis. She had large, rather low breasts, and she hadn’t yet become accustomed to them. They still embarrassed her, so she pushed as much of them as
possible under her armpits and gradually acquired a round-shouldered stoop. Nothing that the other girls said could convince Maxine that her splendid protuberances were an asset. She would turn
scarlet as soon as she saw a group of workmen in the distance, knowing that when she drew level with them, the men’s mesmerised eyes would follow her breasts as she passed. To comfort Maxine,
her mother had told her that her
embonpoint
would disappear when she breast-fed her first baby, but the thought of carrying those footballs around for years until they were battened on by a
baby that hadn’t yet been conceived did nothing to console Maxine, who, when not wearing her expensive Dior clothes, hid under enormous, shapeless sweaters.
    Maxine was wearing one of these short woolen shrouds as, one evening, she taught Kate to dance
un slow.
Humming “Slow Boat to China,” she grasped Kate as they solemnly
shuffled around the narrow space, between the two beds. “It’s better that there’s no space, because that’s how it feels in a nightclub,” explained Maxine, who had
never been to one. None of the three girls had ever had a date with a boy, wouldn’t know what to talk about if they did, desperately envied all the girls with older brothers and worried
endlessly about where you put your nose