As they stopped at the traffic lights, Rupert turned and smiled at her. ‘You shouldn’t have made me wait so long to see you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in such a state of anticipation I’ve been unbearable to everyone.’
Even in the thick of a first-night audience with the diamonds glittering like hoar frost, everyone turned to stare at them. Rupert seemed to know lots of people, but he merely nodded and didn’t stop to chat.
The curtain hadn’t been up for five minutes before Bella decided that Wagner wasn’t really her. All those vast men and women screaming their guts out. She glanced at her programme and was appalled to see she was expected to sit through three acts of it.
Somehow she managed to endure the first act. It seemed so strange to be on the other side of the curtain.
‘Is it all right? Are you enjoying yourself?’ asked Rupert as he fought his way back to her side with drinks during the interval.
‘Oh, it’s great,’ she lied enthusiastically.
Rupert looked dubious. ‘Well, I don’t know; they make a frightful row. Say as soon as you’re bored and we’ll leave.’
Two earnest-looking women with plaits round their heads turned to look at him in horror.
During the second act Rupert became increasingly restless, but cheered up when Brünhilde made her appearance.
‘She looks just like my mother,’ he whispered loudly to Bella, who gave a snort of laughter.
A fat woman in front turned round and shushed angrily. Rupert’s shoulders shook. Bella gazed firmly in front of her but found she couldn’t stop giggling.
‘I say,’ said Rupert a minute later, ‘shall we go?’
‘We can’t,’ said Bella horrified. ‘Not in the middle of an act.’
‘Will you be quiet,’ hissed the fat woman.
‘My wife feels faint,’ Rupert said to her and, grabbing Bella by the hand, he dragged her along the row, tripping over everyone’s feet.
Outside the theatre they looked at each other and burst into peals of laughter.
‘Wasn’t it awful?’ he said. ‘I wanted to impress you, taking you to a first night, but this really was the end.’
As they picked their way through Covent Garden’s debris of cabbage leaves and rotten apples he took her hand. ‘We’ll have a nice dinner to make up for it.’
They dined in Soho; very expensively, Bella decided. Crimson velvet menus with gold tassels, and rose petals floating in the finger bowls. They sat side by side on a red velvet banquette, rather like being in the back row of the cinema.
‘What do you want to eat?’ Rupert asked her.
‘Anything except herrings.’
He laughed. ‘Why not herrings?’
Bella shivered. ‘My mother forced me to eat them when I was young. I was locked in the dining-room for twelve hours once.’
Rupert looked appalled. ‘But I’ve never had to eat anything I didn’t like.’
‘This is a nice place,’ said Bella.
‘It’s a haunt of my father’s,’ said Rupert. ‘He says it’s the one place in London one never sees anyone one knows.’
‘Rupert, darling!’ A beautiful woman with wide-set violet eyes was standing by their table.
‘Lavinia.’ He stood up and kissed her. ‘How was Jamaica?’
‘Lovely. I can’t think why I came home.’
‘Have you met Bella Parkinson?’
‘No, I haven’t. How do you do?’ She looked Bella over carefully. ‘I’ve read all about your play, of course.
Macbeth
isn’t it? I must come and see you.’
She turned back to Rupert and said, a little too casually, ‘How’s Lazlo?’
‘In Buenos Aires.’
She looked relieved. ‘That’s why he hasn’t rung. When’s he coming back?’
‘Next week sometime.’
‘Well, give him my love and tell him to ring me before my suntan fades.’ She drifted off to join her escort at the other end of the room.
‘She’s beautiful,’ sighed Bella, admiring her beautifully shod feet. ‘Who is she?’
‘Some bird of Lazlo’s.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘My cousin.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Evidently Lazlo complained her bed was too small, so she went out to Harrods and bought one three times the size.’
‘She’s
mad
about him. Is he attractive?’
‘Women think so. I know him too well. We work together.’
‘What at?’
‘Banking. We’ve got a bank in the City. But most of our business is tied up in South America. My father’s chairman but Lazlo really runs it.’
‘You look a bit Latin yourself.’
‘My father’s South American. My mother, alas, is pure English. She’s coming home next Friday, worse luck. I’m hoping someone will hijack her plane. She keeps sending me postcards telling me not to forget to water the guides.’
Bella giggled. ‘Who?’
‘One of her interests along with the Blind, the Deaf, the Undernourished, and any other charity she can poke her nose into. Alas, there’s no charity in her heart. Her life is spent sitting on committees and my father.’ He looked at Bella. ‘What were your parents like?’
Bella’s palms went damp. ‘My father was a librarian,’ she said quickly. ‘But he died when I was a baby, so my mother had to take a job as a schoolmistress to support me. We were always terribly poor.’
Poor but respectable. She’d told the same lies so often that she’d almost come to believe them.
Their first course arrived – Mediterranean prawns and a great bowl of yellow mayonnaise. Bella gave a little moan of greed.
Later, when she was halfway through her duck, she suddenly looked up and saw that Rupert was staring at her, his food untouched.
‘Bella.’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you have dinner with me tomorrow?’
‘Of course,’ she said. She didn’t even stop to consider it. The one thing that could have spoilt her evening was the sense of being a failure, that he’d get to know her a little and then decide she was a bore.
Later, they went back to her flat for a drink and Bella drew back the curtains in the drawing-room to show Rupert the view. Half London glittered in front of them.
‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’ said Bella ecstatically.
‘Not a patch on you, and you’ve got the most beautiful hair in the world.’ He picked up a strand. ‘Just like Rapunzel.’
‘Who’s she?’
‘The princess in the tower who let down her hair and the handsome prince climbed up and rescued her. You must have read it as a child?’
Bella looked bleak. ‘My mother didn’t approve of fairy stories.’
Rupert frowned and pulled her into his arms. ‘The more I hear of your childhood the less I like it,’ he said.
Then he kissed her very hard. After a minute he pulled her down on to the sofa and began fiddling with her zip.
‘No,’ she said, stiffening.
‘Why not?’ he muttered into her hair. ‘Christ, Bella, I want you so much.’
Bella took a deep breath and burst into tears. One of her greatest acting accomplishments was that she could cry at will. She had only to think of the poor unclaimed dogs at Battersea Dogs’ Home, waiting and waiting for a master that never came, and tears would course down her cheeks.
‘Oh, please don’t,’ she sobbed.
Rupert was on his knees beside her. ‘Darling. Oh, I’m sorry. Please don’t cry. I shouldn’t have rushed things. I’ve behaved like a pig.’
She looked at him through her tears. ‘You won’t stop seeing me because I won’t?’
He shook his head wryly. ‘I couldn’t if I tried now. I’m in too deep.’
After he’d gone she looked at herself in the mirror. ‘You’re a rotten bitch, Bella. God, you’re in a muddle,’ she said slowly.
She wanted men to want her, but once they tried to get involved she ran away, frightened they’d find out the truth.
Chapter Three
Rupert arrived next evening, his arms loaded with presents.
‘I’ve decided you missed out on a proper childhood, so we’re going to start now,’ he said.
In the parcels were a huge teddy bear, a Dutch doll, a kaleidoscope, a solitaire board filled with coloured marbles, a complete set of Beatrix Potter and
The Wind in the Willows.
Bella felt a great lump in her throat. ‘Oh, darling, you shouldn’t spend all your money on me.’
Rupert took her face in his hands. ‘Sweetheart, listen. There’s one thing you must get into your head; there are a hell of a lot of disadvantages about being a Henriques, but being short of bread isn’t one of them.’ He held out his hands. ‘We’ve got buckets of it. My father’s worth a fortune and, since Lazlo put a bomb under the bank, we’re all worth a lot more. I’ve got a private income of well over £25,000.’
Bella’s jaw dropped.
‘That’s what’s so lovely about you, Bella. Anyone else would know about the Henriques millions. I’ve never worried about money in my life, and when I was twenty-one last month I inherited . . .’
‘Twenty-one?’ said Bella quickly. ‘You said you were twenty-seven.’
He looked shamefaced. ‘I did, didn’t I? I knew you wouldn’t be interested in me if you knew how young I was.’
‘But I’m twenty-three,’ wailed Bella. ‘I’m cradle-snatching.’
‘No you’re not,’ he snuggled against her. ‘Anyway, I’m crazy about older women.’
From then on they were inseparable, seeing each other every night, touring the smart restaurants and getting themselves talked about.
As spring came, turning the parks gold and purple with crocuses, Bella found herself growing more and more fond of him. He was very easy to like, with his languid grace, sullen pent-up beauty, and his appalling flashes of malice that were never directed at her.
But he could be moody, this little boy who had always had everything he wanted in life. His thin face would darken and she could feel his longing for her like a volcano below the surface.
The eternal late nights were taking their toll on his health too. He had lost pounds and there were huge violet shadows beneath his eyes.
One May evening they were sitting on the sofa in her flat, when he said, ‘Don’t you mind that I never take you to parties and things?’
She shook her head. ‘The only parties I like are for two people.’
Rupert turned her hand over and stared at the palm for a minute, then said, ‘Why don’t we get married?’
Panic swept over Bella. ‘No!’ she said nervously. ‘At least, not yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘We come from different backgrounds. I’ve always been a have-not, you’ve always been a have. Your family would loathe me. I haven’t any background.’ She gave a slightly shaky laugh. ‘When I talk about the past, I mean yesterday.’
‘Rubbish,’ Rupert said angrily. ‘Don’t be such a snob. I love you and that’s all that matters.’
‘I love you too.’ Bella pleated the folds of her skirt.
‘You’re making things impossible for me,’ said Rupert sulkily. ‘You won’t marry me; you won’t sleep with me. I’m going out of my mind.’
He got up and strode up and down the room. He looked so ruffled and pink in the face, Bella suddenly had an hysterical desire to laugh.
‘There’s someone else,’ he said, suddenly stopping in front of her.
‘How could there be? I’ve seen no-one but you for the last six months.’
‘And before that?’
‘Casual affairs.’
He caught her wrist so hard that she winced with pain.
‘How casual? I don’t believe you! You’re as passionate as hell beneath the surface, Bella. One only has to see you playing Desdemona to realize that.’
Bella had gone white. She snatched her hand away from Rupert and went over to the window.
‘All right. There was someone, when I was eighteen. He seduced me and I loved him, and he walked out on me the night my mother died.’
Rupert was unimpressed. ‘But darling, one loves the most ghastly people when one’s eighteen. You wouldn’t be able to see what you saw in him if you met him now.’
Finally, Bella agreed to go and meet his family on her birthday, the following Thursday.
She lay in bed dreaming about Rupert the Monday morning before her birthday. I can’t have been very easy these past weeks, she thought ruefully. Living on a permanent knife-edge wondering whether or not to tell him the truth about my past.
‘I love you, and that’s all that matters,’ he’d said. Perhaps she would tell him, but could she bear to see the incredulity and contempt in his face? And if she didn’t tell him, would he ever find out? No-one else had. She realized that, for the first time in years, she was beginning to feel secure and happy.
She idly wondered what to wear when she met his parents. She hoped she wouldn’t be too intimidated by them. She ought to buy a new dress, but too many bills were flooding in.