‘You’re no good for me, Steve. I want to marry someone nice and stable.’
‘And I’m just nice,’ sighed Steve. ‘One has to specialize so young these days.’
He sat back and let one of his knees rub against hers. She jumped as though she’d touched a live wire.
‘My, but you’re edgy,’ he said.
She laughed nervously.
‘When did you develop that laugh?’
‘What laugh?’
He imitated it, and Bella laughed again out of nervousness.
‘Yeah, like that.’
‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ she stormed. ‘You always enjoyed sending me up.’
‘Your voice has changed too,’ he said. ‘Stage school certainly ironed out all the Yorkshire accent.’
As she leapt to her feet, he grabbed her.
‘Let go of my hand,’ she choked.
‘Come on honey, don’t be mad at me.’
‘Let me go,’ her voice rose.
‘Keep your voice down. Everyone’s looking at us. Oh, come on!’ He pulled her down beside him.
‘Don’t you understand! I’ve come thousands of miles to get you back. I’m the one who knows all about you, darling. I bet you haven’t told Baby Henriques about life in the slums and your jailbird father, have you?’
‘Shut up!’ spat Bella, turning white.
‘And that’s only the beginning, as you well know. Now finish up your drink like a good girl and I’ll drop you off wherever you want to go. But from tomorrow the heat’s on. I’m not going to let the Henriques get their hands on you. You don’t want to get mixed up with them, darling; you’re batting out of your league.’
As the taxi drove towards Chichester Terrace, Bella frantically combed her hair and re-did her face.
‘Stop fussing,’ said Steve.
‘But I’m so unsuitably dressed,’ wailed Bella. ‘I had this lovely little black dress.’
‘You’re an actress. The Henriques would be terribly disappointed if you turned up looking straight. Just tell them Harry Backhaus kept you for hours, and only just let you go.’
They were driving along the Old Brompton Road now, the cherry trees dazzling white against the darkening sky.
‘It’s spring,’ said Steve, taking her in his arms. ‘Can’t you feel the sap rising?’
For a moment she kissed him back, aware only of the appalling rightness of being in his arms.
‘Don’t go,’ he whispered.
‘No, Steve. For God’s sake!’ She pushed him violently away and sat back trembling, unable to speak until the taxi swung into Chichester Terrace.
He wrote her telephone number down on a cigarette packet.
‘Don’t lose it,’ she was furious to find herself saying. ‘I’m ex-directory. Oh God, you’ve sat on Rupert’s mother’s flowers.’
Chapter Five
As she stood in the road, watching the taxi carry him away, she was overwhelmed by desolation. She ran past the big, white houses, set back from the road, their gardens filled with early roses and azaleas. Then she came to the whitest and biggest of all. Two stone lions with sneering faces reared up on either side of the gate. A maid answered the door, but before she could take Bella’s coat Rupert rushed into the hall, his face white and drawn.
How ridiculously young and unfledged he looks beside Steve, she thought.
‘Darling! What happened? It’s after nine o’clock!’
Bella was not an actress for nothing. Suddenly she was the picture of distress and contrition.
‘I’m so sorry! Harry Backhaus kept me waiting for ages, and then took hours over the audition, and then he made the most frightful pass at me.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I wanted to phone, really I did, but it got so late it seemed more sensible to come straight here. I didn’t even have time to change. Please forgive me.’
Any moment a thunderbolt will strike me down, she thought wryly. But Rupert, at least, was convinced.
‘Poor darling,’ he said, seizing her hands. ‘Of course it doesn’t matter. Come in and meet everyone.’
They went into a huge unwelcoming room, a cross between a museum and a jungle, full of gilded furniture and elegant uncomfortable chairs. On the wall, appallingly badly lit, hung huge paintings with heavy gold frames. Potted plants were everywhere.
‘Poor Bella’s had a terrible time,’ Rupert announced. ‘The damned director’s only just let her go.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Bella said, giving them her most captivating smile. ‘He kept me waiting for hours, and then . . .’
‘We heard you saying so outside,’ said a large woman coldly.
‘This is my mother,’ said Rupert.
Constance Henriques was tall but not thin enough. Her face, with its large turned-down mouth and bulging, glacial eyes, resembled a cod on a slab. Her voice would have carried across any parade ground.
‘It’s nice to meet you,’ said Bella, deciding it wasn’t.
‘I thought you told Miss Parkinson we always dress for dinner,’ Constance said to Rupert.
Bella had had too many whiskies, ‘And I’ve undressed,’ she said, looking down at her unbuttoned shirt. And, almost unconsciously slipping into a mocking upper class accent, added, ‘I’m most frightfully sorry.’
There was a frozen pause, then someone laughed.
‘This is my father,’ said Rupert, grinning.
Charles Henriques must once have been very handsome, but had long since gone to seed. There was a network of purple veins over his face and great bags under his merry little dark eyes, which ran over Bella’s
décolleté
like a pair of black beetles.
‘How do you?’ he said, holding her hand far longer than necessary. ‘Rupert has talked about no-one else for weeks. But even he didn’t do you justice.’
He handed Bella a vast drink.
Rupert’s sister, Gay, and her fiancé, Teddy, were a typical deb and a typical guards officer. They hardly broke off their conversation when Bella was introduced to them.
Bella couldn’t resist staring at Gay’s stomach. She didn’t look at all pregnant – nor did Teddy look capable of fathering a mouse.
‘I told you they were totally self-obsessed, didn’t I?’ Rupert said, squeezing her hand. ‘And finally I want you to meet my cousin Chrissie, Lazlo’s sister. She’s my good angel.’
She’d be divine too, if she were happier, thought Bella. But Chrissie looked thoroughly out of condition. Her dark eyes were puffy, a spot glowed on her cheek, and she must have put on a lot of weight recently because the dress she was wearing was far too tight over her heavy bust and hips.
‘How do you do?’ Chrissie said. She had a soft, husky voice with a slight foreign inflection. ‘How foul having an audition. They must be beastly things.’
‘I always get into a state,’ said Bella, ‘but some people sail through them.’
Chrissie started to talk about a friend who wanted to go on the stage but, although her mouth smiled, her eyes looked at Bella with hatred.
Bella gulped her drink and looked round the room. That was certainly a Matisse over the fireplace and a Renoir by the door. Between the curtains there was a lighter square on the rose-coloured wallpaper.
‘The Gainsborough usually hangs there,’ said Constance, following Bella’s gaze, ‘but we’ve lent it to the Royal Academy. What can Lazlo be talking about all this time?’ she added irritably to Charles. ‘The telephone bills that boy runs up.’
‘He’s talking to some Arabs,’ said Rupert. ‘He’s been trying to get through all day.’
‘How exciting to have a wedding so soon,’ Bella said brightly.
They all looked at her. I’d better shut up, she thought. My girlish approach is going down like a lead balloon.
‘It’s your birthday, isn’t it? How old are you?’ said Constance Henriques, her mouth full of potato crisps.
‘Twenty-four,’ replied Bella.
‘Twenty-four? But Rupert’s only twenty-one. I’d no idea you were so much older than him.’
‘And you’ve just turned fifty-four, my dear,’ said Charles Henriques mildly. ‘So I think the less said about age the better.’
Bella giggled, which was obviously the wrong thing to do, for Constance Henriques had turned the colour of a turkey cock.
Fortunately there was the click of a telephone.
‘That’ll be Lazlo finished,’ said Constance. ‘We can eat at least. It’s too much to expect the young to be punctual these days, but I do hate keeping the servants waiting.’
Bella flushed. Rupert’s mother was a cow. Thank God Lazlo was going to join them now. Of all the Henriques family he was the one she felt she was going to get on with. She imagined a gay, laughing, handsome, more dissipated version of Rupert, with the same slenderness and delicate features. But as usual in such cases, she couldn’t have been more wrong in her assessment.
For the man who came through the door was tall and as powerfully built as Steve. With his sallow complexion, hooked nose, thick black curling hair and drooping eyelids, it was difficult to tell if he looked more South American or more Jewish in his appearance. But there was certainly nothing of the Jewish fleshiness about his face, nor the melting softness of the Latin about his eyes, which were as hard and black as tarmac. He looked dangerous and incredibly tough.
Rupert bounded forward, ‘Lazlo! Bella’s arrived. Come and meet her.’
Wincing slightly at the pride in Rupert’s voice, Bella gave Lazlo her most seductive smile. ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ she said. ‘I feel I know you very well already.’
For a second there was a flicker of surprise in his eyes. He certainly took his time to look her over. Then, with a smile that wasn’t entirely friendly, he said, ‘I can assure you you don’t. How do you do?’
Then he turned to Constance.
‘Sorry I took so long. This deal’s reached a really delicate stage. If we pull it off though, Charles’ll make enough bread to pay for Gay’s wedding.’
Constance didn’t look in the least mollified. But at that moment a maid announced dinner was ready.
Until then Bella had drunk enough whisky to sail through any situation, but as they went into the dining-room she was overwhelmed with a fear so violent that she had to clutch on to the table to stop herself fainting.
What was that terrible sickly smell? Then she realized it was the lilies – a huge clump was massed on a Grecian pillar at the far end of the room and another great bowl filled the centre of the table.
Bella stared at them horrified, remembering the wreaths of lilies that had filled the house before her mother’s funeral, just after Steve had walked out on her. And how closely, at the time, the white waxy petals had resembled the translucence of her mother’s skin as she lay dead upstairs. She felt the sweat rising on her forehead. She was trembling all over.
Looking up, she saw Lazlo watching her. Immediately on the defensive she glared back, then cursed herself as he looked away. It would have been so much more politic to smile.
They sat down at a table that could easily have accommodated a couple of dozen people. Bella was between Charles and Teddy. Rupert was hidden from her by the centrepiece of lilies. A maid began handing round a great bucket of caviar.
Constance and Gay discussed the wedding.
‘It’s amazing how people cough up,’ said Gay. ‘The most unlikely relations have sent vast cheques.’
‘When I was married,’ said Constance, taking a far bigger helping than anyone else, ‘all the West Wing was cordoned off to accommodate the presents. I’d forgotten how much there is to do. I’m quite exhausted. I’ve been tied up with the bishop all afternoon.’
‘How very uncomfortable for you both,’ said Lazlo gravely.
Constance ignored this. ‘The bishop was most impressed by our work for the blind,’ she went on. ‘Particularly with the number of new guide dogs we’ve provided.’
Lazlo held up his wine so that it gleamed like a pool of gold. ‘You should start a society of Guide People for Blind Dogs,’ he said.
‘Do you know Baby Ifield?’ Charles shouted to Bella down six feet of polished mahogany.
She shook her head.
‘Should have seen her in her heyday. My word she was a smasher. Used to go back-stage and see her. Often took her to the Four Hundred.’
Constance’s lips tightened.
‘I simply can’t bear to discuss the mess this government is making,’ she said, and proceeded to do so for half an hour.
Listening to her, Bella found herself becoming more and more critical, and as her critical spirit waxed, her tact and caution waned.
Constance switched to the subject of Northern Ireland. ‘If only they’d bring back hanging.’
‘Why should they?’ said Bella, her trained actress’s voice carrying down the table.
Constance looked at her as though one of the potatoes had spoken.
‘It’d soon stop them planting bombs so casually,’ said Constance.