She wanted to slip unnoticed into a pew at the back, but, grabbing her arm like a vice, Lazlo led her right up to the second row from the front.
‘You’re a member of the family now,’ he said.
Rupert, looking glamorous, and almost as pale as the white carnation in his button hole, tried to sit next to her, but Lazlo stopped him.
‘Uh-uh,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to sit in the front and look after Constance,’ and sat down very firmly on the edge of the row, next to Bella. Bella moved quickly away from him, slap into a very lecherous-looking old man with long grey sideboards, on her other side.
‘You haven’t met Uncle Willy yet, have you Bella?’ said Lazlo.
Beyond Rupert sat a scruffy, but nice-looking boy with a pudding basin hair cut. That must be Rupert’s brother, Jonathan, let off from school.
Across the aisle sat Teddy and his best man. Teddy’s pink and white cheeks were stained with colour as he alternately tugged at his collar and smoothed his newly cut hair.
‘I comforted my mother,’ said Rupert, ‘that she wasn’t losing a daughter, just gaining a cretin.’
Bella giggled. People were turning round and talking to each other and saying, ‘Hello, haven’t seen you for
years
.’
The organ was playing the same Bach cantata for the third time. Bella, sneaking a surreptitious look round, realized that as usual she was quite wrongly dressed. Everyone was in silk dresses or beautifully cut suits. And the competition was absolutely stupendous. Lazlo was right; it was icy in church. Every goose pimple was standing out on her bare arms. Uncle Willy next door was gazing openly at her breasts. Irritably, to obscure his view, Bella shoved the fox’s mask down the front of her dress.
‘Gone to earth,’ said Lazlo.
Bella gazed stonily ahead at the huge Constance Spry flower arrangement. Suddenly she realized that her wrap-over dress, which looked so respectable when she was standing up, had fallen open, revealing a large expanse of thigh and the pants with ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here’ printed on them, which Rosie had given her for her birthday. Hastily she covered herself up, but not before both Lazlo and Uncle Willy had had a good look.
I’ll kill him, fumed Bella, I’ll kill him, and afterwards I’ll kick his teeth in.
Another old relation, sleeping peacefully behind them, suddenly woke up and said, ‘Come on, buck up. Let’s get cracking,’ in a loud voice. There was a rustle of interest as Constance swept up the aisle looking like a double-decker bus in a dust sheet, waving graciously to friends and relations.
‘She claims she’s just discovered the tent dress,’ Rupert whispered to Bella. ‘But she needs a couple of marquees to cover her.’
Finally, when Bella was about to turn into a pillar of ice, the organ launched into ‘Here Comes the Bride’ and everyone rose to their feet.
Here was Charles, a fatuous smile on his face, wafting brandy fumes as he went. On his arm hung Gay, looking pale but well in control, and carrying a huge bouquet to conceal any evidence of pregnancy. Her progress was slow, for every few seconds she nearly had her head jerked off as one of the little bridesmaids trod on her veil.
Chrissie brought up the rear, wearing pink, a coronet of pink roses on her gleaming dark hair. She’d obviously had a professional make-up. She looked lovely, but suicidal. She halted just beside Lazlo. Rupert turned round and pulled a face at her, trying to make her laugh.
‘Dearly beloved,’ intoned the bishop.
Bella had to share a prayer book with Lazlo. Rigid with loathing, she looked down at his long fingers and beautifully manicured nails and tried not to breathe in the subtle musk and lavender overtones of the aftershave he was wearing.
‘First,’ said the bishop, ‘it was ordained for the procreation of children.’
‘You can say that again,’ muttered Rupert with a grin.
‘Second as a remedy against sin, for such people as have not the gift of continence.’
‘I do hope you’re taking all this in,’ said Lazlo out of the corner of his mouth.
Bella was not listening; she was having a daydream of standing in Gay’s place, with long white satin arms and hair drawn back to show a delicately blushing face, with an impossibly slender waist from a pre-wedding crash diet, with Steve beside her, devastatingly handsome, smiling proudly down at her, and putting a gold ring on her finger.
‘To have and to hold, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part,’ repeated Teddy in his strangulated hernia voice, after the bishop.
But would Steve ever stay with her? Was he capable of loving and cherishing anyone for very long? Would she herself ever be able to love and cherish Rupert the way Chrissie would?
Looking past Lazlo, she saw Chrissie staring fixedly in front of her, the tears pouring down her face. Oh, what a stupid muddle it all is, thought Bella.
‘I feel sick,’ said one of the little bridesmaids.
‘Immortal, Invisible God only wise,’ sang the congregation. Lazlo, next to her, sang the bass part loudly. He’s just the sort of person who would embarrass his children singing parts too loudly in church, she thought savagely.
They all sat down for the sermon. The bishop was getting warmed up about fidelity and the need for steadfastness in the modern world when so many marriages crumbled.
Uncle Willy was rubbing his thigh against Bella’s. She couldn’t move away or she would have been jammed against Lazlo.
She gazed furiously in front of her. Really, she was getting to know that flower arrangement extremely well. Suddenly, with the spontaneity that was so much part of his charm, Rupert turned round, took her hand and squeezed it. She was conscious of both Lazlo and Chrissie watching them. A deep blush spread over her face and down her shoulders.
Constance was crying unashamedly as they all went off into the vestry.
‘It’s not because she’s losing Gay,’ said Lazlo dryly, ‘but the thought of all the money this is costing her.’
A reedy tenor began to sing, ‘Sheep May Safely Graze.’
The wait was interminable.
‘You’d think they were consummating the marriage, wouldn’t you?’ said Rupert. ‘I wish we could smoke.’
Back came the procession. Teddy, crimson with embarrassment; Gay, looking relieved, grinning slightly as she caught the eyes of various relations.
‘Hear you’re an actress,’ said Uncle Willy to Bella. ‘Ever bin in
Crossroads
?’ (He pronounced it Crawse.) ‘Never miss it m’self, bloody good programme.’
For several minutes they were penned up at the top of the church while the photographers took pictures. As soon as he came out of his pew, Rupert squeezed Bella’s arm.
‘Christ, what a performance. Hullo, Aunt Vera. I’m not going through a bloody circus like this when we get married, darling. Hullo Uncle Bertie. It’s going to be in and out of Chelsea Register Office and straight off to London Airport to somewhere warm immediately afterwards.’
Bella put her hand lovingly over Rupert’s. ‘I agree,’ she said, looking straight at Lazlo. ‘And as soon as possible too. I’ve suddenly gone off long engagements.’
The reception was a nightmare. It was held in three huge marquees in the Henriques’ garden and Bella had never felt more lonely or out of things in her life.
There was a strange assortment of people there. Teddy’s grand, dowdy relations in their silk shirt-waisters and pull-on felts were almost indistinguishable from Constance’s fellow committee workers, who included several Chief Guiders in uniform, who brayed to one another and drank orange juice. In one corner, two bus-loads of tenants from Teddy’s father’s estate sat with their legs apart, looking embarrassed. But by far the largest group of people there, Bella suspected, were Charles’s and Lazlo’s friends, members of the international set at their richest and most international. Even though some of them had turned up in jeans, they had that kind of bland self-assurance, the gilt-edged security that enabled them to be accepted anywhere. Everywhere you looked ravishingly pretty women had emerged from their winter furs like butterflies and stood jamming cigarettes into their scarlet lips, knocking back champagne, refusing asparagus rolls and smoked salmon for the sake of their figures, and chattering wittily to the suave handsome, expensive-looking men who surrounded them. Bella had never seen so many people who seemed to know each other, or, even if they didn’t, would discover a host of friends they had in common.
Rupert did his best to look after her, but he was constantly being grabbed by Constance or Charles, or particularly by Lazlo, to go and look after someone else, or see to something.
She tried to scintillate and be amusing, but because she was nervous and unsure of herself, her voice came out far more artificial and affected than it would normally. Putting up a front to cover up her desperate insecurity, she knew she was appearing phoney and as hard as nails. Rupert kept introducing her into a group of people, but it was like feeding a screw into the Hoover. Five minutes later they’d spew her out again.
God, they were noisy too. Half the conversations were being carried on in foreign languages, full of laughter and exclamation marks, like the talking bits in
Fidelio
.
She couldn’t even get drunk because she had a performance that evening. In her misery, she ate five éclairs, then felt sick.
Suddenly, as though someone had stamped a branding iron on her back, she was aware of Chrissie standing behind her, her eyes glittering with misery and loathing.
‘Pink really suits you,’ Bella said nervously. ‘And you’ve lost so much weight! You really look ravishing.’
‘But not quite ravishing enough,’ snapped Chrissie, and, turning on her heel, she disappeared into the crowd. Even talking to Uncle Willy would have been preferable to standing by herself, but he was hemmed in by some aunts in a corner.
Where on earth were Steve and Angora, Bella wondered. It was almost impossible to find them in this crowd.
She couldn’t stay leaning against a pillar for ever – like a small boat launching itself on a rough sea, she began fighting her way across the marquee again – and, suddenly, there like something on the big screen, was Angora, wearing a navy blue straw hat which framed her cloudy dark hair and a parma violet suit, which emphasized her huge, purply-blue eyes.
She was surrounded by men, but lounging by her side was Steve in a grey morning suit, cracking jokes, deflecting any competition, very much master of the situation. Admire her, but keep your distance, he seemed to be saying. They made a sensational pair.
Angora was laughing at something he said, throwing back her head to show her lovely white throat when, in mid-laugh, suddenly she saw Bella.
‘Belladonna! Come here – at once.’
As there was nowhere else to go, Bella went up to them.
‘Darling, you’ve gone orange. How brave of you. Is it for a new part, or are you doing a soup commercial?’
The men around Angora looked at Bella without interest.
‘You’ve all met Rupert’s fiancée, haven’t you?’ said Angora. ‘You know Steve of course, Bella, and this is Timmie, and this is Patrick, and this is . . . oh God, I can’t remember your name.’
Bella was looking at Steve. Her heart was pounding.
‘Yes, I know Steve,’ she said. ‘Or I thought I did. How are you?’
‘Fantastic,’ said Steve, giving her that curiously opaque, shutters-down look she knew of old. ‘Where’s Rupert? Getting some aunt out of mothballs?’
‘I’m glad you’ve brought Foxy,’ said Angora, patting Bella’s fox fur. ‘He looks as though he needs an outing. Why don’t you give him some Bob Martins?’
Everyone laughed. Bella blushed. Why can’t I think of some witty crack to make back, she thought miserably.
Rescue, however, was at hand, in the not very steady shape of Charles. ‘Bella, darling,’ he said, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you. They ought to page people at this party. I wonder if you’d be terribly kind and give a word of advice to a young niece of mine. She’s awfully keen to go on the stage and I thought, being such a star, you were the person to talk to.’
Bella got a slight satisfaction in seeing a look of annoyance flicker across Angora’s face. She obviously felt she was the one who ought to be consulted.
‘I’d love to,’ said Bella and, without even saying goodbye to Steve, she followed Charles back into the crowd.
The stage-struck niece had a horse face and half Chelsea Flower Show on her head.
‘It must be amazing to be acting at the Britannia,’ she said. ‘I suppose you pulled strings.’
‘No,’ said Bella, ‘not even a tiny thread, but I had a lucky break. Have you had much experience?’
‘No. I played Juliet in the school play. Everyone said I was awfully good.’
Oh God! Bella groaned inwardly. ‘Have you tried to get into any of the drama schools?’ she said.
‘No. Perhaps you could give me a list of names. And perhaps you could introduce me to your director. I gather he’s very charming.’