Bella

Chapter Two

Promptly at six-thirty on Wednesday he picked her up.

‘You look gorgeous,’ he said, walking round her.

‘You don’t look so bad yourself,’ she said.

He was wearing a very dark green suit with a red silk shirt.

‘You like it?’ he said, pleased. ‘My tailor only finished it on Monday; that’s why I couldn’t ask you out last week.’

An Aston Martin was waiting outside; music blasted out of the slot stereo; the heat was turned up overpoweringly.

Bella wound down her window surreptitiously as they drove off. She didn’t want to be scarlet in the face before she started.

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.