And they drifted out, hardly bothering to say goodbye, leaving Bella jibbering with misery and impotent rage. Lazlo’s nasty grin stayed with her, like the Cheshire Cat, long after he’d gone.
She had even more cause to be angry with him in the next few days. Two television plays and a commercial she’d considered certainties suddenly fell through. Her bank manager wrote a vitriolic letter complaining about her overdraft.
She was also due to play Nina in the Britannia’s production of The Seagull, which was going into rehearsal next week. Suddenly, Roger Field, the director, sent for her and told her he wanted her to play Masha, the frumpy, frustrated schoolmistress instead.
Bella lost her temper. ‘Lazlo Henriques is behind this!’ she stormed.
‘Who’s he?’ said Roger unconvincingly. ‘I make the decisions round here. I feel you’d be better as Masha.’
Chapter Seven
As usual, Bella left buying something to wear to Gay’s wedding to the last minute. She knew she shouldn’t buy anything at all. There were stacks of hardly worn dresses in her wardrobe and, with the present intransigence of her bank manager, he was bound to bounce the cheque anyway.
But for the last week she’d been spending money as though it was going out of fashion, almost as though she was determining her own destiny, forcing herself into such financial straits that the only way out would be to marry Rupert.
Anyway, she had to have a new dress. She knew that Steve had been asked to the wedding, and that he’d been seeing a lot of Angora, and that she must knock him for six by looking even more glamorous.
The shopping expedition was a disaster; half the shops seemed to have sales on. Everything she tried on looked perfectly frightful and she’d no idea how the weather was going to turn out. It was one of those grey, dull days that might easily get hot later.
‘Puce is going to be very big in the autumn,’ said a sales girl, forcing her into a wool dress and holding great folds of material in at the back to give it the appearance of fitting.
Bella winced at her washed out reflection. ‘I look like something the cat brought in or up,’ she said. ‘I need a new face, not a new dress.’
By two o’clock, when she was getting desperate, she found a dress in willow green, sleeveless, low cut and clinging, with a wrap-over skirt. It was the only remotely sexy thing she had tried on.
‘Do you think it’s all right for a wedding?’ she said desperately.
‘Oh yes,’ said the sales girl, raking a midge bite with long red nails. ‘People wear anything for anything these days.’
By the time she’d found a floppy, coral pink picture hat and shoes to match she was really running out of time. But when she tried them all on later in daylight in her flat, she realized the coral looked terrible with her tawny hair.
She had an hour and a half before she had to be at the church. Her hairdresser was closed that afternoon. The only answer was to wash her hair and put a red rinse on it, but in her haste she forgot to read the instructions about not using it on dyed hair. The result was not a gentle Titian, but a bright orange going on Heinz tomato, and impossibly fluffy with it.
She soon realized, too, that half a ton of eyeliners, blushers, shaders and all her skill at making-up wasn’t going to do her any good. It simply wasn’t an on-day.
Her skin looked dead, her eyes small and tired, and no amount of pancake could conceal the bags under them.
It was also getting colder. A sharp east wind was flattening the leaves of the plane trees in the square outside. All her coats were too short to wear over her new dress. In the end she slung Basil, her red fox fur, round her neck.
‘I need a few allies to face that mob,’ she thought.
A large crowd had gathered outside the church to watch people arrive. Bella, hopelessly late, rolled up at the same time as the bridal car and fell up the steps in her haste to get in first.
‘Drunk already,’ said a wag in the crowd.
Lazlo helped her to her feet. With a flash of irritation she realized that he looked very good and that the austere black and white formality of morning dress suited his sallow skin and irregular features extremely well.
He looked at her hair and said, ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ and then at her bare arms, and added in amusement, ‘You’re going to be bloody cold in church.’
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.