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.