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
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
