too little for Rupert. Really, it was very hard dressing for both, like having God and the Devil to dinner. Perfume was wrong for church, too Delilah-ish, so she settled for pouring half a bottle of cologne over herself instead. Much against her principles, she’d taken one of the tranquilizers she’d been given when she split up with Harold Mountjoy. It was having no effect at all. When she found herself rubbing deodorant into her cheeks and moisturizer under her arms, she realized she was really over the top.
She was ready by ten-fifteen, waiting in the dark polished hall. Various dowdy lady academics were milling around, getting ready for outings to museums or galleries. If only one of them would tell her she looked nice; but lady academics don’t notice such trivialities.
She took a surreptitious glance in the full-length mirror and suddenly decided that she looked ludicrous in the matching tartan beret and kilt, just like an air hostess. Racing upstairs, she changed back into the gray angora dress. Oh God, there was lipstick on it. She covered the mark with a pearl brooch, which looked ridiculous just above her left nipple. Her newly washed hair was all over the place from so much dressing and undressing. She rammed it down with a gray velvet hairband.
She couldn’t stop shaking. It was now twenty-five to eleven. At first the minutes crawled by, then they started to gallop. He couldn’t be coming; it was ten-fifty. Perhaps she’d heard him wrong, but she was sure he’d said half-past ten. She tried to read a long analysis of the Watergate crisis in the
Perhaps, in her state of cardiac arrest, she’d given him the wrong directions to Regina House, saying left when she meant right. It was two minutes to eleven; she musn’t cry, it would make her mascara run, but what did it matter when he obviously wasn’t coming anyway? It was just some diabolical plot to raise her hopes and then dump on her from a great height because she was part of the saboteurs.
The club secretary had just pinned the lunchtime menu on the board and several of the inmates surged forward, trying not to look too eager, watering at the mouth at the prospect of roast beef and treacle pudding to liven up their uneventful lives. In utter despair, fighting back the tears, Helen turned to stumble upstairs, but just as the hall grandfather clock struck eleven the front door pushed open and Rubert walked in, coming towards her with that lovely loping athlete’s stride. Unlike most people, he didn’t automatically lower his voice when he entered an institution.
“Darling, darling, I’m desperately sorry. I had to look at a horse in Newbury on the way up; the traffic was frightful,” he lied. “Are you all right? Did you think I wasn’t coming?”
He walked up to her and, taking her hand, kissed her on the cheek.
Helen gazed up at him, unable to get a word out. Overnight, she’d changed him, in his red coat, into some kind of devil, and here he was turning up, looking just the sort of preppy young man of whom her parents would approve. The severity of the impeccably cut dark suit, striped shirt, and blue tie only served to set off the dazzling good looks. A shaft of pale sunlight coming through the window gilded the smooth blond hair. It was as though a light had been turned on in the dark hall. Even the dingy academics gathered around the notice board changed the object of the salivating, gazing at him unashamedly.
“You want to go to church, don’t you?”
Helen nodded, still speechless.
“Well, it’s not too late. We’ll probably miss the B-film and the ads, but get in for the big picture,” he said, putting his arm through hers.
“I’ve never been to Hammersmith before,” he said, opening the car door for her.
“It’s a fascinating ethnic cross section,” said Helen earnestly.
In the back of the Porsche, sitting muddily on a huge pile of unopened letters, newspapers, and old copies of
“This is Badger,” said Rupert. “He’s the only being in the world who thinks I can do no wrong.”
Badger thumped his thick black tail joyfully, scattering the letters, and, leaning forward, gave Helen a great slobbery kiss.
“Don’t preempt me, Badger,” said Rupert, driving off so fast that the dog nearly fell off the backseat.
“Badger insisted on coming today,” Rupert went on, “to see if you were as pretty as I said you were.”
Embarrassed, Helen said, “Don’t you ever open your mail?”
“Not if I can help it. It’s always people wanting my money or my life.”
He drove her at great speed to the Guards’ Chapel. Immediately they’d crept into a back pew, Helen sank to her knees. Rupert, sitting sideways to accommodate his long legs, noticed she really prayed, eyes shut, lips moving. Confessing in advance the sins she’s going to commit later this afternoon, he thought dryly. While she was kneeling, he examined the freckled hands with their slender wrists and colorless nail polish, the small beaky nose, the very clean ears, the lipstick drawn not quite to the edges to disguise a large mouth, the frightful Alice band holding back the gorgeous, dark red hair — it was the color of drenched fox rather than bracken. Wondering if she had a ginger bush, he felt the stirrings of lust. He’d tank her up at lunchtime and take her back to his mother’s house. As she sat up, he noticed the perfect ankles, slightly freckled beneath the pale tights.
“Nice scent,” he whispered.
For a second she looked at him, her huge wide-apart yellow eyes flecked like a conference pear, then smiled shyly.
Christ, she’s adorable, he said to himself.
He had deliberately not picked up a hymn book on the way in so he could share hers. As their hands touched she jumped as if burnt, then, realizing she was overreacting, tried to relax.
“Forty days and forty nights, tempted and yet undefiled,” sang Rupert loudly and quite out of tune.
During the sermon, Helen found her thoughts straying as she glanced at the crimson and gold banners topped with little gold lions with crowns on their heads, and breathed in the scent of a nearby arrangement of white lilac and narcissi. Among the congregation were several grayhound men in dark suits, with lean, carved features and very straight backs, accompanied by conservatively dressed women with good enough cheekbones to get away with turbans or hats with no hair showing. The altar was draped with purple for Lent. Helen was horrified to find herself wondering whether a dress in that color would suit her. She must concentrate.
Rupert had no such intentions. After staring at the priest for a few minutes with half-closed eyes, he extracted a paint chart out of his pocket and studied the colors, finally marking a Prussian blue square with a cross. Then he produced yesterday’s evening paper and, folding it up into a small square, started to read the racing results.
“Hooray,” he whispered, “I’ve won ?50—it’ll pay for a lunch.”
Helen tried to ignore him and stared stonily in front of her. But as the sermon droned on a loud snore suddenly rent the air. Rupert had fallen asleep and the next moment his head had flopped onto her shoulder. Several of the grayhound men, and a woman in a red turban like piped fish paste, glanced around in disapproval. Helen nudged Rupert sharply in the ribs. He woke up with a start, glanced round in bewilderment, and then grinned at her totally without contrition. The smile suddenly softening the arrogant deadpan features and creasing up the long blue eyes, reduced her to complete panic. Harold Mountjoy had never affected her like this.
She was relieved when the organ galloped through the last hymn and they surged out into the sunshine. Rupert nodded to several of the congregation, but didn’t stop to talk until one of the grayhound men called out to him.
Rupert stopped, said, “Hello, Tommy,” and introduced Helen.
After the inevitable brisk swapping of mutual acquaintances, Tommy said, “You’ve been doing very well; meant to come and buy you a drink at Olympia. Look,” he added, lowering his voice, “there’s a horse that might interest you at the barracks. Bought him in Ireland just before Christmas — make a top-class puissance horse.”
“Can I come and look at him after lunch?”
“About four.”
Helen wondered if she were included in the invitation and was shocked by her relief when Rupert said, “We’ll be there.”
Before lunch he insisted on taking Badger for a walk in the park. It was a perfect spring day. Thickening crimson buds fretted a love-in-the-mist blue sky. The banks were draped with crocuses of the same Lenten purple as the altar cloth. A host of golden daffodils, retarded by the bitter winter, had just reached their prime and nodded
