vast and black-lined with kohl, black hair a mass of snakey ringlets, her shoulders, far creamier and lusher than Maud’s, rising out of a ruched crimson dress with a bustle, was indeed Taggie. Everyone was turning round to gawp at her. Basil, who’d been slowly stalking her for fourteen months, looked beside himself with pride.
‘You look like a Christmas cracker,’ he whispered in her ear, as he fingered the ruched dress, ‘and, my God, I can’t wait to pull you.’
Taggie giggled. She was slightly overwhelmed by how different Hazel had made her look and the sensation she seemed to be creating. Her only aim was to please Rupert. She wanted to show him that she had at last grown up. But as he stared at her, his face totally unsmiling, her courage failed and she gave the dress a desperate tug upwards. Then, just as she and Bas reached the Venturer table, the band started again.
‘Lady in Red,’ said Basil in delight. ‘How appropriate.’ And, taking Taggie’s bag from her and dropping it in front of Rupert in a curiously insolent gesture, he swept her onto the floor.
‘I can’t dance,’ pleaded Taggie, half-laughing. ‘I truly, truly can’t.’
‘You can with me,’ said Bas, putting his hand round her waist. ‘This is a nice slow one to start with. This song could have been written for you, you are so so beautiful. ‘
‘I find all this lipstick a bit strange,’ said Taggie.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll kiss it all off later.’
Taggie blushed. He was at least five inches taller than her, and so supple and strong, and with such a Latin sense of rhythm, that Taggie was soon following him perfectly in time.
‘You dance beautifully,’ he said, laying his cheek against her hair.
‘I can do it,’ said Taggie excitedly. ‘I can really dance.’
‘
‘
‘And you’re the most gorgeous girl,’ said Basil, french-kissing her shoulder.
‘Very fast man across country, Bas,’ said Henry approvingly.
‘Very fast man on the dance floor,’ said Freddie. ‘Don’t they go well togevver?’
Maud was looking extremely wintry. Cameron was watching Rupert. His face was like marble, but the tendons on the back of his hand, which was clenched round his glass, were like underground cables. He never took his eyes off Taggie as she and Bas moved round the floor. Then, suddenly, as the music stopped and Bas bent his otter-sleek head and kissed Taggie on her crimson mouth, his hand tightened on the glass so convulsively that it shattered. Amazingly he didn’t cut himself, but there was glass everywhere.
‘My Auntie was so superstitious,’ said Valerie, as a waitress rushed in with a dustpan and brush, ‘that if she broke something precious she’d rush down to the bottom of the garden and smash two jam jars to break the run of bad luck.’
‘As Rupert’s heart’s just been broken as well,’ said Cameron viciously, ‘we only need smash one more thing.’
‘Shut up,’ snarled Rupert, pouring a slug of whisky into a nearby wine glass.
Declan shot him a warning look. Nor were matters improved by Bas arriving at the table with Taggie.
‘Haven’t I done well?’ he said smugly. ‘Annabel dropped out, so the understudy took her place. I knew you’d be pleased, Maud darling,’ he added blithely as he bent down to peck Maud’s gritted cheek. ‘You were just complaining yesterday Taggie never had any fun.’
‘You look absolutely perfick,’ said Freddie.
‘Where did that gown come from?’ asked Valerie accusingly.
‘Corinium wardrobe department,’ said Basil, lobbing Freddie’s roll at Georgie Baines at the next table. ‘Suits her, doesn’t it?’
‘She looks great,’ said Declan proudly. ‘But make sure it isn’t bugged.’
‘All the bug would pick up is the hammering of her heart because she’s with me,’ said Bas, squeezing Taggie’s hand.
Taggie glanced shyly across at Rupert, who was now looking at her with complete indifference. Suddenly she felt utterly deflated. Even with every stop pulled out, there was no way she could win him. But there was little time to fret. Next minute a thoroughly over-excited Henry had whisked her off to dance. They were just circling decorously when the band broke into ‘Rock around the Clock’.
‘Ha ha ha,’ said Henry, suddenly galvanized like an over-adrenalized tarantula. ‘I know this tune. There’s life in the old dog yet.’ And he flung Taggie across the floor with great energy.
Every time he twirled her round he nearly pulled her out of her cracker dress. He’ll discover a paper hat and a motto in a minute, she thought as she frantically tugged it up again. As soon as the band stopped, a young blood swooped and asked her to dance, and then another, and another. Each one took her telephone number and said they’d ring her.
Great excitement, because it was regarded as highly symbolic, was caused at the Corinium table when Tony won a portable television on the Tombola.
‘He won’t be needing that much longer,’ growled Declan, who was getting increasingly worried about Rupert.
Freddie had also vanished, ostensibly to fetch Valerie some lemon squash, but he’d been away for three- quarters of an hour, and James Vereker could be seen hunting everywhere for Lizzie as he tried to escape from Sarah. Bas claimed another dance with Taggie and persuaded the band to play ‘Lady in Red’ again. As he and Taggie danced past them, all the band stood up in salute to her beauty.
Rupert was three-quarters of the way down his bottle of whisky when he was tapped sharply on the shoulder by one of his more forceful lady constituents.
‘I know this isn’t the time, but could we have a word about the Swindon — Gloucester motorway?’
She had a face the colour and texture of corned beef and it was now very close to Rupert’s.
‘Bugger the motorway,’ he said.
The corned beef seemed to engorge and darken like the interior of black pudding.
Getting to his feet, leaving her mouthing apoplectically, Rupert reached the dance floor just as Taggie and Bas were coming off. Grabbing Taggie’s hand, he dragged her back onto the floor. Alone in the centre, they gazed at each other. Slowly Rupert examined the huge, blackened, almost feverish eyes, the trembling ruby mouth, the quivering white breasts hardly covered by the crimson ruching. Adoring the way she looked normally in old clothes, with hardly any make-up, he detested this new grown-up, glamorous Taggie.
‘What’s the matter?’ she stammered, stepping back as though scorched by the disapproval in his eyes. ‘I hoped you’d l-l-like it.’
‘You look like a complete tart,’ he said viciously, ‘and as you’re with Bas, you’re obviously going to behave like one.’
Taggie gave a gasp of horror as, turning on his heel, Rupert walked straight back to the table.
‘What was that about?’ taunted Cameron. ‘I thought you liked little girls with bust measurements bigger than their IQs.’
‘I like them better than fucking American smart asses,’ snarled Rupert.
Spitting with fury, passing heraldic shields, suits of armour and antlers of several kinds of deer, Cameron fled to the Ladies. Rupert was a bastard, an utter asshole. But as she looked at her reflection in the ancient, dusty mirror, which should have flattered her, she couldn’t blame him for neglecting her. She looked awful, and the black dress she’d thought so sophisticated and understated had understated her so much she was practically invisible. Why the hell hadn’t she worn her black suede dress? Savagely she daubed her cheekbones with blusher and emptied the remains of a bottle of Jolie Madame — what a singularly inappropriate name — over her wrists and neck.
Coming out into the long gallery, she saw Tony emerging from behind a suit of armour and went sharply into reverse. He was too quick for her. Grabbing her wrists, he drew her into an alcove behind a huge urn filled with blue hyacinths. She tried to wriggle away, but he was too strong for her. Oh, why did that sweet, heady smell make her almost faint with longing?
