Angel switched on the ignition. ‘Nothing friendly about you,’ he said.
It was a hot, muggy evening. The ball was held in the garden of a house which reared up ghostly white in the moonlight like the Taj Mahal. Faint stars dotted a gleaming grey sky like children kept up too late. Vast oblong cars dropped off their passengers outside a big blue and white striped marquee. One of the men valet-parking looked at Angel’s Mini in disdain and took the keys from him by the tag, as though they were some particularly mangled shrew the cat had brought in. Lurking
‘Look this way, Miss Alderton. Smile, Miss Alderton. Who’s your escort, Miss Alderton? What’s he been in, Miss Alderton?’
Angel looked as though he was going to smash all their cameras, so Bibi hustled him into the marquee.
‘He’s called Angel,’ she shouted over her shoulder.
‘Can you spell that, Miss Alderton?’
Bibi had worked hard. The marquee looked enchanting. Palms were banked at each end. Round the edge were tables draped in long, pale pink tablecloths, topped with pink roses, pale blue delphiniums and white freesias. A pale pink balloon rose from each day-glo pink number. The floor was covered in green astraturf, which kept catching the high heels of the women, so their swooping progress towards one another was not unlike that of mechanical dolls. Their faces were doll-like too, thought Angel, beautiful, tremendously overmade-up, and unsmiling because smiles betrayed lines round the eyes. Their jewels glittered in the candlelight, but although they made a lot of noise as they chattered away, like the Everglades outside, there was no real communication between them. And their eyes swivelled continually and rapaciously to see if anyone over their partners’ shoulder was richer, more famous or more interesting.
Bibi, used to attending parties like this with Trust Fund Babies who were perfectly at ease and tended to know everyone, was worried Angel would be gauche and out of place. But although she was kept frantically busy, organizing the tombola, finding people’s seats, seeing the waitresses kept the Moet circulating, and working the room herself because half the people in the room hadn’t yet bought Alderton airplanes, every time she glanced across at Angel he had been collared by another predatory lady and was looking quite at ease.
Fighting her way to his side, she introduced him to a Master of Foxhounds from Virginia in a red coat, who announced that the hunting season went from September to December.
‘Pity it’s over,’ said his mettlesome wife, gazing hungrily at Angel. ‘We must have a dance later. Argentines have such a wonderful sense of rhythm. I’ve got a big, big, day tomorrow,’ she went on. ‘I’m organizing Adopt a Handicapped Animal Day.’
‘Does that include Lame Ducks?’ drawled Chessie, ravishing in black lace, who had popped up on Angel’s other side.
‘You OK?’ Bibi asked Angel.
‘Don’t be unflattering,’ said Chessie. ‘I’ll look after him. Your father wants you to go and chat up George Ricardo, Bibi. He’s not struck by Alderton Lightnings enough yet. She looks quite good tonight,’ she admitted, as Bibi sulkily retreated into the centre of the room.
Angel shrugged. ‘OK eef you cut off her head.’
Chessie laughed. ‘Not very kind.’
‘I ’ate leetle Hitlers,’ said Angel moodily.
‘It’s in the blood,’ sighed Chessie. ‘Bart is the biggest bully, and Grace is appallingly bossy, never stops trying to improve people. It’s rubbed off on Bibi. She always goes out with such wimps, they never answer back. Oh God, Bart’s glowering at me. He’s wildly jealous of you. Hasn’t forgiven me for chatting you up on Christmas Day.’
Angel flushed slightly. ‘It was best part of dinner.’
Looking across, Bibi went cold. Not content with enslaving Ricky and her father, Chessie was out to catch Angel as well. By a hasty shifting of place cards, Bibi made sure she and Angel were nowhere near her and Bart.
Unfortunately, when they sat down she discovered that on Angel’s right was a beautiful, very tarty woman, with tanned shoulders rising out of a turquoise taffeta, strapless dress, turquoise toe and finger nails, and turquoise pearls to match.
‘My husband’s thinking of sponsoring a polo team,’ she said, squeezing Angel’s arm. ‘How would you like to come and play for us?’
‘He plays for my father,’ snapped Bibi. Champagne and longing had made her more aggressive.
Angel had been drinking Perrier. Starving, he wolfed his own egg mayonnaise and ring of caviar, and then Bibi’s.
Continuing to drink, Bibi tried to pump him about Miguel and Juan.
‘I don’t want to talk about them,’ said Angel. ‘Eef I tell you, you will run to your father, and why you interrupt when ozzer people,’ he nodded at the tarty woman in turquoise, ‘want me to play for them?’
‘She says that to all good-looking players. She hasn’t got a husband.’
‘What prospect do I ’ave wiz you? Your father say to me, eef you stick at one, you go on playing wiz me, eef you go up, you’re fired. If I play well, I lose my job; eef I don’t, I get fired anyway.’ He gazed moodily at a quivering pink balloon, ‘Full of ’ot air, like everyone in Palm Beach.’
Angel had such a big mouth, thought Bibi, that when he yawned he looked really bored.
Stuffed breast of chicken followed and every time she tried to engage him in conversation, a new vegetable was plonked between them. Once again Angel wolfed everything on his plate, and Bibi ate nothing.
‘Are you sleeming? You don’t need to.’ Angel looked her up and down. ‘You look good tonight. Why don’t you look like that all the time?’
‘I could hardly wear this dress to the office.’
‘You’d get better results,’ said Angel, forking up her chicken.
‘I want to be taken seriously as a woman.’
‘No-one know you’re a woman in those ’orrible suits. Why you deliberately make youself look awful with those beeg glasses and your hair scraped back? I nevair knew you had a body before this evening. Why you ’ide it?’
‘I don’t know,’ mumbled Bibi.
‘Because you’re frightened of sex. You don’t think anyone will love you except for zee money.’
‘And would they?’ asked Bibi with a sob.
‘Of course, if you stop hurling zee weight around.’ Leaning across, Angel pinched the turquoise woman’s roll, spread it thickly with butter and tipped salt over it.
‘That’s
‘Zere you go again. Stop trying to improve people.’
Across the room Bart was singularly unamused to see his grossly underhandicapped ringer getting on far too well with his daughter. He should never have let them sit by themselves. Detesting small talk, he’d intended spending dinner talking polo with Angel.
‘What’s a toyboy?’ boomed the Queen of England’s second cousin who was sitting on Bart’s right. ‘You Americans, Mr Aldgate, are so good at remembering names.’
Bibi felt as though for twenty-two years she’d been a ship wrecked at the bottom of the ocean which is suddenly aware far above of a sun warming the surface.
‘What kind of woman are you looking for?’ she asked Angel.
‘Like my mother, but with none of her defects.’ He took Bibi’s wrist, examining each diamond. ‘I want a woman who is sexually liberated with a mind of her own,’ then, looking straight into Bibi’s eyes, ‘that I can dominate utterly.’
Bibi felt her entrails go liquid. ‘That is obnoxious,’ she said furiously. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her father bearing down on them, looking boot-faced. He was going to order her to work the room again. The band were playing.
‘Shall we dance?’ she asked Angel.
‘No,’ said Angel. Then, seeing her face fall, ‘Let’s start wiz the first lesson. I do zee asking. Will you dance wiz me?’
‘Oh, yes, please,’ breathed Bibi, leaping to her feet.
And her fate was sealed, because Angel was the best dancer she’d ever met. As he instantly became one with every horse he rode, he now became part of the music.
