Jilly Cooper - Bella

After she’d washed it, she went back into the bedroom to comb it into some sort of shape. She was still walking on air. She looked at the mail on the dressing table again. Suddenly, she felt so relaxed, although she knew she shouldn’t, she couldn’t resist having a read of Angora’s letter. With wet fingers she tore open the envelope, and skimmed through the contents. Pandora’s Box! Suddenly she gave a gasp of horror and her hand went to her cheek as she read it again properly.

‘My darling, darling Lazlo,’ every word burnt into her soul. ‘Christ, this movie is a bore. . the director, the producer, the first assistant, have never stopped trying to bang me. The leading man, on the other hand, is trying to bang the first assistant — but that’s movies for you. The director is also determined to have a scene in which I take off all my clothes, but so far I’ve resisted it, keeping myself on toast for you darling.

‘I tried to get you on the telephone, but there was no answer, but filming should be finished by the 12th,’ that’s today, thought Bella numbly, ‘and I plan to fly home on the 13th. I hope you’ve at last managed to extract Bella from Rupert. You should have no difficulty in getting her to transfer her affections to you but what a drag it must have been.

‘Anyway, I’ll make it up ten thousand times when we meet. All my love and anticipation, Angora.’

Bella started to cry very quietly. So that really was the truth, she said to herself. As she’d been frightened all along, Lazlo had only been paying her so much attention, deliberately to make her fall in love with him, turning the full searchlight beam of his notorious sex appeal on her, just to make sure she’d never go back to Rupert. Well, he’d won all round. She had fallen for him, she could never go back to Rupert. Anyway, Rupert had Chrissie now, as Lazlo had always intended. Now he’d achieved his object, he could go back to Angora, who was one of his own kind.

In agony she remembered the Henriques family motto with which Lazlo had taunted her the first time they’d met, ‘Scratch a Henriques and you draw your own blood.’

Where could she go? Where could she escape to? Then suddenly she decided to go back to Nalesworth, the slum where she’d been born. Perhaps there she might find some kind of peace.

Roger and Sabina were well stuck into the play. She scribbled a quick note to Lazlo.

‘Dear Lazlo, I’m afraid I snooped and opened this letter of Angora’s. It’s self-explanatory really. I’m sorry I’ve been such a bother to you all. I haven’t got any money, so I’ve borrowed fifty pounds. I’ll send it back to you when I’ve got it. Thank you for getting me out. With my love, Bella.’

Stuffing the fivers into her bag, she pinched a pair of dark glasses and tiptoed out of the flat.

Later, shivering with misery, cold and exhaustion, she crept into an empty carriage and cried without stopping until the train cranked its way into Leeds station.

The flowers on the graves were spattered with mud and bent in the harsh, bleak wind. Bella stood shaking, still in her green and black cheongsam, her teeth chattering, the rain trickling down her neck, and looked down at the lichened tombstone over her mother’s grave.

‘Bridget Figge, died 1969 — a saint and deeply loved,’ said the inscription.

She was a right bitch, thought Bella, and not at all deeply loved by me. Still, she reflected, she might have been different if she hadn’t married my poor feckless father. Then she started thinking about Lazlo. And she looked beyond the dark yews of the churchyard at the grey houses and the grey stone walls and the set grey faces of the passers-by. This is home, she thought, and I don’t like it one bit. I’m going back to London.

When she got on the train, she headed straight for the bar. The commercial travellers and the men in tweed suits around her, were trying to steer Brown Windsor soup into their mouths. It was only after her fourth double gin and tonic that she realized she hadn’t eaten properly since last night. By then it seemed too late to start. She ordered another drink. It was funny to see her face on the front of everyone’s newspaper, with short shaggy hair and frightened eyes.

‘Ten Days of Terror Take Their Toll,’ said one headline. ‘Bella cracks up during press conference and denies romance,’ said another.

She shrunk further behind her dark glasses, took a slug of gin, and went back to brooding over Lazlo. His behaviour towards her had never been remotely lover-like. In fact, most of the time it had been quite abominable, and yet, and yet, her thoughts kept straying back to the first time he had pretended to be Steve and nearly raped her in the dark. He must have felt something to kiss her like that, and also the way he’d broken down when they sent him her hair.

Everything suddenly became quite simple. She would find Lazlo as soon as she got to London and have it out with him.

By the time she came off the train, she was very drunk indeed. She tottered down the platform, reeling round porters and oncoming luggage trucks. She had great difficulty in finding a telephone booth.

Someone picked up the telephone in Lazlo’s Maida Vale flat on the first ring, but it wasn’t Lazlo. It sounded like a policeman.

‘He’s at the office,’ said a voice. ‘But who’s that calling?’ Bella didn’t answer. ‘Who is that calling?’ said the voice again with some urgency.

Bella put the receiver down and rang Lazlo’s office where she was told Lazlo was in a meeting, but who should they say called. Again the same urgency. Bella rang off.

Suddenly, the fact that Lazlo was somewhere in London was too much for her. I’m going to rout him out, she said to herself.

In the taxi she tried to tidy herself up a bit. Her dress was still soaking wet from the rain, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittering. She managed to put eye-shadow on one eye, then got bored and gave up, and emptied the remains of a bottle of scent over herself. She kept rehearsing what she was going to say to him.

Now look here. . it began.

The taxi got lost three times, but finally drew up outside a vast, tall grey building. Over a sea of bowler hats, Bella read the letters: Henriques Bros.

‘Eureka,’ she shouted, falling out into the street, and belting through the front door into the building.

The beautiful red-headed receptionist looked at her in fascinated horror.

‘Have you come to collect something?’ she said slowly.

‘Only Lazlo Henriques,’ said Bella, tugging her rain sodden skirt down over her bottom.

‘Have you got an appointment?’

‘No, but it’s terribly important I see him,’ said Bella, trying to keep the mounting despair out of her voice.

The receptionist caught her first fumes of gin, her cold blue eyes flickered over Bella’s stomach.

‘Oh gosh, I’m not pregnant,’ she gasped. ‘Not a bit, in fact, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

A man in a commissionaire’s uniform came out of the lift. The receptionist beckoned to him.

‘This — er — person insists on seeing Mr Lazlo.’

The commissionaire looked at Bella, then started.

‘My goodness, it’s Miss Parkinson isn’t it?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Bella. ‘I must see him, you can’t throw me out.’ Her voice was rising hysterically.

Suddenly a nearby door opened and a red-faced man came out.

‘Can’t you stop this damned row, Heywood?’ he said.

‘Sir, it’s Miss Parkinson,’ said the commissionaire.

Bella staggered towards the red-faced man. Suddenly, her self-control snapped. ‘Please, oh please,’ she sobbed, ‘I must see Lazlo. You’ve got to help me.’