The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (17 page)

‘Penelope!
What are
you
doing here?’ she yelled, speaking aloud what I had been
wondering about her. ‘You look different. It’s your hair, isn’t it?’

I
nodded, my heart sinking with shame. Why should the only person I knew at this
gathering be Hope Allen? She glanced around and her eyes lit upon Charlotte,
deep in chatter with the Wentworth twins.

‘Heavens!
Don’t look now, but that’s Charlotte Ferris and the Wentworth girls over there,’
she hissed, swinging her back to them, ‘I read something about Charlotte in the
Standard
last month. They said she was the only girl in London who can
wear Dior, identify a great claret
and
talk to the Teds,’ she added in
one of those whispers that comes out louder than a normal voice. I wanted the
polished floors of the saloon to ‘swallow me whole.

And I
had my doubts about the
Standard.
The only thing I had ever heard
Charlotte say when consuming wine was ‘Yum’.

‘She’s
a friend of mine,’ I said with as much dignity as I could muster.

‘No!
How long have you known each other?’ gasped Hope, virtually winding me with the
insult of her astonishment.

‘A
couple of weeks. We came to the party together.’

‘Ahhhh!’
said Hope slowly. ‘Now the hair makes sense—’ She stopped and clutched my arm. ‘Oh
how
divine,
Harry Delancy’s here too. I’ve always thought him
frightfully attractive in that smouldering sort of way that short men can be.’

‘Smouldering?’
I repeated blankly, trying to edge away from Charlotte.

‘Yes.
They have to try that much harder, you know, short men. They make terrific
husbands as a result. It’s worth remembering, you know.’

‘Right.’

By a
stroke of good luck, this painful exchange was terminated by frantic signalling
from a huge hairdo on the other side of the room.

‘Oh, I’ll
have to whizz off,’ sighed Hope. ‘That’s my mother over there, you see? Talking
to the woman in gold?’

‘I see.’

‘Oh,
you
must
introduce me to Charlotte later,’ went on Hope. ‘I’ve met her
before, with my cousin George. She won’t remember me, of course. That type
never do.’

Cousin
George.
Hope was George Rogerson’s cousin. No wonder
she was even more pleased with herself than usual tonight.

‘Who on
earth was that unfortunate creature?’ demanded Charlotte as Hope waddled off.

‘Hope
Allen. She says she’s met you before.’

‘Can’t
have. I’d remember a pig-scarer like her.’

I
giggled.

But I
thought about what Hope had said about Charlotte and the
Standard.
As
far as I was concerned, the description was as accurate as the press had ever
been. And was she
really
that type, that rare type who had the luxury of
picking and choosing exactly whom they remembered and forgot? I vowed that I
would be one myself by the end of the evening.

Harry slid up to us with
an empty glass. ‘You should try one of these,’ he said. ‘Once you’ve had three,
stand over there in the corner of the room and look out at Hyde Park. It’s the
closest I’ve ever got to the sensation of flying—’ His face stiffened and
Charlotte and I followed his gaze.

‘There
she blows!’ whispered Charlotte. ‘Harry’s dream mother-in-law.’

Resplendent
in a pearl-festooned silver gown with a matching tiara, Tania Hamilton was
greeting new guests with a presidential air. She was a pocket battleship of a
woman, even wider and shorter than Mama had suggested, but she had the
unapologetic air of a woman enjoying life to the full. She steamed up to us,
holding her cocktail glass in front of her like a torch.

‘Well!
Mr Delancy, how
delightful!’
she exclaimed, and instantly my ears tuned
in to the seductive American accent. ‘How
brave
of you to come — George
will be so thrilled. And who are your friends? What a pity your mother couldn’t
be here this evening.’ She beamed, her relief at Aunt Clare’s absence palpable.
Harry was saved having to respond to this by Kate Wentworth who slunk up beside
him and put her hands over his eyes.

‘Guess
who?’ she growled.

‘Crown
Princess Giselle of Spain?’ suggested Harry. Kate exploded into giggles.

‘What a
wonderful party, Lady Hamilton,’ said Charlotte, ignoring her cousin. ‘I’m
Charlotte Ferris, Mr Delaney’s cousin. This is my—
Harry’s
friend,
Penelope Wallace.’

Lady
Hamilton clasped Charlotte’s hand. ‘Of course! Charlotte! What a treat. I’ve
heard so much about you!’

‘Oh dearie!’
said Charlotte with an immodest smirk. I tried not to giggle.

‘I love
your house,’ I said brightly. ‘My mother says I used to come here when I was
little, when the FitzWilliams lived here.’

Curses!
I thought the moment the words had left my mouth.
She won’t like that information one bit.

‘I
expect you think we’ve stripped the place of its old charm and made it all so
grotesquely
American.’ Lady Hamilton laughed, not in the least bit worried. ‘My husband
tells me they were going to pull the place down if we hadn’t have bought it. So
really. it’s a case of the Yanks stepping in and saving the place once again,
ha ha ha! Have you three tried all the cocktails tonight? I have a passion for
Brandy Alexander, so intoxicating. Oh, would you excuse me, girls? I believe
the princess is arriving.’ She surfed off into the crowd.

‘I
thought she was rather a poppet,’ said Charlotte. ‘I liked her sense of humour.’

‘She
has no sense of humour,’ snapped Harry, who had disentangled himself from Kate
Wentworth. ‘Here,’ he added, swiping two cream-coloured concoctions from
another-phantom-faced waiter, ‘and don’t ask me what’s in it.’

All I
could tell was that it was delicious, and sipped through a straw it tasted of
coconut and sugar and countries with names I couldn’t spell. We drank one each,
and then Charlotte suggested we try a different drink, and just as we were
setting forth on our third, Harry’s face hardened, for standing talking on the
opposite side of the room, exactly as he had described her to me, was Marina
Hamilton. She was much shorter than I had expected (as the very glamorous
always are),
and
thinner and ten times more alluring. Dressed in a
hot-pink dress with a dazzling string of diamonds around her right wrist and a
knockout cluster of rubies on the third finger of her left hand, she looked a
million and one dollars. How on earth Harry expected her to feel concerned at
my
presence, I could not think. Laughing, drinking, smoking and sparkling —
she moved as though she was
someone.
Even from as far away as we were,
her famous cackle rang out above the music and the chatter. It was ten minutes
before she spotted Harry, and even then she merely flicked her eyes in our
direction and raised a glass. That’s that then, I thought.

‘She’s
coming over!’ hissed Charlotte.

And she
was. Disentangling herself from a gaggle of girls, Marina was heading in our
direction. I watched her, transfixed. Her pink dress was pure Cinderella and
clashed gloriously with her piled-up red hair yet the way she walked was pure
Marilyn.

‘I
thought
it was you,’ she said to Harry, leaning forward and kissing him slowly on
both cheeks. ‘Daddy insisted on this crazy lighting tonight, which tends to make
everyone look as though they’re staring at everyone else when actually all they
want to know is who the cocktail waiters are. Hello, Charlotte. So pleased you
could come. Oh, and you must be Penelope. How smart of you to find such a
simple dress.’

‘Selfridges,’
I stammered.

‘It
matches your Mai Tai. Have another.’

For a
moment I was baffled, then realised that Marina was talking about my drink.
Quite apart from the obvious appeal of her accent, her voice was like her laugh
— rich with smoke and jazz.

‘Trader
Vic’s cocktail recipes are the best,’ she went on, running shiny red nails over
her diamond-studded wrist. ‘My God, what an amazing man he is! Did you know
that when he introduced the Mai Tai to Hawaii a couple of years back, it was so
successful that he ran the world’s supply of rum dry within a year. I think
that’s kinda fabulous. You should see his restaurant in Los Angeles, Charlotte.
We go there on Sunday evenings in the summer and drink Screwdrivers. It’s the
best fun you can have with your clothes on,’ she added, her eyes glinting
wickedly. ‘I recommend getting as drunk as you can, honey. The drink is so darn
good tonight that you’ll wake up tomorrow still high. And if you stick to the
rum drinks, you won’t even feel it. Trust me.

There
was a brief pause.

‘I love
your dress,’ I blurted.

‘Oh,
George bought it for me,’ said Marina, lighting another Lucky Strike. ‘I saw it
in Harrods yesterday afternoon and he got it for me on the sly. He’s kinda like
that.’

‘Sly?’
I asked brightly. Charlotte giggled and Harry smirked. Marina roared.

‘Oh no!
He’s as far from sly as sly could be! I meant he’s the kinda guy who can’t
resist treating me to things, y’know? And boy, is
he funny!
You know,
back in August we were at this swell party in the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo,
and Ari — you
do
know Ari Onassis? No? Well, Ari just could
not
stop
laughing at George. He found him so hilarious. You know, I could not
be
with
a man who didn’t make me wanna shoot myself laughing. ‘She coughed suddenly. a
hacking, unladylike noise, and her eyes watered a little. ‘Nothing like a funny
guy,’ she gasped eventually. ‘It
matters,
doesn’t it, girls?’

She
went on and on, and we listened, through a haze of Mai Tai and jazz. She
name-dropped incessantly, asked no questions about us at all and was
blush-makingly rude to several of her waiters, yet she was impossible to
dislike. I could have listened to her stories for hours — if only for the fact
that she was the first person of my generation that I had met whose life had
not been limited to England. And did she
really
know these people? Was I
standing next to someone who had actually had a proper conversation with Marion
Brando? As she carried on talking —her life in America, her life in London,
which was better? oh she couldn’t say. they were so different but the weather
in Los Angeles was sublime — I had a good chance to study her face. None of her
features was individually remarkable — her eyes too close together, her nose
too upturned and her mouth too wide —yet together they formed a perfect,
coherent, foxlike beauty. To this day. I cannot say exactly how this was
achieved except to suggest that it was something to do with her colouring — her
enviable hair and her skin — milky dear except for a fetching dusting of palest
indigo under each eye confirming her lust for life post-midnight. I could quite
easily see how Harry had fallen under her spell. He stood beside me, watching
her talking but not, as far as I could tell, listening to a word.

‘You
must stay for breakfast,’ Marina concluded, flickering her eyes to Harry for a
split second. ‘Omelettes and champagne.’

‘How
delectable. Your parents certainly know how to throw you a party,’ said
Charlotte.

At this
point a gawky-looking man in braces launched himself at Harry with a cry of
delight and bore him off in the direction of the band.

‘Who
was that?’ demanded Marina. ~ (Knowing who was attending one’s own party was
obviously not
de rigueur.)

‘Horace
Wells. He was at school with Harry,’ muttered Charlotte. ‘Terrible stutter.’ ‘Oh,
Horrie!’
cried Marina. ‘My God! He must’ve married Lavinia Somerset,
after all. Good for him!’

‘I have
no idea,’ said Charlotte.

Marina
barked her wicked, smoky laugh. ‘Aren’t we ridiculous? Listen to us! We sound
just like our mothers, yakking on about who and where and when!’

I felt
a momentary frisson of flattery that Marina was referring to the three of us
together, which was swiftly replaced by horror at what she was saying. The
burst of self-awareness on her part was admirable, but surely she could see
that Charlotte and I were as different from her as were English from American
cigarettes? She drained her glass.

‘You
know what, girls,’ she said conspiratorially. leaning in towards Charlotte and
me, ‘I said to George that I didn’t want a big wedding, no more than five
hundred people. We tried to cut back the numbers even more but it was
impassible.’

I
hardly dared to look sideways for fear of the giggles.

‘You
are the most marvellously well suited pair,’ said Charlotte. Marina sighed and
looked, I thought, not entirely pleased with this.

‘Well,
George is such a traditional kinda guy. He wants everything done just right.
You know he proposed on my birthday?’

‘How
darling of him!’ I managed.

‘A
toast, I think,’ said Charlotte with a wicked smile. ‘To unimaginable
happiness.’