The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (35 page)

‘It was
a funny thing. I arrived for a week in London and invited them both to a dinner
at Harry’s Bar. I couldn’t believe they’d never met before. Two months later,
they were engaged.’

‘Gosh,’
I managed. ‘Did Marina ever talk about — er — anyone — anyone else?’

‘Oh no,
she was dead set on George the moment she met him George confided in me that
there had been some other guy the year before that she had been involved with,
some jazz fan with no cash. I don’t know what happened to him.’

Charlotte,
listening intently, raised her eyebrows. ‘Poor thing,’ she said rather loudly. ‘The
jazz fan, I mean.

‘Ah, he’ll
be OK,’ said Rocky. ‘If you’re into jazz, you gotta get off on being lonely.’

George
plainly believed in keeping his friends close and his enemies closer. How odd
it was that Rocky was unaware of the fact that the jazz fan in question was
sitting between Kate and Helena Wentworth right now.

‘I used to read what they
said about me in the papers, but I’ve learned to turn a blind eye to it
nowadays,’ Helena was saying. ‘And you can’t trust a soul any more! At Marina’s
engagement party I met this awful girl who said she was George’s cousin, then
wouldn’t leave me alone all evening. She kept on and
on
at me —who
designed my dress? what did I think of the party? — until I was ready to
scream. I mean, there’s only a certain amount of time that one’s prepared to
waste with people like that. I told her that I never spoke to the press at
private parties, and the next day she stuck the knife in.
Helena Wentworth
turns orange after eating nothing but carrots for two weeks in order to fit
into Chanel couture dress borrowed from Princess Margaret
was about the
worst of the lot.
Evening Standard.
I’d have thought they’d have better
things to write about.’

‘People
always say that when they can’t imagine for one moment that anything could fill
the public with more excitement than reading about themselves,’ Rocky whispered
to me.

‘…
she was this fat little thing, voice like a foghorn,’ went on Helena.

‘Hope
Allen!’ I cried gleefully. ‘She and I studied Italian together for a time. When
she was twelve, Patrick Reece used to take her to the theatre and offer her
cocaine in the interval.’

Everyone
barked with laughter. Holy Moses, I thought in horror, what was I saying? But
they all loved it. I had offered them something scandalous, something they
could feast on later with friends.

‘Don’t
you just love Paddy Reece?’ boomed a blond man down the other end of the table.
‘I must invite him to the box at Lords this summer.

‘It was
cabbage
not carrots, and the diet lasted a month, not a fortnight, and
actually it was Tania Hamilton she borrowed the dress from, not the princess,’
shouted Kate.

Everyone
roared again and Helena yelled and threw a bread roll at her sister. Harry
looked over to me, raised his eyes and grinned. Rocky clocked the look.

‘He
loves you,’ said Rocky.

‘Oh no.
He’s — well, we’re…’ I faltered, knowing that I was supposed to be
encouraging Rocky to think what he thought. But how could I, when all I wanted
was for him to tell me that I was the prettiest girl in the room and could he
please walk me home? ‘It’s not what you think, he and I,’ I said feebly.

Charlotte
gave me a warning look. ‘They’re crazy about each other,’ she said. ‘But
Penelope’s very un-American, Mr Dakota. You won’t get any gossip out of her.’

Too
right, I thought.

The
next half an hour was a bit of a blur as Rocky talked about James Dean and
Marilyn Monroe and the film he was working on for a big film studio, but I
couldn’t stop thinking about Marina and Harry. Eventually I stood up.

‘I must
find the bathroom,’ I muttered. ‘Please excuse me.

I was
very drunk indeed and it took all my self-control to walk sensibly across the
room and out into the corridor.

‘Ladies’
room is down the stairs, turn left, madam,’ said the man on the door of the
private room.

‘Oh,
thank you so much.’

Grabbing
hold of the banister, I took the downward journey gingerly. Such was the extent
of my concentration that I did not hear the pounding of feet behind me until
they were right upon me. Someone grabbed me by the waist and I yelped.

‘Penelope!’
It was Harry.

‘Help!’
I cried weakly, collapsing against him.

‘You’re
drunk and you’re flirting disgustingly with Rocky Dakota.’

I
giggled. ‘I wasn’t flirting. I don’t know how to flirt. Gosh. Was I flirting?’

‘You’re
not funny.’

‘But
you’re right, I am drunk. Help, Harry, what shall I do?’ I leaned my weight on
the door of the ladies’ bathroom and, finding it not as heavy as I had
anticipated, hurtled inside, heels skidding all over the polished floor. I
collapsed into giggles, made worse by the distinctly unfazed face of the
lavatory attendant, all smiles, soap pump at the ready. Harry followed me in.

‘Sir,
the gentlemen’s room is next door—’

‘I am
quite aware of that,’ said Harry, taking a crisp note out of his pocket and
handing it to her. ‘Get this girl a glass of water, please.’

‘No. I
want to go back to the table. I want to talk to Rocky again.’ I stood up and
lurched forward.

‘Not on
your life. We’re going to sit here until you’re sober.’

I
collapsed onto a brocaded chair next to the basin, head between my hands. ‘I’m
going to be sick.’

‘No you’re
not,’ said Harry ominously.

His
tone must have been pretty severe because I decided against it. We sat together
in the ladies’ room at the Ritz for twenty minutes while I waited for the world
to stop spinning and sipped at a glass of water. I can’t recall exactly what we
talked about, Harry and I, but I know that I felt an odd relief that he was
with me.

‘I hope
Mama’s OK,’ I found myself saying, apropos of nothing.

‘Why on
earth wouldn’t she be?’

‘I don’t
know. She would be appalled if she could see me now.

‘So
would my dear mother,’ admitted Harry. ‘She thinks you’re the most wonderful
creature ever to have entered our lives.’

‘Can’t
think why—’

‘Neither
can I,’ said Harry, utterly without humour.

‘Thank
you very much! I’m the voice of sanity in your houshhold I mean housh-shold I
mean household,’ I spluttered.

He didn’t
need to respond, but when I fell forward he held me for a few minutes,
absent-mindedly stroking my hair and sighing occasionally. I closed my eyes and
felt as though I could fall asleep for ever.

‘Come
on then,’ Harry said eventually. ‘Please, Penelope, for the sake of my pride
and your Johnnie Ray tickets, can’t you just make the smallest effort to
pretend that you find me even a fraction as attractive as that bloody American?’

‘Bloody
Marina is a bloody American!’ I cried.

Harry
shook his head. ‘We’d better get back.’ He looked sad in that moment, sad and
small but so very familiar. I reached out and took his hand; I just couldn’t
help it.

‘Everything
will work out, you know,’ I said earnestly. For, a second Harry gripped my hand
so hard I opened my mouth to howl in pain. He stared at me.

‘Do you
really think so? Do you believe that?’

‘I don’t
know. I think so—’ ‘I’m a fool.’

‘But
you’re good at magic.’

‘Oh,
shut up.’

When we walked back
through the door, people had started to move around the room. The voices were
louder, the smoke was thicker, the atmosphere hotter. Marina was sitting on
some young mans lap, shredding petals from a rose. Charlotte was talking to
Rocky and eating chocolates from a silver bowl.

‘He
loves me not!’ exclaimed Marina loudly.

‘Don’t
you believe it, darling,’ said the young man. They looked up at Harry and me.

‘Well!’
said Marina. ‘Where have you two been? We were about to send out a search
party.’

‘Penelope
was feeling a little faint,’ said Harry, stifling a yawn. Crikey. I thought. He
can’t be
bored.
I looked at Marina, my dislike for her growing with
every moment that passed. She was looking at Harry in that horrible,
challenging way again. Her eyes mocked us. I was now at that liberating stage
that comes after the room has stopped spinning, but before all sense of
self-awareness has been regained. I caught sight of Harry and me in the long
mirror that ran along the back of the room. We were up to her poxy challenge, I
thought. We sat down together, and I poured us a cup of coffee to share.

Charlotte
crouched down next to me for a moment. ‘Well done,’ she said in an undertone. ‘That
was a stroke of genius, vanishing for as long as you did. You got Marina pretty
cross. Where were you, anyway?’

‘Powdering
my nose.’ I giggled. ‘What do you think of Rocky?’

‘The
least boring man in the room,’ said Charlotte finally, and coming from her, I
recognised this as a huge compliment. ‘He’s also the best dressed,’ she added. ‘You
see the cut of his trousers? I’ve never seen anything so wonderfully crafted in
all my born days. And his
tie!’

‘You
talked about nothing but clothes?’

‘Art,
Penelope. The suit that Rocky Dakota is wearing is nothing short of art. It’ll
be hanging, framed, in Dorset House in a hundred years’ time, alongside that
painting of the orange squares.’

I could
believe it, absolutely. Everything about Rocky looked as though it should be
framed. Harry slid up to me and handed me another glass of water.

‘Drink
this,’ he said. Against Rocky, Harry with his careless hair and odd eyes appeared
even more chaotic than usual. Imagine you’re crazy about him, I told myself
firmly. Imagine he’s not just your friend.

‘Darling,’
I whispered, ‘thank you for looking after me.’ I glanced at Marina who was
pretending not to look at us. ‘Move closer,’ I instructed. ‘Marina’s looking.’

Harry
shifted forward in his chair, and I wrapped my hand over his. We stared at each
other and tried not to laugh. He moved even closer.

‘What
can we do,’ I whispered, ‘to get her really annoyed?’

Harry
smiled at me and pushed a strand of hair out of my eyes. For a moment, that
something that had floated in the air in the Long Gallery was back again and I
didn’t want to move away. Ever.

‘I don’t
know, sweetheart. I’m wondering whether I really care any more.

‘What
do you mean?’

‘I
think perhaps if I kissed you…’

He didn’t
need to say anything more.

I stumbled into my bedroom
at Aunt Clare’s, three hours later, and found an envelope on my chest of
drawers. Ripping it open, I found my precious tickets inside with a note from
Harry.
Thank you. I think it worked.

On the
floor above me, I heard him crashing about in his room. I pulled off my lovely
heels and my dress and my stockings and, being the good girl that I am, wiped
off my makeup with some cold cream. My head was spinning again. Before Harry
and I had left the Ritz, Rocky had taken me aside.

‘Perhaps
I should take you out some time. You English kids, you and the magician boy and
your friend Charlotte. When I was a teenager in America, I had a very clear
idea of how English kids should be. You lot come pretty close.’

I
climbed into bed, my mind full of the Ritz and Rocky and Harry and Marina and
champagne and blistered feet and kissed-off Yardley lipstick. Acting had been
so very easy, I said to myself, effortless in fact. There was another thought
that kept on coming back to me, another thought that couldn’t be pushed away
but that I didn’t fully understand until the next day at breakfast when Harry
emerged, rubbing his eyes and smiling. The other thought said that acting was
only ever easy when you weren’t acting at all.

Chapter
15

MARINA
TRAPPED