Celebration. Rosie Thomas
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ceiling looked out over the lawns at the back to the circle of trees beyond. Charles was standing alone in the middle of the room, his blond head on one side. He was listening to the music that filled the magnificent room.
His eyes widened when he saw Bell, and then he smiled.
‘Every time I see you again, you look more beautiful.’ He held out his hands.
‘Shall we dance?’
Bell stepped into his arms and he swept her away across the gleaming floor. His dancing was just like his outer self, dominating, assured and accomplished. Bell had always been forced to be the man at dancing classes, and usually she surrendered herself to being led with the greatest difficulty. Yet now she closed her eyes and let everything slip away except his arms, his mouth against her hair, and the music. The sound rippled around them and they moved faster, tracing arabesques over the shining floor. They might have been a single body, Bell thought, as they swept in a wide arc and Charles’s arms pulled her closer and closer. I’m here, now, she told herself. I’m so happy. I don’t want this moment ever to end.
‘Charles? What can you be doing?’ The voice from the doorway was Hélène’s, of course. The dancers sprang guiltily apart and turned to watch her as she glided down the room. The dowager was wearing a stiff little blue satin dress, and her neck and fingers were loaded with diamonds. Hélène’s eyes missed nothing, and she made Bell feel uncomfortably aware of the absence of a bra under her own pale violet shirt.
‘I understand that I am to wish you a happy birthday, Miss er.’
‘That’s right.’ Bell smiled, undeterred.
‘That’s right,’ said Juliette, coming in to join them. ‘And we are going to have a brilliant party to celebrate it.’
Then the doorbell, a real bell that swung at the end of a system of levers, clanged sonorously across the hall.
‘Hooray, people,’ said Juliette, and danced away to open the door.
Soon the guests were pouring in in what seemed like throngs. Bell recognized several wine-trade faces, and spotted the gossip-column good looks of a raffish playboy who owned a nearby estate. Juliette’s friends in jeans and dungarees surged in amongst them, mingling with the dark suits of the wine shippers and the haute couture of their wives.
It was an impressive achievement of Juliette’s, thought Bell, to do all this at less than a day’s notice.
The volume of noise and laughter swelled to fill the grand room, competing with the soft music and the clink of glasses.
Bell stood in the middle of it all, thanking everyone for their birthday good wishes, sipping her champagne, dazed with happiness. She tried to stop her eyes from following Charles around the room by concentrating hard on the talk around her.
‘How enchanting that you are so knowledgeable as well as so decorative,’ said the playboy. His wife, a leggy blonde draped in Missoni, smiled indulgently.
More champagne, and the music throbbing louder.
‘… this vintage. Another month like this, and …’
‘… with three blue blobs in the middle of the canvas. What could I say?’
‘… Bell, I want you to meet my friend Cecilie …’
‘… did you say twenty thousand? …’
‘… absolutely impromptu of course, like everything my daughter does, but rather fun, don’t you think?’
Then two or three couples started to dance, and more and more joined in.
Charles materialized at her side and she slipped gratefully back into his arms as if she belonged there.
Bell began to feel dizzy, with surprise as well as with champagne. She had been so utterly sure that she never wanted to fall in love again.
She had torn herself away from Edward, and dammed up the flood of fear that had threatened to engulf her. Bell nodded, dreamily, her head safely on Charles’s shoulder. She had been right to be afraid. Edward had been the wrong man. Now she had stumbled miraculously, thrillingly – into the arms of the right one.
There were no doubts this time, and no fears. So she could use all her strength, her certainty, to help Charles.
The waltz rippled on and they clung together, oblivious of Hélène’s stare and the smiles of the other dancers.
‘There’s only one thing,’ she whispered to Charles, ‘to spoil it. Having to leave you tomorrow. There’s still so much I want to know about you.’
He answered, fiercely, ‘As soon as the vintage is over, we will be together again. Somehow. I promise.’
Later, on Charles’s arm, Bell found herself in the supper room. There was a group of people sitting at a round table. Afterwards Bell remembered the playboy and his wife, Hélène and Juliette, a red-faced jolly man who was introduced as a Bordeaux négociant, and Jacopin leaning over to fill glasses with yet more champagne.
‘Tell me, Miss Farrer,’ said the jolly man, ‘after you have summed up Château Reynard, where do your travels take you next?’
So Bell, with everyone’s eyes on her, was saying It’s very exciting. I’m going to California, to the Napa Valley. To stay with Valentine Gordon, of Dry Stone Wineries.
After a tiny, horrified gasp from Juliette a frozen silence seemed to radiate outwards from Bell to seize the whole room. It stretched on and on. Bewildered, Bell glanced from face to face and they all seemed to stare straight back with hostile eyes.
Then she turned helplessly to Charles but he wouldn’t even look at her. Instead he stood up stiffly and walked away.
A second later Juliette and the playboy started talking, both at once and too loudly.
Bell couldn’t speak. She pushed her chair back with a clatter, excused herself and began to look wildly around for Charles. He had gone, but another hand caught her arm. It was Juliette.
‘Leave him, Bell.’ She was pulling Bell away, away from the stares and whispers.
‘Come with me. There’s something I have to tell you.’
Bell followed her upstairs with leaden feet. They sat down facing each other in the spoon-backed armchairs. Juliette wrenched the cork out of a cognac bottle and slopped the brandy into two glasses. Her speech was already slurred and she was frowning to keep the room in focus, but she said defiantly, ‘I’ve got to have a drink before I can face talking about it all again.’
Bell sat frozen in her chair, unable to imagine what horrible story she could be about to hear. Dimly, as if from another life, she heard the music stop abruptly as the party came to an end downstairs. She closed her eyes but her head swam sickeningly and she opened them again to see Juliette’s white face.
What had happened?
‘Charles and Catherine had a child,’ she said abruptly, not looking at Bell.
‘A boy, Christophe. He was perfect and we – all of us – adored him.’
Bell waited, her heart thumping, dreading what Juliette was going to say. She was horrified to see that huge tears were pouring down her friend’s face and splashing down on to her fingers clasped around the brandy glass.
‘He died. Just after his second birthday. Oh, Bell, he was so innocent – to have died like that. He was blond, you know, just like us. His head was covered with little flat gold curls like … like wedding rings.’ She was sobbing now, her shoulders heaving. Bell knelt beside her and took her in her arms.
‘Juliette, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she whispered helplessly into the mass of blonde waves. Juliette took a deep breath, blinked, then rubbed at her face with a screwed-up handkerchief.
‘I won’t cry any more. Now I’ve said it. It was meningitis, you see, and