by Cathy Kelly
‘She’s fine,’ Mercedes said, taking a protesting Claudia away from her mother. ‘We’ll go to the common and play. Won’t we, ma cherie?’ Mercedes said in baby-speak to Claudia.
The baby’s eyes lit up at the attention.
She looked so adorable in her red woollen cardigan and blue spotty dungarees. ‘Go with Ruth from next door, won’t you?’ said Hannah. You never knew what sort of weirdo would approach a young girl with a pushchair. She’d become paranoid about security and felt much safer when the next-door nanny went walking with Claudia, Mercedes and her charge, a one-year-old bruiser named Henry who was training Claudia how to have terrible tantrums one minute and smile angelically the next.
‘Perhaps we should get a dog, a guard dog,’ Hannah had said worriedly to Felix when they moved to the house in Clapham. Claudia wasn’t even born at the time and Hannah had read a terrible story about a woman who’d had to run away from a crazed man in a park near her home when she was wheeling her twin boys out.
‘You’re such a worrier,’ Felix had remarked, patting her belly. ‘We’re not Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, you know. Nobody is going to kidnap our baby.’
Even so, Hannah did her best to ensure that when Mercedes went out with Claudia, they went with somebody else. She wasn’t frightened of meeting someone scary when she was on her own with Claudia: mainly because Hannah knew she’d savage anyone, man or beast, who tried to harm a hair of her precious baby’s head. Mother love could be a terribly violent thing.
Claudia grizzled a bit as Hannah put on her red woollen hat and matching coat. It was a glorious Friday in April but Hannah was paranoid about chills and it was a bit windy out on the common. Convinced that Claudia was buttoned-up safely from both the wind and mad men on the common, she let them off, reminding Mercedes to phone her in the hairdresser’s if there was a problem.
It was wonderful to have a few precious hours to herself, she thought as she let herself out of the house ten minutes later. The sun shone on the small terraced white houses on the road, and the scent of next door’s yellow jonquils filled Hannah’s head as she shut the door. Their house wasn’t the large, airy Edwardian mansion in Chelsea that Felix had promised her when he’d persuaded her to live in London. There was nothing airy about it. Tall and narrow, there was a basement kitchen, two pretty reception rooms on the ground floor, and three pokey bedrooms on the second floor. If the attic hadn’t been floored, Hannah didn’t know where Felix would have put his clothes.
Still, it was a pretty little house and would be even prettier if they had any money to spend on doing it up. They’d had the living room wallpapered in an apple green and cream patterned paper Felix had fancied and it had worked out so expensive that they’d been forced to abandon plans to redo the dark red kitchen.
It all came back to money. Felix hadn’t worked for two months now and, due to his reckless spending when he was working, they were a bit strapped for cash. Which was one of the reasons why Hannah wasn’t keen on the idea of tonight’s party.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Felix had said crossly. ‘This sort of entertaining is vital for my career. Bill’s bringing this important casting director with her. She could do things for me.’
Hannah knew when she was beaten. Felix’s career was everything, especially since hers was on the backburner. But they needed to cut back on something. Mercedes was an expense they could do without. Hannah hadn’t wanted an au pair at all, saying she’d prefer to look after Claudia by herself, but Felix had insisted that people ‘like them’ always had some sort of help. She could get out more and maybe go back to work, he’d suggested.
However, an intense desire to be with Claudia meant her work was confined to two mornings a week working at a local charity shop, which her mother had insisted was good for getting her out of the house.
‘You don’t want to turn into one of those wives who have no life outside the four walls of your kitchen,’ Anna Campbell had said wisely. ‘Without my job, I’d have been ga-ga years ago.’
She spent an enjoyable hour in the hairdresser, reading magazines she wouldn’t normally buy and savouring a cup of sugary coffee. The small local salon always did a wonderful job of washing and blowdrying her hair. Felix went to Nicky Clark for his streaks but they couldn’t both afford to go there.
‘To think I believed this was natural,’ Hannah laughed, running her fingers through his silky blond hair the day she discovered he had it professionally coloured.
‘I was very fair as a child,’ Felix protested, sounding hurt at the notion that Hannah felt he wasn’t really the gilded creature she’d married.
She kissed him affectionately. ‘I won’t tell anyone, I promise.’
He’d had his hair done the day before and was now out meeting Bill in the Groucho Club, looking as if he was successful and gainfully employed instead of overdrawn and worried. Bill was a terrible woman for boozing and Hannah prayed she’d stay off the Black Label until she got to the party. Otherwise, she’d be pinching men’s bottoms at a rate of knots. Bill went through men faster than Claudia went through nappies. At least if she was bringing a famous and influential casting director to the party, she would be on her best behaviour. Hopefully.
On impulse, Hannah stopped at the chemist on the way home and treated herself to pillarbox red lipstick and matching nail varnish. She’d been very drab lately, slopping around in her old threadbare jeans and never bothering much with make-up or such niceties as painting her nails. Some days it was a miracle that she managed to brush her hair. Felix was such a sweetie, he never complained when she came to bed in a crumpled giant T-shirt and socks instead of some beautifully ironed silken slip of a thing designed to be whipped off.
But then he knew how tired she’d been after having Claudia. Caring for a baby who refused to sleep at night for more than two hours at a time until the last week, had knocked the stuffing out of Hannah. Sex and a beauty routine seemed to matter very little when you were so tired you could barely see straight.
Tonight, she’d remind Felix of the glamorous, sensual woman he’d married, Hannah vowed as she paid for the cosmetics. A smile lifted the corners of her generous mouth as she thought about it. And when the party was over, she’d bring him upstairs, cross her fingers that Claudia would sleep, and seduce him. Slowly, sexily, the way he loved.
‘What are they coming for?’ demanded Felix, pulling Hannah into the kitchen as soon as she had led Freddie and Michelle from next door into the sitting room and gone off to get them a glass of wine.
‘They’re our neighbours,’ Hannah whispered angrily, ‘and unless you want warfare along the road, you have to ask neighbours to parties. If Bill gets twisted and starts running up and down the street naked with a glass of whiskey in her hand and a rose up her bum, it’s better to have the neighbours on our side, don’t you think?’
Felix scowled. He hadn’t a leg to stand on. Bill had arrived home with him from the Groucho Club, much later than he’d promised and minus the famous casting director. Felix had been mildly drunk (he was far too ambitious to ever let his bleached hair down) but Bill was completely plastered, no matter how she tried to hide it. Hannah was an expert at gauging drunkenness. She’d shoved a cup of strong coffee into Bill’s hand, sent her into the garden to cool off, and had made Felix feed her a plate of the Spanish ham that the caterers were taking out of refrigerated packs. That had been an hour ago. Now the guests were beginning to trickle in, starting with their neighbours who all had small children and liked going to parties early because toddler alarm calls at five every morning meant they were too exhausted to stay out late.
‘Circulate,’ hissed Hannah to her handsome husband, who was now admiring his reflection in a shiny silver platter.
‘None of my people are here yet,’ he replied, adjusting the collar on the chocolate brown DKNY shirt that went so well with his eyes and golden skin.
‘Do you mean that all the neighbours are my boring friends and that the thrilling act-or t
ypes, who won’t get here for hours, are your friends?’ Hannah said angrily.
‘Keep your hair on,’ Felix said. ‘I’ll mingle. Just rescue me if I get stuck.’
Hannah followed him in with the wine and watched as he greeted Freddie and Michelle as if he’d been counting the hours till their arrival. Michelle flushed pink when he kissed her hello like she was Claudia Schiffer’s prettier little sister instead of a clever, rounded banker who moaned to Hannah that she was fed up to the teeth with Weight Watcher’s spaghetti.
‘Freddie!’ said Felix warmly. ‘When are you going to stop bullshitting me and give me that game of squash? You promised to fit me in.’
He was so charming, Hannah reflected, watching the tableau. People adored him; he could light up a room, not to mention what he could do to a woman’s eyes. No wonder he was so magical on film.
As the best, if somewhat bittersweet, review had put it: ‘Felix Andretti has a screen presence which draws your eyes to him. If he’s on the screen, you’re watching this magnetic man. It is star quality, but is it acting quality? Time will tell, but keep an eye out for his name.’
Hannah had been horrified by the review. And scared. Her great fear had always been that Felix was such a beautiful creature he’d succeed to a certain level within the business but no further, simply because he wasn’t a good enough actor despite his matinee-idol looks. With his lofty dreams of both critical and commercial success, it would kill him. This review seemed to confirm her fears, but Felix and Bill had been in raptures over it.
‘Acting, schmacting,’ Bill had crowed as they enjoyed a celebratory lunch in a chi-chi bistro on the King’s Road. ‘You’ve got star quality, babe. That’s what this business is all about.’
The condensation ran down the white wine glasses as Hannah stood inside the door and watched Felix ooze star quality.
Freddie and Michelle giggled like schoolkids at his jokes, as did the other people in the room who’d gravitated towards him instinctively.
‘Were you taking those glasses of wine to anybody in particular?’ demanded the waitress.
A & E Catering had come up with two waitresses, one competent and friendly, the other a surly girl who wasn’t much older than sixteen and looked as if she’d been dragged away from a particularly brilliant episode of Friends to waitress at this boring party.
It was Ms Surly speaking.
‘It’s OK,’ Hannah said, smiling in the hope that the girl might summon up a smile in return. ‘I’ll bring them.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said the girl before stomping off.
‘Darling,’ called Felix, giving her a look she recognized as his ‘rescue me’ plea. ‘Come here with the wine before we all expire from thirst.’
She made her way over to the group and Felix handed out the drinks before wrapping his free arm around her waist in a gesture as much of pride as possession.
‘Isn’t she wonderful?’ he said warmly. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without her.’
‘Wonderful,’ chorused the Felix acolytes.
It was Hannah’s turn to flush. She hated it when he did that, made her feel like a possession on display. She remembered a party at one actor’s house when she’d been heavily pregnant and Felix had pushed her round in front of him like a talisman, as if to say ‘Aren’t I a wonderful family man?’
Of course, he couldn’t really have been doing that. She’d been such a slave to her hormones at the time that she’d discounted her initial notion as pregnancy blues.
Yet it felt like it now. She was a part of Felix’s resumé, along with his stint in badly financed theatre shows, his year in America and the rep Hamlet in modern clothes set in Chicago. Her place on the CV was that of sweet Irish wife who looked after their adorable little daughter and their cosy Clapham home. The domestic bliss section of every actor’s life, without which they ‘simply wouldn’t be able to cope’, as they told every interviewer.
‘I must answer the doorbell,’ she said hurriedly.
‘Did it ring?’ asked Michelle in surprise. ‘I thought yours made the same noise as ours, and I didn’t hear it.’
Blessedly, the bell rang loudly.
‘There it goes again,’ Hannah lied.
Freddie laughed at Michelle. ‘One sip of wine and she doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going!’
Hannah escaped to let the newcomers in and to rest her hot forehead against the cool wall in the upstairs bathroom. There must be something wrong with her. She checked on Claudia and Mercedes. The baby was asleep, cherubic with those naughty eyes closed.
‘Would you like something to eat?’ she asked Mercedes, who looked shocked at the idea.
After nine, Mercedes never touched more than a crispbread. Which was why she was so slim, Hannah thought, a hand straying to her tummy, which had never quite regained its once-enviable slimness after Claudia’s birth.
The buffet went down a treat, along with the endless bottles of Roda wine. The acting fraternity turned up en masse and went through the food like a plague of locusts, especially enjoying knocking back the after-dinner champagne that Felix had apparently ordered without telling Hannah.
‘Good drink is the mark of a good party,’ breathed one of Felix’s pals drunkenly as he helped himself to another red wine-sized glass of champagne with the eagerness of a wino opening a new bottle of Thunderbird.
A waste of a good party, Hannah thought bleakly as she surveyed the scene of destruction that was the kitchen and thought of how much money the whole thing had cost them. Every time another cork popped, she winced and remembered their overdraft. It would have been bearable if Bill’s important friend had turned up to admire Felix and subsequently cast him in some career-making TV show or film. But she hadn’t arrived and now that it was after eleven, it didn’t seem likely she would.
The guests were almost all hard-up talent rather than wealthy, powerful behind-the-scenes people. The most powerful person in the room turned out to be a beautifully preserved actress who seemed to have been in every British film made in the previous ten years and who was clearly there because she fancied Felix.
To Hannah’s relief, he didn’t appear interested and even bitchily confided in her that the actress’s gorgeous young husband was in fact gay.
‘At her age, it’s the best she can get,’ he’d said dismissively.
Hannah was so consoled by the knowledge that Felix wasn’t interested in the other woman, that she never said a word about how ageist and sexist his remarks were.
She noticed, sourly, that he spent ages talking quietly in a corner with Sigrid, a Danish actress who’d had a small part in his last TV series. A taut and lean brunette with short spiky hair and a personality to match, she was amazingly dressed in tight suede trousers under which her body seemed to lean towards Felix as they stared deliberately over each other’s shoulders, talking fiercely.
Hannah chatted to other guests, laughed at old jokes and poured out wine, all the while watching her husband out of the corner of her eye. He and Sigrid never even looked at each other but there was something between them, some unmistakable sense that they were closer than mere colleagues. But they weren’t touching or anything. Was she imagining it?
Even when someone spilled a glass of red on the tapestry cushion that she’d meant to hide because it wasn’t Scotch-guarded, Hannah didn’t mind. She was too busy watching Felix, feeling nervous knots in her stomach.
When she returned from rescuing the cushion with a pound of salt in the kitchen, Felix was chatting to another group of people, one arm loosely round the shoulders of a woman she knew he disliked. Perhaps that was the clue, she thought with the shock of sudden comprehension.
He let himself publicly touch people he didn’t like and ostentatiously refrained from touching anyone he did.
She was relieved when Sigrid left shortly afterwards with the man she’d arrived with. But the nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach wouldn’t go away.
‘Everything all right, d
arling?’ Felix asked casually when Sigrid had gone, patting Hannah’s arm.
‘Fine,’ she said.
He smiled almost maniacally at her: she was tired of the party and he was on a high, thrilled that these people had come to see him, buoyed up on a mixture of drink and excitement.
He kissed her on the cheek and was gone, flirting, charming, enchanting everyone. The golden boy who captured every eye in the room.
By ten past twelve, she was exhausted from the combination of being hostessy with worrying that the party would upset Claudia, whom she’d checked on all evening. Most of the partygoers had gone except for the hard-core acting fraternity who were used to staying up late and who were now sitting round the kitchen table, stuck into the Scotch Bill had unearthed behind the tea towels in a kitchen cupboard.
When Hannah went into the kitchen after saying goodbye to some guests, the hard-core were happily ripping apart a period television series in which none of them had been given parts.
‘Derivative crap,’ sneered one.
‘I hate that corset and yes-your-ladyship stuff,’ said Bill. ‘I mean, didn’t they have sex in Jane Austen’s time? You’d never bloody know it.’
Hannah wondered if anyone would notice if she sloped off to bed.
Claudia had slept throughout the whole thing, in spite of the odd rowdiness, so she’d be awake as usual at half five. Hannah knew Felix wouldn’t have the energy to get up to her, and Mercedes, who’d been wonderful all evening and had taken Claudia’s cot into her room to make sure she was all right, was deservedly having the day off.
That was it, Hannah decided. She’d nip into Mercedes’ room and remind the poor girl that she’d take Claudia in the morning so Mercedes could have a lie-on. Felix must be in the loo or something, but he’d figure out she had gone to bed and would look after his guests without her.
She tiptoed upstairs, deeply grateful that the party was over. It had taken so much planning, mainly because of the inefficiencies of the caterers. And she’d been cleaning the house for a week. Mercedes was hopeless when it came to putting on rubber gloves and doing things with cream cleanser. She’d shuddered expressively when Hannah had even suggested it.