‘I’m starving,’ Jude told Valent, as she opened up another roll. ‘We didn’t get tea at the races.’
‘Can you pass the booter?’ Valent asked Harvey-Holden.
‘Butter, Valent,’ corrected Bonny. ‘I’m making Valent persevere with my voice coach,’ she told the table.
‘So you said last time,’ snapped Corinna. ‘Is that why he sounds so much more patrician than you?’
‘Thunks.’ Leaning forward, Valent raised his glass to her.
‘He is rather Neanderthal,’ murmured Blanche, turning to Seth. ‘What does Bonny see in him?’
‘Success,’ said Seth.
Bonny was spitting, but decided not to react to Corinna’s patrician crack. She turned back to Harvey-Holden, who’d had two wins at Chepstow that afternoon and was boasting about his all-weather gallop which had cost over a million.
‘What a pity Mrs Wilkinson can’t come back to you,’ murmured Bonny. ‘Why did you let her go in the first place?’
Harvey-Holden’s hand was wrapped round a solid cut-glass tumbler. Next moment it had shattered, spilling water all over the table.
Everyone stopped talking. Harvey-Holden, whose face had gone absolutely dead, had cut himself. Jude jumped to her feet. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ he snarled, wrapping a napkin round his hand. ‘For Christ’s sake, sit down.’
Romy flapped around, crying that it didn’t matter one bit that the glass was one of a family set, and mopping up the water and broken glass. Jude insisted on waddling off to the kitchen to find some plasters. Corinna turned to Valent.
‘At least I can see you now.’ She drained her glass.
‘How’s your tour gone?’ asked Valent.
‘Standing O’s in every city, but I hate living out of suitcases. Only good thing about staying in hotels, you end up with a lot of free bathcaps.’
‘If you cut your hair short, you wouldn’t need to wear a shower cap,’ cried Blanche reprovingly. ‘It would suit you, long hair’s so ageing. Why don’t you try Shumi in Britten Street?’
When Corinna didn’t answer, Blanche smiled across at Valent. ‘Have you remembered when we met?’
‘With Sampson Bancroft at Downing Street.’
‘Oh, you knew Sampy. Wasn’t he charismatic?’
‘I knew Sampy,’ said Corinna, Cleopatra-majestic, helping herself to more red. ‘He came backstage and asked me out to dinner. I would have gone but I’d only known Seth a few months, we were playing the Marquise de Merteuil and Valmont and were still in the white heat stage, so I’m afraid poor Sampy got the brush-off. He was furious, I don’t think it had ever happened to him before. After that he was never off the telephone, pestering. He came to all my first nights.’
Trixie was laughing openly.
‘You deserve another roast potato,’ she whispered to Corinna, ‘well done.’
Blanche was incandescent with rage.
‘I don’t believe any of that, Sampy had no need to pester.’
‘Perhaps he wasn’t getting it at home or away,’ said Corinna rudely.
Jude had returned to the table. Although blood was seeping through the napkin round his hand, Harvey-Holden curtly refused any plasters. Valent, unable to get H-H’s murderous expression out of his mind, pushed Jude’s chair in for her and found her surprisingly congenial to talk to. She had followed his career and congratulated him on his Iron Man invention.
‘It changed my life, does all my ironing when H-H’s owners come to stay and my clothes, as you can imagine, are quite large.’ She laughed, so Valent did, adding, ‘I got to know your father well when we were on the Aid to Exports Board.’
Her mother, Jude then told him, had ended her days so happily in one of Valent’s care homes.
‘Your Bonny’s so lovely and doing so well. Must be wonderful for her having you as a partner, so she can be choosy about the roles she takes and doesn’t have to worry about money.’
‘You’ve done the same for H-H,’ said Valent.
‘I hope so.’ Jude looked very sad for a moment. ‘I hope he’ll be less likely to wander, if he feels secure and his horses are doing well and he can be choosy like Bonny about owners.’
‘That was a very extreme reaction to Bonny asking him about Mrs Wilkinson. Does he ever talk about her?’
For a second, there was real fear in Jude’s eyes.
‘No, please don’t mention it.’
‘Like Corinna’s hair,’ murmured Valent. ‘Who runs your family business now?’
86
Corinna, divided from Valent by Jude’s vast bulk, ignored by H-H, who clearly preferred listening to Bonny and Martin, irritated by Blanche, who, in revenge for Corinna’s Sampson-baiting, was deliberately chatting up Seth, helped herself to more red as she boiled up for a row.
Martin was telling Bonny about the War on Obesity.