Unguarded Moment

Would she come and see them, he had said, because he had a proposition to put to her. Alix had hesitated at first, her instinct telling her that her mother wouldn’t want her to go. But her curiosity proved too strong in the end.

She could remember the uncertainty she had felt, standing at the foot of the steps for the first time, looking up at the tall Georgian house and wondering if she had the courage to ring the doorbell.

At least she didn’t have to do that any more, she thought, as she fitted her key into the lock, and she was certainly a more confident and self-reliant person than she would have been if she’d gone on with her humdrum little job in a solicitor’s office.

The driver carried her cases in and she thanked him with a tip and a smile he would remember far longer. Then she closed the door and stood looking around her with the usual pang of delight which assailed her every time she entered the house. It was a beautiful hall, broad and spacious, with a broad imposing staircase, and the walls panelled in honey-coloured wood. Bianca had other houses, but this was where she spent most of her time.

‘In spite of everything, England is still the most civilised place to be,’ she was fond of saying in interviews. The only thing she didn’t find civilised was the weather, and as autumn dwindled into winter with rain and fog and frost, she was generally ready to be off to her home in California, or to accept any of the numerous invitations to friends’ villas in Marbella or the South of France.

Alix had seen a lot of the world in the past few years. She had expected to be taken on location when Bianca was filming, but she hadn’t been sure about the trips which were really frivolity. But Bianca had dismissed her misgivings with an impatient wave of her hand. When she travelled, she liked her entourage with her, and that included Alix as well as Edith Montgomery who had been with her all her life, it seemed, fulfilling a variety of roles—a kind of companion-maid-masseuse-dresser-housekeeper rolled into one.

Monty was coming downstairs now, neat in the dark skirt and white tailored shirt she usually wore, and she looked at Alix with her brows raised.

‘So you’re back,’ she observed grudgingly and unnecessarily.

Alix kept her face straight. When she had first come to work here, she had been unnerved by Monty’s inexplicable but thinly veiled hostility. Later, when she became more settled, she had been able to reason it out. Monty wasn’t a young woman. Her face was thin and lined, and she made no attempt to disguise the liberal streaks of grey in her hair. But she had a close relationship with Bianca, and perhaps she thought having her niece working as a secretary and actually living in the house might be a threat to that relationship. Alix had had to walk on eggshells for several months in an attempt to convince Monty that she had nothing to worry about, that although she had accepted the job she wasn’t trying to muscle in on anything else. She supposed she had succeeded up to a point. They had achieved a kind of armed truce, but she had stopped hoping that Monty would regard her with any real warmth or approval.

Now she smiled more widely than she felt inclined to do, and said, ‘Yes, I am. How are things? Any crises during my absence?’

‘We’ve had our ups and downs,’ Monty said drily. ‘But you’re just in time for the row of the year.’

‘Oh, hell!’ Alix was apprehensive. ‘It isn’t the film, surely? It hasn’t fallen through?’

‘No, that’s still very much on the cards. Veronese is coming over here shortly to talk to her about it.’ Monty paused heavily. ‘No, it’s this biography.’

‘Oh?’ Alix’s voice sharpened. This was something she hadn’t foreseen. Before she’d gone away, Bianca had been all for the suggestion that her life story should be written. She had even had boxes of ancient photographs brought down from the attic to look for suitable prints of herself as baby and small child for the inevitable illustrations. ‘What’s gone wrong?’

‘They don’t want her to write it.’ Monty gave a resigned shrug. ‘She thought it would simply be a matter of hiring someone to listen to her talk through her reminiscences, and then ghost them, but now it seems the publishers have commissioned someone—a Liam Brant. Have you heard of him?’

Alix thought she had, but couldn’t remember in what connection.

She said, ‘What has she got against him?’

‘He isn’t her idea. She wanted that girl—the one who did the article about her in Woman of Today. She thought she was simpatico.’

‘It was certainly a very flattering article,’ Alix said drily. ‘I doubt if the same note of unquestioning admiration could be sustained for a whole book. Has she met this Mr Brant? Perhaps he’s simpatico too.’

‘He’s coming here this morning.’ Monty sounded dour. ‘And she says she won’t see him. A nice start that is!’

A nice start indeed, Alix thought resignedly, bidding her holiday goodbye for ever. She was back in the thick of it, and no mistake.

She lifted the dark fall of hair wearily from her neck. ‘If he’s the publishers’ choice, then we may be stuck with him, unless she can come up with a better reason for turning him down than she’d rather it was someone else. And it won’t do to antagonise him. I’ll talk to her.’

‘I wish you would,’ said Monty, and that was an admission coming from her. She sounded tired, Alix thought. Perhaps the last three weeks had been more trying than usual, although after all these years Monty should be used to Bianca’s vagaries. ‘Leave your cases. I’ll get Harris to see to them.’

Harris and his wife occupied a small flat in the basement. They took care of the house when Bianca was away, and when she was in residence, Harris was a total manservant, doing most of the fetching and carrying around the household, but acting as butler when the occasion demanded, while Mrs Harris was a divine cook.

They had worked for Bianca for a long time too, and they seemed impervious to the storms which periodically rocked the household, or perhaps they stayed because the wages were good, and the perfect employer didn’t exist anyway, Alix sometimes thought, amused.

She ran upstairs and paused outside the door of Bianca’s first floor suite, wondering whether to knock. Bianca usually catnapped during the morning, and she hated being caught doing it. But even as Alix hesitated, she heard the unmistakable crash of shattering glass coming from behind the door. She smiled grimly, turned the handle and went into the room.

‘I do hope that wasn’t a mirror,’ she said lightly. ‘I don’t think we can do with seven years’ bad luck.’

It was a vase of flowers. Broken glass, water and sad-looking blooms were strewn across the carpet at Bianca’s feet. Alix thought detachedly that she looked magnificent, even if the flush in her cheeks was caused by temper rather than excitement or good health.

The huge emerald eyes, which had been staring straight ahead, focussed on Alix and sharpened.

Bianca said, ‘So it’s you. Where the hell have you been?’

Alix suppressed a sigh. ‘So nice to be needed,’ she said drily. ‘I’ve been on holiday, in case you’ve forgotten—to Rhodes. Didn’t you get my card?’

‘I may have done,’ Bianca gave an irritable shrug. ‘The girl they sent from the agency has been dealing with the mail. My God, what a mistake that was!’

‘Wasn’t she any good?’ Alix fetched a discarded newspaper from the table beside the chaise-longue and began to gather the broken glass and wilted flowers on to it.

‘Useless. It’s all her fault that this frightful man is coming here this morning. She made the appointment without consulting me. Well, you’ll just have to get rid of him, Alix. Telephone him. Tell him I’m ill—tell him anything. I won’t see him. I won’t!’ There was an hysterical note in Bianca’s voice and Alix glanced up at her, her brows drawing together in a faint frown.

She said equably, ‘Very well. But what shall I say when he asks for another appointment? And he surely will. This is a commission, and he won’t want to lose out.’

Bianca’s perfectly painted mouth twisted sullenly. ‘Oh God, you sound just like Seb! He won’t help at all. He says I’ve agreed that my life story should be written, and the best thing I can do is co-operate.’ She swore viciously. ‘Some public relations man he turned out to be!’

‘He’s one of the best,’ Alix said, faintly amused. ‘And his advice is probably good.’

Bianca gestured wildly. ‘But I don’t want his advice. I just want him to get rid of this terrible man—this Brant.’

Alix retrieved a sliver of glass from the carpet with a certain amount of care.

‘How do you know he’s so terrible? He might be charming. If you met him you might like him.’

‘I would not.’ Bianca made it sound like a solemn vow. ‘He writes the most awful things. He did the Kristen Wallace book last year, and he made her sound like a neurotic bitch.’

‘Well, isn’t she?’ In spite of her care, Alix had cut her finger on a splinter, and she sucked the blood reflectively.

‘Of course,’ Bianca said impatiently. ‘But he had no right to say so.’

Alix hadn’t read the book, but she could remember Bianca doing so with gurgles of enjoyment, and she knew now why the name seemed familiar. The Wallace biography had caused a sensation because it had exploded a myth once and for all. Kristen Wallace had acquired a reputation for playing serious roles in films which relied heavily on prolonged silences and heavy symbolism for their impact. In the book, Kristen had been encouraged to talk about her work, which she had done at length, revealing in the process that she hadn’t, in all probability, understood one word of the deeply significant lines she was called on to say. The real genius, it had been suggested, was Miss Wallace’s dialogue coach. Alix remembered one critic had called the book, ‘A devastating insight into a deeply trivial mind.’ One thing was certain: Kristen Wallace had been a laughing stock afterwards, and she hadn’t made a film since.

‘He’s a hatchet man—a real swine,’ Bianca railed. ‘I don’t want that kind of thing written about me.’

Alix began to smile. She said, ‘That’s hardly likely. You’re not a pretentious idiot like La Wallace.’

‘I don’t want anyone like that poking about in my private life,’ Bianca said with finality.

One answer to that was that there was no aspect of Bianca’s life which could be considered private, but Alix wasn’t brave enough to suggest it. Her affairs, her marriages, and her divorces had all been conducted in the full glare of the publicity spotlight. There could be few details about them that the great reading public didn’t already know, ad nauseam.

‘So you’ll telephone him now,’ Bianca persisted. ‘And when you’ve done that, you can phone Seb and tell him he’s fired.’

‘Just as you say,’ Alix agreed cheerfully. There was no problem about the last instruction. Seb had a fireproof contract, and he was used to Bianca’s tempers. He said they added further colour to life’s rich tapestry.