‘Perhaps you’ve drunk too much?’ he said.
Bart shook his head. ‘Nerves.’
Jonathan offered him a cigarette and he took it with trembling hands. Wedding jitters, him? Really?
Bettina hadn’t needed a year to make up her mind after all. She agreed to the marriage after confessing to making a terrible mistake with Francis; she’d gone all the way with him, desperate to prove that it would be an agreeable act after all, but of course it wasn’t.
‘It was horrible,’ she told him afterwards, her eyes puffy and mascara-streaked. ‘I just lay there like a… like a bloody turkey – don’t you dare laugh – and I felt absolutely nothing, except for pain – of course it hurt, I expected it to hurt, but in that pain-pleasure way that women are always whispering about. And he was just there, looming over me with this awful vapid expression. Don’t laugh!’ Her brows were knitted but there was that spark of mirth in her eyes that never really went away; even in the midst of genuine pain – and it was genuine – Bettina was still trying to be funny. ‘Well, it’s my own fucking fault, isn’t it?’
‘Enough of this nonsense,’ he told her, squeezing her cod of a hand, ‘before you get yourself in real trouble. Marry me.’
She frowned thoughtfully, picking dry skin off her lip. ‘Get on your knees and do it properly. I’m serious.’
‘All right,’ he said, getting down on his knees.
‘I know marriage is a farce and all that,’ she said, ‘but I fear that if we’re too frivolous about it, it’ll be a bad omen.’
‘Right you are,’ he said, pulling off his father’s Eton ring and holding it out to her. ‘Will you marry me?’
‘Will you get a proper ring?’
‘Naturally. I’ll go and buy one tomorrow.’
‘Can I choose it?’
‘Yes. Yes, you can choose it.’
She nodded, brow still tense. ‘All right. Let’s get married.’
Bart drove to Wadley the very next day and asked Montgomery for his daughter’s hand in marriage, telling the man in a proud voice that he had loved her since childhood and had been waiting only for his stage career to take off before proposing so that he’d be in a secure, solid financial position, as befitting a suitor.
‘Stage career?’ Monty sneered. ‘Hobby, you mean.’
Bart opened his mouth, about to inform the git that his income was more than adequate, actually, as well as his prospects, seeing as he’d recently been scouted by a henchman of Universal Studios and might soon be acting in a Hollywood movie alongside none other than Mary Pickford (none of this true). Monty fortunately didn’t give him the chance to speak: ‘I don’t understand why you’d wait for your “career” to take off when you’re set to inherit your father’s estate upon marrying.’
Bart didn’t even bother asking the man how he knew this detail because of course he knew, with his mother constantly dishing out family business to Venetia and Venetia inevitably passing it all on, the pair of them like scuzzy old hags sat open-legged among the sea spray, ripping the spines out of haddocks, gossip gossip, whisper whisper. ‘I wished to make my own money first,’ he told Monty, struggling to keep his tone calm, ‘to prove to myself that I could. I thought you’d appreciate that, being a self-made man.’
Monty smiled with apparent good nature. ‘Oh, but I do. I just wonder if Bettina knows about the provisions of your inheritance.’
Bart looked down at his tea, wishing it were whisky. Monty was a shrewd man. Of course Bart was thinking of his inheritance, he’d be a fool not to, but it wasn’t his sole motive and what’s more, he’d never treated it like some dirty secret. ‘Yes, she knows.’ Through gritted teeth. ‘She’s my closest friend, I tell her everything.’
‘Friend?’ said Monty. ‘That’s a queer way to refer to the woman you wish to marry.’ Monty tilted his head slightly and looked at him – through him. It was the same way he’d always looked at him; a funny look – yes, a queer look – consisting of thoughtful intrigue and cynical amusement. When the little fairy realises what he is I shall be the first to throw him a party, haha.
Bart met his eye unwaveringly. ‘It’s true, though; she is my closest friend. And I happen to be in love with her. I’m a very lucky man. Or I will be if I gain your permission. Do I gain your permission, sir?’
Monty’s mouth collapsed into a slippery grin, his moustache seeming to come alive like a small forest-floor-dwelling animal. ‘You do, Bart. I think it a most agreeable match, actually, with its own peculiar conveniences.’ Another glimmer of some hidden knowledge in his eyes. Such a gloating, omniscient shit – how did Bettina put up with him? Then his face pouched up in thought. ‘I just wonder whether you can…’ He trailed off and was silent for a while, his face still scrunched up with all his droll ponderousness, and then he waved the thought away. ‘Anyway, you have my consent.’
Bart stood up and shook Monty’s hand, making sure to squeeze hard, like a man, a real man. ‘I’d better go and impart the good news to Venny,’ said Monty, his eyebrows going up on ‘good’ like apostrophes, and that was that.
Bettina still had her doubts. She came to his place (he was renting a flat in Bedford Square now) and paced around, the ever-present cigarette trailing urgent wisps of smoke, seeking reassurance that they were doing the right thing. But then. Aha. But then – Bettina met a woman called Gertrude at one of Cousin Tuna’s big dinners, and a stinker of a crush was born. Bettina met Gertrude regularly for lunch or shopping – just friends, Gertrude being a notorious cock-hungry tart. But nursing this crush prompted her to reflect on her predilection. ‘I’ve never felt about a man the way I feel about Trude,’ she told Bart. ‘And in my heart of hearts, I know I never will.’
Took her long enough.
Jonathan touched his arm and he opened his eyes. ‘I’ve got something for nerves, if you like,’ he said, glancing out of the window at the chauffeur, who was still wiping sick off the car. ‘Willy!’ he called, and the chauffeur’s head popped into view.
‘Sir?’
‘I wish to talk to the groom in private. If you’ll be so good as to go over there and have a cigarette.’ Willy touched his cap and walked off towards a grassy clearing full of crumbling sheep turds. Jonathan went in his pocket and brought out a small vial filled with white powder. He held it out between thumb and finger and looked at Bart inquisitively. ‘You know what this is?’
‘I believe I do,’ said Bart.
‘Well?’
‘I wouldn’t normally but it does seem that my situation calls for a little something.’
‘Hold out your hand.’
Bart held out his hand, palm up.
‘The other way.’
Jonathan prised the vial’s tiny cork out with his teeth and tapped some out onto the back of Bart’s hand. ‘Have you done this before?’ The cork was still between his teeth and the words came out garbled. Ha you done is ahore?
‘No.’ Bart pressed a finger to one nostril and snorted up the powder with the other. It shot up like hot sand.
‘Don’t tell Bettina,’ said Jonathan, tipping some out onto his knee and then bending his head down while simultaneously bringing his knee to his face and snorting it up. He blinked, sniffing, and then licked his finger and wiped away the chalky residue from his black trousers.