Night Over Water - Ken Follett [80]
Opposite the princess, in the other window seat on this side, was the movie star Lulu Bell. Diana had seen her in lots of films: My Cousin Jake, Torment, The Secret Life, Helen of Troy and many others had come to the Paramount Cinema in Oxford Street, Manchester. But the biggest surprise was that Mark knew her. As they were settling into their seats, a strident American voice had called out: “Mark! Mark Alder! Is that really you?” and Diana had turned around to see a small blond woman like a canary swooping on him.
It turned out they had worked together on a radio show in Chicago years ago, before Lulu was a big star. Mark had introduced Diana, and Lulu had been very sweet, saying how beautiful Diana was and how lucky Mark had been to find her. But naturally she was more interested in Mark, and the two of them had been chatting ever since takeoff, reminiscing about the old days when they were young and short of money and lived in flophouses and stayed up all night drinking bootleg liquor.
Diana had not realized that Lulu was so short. In her films she seemed taller. Also younger. And in real life you could see that her hair was not naturally blond, as Diana’s was, but dyed. However, she did have the chirpy, pushy personality she displayed in most of the movies. She was the center of attention even now. Although she was talking to Mark, everyone was looking at her: Princess Lavinia in the corner, Diana opposite Mark, and the two men on the other side of the aisle.
She was telling a story about a radio broadcast during which one of the actors had left, thinking his part was over, when in fact he had one line to speak right at the end. “So I said my line, which was: Who ate the Easter cake? And everybody looked around—but George had disappeared! And there was a long silence.” She paused for dramatic effect. Diana smiled. What on earth did people do when things went wrong during radio shows? She listened to the radio a lot but she could not remember anything like this happening. Lulu resumed. “So I said my line again: Who ate the Easter cake? Then I went like this.” She lowered her chin and spoke in an astonishingly convincing gruff male voice. “I think it must have been the cat.”
Everyone laughed.
“And that was the end of the show,” she finished.
Diana remembered a broadcast during which an announcer had been so shocked at something that he said, “Jesus H. Christ!” in astonishment. “I heard an announcer swear once,” she said. She was about to tell the story, but Mark said: “Oh, that happens all the time,” and turned back to Lulu, saying: “Remember when Max Gifford said Babe Ruth had clean balls, and then couldn’t stop laughing?”
Both Mark and Lulu giggled helplessly over that, and Diana smiled, but she was beginning to feel left out. She reflected that she was rather spoiled: for three months, while Mark had been alone in a strange town, she had had his undivided attention. Obviously that could not go on forever. She would have to get used to sharing him with other people from now on. However, she did not have to play the part of audience. She turned to Princess Lavinia, sitting on her right, and said: “Do you listen to the wireless, Princess?”
The old Russian woman looked down her thin beaked nose and said: “I find it slightly vulgar.”
Diana had met sniffy old ladies before, and they did not intimidate her. “How surprising,” she said. “Only last night we tuned in to some Beethoven quintets.”
“German music is so mechanical,” the princess replied.
There would be no pleasing her, Diana decided. She had once belonged to the most idle and privileged class the world had ever seen, and she wanted everyone to know it, so she pretended that everything she was offered was not as good as what she had once been used to. She was going to be a bore.
The steward assigned to the rear half of the aircraft arrived to take orders for cocktails. His name was Davy. He was a small, neat, charming young man with fair hair, and he walked the carpeted aisle