Broken Barriers E-Book

Barbara Cartland

• Herausgeber: Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: The Eternal Collection
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 316

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The thunderclouds of World War Two are gathering, sweeping away old notions of class. But still in 1938 there are almost insurmountable barriers to love – and not just those of Social rank. In the Highlands, the lovely Skye is determined to marry her penniless childhood sweetheart, Hector, but her hidebound grandfather forbids it. Meanwhile in London's Theatreland, Paris and Cannes, Skye's stepfather Norman worships the voluptuous and volatile actress Carlotta, who is blinded to her own feelings by an infatuation with money, fame and Hector too! Will Skye, Hector, Carlotta and Norman ever grasp happiness? It seems only a fatal accident has the power to seal the lovers' Fate.

Leseprobe

CHAPTER ONE ~1938

Norman Melton sat at his desk fingering the pages of the contract that lay in front of him awaiting his signature.

Abruptly and without looking up, he said,

“Well, we have pulled it off, Johnson.”

“Yes, Sir Norman.”

“You have read it all, I suppose.”

“Yes, Sir Norman.”

“You have made all those corrections that were agreed with Miller?”

“Yes, Sir Norman.”

He picked up his pen.

“This should be marked as a red letter day on all of our almanacs. It is the best deal the Melton Motor Company has ever done or is ever likely to do.”

“Yes, Sir Norman.”

Sir Norman put down his pen with a gesture of exasperation.

“Damn you, Johnson! Cannot you ever say anything but ‘yes’? Send Miller to me. No, wait, I will ring when I want him.”

Johnson, an aggrieved expression on his face, left the room.

Alone Sir Norman rose to his feet and moved to the window. He felt nervy and wondered vaguely to himself why Johnson’s usual monosyllabic manner annoyed him so much today.

He was used to curbing his impatience before his subordinates. He remembered vividly the years when he himself hated the blustering of his superiors.

Johnson, for all his efficiency, was the type of secretary he disliked.

He was deemed indispensable, yet the man’s lack of individuality and personality made his employer long to startle him out of his conventional attitudes,

‘I need a holiday,’ Sir Norman told himself, looking out onto the bustling yard below his office window.

The siren had just gone for luncheon and the men were streaming out of the workshops, struggling into their coats as they did so, taking packets of sandwiches from the pockets or lighting with relief a cigarette after the long hours of abstinence.

High above the buildings was the great sign The Melton Motor Company.

The yard was four stories below him and Sir Norman, watching, felt for a moment as if he, Director and Chairman of this vast Factory, was also the controller of the destiny of each man who worked for him.

‘I am a part of them, one of them,’ Sir Norman tried to tell himself.

But he knew that it was a false illusion. He had grown away from them and was changed now completely from the men who had once been his comrades as he was removed from the life they lived and the work they did.

He was the boss.

He remembered his own feelings when as a young man he had come into the Factory, a small gloomy building it had been then and he had first seen the heavy-moustached, black-coated figure of Edward Buller.

He had little thought then that twenty-nine years later he would be in Buller’s place and that Works would bear his name as the outward sign of his success.

Today was the greatest triumph of all.

He had hardly dared to believe that he would land for his own firm the Government contract for a ‘shadow factory’, but he had accomplished it.

Once the contract waiting on his desk had been signed, the orders would go out for new buildings, new machinery, and for at least five thousand more workers. It was a triumph for which he had been working for nearly three months now.

His Factory was small compared to the other great firms who were bearing their part in the rearmament programme.

There was a dozen other Factories of the same size all over the country. There was no reason why the Melton Motor Company should have been chosen except that its Director had the drive, the originality and the vision that were required if the work undertaken was to be successful.

The Melton Motor Company had been sensationally successful over the last five years.

The shares had risen until the shareholders’ meetings were nothing but a celebration of renewed confidence, congratulations and good wishes.

But the Chairman, on his forty-second birthday, had woken to the fact that he had joined the ranks of bored millionaires.

Only now when the contracts had been passed did Sir Norman realise how greatly he had wanted this new work, how much he had longed to get his teeth into something new and to find an outlet for his activity and drive, which had been wasting itself in trivial matters.

His nerves had been strained to breaking point this last week.

For the first time a sense of responsibility began to depress him. He was almost afraid of what he had undertaken. It was so big, far bigger than anything that he had attempted before.

He turned away from the window and lit a cigarette. Over the mantelpiece was a small badly executed drawing of Buller’s Motor Company.

He stood looking at it for some time and then he went back to his desk and rang the bell.

It was two hours later before he left the Works. He had had no luncheon, but had refused to have anything sent up to him in his office.

“My sister will be expecting me at home,” he said to Miller. “I will get off as soon as we have finished and I shall not come back today. Tell the architect to get on with those plans as soon as possible. We must waste no time.”

He felt already as if time was to haunt him. The very thought of ‘so much to, do, so little time to do it’, made him say to his chauffeur as he left the Works,

“As quick as you can, Davis.”

Norman Melton lived about three miles outside Melchester. His home, which had only been his for the past five years, had once belonged to an ancient County family and, flanking the drive gates, were stone lions balancing a heraldic shield between their paws.

The iron gates were wide open and the motor car drove up an avenue of oak trees. The house was Georgian in design although the original foundations were several centuries older.

As the car arrived at the front door, it was then opened. A bell at the lodge by the gates communicated with the pantry of the house and prevented any delay on the arrival of Master or guest.

“Where is Miss Melton?” Sir Norman asked the butler.

“In the morning room, Sir Norman.”

He walked over the wide hall and opened the door at the other end. His sister was sitting at her desk writing letters.

She looked up when he arrived and rose to her feet.

“You are very late, Norman,” she told him severely.

“I could not get away before.”

“Have you had any luncheon?”

“No, but I would like some.”

She touched the bell and, when the butler answered it, gave the necessary order.

“What time did you get up from London this morning?” she asked.

“I caught the seven o’clock,” he said.

Alice Melton waited. She knew quite well how important his visit to London had been, that the final decision would have been taken as to whether the Melton Motor Company were to have the Government contract, but she did not ask any questions.

She waited for her brother to tell her the news.

She was fond of Norman, yet she found it difficult to understand him. She was the elder by nearly ten years.

It seemed strange that they were brother and sister for Alice had none of Norman’s fire, no originality and an entire lack of self-confidence.

Norman was a good-looking man. He was a millionaire and his personality could neither be belittled nor ignored.

‘He ought to marry again,’ Alice thought to herself looking at him.

She wondered why the idea had suddenly come to her.

“We have the contract,” he said indifferently, as if he was speaking of something quite unimportant.

“I am glad,” Alice answered slowly. “It will mean a lot of extra work for you, though?”

“It will and I am glad of it,” Norman answered. “I am getting stale and dull and perhaps old.”

Before his sister could answer, the butler announced that luncheon was now served and Norman, without another word, walked from the morning room and left his sister alone.

Alice made no attempt to follow him. She knew that he would rather eat alone and, if he wanted further conversation with her, he would come back after he had finished.

Instead she looked through the windows to where the daffodils were just beginning to come out under the trees on the lawn. They gave her very little pleasure.

When his wife had died, he had asked Alice to come back to him and he had no idea how bitterly she had wept to leave the place that had been her home for so long and which was the one dear thing to her in her whole life.

Norman’s wife had always lived in London. On her death he had shut the London house and made up his mind to live near the Works, spending all his time there, just as he had done before he was married.

He had no idea how lonely Alice found it. They had little to say to each other, having nothing in common beyond their blood relationship.

Alice made him an excellent housekeeper and, if he thought about her at all, he imagined that it was to her benefit to live with him.

He came into the room slowly, a cigar between his fingers, a glass of brandy in his hand.

He settled himself by the fire before he spoke. He stretched out his long legs, sipped the brandy reflectively and then, as though making a solemn pronouncement, said,

“I have decided to re-open the London house.”

CHAPTER TWO

The rain was |pouring down and the gutters of Shaftesbury Avenue were awash.

A few theatre-goers still stood disconsolately beneath the dark porticoes of the theatres, waiting for their motor cars or hoping for a taxi.

The porters had closed the doors inhospitably behind them, anxious to get away to their homes and their suppers.

From a stage door that opened onto a side street a girl came slowly out, calling a cheery ‘goodnight’ to the doorkeeper as she passed.

“Oh, it’s been raining!” she expostulated.

“It’s been doin’ that for the best part of two hours, miss, and it doesn’t look as if it’s likely to stop.”

She opened her umbrella and hurried out into the rain.

She crossed the street to wait for a bus. There was a small crowd of people also waiting, all huddled under umbrellas, standing in silence, their faces turned in the same direction.

After some minutes a bus came and pulled up with a jerk. Instantly there was a scramble to get aboard it.

Carlotta hurried forward, shutting her umbrella and feeling the rain against her face.

She stepped off the pavement and then, she was not certain how it happened, she might have slipped or been pushed by someone – she fell slithering forward under the legs of those scrambling onto the bus.

For a moment she was too surprised to do anything. She felt helpless, afraid and drowned by the humanity about her. She struggled to regain her feet, feeling the cold wet road with her fingers.

Unexpectedly a hand was placed under her elbow and she was hoisted up.

“I say, are you hurt?” a voice asked.

“Not at all,” Carlotta started to reply, but, as she spoke, her ankle gave under her and she cried out with pain.

“My ankle!” she exclaimed, standing on one leg, still held steady by the support of a firm hand.

The bus had already driven off and the few disappointed people who had been unable to get aboard it were now waiting for the next and were watching them.

“Here’s a taxi. I’ll help you into it.”

The man who had dragged her to her feet hailed the taxi that was coming towards them. He opened the door and half-lifted, half-pushed her into it.

“What’s your address?” he asked.

Carlotta told him and added,

“But please don’t trouble to come with me. I am quite all right really.”

The man did not answer her. Instead he got into the taxi beside her, slamming the door.

“I say, you are in a mess!” he said, looking at the patch of wet which stained one side of Carlotta’s red coat and at the state of her stockings and thin patent leather shoes.

“I cannot think how I was so silly,” she said ruefully.

“Would you let me feel your ankle?” he asked. “I am a Doctor.”

She looked at her companion. He was large, broad-shouldered and clean-shaven. He had, she thought, a particularly nice calming voice.

There was just a faint accent in his speech which she could not place, she wondered what it was while painfully she moved her leg a little so that he could touch her ankle.

He knelt down on the floor of the taxi and felt it with expert fingers.

“I hope it is only a slight strain,” he commented. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes,” she confessed, “there – where your fingers are now,”

“A strained tendon,” he said. “You must get a cold-water bandage on it at once. It might have been worse, no bones are broken.”

“I cannot think how it happened,” she whispered. “How I hate buses,”

“So do I,” he answered, “but not so much as the rain.”

He took off his hat, which was dripping, and threw it on the floor in front of him and she saw that he was younger than she had expected.

“I am very lucky to be helped by a Doctor,” she said lightly, a little embarrassed at the situation. “Usually on these occasions there is not one within twenty miles.”

“You have been most unfortunate,” he said and something in the way that he pronounced the words made her exclaim,

“You are Scottish, aren’t you?”

“My name is Hector McCleod,” he answered and they both laughed as if it was a joke.”

“Mine is Carlotta Lenshovski,” she answered.

“Russian!” he exclaimed and they laughed again.

The taxi drew up with a jerk.

“Is this the right place?” the taxi-driver then asked her rather doubtfully, pulling back the communicating window.

“Yes, this is right,” Carlotta answered. “It always looks a bit strange at night,” she added to her companion.

A huge doorway with carved stone figures round it held an imitation medieval oak door with iron studs and a barred peephole.

Carlotta produced a Yale key and Hector McCleod climbed out of the taxi and opened the door before coming back to help her alight.

“Can you manage all right now?” he asked as she went into the shelter of the doorway.

“Will you come in and have a drink?” she asked him,

He hesitated a moment.

“Are you quite certain it will be no trouble?”

“None,” she assured him, “and you have been so kind.” She held out her purse. “Will you please pay the taxi for me?”

“I’ll do it,” he countered.

“But you must let me pay,” Carlotta parried.

He then paid the man off, the rain pouring down on him as he waited for his change.

“Please be sensible and let me give you the fare,” Carlotta pleaded when he returned to her.

He shook his head.

“I would not think of it,” he replied. “It is not often I get the opportunity of rescuing a damsel in distress!”

“But I insist.”

“You cannot insist with only one leg,” he answered with a grin. “Please let me help you upstairs if it is up we go,”

He looked around him in a bewildered manner.

They were in a high narrow hall in which he could dimly see what looked strangely like suits of armour standing by the walls.

Carlotta hobbled on his arm to where she switched on the electric light.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she said as the light revealed not only suits of armour but two great showcases filled with theatrical jewellery, wigs, feathers and ornaments of every kind.

“Surely you know this place by name even if you have never been here before?”

He shook his head.

“I am from the North,” he apologised.

“This is Lenshovskis,” Carlotta said. “Theatrical costumes. I am afraid that you will have to help me up these stairs, our rooms are at the top.”

They went up the stairs extra slowly. When they reached the top they were in a huge room filled with dresses hanging in rows on stands. There was the faint musty smell of worn clothes.

They passed through the room to a baize door at the end of it.

Carlotta was leaning heavily on Hector’s arm and her ankle was beginning to throb in a most alarming fashion.

“Are you quite sure you can manage?” he asked. “Would you like me to carry you?”

“I am all right,” she answered. “Open the door, will you?”

He did as he was told and instantly Carlotta called out,

“Magda! Magda! Where are you?”

A deep mellow voice answered her.

“Are you back, dearie? Supper’s ready.”

They passed through a small hall and opened yet another door into a room that seemed brilliantly lit in contrast where, seated at the supper table waiting for them, was the largest woman that Hector had ever seen in his life.

It took him some time before he could take in the details of the room, for what he saw took his breath away, it was so unexpected. It was a small room, hung from floor to ceiling with a miscellaneous collection of objects.

There were photographs, pieces of embroidery, valuable Persian carpets, Russian Ikons, swords with jewelled hilts and various trophies that could only have a sentimental value,

A log fire was blazing on the hearth. Before it in two huge armchairs lay an assortment of cats. There were three blue Persians, a Siamese kitten, which was being most destructive to one of the cushions and a ginger-coloured tabby.

The owner of this room was even more surprising than the room itself.

Magda Lenshovski must have weighed nearly twenty stone. She was a huge mountain of flesh, It was surprising that she could move at all and that she could move with agility and quickly.

Hector stared at her in fascination, wondering what glands were working too fast or too slowly in her monstrous body.

She wore over her shoulders a magnificent shawl embroidered in vivid colours. She was not an ugly woman. Her eyes must once have been very enchanting and they were still dark and alive beneath straight narrow eyebrows.

She rose to her feet at Carlotta’s entrance.

“My dove, my angel – you are hurt!”

“I have turned my ankle,” Carlotta answered. “It is only a twist,”

She was holding tightly onto Hector’s arm. He looked down at her and thought suddenly that she was very beautiful.

She had pulled off her hat and her dark hair, curling away from her forehead, was pulled behind her uncovered ears into a mass of thick curls. Her skin was white and her dark eyes glittered as she talked.

Her body was slim and exquisite and he realised that there was about her a strange and foreign sensuality.

‘She is exotic,’ he told himself, ‘and the most glamourous woman I have ever met.”

She took off her coat before she sat down.

She was dressed only in a simple little black dress without a touch of colour in it. Hector felt that she should have been dressed in fine silks and adorned with sables bejewelled with diamonds.

There was something rich about Carlotta and some expression in her of elegance, which he sensed as he gazed at her.

‘She is lovely,’ he thought again and almost said so aloud.

The huge woman, Magda, was exclaiming in a deep voice, while Carlotta chattered gaily of the accident, making a story of Hector’s rescue as she was being trampled to death!

The incident grew in the telling and became colourful and alive.

Carlotta made Hector feel as if he had taken part in an adventure.

He then dressed Carlotta’s ankle once he could make them all understand that it was an immediate necessity. When he had finished, Magda invited him to join them at supper, an invitation that he was delighted to accept.

He had only to smell the delicious dishes brought to the table to know that Magda was greedy and that she knew what was good. The Russian taste for cream, butter and pastry was evident even in this short meal.

It was difficult for Hector to understand why, if she habitually enjoyed food of this sort, Carlotta was able to maintain her very fashionable and slender figure.

“A good audience tonight?” Magda asked.

Hector understood then that Carlotta was an actress.

“What are you in?” he asked,

“Oh, an awful show,” she replied. “It is called The Starry Staircase written by one of those earnest young authors with a strong mission in life, whom no one wants to listen to. I am afraid it will not run for very long.”

“None of the plays do these days,” Magda answered. “I have no sooner dressed one show than it is off. Oh, it’s good for business as long as we get paid.”

“Trust Magda to see to that,” Carlotta interposed. “Money in advance or no costumes is the motto of this house.”

Magda laughed, a deep throaty chuckle.

“And why should I work for nothing?” she enquired.

“Oh, you are quite right,” Carlotta replied. “I am only telling Mr. McCleod or should I say ‘Doctor?”

“Have you a practice?” Magda asked.

“I am working for my London Degree after taking my Scottish one,” he replied. “I only came here a month ago from Edinburgh. I am at St. Anthony’s.”

“It is a very big Hospital, isn’t it?” Carlotta asked.

“One of the biggest,” he answered.

“And you like doctoring?”

“It is the one thing I have always wanted to do ever since I was a little boy,” he said. “I can hardly believe that it isn’t all a dream,”

That is the way to be happy,” Magda said. “To dream and to get your dream fulfilled. I once dreamt too – but that was many years ago.”

“Magda was in the ballet,” Carlotta said to Hector.

She pointed to the mantelpiece to where in the centre of it was a pair of pink ballet shoes, they were worn and had a tired pathetic air in their glass prison.

“I broke my leg,” Magda related. “I could never dance again.”

Hector did not know what to say. There was clearly a tragedy in those few words.

He knew that here was a wound deeper than any bodily hurt and he could find no words to console her, he could only listen and hope that he looked as sympathetic as he felt.

They were interrupted by the opening door and another woman came in. She was tall and thin with curled hair of a colour that was either faded gold or dusty white.

“Hello, Leolia,” Carlotta greeted him. “Meet Dr. McCleod who has brought me home.”

“Why, what has happened?” the newcomer asked.

The story of Carlotta’s adventure was told once again. She sat down at the table.

Hector judged that she must be nearly sixty. She too seemed an unusual person. She was English, yet she was of no ordinary type.

When she spoke, it was with the voice of an educated woman and she had a charm that entirely belied her appearance.

“Mrs. Payne lives here with me,” Magda informed him.

“Does she help you with the business?” Hector asked.

Leolia Payne laughed.

“There would not be much of a business if I did! No, Magda runs that all herself. I only live here and look after her when Carlotta is playing in the Provinces or out enjoying herself with her young men.”

Carlotta laughed.

“You talk as though I was a gay butterfly. I can assure you, Dr. McCleod, that I generally come straight home after the theatre.”

“I think you are very wise to do so,” he answered, “if you are interested in your career.”

“I am and I am not,” Carlotta replied enigmatically and with a sigh.

“The girls these days have no ambition,” Magda said. “While I was consumed with it, it was the only thing I cared about, my dancing. We were made to practise until our toes bled and do you think we minded – ?”

“Don’t tell us, darling,” Carlotta interrupted her. “You know that those days are past. Nowadays nobody is ambitious like that.”

“Except perhaps Sir Norman Melton,” Leolia Payne interposed quietly.

“Yes, perhaps Norman is the exception,” Magda answered.

A clock chimed and Hector rose to his feet to say ‘goodnight’ and he was surprised to see how late it was.

Carlotta held out her hand.

“Will you come and see me tomorrow?” she asked. “I don’t have a matinee and I would like my leg to be well for the evening performance.”

CHAPTER THREE

Carlotta was awakened by the telephone ringing beside her bed. She stirred sleepily, then with an effort stretched out her hand and picked up the receiver.

“Hullo,” she said.

“A personal call for you, miss, from Melchester,” said the voice of the boy who managed the shop exchange.

Carlotta settled herself comfortably on her pillows and waited.

She knew who it was.

“Is that Miss Carlotta Lenshovski?” someone asked.

“Yes, I am speaking,” she answered.

“Hold the line, please. Sir Norman Melton wishes to speak to you,”

A moment later she heard Norman’s voice.

“Good morning,” she began. “I thought you had forgotten all about me.”

“I could not telephone last night,” he said. “I had a conference, which lasted until nearly midnight,”

“So you have signed the contract?” she guessed.

“I have.”

There was a note of jubilation in his voice.

“Congratulations,” Carlotta enthused, “but I never thought for a moment that you would not get it. When you finally do make up your mind, Norman, you always get what you want, don’t you?”

“I might ask you to prove your belief in me,” he said and then added abruptly as though he had said too much, “Will you have supper with me tonight after the show?”

“I would love to,” Carlotta answered, “that is if I go to the theatre.”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“I cannot tell you how really fascinating my young Scottish Doctor is,” she said. “He has promised to come and see me today.”

“I never heard such nonsense,”Norman answered. “Go to Sir Harry Andrews – he is the only man worth seeing. He is my Doctor.”

“I have complete faith in my Scot,” Carlotta replied stubbornly.

She laughed at Norman’s protests.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “and unless you hear that I am – in hospital, be waiting for me at half past eleven.”

“I will,” he promised, “and take care of yourself, my child.”

“I will do my best,” she answered and rang off.

She lay still for a long time watching the chinks of light through the moving curtains.

She was thinking of Norman.

They had met about three months ago at a cocktail party. She was introduced to Norman Melton halfway through the evening.

His name was mumbled by her hostess so that she had no idea who he was. She found herself shaking hands with a tall grave-looking man who seemed, somehow, out of place in the chattering and laughing throng of cocktail drinkers.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said. “I expect I ought to know all about you, but I must just plead ignorance,”

“What do you think I am?” he asked.

Carlotta tried to guess.

“You might be a Politician,” she said. “You certainly are not an actor and I don’t think you look sophisticated enough to be a Diplomat. Yes, you must either be a Politician or big business or perhaps both.”

Norman laughed,

“You are either a good guesser,” he suggested, “or a flatterer,”

“Then I am right?” Carlotta questioned.

“Not where Politics are concerned, but business, yes. Are you disappointed that I am not a future Prime Minister?”

Usually at these sort of functions Norman felt out of place.

He was used to most intense concentration, to pouring forth his inexhaustible energy into everything that he undertook and accordingly he found it difficult to discuss trivialities at once with sincerity and that lightness relative to their ‘unimportance’.

At a dinner party or luncheon table, Norman was certain, sooner or later, to find himself enveloped in an argument.

In Carlotta, however, he met for the very first time someone in this world with whom he found it easy to converse.

He watched her face, expressively vivacious, he so liked the quality of her voice and the gestures she used to demonstrate her remarks.

She talked with her hands as well as with her lips. It was so obvious that she was not English, although she confessed to him that she could not speak any other language.

She told Norman where she was acting and he promised to come and see the play if she would have supper with him after it was over.

“I have a rotten little part,” she said, “but it is a great thing to be in the West End – the Managers and Agents are impressed if not the general public,”

“Why did you go on the stage?” he asked her.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Not because I had a particular call,” she said, “but because I have been brought up to it. My mother, my adopted mother, is Magda Lenshovski, the theatrical costumier.

“I recall the smell of greasepaint more vividly than anything else during my childhood. I met every famous character on the boards before I was five, for I used to go to rehearsals when Magda had to arrange the dresses.

“In fact my first lessons were memorising the parts I heard repeated over and over again as I sat in the empty stalls waiting for Magda to come from the dressing rooms.

“I could not say ‘no’, when Christian Holden offered me a part in his company. I was just seventeen and I thought him the most attractive man who I had ever seen in my life. Of course I accepted – who would not have?”

“Is there anything else you would rather have done?” Norman asked.

“Oh, nothing particular,” Carlotta answered. “I think I am just lazy. I don’t really want to do anything in life except enjoy myself. Now you cannot understand that, can you?”

She knew by this time exactly who he was and she remembered reading about him in the newspapers, of his sensational rise until he became a Director and then owner of the Factory in which he had gone to work in as a boy.

“I have been driven by my ambition all my life,” Norman confessed. “That sounds rather as though I was giving a newspaper interview, but, strangely enough, it is true,”

“Are you content now?” Carlotta asked.

He laughed abruptly.

“I have not even started,” he answered.

They dined together the following night and Carlotta decided that she liked him.

His keen intelligence appealed to her and she was amused by his abrupt, at times almost rude manner, which was obviously assumed to conceal his shyness.

She could quite understand why some people disliked and misunderstood him, but she herself had lived too long amongst all sorts of people to judge by surface superficialities.

“It’s funny,” she said later to Magda, “but in some ways I feel as though he is younger than I am. He is so unsophisticated about everything.”

She was sitting on Magda’s bed as she spoke, a vast mahogany four-poster. She wore a white tulle dress with silver sequin shoulder straps and she looked very young and amazingly lovely. Magda understood what she meant.

“You are Russian!” she replied. “You are as old as God,”

“Only half,” Carlotta answered, “you forget my father.”

“I never knew him,” Magda said with a twinkle.

“I wonder what he was like,” Carlotta said.

“I expect he was tall and fair and stupid,” Magda replied, “like most Englishmen.”

“Was the one you loved like that?” Carlotta asked.

Magda did not reply for a moment. She was propped up on her pillows, her huge body under the bedclothes like a mountain before her.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Don’t pretend,” Carlotta answered. “Leolia told me! Oh, years ago. You must not be angry because I wormed it out of her.”

“I never think about him,” Magda answered.

“That’s a lie!” Carlotta said. “But never mind, let’s go on talking about me, if you prefer it. Am I like my mother?”

“You are,” Magda replied.

“Then she must have been very pretty,” Carlotta remarked.

“She wasn’t when I saw her,” Magda answered. “She had been without food for two days. She was white and drawn and her eyes were dark hollows in her head.”

“And yet she was lovely,” Carlotta answered. “I know she was lovely – tell me so.”

“She must have been a very beautiful woman,” Magda said shortly.

“And she was a Romanoff,” Carlotta said in a voice of triumph. “A Romanoff! Do you think I am worthy of her?”

“You’ll do,” said Magda in a gruff voice that hid the deep affection for the child she had brought up. “Get to bed, you will be so tired in the morning if you don’t. When is this fine young man of yours coming to take you out again?”

“Tomorrow night perhaps,” Carlotta answered. “I think he likes me.”

“More fool if he doesn’t,” Magda replied. “Bring him to see me one day and I will tell you what I think of him.”

“As long as you don’t tell him what you think,” Carlotta said, “I will bring him, but not unless you promise.”

She was half-laughing and half-serious for she had suffered in the past from Magda’s frankness.

The old woman had no compunction about expressing her mind regardless of whether it was unpleasant to hear or not.

Magda was a character, the whole theatrical world knew it, some loved her, some hated her, but all in the profession were forced to accept her.

The designers adored her for she was so artistic that she never allowed anything ugly or inappropriate to leave her workrooms.

She did not mind when people laughed at her and when an angry juvenile had nicknamed her ‘The Ugly Duchess’, she bore him no ill-feeling.

The name had stuck and to the theatrical world Magda was ‘The Ugly Duchess’. She grew used to hearing people refer to her in this way and even used the nickname herself.

Maybe it was Magda’s huge body that made Carlotta crave for beauty. She wanted to be lovely from the time when she was a tiny child.

She hated anything that was not attractive, crying out in fear from a golliwog that had been given to her and hating toys that were not dainty in appearance.

As she grew older, she refused to wear clothes that did not appeal to her artistic sense or satisfy her taste.

“When I grow up,” she told Magda when she was five, “I am going to be as beautiful as an angel.”

Magda had laughed at the child’s remark, but to Carlotta it was the registration of a vow of which she was to be conscious all through the years.

So the child grew up. She blossomed into a very lovely woman, so lovely that at times Magda stared at her in amazement.

Carlotta had been nervous when, after accepting nearly a dozen invitations from Norman Melton, she had invited him home to meet Magda.

“She is but a strange person,” she warned him. “If she doesn’t like you, she may say so outright. She will certainly show her feelings very obviously!”

She was faintly amused to see that Norman was nervous too.

It seemed funny that this clever man, rich and successful, should be afraid of a gross old woman with an alarming tongue.

Socially Magda was poles apart from the motor millionaire, yet their link was Carlotta and she saw herself as a bridge between them.

It was a close foggy evening and Magda’s sitting room was stuffy.

The old woman was sitting with a red shawl draped over her shoulders with heavy rings in her ears, which glittered every time she moved her head, her wrists were weighed down with Oriental bangles of gold and silver.

She looked fantastic. There was a cat sitting in her vast lap and two others ranged at her feet.

She did not attempt to stand up, but held out her hand to Norman as imperiously as an Empress might have done, and gave him one of her quick speculative glances.

Carlotta knew that she was summing him up and making up her mind instinctively.

Just for a moment Carlotta felt anxious, she liked Norman, it was not often she wanted Magda’s approval, but was afraid of her antagonism.

“Supper is ready,” Magda announced.

There was a note of approval in her voice. Carlotta recognised it.

She felt immensely relieved.

CHAPTER FOUR

Hector McCleod walked jauntily out of the Hospital and stopped at the nearest telephone box.

He looked up a number under ‘L’, dialled rapidly, pressed button ‘A’ and asked for Miss Carlotta Lenshovski.

It was some time before he heard her voice,

“Who is it?” she enquired.

“Hector McCleod,” he said. “How are you today – is your ankle better?”

“Oh, it’s you,” she replied. “The boy made such a muddle over your name, I could not think who it was.”