Marrying Up (20 page)

And it was true that, on her way up the path, she had attracted more than her share of attention. ‘Damned fine filly that,’
a tall, handsome man with an outdoors complexion, thick silver hair and very naughty blue eyes had commented as she wiggled
past.

‘Stonker Shropshire,’ Barney had hissed excitedly.

‘The Duke of Shropshire?’ Alexa gasped, reeling under a wave of money-and-title lust. The man who owned almost the entire
county where her parents lived.

‘Yes, but don’t get too excited. He’s married. That’s his wife over there.’

Alexa regarded the short, plain woman with jealous eyes. Next to her tall, elegant and charismatic husband, she looked like
a dull hen bird beside a peacock. How did a woman like that snare a duke?

Inside the chilly – amazingly chilly – church, Barney steered a shivering Alexa into a pew otherwise occupied by a boot-faced
trout in a black straw boater and a man whose nose was so pointed and eyes so receding he resembled an eagle in a suit. They
both looked her disapprovingly up and down.

Alexa ignored them. She knew that she looked beautiful with a rainbow of coloured light from the stained-glass window spilling
across her breasts. Aware of a number of interested gazes, she stood as straight as her crippling heels permitted.

The pillared nave and the side aisles were rapidly filling up; it was standing room only at the back under the organ pipes.
The sidesmen were running out of service sheets, a thick cream card affair printed by Smythson’s and bearing a photograph
of Lord Bedstead looking like an enormous ancient baby in his floppy Garter bonnet and ribbons.

‘The grieving widow,’ Barney murmured, nudging Alexa in the direction of a woman with an obviously new facelift sporting a
fascinator and an air of undisguised triumph.

Barney was making a great show of waving cheerfully at people, who, having stared back blankly for a few seconds, hesitantly
waved in reply.

Alexa was by now shaking with the cold. ‘It’s f-freezing,’ she hissed at Barney, who was mouthing greetings at a heavy-faced
woman in a pillbox.

‘Who’s that?’ the woman in the pillbox could be heard loudly demanding of her neighbour, a stooped-looking man in rusty black.

‘Here.’ Barney surreptitiously passed Alexa a small silver flask of brandy. ‘Keep your spirit levels up.’

They rose for the first hymn: ‘Abide With Me’.

‘I’m not sure I can.’ Barney sighed, after the obviously nervous organist fluffed the beginning twice and embarked on it a
third time.

In the pew in front, various sleek-looking men had their heads bent respectfully. Leaning over slightly, Alexa could see that
the entire row was working away on their respective BlackBerries. These, she assumed, were the helicopter owners.

The eulogy had begun.

‘The Lord Bedstead was, above all, a much-loved man . . .’

Alexa wondered if any old flames were actually present. She was particularly keen to see the one with the steel teeth. ‘From
his very earliest years, it seems, the Earl was looked up to by his fellow man. He was known at school for his firm leadership
of the younger boys . . .’

‘Beat them senseless whenever he got his hands on them, you mean,’ grumbled a fruity voice in the pew behind.

‘. . . and his unorthodox views during the war made him the focus of much controversy.’

‘Why was that?’ a young girl to the side whispered loudly. ‘Was he against the invasion of Iraq or something?’

Her father, next to her, shook his head. ‘He thought we should appease Hitler.’

The vicar was droning dutifully on.

‘He later became well known for the campaigning green management of his estates . . .’

There was a disturbance two rows in front. Alexa raised her chin to get a better view of a white-haired old lady with a hearing
aid. ‘He was so stingy he made everyone use tea bags twice,’ she declared loudly. ‘There were notices in every bathroom telling
you to use one square of loo paper only and not have more than three inches of water in your bath.’

There were more hymns for the organist to stumble through before a very small boy in a waistcoat led by a superior-looking
blonde in a racily short purple tweed skirt, mounted the lectern and began to lisp ‘Jabberwocky’.

‘The grandson,’ sighed Barney. ‘How terribly moving.’

The child began. ‘’Twas brillig and the slithy toves . . .’

Some of the BlackBerrying helicopter owners looked up in astonishment. ‘What the bloody hell’s he talking about?’ Alexa heard
one rasp to another.

‘Probably autistic,’ was the answer.

An anthem came next; the very small choir taking what seemed to Alexa an unconscionably long time to get through the handful
of words on the service sheet. She had never known ‘Alleluia’ last so long, and by the time it was finished, her bottom was
numb with the cold and she had long since lost contact with her feet.

A lumpy, black-clad woman now stepped up to the lectern.

‘The daughter,’ Barney whispered to Alexa.

‘
Remember me when I am gone away
. . .’

‘Husband’s a gambler,’ Barney added with relish, ‘so she really needed the dosh, but he’s left everything in trust for the
grandchildren. She hasn’t got a brass farthing.’

‘
Better by far you should forget and smile
. . .’ the daughter concluded through obviously gritted teeth.

‘
Than that you should remember and be sad.
’

She shut her book with a grimace and stomped down the lectern steps with a face like thunder.

As the service neared its end, Alexa felt nervous. Once outside there would be only the briefest window to make her move and
get her man before everyone started climbing back in their Bentleys. If Alexa failed to get inside a Bentley herself, it would
be back on the bus.

‘Take your marks . . .’ Barney muttered, as the service ended with ‘In the Mood’ by the Glenn Miller orchestra from a CD player
at the back of the church operated by one of the sidesmen. In a matter of seconds, Alexa, clinging to her companion, was down
the aisle and outside amongst the gravestones.

‘Now listen.’ Barney was casting an expert view over the stream of alpha males issuing from the church porch. ‘Wharte-Hogge’s
your man,’ he whispered, as a Humpty Dumpty-like figure came wobbling out and stood blinking for a moment or two in the sunlight.
‘Not gorgeous,’ he hissed, ‘but he’s just come into thirty thousand acres and a Vermeer.’

Alexa needed no second urging. Apparently overcome by emotion, she swooped on Lord Wharte-Hogge quicker than a seagull on
a child’s ice cream. Weeping prettily, she asked to borrow his handkerchief. The rest – the sudden, further attack of grief;
his assumption that she was a close member of the deceased’s family; her asking him to give her a lift home to London – had
all been well rehearsed. By the time ‘In the Mood’ drew to a close, Alexa was shutting the door of the Wharte-Hogge Bentley
and purring away.

Things had changed overnight on the dig. The discovery of a skeleton had transformed everything. The small, shallow trench
on which previously only Polly and the children had worked was suddenly buzzing with new people. A university archaeology
department took charge. Funding was found. There was a site director. Experts converged from all directions, as did speculation.
Was it a murder? The outer edge of a Roman graveyard? A small, previously unsuspected settlement?

Or just a skeleton somewhat inexplicably located by an ancient lavatory block? Various and disparate though the new individuals
on site were, it seemed to Polly that they were united in their determination that whatever it was, it should be more than
that.

The Duke of Shropshire was keeping in close touch with developments. His hopes of a world-class site on his land were, Polly
gathered, once again rampant, quite compensating for the fact that half his lawn was being dug up.

More people turned up every day. They seemed to Polly to fit more or less every category of archaeologist she had ever known
or worked with. Paunchy and bearded (Neil, the site director), red and scrubbed (Rosamund, his deputy), fastidious and bespectacled
(Sven from Sweden who spent all his time working), crusty (Marcus and Sam, students with an MP3 player and speakers in a plastic
bag). And inevitably, site bunnies (Rose and
Amber, who spent most of their time standing on the sidelines shaking their hair at Sam and Marcus and successfully avoiding
heavy work).

Polly missed Kyle, Poppy and their friends. She had pleaded with Neil for them to stay, but the extra personnel on site, as
well as new machinery, meant an increased and unacceptable level of potential danger for small people who didn’t always stay
in the places they’d been told to.

‘Sharp tools, heavily laden wheelbarrows, you get the picture. It’s fairly risky insurance-wise,’ Neil said, shaking his head.

Kyle in particular had taken the news badly. ‘It’s not fair. I found the skull in the first place,’ he protested, stretching
the truth unashamedly and making wild claims for himself. He was, Polly could see, going to make an excellent archaeologist
one day.

‘Better to have them off site really,’ Neil added, after Mrs Butcher had taken her charges away for the final time. ‘Kids
get a bit worried about bodies, you know. Think they’re scary and all that.’

Glancing after Kyle straining at Mrs Butcher’s leash and looking yearningly back at the skeleton – now discreetly shrouded
in tarpaulin – Polly felt that Neil was somewhat wide of the mark.

One more person was expected on site: a Roman specialist from France. Polly did not dwell much on the subject. The only subject
she dwelt on was Max. Would he ever come back? Would she ever see him again?

Now it had been a month. Effectively, he had disappeared. As the days, then the weeks passed without word, she became prey
to horrible suspicions. First that something terrible had happened to him, preventing him getting in touch. Then that the
something terrible was another woman; a girlfriend at home.

It was difficult to know which was worse.

Perhaps it was Dad, positively relishing having his worst suspicions confirmed. His belief that his daughter had fallen prey
to yet another feckless charmer was something he had no compunction – and less tact – about transmitting. ‘You don’t even
have an address for him? Not even a
phone number
?’ he growled disbelievingly.

When Polly was forced to admit that she hadn’t, Dad merely rolled his eyes. ‘Oh George, for goodness’ sake,’ her mother would
expostulate. ‘That’s
enough
.’

‘It’s all right, Mum,’ Polly muttered, escaping to her bedroom to lick her wounds and brood over the inexplicable and infinite
void that now stretched between herself and the person to whom until recently she had felt closest in the world.

Poor Mum. She kept trying to feed her up, but, thanks to a stomach permanently abuzz with nerves, the weight was falling off
her. Her hair was losing its shine and her eyes, when she glanced furtively at herself in the mirror, looked sunken and heavy.
She had, she knew, become jumpy and irritable. She would go to bed exhausted and then be unable to sleep. She would lie awake
as animated sequences from her time with Max rolled across the back of her closed eyes. How could he have gone and left nothing
behind, as if he had never existed?

At work, Polly did her best to pretend that everything was normal. She confided in nobody; her hope was that they would assume
she was naturally subdued and leave her alone. She kept her distance; she was, for instance, the only one apart from Sven
who stayed in every evening. The rest went home, then changed out of their mud-spattered working clothes and reconvened in
the Shropshire Arms, where the vast amounts of alcohol they drank left impressively few ill effects the next day.

‘Come to the pub?’ Sam urged now as they packed up the dig for the evening.

Polly looked up from stretching tarpaulin over a newly dug section of trench. She smiled. ‘No thanks.’

‘Come on, Poll,’ Marcus chipped in. ‘You look like you could do with some fun.’

What bloody business was it of his? But Polly suppressed her
flash of annoyance. Marcus was only being kind. As well as curious, which he could hardly be blamed for. Her colleagues were
bound to be wondering why she was drifting disconsolately round the site like the Lady of Shalott in a hard hat and wellies.
Digs were sociable places – hysterically so at times. She was, Polly knew, sticking out like a sore thumb; one of the few
protrusions on excavations that archaeologists had no time for.

Rosamund had offered her a chocolate digestive at morning break, saying that she jolly well needed feeding up; the day before,
Neil had asked her, point blank, whether anything was wrong. His interest, Polly suspected, was more of a professional one.
She was, after all, occupying a place on a dig that someone more committed could fill. He had been tactful, but Polly was
left in no doubt that if she didn’t buck her ideas up, her place was in jeopardy.

It was, as always, like being attacked by a walrus. While the English upper classes were not known for their bedroom skills,
this was worse even than usual. Alexa timed her moans to coincide with Lord Wharte-Hogge’s sporadic jerks and grunts. He had
been at it for hours already, but nothing had happened.

Wharte-Hogge was thrusting faster now, and squealing. Come on, boy, Alexa thought. Almost there.

‘Nanny!’ he yelled suddenly, right in her ear. ‘Nanny!’

She winced, ears ringing, as he rolled off; his sweaty flesh peeling away from her own like a plaster. From the wall some
fifteen feet above her head projected a mahogany half-tester to which the Wharte-Hogge coat of arms – three porkers rampant
– was somewhat uncertainly fixed. Alexa had been worried about it falling down and decapitating her during some of the more
energetic bouncing, but thankfully it had held fast.

A mobile beep, the sharp sound of a message being received, interrupted the drowsy afternoon air. Alexa had switched hers
off; Wharte-Hogg rummaged in the suit on the floor for his phone.