The Marrying Game (19 page)

‘I was always afraid you wouldn’t have the stamina,’ Rufa said. ‘You’d better leave it to me.’

Nancy frowned. ‘Rufa, what’s happened to you?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You never used to be this weird.’ Nancy eased off her new shoes, and rummaged in her bag for her tube of Polos – her Prada handbag was already a chaos of sweet wrappers, tissues, bent combs and hairy lipsticks. Her
voice
softened. ‘I know we’ve all been bonkers as conkers since the Man died – but in your sweet, quiet way, you’re the most demented by miles.’

‘Why did you come with me, then?’ Rufa snapped. ‘Why did you sign up for the Game in the first place, if it’s so demented? I’ve found a perfectly decent target –’

‘No you haven’t. I’ve got Berry, and I’m sure he’ll make me deliriously happy. You can forget all about that creepy Adrian.’

‘I shan’t do any such thing.’

‘OK,’ Nancy said. She sighed heavily, and threw three Polos into her mouth. ‘The battle lines have been drawn. I don’t want you to marry Adrian. You don’t want me to marry Berry – well, do you?’

Rufa was silent for a long moment. ‘This is silly,’ she said eventually. ‘We’re arguing, and we both want exactly the same thing.’

‘If I bag Berry,’ Nancy said, ‘I’ll be the winner of this Game. And my prize will be you ditching Adrian.’

Another spell of silence. In the yellow glare of the streetlights, Rufa’s face was white and tired. ‘If you bag him,’ she said. ‘If.’

Chapter Eleven

THE FIRST LUNCH
took place three days later, at the Connaught. Rufa wore the taupe jacket, over an ivory silk shirt.

Adrian gently suggested that he should order for her. ‘I know this menu extremely well, and I like to think I’ve worked out tastes and textures to blend with every sort of day. You must try my lunch for a wet day in February.’

Rufa thought this was a neat way of getting round the tense ritual of studying the menu. She did wonder, however, how Adrian would have reacted if she had refused.

They ate English oysters and Dover sole. With each course, a delicate white wine appeared. Rufa sipped sparingly, just enough to hold each flavour on her tongue. It was essential not to get sloshed, and she sensed that Adrian would be repelled by gusto. He was watching her intently.

‘I thought the Connaught would be a good backdrop for you,’ he said. ‘It’s a timeless classic, and so are you. You’re absolutely clear – like a piece of crystal, or a high, true note. You should wear more yellows and greens. Leave the autumnal tints to your sister. The jacket looked better on her.’

Rufa smiled. ‘I wondered if you’d notice.’

‘When I notice a woman,’ Adrian said, ‘I always notice her clothes. You make me think of spring – you’re Botticelli’s Primavera made flesh, as I’m sure you’ve been told before.’

He seemed to want a reply. The thing not to do, Rufa guessed, was protest. Adrian Mecklenberg would not care for a woman who flinched at a barrage of heavy compliments.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The Man used to say it.’

Adrian said, ‘Botticelli would have loved the pure line of your nose, and those unspoilt lips.’

There was no possible reply to this. Rufa watched his long, pale fingers caressing the stem of his glass. His movements were deft and precise, and curiously passionless.

‘I own a Botticelli drawing,’ he said. ‘It’s my favourite possession. Not even a wife has managed to chisel it out of me.’

He smiled, to show he had not brought the subject up by mistake.

Rufa said, ‘Berry told me you’re a famous collector.’

‘Rather denuded, at present. The last Mrs Mecklenberg wouldn’t budge without half my paintings.’

‘You must miss them.’

‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘There was too much of her in them. I don’t mean she chose them. The whole collection was a response to her. And she to it.’

‘I see.’ Rufa, still smiling, was wary. Where was this leading?

‘All my wives adore art,’ Adrian said. ‘Two of them studied at the Courtauld. I’m obviously drawn to women who are profoundly affected by art. As I think you are.’

Rufa changed her smile slightly, to accommodate the sudden intimacy. This, she thought, was like being interviewed for a job. Her qualifications – breeding and beauty – had got her past the first stage. Now, she was being examined more closely, to check that she would fit the corporate image.

‘In any case –’ Adrian began again abruptly, after a short silence. ‘I’m looking forward to beginning again. A new collection for a new era. Perhaps I’ll only collect paintings of redheads.’

It was difficult to smile graciously while eating fish. Adrian’s compliments were cool and casual: statements of observation. It was a very deliberate form of wooing, and also a kind of test, to see if she could take admiration without squirming. Her role was to listen, to accept. Protests, even modest ones, would count as resistance. Rufa already knew that any form of resistance or argument would be simply incomprehensible to him.

‘I cannot understand,’ Adrian said, ‘how Berry managed to keep you a secret.’

‘My brother-in-law was at school with him, but we only met last Christmas.’ Rufa told the story of the pond and the lost keys, and felt she was making progress when Adrian chuckled. She liked him more because he evidently liked Berry.

‘A thoroughly decent sort,’ he pronounced. ‘A good egg of the traditional kind. It’s virtually impossible to dislike a man with a talent for slapstick.’ Berry was dismissed, with a pat and a biscuit.

Rufa said, ‘Polly seems nice.’

‘Ah, Polly. Radiant with love for the title and the house, and the peerless collection of eighteenth-century paintings. She’s not in love with Berry himself, of course –
not
in the accepted sense. That sort of woman doesn’t fall in love in the ordinary way. She’s programmed to hold out for the whole package. My first wife was one of those.’

This was uncomfortable territory. ‘Surely Berry wouldn’t want to marry her, if she’s like that!’ protested Rufa.

Adrian was watching her narrowly. ‘You’re missing the point. A marriage is a contract, after all. It exists because each party has something the other needs. What Polly provides for Berry, in return for the title, is probably entirely satisfactory. Sex, affection, companionship. Effective management.’

Rufa did not like the way the conversation was going. Was Adrian telling her she had been rumbled as a gold-digger? Or was it a veiled assurance that her emotions were irrelevant to the final deal? She felt herself being appraised and considered and held up to the light. It was humbling, and she was hardly in a position to blame him for it.

Something in the defensive set of her shoulders pleased Adrian. He smiled, and, for the first time, it reached his eyes.

‘I’ve shocked you,’ he said softly. ‘What a delightful experience. I forgot I was talking to a romantic Hasty. If ever I wanted you to marry me, I’d have to make you fall in love with me first.’

Afterwards, he saw her into a taxi, and put twenty pounds into the hand of the driver. He spoke of their next meeting. It was to be another lunch, but it would involve a drive out to a little place he knew in the
country
. Without a single kiss or caress, Adrian was assuming a courtship.

Staring sightlessly out of the rain-spattered window, Rufa assessed the situation. She had done amazingly well, with almost no effort. Adrian was beginning a process, at the end of which Rufa would be in love with him. Over coffee, she had told him something about the affair with Jonathan, leaving out the subsequent death of her libido.

Adrian guessed, however, and appeared to like the idea of waking the Sleeping Beauty. She wondered if he had the power to make her fall in love with him, and tried hard to imagine it. She wished (hoped) it would happen. He was charming, and very good-looking, if rather ancient. She had nerved herself to put up with much worse, for the sake of the Marrying Game. As far as she could be, she was attracted, and intrigued. Up to now this was all he had seemed to want from her. Perhaps this was a man who could lead her back to love, stage by stage?

It could never approach the ecstatic, all-consuming love she had felt for Jonathan – but she did not want to go through that again. Sex with Adrian, when she had eaten her lunches and dinners – like a barrister at the Inns of Court – was bound to be refined and highly bearable.

Rufa felt a little careworn when she let herself into Wendy’s house, but she congratulated herself on a job well done. It was thundering now, and there were great flashes of lightning. A curtain of rain made the air livid yellow and black. She went to the bedroom and removed her expensive new clothes. She hung them carefully in the wardrobe, pulling on her jeans and guernsey with huge relief.

The others would be dying to know how it went. On her way downstairs, Rufa tried to decide how much to reveal. She felt oddly protective of the whole experience, and wished she did not have to talk about it. She was, she realized, on the defensive and slightly ashamed. Describing it would feel like a confession, though – God knew – she had done nothing wrong. Fortunately, Wendy was busy in the basement, prodding the feet of a client, and Nancy was still out, on some mysterious mission involving the wearing of a Wonderbra and a searing new lipstick. She had declared, before lunch, that she intended to make another move on Berry.

But she’ll never see it through, Rufa told herself; the second Max makes a serious pass at her, she’ll collapse like a house of cards.

She was glad to have the bedroom to herself. In the empty kitchen, under the ticking strip of fluorescent light, Rufa made herself a mug of tea, then went back upstairs with the early Anita Brookner she had found in Wendy’s airing cupboard. She had earned a rest.

An hour later, the doorbell rang. Rufa ignored it, thinking it must be someone for Wendy. She was deep in the novel, wondering what on earth Anita Brookner would make of Nancy, when Roshan’s sleek head appeared round the door.

‘It’s for you.’

‘Mmm?’

‘Yes, there’s a Captain Birdseye to see you. He’s very wet and strict, and he insists that you know him.’

Rufa shut the book, and leapt off the bed. Her heart galloped. ‘Oh, God. I know him, all right.’

‘Are you OK?’

She tried to laugh. It came out as a nervous whinny. ‘I told you about my godfather, didn’t I?’

Roshan mimed a shriek of glee. ‘The brooch man? I thought he’d be older – but he’s certainly scary enough. What’s he doing here?’

‘He never comes to London,’ Rufa said. ‘I have a ghastly feeling I’ve been found out.’

‘Don’t panic. Treat it as a social call – what a lovely surprise, and all that. Give nothing away.’

‘Edward never makes social calls.’

Roshan whispered, ‘Shall I stay with you?’

‘No, no.’ Rufa was whipping round the room, emptying Nancy’s ashtray and hiding Nancy’s packets of condoms. ‘I’d better bring him up here, out of everyone’s way.’

Edward waited rigidly in the narrow hall. His iron grey hair was black from the rain. Rivulets ran off his waxed coat.

‘Edward, what a surprise!’ Rufa ran down the stairs, and kissed his bristled cheek. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ She could not say it was a pleasure to see him. He was plainly furious.