The Marrying Game (20 page)

‘I need to talk to you.’ He rolled a baleful eye towards Roshan. ‘Alone.’

Perfectly on cue, there was a deafening clap of thunder.
Dies Irae
.

‘Of course,’ Rufa said. ‘We’ll go up to my room. This is Roshan Lal, by the way. Roshan – Edward Reculver.’

Behind Edward’s back, Roshan mouthed, ‘Good luck!’

She led him into the bedroom, and closed the door. She knew she was about to get the dressing-down of all
time
. She dreaded it, but it was also a relief. Deceiving him had been horrible.

He asked, ‘Where’s Nancy?’

‘Oh – she’s gone out.’ Rufa was glad about this. Nancy, in her idea of full campaigning rig, would annoy him mightily. ‘Won’t you take your coat off and sit down? Can I get you a tea or coffee, or something?’

He loomed. The room suddenly seemed absurdly small. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Let me know if you change your mind.’

Edward folded his arms. ‘I will not change my mind. Since I’ve driven from Gloucestershire in a thunderstorm, and spent the past forty minutes trying to find a parking space, I think we had better get on with it.’

Rufa sat down on her bed, on the other side of the room.

He said, ‘I daresay you know why I’m here.’

‘Just tell me, Edward. Please don’t make a song and dance about it.’

‘All right. I was in Cirencester this morning, and I ran into Mike Bosworth.’

‘Oh.’ Bosworth’s were the firm of auctioneers who had valued Melismate.

‘I asked him what was happening about the sale,’ Edward said. ‘And I was absolutely staggered to discover that it had been postponed. Mike said your mother still hadn’t given him the go-ahead.’

There was a long silence.

Rufa looked down at her knees. ‘We wanted a little more time.’

‘The time ran out long ago.’ Edward shrugged off his wet coat, and draped it over the back of the single chair in the room. ‘The debts are piling up, the house is ready
to
collapse – I expected craziness from Rose. But never from you.’

‘Did you speak to Mum?’

‘I drove straight round to Melismate to find out what was going on. And out it all came. How halting the sale was all your idea. How you were going to London, with the avowed intention of marrying a man rich enough to sort out the whole bloody mess.’

Rufa hung her head. Her throat felt hot. Put like this, it sounded crude and stupid. She wished Rose had not blabbed, but could not blame her for it. When Edward sank his teeth into something, there was no point in not telling him the truth. Rose freely admitted she was scared ot his moral dressings-down. And she had never quite grasped how essential his approval was to Rufa.

‘I didn’t bother to ask what you and Nancy were doing for money,’ Edward went on. ‘I naturally worked that one out for myself. It appears that I have bankrolled the entire operation. With the money that I gave you, on the understanding that you would spend it on some kind of further education. I know exactly how you spent it, because Rose showed me a photograph of you, in a very questionable Sunday newspaper. She appeared to think this settled everything.’

‘Edward, I’m sorry,’ Rufa said. She made herself raise her head, to look at him. She was sorry. ‘I had to tell you all those lies. If you’d known the truth, you would have taken back the brooch.’

‘The brooch was a bloody present,’ Edward snapped.

‘With definite strings attached.’

His dark grey eyes and hair looked black under the feeble overhead light. ‘You sound exactly like your father – which you will, doubtless, take as a compliment.
And
I really thought you were the one person in your family with some sense. Well, we needn’t go into it any further. Get your things together – if you want to argue, you can do it in the car.’

Rufa’s guilt boiled over into anger. ‘We can argue right here, because I am not going home with you. And there’s nothing crazy about my idea. It’s perfectly possible for a girl like me to marry a lot of money. I know I can find someone rich enough to save Melismate – so why shouldn’t I?’

‘Do you honestly need me to spell it out?’ Edward was quiet and still with compacted fury. ‘Because of the sheer immorality of it. Of course it’s possible for you to find a rich husband – you’re a beautiful girl. But to sell yourself for money –’

‘Look, Edward, you have no right to storm in here giving me orders. If that brooch was a gift, I can do what the hell I like with the money. And I’m using it to save my home. Obviously, I’m not going to marry a man I can’t admire and respect –’

‘You think that will make you happy?’

‘Yes!’ she shouted – she had never shouted at Edward. ‘I’ll be incredibly, deliriously happy with any man who gives me back my house!’

He was rattled. He had not expected to be argued with, once he had let Rufa see his wrath. ‘I didn’t realize how deeply you cared about money,’ he said stiffly.

‘You’ve never wanted to understand how much Melismate means to all of us. Just because you disapprove of inheritances and things, you won’t see that it means more to us than money – that it’s worth a sacrifice. You were just the same with the Man.’

Edward said, ‘I never saw him making any sacrifices.’

This was true, and it made Rufa angrier. ‘You couldn’t control him – that’s why you were always carping at him, criticizing everything he did –’

White with anger, he took a step closer to her. ‘Is that what you think I was doing?’

He seemed to loom over her, overwhelming her. Rufa, her defences weakened by the awfulness of arguing with Edward when she knew he was right and she was wrong, was suddenly stiflingly aware of his body. She smelled rain and woodsmoke on his coat, and the Wright’s Coal Tar soap he used on his hands, overlaying a musky tang of sweat.

For the first time, she was overwhelmed by a sense of him as a sexual being; someone who could lean six inches closer and kiss her. A picture came into her mind, of Edward’s angry energy channelled into desire. The air suddenly tasted of sex. Rufa flushed, and backed away from him. ‘You tried to manage him,’ she said. ‘We didn’t give you permission to manage us.’

His voice was very quiet. ‘I didn’t think I needed permission, God help me.’

‘You have no right to charge down here and spoil everything.’

‘I’m trying to help,’ he said. ‘I – I do it because I care for you.’

She could not accept this, without suffering agonies of guilt. ‘No you don’t – part of you was jealous of the Man, and now you’re thrilled to see his show-offy family being forced to be ordinary! You think it serves us right! Oh, God –’

Rufa was appalled by this piece of horror that had bubbled out of her subconscious like pond scum. She pressed her palms into her burning cheeks. She knew at
once
that she had dealt him a serious blow. He was astonished that she had such weapons.

‘I didn’t understand,’ he said. ‘You’re as much a fantasist as he was. I thought you had a grain of sense – and all the time you were clinging to this ludicrous notion that the world owes you a living – merely because you’ve loafed around on the same bit of land for a few centuries. Does this make you a special case? There’s nothing clever or admirable about getting yourself born into an old family!’

Rufa was trying not to cry. ‘You know it’s more than that. Melismate is part of us, and what we are. Without it, we’re nothings and nobodies.’

Edward frowned. ‘Rubbish. You could do anything. Listen to me, Rufa. I’m only trying to stop you ruining your entire life for the sake of a heap of stones. What would it take, for God’s sake?’

‘You’d have to find a few million quid,’ Rufa said, ‘and give it to me – without telling me how to spend it.’

‘I see.’

‘You don’t!’ She found his obstinacy infuriating. ‘You never will! Oh, God, this isn’t – Edward, I’m not –’ she was trying to claw back some self-control. ‘I know you mean to be kind. But please don’t interfere. Please. I want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything!’

They both stared down at the swirly carpet, arms rigid at their sides, casting around for some way to part as friends. There was a long, hardening silence.

‘Well, I tried,’ Edward said abruptly. ‘I offered to help clear up this mess, and you turned me down. I won’t interfere again.’

Rufa moved to the bedroom door, making a wide circle around him, and jerked it open.

‘Goodbye, then.’

Chapter Twelve

AFTER BREAKFAST, ON
the morning of Rufa’s first lunch with Adrian, Nancy had made a secret phone call to Rose. ‘She can’t marry this man, Mum. Please take my word for it – he makes my blood run cold.’

Miles across the rain-spattered country, Rose had chuckled. ‘She rang me last night, when you were in the bath. She said I had to talk you out of chasing young Berry.’

‘She thinks he’s too good for me,’ Nancy had said indignantly. ‘Of all the sauce. Well, I’ll show her. I’ve got at least two more assets than she has.’

Rose had said, ‘I might have known the pair of you would start bickering. Do calm down. It’s only a lunch.’

‘Only? He’s taking her to the bloody Connaught!’

‘Ah,’ Rose had sighed. ‘Did I ever tell you—’

‘About the Man washing dishes there when he was a student? Yes, millions of times. He dropped a tab of acid, and thought the sous-chef was an octopus – perhaps Ru will mention it, if she runs out of small talk.’

‘I’m sorry you’ve inherited my sarcasm gene,’ Rose had said, mildly but firmly. ‘Don’t get into one of your states, darling. Rufa won’t do anything silly.’

Nancy was not so sure. The Marrying Game had seemed terrifically amusing when the rich men only
existed
in theory. The cold actuality of a man like Adrian Mecklenberg, and Rufa’s willingness to sacrifice herself to him, had come as a severe shock.

Nobody, Nancy thought, could describe me as a prude – but there’s something indecent about Ru trying to sell herself to that frosty old geezer.

What had got into her? Suddenly, the Marrying Game had the potential to turn rather nasty. Unless Nancy did something about it.

In the bedroom, Rufa had been dressing for her lunch. She was pale and overwrought, but looked wonderful – she was very convincing as a highborn virgin. Nancy knew that if she wanted to beat her vestal sister to the altar, she would have to ignore her advice about delicacy and refinement, and tackle things in her own style.

She had said, ‘Don’t mind me,’ and pulled off her tight black sweater, treating a rainy segment of Tufnell Park Road to the sight of her bare white breasts. She put on her Wonderbra – that boon to the titless, which moulded the naturally well-endowed into queens. She put the sweater back on, applied fiery crimson lipstick, and added one of the creamy, supple, classic raincoats Roshan had made them buy at Margaret Howell.

Rufa had asked, ‘Where are you going?’

‘The Square Mile, darling,’ Nancy had said, neatly swiping the best umbrella. ‘I’m doing a little research.’

Nancy was impressed by the City. She looked, with great interest, at the shining slabs of buildings, and the majestic columns of St Paul’s and the Bank of England. She noted, with increasing optimism, the huge flocks of personable young men, in identical charcoal suits. The
whole
warren of packed streets reeked of maleness. This was the Land of the Male: a hard, rapid, bustling place, where business ruled and sex was tucked firmly into corners. The few women bobbing through the endlessly surging crowds looked either cheerfully secretarial, or soberly dressed and harassed.

The offices of Berry’s bank were in Cheapside, near Threadneedle Street. Nancy stood on the opposite side of the road, watching the building with open curiosity. Its sheer glass walls towered above a sea of moving corporate golf umbrellas, like huge mushrooms with logos. Berry emerged, struggling with his own umbrella. He was deep in conversation with another man, and did not see Nancy when she slipped into the crowd, a few umbrellas behind him.

They turned into a narrow side street. Nancy’s interest quickened. Berry and his companion were furling their umbrellas at the low doorway of a place called Forbes & Gunning – which, though it claimed to be a wine merchant to the gentry since the year dot, was essentially a wine bar.