The Marrying Game (21 page)

Nancy, folding herself into the tide of charcoal suits, went down a cramped wooden staircase and found herself in an enormous vaulted cellar, reverberating with male noise. The long bar was hidden behind a solid wall of charcoal backs. Some men were standing, with glasses of wine or beer, and old-fashioned doorstep sandwiches. Through a glass door, more men were eating what appeared to be very posh school dinners, at crisp white tables. Berry and his friend fought through to the bar, emerged with a bottle of red wine, and sat down at a round table in a relatively quiet corner.

Nancy was just deciding she was too conspicuous
here
, and had better leave, when a beautiful opportunity presented itself – like the hand of destiny, as she said afterwards. A young man, in a long apron like a Toulouse-Lautrec waiter, touched her arm.

‘Hi – sorry to keep you waiting. You’ve come about the job, right?’

She did not get back to Wendy’s until past midnight. Two bottles of Forbes & Gunning’s House Champagne distended the pockets of her Margaret Howell raincoat. The young man, whose name was Simon, had hired her on the spot. He had taken her into an airless underground office, given her a cappuccino, and formally telephoned the landlord of the Hasty Arms for a reference.

Nancy had explained that she could pull pints and do a perfect shamrock on the head of a Guinness, but that she knew nothing about cocktails, wines or espresso machines. Simon said none of this mattered, and offered her an hourly rate which seemed like an absolute fortune. She went straight on to the evening shift, and was further dazzled by the amount she made in tips. The men had been surprisingly unbothersome. They had all flicked glances at her during their conversations, but none of them assumed that a tip gave them a right to heavy flirtation, or even a kind word. Often, they simply thrust a banknote into her hand with a brief smile. She could not believe how easy this was. She had forgotten how much she relished the raucous bustle of a busy bar.

‘Well, madam,’ Simon said, when they had locked the doors after the last, lingering suits, and sat at a table drinking champagne, ‘I knew you’d be a fast learner.’ He thought Nancy, with her posh voice and village-pub reference, a great novelty.

‘None faster,’ Nancy said. ‘You run ever such a nice place, Simon. The streets of London really are paved with gold.’

Singing to herself, she put her bottles on Wendy’s kitchen table, and switched the kettle on. She had spent the tube journey home dreaming of the treats she would heap upon Linnet with her new-found wealth. The television murmured in the sitting room next door.

Wendy’s high voice quavered, ‘Is that you, Nancy?’

‘Yes,’ Nancy called back. ‘I’m making tea.’

The noise from the next room abruptly ceased. Wendy came in, blinking (she liked to watch television in the dark). ‘Where on earth have you been?’ She saw the champagne, and her eyes widened. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘I’ve landed myself the most divine job – the job of my dreams. Where’s Ru? How was her lunch with Count Mecklenberg?’

Wendy was solemn. ‘She’s upstairs.’ Briefly and breathlessly, she outlined the visitation from Edward. ‘I didn’t see him – I just heard the door slamming when he walked out.’

‘Oh, God,’ Nancy groaned. ‘The miserable old git – I suppose he accused her of being less pure than the driven snow. You know how she minds about things like that. I hope you told her not to take any notice.’

‘I couldn’t tell her anything,’ Wendy said. ‘She won’t come down. She won’t even let me in.’

Nancy was angry. She pulled another mug down from the shelf, and stuffed in a tea bag aggressively. ‘How could he? He knows perfectly well what Ru’s like – she acts all cool and collected, but she’s about as tough as a marshmallow. And she’s the only one of us who gives a
damn
about Edward’s good opinion.’

‘I’m rather glad I missed him,’ Wendy confessed. ‘When I lived at Melismate, I was always terrified of him.’

‘He doesn’t terrify me.’ Nancy picked up the two mugs of tea. ‘We’ll be down in a minute. Put the champagne in the freezer, there’s a love.’

She carried the tea upstairs, and went into the bedroom.

As soon as she turned the handle, a muffled voice cried, ‘Go away!’

‘Darling, it’s only me. I sleep here too – unless you’d like to exile me to Max’s room.’

Rufa lay sprawled across her single bed. It was obvious to Nancy that she had cried herself half-blind. Her face was raw and bloated with tears. Nancy felt a spasm of pure rage against Edward, but managed to pin on a cheerful smile.

‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea.’

Nancy very rarely made tea for anyone. Rufa sobbed, ‘Th-thanks –’ and struggled blearily into a sitting position.

‘Well, I heard,’ Nancy said, dropping down on her own bed. ‘And I’m sorry I wasn’t here to give him a handsome piece of my mind.’

‘He’s found out about the Marrying Game. He thinks we’re disgusting.’ Rufa shakily sipped her tea. ‘I said the most awful things to him – he’ll never speak to me again, probably.’

‘Good,’ Nancy said. ‘I’m always telling you, don’t listen to him. The Man never took a blind bit of notice.’

Rufa’s lips quivered. ‘What’s going to happen to us all without Edward?’

‘We’ll survive, that’s what,’ Nancy declared. ‘Don’t
go
nuts, but I’ve got myself a job – and not at the Duke of Clarence, before you say anything.’

She reached into her Wonderbra, and pulled out a crumpled bunch of banknotes.

The corners of Rufa’s mouth twitched into the beginnings of a smile. ‘Don’t tell me you made all that pulling pints.’

‘Pints of champagne, my dear. I’m working at Berry’s local – down a city alley with one of those tactless historical names, like Great Cripple Street, or Leper’s Yard.’

‘What?’

Nancy laughed. ‘It’s wondrously posh. When it’s closing time, you don’t have to turn off the telly, or dip the lights – they just leave by themselves. And when I dropped a glass, nobody cheered.’

‘Yes, that’s certainly very posh.’

‘Admit it,’ Nancy coaxed, ‘you’re impressed.’

Rufa smiled now – a watery sketch of a smile, that went to Nancy’s heart. ‘God, yes. I’ve been feeling so hopeless and scared about money. It was stupid of me to be snotty about you being a barmaid. I wish I could find some work myself.’

‘Didn’t Berry say he’d ask around about your dinner parties? I’ll remind him.’

‘Of course,’ Rufa murmured. ‘You’ll be seeing him.’

‘Seeing him? I’ll be having a wild affair with him, and then I’ll be marrying him. So stop crying, honey. Come down and have a glass of my champagne. Forget about Edward. Honestly, darling, it’s not worth getting this worked up over a man unless you’re in love with him.’

‘I can’t bear that he despises me,’ Rufa said. ‘I can’t bear that he sees me in this sleazy way. It makes me hate myself.’

‘You’re not sleazy. He’ll see that when he gets the invitation to my huge society wedding.’

There was a box of tissues on Rufa’s bed. A snowdrift of used tissues lay on the faded Indian cotton counterpane beside her. She extracted another clean tissue, and blew her nose. She was making an effort to pull herself together, but her voice was desolate.

‘I don’t think you should count on marrying Berry.’

Nancy laughed, and dropped a kiss on her sister’s head. ‘I’m not going to argue about it.

Nancy was Berry’s introduction to the phenomenon of stress. In the usual way of things, he bobbed serenely between work, fiancée and family, never much disturbed by anything. Nancy’s astonishing, overbalancing appearance behind the bar at Forbes & Gunning rapidly turned him into a restless, coffee-guzzling nervous wreck.

The worst of it was that other men noticed her – how could they help it? She was a redheaded Hebe, dispensing nectar with unhurried ease. She smiled, she parried lubricious remarks, she never gave the wrong change or forgot an order. In a matter of weeks, she had a cult following. They were coming from as far as Canary Wharf to get a look at her wicked blue eyes and gorgeous breasts.

Other men asked her out, with varying degrees of seriousness. Nancy always refused, hinting that she was ‘spoken for’. Berry heard this once, and was seized by a pang of jealousy, frightening in its intensity. On hearing someone call her ‘the Russet Gusset’, he could, for a second, have committed murder. She upset him dreadfully. He knew he should have avoided her, for the
sake
of his sanity and peace of mind, but could not stop himself haunting Forbes & Gunning like a miserable spectre.

Several times a day, as the winter began to soften into spring, he told himself that he absolutely refused to do anything to hurt Polly – utterly, totally refused. He told himself how deeply he loved Polly. Never mind the expensive arrangements for their wedding. This was a matter of principle. Call him old-fashioned, but he believed in the sanctity of a gentleman’s word.

Unfortunately, he kept encountering a part of himself that would never be a gentleman. He had always assumed that this part was well under control. His cataclysmic discovery of sexual obsession pulled his entire life out of shape.

Two factors made the whole situation more complicated. The fact that Nancy worked at Forbes & Gunning, where all his colleagues drank and gossiped, was difficult enough. Staying out of the wine bar did not mean he could avoid her, because both Adrian and Polly were so deeply involved with her sister. The enigmatic Adrian was, as far as Berry could tell, very serious about his pursuit of Rufa. And the more serious he became, the greater Polly’s determination to cultivate the future Mrs Mecklenberg.

Adrian moved methodically. In a matter of weeks, the lunchtime assignations progressed to concerts and dinners. And as the courtship developed, Polly grew more friendly with Rufa and more willing to tolerate Nancy. The culmination came one evening when Berry returned from the office, sadly congratulating himself for his strength of mind in not going to Forbes & Gunning – and found a red-haired Hasty in each corner
of
his Knole sofa. Polly had invited them both to supper.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Polly said to him privately, in the kitchen. ‘I couldn’t very well invite Rufa on her own.’

She did not like Nancy, and assumed Berry agreed with her.

He said, hoping to heaven he sounded casual, ‘Oh, I don’t mind Nancy.’

Polly plucked the briefcase from his hand, and gave him the corkscrew. ‘I’m relying on you to talk to her, while I go over my contacts with Rufa. You know how Nancy hijacks the conversation.’

Berry watched her arranging asparagus spears in balsamic puddles, and thought how exhausting and thankless it was to live perpetually on show. Even when they were alone together, Polly never entirely stopped playing to impress an invisible audience. As if, he thought, she had a satellite trained on her. She could let the Hasty girls think they lived like this all the time, because they bloody well did.

‘It’s not that I don’t like her,’ Polly said. She was now shaving Parmesan at the counter, with her back to him. ‘But let’s face it, she’ll never have Rufa’s sheer quality. Well, can you imagine Adrian taking someone like Nancy to a chamber concert? I’m afraid there’s something rather provincial about her. If not borderline vulgar.’

To Berry’s dismay, he was seized by a pang of active dislike for Polly. It had never happened before, and it shocked him into facing the truth.

This had turned into more than overheated infatuation. This was the real deal, the whole nine yards. He had fallen in love with Nancy. She brought the sun into
a
room with her, and it sank into chilly gloom when she left. Her charm, her laughter and her high spirits charged the atmosphere with magic. Her unexpected flashes of pure kindness all but unmanned him. He was madly in love with Nancy, as he had never been in love before. And he was unavoidably engaged to marry Polly. He could jilt her, and despise himself for ever. Or he could ignore Nancy and die of a broken heart. Either way, he was condemned to a lifetime of misery and a permanent erection.

He tried to exhaust his treacherous body into submission. Instead of drifting into the wine bar at lunchtime Berry went to the gym (Polly had bought him a year’s membership as a birthday present). Instead of eating a chocolate pretzel and three sultana muffins before work, he went to the gym. He went to the bar after work, as usual, but spent the whole time nursing a glass of mineral water and pining for Nancy’s attention.

He lost interest in food. As the spring days lengthened, his paunch melted. All his suits were taken in three times, then discarded. His jaw was lean, and there were poignant hollows underneath his cheekbones. Berry stared at his new reflection when he shaved – disconcertingly huge brown eyes in a bony, boyish face – and thought himself a pathetic figure. Other people, however, kept telling him how marvellous he looked. Even his sister, who could usually read his mind, congratulated him for deciding not to turn into a blimp.

Polly was delighted. Why, Berry wondered, didn’t she notice? How could she want to marry a man who was burning with love for someone else? He allowed himself the small treat of being annoyed with Polly for her complacency, but that was as far as it went. He was still
determined
to marry her. Let it be written on his tombstone that he was a man of his word.