The Marrying Game (27 page)

He cleared his throat. ‘Are you all right?’

Rufa, turned to him, still smiling. ‘Fine.’ When they spoke, normality reasserted itself.

‘You’re not fine,’ he said. ‘And I wish to God I knew what to do about it. Is it me?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Is it Nancy?’

Her silence told him he was right.

‘I was under the impression,’ he said, ‘that I would be driving Miss Nancy today. Am I to take her absence personally?’

Rufa had her meditative, inward look, which he recognized as anger. ‘She’s in one of her tempers. We had a massive row.’

‘About me, I suppose. About you marrying a superannuated old fart.’

‘Well, yes. But she’ll calm down.’ Rufa said this forcefully, willing it to be true. ‘She usually does in the end.’

Edward gripped the steering wheel aggressively, swallowing his intense annoyance. Nancy had all the Man’s faults, he decided, and precious little of his charm. Rufa’s feelings, however, were his chief consideration. He had been alarmed by the chasm of pain that had opened up in her yesterday, when he proposed. She was not as self-possessed as people thought. Thinking of this reassured him. He was doing the right thing; he was not taking advantage. She needed him.

He said, ‘I don’t suppose your Mr Mecklenberg was too thrilled, either.’

Rufa sighed. She had not yet told him about telling Adrian. ‘No, he wasn’t, though he wouldn’t let me explain. He just gave me a dreadful look, that left me covered with ice.’

‘Rather awkward, I should think.’

‘I deserved it,’ Rufa said. ‘It was the least I deserved.
Proper
behaviour is what matters most to Adrian. In front of the others, he was very nice. He made everyone drink a toast to me, and said you were a lucky man. I felt about an inch tall.’

‘Well, you’ve done it now.’

‘Yes.’ She was drifting back into silence.

Edward asked, ‘Do you mind if we stop off at the farm on the way?’

‘I’d love to.’

He kept his stern eyes on the road. ‘You might think about what needs to be done there. The outside’s in good nick, but the inside hasn’t been touched in twenty years.’ He added, ‘Since the last bride came home, in fact.’

‘Don’t let me change anything,’ Rufa said. ‘I couldn’t stand the responsibility.’

‘It’s not a shrine.’ Edward was firm. ‘It’s got to be your home. Our home.’ He dropped this in carefully. They had not mentioned it before – that Rufa, in order to save the house she loved, must live in exile. They must live under the same roof, or where was the point of getting married? He felt brutal for pointing it out, and half expected her to protest.

She was still smiling. ‘OK, but nothing fancy. I like the farm as it is. It reminds me of your mother.’

‘She’d be terrifically pleased about this,’ Edward said, touched that Rufa had invoked that benign, hectoring presence.

‘Only if I make you happy.’

‘You will.’

‘I hope so – I mean, I hope there’s something in it for you. I’d hate it if marrying me was just another example of your doing something kind.’

Here was his cue to assure her that there was everything in it for him, because he adored her. And all he could manage was, ‘I don’t go and marry people in the way that I fix drains.’

He turned the car off the road, down the narrow track that led to the farm. They halted in front of the plain, square, trim house that had not changed since Rufa’s childhood. It was scrupulously clean, and achingly bare. The big Georgian windows had a chilly glint where the sun caught them.

Rufa got out of the car, and stood gazing at her new home. Edward was surprised to see how happy she seemed: eager and determined to be pleased. The sunlight on her hair almost disabled him with a sudden, blinding awareness of her beauty. He wanted to fill her arms with great bales of spring flowers.

He unlocked his front door. There was a pile of mail on the mat. He stooped to pick it up, and went across the broad, tiled hall to the drawing room. Rufa followed obediently, like a visitor.

In his army days the house had been let to a series of tenants, while he and Alice had mostly lived abroad. It still had an impersonal feel. There were no traces of Alice except for two photographs in silver frames on the chimney piece. One was of Alice, squinting against the sun, outside their army house in Germany. In the other, she was holding her baby nephew, son of her half-sister. Rufa looked at these, then looked away. Light-headed with the longing to touch her, Edward wrapped his arms around her.

For the smallest fraction of a second, Rufa tensed defensively. A quarter-second later, she smiled again, and relaxed against him in the old friendly way, but it
was
enough. He released her gently. She was not ready. It horrified him that she might think of sex with him as a duty. Too many ghosts. He saw Alice, faded to sepia, quietly leaving and closing the door behind her. He pushed away a disturbing memory of standing beside the font in the village church, with the weight of a baby in his arms. It was too soon. They both needed more time.

He said, ‘Do you want some tea?’

She was grateful, which was awful. ‘I’ll make it.’

‘Thanks. There’s a carton of long-life milk in the larder.’

Rufa went to the kitchen. Edward heard her opening doors, humming to herself. He sat down on the sofa to open his letters.

She brought the tea things in on a dented tin tray, decorated with a worn picture of a Scottie dog, which she had coveted as a small child. The cups were clean and chipless, but of different patterns. The teapot was a thick brown clod, with a rubber tip over the broken spout.

‘You need a new teapot,’ she said. ‘Nobody uses these little condom things any more.’

Edward laughed, suddenly feeling more cheerful. He loved it when she gave him orders. ‘Don’t they?’

‘No. It just looks mean, in a weird way.’

‘Hmmm, they are getting rather hard to buy, now that you mention it. Condoms are a hell of a lot easier.’

Rufa set the tray down on the hearthrug and knelt, like a geisha, to pour it. She had found a jug for the milk. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll drag you into the right century.’ She handed him his tea, and settled contentedly against his leg – the unthinking physical contact moved him deeply, and increased the distance between them.

‘Isn’t this lovely?’ she demanded. ‘It feels like we’ve been married for ages.’

‘Well, here’s to the latest Russian play,’ Rose said, holding her fourth glass of champagne up to the bleary light. ‘The one where Rufa Rufusova marries the elderly neighbour to save the orchard.’

‘He’s not elderly, but you can say anything you like now,’ Rufa said calmly. She was moving between the range and the kitchen table, assembling a lavish supper. She had made Edward take a detour to the supermarket in Cirencester on the way, knowing there would be nothing at Melismate. ‘I don’t care – as long as you’re civil to him when he’s here.’

‘Come on – wasn’t I the very pink of politeness? Weren’t we all?’

Rufa said, ‘You know what I mean.’ There was steel beneath her serenity. She was alone with her mother for the first time since her triumphal return. Edward had wisely lubricated the homecoming with a dozen bottles of supermarket champagne. Even so, Rufa had sensed that her mother and sisters did not protest only because they were too limp with amazement. She had been acutely aware of Rose’s anxiety and scepticism. It had been a relief when Edward went home, leaving her here. Now they could talk about him openly, and have a screaming row if necessary.

Rose, slouched in her drinking chair beside the range, watched Rufa narrowly.

‘Daughters are the most puzzling creatures,’ she said gloomily. ‘How can you possibly be happy?’

‘Mum, for the last time, please believe me.’ Rufa
turned
to face her, so that Rose could see she meant it. ‘I’m happier than I’ve been in ages. I feel as if a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders.’

‘Darling, that wasn’t for you to carry. You weren’t designed for weights.’

Rufa’s lips twitched. She was so light and giddy from the sudden removal of the pain, she was finding their objections to Edward rather comical. Rose, Lydia and Selena had wanted to be cold and disapproving, but they had not been able to resist the free alcohol. The savages of Melismate would have sold each other for a drop of the white man’s fire-water.

‘You shouldn’t drink champagne,’ she said. ‘It makes you lugubrious.’

Rose let out a yelp of laughter. This was not what she had expected from her earnest, Victorian daughter. ‘Oh God, does it?’

‘I love Edward very much, and I’m radiantly happy.’ This absolutely had to be true, and therefore was. Rufa did love Edward, in the sense of being deeply fond of him, dependent on him, anxious to have his good opinion. At the farm, seeing the changed Edward in the familiar setting, she had found herself thinking how easy it would be to fall in love with him if they had only just met. She was sorry she had not been prepared when he put his arm around her. Edward had backed off too quickly, she thought. It was difficult, when both of you felt you were play-acting at being in love.

If he had ignored her surprise and ravished her, would she have enjoyed it? Or would she have despised him for behaving as if he had bought her? Any reaching out to Edward would carry embarrassing implications of buying and selling. These were complicated
questions
, only beginning to form in Rufa’s mind. She did not want Rose to put them into brutal words. Her mother’s role in all this was simply being overjoyed, nothing more.

She asked, ‘Why can’t you accept it, and start looking forward to the future?’

‘I’ve lost the art,’ Rose said sadly. ‘The future always looks shitty to me.’

‘It’s going to be heavenly. I’m so excited.’ Rufa squeezed lemon over plates of smoked salmon. ‘Edward says he’ll bring over a friend of his who’s a structural engineer, to decide what major work needs to be done – the foundations, the roof, the west wall –’

Rose groaned, and leaned forward to dribble the last champagne in the bottle into her glass. ‘Spare me.’

‘I’m sorry if it bores you,’ Rufa said, with the first hint of lemon-sharpness. ‘But it’s not as if he’s asking you to actually do anything. All you have to do is live with the workmen, and try not to subvert them.’

There was a sour twist to Rose’s smile. ‘You even sound like him.’

‘Perhaps I am like him.’

‘It’s not the plans for the house I mind,’ Rose said. ‘The Man would have been thrilled.’

Rufa ground black pepper over the salmon. ‘I keep thinking about him. I wish we’d been able to save the house before, when he was alive. It might have changed everything.’ She had tried to make her voice sound casual, but it cracked.

Rose said, ‘It wasn’t really because of the house.’

‘Because of everything it stood for, then.’

‘No, there was more.’ Rose was finding it easier to talk about the Man with resignation, if not detachment.
‘Lost
looks, lost years. Hitting fifty was dreadful for him. He couldn’t roll back time.’

‘All the same, I wish time did roll back.’ Rufa’s voice cracked again.

Rose swallowed a twinge of anger with the Man. Though she had barely admitted it to herself, she read selfishness and aggression into his suicide, and despised him for it. Couldn’t he have seen what it would do to his girls? Especially Rufa, his best beloved. He must have known there was a good chance that Rufa would be the one to find his body. She had been a basket case ever since. In the end, it had been very hard to feel he gave a damn about any of them.

She levered herself out of her chair. ‘You’re right, champagne obviously does make me lugubrious – bloody nice engagement party this is. If you’re really happy, I suppose I am too. All right?’ She filled the battered kettle at the stained butler’s sink in the pantry, and banged it down on the hotplate. ‘It’s you I’m worried about, darling. If Edward truly is the man you want, I’ll welcome the tiresome old fart with open arms.’

Rufa’s face brightened. ‘He is. Don’t you think he’s handsome, without the beard?’

‘God, yes, there’s no dispute about that. I must say, the pair of you look fabulous together – you’ll be the best-looking couple this parish has seen in years.’ Rose poured water and made tea. She took her cup back to the drinking chair. ‘But I just can’t stretch my imagination into picturing you sleeping with him. And that does worry me. Sex is a lot more important than you seem to think. Being able to live without it is not the same as living with someone and not doing it.’

‘I haven’t slept with him yet,’ Rufa said. ‘But I do
assure
you, sex with Edward is – is very nice indeed.’

‘What – you mean you’ve done it?’

Rufa bent over the table, keeping her face hidden. ‘Yes. What’s so odd about that?’

Rose gasped, ‘Oh, God – you’ve done it with Edward!’ She went off into a fit of nervous laughter. ‘You’ve seen his bum! I’ll never be able to look him in the eye again!’

‘Stop it.’ Rufa was smiling.

Rose played up to her audience, as she had not done since the death of the Man. ‘Tell me the truth, dear – remember, you can say anything to Marmee – are his pubes grey?’