The Marrying Game (34 page)

Nancy liked Max when he knocked off the flirting, and spoke honestly. It made him yards more attractive; perhaps he was aware of this. ‘That exactly describes my own romantic career,’ she said, ‘until I met Berry. You’d better be warned.’

He smiled at her, evidently not devastated by the rejection. ‘What’s it like, then?’

‘Rather shitty, darling,’ Nancy said. ‘Especially when he’s about to marry someone else.’

‘I wouldn’t totally bet on it. He hasn’t taken his eyes off you for a second. You should send him a rope ladder as a wedding present.’

‘Not a hope,’ Nancy said sadly. ‘You haven’t met Polly. She’s had him electronically tagged. No power on earth will loosen her grip.’

Polly now knew what she had sometimes suspected. She had never been properly in love before. At some point during the service, between the Wagner and the Mendelssohn, she had slipped into another dimension. At last she understood what people went on about, and wrote poetry about – as for the poems, she suddenly saw the point of half the world’s literature.

His name was Randolph Verrall. He wore a foolish suit and his hair was far too long. He was being shadowed by a droopy ex-wife and her beady child. None of this was relevant – this charming country property was simply in need of a little renovation. Polly
had
been swimming in Ran’s black velvet eyes since Berry had introduced them.

‘Careful,’ Ran said.

They were walking round the moat, away from the noise of the reception, and the haunting presence of the droopy ex-wife. Polly’s pale blue heels were black with mud and, amazingly, she did not give a damn – Polly the fastidious, who found Glyndebourne almost unbearably stressful because of grass stains and rogue blobs of mayonnaise. Ran took her hand, to steady her. She felt the contact hit her heart, like a rush of electricity.

She murmured, ‘This is the most disturbingly beautiful place I’ve ever seen.’

‘Ridiculously romantic,’ Ran said. ‘There ought to be a law against it.’

They halted, still hand in hand. The two swans paddled past majestically, their long necks arching and twining. A weeping willow, newly pollarded, sheltered a keening choir of gnats.

‘So this is where Rufa grew up,’ Polly said. She was fascinated by Rufa. ‘Mariana in the moated grange.’

‘The moat was two inches deep and choked with weeds, until about a month ago,’ Ran said. ‘In hot weather, it stank like the shit pit at the Glastonbury Festival. They had to keep all the windows shut.’

The uncouth words ‘shit’ and ‘Glastonbury’ would normally have made Polly shudder. All she thought was that he had the mouth of an angel. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘you know them all terribly well. You were married to one of them.’

Ran said, ‘How could I help it? I was the boy next door.’

Polly shivered a little, because Ran’s warm fingers still held her hand. ‘Did you fall in love with them all?’

She was bantering, in a fie-fie, fan-tapping style that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Ran, however, considered the question seriously. ‘I fancied the older ones, but that all stopped when I got it together with Liddy. Women change when you marry their sisters. They turn into harpies.’ His great eyes were tragic. ‘You won’t believe this, but Nancy chucked a dustbin at me once.’

Polly asked, ‘Why? What had you done?’

‘I fell in love.’ ‘Oh.’

‘That’s the only crime I ever commit.’

Breathlessly, Polly stated, ‘Falling in love can never be counted as a crime.’

‘Do you think so? I wish Liddy would see it.’ Ran heaved a sigh. ‘We turned into a habit. Spiritual development between us was at a standstill. The bond is eternal, but there’s no more music.’

‘Music?’ Polly was mesmerized.

‘The music two people hear when they fall in love.’ His voice was low. ‘Listen!’

They were silent for a long moment.

‘Violins,’ whispered Polly.

‘A fanfare,’ Ran said, his mouth moving towards hers. Their lips met.

Polly caught the bouquet, and Lydia began to leak tears. Berry might not have noticed anything, but she had seen the hormonal storm clouds gathering round the angelic form of her ex-husband. He was falling in love again. She knew the signs.

Rose knew them too. She was faced with the ghost of
her
former self, wincing over the romantic follies of the Man. With a sigh of resignation, she collapsed into the chair beside the range, and eased off her new shoes.

‘Have a cup of tea,’ Roger suggested, looking down at her tenderly. ‘You’re knackered.’

They were alone, in the chaos of bleary glasses and empty bottles. The caterers were clearing away in the Great Hall. Nancy and Selena had dragged Lydia up to the old nursery, for red wine, consolation and bracing advice. Linnet was in a sticky sleep, clutching the Ressany Brothers, on the new sofa in the drawing room.

‘It went all right, didn’t it?’ Rose asked.

She expected to be reassured, and Roger was reassuring. ‘Brilliantly. Edward even thanked me. Nothing to worry about.’

‘And Ru’s OK, isn’t she?’

‘I’d say so.’ He handed Rose a mug of tea. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rose said. ‘She swears she’s happy. I have to take her word for it. But I don’t believe she’s ever slept with Edward – she was lying, to get me off her back. Or maybe it’s just the champagne, making me lugubrious.’

‘You’re thinking of the old ’un,’ Roger said gently.

‘Well, look what that bugger of a Man has done to my girls.’ Rose had never before said this aloud. She would not have said it to anyone but Roger. ‘Here’s Liddy, still obsessed with the Village Idiot, Nancy moping like Madame Butterfly, Selena—’

‘Selena’s great,’ Roger interrupted.

‘She’s left us. She came back for the wedding as if she was visiting another planet. But she doesn’t worry me like Rufa. I can’t make Ru talk about the future, beyond
finishing
this bloody house. As if she were taking orders from beyond the grave.’

‘You’d better change,’ he said, hearing the dryness of his own voice and cursing himself for it. ‘The traffic won’t be too bad, but we ought to leave plenty of time.’ Owing to what Edward described as ‘a slight balls-up on the booking front’, they were driving straight to the airport, to catch their flight to Italy. He thought it was probably just as well. His blood raged to make love to Rufa, but while they were in his house, or anywhere near Melismate, there was too much awkwardness to work through first.

He had chosen the villa in Tuscany because it was the most obviously romantic backdrop he could imagine. Somehow, in the space of a few hours, he had to shake off the image of faithful family friend, and transform himself into a lover. The act of marrying Rufa, and submitting to the carnival of an enormous family wedding, had not been enough. The oddity of their situation paralysed him. He kept hearing Prudence: ‘Of course she married you for your money – do you honestly imagine a girl like that would sleep with you for nothing?’

But Prudence – so woundingly and amazingly determined to make trouble – had no idea what kind of girl she was talking about. Edward knew that any feeling of owing her husband sex would make Rufa wretched. He was alarmed by the distance that must be travelled, before they could reach the right level of intimacy. How was he to reach her?

He took an envelope from his breast pocket. ‘I nearly forgot. Nancy told me to give you this.’

Rufa took it from him. The envelope said: ‘Mrs Rufa Reculver. Don’t open this until you are at home.’

Inside was a Polaroid photograph of a row of bare bums. Nancy, Lydia and Selena – their best wedding clothes bundled untidily round their waists – were doing low Japanese bows away from the camera. Underneath was written: ‘Full moon tonight!’

Rufa laughed till she cried. Then she did cry. Tears spilled from her eyes. She buried her face in Edward’s shoulder, suddenly shaking with sobs. He put his arms around her, and felt the love she had for him, trying to beat its way through the barrier of the bargain they had made. He felt strong, and strangely peaceful. The shadows darkened around them while he held her.

‘It’s all right,’ he whispered.

‘I’m so sorry. I’m sorry about everything.’

‘There’s nothing to be sorry for.’

Rufa said, ‘The thing is, I do love you. I haven’t told you properly.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘I do,’ she insisted. ‘You have to know.’ She drew apart from him, trying to scoop away the tears with the backs of her hands. There were two streaks of dark eye make-up on her cheeks. ‘Edward, I’m so ashamed.’

‘Ashamed?’

‘I must have been mad. I was mad.’

‘Here.’ He dug in his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and put it into her wet hand.

She laughed dismally. ‘You’re always having to find me hankies.’

‘Well, I’ll find you as many as you want.’

She mopped at her eyes. ‘You have to know. It wasn’t just about the money.’

‘Are we talking, by any chance, about your infamous Marrying Game?’ Edward was smiling, a little grimly.

‘Yes.’

‘Hmm. The general consensus seems to be that you played an absolute blinder.’

‘Please don’t joke about it. Until you asked me, I hadn’t really admitted how wrong it was. I sort of knew deep down, but there didn’t seem to be any other way out. And now I don’t know – I can’t find a way –’ Rufa was struggling for words. ‘I probably would have married Adrian, but I knew it would make me miserable. And then you came along, and saved me.’

Edward did not like the avuncular, Father-Christmas image of himself as family Saviour, but he could not help being touched by her faith in him. She was still so certain that she had been saved. He circled her waist with his arm, manfully ordering his erection to subdue itself until they were several hundred miles outside Gloucestershire, and led her to the window. The night was clear, hung with stars. There were bars of moonlight across the lawn.

‘Perhaps you saved me, too,’ he said gently. ‘If you hadn’t dreamt up your Marrying Game, I’d have been trapped in my old life, rapidly turning into a grey-bearded, barmy old git. I can’t let you think the favours are all on my side.’

‘You might have married someone else.’

‘I didn’t, though, did I? Because I happened to be in love with you.’

She whispered, ‘Were you— did you love me before we had that row?’

He could tell this question was crucially important to her. He was cautious. One word out of place now, and he
would
lose her. Mentally he shuffled the pack of truth cards, to find a configuration that would not alarm her. ‘It’s not as simple as that. My life came to a standstill when I left the army. Without that to hold me together, I found I was still grieving for Alice. I wasn’t in a position to fall in love with anyone. Your Marrying Game forced me to take action, when I thought nothing on earth could. I’d never have married you – or anyone – without it.’

She had stopped crying. ‘Honestly?’

‘Honestly – so, for the love of God, stop being grateful. You can’t build a marriage on gratitude. Whether I admitted it to myself or not, I realized I’ve loved you for years.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Would you have looked at me?’