The Marrying Game (36 page)

She sighed. ‘I can’t move.’

‘You don’t have to.’ The world rocked again as he lifted her out of her chair and carried her across the terrace. They were both laughing. Rufa did not know
what
was so funny, except that life suddenly felt brilliant. Her consciousness flickered between stupid, fuzzy happiness and intense awareness of Edward’s body. She rested her swimming head on his shoulder.

The soft mattress of the big double bed was underneath her. Very distantly, she felt Edward pulling off her sandals.

He murmured, ‘Do you want me to take your dress off?’

‘Mmmmm. Yes.’ She could not have done it herself, if her life depended on it.

She felt his fingers, warm and firm, unfastening the buttons down her front. She felt him peel away the silk, exposing her flesh. She felt his lips on her breasts, and heard – as if from a great distance – her own shuddering sigh of longing.

And suddenly, jumping ahead several frames, he was on top of her, still fully clothed, moving inside her. Another jump ahead, and her legs were around his waist, gripping him against her. Nothing existed, beyond the delicious urgency of being fucked by him. She came, tightening around him, and he came too, rocking the bed beneath them.

Afterwards, Rufa lay watching Edward in the shadows of the shuttered room, swiftly and silently tearing off his clothes. She felt as if he had shattered her, and reassembled her into a new person. At the back of her addled, crazed mind, she marvelled at the old Rufa, who had considered poor Jonathan a good lover. Edward was in another league entirely. His body was hard and lean, with two dark triangles of hair on his chest and groin. Mesmerized, she stared at his erection, wondering how he had got such a thing inside her; faint with
the
desire to have him inside her again.

He made love to her slowly this time, gazing down into her face, keeping iron control until he came with a long groan of release. The room dissolved around Rufa. She lay against his chest, and slipped into a sleep of dizzy, mindless happiness.

Sighing, she pushed the memory away – but too late to avoid recalling the next day. She had woken in the early morning with a ferocious headache, and spent the entire day throwing up and swearing never to touch alcohol again. Edward had been marvellously considerate. That evening, when she had recovered enough to drink camomile tea under the moon, he had quietly apologized. When she begged him to believe that no apology was necessary, he had ignored her. She could hardly blame him – the face she met in the mirror was pasty, with black semicircles under her red eyes. She looked like death warmed up. A couple of times she caught Edward watching her with a kind of horrified concern, as if he had killed something by mistake. They had not made love again.

Rufa longed for Edward to make to love to her, and had several times humiliated herself by dropping delicate hints – which he had ignored. It had been like dropping hints to a brick wall. She did not dare risk rejection by asking him outright. His spells of depression, when he would raise a black wall around himself, intimidated her too much. Just occasionally, she had even been a little afraid of him. Though the moods had never been directed at her, they had turned him into a stranger.

He was more like himself now that they had come
home
. The two of them had not made love the night before, but they had been very cheerful in bed together – Edward’s pungent comments about Ran had made her laugh hugely. Today, Rufa’s spirits had risen to something like their pre-marriage level. This was the same old world, after all. Being married had not pulled it so dreadfully out of shape.

She poured boiling water over dried porcini mushrooms, blissfully inhaling their mossy forest scent. It was lovely to be cooking privately, without having to consider the cost of the ingredients. She had overcome her last shreds of reserve about spending Edward’s money, and begun to indulge her passion for excellence. At the delicatessen in Cirencester she had bought a big lump of Parmesan, hard and chalky. She had bought a great bag of fresh, fat, purple figs, and slices of Parma ham and air-cured beef, thin as whispers. From Italy she had bought bottles of Marsala, jars of powerful black olives in oil, and gaudy pottery bowls. From Edward’s garden she had gathered a large basin of scarlet tomatoes, and aromatic handfuls of oregano and rosemary. She was in a quiet, sunny kitchen, creating a beautiful dinner. If this was not happiness, it was surely very like it.

They had invited Rose and Roger to dinner this evening. Rufa was designing an Italian banquet. She decided to make a zabaglione for pudding, with the Marsala. She had only made zabaglione once before, for a dinner party in London, and had been too anxious about following the recipe to enjoy the experience. She was looking forward to whipping up a cloud of warm, spiced foam, in the copper pan she had found in Florence.

The Italian theme was all the more appropriate because the countryside was basking in a heatwave. The heat lay like golden syrup, making the bees sleepy. One blundered stupidly through the open window, and lay placidly in Rufa’s hand when she turned it outside. This heat, both heavier and softer than the heat of Italy, made her overwhelmingly aware of her own body. She wanted to work hard, to find as much as possible to distract her from the permanent ache of desire. She had not been alive like this since the height of her affair with Jonathan. If was uncomfortable, like the feeling returning to a limb that has gone to sleep.

A door clicked across the passage. Edward came in, massaging his eyes. He had found a large pile of letters waiting for him, including one about Bosnia, which had taken most of the afternoon to answer. Rufa assumed this was the reason he looked so tired.

‘Darling,’ he said. He was not a great man for endearments, and when he used them, they had a special resonance.

Rufa was wary. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘My darling, I’m so sorry. You’re going to have put off Rose and Roger.’

‘Oh.’ She was disappointed, but determined to be positive. ‘Oh, well. It’s not the end of the world.’

‘I wish to heaven I didn’t have to throw this at you, but it’s too late to do anything about it now. I’m afraid Prudence is about to land on us.’

‘What?’ Rufa could not help sounding dismayed.

He sighed. ‘She’ll be here in about an hour, and she intends to stay. I know it’s impossibly short notice. She didn’t tell me she’d invited herself until she was on the motorway. I suppose she knew I’d say no.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘There’s been a fire at her London flat, apparently.’

‘What’s wrong with her Paris flat?’ Rufa snapped. She was surprised by her own waspishness.

‘She lent it to someone. But she won’t be staying here for more than a couple of days – I can promise you that.’ The look of vexation melted from his face. He smiled wryly at Rufa. ‘Think of it as the first big test of your married life – putting up with Prudence and her troublemaking.’

‘Has she come to make trouble?’

‘Probably.’ Though he was still smiling, Rufa sensed his anger.

‘But you said she’d forgiven you for marrying me.’

‘Not exactly. I said she
said
she’d forgiven me. Oh, God. What a grisly homecoming.’ He wrapped his arms around Rufa. ‘I really am sorry about his.’ He kissed her neck. Rufa sighed, leaning against his chest. He stroked her hair with the backs of his fingers. ‘She’ll be incandescent when she sees how beautiful you are.’

‘Did you tell her I was plain?’

‘Tristan will be impressed with my pulling power. He thinks I couldn’t pull a muscle.’

Rufa had started to laugh. ‘So we’re expecting the boy as well. I’d better make up the beds.’

‘It’s nice of you not to be furious,’ Edward said.

‘I know.’

‘Thank you. I’ll make it up to you – and I’ll confess to Rose that it’s all my fault.’

‘Don’t worry, Mum won’t mind. They can always come another time.’

‘There’s bound to be a bit of subdued aggro about the money.’ Edward released her, with another affectionate
kiss
. ‘But Tristan won’t hold it against us – he’s a nice kid. And Pru’s far too well-behaved to make scenes.’

Warm from his embrace, Rufa said: ‘Thank God someone is. Everyone else seems to have spent the last few weeks making absolutely operatic scenes. Why do changes have to happen all at once?’

Polly tipped the contents of the cutlery drawer out on the scarred kitchen table. It was nasty stuff, stained and bent. She would add it all to the teetering pile of rubbish outside the back door. There was a terrifying amount of throwing away to be done before she could unpack her own immaculate kitchenware. Now that Ran had removed his daughter, she was free to tear through his cupboards.

It would all have to go. One expected a certain amount of dilapidation in a farmhouse kitchen, but it only suited things that had been good in the first place. Everything here was shoddy, dented, buckled and grimed. If necessary, they could stay in a hotel while Semple Farm was being gutted. Polly was not so gaga with love that she had not registered the sweet little hotel in the nearest market town.

And a temporary relocation might have the welcome side effect of keeping the child out of the way, until Polly had worked out how to treat her. Children were such a mystery. What did one do with them all day, if one did not have a nanny? Possibly, if the little girl was to be here often, a housekeeper might be in order. Linnet had spent the whole time clinging to Ran like a limpet, and looking utter daggers at Polly. They had not had a second to themselves.

Polly had not discussed this state of affairs with Ran. There was never time. They could not be alone together without falling ravenously on each other’s bodies. Polly sighed, and stretched luxuriously. The heat made their passion more intense. Night after night they lay naked under a single sheet, moist and musky with sweat. Polly, who had never admitted the existence of something as ungenteel as sweat, loved to lick the salty sheen on Ran’s smooth skin. Ran parted her legs in the moonlit darkness. The springs in his lumpy, world-weary mattress creaked when he rolled on top of her. They became one flesh, rocking urgently towards climaxes that seemed to last for hours.

Rufa’s wedding had been on a Saturday. On the following Monday Polly had brazenly told Berry that she was driving to Petersfield, to see her parents. Poor Berry had assumed it was business to do with their own wedding, and had kissed her goodbye with grateful affection.

Polly had driven straight to Semple Farm, not caring who saw her. Ran had been waiting, as they had arranged in a hot exchange of whispers. Minutes later they had been making love, on a twanging sofa that smelt of dog. It had been a rebirth. Polly had only dimly noticed the surrounding squalor. She had been too drunk with the wonder of Ran’s extraordinary beauty. At a great distance, she was aware of his awful clothes and nutty opinions, but these did not matter. He was an innocent, an angel. The clothes could be changed, and the opinions were adorable. Polly had been light with the joy of shedding her old skin.

Later they had walked hand in hand down the rough track to where she had left her car. They ended up
making
love again on the grass, under the huge, orange, blue-veined moon. Ran’s loud groans of pleasure had mingled with the cries of foxes and owls. Afterwards, he had dropped juicy tears on her collarbone, and begged her to stay for ever. She was the woman he had been searching for all his life. There was no life without her. On her second illicit visit, Polly had known, beyond all doubt, that she could never leave him again.

The jilting of Berry had been ghastly, but she had made up her mind to manage it as efficiently as she managed everything else. She had made sure it was a Friday, so Berry did not have to go to work next day with a broken heart. Before he came home, Polly had rung a very good firm of packers, and booked them in for Monday morning. She had already taken Jimmy Pellew out to lunch, to thrill him with her story and resign from the gallery.

By the time she heard Berry whistling outside the door, Polly had fired the cleaner, called an estate agent about putting the flat on the market, and arranged for Harrods to store her bulkier furnishings. Berry did not realize it, but his home had gone before he turned his key.