The Marrying Game (42 page)

Nancy laughed. ‘You do, as a matter of fact. God, he knows you well. You’ve lived your entire life in the shadow of some supreme man or other.’

‘I have not!’ Rufa was stung, because she realized this was true. First, there had been the Man himself, briefly eclipsed by Jonathan. Then, after the disaster of the Man’s death, she had gratefully transferred her allegiance to Edward. It was annoying to see herself in this pathetic light.

‘Well,’ Roshan said, ‘if it was any other woman but Rufa, we’d be deep in the third act of
Desire Under the Elms
. Because that young man is so gorgeous, it’s a joke.’

Nancy helped herself to coffee. ‘Leave her alone. Can’t you see she has no idea what you’re talking about?’

Rufa, who knew exactly what he was talking about, was relieved that Nancy had not read the signs. For the moment, she was off the hook. It had been too easy – the state of unrequited love was taking the edge off Nancy’s natural suspiciousness. Here was someone else obviously changed by being in love. She was a shade thinner. Despite the peculiar orange dress, which Rufa considered terrible with her hair, Nancy looked disturbingly stunning. Her white shoulders were dusted with freckles. Her feet – always smaller and more delicate than Rufa’s – were bare inside minimal sandals, the toenails painted gold. She wore a silver bracelet on one arm, just above the elbow. Though she was ashamed
of
it, Rufa felt a twinge of anxiety. What did Tristan think of Nancy? He had been very quiet since their arrival, but that might be because he was shy.

Then he came back into the room, and gave Rufa a smile of special intimacy. Warmth spread through her, like the sun rising inside her ribcage. It was followed by a piercing shaft of guilty yearning for Edward; an internal scream begging him to come home and rescue her. She could not risk letting any of this show, when Nancy and Roshan were watching.

Fortunately, there was no danger of Lydia drawing any awkward conclusions. Her senses, already overloaded with the unfamiliar, were too busy grappling with the awesome prospect of spending real money, in shops that were not run by charities or local rainbow-jersey friends of Ran. In any case, she seldom had attention to spare for men who were not her ex-husband. Rufa tried to deflect Roshan’s beady gaze by asking for advice. It seemed to work. He fetched paper and pen, furnished them with a neatly written list of shops, and personally telephoned a hairstylist who owed him a favour. Wendy kindly called a minicab to take them down to the West End. Rufa began to think she had hauled the general attention away from anything awkward.

Nancy, however, managed to corner her in the hall before they left. She grabbed Rufa’s wrist. ‘Are you all right?’

The oddity of the question, when she was so plainly and radiantly all right, made Rufa smile. ‘Of course. Edward said I should feel free to push the boat out for Liddy.’

‘That was nice of him.’ In the dim light of the passage,
Nancy
was watching her narrowly. ‘How’s he doing?’

‘Still waiting to give his evidence, poor man. He says the pointless hanging about is worse than the army.’ At the very back of her mind, Rufa was challenging Nancy to accuse her of something.

Nancy said, ‘You’re awfully thin, Ru.’

Rufa laughed. ‘I thought one couldn’t be too rich or too thin. And look who’s talking – if you lose any more, there’ll be nothing left to snare Berry.’

‘Are you sure everything’s OK?’

‘Nance, what is this? Why shouldn’t it be?’

‘I don’t know.’ Nancy was searching her sister’s face. ‘It’s just so long since I’ve seen you properly – not since your all-star wedding. You look different.’

‘Of course I do,’ Rufa said, more forcefully. ‘Think of me this time last year – making jam like a woman possessed, to pay the undertaker’s bill before they took us to court. I don’t even want to think what I looked like then. If I’ve changed, it’s because things are so much better.’

‘Are they?’ Nancy was doubtful. ‘I suppose so.’ She hugged Rufa quickly. ‘Keep ringing me. Promise you’ll ring me. Tell me everything, just like you used to. It doesn’t feel right that you’re so far away.’

Rufa glanced outside, through the open front door, to where Tristan stood beside the minicab. ‘Come home occasionally. Then you’ll see for yourself that we’re all absolutely fine.’

By eleven o’clock Lydia was sitting in front of a mirror at John Frieda’s salon in New Cavendish Street, gazing with mingled fascination and terror as the stylist sifted
her
masses of light brown hair through his fastidious fingers. Rufa and Tristan left her, to buy Linnet’s bribe at Hamley’s. They bought her a Spacehopper (Tristan’s idea) and two dolls’ jerseys for the Ressany Brothers. Rufa could not resist dragging Tristan into Gap Kids, to whisk three enchanting cotton frocks off the sale rail. She loved buying clothes for Linnet – she had arrived home from Italy with an extra suitcase packed full of them.

Back at John Frieda’s, they found Lydia quivering with excitement, and deliciously transformed. Heaps of her hair were being swept off the floor. The stylist had reduced it to a short bob, which curled as sweetly and naturally as a lamb’s back. It exactly suited the fragile prettiness of her heart-shaped face. She looked youthful and vibrant, and unexpectedly chic – every stitch she owned suddenly seemed wrong. Lydia had now awoken to the urgency of the situation, and was impatient to remake herself.

Tristan gently hinted that he was hungry. Rufa bought them all a hurried lunch at Dickins and Jones, then she and Lydia plunged into an orgy of shopping. They bought linen trousers and striped Breton jerseys at Margaret Howell, jerseys and jackets from Joseph, a suit, jeans and a handbag from Emporio Armani. They bought stilettos with lethal pointed toes from Russell and Bromley, and silver Donna Karan trainers. They bought armfuls of underwear from Marks and Spencer (Lydia favoured wholesome undergarments), and a dashing little coat for Linnet, which neither sister could resist.

They returned to earth outside John Smedley’s shop in Brook Street, when Tristan plaintively said, ‘Rufa,
hasn’t
your credit card suffered enough? I’ve been busting to pee for the past hour.’

Lydia slumped forward to let her load of carrier bags rest on the pavement. ‘And if I don’t sit down, I’ll faint.’

‘You’re both wimps,’ Rufa said, laughing. ‘I’m hardly started – this is exactly what I dreamed of doing, when I dreamed of having money. All right, we’ll call it a day.’

She was entirely satisfied, entirely happy. The three of them sat in the heavy, late afternoon heat, around a table in a coffee shop. Slippery cairns of carrier bags were heaped around them.

Lydia attacked a chocolate pretzel, with something approaching gusto. ‘Ru, I’ve had the most terrific day. Thanks so much – and please say thanks to Edward.’ She smiled at Tristan. ‘I should thank you, too. I know men don’t like being dragged round shops. When it happens to my husband, he starts to cry.’

He laughed. ‘I managed to fight back the tears. It wasn’t too bad.’

‘No need to thank me,’ Rufa said. ‘I’ve had a sublime day. I’m sorry to say I love it when people let me boss them around.’

Lydia wrapped a second chocolate pretzel in a napkin, for Linnet. ‘Will the traffic be dreadful if we go home now?’ She was exhausted, suddenly smaller all over, realizing how far she was from home.

‘Don’t worry.’ Rufa squeezed her hand. ‘It won’t take long.’

Tristan leaned forward, smiling persuasively. ‘Lydia, why don’t you take the train? We could take you to the station, someone could meet you at the other end. And then Rufa and I could drive down when it’s quieter.’

Rufa’s heart lurched. The prospect of being alone
with
him in London was dazzling, and also terrifying. The delight and the sense of impending disaster were impossible to separate.

He stared into her eyes, as if they were the only two people in the world. ‘I had this mad idea that we might catch the
Dream
at Regent’s Park. This is the perfect weather for it.’

Rufa cried, ‘Oh, how lovely! But we’ll never get in –’

‘Prudence uses this upmarket ticket agency that gets her into everything. Let me phone them.’

‘I really don’t mind going on the train,’ Lydia assured her, perking up hopefully. She liked trains. Cars made her feel hemmed-in and powerless, especially when there were traffic jams. Their several stops that morning, for Tristan to relieve himself, had increased her worries about breaking down or crashing. ‘Honestly. Then you wouldn’t have to hurry.’

It was settled seamlessly. Tristan arranged the tickets for the Open Air Theatre with his mother’s breathtakingly pricey agency. They bundled Lydia and her shopping into a taxi, escorted her to Paddington station and put her on a train. With one more flourish of wicked extravagance, Rufa bought her a first-class ticket. She rang Melismate, and told the affable Roger when to meet Lydia at Stroud. Tristan ran off to get her a cup of tea.

Lydia kissed them both gratefully. ‘This has been wonderful. When I wake up tomorrow, I’ll think I dreamt it.’

The train pulled off towards the green fields of the west, and Rufa and Tristan were alone. Being alone with him on the crowded Paddington concourse somehow felt more intimate than being alone in Edward’s house. He tucked Rufa’s hand firmly into his arm, and dragged
her
through the streams of hurrying people to the taxi rank. He was taking care of her – not as if she were an invalid, which was sometimes Edward’s way, but with a formal consideration that was almost reverent.

Nothing could be said aloud, but the guilty, dreadful, intoxicating fact shouted in both their minds. Tristan was more desperately in love than ever, and his love was chafing inside him, fighting to express itself.

Rufa had never been to the Open Air Theatre at Regent’s Park. The place enchanted her. In the centre of London, on this still and tropic night, they sat, leaning against each other’s shoulders, inside a magic circle of trees. The sounds of traffic were distant and muted. On the stage below them, Shakespeare’s lovers suffered and sighed while the fairies played football with their hearts. Above them, the sky slowly faded from blue to pearl.

After the interval – spent battling for plastic glasses of orange juice – the stage was a pool of light in a nest of grey shadows. It became dark, and points of light appeared in the trees. It was beautiful. They could not have found a more purely beautiful spectacle in the whole city. Rufa felt torn open and ravished with delight. As the moon rose, the conflicts of love were sweetly restored. Puck, perched upon a spotlit bough, offered them his goodwill – ‘Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.’ The night fell softly around them, in deep peace spiked with erotic longing.

Rufa, like a child at the pantomime, could not bear the enchantment to end. Her head was filled with poetry and romance. Her heart felt absolutely raw; as sensitive to the smallest touch as a snail’s horns.

Tristan kept his hand on her arm while the rest of the audience surged around them, spilling out of the theatre on to the dark lawns of the park. Globes of lamplight from the road shone through the trees, turning the leaves emerald. They stood at the park gates, unwilling to return to reality.

‘Shall we walk to the main road?’ Tristan asked softly. ‘We need to get back to the car.’

‘Yes.’ Rufa let him take her hand. She walked beside him, through a dream, until they met a lighted taxi. Tristan did all the work of hailing it, and giving the address to the driver. They sat in silence, not looking at each other, their mouths dry. They were still holding hands when the taxi dropped them in Tufnell Park Road.

A light was visible behind the skimpy curtains of Wendy’s sitting room.

‘Let’s not go in,’ Rufa murmured. ‘Let’s go home.’

‘OK. Give me the keys. I’ll drive – you’re too tired.’

Edward’s car was under a lamp post, reproaching her with its stoic familiarity. ‘Would you mind?’ She was deathly tired; far too tired to think.

Tristan stood under the light, his hand on her shoulder, gazing down into her face. ‘You look exhausted. Oh, Rufa, there are shadows under your eyes, you’ve been up since dawn. I promised Edward I wouldn’t let you wear yourself out.’