The Marrying Game (56 page)

‘I just might.’

‘And how would your financier like that?’

Ran scowled. ‘Polly’s not my fiancée.’

‘I didn’t say fiancée – you heard me. Where is she, by the way?’

‘At home. She has some friends over.’

‘Oh – how nice of her to let you come here. Why don’t you circulate, instead of standing on Liddy’s shoulder with a scythe and an hourglass?’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Well, actually Ran, I don’t care what you want.’ Nancy lowered her voice. ‘You were invited to please Linnet. So go and please her.’

‘I can’t sully her with my anger.’

‘Then sully yourself, by pretending not to be angry. I do wish you’d pull yourself together – just for this evening would do.’

Nancy left him scowling, and took her sausage rolls to the lively group around Lydia. It had to be admitted, the Man would have laughed at some of these choir people – so clean, so polite, so crashingly harmless. Lydia, however, seemed entirely at ease among them. She stood close to Phil Harding, joining in the spotless gossip and lame musical jokes. Well, why not? Nancy was ashamed of her sneering reflex. Left to herself, Lydia evidently preferred unoriginal niceness to the Man’s alarming bohemianism. It was strange, Nancy thought, how they were all beginning to seek out their real selves, outside the shadow he had cast.

Lydia broke away from her group to pour out a mug of mulled wine, which she handed to Nancy. ‘Go on – you haven’t had a single drink yet.’

‘Thanks, darling. Is it going well, do you think?’

‘Wonderfully. You’re a complete genius.’

‘At least they’ve all stopped standing about in silence.’

‘Everyone’s having a fantastic time.’ Lydia poured another mug of wine. ‘Would you mind taking some over to Ran? He’ll only get upset if I do it.’

‘OK. Let’s avoid a scene, at all costs.’

They both looked at Ran, standing with his arms folded, glaring at Phil Harding. Nancy tried not to find it hilarious that he should consider the bald choirmaster
a
serious rival. ‘He’s fallen out with Waltzing Matilda, hasn’t he? I know the signs.’

‘What signs?’

‘Well, he’s still in the sulking stage at the moment,’ Nancy said, making a point of not lowering her voice. ‘This will gradually soften into melancholy. By my calculation, he should be bursting into tears at about half past eight.’

‘Cow. Don’t be so mean.’

‘Ha! You’re laughing!’ Nancy pointed accusingly at her sister. To the obvious annoyance of Ran, they both began to giggle.

‘He hates seeing me with my own friends,’ Lydia murmured. ‘When we were married, we always had to hang out with people he chose – joss-sticky people, who liked sitting on the floor and saying Om. He finds the friends I make for myself too threatening.’ Her face was full of tender affection for her ex-husband.

‘Liddy,’ Nancy said sternly, ‘tell me you’re not making him jealous on purpose.’

Lydia smiled. ‘Course I am.’

‘Why bother? Why pay any attention to him at all?’ Even as she asked, Nancy knew these were pointless questions. Her foolish sister, besotted with Ran since the year dot, had aimed her transformation entirely at him, with a single-mindedness you could only gasp at. Why did Liddy think she could handle him now? Did she imagine he would change?

Nancy took the mulled wine across to Ran. ‘This should lighten you up.’

Ran muttered, ‘I’m not sulking. How typical of you not to acknowledge real pain.’

‘Bollocks,’ Nancy said, thinking this was the only
reply
he deserved. What was it with the Hasty girls and men? Rufa had practically arranged her own marriage of convenience, only to break her heart over Tristan. Lydia had stubbornly attached herself to the Village Idiot. Nancy herself had fallen in love with the one decent man to come their way – and Berry was in Frankfurt. Selena was their only hope, or they would all end their days as cranky old leftovers. She took the empty plate back to the kitchen, full of warmth and light after the gun-powdery darkness outside. Selena’s massive crock of venison stew was keeping warm on the hotplate of the range. Nancy removed a tray of sizzling cocktail sausages from the oven.

The telephone rang. She reached for the receiver. ‘Hello?’

‘Is that Nancy?’ It was the voice of Polly, clipped and wrathful. ‘I’d like to speak to Ran, please. Is he still there?’

‘Hi, Polly – yes, he’s still here.’

‘May I speak to him?’

‘He’s outside, and it’s a bit of a trek,’ Nancy said. With her free hand, she tipped the sausages into a bowl. ‘Shall I ask him to call you back?’

‘Actually, I have to speak to him now. Urgently. Could you fetch him?’

‘Well, if you don’t mind waiting – sorry you couldn’t come, by the way. It’s going famously.’

‘You were very kind to ask me,’ Polly snapped. ‘Unfortunately, we’re giving a dinner party. Ran seems to have forgotten the time.’

‘Silly old him.’ Nancy tried – not very hard – not to laugh. ‘I’ll get him.’

Taking her time, because she really could not resist
keeping
the Secret Australian chafing, Nancy sauntered back to the yard. Ran stood in the same belligerent attitude, a little closer to the group of choir people.

‘Ran, darling, your financier’s on the phone.’

‘Oh.’

‘Apparently you’re expected at a dinner party.’

‘I hate her dinner parties,’ Ran said. ‘Tell her I’m not coming.’

‘Tell her yourself. I’m far too busy to get involved in your sordid domestic wrangles.’

He suddenly clutched at her hand, his black eyes pleading. ‘Don’t you understand? If I turn my back for a second – look at her! – rubbing herself against him!’

Nancy gently disengaged her hand. ‘That’s rich, considering you’ve rubbed yourself against half the female population of Gloucestershire.’

‘Please, Nance – just tell Polly I’ll be along later.’

She laughed. ‘All right, but I somehow doubt she’ll keep anything warm for you.’

‘I know I’m in deep shit, and I don’t care. Please!’

‘I said all right.’ Only slightly ashamed of herself for relishing the job, Nancy returned to the kitchen and took the phone. ‘Hello, Polly?’

‘At last!’ Polly hissed. In the background, Nancy heard clinking glassware and well-bred laughter. ‘Is he on his way? It’s past eight o’clock – the guests are here – push him into his car and send him over, before I go insane!’

‘Sorry, he won’t come to the phone. He says he’ll be along later.’

‘Later! What the hell does that mean?’

‘I really do have to go, Polly, if you’ll excuse me – duties of a hostess, and all that. Bye!’ Nancy hung up.
She
found that she felt mildly sorry for the redoubtable bossyboots. Polly had burned all her boats, only to discover that Ran was not nearly as malleable as he seemed. For the sake of this idiot, she had voluntarily given up Berry, the best man in the entire world. There was some comfort in the knowledge that even people who considered themselves experts at the Marrying Game could fall on their fannies at the last hurdle.

‘Liddy –’ Ran plucked urgently at her scarlet sleeve. ‘For the love of God, I have to talk to you!’

‘In a minute,’ Lydia said. ‘Have you had something to eat?’

‘No. I don’t want anything.’

‘Are you sure? The stew’s delicious.’

‘How long are you going to keep this up? Oh, please!’

The kitchen was packed. Lydia, Selena and Nancy had just finished a production line of plates. Roger was making a dozen mugs of tea. Rose, her eyes glazed with elation, darted from group to group refilling glasses. There was a solid roar of conversation.

‘I can’t just walk away,’ Lydia said reasonably. ‘I ought to keep an eye on the girls, and make sure they eat something besides chocolate fudge.’ Her sweet, three-cornered smile lit up her delicate face as she looked over at Linnet and her two friends, sitting around Linnet’s miniature table on tiny chairs. The Ressany Brothers, who normally dined with Linnet, had been relegated to the dresser. The girls were streaked with soot, giggling wildly and shrieking witticisms that contained the word Bum.

‘They’re fine,’ Ran said. ‘Please, Liddy – I really need to talk to you.’

The moment had arrived. Lydia felt surprisingly comfortable and calm. Ran was, at last, beginning to see that her transformation was more than skin-deep. She had put herself through a painful course of thinking. To put it crudely, she had tested the market and ascertained her true worth. Ran did not know she had already turned down poor Phil Harding – worth ten of her ex-husband, by anybody’s reckoning. Yelling at Polly, on the humiliating afternoon of the Hotel Dinnerware, had crystallized something in Lydia’s mind. It had shown her how low she had fallen. She had seen herself with the eyes of a stranger – a tattered, soggy little loser. How could a man as simple-minded as Ran desire such a pathetic creature? She had decided then to take a turn at playing the Marrying Game by giving the loathsome Polly a run for her money. It was worth an effort, when so much happiness was at stake.

She asked, ‘Can’t we talk in here?’

‘No!’

‘Well, OK.’ There were people in the kitchen, the drawing room and the Great Hall. ‘We’d better go upstairs. Make it quick, though.’ She led him up the uneven wooden staircase. ‘I don’t mind missing the next lot of fireworks, but we’ll be singing straight afterwards.’

Ran hurried to keep up with her. ‘Singing?’

‘We’ve been practising some madrigals.’

‘Hmm – I suppose that was Baldy’s idea.’

‘No,’ Lydia said serenely, ‘it was mine. I’m sure you’d prefer some ritual chanting from the rainforest, but I love singing madrigals. Phil says the acoustic in the Hall
is
perfect.’ She stepped into her bedroom, flicking on the lamps. ‘So talk.’

Ran was bewildered. He had not seen inside Lydia’s bedroom since long before the renovation of Melismate. Unconsciously, he had expected the familiar peeling walls and heaps of frayed clothes. He was unprepared for this charming, chintzy, lamplit boudoir.

‘I don’t know you any more,’ he said plaintively. ‘What’s happened to you?’

‘Nothing. I was always like this, if you’d ever bothered to find out. I like beautiful music and nice things. I like getting up in the mornings at a reasonable time, and sending Linnet to school in decent clothes.’

Ran paced distractedly across the polished boards and flowered rugs. ‘You never liked all that stuff when you lived with me.’

‘I loved you enough to put up with not having it.’

‘Possessions? Since when were you into possessions?’

‘Well, it’s not just that,’ Lydia said. ‘It’s not things, exactly. It’s having the same standards as other people.’

‘Stop it,’ Ran said wretchedly. ‘You sound like Poll.’

‘She’s taught me a lot, actually. She doesn’t wait for permission.’

‘This isn’t you!’ There were lines appearing on his beautiful face, and threads of grey at his temples. Like the Man, he could not fight time. Every year, he became slightly less flawless.

Lydia had made a firm and conscious decision not to let him turn into the Man. She sat down on the bed. ‘I’m sorry you don’t like all the changes. But you don’t have any right to object to them.’

‘I do when they affect my daughter,’ Ran said.

Lydia had been expecting this line of reasoning, and
was
prepared. ‘Linnet’s never been better,’ she said calmly. ‘She’s settled and secure. She’s making proper friends at school, instead of being treated as a peculiar little outcast. If you’re thinking of criticizing the way I’m bringing her up, fuck you.’

Ran’s eyes widened. Lydia never, never said things like this.

She waited for him to see the height of the mountain he had to climb. There was a silence, which she refused to be the one to fill. Laughter and voices drifted from the party downstairs.

Ran stopped pacing. He was pale, and suddenly looked years older.

‘Nobody asked her home to play,’ Lydia said. ‘Partly because her mother was a ragged depressive who lived in a dump. And partly because her father was a sex maniac – who also lived in a dump. Her only real friends in those days were the Ressany Brothers.’

‘Sex maniac?’ In his trance of astonishment, Ran could only echo the key words. His gentle Lydia had never spoken as if his behaviour could be judged by ordinary standards.

She sighed. ‘You were the one who wanted to talk, and I’m doing all the talking. Sorry.’

‘You should have told me about Linnet,’ he said softly.

‘What would you have done?’

‘I don’t know.’ He dropped to his knees on the rug. ‘Tried to make things better. It kills me when she’s unhappy. I hate myself for letting Polly come between us. Why am I such a stupid shit?’

She smiled. ‘You grab things you fancy, without thinking of the dangers. Like Linnet chasing swans.’

He was neither tearful, petulant, nor windily self-justifying. ‘
I
wish I could turn the clock back,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve made some incredible mistakes.’

‘Is Polly a mistake?’

‘Poor thing, it’s not her fault.’

Lydia repeated, ‘Is Polly a mistake?’

‘Yes,’ Ran said humbly. ‘Oh God, it’s awful. You should see what she’s done to the house. She thinks she’s bought me. I can’t make her understand that I don’t want to marry her.’