Marrying Up (9 page)

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

‘Like you say,’ Max remarked, breaking the silence, ‘people aren’t all that different. I’d probably want to be buried with
my dog, frankly.’

‘What sort of dog is it?’ A much-loved one, obviously; his eyes were shining with affection.

‘He’s a spaniel called Beano.’ Max’s voice was soft. ‘Been my pet since I was a little boy. Only got one eye, though, poor
old devil.’

‘One eye?’ Polly was immediately interested.

‘Blind in the other. Squints a bit too. He’s always been funny-looking.’ Max flashed her a grin. ‘But I love his squint. He’s
more interesting because he’s not perfect.’

Polly stared at him. She felt a rush of something like adoration. She had suffered so much of her childhood because of her
squint. And here was Max, who loved his dog all the more because of his.

‘I’d love to meet Beano,’ Polly said sincerely. ‘He sounds like my kind of dog. You see,’ she added shyly, ‘I had a squint
as a child. We’d have a lot in common.’

Max looked at her eyes for a long time; perhaps longer than
was strictly necessary. ‘A squint?’ he said softly. ‘You can’t tell at all now. Which eye was it in?’

Polly’s face was warm with self-consciousness. ‘This one.’ She lowered her right eyelid in a wink. ‘They used to call me Boz
Eyes at school,’ she added, embarrassed.

He frowned. ‘Boz Eyes?’ he repeated in his slight accent. ‘What is that? It doesn’t sound very polite.’

‘It’s not.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘But who cares now? It was ages ago. Anyway, I’d love to meet Beano. Is he with you?’

Max shook his dark head. ‘No, at home.’

She was about to ask where home was when she saw that something had distracted him. He was staring over her shoulder, towards
the village green.

‘Excuse me,’ he said softly, standing up.

Polly twisted round. There was a dog on the green, a Jack Russell. She had vaguely noticed it before; it had been galumphing
about in the centre, bolting backwards and forwards, crouching, then leaping, as dogs did at play. But now it had stopped,
she saw, and was standing in the middle of the green, one paw raised in the air, whining sadly.

Max was already crossing the grass towards it. She got up and followed him. When she reached him, he had dropped to the ground
and was examining the animal’s hurt paw. The dog had sunk its head on its uninjured one and was emanating a sad keening noise
like an alarm.

The paw Max held had a cut in it. Blood was smeared across the white fur.

‘Poor thing!’ winced Polly, who was helplessly squeamish and hated the sight of blood.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks. Broken glass, I suppose.’ Max’s eyes narrowed as he looked around the green. ‘People just chuck
things; they don’t realise how dangerous it can be for animals. Here, just hold this, would you?’

While he rummaged in his pockets, Polly found the Jack Russell’s bloody paw plonked matter-of-factly in her own. She
held on to the twitching limb and realised, to her surprise, that her feelings of nausea had faded. Max clearly expected her
to cope and be calm, so cope and be calm she would.

‘Thanks, Nurse.’ He flashed her a grin. Taking back the paw, his hand accidentally touched hers, and she felt suddenly breathless.

Max, meanwhile, had calmly produced a small can of antiseptic spray from the pocket of his jeans. It was like the Tardis in
there, Polly thought, as he dragged out some cotton wool balls and bandages. Talking softly to the dog all the time, he swiftly
cleaned and dried its wound. His head was very close to Polly’s; she could see faint threads of glittering brown in the glossy
black.

He glanced at her and saw her looking; hurriedly, Polly transferred her attention to the dog. ‘His name’s Archie,’ she observed,
flipping up the disc on the dog’s tartan collar. ‘There’s a phone number. I’ll ring it, shall I?’

Max, busy, grunted assent. She scrambled to her feet, rummaged in her bag for her phone and paced round the green as she dialled.
No one answered at Archie’s home; Polly left a brief message on the answerphone.

She returned to find that Archie was calm now, and Max was wrapping his paw.

‘You’ve done a great job,’ Polly said admiringly.

‘Did you talk to his owners?’ was all Max wanted to know.

‘Answerphone.’

He muttered something under his breath.

‘Perhaps they’re out looking for him,’ Polly suggested.

He looked up, his face lit with a soft smile. ‘You always think the best of people, don’t you?’

She shrugged, and dropped down to tickle the dog’s rough fur. ‘He’s sweet.’

‘Can I see you again?’ Max asked her, so quietly that at first she thought he was addressing the dog. She nodded, her heart
hammering so hard she felt she might be knocked off balance.

His fingers brushed hers; fire juddered up her arm. ‘I really
like you, Polly,’ he said quietly. His dark head moved towards her; she gasped softly.

‘
Archie!
’

They both looked up.

An enormous woman in muddy jodhpurs was striding over the green. Prominent blue eyes bulged from a wide red weatherbeaten
face framed by a short grey bob.

Archie struggled to his feet. He managed a weak bark of welcome.

The woman gave a fruity roar, ‘Archie!’ She broke into a heavy run. ‘Archie! I’ve looked everywhere for you! I’ve been all
over the village! Where did you go to, you silly,
silly
dog? And what have you
done
to yourself?’

‘You were right,’ Max muttered to Polly. He leapt to his feet and passed Archie to his tearful owner, who hugged him to her
great fawn bosom, exclaiming with love and relief and crooning into the top of his head. ‘Silly baby!’ she was murmuring.

Polly looked at Max. They grinned at each other.

The woman looked up from fondling Archie’s ears. Her veiny face was purple with emotion. ‘I can’t thank you enough. I’m Lavinia
Butts-Upward, by the way.’

‘It’s just a cut, Mrs Butts-Upward,’ Max told her politely. ‘It won’t take long to heal. It was fairly clean.’

After more thanks, Mrs Butts-Upward hurried off with her prize. Left alone with Max, Polly braced herself. Would he remember
what he had been about to say? Or had the moment passed?

It seemed as if it had. They walked back across the green. Their shadows slid ahead over the bright grass; his tall and broad-shouldered,
striding confidently; hers smaller, more awkward, trailing slightly behind. Had she merely imagined he was about to kiss her?

She felt dreary with disappointment. If only Mrs Butts-Upward hadn’t barged in . . . but no. The poor woman had been ecstatic
to be reunited with her dog.

Max, as he walked, seemed to be lost in thought and stared into the distance. She guessed he had forgotten all about her.

‘Well,’ Polly said resignedly. ‘Thanks for the drink. I guess I’d better be going.’

He was all attention in an instant. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t go.’ He stopped and turned to her. She had the head-spinning feeling
that something was about to happen.

Silently, gently, he drew her into his arms. She looked up at him, wide-eyed; his mouth approached hers and grazed her lips
lightly. Then it grazed them again, more firmly this time, and suddenly he was kissing her. She rose into him, kissing him
back, ablaze with a sudden overwhelming want.

‘This is ridiculous,’ she murmured, dizzy with desire. ‘We’ve only just met, after all.’

‘No we haven’t.’ His eyes, deep midnight blue, were searching hers. She felt she was looking into infinity. ‘I feel I’ve always
known you,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t you feel that?’

‘Yes,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Yes. I do.’

The chateau of Sedona looked down to the blue Mediterranean from its position high in the hills. Originally a small defensive
fort, it had been, over the centuries, enlarged and embellished by the de Sedonas, successive rulers of this tiny mountain
kingdom that had broken away from its Italian city-state rulers in the fourteenth century. Fortunately it was so small and
insignificant that no one seemed to notice, medieval Italian city-states being, in those days, far too busy fighting each
other to worry about piffling little villages declaring UDI.

Yet Sedona’s rulers had been successful over the centuries, and now the chateau spread over a wide area. Four great round
towers with conical tops marked the outer limits of a romantic riot of turrets and castellations, mostly decorative and entirely
delightful when, as now, each tower fluttered with a colourful flag. Were a child to draw its ideal palace, the ancient castle
of the kings of Sedona was exactly what it would come up with.

The sunshine was pouring down cheerfully over Sedona this morning. The Old Town flowed out behind the palace; a rough cloak
of red roofs over a picturesque knot of narrow medieval lanes whose shape and length had been dictated by the rise and fall
of the rocky terrain. The lanes were ten feet across at the widest, and the walls were so close at their narrowest that you
could shake hands over the street.

The walls of the lanes were painted in ice-cream colours:
vanilla, lemon yellow and apricot orange enlivened by the occasional pink. The lanes themselves were a mixture of houses,
shops and cafés, linked by shady passages and arcades that led to fountained courtyards and neat, tree-planted squares before
well-kept official buildings over which fluttered the royal standard: three golden keys against an azure background.

The pumping, parping sound of a brass band came from the cobbled square in front of the chateau gates. Here, every morning
when the King of Sedona was in residence – as almost invariably he was – the Royal Sedona Regimental Band went through its
paces.

The sun caught the whirling white pompoms beating the big bass drum and the gold braid glittering on the front of the musicians’
red coats. From nine a.m. until noon, the band bashed and blew, making up in spectacle and gusto what it lacked in musical
finesse. Its repertoire harked back to the visit of Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India, in the 1880s. Sedona
liked to remind itself of its most famous royal visitor, and so ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, ‘Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’,
‘Cwm Rhonnda’, ‘The Skye Boat Song’, and other British favourites could be enjoyed daily by resident and visitor alike.

Behind the scrolled wrought-iron gates, before the sea-facing façade of the great building, a sequence of terraced gardens
followed, like wide grassy steps, the contours of the hillside on which the chateau was built. While Sedona was generally
a warm and sunny place, its high, exposed position and the occasional appearance of those dry Mediterranean winds, the dreaded
mistral, meant that flowers could be difficult to grow.

Despite these limitations, the Queen of Sedona had man-aged, with her customary patience and diligence, to produce a surprising
number of roses. Two varieties, which she had named after her sons Maxim and Giacomo, were even registered with Britain’s
Royal Horticultural Society. These roses, along with others, now formed the colourful middles of borders placed symmetrically
about the palace lawns.

At the other end of the town from the pinnacles and towers of the palace reared the answering spiry bulk of Sedona’s twelfth-century
cathedral, built at the very edge of the mountain plateau and commanding the principality’s most magnificent view. Anyone
standing atop the sweep of the cathedral steps enjoyed a stunning prospect as mountains and valleys tipped away to a distant
sea where yachts sat about like tiny white toys on a giant blue silk rug. The views extended up and down the coast from Monte
Carlo to the north and Bordighera in Italy to the south.

It was at the great Gothic cathedral, vaulting soaring within, gargoyles and statues bristling without, that all the main
ceremonies of Sedona royal life were conducted. Every king since Engelbert the Fat had been baptised in the black marble font,
while lined up like a spread deck of cards by the high altar were gold-lettered marble tombstones going back to Engelbert
the Ugly. The impressive nave, meanwhile, had resounded to the footsteps of every marrying royal couple since the thirteenth
century, the latest being those of current monarchs Engelbert XVIII and his consort Astrid.

The Old Town this morning was peaceful, the red herringbone brick-paved lanes still drying in the sun after the daily clean
and cheerful with the sounds of people calling greetings or goodbyes as they opened or shut the glass doors of the various
bakeries and cafés. The air was filled with the scents of fresh coffee and freshly baked coeurs de Sedona: the small, icing-dusted,
custard-filled pastries that were a speciality of the town.

The owners of the souvenir shops were opening up too, arranging their piles of glossy paperback guides and laying out pennants,
pencils, flags and keyrings displaying the royal coat of arms. The same three golden keys against a blue background were available
on sweatshirts, bags, T-shirts and baseball caps; one particularly go-ahead retailer had recently introduced a screenprinted
Warholesque version.

On the postcard stands, the Sedona royal family beamed out at passers-by. Dark-haired Prince Maxim, eldest son of the King
and Queen, had the serious expression appropriate for someone poised to inherit the responsibilities of a throne. The Crown
Prince was currently at university in England.

His younger brother Prince Giacomo had not, to employ one of his mother’s favourite euphemisms, gone down the university route.
To his parents’ dismay, he had gone down the hedonism and girls route. At only eighteen, the prince already enjoyed a fearsome
reputation in what nightclubs Sedona possessed, and in most others up and down the coast.

Giacomo’s expression on the postcard was something between a smoulder and a smirk. His striking looks were of an entirely
different variety to his brother’s. Smirk aside, Giacomo was the image of his mother; Sedona’s popular, gentle and kind Queen
Astrid, who was fair-skinned, blue-eyed and blonde.