The Marrying Game (25 page)

He spoke with the quiet, immovable assurance Rufa had missed so much. Since the Man’s death, she had relied on Edward to know how things had to be done. He was always absolutely certain, and never wrong. They were silent. Rufa was dazed, trying to work out the turmoil of her feelings. She tried to imagine being married to Edward. This was totally different from imagining being married to Adrian.

Adrian was unknown, and she had known Edward most of her life. She trusted Edward implicitly. She
liked
him. She liked the ordered sobriety of his life. And, in a way, she loved him. This had nothing to do with romance. He encapsulated all her love for the safe, the sheltered, the familiar. Gradually, Edward’s staggering proposal began to dawn on her as a godsend. For the first time in years – most certainly, for the first time since the death of the Man – she would be able to drift off to sleep without worrying about her family. Oh, the blissful peace and happiness of knowing, on a stormy night, that the roof of Melismate, and the beloved people beneath it, were utterly secure.

Edward said, very quietly, ‘Say yes, and you can stop all this nonsense about the Marrying Game, once and for all. You’re very tired, Ru, and you’re obviously miserable. You’ve been like this since your father died, and I can’t bear it any more. Tell Miss Muir where to stuff her dinner party, and let me take you straight home.’

She closed her eyes. Home, with Edward. No more slaving in other people’s kitchens. No more editing her personality to suit the pitiliess standards of Adrian. She did not love Adrian, and she never would. He knew this as well as she did. And he also knew that he was buying her. If she married Edward, she would never have to see him again.

It was as if the iron band around her heart, that had chilled her and trapped her since the day of the Man’s death, had suddenly melted into air. If she drew a deep, unconstrained breath, she would soar away into the sky.

She was crying, weak and giddy with the relief of it. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, please.’ She started to sob. The sobs had been battling to get out for months, and would not be pushed back.

Edward, in the unhurried and deliberate way he did everything, stood up and came round to Rufa’s side of the table. She felt him pulling her out of her chair, and firmly propelling her out of the café into a dark corridor with a public telephone.

‘Sorry – sorry –’

Rufa was mortified that she could not stop crying – Edward hated scenes. Instead of urging her to pull herself together, however, he wrapped his arms around her and drew her head down on his shoulder, as he had done on the terrible day of the Man’s death.

‘It’s all right,’ he murmured. ‘It’s all over now.’

Time reeled back to that day. It was unfinished business between them. Rufa had wept gallons for the Man in private, but she had only lost control once – in the middle of apologizing to Edward, for not being able to clean the room where she had found her father. Her howls of anguish had taken them both by surprise. Edward, with barely a word, had held and soothed and stroked her, for the best part of an hour. That outburst and this one now seemed connected, as if she had not stopped crying since.

Eventually, she was able to take her wet face off his shoulder. He put a clean handkerchief into her hand.

She blotted her streaming eyes, and blew her nose. ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry –’

Edward said, ‘Stop apologizing.’

‘It’s just that I couldn’t help thinking of –’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘What’s the time? Hell, I should get back.’

He smiled. ‘I think you’d better have some more tea first.’

They returned to their table, and Edward ordered the
tea
. Rufa felt hollowed out and scraped clean. She had sensed the strength and depth of his love for her, and for her family. Melismate was saved. Cautiously, she tested her new-found serenity, to check that it held. The nightmare was over.

‘You were right,’ she said. ‘I am tired. And I was miserable.’

Edward had now regained all his briskness and composure. ‘Rufa, you don’t need to tie yourself in knots any more. I know what you were miserable about – and I promise to be kind to the idle bastards, for your sake.’

Shakily, she laughed. ‘Have you seen them?’

‘No, I haven’t been near Melismate for ages. How are they all? I can’t believe how much I’ve missed them.’

Rufa could not help launching into her anxieties about Selena, the mountain of unpaid bills and the crumbling state of the house. Edward listened impassively, as he always had. She was not asking for help, simply enjoying the novelty of pouring her worries into a sensible and sympathetic pair of ears.

It was nearly seven when she dashed back to Polly’s flat. She had stepped through the looking glass, and the world was now entirely, enchantingly different. She felt fond of everyone, even Polly.

‘I know I’m disgustingly late, but it got complicated.’

Polly had just received an enormous bunch of astonishing bright orange and shocking pink roses, and was beaming. ‘Do tell me more about your impossibly young and tasty godfather. Is he spoken for?’

To her slight annoyance, Rufa felt her face turning hot again.

She said, ‘Yes.’

‘Adrian will be here soon. You’d better get changed.’

Too late. She had got herself changed already. Now, she faced the unsaying of what had never really been said, to let Adrian know he had lost her. The Marrying Game was over.

Chapter Fourteen

NANCY MOROSELY SPOONED
the last bit of froth from her cappuccino. How handy, she thought, that Berry lived directly opposite a trendy coffee shop. It meant that she could watch his front door and recover from the row with Rufa at the same time. She had flounced out of Wendy’s in a screaming fury, and sobbed her way through a whole packet of tissues on the tube. God, that had been embarrassing – everyone had stared, and a black man in a dog collar had started asking her about the Bible. But she had been too far gone to care. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire – she would never have opened out to Edward, if she had dreamt that he would stop the Marrying Game by marrying Rufa himself.

She had told Edward about her sister’s aching vulnerability, and he had used it to take advantage of her. It was sick. It was disgusting. At the height of the row, Nancy had screamed that it was practically incest. He had married his first cousin, after all – ‘So he’s obviously not above screwing his relations.’

Her eyes smarted again. She sniffed angrily, sorry that she had spoiled her own argument by overreacting. All right, incest had been a bit strong. But Edward was one of the grown-ups, and she had expected him to give
Rufa
nothing more controversial than a telling-off. The silly cow now thought she was happy, when anyone could see she had forgotten the meaning of the word. She only wanted to marry Edward, as far as Nancy could see, because he was not Adrian, and better the devil you knew. He may have been too youthful and good-looking to cast as a dirty old man, but it was still gross. And the Man would have counted it as a betrayal.

The nagging guilt made it all worse. Nancy avoided introspection if she possibly could, but now she was forced to look back at her own behaviour. Since the death of the Man, what had she done? She had congratulated herself for handling it all rather well, for not being as cock-eyed as poor Ru about the house, and the ‘blood’ the Man had gone on about like a vampire. But she had dived for cover, by losing her heart to poor Tim Dent, and could not even remember now why she had fallen in love with him – except that the act of falling in love had been like sheathing every emotion in clingfilm. She had simply refused to look into the future. She had left all that to Rufa, because Rufa was better at worrying. And here was the result. Her favourite sister, who was worth all the rest of them put together, was about to fling herself into a marriage that could only be grotesque.

There was just one way to save her. Nancy had come here for the express purpose of screwing a proposal out of Berry. Before she had started howling, when she was still being swept along on the tide of fury, she had remembered Rufa saying that Polly was due at the hairdresser’s this morning. That had carried her straight to the tube, absolutely determined to seize the day. Rufa would have tried to stop her, but she knew nothing
about
it. She was driving to Melismate with Edward, supposedly in triumph.

Nancy sighed impatiently. Forty-five minutes she had been sitting here, waiting for Polly to emerge from the smug blue front door across the road. Surely Polly the Perfect, with those complicated highlights, could not afford to cancel her hair appointment?

At last the door opened. The brisk, assisted-blonde figure of Polly appeared on the front steps and paused for a moment, to eye the smiling blue sky with approval. She dug in her Fendi handbag for her car keys, climbed into her dainty silver jeep, and neatly removed herself.

Action stations. Nancy wiped her lips with her napkin to remove all traces of cappuccino, hoping her eyes were not too puffy. She left the coffee shop, walked across the road, and pressed Berry’s buzzer. Her heart was beating hard. She was nervous, which was unfamiliar and rather exciting.

His voice crackled out of the Entryphone. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, it’s Nancy Hasty. Can I come up?’

‘Nancy?’ Berry’s voice leapt up to a quavering falsetto. He cleared his throat. ‘Er – Polly’s not here, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, drat,’ Nancy said. ‘What a disappointment. Still, you’re here. I’ll pop in anyway.’

There was a short but significant silence. The door buzzed, and Nancy pushed it open. The communal hallway of the house was extremely tidy, with a fat beige carpet and a polished cupboard for letters. Nancy smiled at her own wicked reflection, in a large gilded mirror. She wore her tight jeans, and an embroidered silk cardigan that practically lit her nipples in neon. If she said it herself, she looked fantastic.

Berry was waiting for her upstairs, at the door of his first-floor flat. He was barefoot, in black jeans and an old blue sweater. She realized that apart from Christmas Eve, she had only ever seen him in his City overalls – dark suit, tie, cufflinks, hard collar. Without these, and with his tousled hair falling over startled deer’s eyes, he looked absurdly young and extraordinarily sexy. Nancy’s spirits rose.

‘Hi.’ He was tense and anxious.

She firmly kissed his cheek, and pushed past him into the flat. A cafetière of coffee stood on the low table in the drawing room, beside Saturday’s
Financial Times
and a handsome plate of croissants. Nancy looked at these affectionately, hoping there would be time to eat a couple later.

‘Polly’s out,’ Berry said, too loudly. ‘At the hairdresser’s.’

Nancy sank into the embrace of the sofa cushions. ‘Highlights, is it? Poor thing, she’ll be gone for ages. How very tiring, to have roots that need so much attention.’

He hovered, visibly trying to control a rising agitation. ‘Would you – er – like some coffee?’

‘Not yet.’ Nancy slipped off her shoes. Her toenails were painted magenta. ‘Do sit down. It’s actually you I came to see.’

‘Me?’

‘It’s a delicate matter – not the kind of business I can settle with Polly around. Now, sit down – you’re making me nervous.’

‘Sorry.’ Berry lowered himself cautiously on to the sofa, staring at Nancy with helpless fascination. ‘Business?’

‘You’ll never guess,’ Nancy said. ‘So let’s cut to the chase. I popped round to fuck the daylights out of you.’

Berry whispered, ‘Oh, God –’

She leaned across the sofa, unhooked his glasses and kissed him on the mouth. He submitted as if in a trance. His arms went round her. He sighed tremulously into her lips, and pulled her against him. They kissed rapturously.

Gently, he pushed her away. Nancy lay back against the cushions and began to unbutton her cardigan.

‘No,’ Berry said breathlessly.

‘Mmm – want me to keep it on?’

‘Yes. I mean, yes. I do.’ His voice gathered force. Painfully, he scrambled for his glasses, and stood up. ‘We mustn’t – I can’t.’ He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. ‘Nancy, I can’t do this.’

‘What?’ Nancy was astounded.

‘I’m awfully sorry –’ he looked grief-stricken, but determined. ‘It’s just not possible. It’s out of the question.’

‘Are you saying you don’t want sex with me?’ Nobody had ever not wanted sex with Nancy. ‘Don’t be silly.’ She sat upright, her voice sharpening. ‘Of course you do.’

Distractedly, he raked his hair into Stan Laurel peaks. ‘Nancy, for God’s sake, please don’t make it harder for me.’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Stop it. You know perfectly well. I’m not saying that if I’d met you sooner, or in another life— God, I’m babbling.’ He was gathering dignity with every word. He stood straighter, and squared his shoulders. ‘Because I’m going to marry Polly.’

Nancy stared at him. ‘But you don’t love her nearly as much as me!’

‘I do love her.’

‘You’re lying!’

‘No I am not!’ Berry said fiercely. ‘I love Polly far too much to cheat on her. I can’t even think of it. I couldn’t live with myself afterwards.’