The Marrying Game (3 page)

‘A what?’ Nancy murmured. ‘God, she’s serious!’

‘I am, actually.’ Rufa listened to herself saying it, with amazement. ‘I think it can be done. There must be rich men ready to fall in love with looks and breeding. Both of which we have in abundance.’

Selena, who had been gradually sinking back into her book, suddenly resurfaced. ‘You could always divorce them, once you’d got your hands on the cash.’

Nancy could not help showing she was interested. ‘Well, find me a rich man, and I’ll be happy to consider it.’

‘I could never go down on a guy with a paunch,’ declared Selena.

‘Excuse me, madam,’ Nancy said, with mock severity, ‘you’re not supposed to know about “going down” on anything but a staircase.’

She reached out, bracelets jangling, to pull Rufa’s watch towards her. ‘Bags I the bath. I’m going out to dinner at the Dents.’

‘They’re letting you inside the house now, are they?’ Rufa asked.

Nancy stood up on the ragged hearthrug, and stretched luxuriously. Her tight black jersey strained
across
her chest, and rode up to reveal her navel. Nancy’s clothes often seemed on the point of falling off.

‘It’ll be incredibly dull, but I have some important business. Thanks to my tireless efforts, there’s a fab present waiting for me under the Dents’ tree.’

‘Lucky cow,’ muttered Selena. ‘What is it?’

‘Ma Dent asked if there was any special treat I’d like. I said there certainly was, and I told her exactly where to get one.’ She smiled down at her sisters, enjoying their suspense. ‘It’s a fairy outfit, in rainbow tulle –’

‘Oh, Nancy!’ Lydia cried, in ecstasy.

‘– comprising sticky-out skirt, wings, twinkly wand and tiara.’

‘You total darling.’ Lydia was almost in tears. ‘She’ll be in seventh heaven.’

Rufa beamed. ‘It’ll make Linnet’s day. You are a love, Nance.’

‘I just wish they made them in a size twelve,’ Nancy said. ‘Then I could wave my magic wand, and make the Dents interesting. In the name of humanity, don’t drink all the wine while I’m out – the doctor’s house is as dry as a fucking bone.’ She shot a calculating glance at Rufa. ‘May I borrow the car?’

‘No, you may not,’ Rufa said sharply. ‘For the last time, not till you get a driving licence. And anyway, Roger’s got it.’

‘Oh well, worth a try.’ Halfway round the edge of the scrap screen, Nancy turned back to add, ‘Which is exactly my position regarding your idea, darling. I have a feeling I’d be terrifically good at the Marrying Game.’

Chapter Two

‘“… AND IT WAS
always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge …”’

Rufa heard the low, tearful voice of her mother, as she went into the cavernous kitchen. Rose Hasty sat beside the ash-caked range, with her Sellotaped reading glasses low on her nose, a battered paperback in her hand and Linnet on her knee.

‘“May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed—”’

Her voice wobbled, and failed.

Linnet finished for her. ‘“God Bless Us, Every One!”’ She squirmed off Rose’s knee. ‘“The End.”’

Rose closed the book, and leant back in her chair with a loud sniff. ‘My God, the emotional drainage!’

‘Well, if you will read Dickens,’ Rufa said.

‘I know. I must be mad.’

Rose was fifty: an ex-beauty not so much running as dashing to seed. The fair skin around her eyes was curdling into a network of lines. The soft flesh sagged away from her jaw, and her wild curls were degenerating into a frowsty puff of pepper-and-salt. It was still possible, however, to trace the outlines of the exquisite flower-child who had captivated the Man thirty years
before
, at a muddy rock festival down in the West Country.

‘Kettle’s on,’ she said. ‘Get us some tea, there’s a love.’

Rufa was the only member of the family who could be asked for tea without arguing or making elaborate excuses. She stuffed two tea bags into two mugs, and filled them from the heavy kettle on the range.

‘Roger not back yet?’

Roger was Rose’s lover, and the Useless Man of the house, now that the Man himself had gone. He had arrived at Melismate, by accident, ten years before, and shared Rose’s bed ever since. The Man, glad to have his wife’s bed decently occupied, had grown fond of him. And they had all benefited from his minuscule private income.

‘He went over to Ran’s,’ Rose said. ‘There’s a crisis, apparently.’

Linnet’s voice floated up at them, from under the huge and ancient kitchen table. ‘The old tart from the bookshop left him. He rang up crying, and I said I wasn’t sorry.’

Rufa’s convention gene twitched disagreeably. It was absolutely no use reminding anyone here that little pitchers had big ears. They were all strangers to embarrassment.

‘Twenty minutes to bedtime, plum,’ she said.

Linnet growled irritably. ‘Can’t you see? I’m busy in my house.’

She was five, and as beautiful as a child could be. Her mother’s porcelain features and blue eyes had gone into the genetic mixer with Ran’s glossy, dead-straight black hair, and the result was a pale, grave little Rapunzel. She wore a bright green jersey, with a yellow jersey showing
underneath
through the holes, and somehow radiated dignity.

Sipping her tea, Rufa knelt on the stone floor beside the table. Linnet had furnished her house with a very dirty cushion, and a bald twig supposed to represent a Christmas tree. Her two brown bears, the Ressany Brothers, lay at drunken angles upon a towel. Two of Linnet’s socks were tacked to the table leg, at bear height.

‘This is their fireplace,’ she explained. ‘They’ve just hung up their stockings.’

Rufa took her mention of stockings as a hopeful sign. Some weeks earlier, Linnet had found her grandmother sobbing over a gigantic electricity bill. Because nobody ever thought of being discreet in front of the little girl, she had heard loud disputes about whether they should have electricity or alcohol for their last Christmas at Melismate.

A little later, she had said to Rufa, with studied casualness, ‘There probably won’t be many presents this year, I should think.’

The bravery of this had hurt the sisters indescribably. The idea of Linnet being disappointed on Christmas morning had startled them all out of the general, despairing chaos. Even Selena, who rarely lifted her head from the page long enough to grunt, had managed to scrape together the wherewithal for her chocolate fudge. Nancy had grandly declared that she would get Linnet a present if she had to sleep with an entire Welsh Male Voice Choir, all singing ‘Myfanwy’, to do it (luckily this had not been necessary). Rufa had burned quarts of midnight oil, stretching the money that had not been swallowed up by the Electricity Board.

Now, giddy with the realization that it was going to be
all
right – that Linnet’s delight would make a window of all-rightness in the pervading depression – Rufa was almost happy. She had knitted a brilliant jersey, from Technicolor scraps. She had made two tiny Pierrot costumes for the Ressany Brothers, and illustrated a story of Nancy’s called ‘Trouble at Ressany Hall’.

The spirit of the Man was in me, she thought, making magic out of nothing.

There was not a drop of gin in the house, and other basic necessities were down to a minimum, but the sacrifices had been worth it. Tomorrow morning, at the foot of the bed she shared with her mother, Linnet would find a stocking bulging with presents.

Under the table, Linnet was wrapping two wrinkled conkers and a tarnished brass doorknob in tinfoil.

‘Bless them,’ she said indulgently, nodding towards her bears. ‘They’re so excited. Calm down, boys.’

‘It’s nearly time to hang up your own stocking,’ Rufa said. ‘And we mustn’t forget to leave a little something for Father Christmas.’

It hurt her to see the shrewd, cautious look cross Linnet’s face. The Man had always left a snack for the overworked saint on Christmas Eve. But the Man was dead, and everything was horribly changed.

Linnet emerged from her house on all fours. ‘We gave him gin and tonic last time.’

‘No gin,’ Rose sighed.

‘A cup of tea and a biscuit,’ Rufa suggested. ‘It’s what I’d fancy myself, on a night like this.’

Linnet nodded, satisfied. ‘And some grass.’

‘Oh no, darling,’ Rose said, ‘I don’t think Father Christmas smokes.’

‘Not THAT kind of grass, silly. I meant for the
reindeer
to eat.’

Rufa swallowed an unholy snort of laughter – Linnet hated any laughing that seemed to be connected with her. ‘It’s too cold to go outside. How about sugar lumps?’

‘OK.’

Rufa kissed the top of Linnet’s head, which smelt of woodsmoke, and went to find sugar lumps and a saucer. The sugar lumps were elderly, and stained a rather sinister brown colour.

Linnet giggled. ‘They look like little poohs.’

The door flew open, and Nancy blew in on the draught. ‘Miss Linnet, your mother wants you upstairs.’

She was fresh from the bath, in a cloud of glorious hair and unidentifiable perfume. She had changed into a black knitted dress that showed the outlines of her nipples and hugged her bra-less breasts.

‘Ow, not yet!’ Linnet protested.

Nancy said, in a pert, squeaky voice, ‘Come on, Linnet, I’m sleepy.’ In a deep, gruff voice, she added, ‘It’ll make Christmas come quicker!’ Nancy, not to be relied upon for serious childcare, was a Mel Blanc of vocal characterization. She had invented voices for all Linnet’s principal toys, and could ‘do’ the Ressany Brothers for hours at a time.

‘Come up with me,’ Linnet ordered.

‘All right.’

‘That dress looks nice on you,’ Rufa said.

‘Doesn’t it? Sorry I didn’t ask. But you don’t mind, do you?’

‘No. I only wish I filled it out in the same places.’

‘Thanks.’ Nancy picked up Rufa’s cup of tea, and dropped in three of the discoloured sugar lumps.

Linnet gave her goodnight kisses, and the two of them
departed
, in a cloud of witnesses – the Ressany Brothers could be heard arguing, all the way up the stairs.

Rufa moved to the range, to make herself another cup of tea. Nancy really could look absolutely stunning, she thought – if she would dress like a lady, instead of a cross between Dorelia John and Posh Spice. The notion of marrying money was hardening in Rufa’s mind.

While she waited for the kettle to come back to the boil, she looked around the room. This enormous kitchen, and the vaulted Great Hall that adjoined it, were the oldest parts of Melismate. They had been built in the fourteenth century, and their massive walls had sunk deep, immovable roots into the Gloucestershire earth. Now that she was about to lose her home, Rufa ached for all the lost opportunities. What a house it might have been, if there had been enough money to restore its diaphanous roof and sagging timbers. She hated the waste of so much beauty.

She made her tea, in a mug with ‘I’VE SEEN THE PIGS AT SEMPLE FARM!’ printed on its side. Semple Farm was where Ran lived, and there had never been any pigs. The mugs were all that remained of that particular doomed project.

She asked, ‘Has Ran’s girlfriend really left him?’

Rose stretched out her legs in their faded blue corduroys. ‘I knew it couldn’t last. She was far too clean.’

Rufa laughed. ‘When she came to supper here, I swear she wiped her feet on the way out.’ She sat down at the kitchen table. ‘I bet Linnet’s pleased, anyway.’

‘So is Lydia, no doubt,’ Rose said sagely. ‘That idiotic girl is still in love with Ran.’

Rufa sighed. ‘She says she dreads having to live on the farm again – but only because she can’t bear the jealousy.’

Rose sighed, too, and they sat in peaceful agreement. Rose had not always got on with her eldest daughter, despite her relentless efforts to please. Rufa’s normality had grated on her. As a teenager, Rose had run away from a sweetshop in Falmouth to escape normality. She had fallen in love with Rufus Hasty because he was the exact opposite of normal. Rose had chosen to be different, and Rufa’s inbuilt normality had sometimes seemed like a reproach.

The arrival of Linnet, however, had awakened Rose’s dormant bourgeois values. As a mother, she had cultivated eccentricity. As a grandmother, she wanted Linnet to have all the good, solid, dull things that other little girls had. Rufa, who all but worshipped Linnet, wanted it too. Rose had suddenly found she had a lot in common with her firstborn. She leant on Rufa these days, as she had never leant on the Man, or Roger. You could throw a normal sentiment out at Rufa, without risking a barmy response.

‘Mum,’ Rufa said, ‘what do you think about marrying for money?’

‘Seriously? Oh, of course you’re serious – you’re never anything else. Have you met someone rich?’

‘No. I’m theorizing, at the moment. What would you think if I married a very rich man, without necessarily being in love with him?’

Rose narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. ‘I’d think,’ she said slowly, ‘that you were either very cynical, or very naïve. Cynical to marry without love. And naïve, to imagine you can live without it.’

‘I can,’ Rufa said dismissively.