The Marrying Game (41 page)

‘You’re kidding.’

‘You remember how much I loved the choir at school. It was practically the only thing I was good at,’ Lydia said. ‘So I plucked up my courage and wrote in for an audition.’

‘You had to do an audition? Singing by yourself?’ Rufa could not imagine her subdued, lovelorn sister daring to do such a thing.

Lydia giggled. ‘I was incredibly nervous. But Phil Harding – he’s the conductor – was really patient. I actually sight-read a line of music, for the first time in yonks. I’m going to the rehearsal this Friday. Phil swears it’s very informal. They’re just starting the Mozart
Requiem
.’

This was the longest speech Rufa had heard from Lydia in ages, and certainly the longest that did not contain a single reference to Ran.

‘Hooray for you,’ she said warmly. ‘Actually, I had forgotten how faithfully you turned up for choir practice at St Hildy’s.’ She took a piece of shortbread from a plate in front of her on the table. ‘Didn’t the Man sing at one of their concerts?’

Lydia smiled. ‘The Bach B Minor – we were short of tenors. Don’t you remember? He stood next to Nancy, and the two of them fooled about till we nearly died of laughing.’

Both sisters sighed.

Rufa said, ‘This shortbread is fab.’

‘I made it with Linnet this morning.’

Privately, Rufa was amazed to hear of Lydia doing something as normal and organized as making biscuits with her child. ‘How on earth did you stop her ruining them?’

‘We made a tray each,’ Lydia said, laughing. ‘She took her grimy efforts over to Ran’s.’

Rufa leaned forward earnestly. ‘This isn’t for Ran’s benefit, is it? Please don’t tell me you’re trying to win him back by turning yourself into Nigella Lawson.’

Lydia’s Gioconda smile did not waver, but there was a lurking steeliness in her soft, pale eyes. ‘Don’t be silly, I’m not doing anything for him. I’ve decided I have to start doing things for myself.’ She was hesitant, and very serious. ‘To find myself, if you like. You’ve all been lecturing me for years about wasting my life, and you were absolutely right. I can’t hang about waiting for him. I owe it to Linnet to move myself on.’

‘I don’t believe it – that I should live to see this day.’ Rufa was laughing softly. ‘Wait till I tell Nancy.’

Lydia looked puzzled. ‘Tell her what? That I’ve joined a choir?’

‘That you’ve finally given up on Ran, of course.’

‘Oh, no,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m never doing that – I’m as married to him as I ever was. But he’s got to come to me. He’s got to want me enough to win me back.’

Rufa was gentle. ‘I can’t really see him doing that. Polly’s a very determined person, and I can’t see her living in sin on a smallholding. She’s bound to make him marry her.’

‘He’ll never marry her,’ Lydia snapped.

‘Liddy –’ Rufa had not heard this timid sister of hers snap for years.

Lydia was fierce. ‘I know he thinks he’s madly in love with her. But I know – I absolutely know – that in the end he’ll see where he truly belongs, and come back to Linnet and me.’

Rufa was silent, thinking. There was no point in
arguing
with Lydia about anything to do with her ex-husband. But the signs of waking up to the rest of the world were distinctly promising. She thought how excellent it would be if Lydia’s choir practices turned up a decent man or two. She was so pretty – if only she would stop dressing in frayed, faded cotton sacks, and not tie her hair back with old tights.

‘We should go shopping,’ she said impulsively.

‘What?’ Lydia was bewildered. Her mind did not change gear quickly.

‘You’re the only one of us who hasn’t been made over – the only bit of Melismate that hasn’t been restored. Let’s go down to London and be ridiculously extravagant.’ The idea of extravagance was suddenly intoxicating.

‘But I can’t leave Linnet –’

‘It’s only one day, Mum and Roger can look after her. Or Ran.’

Lydia shook her head, smiling with a certain grim pride. ‘She won’t have anything to do with Smelly.’

Rufa giggled. ‘Poor old Polly – it’s not much fun being on the wrong side of Linnet. She’ll be fine with Mum, though. We’ll bribe her, if necessary.’ She was eager. ‘Come on, Liddy. It’ll be brilliant. We can see Nancy, and Wendy – I haven’t seen anyone since I came back from Italy.’

‘Are you sure? I mean, I haven’t any money.’

Reaching across the table, Rufa took Lydia’s hand. ‘You don’t need any. This is all on me. You’re going to be waxed and dressed and groomed, and then Ran had better watch out, because you’ll be the most gorgeous woman for miles.’

Chapter Four

‘AND THE FIRST
thing you should do when we get there is cut off your hair,’ Tristan said. ‘It’s utterly lovely, but you could make a still lovelier impression with about seventy per cent less of it.’

Lydia began, ‘Oh, I don’t think I could do anything that drastic—’

‘You’re a genius,’ Rufa told him. ‘It’s a marvellous idea. I’ll ask Roshan if he can recommend a hairdresser.’

Tristan was at the wheel of Edward’s Land Rover Discovery (Edward, with typical efficiency, had rearranged the insurance before he left). Tristan had insisted upon taking over the driving after they stopped at a service station. He had come on the shopping excursion without being asked, and was assisting at Lydia’s transformation with touching eagerness. Rufa thought it very sweet of him, though she was a little anxious about introducing him to Nancy. Lydia was too dazed by the novelty of it all to pay close attention to Tristan, or to wonder why he was there, but Nancy was another matter entirely. Nancy could read Rufa like a menu – better, sometimes, than she could read herself.

Lydia was in the back of the car, because sitting in the front for long periods made her queasy. She had not been to London since before Linnet was born, and then
only
to visit the Nursery and Layette department at the Oxford Street John Lewis. She was slightly awed by Rufa’s casual familiarity with the seething, exotic Babylon.

Tristan glanced at her in the mirror. ‘Forgive me, Lydia. I know we only met this morning, but the dispassionate eye of a stranger can be useful.’

‘She should show more of her face,’ Rufa agreed. ‘You do hide behind all that hair, Liddy.’

Her voice very faintly spiked with resistance, Lydia said, ‘The Man loved our hair.’

‘Selena cut hers, and the sky didn’t fall in,’ Rufa said briskly. ‘The point is, we should listen to Tristan. He knows what looks normal. Don’t you want to look normal?’

‘Well,’ Lydia said doubtfully. A part of her had begun to crave normality, but it was a big step. ‘I haven’t asked Linnet’s permission. She might hate it, and we’d all be blacklisted.’

This was a good point, but Rufa knew her sister was also talking about Ran. ‘She might love it.’

Tristan was laughing. ‘Who is this kid? Mussolini?’

Both sisters chorused ‘Yes!’ and joined in the laughter.

‘For God’s sake,’ Rufa coaxed, ‘live a bit dangerously.’ The early morning was silver, promising more blazing heat. She felt reckless and young and light-hearted. ‘Do something for yourself, without consulting anyone else. If it makes you feel better, I’ll cut my hair off too.’

‘No,’ Tristan said. He was suddenly serious – he could move from merry to serious like mercury, and inhabit both with his whole being. ‘Not you.’

‘I suppose,’ Rufa said carefully, after a brief, breathless silence, ‘that it would be rather a production. And anyway, this isn’t my day, it’s Liddy’s.’ She had to keep reminding herself. It felt like her day.

They had all got up horribly early, to miss the traffic and give themselves plenty of time to raid the shops. Rufa was good at getting up, and she had promised to knock on Tristan’s door. In the grey dawn of the summer morning, she had stood outside it with her hand rolled into a fist, and before she rapped the door, she had listened. His breathing had just been audible: lapping, rhythmic sighs, like waves. When she knocked, he had groaned. A few minutes later, down in the kitchen, she had heard blundering movements above her. She had switched off the kettle to hear more completely. The lavatory flushed. From the boiler cupboard came the metallic hum that happened when someone had a shower in the guest bathroom. An amazingly short time later, Tristan had leapt into the kitchen with wet hair, blasting out energy. He had eaten four slices of toast, and a handsome omelette, lovingly made by Rufa, light as foam.

They arrived at Wendy’s just before nine o’clock – to leave the car, and eat more toast. Nancy, dressed for the heat in a kind of elongated orange vest with apparently nothing underneath, made piles of seared white bread under the grill. She had taken Tristan on board with her usual easy warmth, but the raised eyebrow she cocked at Rufa behind his back was a little disturbing. Roshan (an effortless early riser, like Rufa) had prepared a plate of croissants and a jug of fresh orange juice. Selena had left
a
rather grumpy note, explaining that she could not join in the shopping because she was ‘on some stupid shoot’.

‘Doesn’t she like being a model, then?’ Lydia asked, opening wide her innocent eyes.

Roshan, crisply elegant in white linen, pounced on the coffee pot. ‘She’d rather die than admit it, but she’ll never last the course. She’s only doing it to score some obscure point against you lot. Rufa – will you make the coffee? You know Wendy and Nancy can’t be trusted to do it properly, and I have to make a pot of herbal tea for Tiger.’

‘Tiger?’ Rufa was taken aback. ‘Is he here?’

‘Oh, yes. Fast asleep upstairs.’ Roshan was brisk and businesslike, but even he (Rufa was interested and alarmed to notice) could not hide the glaring fact that he was in love – utterly besotted and bewitched, his soul locked into someone else’s. ‘I didn’t wake him, because sex and natural sleep are just about the only pleasures he has left in life. He’s given up booze, drugs, fatty food and assaulting young women. Without the chemicals, he turns out to be quite anxious and unsure of himself. I have to keep encouraging him – well, he’s doing it all for me, as he keeps saying.’

‘Love is a many-splendoured thing,’ Nancy said. ‘Dear old Tiger’s quite a fixture in Tufnell Park these days. I can’t find it in my heart to condemn him. Even Max has admitted he grows on you.’

‘He hoovers the stairs,’ Wendy put in. ‘He learned in rehab.’

Rufa smiled at Roshan. ‘So it’s the real thing, at last?’

He was solemn. ‘Rufa, I never knew it could be like this. Tiger’s a complete mess. He’s so tiresomely jealous I can’t even write a note to the milkman. The first time I
saw
him he was trying to force his slobbering attentions on my dearest friend. And yet I’m quite madly in love with him.’

‘We’re frightfully grand these days, what with the Savesmart Heir sharing our bathroom,’ Nancy said. ‘I bet you hardly recognize the old place.’

Rufa looked affectionately around Wendy’s cramped, crowded kitchen. It now seemed agreeably raffish and bohemian – how unhappy she must have been, she thought, when she had found it depressing and tacky. ‘I think it’s looking better than ever. I’ve missed this house.’

‘It’s funny how quickly things change,’ Wendy remarked happily. ‘Max sent his love, but he’s staying with his new girlfriend, I think in Shepherd’s Bush.’

Lydia asked, ‘Isn’t he the one who fancied Nancy?’ She had not kept pace with the plot. Her own plot was too absorbing.

Tristan, his mouth full of toast and jam, said, ‘Excuse me, must have a pee,’ and left the room. His energy had a nervous edge today, and he needed to pee constantly. Rufa found this almost painfully endearing.

The second he had gone, Roshan turned on Rufa. ‘What’s going on?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, Mrs Reculver, who on earth is that divine boy?’

‘I told you, he’s Edward’s first wife’s—’

‘Yes, yes, we’ve had the family tree, thank you.’ Roshan sat down at the table, in Tristan’s vacated chair. ‘But I take it you’ve noticed he’s a burnished young sex god?’

‘Of course she hasn’t,’ Nancy said. ‘Ru never notices a man’s attributes without written permission.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ Rufa’s cheeks warmed. She attempted a laugh. ‘He refused to be left behind at the farm, and he’s sharing the driving. He’s – awfully nice, actually.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I didn’t really want him to stay, but Edward seems to think I need someone male to look after me.’