The Marrying Game (57 page)

‘But will you?’

Ran reached to take her hand. ‘No. I’m not marrying Polly. I got it into my head that I was in love with her – well, you know what I’m like.’

Lydia’s hand tensed inside his. ‘So are you going to tell her?’

‘Yes. Even though she’ll probably kill me, and squat in my house till I can pay her back all the dosh she’s spent on it. I don’t care. It’s still better than hurting my baby.’ Ran groaned gently, and laid Lydia’s hand against his cheek. ‘I’ve got myself into a huge mess this time, eh? And I look at you, and see what a bloody great fool I am for ever letting you go. I’m sorry I got angry tonight, but if you will go round looking so incredibly beautiful – and bombarding me with psychic messages that I can’t ignore –’

‘If you want me now, you have to want me for ever,’ Lydia said. ‘And if you want me for ever, the rules have to be different. You know what I mean.’ She was breathless, forcing herself to make the speech she had rehearsed in her head so many times. ‘You made me desperately unhappy when we were married. The first time you cheated on me, I thought I’d die. You told me I’d get used to it –’

‘Oh, God!’ Ran winced. ‘I didn’t, did I?’

‘But I never got used to it. Each time was another death. I never stopped hoping you’d want me again.’ She swallowed hard. Tears brimmed in her eyes. ‘Maybe it wouldn’t be so important, if I didn’t love you.’

The years melted from him. For the first time that evening, he smiled fully. ‘Do you still love me?’

‘I don’t know how you can ask me – I’ve never stopped loving you for a second –’ Lydia’s voice was fractured with sobs.

Ran sprang up, to sit beside her on the bed and gather her into his arms. Tenderly, he drew her head down to his shoulder. He whispered, ‘Liddy, please forgive me and start again. I’m a stupid shit, but at least I’ve learned that I can’t be happy without you. Or Linnet. I want my family back.’

Nancy ended the evening rather seriously irked with Lydia. She had disappeared during supper, leaving her sisters to entertain the choir people and pretend to be delighted when they suddenly started singing madrigals. They had obviously been puzzled by Lydia’s absence, and Nancy had concocted a feeble story about a sudden migraine. They all believed it, and had left with many expressions of concern.

The party was in its final stages now, the last drinkers amiably helping with the clearing up. Linnet and her remaining friend, Lauren Poulter, were slumped on the sofa in the drawing room, watching
The Little Mermaid
through drooping eyelids. Rose and Nancy were scraping leftovers into the bin and stacking the dishwasher. Selena was at the sink, attacking the pans.

In the middle of all the activity and confusion, it took Nancy a few minutes to notice Polly. She stood, taut with fury, among the rough jerseys and grimy hands of the last guests. She wore a new Barbour over a black velvet cocktail dress. A single diamond glittered at her throat.

‘I’ve come for Ran.’ She was too angry to care who heard her.

Nancy tossed potato skins into the bin. ‘Ran? I thought he left ages ago. Isn’t he at your place?’

‘I know he’s here, Nancy,’ Polly said. ‘And if I can’t see him immediately, I’m never seeing him again.’

‘Hold on, no-one’s trying to hide him.’ Nancy touched Rose’s shoulder. ‘Mum, have you seen Ran?’

‘No, and I haven’t seen that wretched Lydia either – how dare she leave us high and dry? I didn’t know where to look during those madrigals. What bollocks.’ Rose had reached her brutal-honesty level of tipsiness.

Polly’s neat blond face was a Japanese Noh mask of outrage. ‘He left me to handle the whole dinner party by myself. I’ve never been so humiliated in my life. And I refuse to wait at home till he deigns to come back.’

‘Well, do feel free to have a search for him,’ Rose said kindly. ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea while you’re here?’

‘No – thank you.’ Polly strode purposefully towards the sound of laughter out in the Great Hall. In the doorway she snorted impatiently, and veered off towards the stairs.

Rose and Nancy watched her, with detached sympathy.

Rose said, ‘She might as well see for herself. He’ll never manage to tell her.’

Nancy sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘I do think Liddy’s
a
bit of a gumby. Why couldn’t she seduce someone else?’

‘Because she married him,’ Rose said. ‘Unlike Ran, she knew a marriage is not biodegradable – especially when there’s a child. He’s had to learn that there is no such thing as a Disposable Marriage. Your father always knew it. That’s why he always came back.’

Nancy was surprised. She had never heard her mother taking this faintly critical tone about the Man. ‘You were the love of his life.’

‘Yes, because I married him and stuck it out. But it wasn’t easy. Why d’you think I looked so old and wrinkled, and he didn’t? I was his portrait in the attic.’ She had sobered up, and now she caught Nancy’s surprise. ‘Oh, darling, I didn’t mind. There were huge compensations. It’s what I chose, and what Liddy’s chosen. And two people who have a child as perfect as my Linnet ought to be bloody well chained together.’ She darted forward to snatch her wine glass. ‘Quick, another tipple, before I turn into Ann Widdecombe.’

Polly, with a white face and blazing eyes, stalked into the kitchen.

Rose asked, ‘Did you find him?’

Polly did not reply. She swept the room with one withering look, then stormed out of the back door like the Bad Fairy at the christening.

Nancy knew it all half an hour later, when she carried a sleeping Linnet upstairs. The door to Lydia’s room stood slightly open. Lydia and Ran lay fast asleep in the rumpled bed, blissfully clasped in each other’s arms.

Chapter Fourteen

RUFA WAITED AT
the crossing outside the Caledonian Hotel, bracing herself against the wind. Daily life in this city was an endless, hand-to-hand battle with the wind. It scoured the grey stones, drove the crowds of shoppers along Princes Street, roared through the Georgian canyons of the New Town. Hard flecks of snow stung Rufa’s face. The cold was unbelievable. Her hands ached inside her gloves.

Then, on the point of weeping, the strange and not unpleasant feeling of dislocation stole over her again. The thundering traffic, the harassed crowds, the lighted Christmas windows – everything was unreal and two-dimensional, like a picture. Rufa tried to reconnect to it, enough to remember how to go about the effort of getting back to the flat. She should have stayed there, swaddled in her overcoat and the rented duvet.

But she had to find a present for Linnet. This was a large project. The tea set she had bought for Linnet’s birthday had involved hours of glassy-eyed wanderings around toy departments. She had then had to find wrapping paper, a card (with badge – ‘6 Today!’) and a Jiffy bag. In the olden days, she could have accomplished all this in an hour. These days, everything
seemed
to take amazing amounts of energy. She had fainted in the queue at the post office.

The faint had been very embarrassing. The place had been thronged with nosy old ladies collecting their pensions, and it had been a struggle to get away. They had wanted to call an ambulance, but were distracted when Rufa lied that she was pregnant. Being pregnant seemed to explain away all kinds of medical horrors. Your head could fall off and roll into the gutter, she thought, and if you said you were pregnant, everyone would say, ‘Och, no worries, then.’

She had probably fainted because she was not eating. It was not that she disliked food – simply that it did not seem to have anything to do with her body. Bushes of broccoli, mats of meat, blankets of bread, plates of white china, steel forks – they were all the same to her. The huge effort of pushing things into her face made her exhausted. This morning it had taken her a good hour of the
Today
programme to eat a single slice of toast. She had kept looking down at her plate, to find the toast exactly the same size – Fortunatus’s piece of toast, doomed never to get any smaller.

She was fine, however, if she did not think too much about the wrong things. Such as the painful Christmas decorations, which pulled her heart towards home. The home she longed for no longer existed. She wanted the old Melismate, all grimy and chaotic and crumbling, where she could find the Man in the kitchen with Linnet on his knee – Rose in her drinking chair – the girls up in the old nursery. She had ruined the nursery, painting it white and stowing the junk in the stable loft. The destruction had been paid for with Edward’s money. She had wanted to save the Man’s home, and she had raped it.

Thinking of Edward made her warm. She had recently noticed these rushes of warmth, which muffled all noise and turned the ground beneath her feet to sponge. Very distantly, Rufa saw that the green man had appeared on the crossing. The people around her surged across the road. The red man appeared before Rufa remembered that she had intended to cross too. Why was everything happening so fast?

There was a hand on her upper arm. ‘Rufa? I thought it was you.’

She turned her head, and saw – of all people – Adrian Mecklenberg.

Adrian reacted with the impeccable consideration one would expect from a man dedicated to the pursuit of perfection. It was as if he was following instructions in some arcane book of etiquette – How to Behave When a Lady Known to you Faints in Princes Street.

He took Rufa into the Caledonian Hotel, and rapidly installed her in a room like a carpeted football pitch. He arranged for a private doctor to be sent. It took him no more than fifteen minutes, then he departed for his meeting in George Street. The rational part of Rufa was mortified. To Adrian, a faint would be nearly as offensive and distasteful as a loud fart – the unwanted attention, the fuss, the sheer lack of control.

The doctor was a young woman, no older than Rufa herself. She prefixed every question with ‘And’.

‘And how long is it since you miscarried?’

‘Nearly five weeks.’ They were drinking a pot of excellent strong leaf tea, and Rufa leaned forward to refill the doctor’s cup.

‘Thanks. And was there much bleeding?’

‘Tons. It went on for ages. But it’s stopped now.’

‘And has there been any other discharge?’

What a question – thank God Adrian did not have to hear it. ‘No.’

‘How long did the pain last?’

Rufa had to think about this. It was hard to distinguish between different types of pain: to tell where one ended and the other began. ‘Well, it comes and goes. It’s manageable.’

The doctor nodded. Her bedside manner was still a little solemn and unsure, Rufa thought; perhaps she had not been a doctor for very long. ‘Did your GP give you anything for it?’

‘I don’t exactly have a GP,’ Rufa said apologetically. ‘I haven’t been here for long, and I never got round to it.’

‘But you must have seen someone when you had the miscarriage?’

‘I didn’t see the point,’ Rufa said. ‘What could anyone have done?’

The doctor looked disapproving, then consciously tactful. ‘You should always get help for something like that.’

‘I take Nurofen,’ Rufa offered.

‘And are you eating?’

‘Oh, yes.’ It was true. She worked hard at eating. She looked out of the window, at the steely sky, while the doctor wrote something in a little notebook.