The Marrying Game (59 page)

Simon was taken aback, and shot a searching glance at Nancy. ‘Oh, right. Sorry. I can let you have half an hour – you can go in the office, I suppose.’

‘Thanks,’ Berry said.

Simon opened a wooden flap to admit Berry behind the bar. Berry swept a protective arm around Nancy’s shoulders. The softness of her flesh, warm underneath her thin black cardigan, sent his heartbeat into overdrive. Wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, she led him to a door, set deep into the bare brick cellar wall. It opened into a tiny, windowless office.

Berry shut the door behind him. He folded Nancy in his arms, drawing her face down into his shoulder. ‘Darling,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘My darling. It’ll be all right.’

Her voice was muffled in his suit. ‘I know this is stupid – I just can’t bear to think of Ru having a miscarriage, and keeling over in front of Adrian – God, it’s such a relief to know she’s not dead!’

She drew away from him, sniffing loudly, and distractedly rummaging in her pockets.

Berry whisked out his handkerchief. He put it into Nancy’s hand. ‘But she’ll be fine now. You’ve found her, and you can stop worrying.’

‘I knew there was something wrong – I always do with Rufa. We’re connected.’ She mopped at her face. ‘I can’t get over Adrian playing the Good Samaritan.’

He laughed quietly. ‘The rather reluctant and peeved Samaritan. Though I think he is fond of her, in his own peculiar fashion.’

‘It’s ironic that he should be the one to find her, when Edward’s been wearing out shoe leather searching for her all over Edinburgh. He’s been up there three times, and didn’t see a hair of her. Can I get snot on this hanky, or do you need it back?’

‘Consider it yours.’

‘Thanks.’ Nancy blew her nose. ‘He’s driving up again tonight. I don’t know if I should have told him first, but he’s the one who deserves to claim her. And he’s so much more effective than the rest of us. He’ll bring her home – oh, Berry, she’ll be home in time for Christmas!’

She smiled properly for the first time: a radiant, brilliant smile that burned away the tears. She flung her arms around Berry’s neck and hugged him fiercely. It was incredibly easy – and felt beautifully natural – for Berry to kiss her warm neck, her soft cheek, her ripe mouth.

He pulled his mouth away, keeping one hand on her breast. ‘Look, I have to tell you,’ he whispered, ‘because I can’t hide it any more – you’re a goddess, you’re an angel, and I’ve been completely crazy about you since
the
moment we met, when you made me look at your nipples.’

‘Oh, darling.’ Nancy’s eyes were streaming, but her smile was beatific. ‘I’ve been crazy about you since the moment you told me you didn’t have enough money for that stupid Marrying Game.’

They fell ravenously upon each other’s open mouths. Berry (who had not dared to have so much as a lubricious thought in Polly’s presence until he had bought her a formal dinner) pressed his unashamed erection against Nancy’s thigh. He groaned softly, and slipped his hand into the space between her breasts. ‘You’re still very upset,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll tell your boss you can’t possibly do any more work, and then I’ll take you home, and then I’ll make love to you in every imaginable position. It might take days.’

‘Weeks.’ Her wanton hand caressed his flies.

‘Months – maybe years. Actually, I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I may have to keep you for ever.’

Chapter Fifteen

THERE WAS NO
mistaking Nessie’s. A jaunty purple Loch Ness monster cavorted cheerfully above its window. Edward halted as soon as he saw it, almost gagging with anxiety. Suppose Rufa was not here? Suppose she was? Searching for her – with a determination that bordered on obsessive – had made her seem dangerously unreal, as impossible to catch and hold as mist.

Keeping his eyes on the expanse of lighted window, Edward tried to rub some warmth back into his hands. The sky was the colour of lead, heavy with the threat of snow. He had driven to Edinburgh straight after Nancy’s breathless phone call, pausing only to pass the hopeful news to Rose. He had arrived at his hotel in Charlotte Square in the small hours, after a tense, impatient drive along unending motorways. And he had surprised himself by sleeping till ten, when he had hardly had one peaceful, dreamless night since his marriage. He could not think of anything else, until he knew that Rufa was safe.

The three previous trips to Edinburgh had only hardened his determination. He had interrogated the embarrassed but helpful staff of the hotel at which Rufa had used her credit card. One girl had remembered that she had been looking for a flat. Edward had doggedly
begun
to work his way through every letting agency listed in the phone book, criss-crossing the city. And all that time she had been slaving here. He must have passed within a few yards of her a hundred times.

He had waited until lunchtime, wanting to catch Rufa at work, where there would be less chance of her running away from him. Bracing himself for yet another disappointment, he crossed the narrow street and went to the window of the café.

His heart almost stopped. He saw her.

Rufa, wrapped in a striped butcher’s apron, was stirring a vast saucepan in a kind of open kitchen. Edward had last seen her at the airport, before departing for The Hague, and was startled by the change in her. She was far too thin. There were poignant hollows in her cheeks and dark smudges under her eyes. She was pale and exhausted, and unbearably beautiful. As it sank in that she was really, truly there, he experienced one moment of profound relief. Tears spilled down his face, instantly turning cold in the sawing wind.

She turned her head, and saw him. She froze, her eyes wide with shock. Edward blindly pushed his way into the café, strode right up to Rufa and threw his arms around her. He could not hold her close enough. Her bones felt sharp and fragile under several layers of clothes. As if gulping in oxygen, he inhaled the scent of her hair. Then he gently pushed her away, so that he could look into her face. His hands on her shoulders, he held her in his gaze. Her eyes were tearless and bewildered.

‘My darling,’ Edward murmured, deliberately ignoring the stares of the people around them. ‘Say something. Say you won’t run off again. Say you’re glad to be found.’

Rufa said, ‘I lost my baby.’ A silent sob shook her. She
flung
her arms around his neck, and wept into his shoulder.

She did not cry for long. She pulled away from him, scooping the tears with the backs of her hands, scattering apologies. She insisted upon finishing her shift. Edward refused to leave her. He established himself at a corner table, pinning his eyes to her as if afraid she would fly away. She brought him over a plate of stovies, which he ate without tasting. Term had ended, and the café was not busy. He watched her moving between the saucepan and the till, smiling at customers, talking to the other woman in the open kitchen.

It was like being trapped in some bizarre dream. Occasionally she glanced over at him, doubtful and anxious. Every time she did this he smiled at her, determined to reassure her. He had not come to rebuke, or to condemn. He wanted her to know she was being rescued. Plainly, she needed rescuing. He thought she was beginning to be happy to see him. A spark of something like hope appeared in her sorrowful eyes when he smiled.

The other woman came over to Edward’s table with a cup of tea. She murmured, ‘You’re her husband, aren’t you? She’s told me a bit about you. I’ll send her packing as soon as we’ve finished the hot food.’

He would have liked to bombard the woman with questions, but there was no time. He had to wait until Rufa had cleaned the top of the big stove, wiped down the counter with Dettox and folded her apron. She was very white, swaying slightly when she stood still. Edward watched, seething with impatience, as the café’s owner brought out Rufa’s coat, said something to her, and kissed her.

Rufa’s flat was nearby. There was a short cut to the Royal Mile, up a steep flight of stone steps. Edward walked behind her while she climbed, poised to shoot out an arm if she fell – she toiled up gasping for breath, battered by the freezing wind. Once inside her flat she stopped pretending to be fine, and collapsed on the sofa with a gasp of relief.

‘Stairs,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘Everything in this town is vertical.’

Since when had Rufa not been able to manage stairs? And how long did they have to pretend she was not ill? Edward bit back an impulse to lecture her about taking care of herself. He must remember he was not briefing a platoon, nor carpeting a troublesome squaddie. In civilian life, a lecturing habit drove foolish young wives away. ‘I’ll make some tea.’

‘That would be lovely.’ She did not even try to protest about being waited on: a very bad sign.

He went into a kitchen the size of a coffin. It had a strip of window looking out over the ancient court below, where a knot of hardy Japanese tourists were taking photographs. He was dismayed to see that Rufa had not colonized the kitchen. Apart from a few rich tea biscuits, there was no food. Her precious library of cookery books lay in a careless heap on the draining board. The Rufa he knew had never been truly present here.

When he carried the tea into the sitting room, Rufa – still in coat and gloves – was fast asleep. He spoke her name softly. She did not stir. Very gently, Edward raised her legs, and put a hard cushion under her head. He found a chilly duvet in a claustrophobic bedroom, draped it over her, and sat down to wait until she woke
up
. Dear God, how sad she looked. She should not be in this mausoleum, without a living soul to talk to, or care if she lived or died. Not when there was someone to live and die for her, if only she would let him.

The short afternoon darkened as he watched her. When he could no longer make out her face in the shadows, Edward switched on a lamp and moved silently to draw the curtains against the winter night. Thick flakes of snow whirled in the light cast by the window.

He took his seat again, wondering if he would ever find a way to tell her how long, and how much, he had loved her. Whatever the local gossips thought, it had not happened when she was a child. As a little girl, Rufa had only been one of the Man’s tattered brood: gap-toothed, with sprawling legs like a colt. In his periods at home he had often found Rufa in his kitchen, sitting with his mother and Alice, gravely helping them to shell peas or mix cakes. Over the years, the Man had drawn his attention to Rufa’s growing beauty. Edward had noticed it in a theoretical way, but he had not fallen in love with her until he had left the army.

They had been friends at first. Rufa had seen, when the others had not, how the death of his mother had deepened his depression, his sense of dislocation from normal life – he wondered if she guessed how he had come to depend on her, through that long, bleak year. The moment of truth had come during an elaborate picnic at Melismate, arranged by the Man for Rose’s birthday. Torrential rain had interrupted the bacchanal, and everyone had dived for the nearest cover. Edward had found himself under one of the trestle tables, next to Rufa. He had stared at her wet hair and dripping,
laughing
profile, and had suddenly been able to put a name to what he felt for her. He had fallen in love with her, and it was already a serious case.

He brooded over her face as she slept. Perhaps it was the softening effect of the lamplight, but she seemed a little less ghastly. Some colour had crept back into her lips. Edward thought, as he often did, of the one night he had lost control in Italy. He blamed the brandy. He had been sloshed, and poor Rufa had been as drunk as a skunk – without an inhibition left in the world, and barely able to stand up. He had felt ashamed of himself while he was doing it, but never in his life had passion made him so savage.

I made her come, Edward thought, and then she passed out – and I didn’t stop. I have fucked an unconscious woman; I should be locked up.

The memory fired his blood, and mortified him. He had been appalled by Rufa’s illness the following day. Since the death of the Man, Edward had been profoundly disturbed by her aching vulnerability. God alone knew what the sight of her father’s body had done to her. He wished he had not lectured her so relentlessly about a reality she could not bear to face. He was ashamed to remember how he had told her off for making mountains of jam when she ought to have been thinking constructively about the auction of the house. Nancy – springing to her sister’s defence, as she always did – had blurted out that she was doing it to pay the bloody undertakers, and Edward had chopped logs for a whole afternoon in a fury of remorse. He would never have taken advantage of her by marrying her, if the poor creature had not been so determined to marry someone else. Thank God she had not – he felt
he
had grabbed her on the very edge of the precipice.

Rufa sighed, and stirred. She blinked at the ceiling, and turned her head towards Edward. He was encouraged to see that the hunted expression in her eyes faded as soon as she saw him. ‘What time is it?’

Edward came over to her, perching on the sofa beside her feet. ‘Nearly seven.’