The Marrying Game (7 page)

He opened the boot of his car. His address book, containing the number of Polly’s farmhouse, lay on top of a wicker hamper. Berry thrust the book aside
impatiently
. The hamper was filled with luxurious jars and tins, and an enormous turkey. A client had sent it to him that morning, and Polly need never know – it wasn’t her sort of thing, anyway. He hefted it out on the cobbles, grinning to himself at its weight. This had been sent by heaven, he decided, to lay at the feet of the foodless, fatherless Hastys.

Chapter Five

BERRY DEPARTED, IN
a sudden, guilty flurry, an hour after midnight – diffidently pressing into Ran’s hand his phone number, which Ran immediately lost. Thanks to Berry’s hamper, Christmas at Melismate was celebrated in a style that had not been seen since the Man’s last store card bit the dust. The turkey was a sumo wrestler of a beast. Rose kissed it drunkenly before she shut it in the oven – ‘It’s twice the size of Tiny Tim!’ With a great collective suspension of disbelief, they managed to take a few days’ holiday from grieving.

Rufa performed miracles of stretching with the food. She made turkey pie, turkey curry and turkey risotto – not one atom of that bird was to be wasted. Finally, on New Year’s Eve, she boiled up the picked bones to make a rich turkey broth. She stood patiently over the simmering pan, neatly skimming off the fat. Her spirits had dwindled along with the bird. The wolf was still lounging at the door. The Man was still dead.

This, she could not help thinking, is the last day of the worst year of our lives.

She would have given anything – really anything – to fly back in time, just to see him once more and hear his voice. On this day last year, the Man had found a suitcase full of ancient clothes. He and Rose had dressed
up
as their youthful selves, and done a demonstration of Seventies dancing that had made them all weep with laughter. Rose’s ethnic robe had been ravaged by moths, and one sleeve had suddenly fallen off mid-groove. The Man’s stomach had strained against the waistband of his purple velvet loon pants. He and Roger had fetched their guitars, and strummed embarrassing old hits by Mott the Hoople and Fleetwood Mac. Edward, who had seen in every New Year at Melismate since leaving the army, had said, ‘Think what I missed, by spending those far-out years at Sandhurst – the only place on earth where short hair and straight trousers stubbornly hung on.’

The Man had said, ‘You’ve got some catching up to do, Ed – but it’s never too late to drop out.’

He had been in high spirits that evening, welcoming the unseeable New Year like an immortal boy of twenty.

Rufa half-closed her eyes, to conjure a picture of the Man under the dim kitchen bulb. There had been scarcely a thread of grey in his thick auburn hair. At midnight, he had taken Rose into his arms, and for a moment – as they had always done – they gazed at each other as if the rest of the world did not exist. Their love, unshaken by age or infidelity, had been the rock that sheltered them all.

Then – as they had always done – Rose and the Man had held out their arms, to embrace all four daughters at once.

‘My silk princesses – my butterflies – my orchids! Who needs sons?’ He never would accept that he ought to have wanted a son to carry on the venerable Hasty name. He had roused a cross, sleepy Linnet, to give her a sip of wine, just as he had done when his own girls were little. He had delighted Linnet by pretending to give
some
to the Ressany Brothers, and then fining them a penny each for being drunk and disorderly. He had embraced Roger and kissed Edward, mainly to annoy him. Lastly, according to tradition, he had raised his glass and, with tears in his beautiful eyes, he had murmured, ‘Absent friends.’

Rufa blinked away the tears smarting behind her own eyes. He had meant his adored mother, dead since his adolescence. And now the absent friend was him. She had been over and over every memory, searching for clues. Later, there had been shadows, but last Christmas had been without a cloud. The Man had been celebrating a small victory against ‘the Abominable Dr Phibes’, also known as Sir Gerald Bute, master of the local hunt. The Man had stopped hunting when he fell behind with his subscription and grew too stout for his father’s old pink coat. Typically, he had then decided all hunting was wrong, and banned the hunt from his land.

That had been the year of Edward’s return, and to the fury of the Abominable Dr Phibes, Edward had taken up the Man’s battle against cruelty to foxes. Every year since then, the two of them had joined the protest at the Boxing Day meet. The other protesters were mainly what Sir Gerald called ‘wholemeal City types’, and he regarded his neighbours as traitors – especially Edward, who had once been an officer and a gentleman, and a fearless rider to hounds. Edward had followed the hunt in his Land Rover, with the Man hanging over the side, scattering anti-blood-sport leaflets and yelling rude things through a loudhailer. Rufa warmed herself with the memory of them coming home after dark, plastered with mud and sometimes carrying a bewildered, ungrateful fox. These were the only times they had seen
Edward
drunk. He and the Man knocked back his searing home-made sloe gin all day, and you could hear them singing up the road for miles. It had been a poor New Year that was not seen in with an angry letter from Sir Gerald.

Rufa paused in her skimming, to wipe her eyes. Sir Gerald Bute had not written a line when the Man died, and Edward had fiercely denounced him as a ‘shit’. This Boxing Day had been very hard for Edward. Everyone had times and places where the Man’s absence was insupportable. Edward had taken refuge at Melismate, because he could not even bear to hear the barking of the hounds on the road beside his farm.

Roger ambled into the kitchen. ‘Still at it?’

‘Not long now.’ She kept her face turned towards the pan, so he would not see she was crying.

He briefly squeezed her shoulder. ‘You’ve been standing there for hours. Give yourself a break.’

‘Oh, I’ve nearly finished.’

‘Here. Let me do it.’ Roger took the spoon out of her hand, and gently nudged her away from the range. ‘You can trust me. I’m famed for my patience.’

This was true, and Rufa felt a surge of fondness for him. Good old Roger. His patience and his unshowy, unstinting devotion had kept Rose from losing her head in the days after it happened.

‘Thanks, Rodge. It needs to reduce about another half-inch.’

‘Righto.’

Rufa made herself a mug of tea, and climbed the rickety stairs up to the old nursery. The grey countryside had fought off the intense cold, and heavy rain hammered against the leads. Water dripped through the
holes
in the ceiling, pinging discordantly into an enamel bucket and two chamber pots. Nancy lay on the sofa, nursing a tiny fire and reading a ragged
Woman’s Weekly
which she had found in one of the heaps of lumber.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Is the soup ready?’

‘Nearly.’

‘Can I have some before I go to the pub? I’m on at six.’

Rufa said, ‘It seems a shame, working on New Year’s Eve.’

Nancy, without raising her eyes, said, ‘The money’s good, and heaven knows, we need it.’ She looked up. ‘I didn’t want to stay here. The memories would choke me.’

‘I know. I’ll miss you, though.’

‘Don’t, Ru. I’m sorry.’ Nancy frowned. ‘What a ghastly bloody day. Water coming through the ceiling is only amusing in novels about lovable madcap families. In real life it’s just depressing.’

‘Move your butt,’ Rufa said. ‘I want the sofa. I feel as if I’d just eaten that entire seventeen-pound turkey single-handed.’

Nancy sat up against one of the arms, making room for Rufa. ‘There’s a great story in here. It’s about this secretary who marries her boss. She tries to look plain, so he’ll admire her efficiency. Then a big gust of wind comes along, knocks off her glasses and blows down her hair, and he suddenly notices she’s pretty. A man that thick should be in a home.’

‘The Man said men were pathetically suggestible. He said if a plain woman with reasonable legs wears suspenders, it takes the average male several hours to realize she’s not gorgeous.’ They laughed. Repeating the Man’s sayings to each other made him seem nearer for a second, then even further away.

‘Oh, I wish we knew why,’ Rufa sighed out. ‘What made him do it, Nance?’

‘We’ll never know,’ Nancy said sadly. ‘So we might as well stop asking, and try to let him go.’

Rufa was shaking her head. She would not hear of letting the Man go. ‘There should have been a note. You know he never could do anything without a fanfare. Why didn’t he at least leave us a note?’

Nancy leaned across the rug to put a cobwebbed log on the fire. ‘It could never have said enough for us. We would always have wanted more.’

‘Just “Goodbye” would have been enough,’ Rufa said. ‘Goodbye and I love you.’

‘Stop beating yourself up.’ Nancy’s face was gentle, but she made her voice bracing. ‘This is a new year, and we’ve got to stop acting as if it happened yesterday – Edward’s certainly right about that. We should be doing something about the future.’

‘I won’t give in, Nance.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m not going down without a fight.’ Pale and determined, her hands clenched with excitement, Rufa told Nancy about Edward’s brooch. ‘He says he’ll help me to get a good price for it, if I promise to do something constructive with the money.’

‘Like getting your tits enlarged,’ Nancy suggested.

‘Oh, ha ha. I’m trying to be serious.’

Nancy leaned forward. ‘Why couldn’t Edward just give you the money, instead of going through all this rigmarole?’

Rufa was patient. This had also occurred to her, and she had prepared an answer. ‘You know how odd he is about actual cash – he doesn’t like anything to
do
with it. You certainly can’t call him mean, though.’

‘No, but I can call him a control freak. He basically won’t give you a penny, unless you carry out his orders.’

‘He trusts me,’ Rufa said. ‘If I say I’m using the brooch money to pay for a course, or start a business, he’ll believe me.’

Nancy missed the significance of her tone. ‘Of course he will – he knows you can’t lie to save your life.’

‘I’ve broken one promise to him already. I said I wouldn’t tell any of you about the brooch.’

‘Miserable old sod, he obviously thought we’d fleece you.’ Nancy did not always see eye to eye with Edward. The Man had said they were polar opposites – hot and cold, loose and tight, oral and anal. ‘Why are you telling me, by the way?’

‘I wanted to ask you something.’

Nancy threw down her magazine and leant closer to Rufa. ‘Darling, tell me you’re not still thinking about that cock-eyed Marrying Game!’

‘I can’t get it out of my mind,’ Rufa said earnestly.

‘Oh God, I might have known. You’re that bloody desperate.’

‘You realize it’s theoretically possible, now we have some money,’ Rufa went on stubbornly. ‘We can invest in the right clothes, go to the right places –’

‘And what if we fail? I’m not having Edward accusing me of leading you astray.’

Rufa had not thought of this, and had to admit it was exactly what Edward would do. ‘If we fail, I’ll confess. I’ll take all the blame.’

‘Well,’ Nancy said. ‘I don’t know.’ She was silent, looking thoughtfully at Rufa, weighing up their chances. ‘What will you do if I say no?’

‘I don’t know.’ Rufa was silent for a few seconds, then said in a rush, ‘Go by myself.’

Nancy laughed suddenly. ‘I was afraid you’d say that. You know I’d never let you go to London alone.’

‘Why? I’m not a halfwit.’ Rufa was nettled. ‘I can look after myself.’

‘You won’t have to. I’m coming too.’

‘Does that mean you’ll do it? The Marrying Game?’

Nancy sighed, pensively gazing into the fire. ‘Yes, I suppose it does. Actually, it’s come at rather a good time. Things with Tim – well, he isn’t the man I took him for. His mother keeps hinting that he’ll go back to college if I’m off the scene. I need to broaden my horizons.’

The Marrying Game had rooted stubbornly in Rufa’s mind. From her position of having nothing and knowing no-one, she had spent Christmas building an airy scaffold of hope. ‘The men – our potential husbands – would have to be very, very rich,’ she said. ‘Not just what old Mrs Reculver used to call “well-orf”. We’re faced with a ruined house and an absolute mountain of debts. It would take a tycoon to help us without feeling any pain. A billionaire rock star is the sort of thing we have to look for.’

‘All right,’ Nancy said, ‘as long as we can find a couple who aren’t fat old trolls.’

Rufa was stern. ‘Fat trolls if necessary. We’re not doing this for fun. Our mission is simply to find some very rich men, and make them fall in love with us. Whatever they look like.’

Nancy groaned. ‘Don’t – you’re scaring me. There must be some rich men who don’t have to go out with a Gucci bag over their heads.’

‘Nance, please be serious!’

‘I’m sorry.’ Nancy’s expression softened, as she saw how much the Marrying Game had come to mean to Rufa. ‘I’m just not used to you being so barmy – you’re supposed to be the sensible one. I mean, this has virtually no chance of working.’