The Marrying Game (10 page)

Rufa’s lips were pale. She did not know how to begin to reply. Max had accused her of the worst kind of hypocrisy. He refused to see that they were playing the Marrying Game for a reward that was worth a real sacrifice.

Nancy glancing at her, quickly said, ‘It’s not because we want to be posh. It’s about saving a family home that means a lot to all of us – and meant everything to our
father
. We have to do this. We owe it to his memory.’

‘His spirit’s in every stone of the place,’ Wendy said, her eyes brimming.

Rufa said, ‘You didn’t know him, Max. I couldn’t explain it to you, unless I could find a way of making you see the Man. And how absolutely wonderful he was.’ She was calm, but her voice shook a little.

Max softened. ‘I’m sorry. But there’s something so bloody sad about it. You’re both sublime. You were made to be adored. And you’re denying yourselves the chance to fall in love properly.’

There was another silence. Nancy could see that Rufa was shrinking away from a wave of desolation. It had all got far too heavy.

‘How do you know we won’t fall in love?’ she demanded. ‘If you don’t want to help us, go and make a round of tea.’

‘Max never makes tea,’ Wendy said. She looked up from her magazine at Rufa. ‘Is Harold Pinter rich enough?’

‘Probably not,’ Nancy said. ‘And think of the conversation – all those pauses.’

Roshan jumped gracefully to his feet. ‘I’m miles ahead of you all, so I’ll make the tea. Max – are you with us, or against us?’

Max, glancing at Nancy, pulled his pile of magazines towards him. ‘With you. I think it’s crazy, but you need me.’

After hours of wading giddily through parties, film premieres and race meetings, they had pencilled in their first two targets. They had argued fiercely, scribbling
names
and crossing them out. Balls of discarded paper lay among the mugs, biscuit wrappers and ramparts of glossy magazines. Max, who did not seem to be able to do anything less than passionately, had now thrown all his energy into the Marrying Game. He had been very useful. He cut through flights of fantasy, and isolated the men who would be easiest to approach.

‘Well, I think we can declare the meeting over,’ he announced, at half past one in the morning. ‘Roshan and I can ransack the cuttings libraries at work, to compile proper dossiers.’ Max was a trainee arts producer at BBC Radio Four, and Roshan was the Assistant Deputy Style Editor of a Sunday newspaper. Rufa was now thanking heaven for the usefulness of Wendy’s lodgers. ‘Nancy’s target will be pretty easy,’ Max went on, ‘though we’ll need a sick-bag when we’re going through his cuttings. Rufa’s will be a shade more tricky, but at least he ventures out to the opera occasionally. You can always trail him to Glyndebourne and throw a faint at his feet.’

Roshan was not entirely satisfied. ‘I still think Rufa should have gone for the marquess. They’d make such a heavenly couple.’

‘We could spend years trying to get near him. Let’s at least use the contacts we already have.’ Max yawned noisily, stretching and showing perfect white teeth. ‘Though I must say, I’m disappointed you girls don’t have more contacts of your own. I thought you upper-class types all knew each other, and married your cousins.’

‘The Man didn’t like conventional upper-class society,’ Rufa said. ‘He dropped out when he fell in love with our mother. She’s from a different sort of world.’

Max was intrigued. ‘He married out, did he? That explains a lot. I have an uncle who married out, and nobody’s spoken to him for years. English-gentry types and posh Jewish types evidently have bags in common.’

‘It wasn’t that people didn’t approve of our mother,’ Rufa added quickly. ‘He didn’t introduce her to anyone, that’s all, because nobody was good enough. And her parents weren’t remotely posh. They ran a shop.’

‘A newsagents, tobacconists and confectioners,’ Nancy said, enunciating each word in an immaculate upper-class accent. ‘They’re both dead now. Our mother always says they came from another planet – they stopped speaking to her when she ran away and got knocked up with Ru. I wish I’d met them, though. I often think I must be rather like them.’

Rufa laughed softly. ‘The Man said I was the one with the shopkeeping streak.’

Nancy, pleased that she had been able to make Rufa smile, leaned over to nudge her affectionately. ‘No, darling, you take after the blue-blooded side of the family. I’m sure you got more of it than I did. The fact is, we’re hybrids – half landed gentry, with a bloodline stretching back to William the Conqueror. And half corner-shop, closed Wednesday afternoons. That’s why we don’t know anybody. The Man was rejected by most of his friends –’

‘Except the Reculvers,’ Rufa put in.

‘– and he annoyed most of the neighbours. They used to call us “those poor little hippy girls from the manor”.’

Max and Roshan had been listening with intense interest.

Max asked, ‘Do people really care that much about class these days?’

Roshan sighed, and said, ‘God, how romantic – love across the social divide!’

‘The Man was the most romantic man in the world,’ Wendy said solemnly. ‘That’s all you had to understand about him. The normal barriers were simply invisible to him. For instance, I remember a Bath and West County Show, back in – sometime in the late Eighties, anyway – when he made Lady Garber give up her seat for me because a pig had trodden on my foot –’

Nancy and Max and Roshan snorted with laughter. Rufa’s lips twitched, but she managed to sound sober. ‘Max, didn’t you say you had an interview tomorrow morning? I think we’d better go to bed, or we’ll be here till dawn.’

Wendy beamed around at them all – she had had an entirely wonderful evening. Nancy and Rufa had all their father’s gift for creating an instant party. She felt ten years younger. ‘All right. But do let’s have one last reading out of the notes. I keep getting them mixed up.’

Max had written down basic details of the two targets, on separate sheets of paper. To each sheet, he had clipped relevant articles and photographs cut from the magazines. He read out the notes he had made, in an insolent, challenging drawl, mostly directed at Nancy.

‘1. George Hyssop, Earl Sheringham of Sheringham.

Age: 32

Marital Status: Single

Financial Status: Seriously rich. Owns several London districts and a large slice of Canada.

Address: Lynn Castle, Sheringham, Norfolk

Personal Telephone Number: Not known.

Remarks: Linked with several women, nothing long-lasting. Seldom photographed or written about.
Sometimes
turns out for charity events, classical concerts and opera. Known to be classically stuck-up and operatically refined. May be a tad hard to approach at first, but committee feels he would be so ideal for Rufa that this does not matter. We believe he is drawn to very highborn ladies. Committee feels Rufa should play up the Norman blood for all it’s worth, and make out his lot are parvenus. We feel that the novel experience of being looked down on may give him a kinky thrill.

2 Timothy ‘Tiger’ Durward

Age: 29

Marital status: Divorced. No children.

Financial Status: Vast fortune from great-grandpa’s chain of supermarkets. His mother is an earl’s daughter.

Address: Hooper Park, Wooton, Wilts

Personal Telephone Number: Not known.

Remarks: If anything, Tiger is too easy to bump into – regularly all over the tabloids like a rash. His hobbies are fighting, getting drunk and chasing totty. He is as noisy, dissolute and useless as a Regency buck. Likes games with hard balls, ladies with large breasts. Shot to fame after streaking at Twickenham – a fool and his underpants are soon parted. Married a Page Three model when he was 21. Divorced and paid her off two years later, but not before he was arrested for shouting obscenities through her letter box. Several dalliances with topless models since then, nothing lasting. The committee regards this big lummox as beneath contempt, but Nancy is stubborn and insists she can handle him.’

The others had been laughing and catcalling all the way through, and ‘big lummox’ made them howl.

‘Of course I can handle him,’ Nancy declared, wiping her eyes. ‘I regularly chuck out two or three like him from the Hasty Arms every Friday – we get them from the agricultural college in Cirencester. Their idea of foreplay is grunting “Hellair” before they grab your tit.’

Rufa looked down at the photographs Max had fastened to each page. Chasing a man like Earl Sheringham would certainly be a challenge. He was tall and thin, of a white-blondness that seemed to give him a silvery aura. Every line of him was bred to its ultimate refinement. He had pale blue eyes and thin blue blood. He looked as if a gust of strong wind would wither him like an orchid. Rufa knew she could respect the sheer exquisiteness of such a man. She could cast him as the Handsome Prince destined to save her father’s kingdom.

It was a shame they had to chase a man like Tiger Durward at the same time. Rufa only saw tabloid newspapers when they were wrapped around vegetables, but even she had heard of him. His beefy, loose-limbed body and ruddy, guffawing face were a familiar sight, attached to headlines like ‘Savesmart Heir asks for Time to Pay Speeding Fine’ and ‘Exclusive – My Jacuzzi Love-Romps With Tiger’. Still, perhaps he was not as bad as he was painted.

Wendy, with much huffing and groaning, began to heave herself off the floor. ‘I’m off to bed. Don’t leave the kitchen in a mess.’

‘We won’t.’ Rufa knelt to gather mugs and plates. ‘Tomorrow, we’ll plan the first moves.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Roshan said. ‘Tomorrow we’re buying you some decent clothes.’

Ignoring Rufa’s pained expression, Roshan interrogated her about the exact amount of money in her bank account, and dismayed her by earmarking the whole lot for shopping.

‘I refuse to let you do this in a half-hearted manner. You’re both stunning, but that isn’t enough. I’m afraid you look like two little girls from the country, and you won’t fetch your asking price.’

Fashion was his religion and his livelihood. He escorted Rufa and Nancy along Bond Street with the businesslike reverence of a verger showing visitors round a cathedral.

‘If you girls really want to marry serious money, clothes are going to be your biggest investment. I’ll quote your own sainted father back at you – you have to look as if you belong. Rich men dally with all sorts of people, but they’re dynasts at heart and they tend to marry their own.’

‘Surely it doesn’t have to be this expensive?’ Rufa pleaded. ‘I can’t believe how much I’ve just spent on four pairs of shoes and two handbags.’ They had started the morning by making a huge crater in Edward’s brooch money. Her lips were white with shock.

‘
Prada
shoes and handbags,’ Roshan said, with exaggerated patience. ‘But if you want to marry a dustman, go ahead – get the rest at British Home Stores. If you’re not prepared to deal in thousands, you’re wasting your time.’

‘He’s right, and you know it,’ Nancy said, giving Rufa a friendly nudge. ‘So don’t be a drip.’ She halted suddenly, in front of a gleaming shop window. It displayed a single mannequin, dressed in a scrap of lime velvet. ‘Isn’t that divine?’

‘Moschino? Forget it.’ Roshan tugged at her sleeve, to pull her away. ‘It is lovely, and you’d probably stop the traffic in it. But it’s completely off-message.’

‘Well, what do you suggest, then?’ Nancy could not see the point in buying expensive clothes if they made no impact. ‘Twinset and pearls?’

‘Yes,’ Rufa said. ‘We need to look posh.’

‘You need to look
stylish
,’ Roshan corrected her. ‘You need Chanel (though not the accessories), Jil Sander, Armani, Miu Miu and God knows what else. For the last time, leave it to me.’

Nancy smiled insolently. ‘All right. Where to next?’

‘Rigby and Peller.’

‘God, what’s that? It sounds like a firm of undertakers.’

‘They’re corsetières to the Queen,’ Roshan said loftily. ‘Bra-makers, to you.’

‘Oh, we won’t bother with underwear,’ Rufa said. ‘Nobody will see it.’

Roshan sighed. ‘Will you two co-operate? Style begins at the foundations. A proper bra is vital to the image I’m building for you.’