The Marrying Game (9 page)

Before Rufa could stop her, Nancy told Roshan about the Marrying Game. He was captivated, and immediately voted himself on to the committee. ‘I’m exactly the person you need. I read every magazine in the world, and I can tell you who’s really gay. You’d be amazed.’

Looking reverently at Rufa, he invited the sisters to breakfast in his top-floor bedroom. It was exquisitely tidy, as crammed with comforts and luxuries as a pharaoh’s tomb. A very clean Apple Mac stood on a dustless desk. The walls were painted white. He had a microwave, a steam iron and a hissing coffee machine. Nancy, wrapped in a shocking pink bathrobe that clashed outrageously with her hair, lay down on the double bed.

Roshan poured coffee, in thin Conran mugs. He put chocolate croissants into his microwave.

‘It’s heaven to meet you two in the flesh,’ he said.
‘Wendy
never stops talking about you. Her bedroom’s plastered with pictures of your father.’

‘I can’t get over the two of you living together,’ Nancy said. ‘How on earth did you find each other?’

‘At a yoga class in Highgate. We got chatting one day, and she mentioned she had a room going. I can’t tell you what she looks like in a leotard. Poor old sausage, I think living with us makes her feel her age. Max and I are about thirty years younger than she is, after all. We don’t think “Tubular Bells” is deep, and we weren’t even born when Dylan went electric.’

‘She’s frozen in the time she fell in love with our father,’ Nancy explained. ‘Like a sort of Seventies Miss Havisham.’

Roshan handed round the croissants. He pecked at his like a bird. ‘I’m relying on you two to settle an argument. Max and I are desperate to know if your sex-god father really slept with Wendy. Max has bet me ten pounds he didn’t. I’m sure he did.’

Nancy was chuckling, not unkindly. ‘You win. He definitely did.’

‘He was very fond of her,’ Rufa felt she should say.

‘Oh, yes,’ Nancy agreed. ‘The Man could only sleep with someone if he loved them. And he usually stayed a bit in love with them afterwards.’

Roshan’s large, liquid brown eyes were wistful. ‘Oh, God. He sounds absolutely divine.’

‘Well, he was,’ Nancy said. ‘Though as a general rule, it wasn’t a particularly good idea to fall in love with him.’

‘Nance!’ Rufa was shocked. This was blasphemy.

‘He was the greatest darling in the world,’ Nancy said calmly. ‘But he never let people go. To the naked eye, he could seem like a bit of a bastard.’

Rufa had never allowed herself to consider the Man in this unflattering light, and she refused to do it now. She finished her coffee in silence. Her father’s heart had been as lovely as his face. Nothing he did could spoil its sweetness.

Roshan and Nancy were attacking a pile of glossy magazines, hooting with laughter. They were searching for suitable husbands, but, according to Roshan, everyone except the Archbishop of Canterbury was a closet gay. Rufa left them to it, and went downstairs to take her washing out of Wendy’s machine.

While she was folding Nancy’s collection of very small T-shirts and her own seemly knickers, Rufa met the other lodger. Max Zangwill dived into the kitchen, banged down a bunch of keys and wrenched open the fridge. After grabbing the milk, he took a proper look at Rufa, and realized she was probably not one of Wendy’s lentil-scoffing clients.

Rufa introduced herself, with sinking spirits. She would never keep Nancy away from this man. He was gorgeous – tall and brawny, with wicked, almond-shaped black eyes and thick black hair. His ripped jeans and faded plaid shirt marked him out as another impoverished beauty, of the type Rufa knew only too well.

Max made Rufa a cup of tea, and put four of Wendy’s crumpets under the grill.

‘I’m ravenous,’ he said. ‘I’ve driven all the way from Sevenoaks. You know about Wendy’s “No Sex on the Premises” rule, I take it?’

Reluctantly, Rufa laughed. ‘She says it’s your fault.’

‘She likes to paint me as a promiscuous swine, because I’m the only person in this house with a normal sex drive.’

From the top of the house, they heard a loud scream from Nancy, ending in a burst of laughter. Max glanced up curiously.

‘Ru!’ There was a sound of bare feet pounding downstairs. Nancy flew into the kitchen, clutching a glossy magazine. ‘Ru – oh, sorry –’ Her white, redhead’s skin flushed becomingly. She tightened the belt of her dressing gown, which Max’s ruthlessly admiring gaze seemed to strip right off her.

‘This is Max,’ Rufa said resignedly. There were enough plain men in the world, God knew – why couldn’t Wendy have chosen one of them as her lodger? Nancy managed to look so fabulous in a state of déshabillé.

‘Hi.’ She smiled into his bold dark eyes. ‘I’m Nancy. Ru’s sister.’

‘Yes, I can see the resemblance. I’m Max – the straight lodger, horribly affected by the sight of beautiful, scantily clad young ladies. I don’t hold out much hope for my blood pressure with you two around.’

Roshan entered the crowded kitchen in time to hear this. ‘Morning, Max. I see you’ve started already.’

‘Started what?’ Max asked, still staring at Nancy.

‘I ought to sing a chorus of the Gypsy’s Warning,’ Roshan said. ‘Ignore him, girls. He has a PhD in corny pick-up lines.’

Max laughed. ‘I was at Cambridge with this dear little brown man. He loves me really – it’s sweet, and rather sad. We’re like A.E. Housman and Moses Jackson.’

Nancy asked, ‘Who?’

‘A.E. Housman was a poet,’ Rufa said, willing Nancy to look at her, so she could signal a warning not to flirt.

Max tore his gaze off Nancy, and turned to Rufa. ‘So you’re the brainy one?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Nancy said. ‘People just think she’s brainier, because she has smaller bosoms.’

Rufa, though still annoyed by the inconvenient attractiveness of Wendy’s lodger, could not help laughing. ‘Just in case you hadn’t noticed.’

Nancy, remembering why she had come down, pushed the glossy magazine at Rufa. ‘You have to look at this, Ru – it’s too hilarious.’

It was folded open at a page of society photographs, taken at a charity ball in aid of leukaemia research. Rufa looked at it blankly, until Nancy pointed out a picture at the top. It was of two people in evening dress, standing on either side of the Duchess of Gloucester. One was a slender, fair-haired, elegant woman in dark blue velvet, and the other—

‘Oh my God,’ Rufa gasped. ‘It’s Edward!’

He was straight-backed and stern, his cropped hair and close beard incongruous above a dinner jacket they had not known he owned.

‘The secret life of Major Edward Reculver,’ Nancy said. ‘By day, he wears wellies and cleans the nuts on his tractor. By night, he rubs shoulders with royalty.’

‘Rather gorgeous, in my opinion,’ Roshan said. ‘I love the designer stubble.’

Nancy and Rufa both laughed, at the idea of Edward’s stubble having anything to do with design.

‘Sorry,’ Nancy said. ‘He’s about as straight as they come.’

‘He does look handsome, though,’ Rufa said. ‘Don’t you think?’

Nancy stole another glance at Max. ‘Oh, everyone looks more or less tasty in a dinner jacket.’

‘I don’t remember Edward saying anything about this,’ Rufa remarked, studying the page curiously. ‘It says here that he’s a patron of the Fox Trust, whatever that is. Oh, hang on – it’s something to do with leukaemia, and that’s what Alice died of, poor thing. It’s family stuff, and you know how buttoned-up Edward is about his family. I think the other woman must be Alice’s half-sister Prudence.’ She gave the magazine back to Nancy. ‘The one he doesn’t approve of.’

‘She keeps getting married,’ Nancy explained to Max and Roshan. She favoured them both with a brilliant smile. ‘She ought to be our role model. We’re just starting careers in marriage ourselves.’

Chapter Six

THEY HELD THEIR
first committee meeting the following evening. Max insisted on joining them. He could not decide whether the Marrying Game was hilariously funny or a monstrous insult to his socialist principles, but was too fascinated by the Hasty girls to keep away. He brought two bottles of champagne, and placed himself where he could exchange smouldering looks with Nancy. Roshan provided Thai takeaway and a towering pile of glossy magazines:
Harpers, Tatler, Vogue, Hello!, OK!
. They sat on the floor of Wendy’s sitting room, around the ugly but comfortable log-effect gas fire. Wendy handed round Woolworths notebooks and biros, seeing the crazy optimism of the Man in the whole daft enterprise, and thinking she had not had such fun in years.

Rufa had begged Nancy not to ruin everything by laughing, but she need not have worried. They were all serious; rather ludicrously like a real committee meeting. ‘Right,’ Rufa said, aware that everyone was looking at her expectantly. ‘First of all, we have to find our targets.’

‘Targets!’ Max protested. ‘Is that what you call these poor, hapless fools?’

‘Our future husbands, I mean,’ Rufa said quickly. ‘I
propose
we make a list of suitable candidates, which we can then narrow down to two – one each.’ She divided the tower of magazines into five smaller piles, and pushed one to each person across the rug. Roshan immediately set to work riffling through his pile, as brisk and businesslike as a bank clerk.

Max asked, ‘Are we looking for rich and sexy, or just rich?’

‘Just rich,’ Rufa said. ‘Once we’ve got our first list of rich men, we can decide who’s sexy.’

‘What if none of them are?’

‘You’re missing the point,’ Nancy said, rather sharply. Max had cast himself as devil’s advocate, but she was not going to let him agitate Rufa. ‘A big bank balance is like a big willy – if a man’s got one, you can always find something sweet to say about him.’

Max snatched a copy of
OK!
from the top of his pile of magazines, and began to flick through its gaudy pages. ‘You don’t seem to realize what you’re getting into. For instance, find something sweet to say about this one.’

He slapped down a photograph of a particularly silly old rock star, and they all – even Rufa – exploded into laughter.

‘His teeth are in quite good shape,’ Wendy said. This made them laugh harder.

‘It’s a serious test,’ Max said, looking at Nancy. ‘Could you marry a guy like this?’

‘He’s not rich enough,’ Nancy told him airily. ‘It’s as simple as that. Personally, I think he’s an absolute Adonis, but we’re not playing this Game for fun.’

Roshan, shaking with giggles, was turning the pages of a
Tatler
. ‘I’ve got another test. Ah, here he is, the pouting devil.’ He displayed a photograph of a
good-looking
young man in a dinner jacket, covering the caption with his hand. ‘Would you throw this one out of bed for making crumbs? I think not. A foolish virgin would marry him without a penny.’

‘That’s more like it,’ Nancy declared. ‘What do you think, Ru?’

‘I don’t know. Quite handsome, I suppose.’ Rufa, her heart thoroughly shredded by Jonathan, was not used to weighing up the merits of other men. ‘What’s the point of this test?’

‘We have to either stop Max being a smartarse, or throw him off the committee,’ Roshan told her. ‘Come on, smartarse – what do you make of this one?’

Max shrugged. ‘He looks like a croupier. But you’re going to tell me he’s someone posh.’

‘He is indeed – a marquess, and single, and one of the richest men in Britain.’

‘We’d better put him on our list,’ Rufa said.

Max poured himself more champagne, and leaned back against the Dralon sofa. ‘Why not just stop at him? Then you’ll only need to find one more, and we can finish in time to watch
Frasier
.’

‘Obviously,’ Rufa said patiently, ‘it’s not as simple as that. Once we’ve made a list of rich men, we’ll make another list of the ones who’ll be easiest for us to find and approach. At this stage, it’s pure science. Personal liking only comes into it when we’ve found the men who score most for money and approachability. Then we plan our campaign in detail.’

There was a silence. Max lounged against the cushions, his wicked black eyes mocking Rufa. ‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’

She was defensive. ‘Yes. As far as possible.’

‘So we’re considering first money, then approachability. Then personal preference.’

‘That’s right,’ Wendy said. ‘Should I put the Prince of Wales, Rufa? Or does his lack of availability cancel out the money?’

‘Those ears cancel out the money,’ Nancy said. ‘Never mind the little problem of his girlfriend.’

Rufa was stiff and self-conscious, aware that Max was still looking at her, waiting for an answer. ‘Yes, leave him out. We have to be a bit realistic.’

‘Anyway,’ Nancy said, ‘the Prince couldn’t save Melismate, unless he persuaded the Government to vote for it.’

‘And there might be a revolution,’ Max said, his eyes still laughing at Rufa. ‘You don’t want to lose your head.’

Roshan threw aside one magazine, and reached for a fresh one. ‘Max, stop trying to subvert the Marrying Game. We know it’s against your principles, all right?’

‘I just don’t get it,’ Max said. He looked at Nancy now, and suddenly sat up, full of energy. ‘You talk about sacrifice, and not putting yourselves first – as if you were doing something virtuous. As if you’re so addicted to being posh, you’ll sell yourselves to men you don’t even fancy!’