Marrying Up (14 page)

But Florrie’s mother was not, she guessed, the sort to give up easily. She was obviously a very determined woman, who had
married into a line of determined people for whom morality and principle were secondary considerations at best. The marriage
may have faltered, but there was no wavering in Lady Annabel’s sense of position, or her pride as mother of the sole son and
heir to the family fortune.

The founding father of this family fortune, Sir Willoughby Whyske, had been interred, as befitted his position, in the family
mausoleum at Willoughby Hall. On the front of his magnificent white marble tomb was a large carved plaque upon which he was
described, somewhat euphemistically, as ‘owner of many large plantations in the West Indies’. Nor had Ebenezer Cleethorpe,
who had married a Whyske in the nineteenth century and brought with him a vast industrial fortune, been noted for his humanity.
His money had mostly been made before the Factory Act restricted the working hours of small children in his numerous Manchester
cotton mills.

Of the founding ancestors, it seemed only Thomas Trevorigus had no blood on his hands. And yet he might have had something
even more unpleasant on them. Trevorigus was a Cornish landowner who had in the early seventeenth century appeared at court
in order to appeal for the monarch’s assistance with a legal difficulty. What the difficulty was, no one ever discovered;
Thomas never saw his native county again.

His bluff West Country manner had apparently proved so immediate and lasting a hit with the King that James made him his Groom
of the Privy Closet. This prestigious royal appointment involved attending to the monarch’s lavatorial requirements in every
specific. The remainder of Trevorigus’s life was thus taken up with matters pertaining to the regal posterior, and so successful
did he prove in the execution of his duties that on his deathbed, the monarch conferred the appointment on the Trevorigus
family in perpetuity.

Thanks to developments in sanitary engineering, however, the position was no longer the hands-on responsibility it had been
in the past, and now involved nothing more onerous than the
annual duty of supplying the reigning monarch with twelve months’ worth of lavatory paper. Florrie had told Alexa how she
could remember as a child seeing the liveried driver of the Harrods lorry making a detour to drive with slow ceremony past
the Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpes’ London residence so it could be saluted by the family before proceeding to the Palace.
But due to the time-pressed nature of modern monarchy – that, at least, had been the official reason – this annual parade
had some time ago been abandoned, and the supply was now ordered on the internet from Waitrose and delivered by Ocado.

All in all, Alexa had concluded, it was a family history in which social failure was, and never had been, an option. As soon
as Lady Annabel found another prince for Florrie, it was a fair bet that she would be up the aisle with him in short order.
And there could be little doubt she was looking for a princess for Ed. If Alexa herself was to have a chance, she must move
fast and strike hard.

‘Amazing.’ Polly shook her head, smiling, at the chilled champagne bottle, the polished glasses, the snowy linen napkins,
the plates, the prawns and smoked salmon. ‘I wasn’t expecting anything like this. It’s like . . . like something the Duke
of Shropshire might take shooting.’

She meant it was excessive, Max knew, with a clutch of shame. And she was right. He wished he hadn’t been forced to take it;
it was a distraction, an over-opulent infringement on what was intended as an evening of simple pleasures. A drive into the
countryside. A drink at a remote pub. Fish and chips eaten out of paper in the Land Rover, looking out at the wonderful view.

But Stonker Shropshire, his host, was an unstoppable force, and when, over the silver chafing dishes that morning, he had
winkled out Max’s evening plans, he had been determined to make a contribution.

‘Taking a girl out, eh?’ he had boomed. ‘Better have one of my Hanky-Panky Picnics then, my boy. I’ll get Mrs Bunion to make
you one up. Seafood, champagne. Aphrodisiac City, basically. Then you strike as they’re flicking through the newspaper diary
page. Never fails with me. Thinking of getting them copyrighted and sold in the estate farm shop, as a matter of fact. With
free monogrammed condom in every one!’

Max, coughing into his tea cup, was relieved the Duchess was not present.

If Max, now uncorking the bottle, looked red and uncomfortable, Polly hardly noticed. She had now discovered the large lobster.
‘There’s even mayonnaise,’ she crowed, ‘here in this little white pot! And lemons! And to cap it all, the
Daily Mail
, too!’

As Max looked even more embarrassed, she decided to stop teasing him. The picnic was a wonderful extravagant gesture and,
could he have seen it, would certainly have given her father something to think about.

Dad had hardly looked up from his paper, as, earlier that evening, she’d come into the kitchen, her freshly washed hair bouncing
on her shoulders, her new high heels clacking on the tiled floor.

Mum had turned round from the cooker and swept her over with an indulgent glance. ‘Going out with Max, are you? He’s a lovely
boy.’ Max had charmed her on his last visit by admiring her garden and telling her that his mother had green fingers too.

Dad had looked up from his paper. ‘Be careful, that’s all,’ he’d warned. ‘He does seem all right, I’ll give you that. But
I don’t want you ending up hurt again.’

Hurt! Polly thought now as, lying on her stomach, sipping the fizzing wine, she leafed through the
Mail
. It was sweet of her father to care so much – she had forgiven his initial reaction by now – but his concerns were groundless.
Unlike Jake, Max treated her like a princess.

He was so romantic. He wanted everything to be perfect. He had turned the Land Rover off the road at the best spot of all,
parking on the bright turf edge of high, heathery moorland. They had walked through the carpet of frothing purple, heaving
the hamper between them, with the prospect of coloured hills in the distance stretching to the blue horizon. Now Max was lying
on his back on the grass. He had, she saw, a faint smile on his face.

‘Just listen to this!’ She smoothed out the diary page and began to read out loud.

Is actress-socialite-whatever Champagne D’Vyne planning an acting comeback? Following her turn as sexbomb architect Bouncy
Castle in Bond’s last screen outing, she was spotted lunching at thesp hangout Luvvies with hot director Caractacus Pond.
‘He did mention Hamlet, but I’ve never been keen on eggs.’

‘Bouncy Castle!’ Polly crowed. ‘Oh, and you won’t believe this!’

London’s leading champagnista, party girl Lady Florence Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe is back with oligarch’s son Igor Tchaikovsky
after a brief relationship with HRH. But will the irrepressible Florrie make the throne yet? After all, her new position,
as assistant to Sir Rupert Backhander MP, will give her some valuable insight into the constitution
. . .

‘Unbelievable,’ Polly cackled. ‘I didn’t realise people really live like that.’

‘Like what?’ Max asked sleepily.

‘Oh, you know.’ Polly flipped the pages of the paper. ‘Women running around trying to marry princes, that sort of thing.’

‘You don’t approve?’ A glimmer of a smile was pulling at his mouth. ‘You wouldn’t like a handsome prince yourself?’

‘Of course not!’ Polly leant over and poked him. ‘I want you, obviously. No prince could come close.’

They made love then, unhurried and ecstatic, on the extra-padded blanket that was another feature of Stonker’s Hanky-Panky
Picnic. The exquisite setting only heightened the perfection of it all; there, among the larks and curlews, under an evening
sky that was a decadent riot of violets, golds, reds and blues.
Afterwards, he lay for a long time just gazing into her eyes while she stroked his hair.

With incredible speed, it seemed to Polly, she had become part of him. And he, in turn, had become half of her. It was beginning
to feel as if Max was the only person who really existed, and she herself only lived when she was with him.

The people at the dining table were roaring with such ear-splitting laughter that Alexa was seriously worried about her eardrums.
Just as grand people were entitled to more names than everyone else, they appeared to have more lung capacity too. It was,
it seemed, just biology.

‘Har har
har
!’ bellowed Charlie. He was a chinless wonder with huge ears and a face that drink had made progressively purpler all evening.
So far as Alexa could make out, he possessed no brains at all. ‘Ha ha
har
,’ screamed back Ed Whyske. His eye caught Alexa’s. ‘Who’d you say you were, again?’

Alexa groaned silently. Appropriately enough given his interests, Ed looked like a cod but had the brains of a goldfish. As
he could never remember who she was, Alexa had to start from scratch trying to interest him every time she saw him.

‘Flo’s flatmate! Course you are.’ But Ed’s dead-white, pasty forehead now crinkled in perplexity. ‘Flatmate, is it? Silly
bugger, me. Why did I think you were her maid?’

Because I dressed up in a short black dress and frilly white apron and sat on your knee yesterday?
Alexa wanted to say, but didn’t. The confusion was understandable in any case; Florrie certainly treated her like a servant.
Her presence as a guest, rather than a waitress, at this dinner party had only been secured after the following exchange:

Florrie (putting down the telephone): Omigod, what a total nightmare from hell. Lulu de Borgia’s cancelled. I’m a girl short
for tonight.

Alexa: I could stand in if you like.

Florrie:
You?
But you’re serving all the stuff.

Alexa: Yes, but I could be a guest as well. People quite often cook and serve their own dinners and sit at the table with
everyone else.

Florrie: Omigod, how
weird
.

The other guests at tonight’s supper – or ‘din-dins’ as Florrie always called it – were Charlie’s girlfriend Camilla, and
someone called Barney van Hoosier. Small, compact and camp, he was in his early twenties and wore co-respondent shoes, three-piece
beige linen suit and watch chain, pink cravat and matching rose in his buttonhole the exact shade of the pink pate shining
through his carefully combed side-parted dark hair.

Alexa observed van Hoosier narrowly over the cauliflower cheese. She was struck by his line in talk; a torrent of oleaginous
charm, wide-ranging cultural knowledge and amusing, well-informed gossip. It seemed to her that he used conversation to distract,
as she did herself. ‘Omigod, Barney!’ Florrie kept shrieking. ‘That’s
hysterical
!’

Over the rice pudding, Alexa’s suspicions grew. She wondered what Barney was distracting everyone from. Did he, like her,
come from obscure origins? Had he too largely reinvented himself? Was van Hoosier made up? A clever choice if so, a name so
outlandish, no one would ever imagine it was not genuine.

He was, apparently, some sort of historian. She listened to him banging on about his specialist subject, the Tudors. ‘Sex
and executions, basically,’ he drawled, adding that Elizabeth I had her own recipe for anti-farting powder and the plays of
Shakespeare included a hundred and fifty words for clitoris. As Florrie shrieked and Camilla and Charlie, cheeks bulging
with just-swilled claret, thumped the table in appreciation, a great dark fear gripped Alexa. How could she compete?

What was worse, van Hoosier’s curious, assessing gaze was frequently on her; it was as if he too had reached certain conclusions.
‘Tell me, where did you meet your lovely friend?’ he asked Florrie as the roars of amusement died down.

‘At
work
!’ Florrie shrieked, before collapsing into fresh gales of laughter.

‘Work!’ everyone echoed, roaring and slapping their sides.

Admittedly Florrie and employment had not proved a match made in heaven. The
Socialite
job had lasted less than a week. Florrie’s penchant for turning up late or not at all, her hopeless vagueness, her lack of
concentration and her complete inability to spell were, apparently, normal enough for aristocratic members of staff, most
of whom, however, managed to muster up some sort of deference to the editor. But Florrie, it seemed, never seemed quite to
grasp who the editor was and would stare at her blankly, yawning widely. She was now working for an MP friend of her father’s.
Only time would tell whether democracy would survive the experience.

Alexa’s instinct was to keep a distance between herself and the man with the smiling pink face and co-respondent shoes. She
resisted his offers to help her carry plates into the kitchen. But then, as he carried them in anyway, she found herself standing
dumbstruck as he placed a pile of ancestral Minton down on the butcher’s block and said in an amused voice, accompanied by
a charming smile, ‘You’re not making much headway here, are you?’

‘Headway?’ Alexa said stiffly, yanking open the dishwasher.

Outside, as was usual at this stage in din-dins proceedings, Florrie and Ed had started throwing bread rolls at each other.
Florrie screamed as Ed got her smack in the eye.

‘With Ed, of course.’ Barney had come over and was leaning against the front of the fridge. His beam was undimmed. ‘You’re
after him, aren’t you?’

‘Whatever can you mean?’ Alexa met his amused glance with a haughty one of her own.

‘Oh, come off it, dear,’ he said genially. ‘You’re a fake.’

‘Fake? What do you mean?’ Alexa’s indignation disguised fear. What did Barney know? Rattled by Lady Annabel’s eagle eye, she
had recently taken down some of the more blatantly improbable Facebook images. But had she been thorough enough? That one
of her whirling between two tartaned dukes at the Royal Caledonian Ball, for instance . . .