The Marrying Game (14 page)

‘It looks bad,’ she whispered to Nancy. ‘We’ll never get past them.’

‘You’re not bottling out, are you?’

‘Certainly not,’ Rufa said briskly. ‘We’ll have to resort to Plan B, that’s all.’

A slender, elegant man with thick grey hair stood aside, to let them stroll back to Roshan. Rufa gave him a gracious, slightly unfocused smile, and took Nancy’s arm. ‘Keep looking casual.’

‘In this outfit? You must be joking. My skirt’s so tight round the knees, I’m hobbling like the Widow Twanky.’ Nancy stifled a nervous giggle. ‘Let’s just pretend we belong.’

‘I do belong,’ Rufa said. ‘I’m as good as anyone here. This is exactly the sort of world I want. And you should want it, too. Think of the Man, and remember you’re a Hasty.’

‘I’m a Hasty. A Norman-blooded Hasty, with no
seaside
sweetshop in my coat of arms. Though the College of Heralds or whatever ought to design us a new one, with a Flake and ten Embassy couchant in one quarter. Or should it be rampant?’ Nancy wrestled down another burst of giggling. The man with the grey hair was still looking at them. She lowered her voice. ‘Sorry. I’m babbling. Terror makes me facetious.’

Roshan ran to them, and pulled them away from the legitimate guests. ‘This is a nightmare. Max says they’ve laid on extra security because Princess Michael of Kent is coming, and they obviously can’t give anyone a chance to blow the wretched woman up.’

Rufa frowned. ‘There must be another entrance. You could sneak round and let us in.’

‘There’s another rozzer out in the mews at the back.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘It looks hopeless. What on earth are we going to do?’

‘Well, maybe a window –’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Nancy took a firm hold of Rufa’s hand. ‘Don’t you two know anything about gatecrashing? Roshan – you go in and find that photographer of yours.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘We’ll meet you in there. Go on!’

Roshan passed through the pillars, giving them a miserable look over his shoulder, as if they had pushed him into the last lifeboat on the
Titanic
.

Rufa asked, ‘What are you up to?’

‘Shh, don’t spoil it.’ Clutching Rufa’s hand, Nancy fell into step behind a party of ten or so people. Behind the table where the invitations were being checked, the hall was crowded. In the far wall, a pair of double doors stood open, giving a tantalizing glimpse of rows of gilt
chairs
, set out for the recital. Outside another pair of double doors stood a waiter, with a tray of glasses. They were close enough now to hear a solid hum of well-bred chatter.

Nancy waited until the watchful, grey-haired man had taken a glass and disappeared into the crowded room, and the large party were swamping the table. Then she dragged Rufa through the glass doors, fixed her gaze somewhere in the middle distance, waved enthusiastically, and shouted, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’

There were a couple of indulgent smiles, but nobody took much notice of the two girls finding their father. They had passed the table. They were inside.

Rufa was breathless with surprise, and full of admiration. ‘Nancy, you’re brilliant – I’ve never seen such utterly bare-faced cheek.’

Nancy felt the knot of hair at her neck. ‘That’s as brilliant as I get, darling. You’ll have to work out what the fuck we do next.’

Rufa glanced around. New arrivals were making their way to a door on the left of the hall, shrugging off coats and wraps. They followed three middle-aged women along a passage hung with old engravings, to a small sitting room which had been turned into a cloakroom. Two smiling Filipino women in black dresses helped them out of their coats.

Rufa smoothed down her velvet skirts, rapturously inhaling the scented atmosphere – beeswax, pot-pourri, French perfume on incredibly clean flesh. A wrinkled lady with white hair, wearing dark blue chiffon, smiled at them kindly.

‘What lovely frocks!’

Rufa said, ‘Thank you,’ with a plummeting heart.
This
was the moment she knew their dresses were all wrong. Everybody else here seemed to be old, and rather dowdy. Clare’s superb gowns looked theatrical, showy, artificial. Still, it was too late to turn back now. And she was not going to worry Nancy. She shook back her hair, wishing Roshan had let her wear it in a seemly plait, and held her head a little higher.

They returned to the hall, and sauntered into the room where everyone was gathering before the concert. This turned out to be a library. Just inside the door, a small table held a heap of glossy programmes. They each took one, and Nancy took a glass of champagne from the tray.

Rufa murmured, ‘Didn’t we agree not to drink?’

‘You and Roshie did. I agreed to no such thing. I’m not turning down free champagne.’

‘All right. Just don’t get plastered.’ Rufa glanced around the room, searching for Roshan and the photographer sent by his newspaper. The library was large, with two windows looking out across the square at the park. Two walls were lined with books. These appeared ponderous and scholarly, but were mostly old bound volumes of the
Illustrated London News
. The other walls were hung with oil paintings of the earl’s ancestors. Rufa thought wistfully of the mouse-ravaged drawing room at Melismate, where only five Hasty ancestors remained – those that had proved too ugly or too badly painted to sell. The Man had called them the Old Lags. It was impossible not to make comparisons. When gentility decayed, she thought, it went off with an awful smell.

‘There he is,’ Nancy said. ‘Come on.’

She had spotted Roshan making faces at them from the shadow of an icy white marble fireplace. A large, red-faced
man
with a camera stood beside him, staring round with a mixture of resentment and contempt. Two other photographers were moving discreetly among the bony, dowdy, beak-nosed dowagers – it was easy to see why Roshan’s editor did not want these people all over his glamorous and somewhat vulgar Style pages, even if they were authentic toffs.

‘You got in!’ Roshan whispered, almost skipping with glee. ‘Isn’t this fabulous?’

‘This? It’s a collection of dull old farts,’ Nancy said. ‘I feel like organizing a game of musical bumps, to get the party going.’

‘You’re in, and you’re being seen. That, surely, is the point.’

Rufa, taking care not to stare, glanced round the room. The slender man, with the neat grey hair, was still gazing at them thoughtfully. She turned her back on him. ‘Where’s the earl?’

‘Not here yet,’ Roshan said. ‘He’s probably shut away inside some inner sanctum – there are always hierarchies within hierarchies. I daresay the truly elect are hobnobbing with the princess behind closed doors. This is Pete, by the way.’

The photographer ran a finger round the inside of his collar. ‘Hi, gels. Where d’you want ’em, Rosh?’

Roshan nodded towards the door. ‘Here’s the earl – see if you can get a couple of him with the princess.’

Pete let out a slow chuckle. ‘Princess Pushy. I like her.’ Unhurried, he ambled off through the crowd. Rufa rather envied his confidence.

‘He’s not the snapper I would have chosen,’ Roshan told Nancy, ‘but let’s be thankful for small mercies – at least he owns a dinner jacket.’

Rufa was looking at Earl Sheringham. Her heart jumped nervously, but she felt nothing – except awe, at the huge gulf between breaking into this man’s house, and persuading him to marry her. He was paler and smaller than his pictures; elegant in a brittle way, like a precious, faded piece of tapestry. When he turned towards the princess, his smile was gentle and charming. When he turned away to survey everyone else, his face became blank and cold. His gaze met Rufa’s for a second, without changing its expression. Rufa felt less than the dust, and prickled all over with anger and embarrassment. She remembered what the Man had always said about people who looked down their noses – ‘When William Rufus gave the demesne of Melismate to your ancestors, that guy’s forebears were still pulling up turnips.’

Pete shuffled back to the fireplace, changing his roll of film. ‘Let’s get the gels by the mantelpiece, then I can bugger off.’

‘Good idea,’ Roshan said. ‘Chat to each other, you two. Try to look as if you’re having a whale of a time – I’m going to paint you as hedonistic young Sloanes.’

‘Let’s sing the Internationale,’ Nancy muttered. ‘I’m feeling distinctly downtrodden.’

Rufa smiled at her. ‘You don’t look it. You actually look rather amazing.’

‘You’re too kind, darling, but I can’t wait to get back to my own planet. When you’re married to that man, for God’s sake don’t let him give any more parties like this.’

Pete danced and ducked around them, firing the camera rapidly, without any apparent effort or artistry. ‘That’s nice – put your hair back, love – yeah, that’s
great
. Rosh, d’you want one with Pushy and Lord Snooty in the background?’

‘Yes,’ Roshan said. ‘And remember, nobody must look posed. These are meant to be party shots.’ He took each girl by the wrist, and moved them into their new positions. Pete fired more shots. The whole operation had taken less than ten minutes, but they were already attracting curious glances.

‘Wonderful,’ Roshan declared. ‘Just get me a couple of Radu Lupu, and you can call it a night.’

‘Who?’

‘Dark hair, talking to Pushy.’

‘Oh, right.’ Unhurried as ever, Pete strode through the crowds.

‘Next time,’ Rufa said, ‘I’m coming as a photographer. Nobody’s gawping at him.’

‘No, and nobody will remember him afterwards,’ Nancy said shrewdly. ‘It’s his camera they’re all sucking up to.’

Rufa was covertly watching the earl, wondering how on earth to begin the mysterious process of making him fall in love with her. Should she faint at his feet? Display her adoration of music? Find some slim pretext to engage him in earnest conversation? If she could only get past that frigid air of superiority –

The earl moved away from the princess and the pianist. His eyes made one more chilly circuit of the room. Once again, his gaze snagged against Rufa’s. Her spine turned cold. This time, there was a definite hint of opprobrium in his bad-smell expression. Roshan’s friend, Hermione – pretty and vacuous, and obviously harassed – approached him. She was with one of the forbidding men, from the table out in the hall. The earl
turned
his back on Rufa to talk to them. She shivered with relief.

The relief did not last long. The man from the hall table looked over the earl’s shoulder, directly at Rufa. His expression changed to one of unmistakable annoyance, mixed with scorn.

Rufa’s ears rang. Oh God, she thought, remove me from this place. She knew what people meant when they said they wished the ground would swallow them. She had imagined she could handle something like this, and the mortification was absolutely piercing. She nudged Nancy.

‘What? What is it?’

Wordlessly, Rufa nodded in the direction of the man, now walking purposefully towards them.

Nancy said, ‘Whoops.’

The man came close to them, and addressed Roshan. The quietness of his voice gave it a disagreeable intimacy. ‘I don’t believe these ladies, or you, are on our guest list.’

Feebly, Roshan said, ‘I have a press pass –’

‘We’ve only invited selected music critics,’ the man said. ‘We certainly did not give you permission to do a photoshoot. I think you and your – your
models
had better leave immediately. Don’t you?’

‘Drat,’ murmured Nancy, ‘we haven’t done the topless shots yet.’

Rufa, severely weakened by embarrassment, gave a great snort of terrified laughter. She caught Roshan’s eye, and they both began shaking helplessly.

The man’s annoyance deepened. He put a hand on Nancy’s bare elbow, as if arresting her, and marched her towards the door. Rufa and Roshan stumbled after
them
, yelping with suppressed giggles. Rufa – while weeping with laughter – felt she was living through five minutes that would haunt her until the day she died. The horror of it was so huge, it was funny.

And then, near the door, one of her shoes came off. She stumbled, and halted to pick it up. The arresting man looked balefully over his shoulder. Rufa froze, not knowing whether he wanted her to follow with her satin shoe, or leave it marooned on Earl Sheringham’s carpet. Heads turned all over the room; you could almost hear them.

A cool hand touched her sleeve. The elegant man with thick grey hair, who had been watching her every time she looked at him, was holding out her shoe.

‘There you are, Cinderella,’ he said quietly, smiling.

‘Thank you.’ Rufa took it, and limped over to the door, with burning cheeks and eyes wet with laughing.

The arresting man did not throw them out through the front door. He shooed them down the narrow passage leading to the cloakroom, and tried to push them past it.

Nancy whipped away her arm. ‘Excuse me, we have to collect our coats.’ Without waiting for permission, she swept into the cloakroom. The Filipino women were sitting in armchairs, with cups of tea. One of them leapt up guiltily, and scrabbled for their taffeta coats in the racks of glossy, scented furs. She did not need to ask which coats were theirs. They stood out a mile.

Rufa remembered that she had put a pound for a cloakroom tip into her evening purse. She advanced into the room long enough to take her coat, and place the pound in an empty saucer. Both the Filipino women grinned at her uncertainly.

‘Will you come now, please?’ The man was testy. ‘You can leave through the kitchen.’

At the end of the passage was a door, which opened suddenly into the steely glitter of a large kitchen. Out there, the light was soft and golden. In here, it was hard and silver. A woman in an apron and two waiters gawped at them, as the man hustled them towards the back door, with very little ceremony.

He jerked it open. There was a rush of cold air, which made them all cringe. ‘I hardly need to add,’ he said, ‘that you will not be permitted to use any of those photographs.’

It was over. The three of them were shivering on the other side of the back door, in the outer darkness of the mews behind Sheringham House.