The Marrying Game (38 page)

Alice had been quiet and retiring, devoted to Edward both for himself, and as a symbol of the place where she had been happiest in her childhood. Prudence, who had no scruples about her father’s money – or anyone else’s – had chosen the exotic international lifestyle of the very wealthy. Rufa did not see why the woman had to stay here while her London flat was being cleaned up after the fire (a very small fire anyway, as far as she could make out), when she had perfectly good flats in Paris and New York.

‘How lovely,’ Prudence exclaimed. ‘You’re so sweet. I’m afraid I’m being the most frightful nuisance.’

‘Not at all.’ Rufa set down the tray on the low table, and knelt on the floor to pour the coffee. She was not up to taking the other end of the sofa.

‘Sylvia’s coffee set. I haven’t seen this for years. Is that cream? Yes, I will have a little, please.’

Sylvia was old Mrs Reculver. Rufa gave Prudence a cup of coffee.

Prudence said, ‘Mmm, you do everything so exquisitely. You’re a paragon. No wonder Edward fell madly in love with you. The way to a man’s heart, and all that.’

Rufa smiled. ‘He just eats what’s put in front of him. I don’t think he particularly cares.’

‘Oh, all men care. And life with you seems to suit him – have I mentioned, he’s looking tremendously well?’

‘Yes.’

Prudence had mentioned it, at least twice a day. She went on, ‘You deserve a medal for making him shave off that beard.’

‘It wasn’t anything to do with me.’

‘Come on. Of course it was. He wanted to impress a beautiful young woman. And he’s at the age when men start to panic about their lost youth.’

‘Edward’s not old, though.’ Rufa was self-conscious about the gap of eighteen years between them, which Prudence always managed to turn into a yawning gulf.

‘Oh God, no,’ Prudence said, with a short laugh. ‘If he’s old, what the hell does that make me? But a man as frankly handsome as him is bound to want to make up for lost time.’

Rufa said, ‘Do have a biscuit.’

‘No thanks. I had to more or less give up eating twenty years ago. I can’t tell you how huge I was after I had Triss. Have you seen him this morning, by the way?’

‘He went for a walk, I think,’ Rufa said.

Prudence smiled. ‘Good. He’s rediscovering energy, after spending about five years in a darkened room. Do I have to remind Edward about lunch?’

‘No, he won’t forget.’ Rufa knew he had not forgotten. He had complained about it that morning, before
Prudence
was up, and said that if she dropped one more hint about the money, he would ‘scrag’ her. Rufa had enjoyed this.

‘He does seem distracted at the moment, doesn’t he?’ Prudence mused. ‘Not like my idea of a man newly returned from his honeymoon. I do hope he’s all right.’

‘He’s fine,’ Rufa said lamely.

‘You know,’ Prudence went on, with one of her pretty, catlike smiles, ‘I might get him to talk to me when we’re alone. I was always rather good at getting him to open out.’

Rufa struggled for a polite and casual way to assure her that Edward told her absolutely everything. ‘He tends to clam up when there are other people in the house.’

Prudence was having none of it. ‘Yes, it must be odd for him, having you here when he’s been alone for so long. The poor man hates expressing his feelings. It all reminds me—you probably don’t remember what he was like after Alice died.’

‘Not really.’

She scrutinized Rufa, narrowing her tight eyes. ‘Well, you were a child.’

‘I was eleven.

‘It must be odd for you, living in the shadow of your predecessor. Especially when it was such a famously happy marriage.’

‘Edward doesn’t talk about her much.’

‘The trouble with that marriage,’ Prudence said, ‘is that it spoiled Edward for life.’

‘Sorry?’ Rufa had not expected this.

‘I think Alice took the best of him with her. He lost the ability to fall in love. Something got burned away.
Don’t
you find him a little unresponsive sometimes?’

She seemed to expect an answer. Rufa bent her head to fiddle with the crockery on the tray.

Prudence took her silence as affirmation. ‘I suppose he’s told you about his thing with me? Yes, of course – he’s such a stickler for being truthful, and all that jazz. And I’ve always found you had to absolutely trample on his feelings to get any sort of reaction. It didn’t work out because I needed more warmth. More passion, if you like. I assume he
was
passionate with Alice. Although she never confided in me – she was like him, the buttoned-up type.’ With a smile, she crossed her long legs and changed gear. ‘Mind you, both of them were much less buttoned with Tristan. He adored coming here when he was little, and he still worships Edward. When I was out of the country, I used to send Edward to his school sports day – frankly, I couldn’t stand that kind of thing, and Edward’s one of those people who can just naturally talk to housemasters and so on. I never had the knack.’

She paused, to let the message sink in: Edward was a father to her son; the centre of her family. Rufa heard it. She thought what a cow Prudence was, getting someone else to visit her child at boarding school.

‘It’s so funny seeing Tristan’s sudden passion for the countryside. I sent him to school in the middle of nowhere, and he never stopped complaining about it. And now he’s begging to stay here until term starts. Do you think Edward would mind?’

‘No, of course not. He’ll be really pleased.’ Rufa could say this with confidence. Edward was very fond of Tristan, now twenty and at Oxford. ‘But won’t you miss him?’

‘Not if he’s in one of his sulks.’

‘I’ve never seen him sulking.’

Prudence said, ‘There’s a lot you haven’t seen.’ She sipped coffee, leaving another pause for Rufa to read possible meanings into this. ‘He saves all the tantrums for me. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you have a child yourself.’

Rufa felt crushed. Was it possible that Prudence knew she and Edward had achieved sex only once?

‘I’m assuming you’ll start all that pretty soon,’ Prudence said. ‘It’s obviously the reason Edward was in such a rush to get married. For your sake, I hope you’re the maternal type.’

Faintly, Rufa asked, ‘Why did you only have one child?’ She had asked it innocently, but instantly realized she had scored another hit, by reminding Prudence of the disparity in their ages.

Prudence laughed merrily. ‘Tristan was quite enough, thank you. When you have two or three days to spare, I’ll tell you all about my lurid relationship with his father.’ She sipped coffee, picked up a biscuit, looked at it and put it back on the plate. ‘The first divorce is the worst. I’d never have survived it without Edward.’

Her eyes were blue, of a precise almond shape, set in very tight skin. Perhaps, Rufa thought, it was the tightness which made them seem so hard. Mentally she begged Prudence not to confide in her.

But she was not to be put off. She was making various graceful movements, settling herself for a barrage under the white flag of confession. ‘He’s been a rock to me, an absolute rock. Through all my ghastly life, all my stupid marriages. I freely admit, I took him rather for granted.
I
assumed he’d always be there for us. I should have bagged him while I had the chance.’

Rufa’s cheeks burned. Panic gripped her stomach. ‘When did he ask you?’

‘He didn’t,’ Prudence said. ‘I should have asked him. But you see, Rufa, I didn’t think it was necessary.’ She continued to smile, but Rufa was left in no doubt of her furious anger. ‘Did he say anything about what happened in Paris?’

‘Yes, he said you’d had a row. About me.’

‘Not about you personally,’ Prudence said. ‘I suppose about the fact that Edward thought he was single. And therefore free to marry anyone else at all.’

This changed the world too much to be understood all at once. Did Prudence think she was his rightful wife? Surely this could not be possible.

Something in her reaction softened Prudence. The aggressive sweetness left her face. She looked tired. ‘It’s one of the basic differences between men and women,’ she said. ‘When a woman says she’s single, she means just that. But when a man says he’s single, he only means the woman he’s screwing isn’t good enough.’

‘Edward’s not like that,’ Rufa stated. She was not going to take Prudence’s word for this.

‘Oh, I know he’s the soul of honour and chivalry – and God, he never lets you forget it.’ Prudence was bitter now. ‘This was why he had to ride in like the cavalry, to mend your roof and save your family. It was all tied up in his ridiculous loyalty to your father.’

Rufa bowed her head. Her own silliness, coupled with the family poverty, had virtually forced Edward to do the decent thing and marry the Man’s eldest daughter. Prudence meant her to know that Edward had
committed
this romantic act without considering the feelings of the woman who loved him. And he would not make love to Rufa because he felt joined to this other woman. The cruelty of the situation Prudence was describing made Rufa think it must be the truth.

‘Pru?’ Edward’s voice was in the corridor.

‘In here!’ A male voice galvanized Prudence, as if she had switched on an internal light.

Edward came into the room. ‘Oh, here you are.’ He looked at both of them.

Prudence smiled up at him. ‘Hello. Where have you been hiding all morning?’

‘Sorry, I had work to do.’

‘Rufa’s been taking wonderful care of me.’

Edward frowned. He often frowned when with Prudence. ‘Good. I think we ought to leave, if we’re having this lunch. Please don’t make me wear a tie.’

‘In this heat? I’m not such a sadist.’ Prudence jumped up to kiss Edward’s cheek. Her fingers brushed an imaginary speck off his shoulder. ‘And in any case, you look gorgeous in that shirt.’

He frowned, but Rufa saw, for the first time, exactly why it made her so uncomfortable to observe Edward and Prudence together. There was no physical reserve between them. In the private language of women, as inaudible to men as a dog-whistle, Prudence was telling her what had happened in Paris. She and Edward had still been lovers, and as far as Prudence was concerned, the affair was not yet over.

After that, everything was different. Prudence could not have made it clearer if she had shouted it through a
megaphone
– she and Edward had a far longer and more elaborate history than Rufa had been led to believe, and Prudence just wanted Rufa to know that the position of being a young, beautiful new bride was not as unassailable as it seemed.

Was this a warning that she was still dangerous? Rufa waved the two of them off to lunch, oppressed by the sheer peculiarity of her situation. Prudence would not have been dangerous at all if Edward had been getting sex anywhere else. He lay beside her through the hot nights, never touching her except by accident. Inches separated them, and miles. Had Prudence guessed? Was it obvious?

For a moment, standing in the empty drawing room gripping the tray, Rufa was giddy with fear. The old terror of the surrounding blackness, that had tormented her since the death of the Man, came rushing back. Edward had slept with this woman when he went to Paris to end it all. Prudence had power where she had none. If Prudence wanted to smash the tender shell Rufa had just begun to build against the blackness, she could.

The fear receded as soon as Rufa thought of Edward, and took him properly into account. He was the world’s most honourable man. He loved her. The least she could do for him, when he had done everything for her, was trust him. She did not need to look very deep inside herself to know that she trusted Edward with her life.

Sunlight lay upon the clean kitchen surfaces in pools of silver. Screwing up her eyes against the dazzle, Rufa set the tray down on the draining board. It disturbed her to be made conscious of Edward as a sexual being, when she craved sex with him so intensely. But if she could not trust him, what was left to believe in?

She picked up old Mrs Reculver’s white and gold coffee pot. It slipped through her fingers, smashing explosively on the stone floor. Rufa leapt with shock, and burst into tears. She was sick of performing and pretending. She was sick of skivvying for Prudence, who managed to convey hostility and dislike with every sweetly worded request. She wanted to be at home, where you could have an ordinary, unambiguous row.

‘Rufa?’

She leapt again. Tristan stood in the doorway – she had forgotten she was not alone in the house. Mortified to be caught sobbing, Rufa snatched a strip of paper towel and pressed it to her face.

She gasped, ‘Hello, you made me jump –’ with a ridiculous stab at sounding breezy.

Rufa and Tristan had been careful to maintain a distance. This was not because they disliked each other, but because they were both aware of the potential embarrassment of their situation. Rufa, as the wife of Tristan’s uncle by marriage, had the same status as a grown-up. Tristan, as the son of Prudence, had the status of a child. But he was only seven years younger than Rufa, and this made them feel as if they were playing charades.

It was further complicated by the fact that Tristan was beautiful. Prudence and Edward spoke of him as a boy, when he was actually a young man, a few weeks past his twentieth birthday. He was tall and graceful, with golden brown hair that curled to his shoulders and eyes of a warm blue.