A Marriage Has Been Arranged

by Anne Weale

  The telephone rang and Chiara answered it. ‘It’s Eric. I’ll talk to him in the living room. Have a look through. Try things on,’ she said, indicating the other cupboards. ‘Hang on a minute, sweetie. I’ll be right with you. I’ve got Holly here. She’s just arrived. We’re going to spend the afternoon shopping...unless you have other plans for me,’ she added, with a meaningful giggle.

  Holly had never met Eric. She had only seen photographs of him posing on board his yacht in a peaked cap. He was in his late forties, had two divorces behind him, and Chiara said vaguely that his wealth came from pharmaceuticals. He looked to Holly as if he might be involved in something shady. Of all Chiara’s men-friends, from what little she knew of him, she liked him the least and hated the thought of his picking up the bills which her sister had no means of paying herself, except by selling some of the jewels she had acquired.

  Crushed tightly together in the other cupboards were garments which sooner or later would be given to a charity shop to make room for new things. Had they belonged to Holly, she would have taken them to a dress agency in order to recoup a little of what they had cost. But thrift was a concept beyond Chiara’s grasp.

  As her gaze coasted over the rainbow of vivid colours, looking for something more subtle, Holly’s eye was caught by a sky-blue shoelace peeping out from between something made of yellow satin and its black lace neighbour. Investigating, she found that the shoelace with its matching metal tag was stitched to the sleeve of a lime-green jacket. Extracting it from the crush, she found there were other laces in other colours, stitched on like stripes with their ends left free. The colours were those found in a box of fondants: pink, lemon-yellow, lilac. The effect was charming.

  Holly tried the jacket on. It wasn’t her usual style, but it suited her. The statement it made was spring-like and carefree. It spoke of April in Paris, bunches of bright balloons, ice creams in many flavours. When she looked, the label said Moschino.

  ‘Oh, heavens, that’s ages old. I saw it on a display model when I was on the escalator at Harvey Nicks and I couldn’t resist it,’ said Chiara, returning. ‘It’s fun, but somehow not me. I’ve hardly worn it. It’s lovely on you, though.’

  ‘Did Pierce buy you this?’ asked Holly.

  ‘God, no! It’s not that old,’ Chiara said, amused. ‘What ever made you think of him? Pierce was a long time ago. All the stuff I wore when I knew him would look really draggy by now.’

  ‘I ran into Pierce,’ said Holly. ‘He was at New Covent Garden with Mrs Shintaro. He’s a friend of her grandson.’

  ‘Did he recognize you?’

  ‘Surprisingly, yes, he did.’

  ‘He always had a fantastic memory. I could never get away with fibbing to him. He’d catch me out straight away.’

  ‘Why did you need to fib to him?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know...one just does,’ Chiara said airily.

  ‘Men are such tricky creatures. You have to learn to manage them. I didn’t know that then and I handled him awfully badly. It was always he who called the shots.’

  ‘Doesn’t Eric?’

  ‘Definitely not! I’ve got him eating out of the palm of my hand. The fact is, darling, that the entire male sex is so hooked on sex that when they’re in need of a fix you can make them do anything you want. For women who understand that, anything is possible.’

  Holly frowned. ‘It sounds horrible...like pushing drugs.’ ‘I suppose it is in a way, except that it doesn’t do them any harm or kill them. Well, it might if they were quite old and they overdid it, I suppose. But normally it just puts them in a good mood—the kind of mood when they’ll give you the moon if you ask for it. I sometimes think I could write a best-seller—How to Manage Men. But really it’s so dead simple that it wouldn’t cover more than a couple of pages.’

  On impulse, Holly said, ‘Do you really enjoy having sex with Eric?’

  Chiara gave a peal of laughter. ‘No, but he does, and that’s what counts.’

  Holly said nothing. Her own view of sex had been formed by her father who, long before she had started menstruating, had given her a book which explained the workings of her body and the reproductive process. Then, later, at some appropriate moment, he had mentioned that physical love was one of life’s most glorious experiences and, for that reason, not to be undertaken casually, like lesser pleasures.

  ‘Any fool can jump into bed and they do... in droves,’ he had told her. ‘If you can, hang on a bit, Holly. Wait till you’re seriously in love, because it makes all the difference.’

  But of course she hadn’t listened to him. Curiosity and attraction had been the reasons for her first experience, and loneliness and attraction had propelled her into the second.

  Chiara said, ‘Let’s have a look for a skirt you could wear with that jacket. Not black—that would be too heavy for it. Something to pick up the colour of one of those sneakerlaces.’

  As Chiara had a date with Eric that evening—they were going dining and dancing with another couple—Holly took herself to the theatre. The others were still on the town when she returned.

  The last time she had been to the theatre in London, she had gone to sleep thinking about the play. Tonight it was Pierce who filled her thoughts. Reluctant as she was to admit it, she knew she was looking forward to seeing him tomorrow night. On her way to the theatre she had wondered if he might be there, his height and his thick dark hair making him easy to spot even in a crowded auditorium. But although she had scanned the front stalls and the boxes from her seat in the dress circle, he hadn’t seemed to be there. She had felt absurdly relieved. Somehow, to see him escorting some glamorous woman would have dimmed her anticipatory excitement about the party tomorrow.

  As Chiara had always been able to burn the candle at both ends, she appeared in the kitchen while Holly was having breakfast the next morning.

  ‘Pour me a tall glass of orange juice, would you? I didn’t get to bed till three. But a hot shower will put me right. Then we’ll go out and shop till we drop.’

  It was while they were having a light lunch at a restaurant where the daytime clientele were women laden with shiny paper carriers bearing names familiar to all readers of Vogue that Chiara asked, ‘When you met Pierce, did he mention me?’

  ‘Yes. He asked how you were and if you were still single or settled down.’

  ‘That’s what he told me I should do. He said I wasn’t cut out to be a playgirl. Actually he was very rude. He said that to get to the top as a rich man’s darling you had to have brains as well as beauty, and I wasn’t clever enough. Well, he was wrong actually. Because while we were down on the Costa, I met someone really rich... far richer than Pierce or Eric.’

  Holly was appalled. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Chiara, you’re not going to ditch Eric and start yet another of these awful affairs, are you? Pierce was right. What you need is a loving husband and babies. They would make you so much happier than all these horrible older men whose only attraction is their money.’

  ‘Settle down in suburbia with a mortgage and a grizzling toddler in a pushchair? Not likely!’ Chiara exclaimed. ‘I’m not going to look the way I do now for ever. While I do, I’m making the most of it. And you ain’t seen nothing yet, baby, because this guy who gave me the eye on the waterfront at Sotogrande is one of the big-league players. If he fancies me as much as I think he does, I’ll have diamonds in every orifice, not just my navel.’

  ‘Lots of men give you the eye. What makes you think he’s going to follow it up?’

  ‘Because he sent me a note. It was delivered by hand by one of the stewards on his yacht and it came with a box of chocolates. One of the chocolates was missing. In its place was a huge chunk of aquamarine. I’ve had it valued. It’s worth two thousand pounds. I can’t show it to you. It’s in a safety-deposit box at the bank. Don’t you think that’s the most romantic gesture you’ve ever heard of?’

  ‘What did the note say?’

  ‘Just that he thought I was the most
beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on and he felt sure our paths would cross in the near future.’

  In the taxi taking her to the party, Holly knew that she had never looked better. Chiara had done her hair for her, using a styling mousse which added an extra sheen and would hold the ends firmly flipped up.

  To go with the Moschino jacket, her stepsister had produced a soft, swingy skirt made of several layers of violet chiffon to tone with the lilac laces. Luckily they both wore size six shoes and Chiara’s extensive selection included a pair bought to go with the chiffon skirt, and she even had a pair of lace-topped sheer violet stay-ups.

  Holly had never worn stay-ups before and when she was trying them on, wearing rubber gloves to avoid the risk of snagging them, Chiara had said, ‘They won’t sneak down your legs, I promise you. I wear them all the time. They’re much sexier than pantyhose. It gives a guy a real buzz suddenly to feel bare flesh where he thought he was going to feel Lycra.’

  ‘Maybe so, but nobody’s going to be putting their hand up my skirt tonight,’ Holly had said. ‘Honestly, Chiara, your relations with men seem to revolve round sex. Don’t you ever wish they would grope round your mind for a change?’

  ‘I haven’t got that sort of mind. All the things that interest me, men don’t want to know about it, and the stuff they drone on about—cars and golf and investments—bore me to death.’

  As the taxi sped in the direction of Grosvenor Square, Holly gave a long sigh. She was deeply worried about Chiara. This new affair that she had in prospect with the donor of the aquamarine sounded much deeper water than she had swum in before. But there seemed to be no way of stopping her getting involved if the man concerned wanted her.

  Outside Mrs Shintaro’s apartment block, a liveried doorman opened the door of the taxi, touching the brim of his cockaded top hat as he said, ‘Good evening, miss.’

  Holly stepped out and paid the fare with notes taken from a clutch purse of soft glacé kid to match her evening shoes. She would not have bought such high heels for herself and felt slightly awkward in them, but they did flatter her legs, which had never looked longer or more shapely than they did tonight.

  As she was about to walk into the building, along the stretch of carpet which led from the kerb to the entrance, protected from rain by an awning, someone pipped the horn of a car.

  Turning, she saw Pierce’s Jaguar waiting to take the space occupied by her taxi. As she looked through the windscreen he waved to her.

  A few minutes later, having handed over his keys to the valet who would park the car for him, Pierce turned to her and said, ‘You look wonderful, Holly. I thought you were strictly an open-air, outdoor girl, but tonight you epitomise glamour. What an amusing jacket.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She decided not to tell him it was borrowed finery. ‘You look very nice yourself.’

  He was wearing a pale grey suit with an apricot shirt and tie, all of recognisably superb quality.

  He acknowledged her compliment with a slight inclination of his head and then, taking a step back and looking down, said, ‘It’s a crime to hide those legs in trousers. This is the first time I’ve seen them.’

  Knowing she was starting to blush, she said, ‘Skirts aren’t practical for gardening.’

  Taking her lightly by the elbow, Pierce steered her into the lobby with its luxurious carpet, sofas, silk-shaded lamps and lavish flower arrangements.

  There were two lifts, one of them open. In its mirror-lined walls, she caught an unexpected glimpse of him looking down at someone she scarcely recognised as her everyday self.

  She had thought he was out of her class, a godlike being she could never hope to ensnare, even though he had claimed to be attracted to her. But now, suddenly, catching sight of their reflections, for the first time she felt it was possible for her to make a small dent in his well-armoured heart. Not for long. Certainly not for ever. But for long enough to make some memories she would always be glad she hadn’t missed.

  ‘Although you insisted on coming here by yourself, I refuse to allow you to leave under your own steam,’ said Pierce as the lift doors closed. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Chiara has a place in Chelsea. I’m spending two nights with her. We’re still close. I don’t have any contact with her mother and sisters now. Her mother has married again. She’s living in Scotland.’

  ‘An obnoxious woman. When Chiara told me who your father was, it was hard to fathom what had possessed him to marry her. But I suppose he thought it was the best thing for you.’

  ‘Yes, and I think she put on an act for him.’

  ‘People of both sexes do that. It’s the reason for so many breakups,’ Pierce answered drily. ‘Whether they’re married or only shacked up together, couples suddenly wake up to the fact that the person they’re with is someone different from the person they were before the decision to merge. Let’s make a pact never to be on our best behaviour with each other.’ He smiled. ‘That way we’ll know where we stand.’

  She looked up at him. ‘I already know where I stand with you. I’m the Thompson gazelle and you’re the leopard. If I don’t watch out, you’ll have me for dinner.’

  Before Pierce had time to reply, the lift doors opened, revealing the landing outside the entrance to the penthouse which tonight stood open, giving a view through the wide hall into Mrs Shintaro’s beautiful drawing room.

  When she realised what a glittering throng Mrs Shintaro had assembled to meet her grandson, Holly was glad she had Pierce beside her and didn’t have to brave the throng of elegant women and distinguished-looking men on her own.

  Although she had never been shy, it was nice to feel his hand on the small of her back as they crossed the space between the lift and the wide flight of shallow stairs leading down into the huge room, tonight lit by glittering crystal sconces as well as enormous table lamps making pools of flattering light.

  Some people were already relaxing in the groups of sofas and chairs in different parts of the room. Others were standing in groups. Everyone was drinking champagne being served by Japanese waiters in starched white tunics and white gloves.

  ‘Pierce... Holly...’ Their hostess had seen them and came hurrying towards them, wearing an exquisite robe of diaphanous dark brown dévoré velvet and pearls which could only be real, so beautiful was their soft lustre.

  ‘My dear, you look simply lovely. I knew you would.’ Mrs Shintaro embraced her, pressing her cheek to Holly’s in a gesture which was as soft as the brush of a moth’s wing but far more affectionate than the conventional ‘mwah-mwah’ kiss.

  Lifting her face to receive Pierce’s salutation, she said, with a twinkle in her eyes, ‘So...there is a détente, as diplomats say when there’s an easing of tension between nations which seemed on the brink of strife. I am delighted to see it. Now I want you to meet my treasured grandson, Holly. I have told him how much you liked the Nepalese hand. He’s looking forward to meeting a girl with such discriminating taste. Where has he gone to?’

  As she started to look round the room, from the opposite direction a young man came through the crowd, making a beeline for Pierce.

  Slightly to Holly’s surprise, the two men not only clasped hands but gave each other a hug—the kind of embrace which might be exchanged by brothers who had been apart a long time.

  She found herself oddly touched by the open affection between them. It threw a new light on Pierce’s character. A man who could feel and inspire deep, close friendship must surely be capable of loving? Why his ability to love should be important was something she didn’t have time to examine.

  As they drew back, the young man turned his attention to Holly. Before his grandmother could present him to her, he said, ‘The garden designer, right? I’m Ben Rockland. How do you do, Miss Nicholson.’

  ‘Hello, Ben... Please call me Holly.’ As they shook hands, she remembered wondering if he would be good-looking.

  He was. She had never seen such a superb example of the mingling of two race
s. From his American father he had inherited a tall, well-built physique, from his mother, the liquid dark eyes, finely marked brows and jet-black hair of his Japanese ancestors. If she hadn’t already met Pierce, she would have thought him the most gorgeous male she had ever seen.

  It wasn’t until later in the evening that she had a chance to talk to Ben one-to-one. Supper was served in the other parts of the apartment, in a room lined with books and on a glassed-in terrace overlooking some of the city’s landmarks, which were picked out by beams of light. Everyone had been given a place at one of the large round tables each seating eight guests.

  Holly found herself placed between Ben and an elderly man who introduced himself as an archaeologist. Through the first course she talked to him, and then he turned to his other neighbour and the same thing happened to Ben, leaving them free to concentrate on each other.

  He opened the conversation by saying, ‘My grandmother has been telling me how she met you. But she said you and Pierce had met before the visit to New Covent Garden.’

  ‘Briefly... a long time ago. You know him much better than I do. You share a passion for mountains, I hear.’

  ‘That’s right, and now we’re discussing doing an expedition together. Does the name Aconcagua mean anything to you?’

  Holly shook her head.

  ‘It’s a mountain in Argentina, the highest peak in the Americas. We’re going to tackle it in February.’

  ‘Will it be dangerous?’

  ‘Crossing the road can be dangerous,’ he answered, smiling. ‘It’s a difficult summit because of the weather conditions, but it’s a mountain you can walk up. There’s no serious climbing involved.’

  ‘How long will you be away?’

  ‘Five weeks.’

  ‘It will be an anxious time for your grandmother. She’s bound to worry about you.’

  ‘I know. I’m trying to convince her that nothing bad can happen to me while I’m with Pierce, but she still doesn’t like the idea. I guess women never do want people they love to take risks, even small ones. But men need a sniff of adventure every so often. Our everyday lives are so tame. We need to live rough for a while, to pit ourselves against the elements.’