Marrying Up

by Wendy Holden

  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.

  Chapter 18

  ‘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.

  Chapter 19

  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 . . .

  ‘Oh, it’s quite all right, I’m one too,’ Barney said lightly, fiddling with his watch chain as he kept up his unremitting smile. ‘I know what you’re after. And I can help you get him.’

  There was a deafening clatter of good silverware as Alexa dropped some spoons.

  The company in the dining room roared approvingly.

  ‘Let me give you some advice.’ Barney folded his arms in their buttermilk linen sleeves. ‘You’re going about it all the wrong way. Much too obvious.’

  ‘Obvious?’ Alexa looked indignantly down at herself. She was a vision of discreet taste in the soberest little black dress she could find in Florrie’s wardrobe.

  ‘That frock, for instance.’ Barney looked her up and down. ‘So tasteful. It positively screams that you don’t want to put a foot wrong, and people wonder why you don’t. Much better to double-bluff in a tarty dress. People don’t take you seriously, and then – whoosh,’ he raised his arm swiftly, ‘you move in for the kill and get what you want.’

  Alexa was piling cheese on the board and trying to ignore him. She didn’t need his advice. His or anyone else’s. Why was he offering it anyway?

  A slight sly smile was playing about Barney’s lips. ‘Wondering why I’m offering to help you?’

  ‘Because you want to marry Florrie and you want me to help you?’ Alexa hazarded. It seemed unlikely, but it was all she could think of.

  ‘Hardly, my dear,’ he said roguishly. ‘I’m as gay as New Year’s Eve, as I thought you might have gathered. Mink-lined, gilt-edged, copper-bottomed one hundred per cent proof homosexual.’ He gave her a dazzling smile.

  A terrible suspicion now gripped Alexa. He was not just camp, but actually gay. Surely . . . surely . . . he wasn’t after . . .

  ‘Ed?’ she gasped.

  Barney’s eyes bulged slightly. ‘Hardly, dear. I have got standards, however low. No, what I’m after is a comfortable berth. I help you marry Ed, and I’m your house guest for life in a range of enticing properties.’

  Alexa said nothing as she arranged the grapes. Barney’s candour had temporarily disarmed her. As she struggled to think, the aroma of ripe Brie floated up into her nostrils.

  ‘We can help each other,’ Barney pressed.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Alexa muttered pushing past him with the cheese board and out into the dining room, whose carpet was littered with bread rolls.

  ‘God, what a honk!’ yelled Florrie as she made room for the cheese between the candlesticks on the table. ‘Have you dropped a beast, Ed?’

  Alexa studiously ignored Barney as she took a knife to the cheese. She did not want his help. She would do what she had to alone.

  She remained aware of his amused stare, however, and was flustered. She could not shake off the uncomfortable and, for her, unprecedented feeling of someone being several stages in front of her.

  ‘Lexie!’ shouted Florrie in disgust. ‘You’ve cut the nose off the Brie, you bloody oik.’

  Chapter 20

  Max, lying on the rug with Polly amid the bird calls and heather scents, felt he was in heaven. Then, piercing the mellow sounds of the evening came the shrilling of his mobile from the front of the Land Rover.

  ‘Leave it,’ Polly murmured, almost asleep under the influence of wine and love.

  ‘I’d better get it,’ Max sighed, rising and loping over to the vehicle. ‘Might be an animal.’

  The caller code was not local; it was none of the estate farmers. The number was Sedona. The caller was the King.

  ‘Father?’ he said in surprise. King Engelbert never called his son on his mobile. He rarely called him on anything.

  Engelbert, who had been preparing himself for hours with measured arguments and reasoned remarks, prefaced by a stream of pleasantries and chatter, now found everything he had so carefully rehearsed flying from his mind. He was not used to persuading people; he was used to ordering them about. What was the point in beating about the bush? He had told Astrid as much after she had confessed her miserable failure at telling Max where his duty lay. ‘OK then, your turn,’ she had flung at him.

  That it was much easier in theory than in practice, the King was now realising. He had not factored in his enormous fondness – love, even – for his elder son, and the associated difficulty of making someone you love do something they hate. Overcompensating for this weakness, as Engelbert saw it, made his voice gruffer and snappier even than usual.

  ‘You have to get married!’ he announced.

  Max blinked.

  His glance flicked to Polly lying on the rug, the sunset burnishing her hair to a blaze of tangled copper. It was quite soon, admittedly; on the other hand, he was fairly certain she was The One. Why not, he thought to himself.

  ‘Fine,’ he told his father. He smiled; a feeling of elation was growing within him. ‘Great,’ he added euphorically. ‘Fantastic!’ he shouted. Polly looked up from the rug and gave him a puzzled smile.

  Engelbert, at his end, felt a mixture of surprise and triumph. What had Astrid been complaining about? Convincing Max was
ridiculously simple; he had accepted his instructions without question.

  ‘So you’ll come home immediately?’ the King growled in relief.

  ‘Come home?’ Max frowned. ‘But I could marry Polly here.’

  ‘Polly?’ snapped his father. ‘I’m not talking about Polly. That is an unsuitable relationship,’ he abruptly informed Max. ‘It has to end.’

  Max thought he was hearing things. ‘What?’ he stuttered.

  The King repeated it. ‘She is not a suitable wife,’ he added.

  Max shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Who am I supposed to marry then?’

  ‘Someone else!’ the King thundered, annoyed at his son’s slowness to comprehend the obvious. ‘Someone suitable, that we’ll find for you.’

  ‘Let me get this straight.’ Max was frowning, his eyes darting, nervous and unseeing, about the dashboard. ‘You want me to drop everything here, come home and . . . get married? To someone I haven’t even met?’ He almost wanted to laugh, it sounded so incredible.

  The King caught the giddiness in his son’s tone. He would not be mocked, not under any circumstances. ‘You’re heir to the throne of the ancient kingdom of Sedona. You have to get married to someone appropriate.’

  Someone, Max thought, would wake him up in a moment; this would all be a bad dream. Or a joke, or something else with a sane explanation. ‘Where did this idea come from all of a sudden?’