Marrying Up

by Wendy Holden

  ‘I just don’t think work’s my sort of thing, really.’ Florrie giggled as she polished off the last of the lobster. Her pretty long fingers, heavy with rings from Tiffany and Chanel, flew to her rosebud mouth. ‘Omigod, but I haven’t told you about my new thing! I’ve branched out into art!’

  ‘Art?’

  ‘Yes, I’m a leading contemporary artist! I’m painting pictures with my tits!’

  The sentence, delivered in an excited shriek, caused mayhem in the restaurant. Forks were dropped, glasses clattered on to plates, people choked and spluttered. All eyes swivelled to Florrie, who as ever couldn’t have cared less.

  ‘Met this amazing girl at a party who showed me how. I just did it for fun at first, but now people are actually paying for them! Well, Igor’s bought one.’

  Alexa could only stare, as Florrie wittered on happily about her creative epiphany. ‘The paint’s freezing and there are certain bits where you don’t want to get it.’ She applied it with surgical gloves, she added, and rolled around on a canvas before removing the paint with Fairy Liquid.

  ‘Daddy’s not keen on it, though,’ Florrie added soberly, or as soberly as one who had drained more than half a bottle of champagne could manage.

  ‘What about Mummy?’

  Lady Annabel had not been mentioned so far. Perhaps she had spontaneously combusted with her own fury.

  Florrie’s beautiful face fell further. She tugged moodily on a strand of silver-fair hair. ‘Actually, she’s being a complete mare.’

  ‘Surely not.’ Alexa’s tone was heavily ironic.

  Not that Florrie noticed. Having polished off two glasses of champagne by now, she was nodding at the waiter to fill her up again.

  ‘Lady Annabel’s being difficult about the painting?’ Alexa prompted.

  Florrie crossed her slender arms and looked sulky. ‘No, about the Prince.’

  ‘The Prince?’ Alexa gasped. ‘You mean you’re back with—’

  A whirl of pale gold as Florrie shook her head. ‘No, no. That’s over. He’s back with his old girlfriend now, I thought everyone knew that?’

  Alexa tried to look as if she were still in receipt of inner-circle gossip.

  ‘So Mummy’s simply found another prince to marry me off to. Such a bore.’

  Alexa summoned all her considerable acting powers to look sympathetic. ‘Poor you.’

  ‘Some old git of a duke Mummy knows rang her up and told her about this guy. I was like, “Thanks a lot, old git”.’ Florrie rolled her beautiful eyes.

  Alexa grasped her champagne glass and, finally, took a deep slug. ‘Who is this prince?’

  ‘Someone desperate to marry, apparently.’ Florrie yawned. ‘I’ve got to go and meet his parents next week. The King and Queen?’ She pulled a face. ‘In their chateau?’ She mimed being sick. ‘Wearing the family tiara and everything?’ She drew a tapered forefinger across her throat. ‘Can you imagine?’

  Alexa took another deep and fortifying swig of champagne. ‘Where is this chateau?’ she asked when she had recovered herself.

  The beautifully shaped shoulders humped resentfully up and down. ‘How should I know? Don’t even want to think about it. Omigod, got to go,’ Florrie added suddenly, glancing at her Cartier watch. ‘Bugworth will be coming in the Bentley. He won’t know I’m here; we’re meeting outside Paxton and Whitfield.’

  ‘Bugworth?’ Alexa queried. ‘I thought your chauffeur was called O’Hagan.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Florrie replied rudely. ‘Must dash, anyway. You’ll get the bill, darling, won’t you?’

  Chapter 38

  After the discovery of the graffiti, because of the bonding experience it had been, but most of all because of the boyish excitement in his eyes, Polly finally gave in. She agreed to have supper with Jake.

  Privately, she had also decided to sleep with him. Why resist? That she would do so again had been inevitable from the moment she had seen him in the Shropshire Arms. What did it matter anyway? She had imagined herself in love, but Max had disappeared. He had probably forgotten all about her by now.

  Jake might be a bastard, but he was a handsome, brilliant, amusing bastard whose measure, moreover, she had by heart. He was, quite literally, the devil she knew. And what was so wrong with his casual attitude to sex, to taking pleasure as and when he found it? He didn’t get hurt, as she had. Or abandoned with no explanation.

  So why not allow herself to be seduced; who, otherwise, was she saving herself for?

  Jake was evidently of the same view. He had chosen as his theatre of seduction a newly opened pizza restaurant in a nearby town. The building had been an old warehouse and was full of shadowy corners into which tables for two flickering with candlelight had been inserted.

  ‘Like it?’ he said, eyes wolfish over the breadsticks.

  Polly looked round at the gel-slicked, black-shirted waiters, the bleach-blonde waitresses, the light from the pizza oven flickering against the exposed brickwork. ‘Very sophisticated,’ she smiled.

  They ordered, then he leant over and took her hand. ‘I was always thinking of you, Polly, all the time I was on the dig.’

  She raised a disbelieving eyebrow, but smiled. Sitting here, sipping Prosecco, being seduced by a scorchingly gorgeous man, was a pleasant experience. She could see the waitresses looking at her enviously.

  ‘Tell me about the French dig, then,’ she said. As she had already decided she would sleep with him, there was no need for flirtatious preamble. They could talk about something actually interesting. ‘Where exactly was it?’ she asked; there were, after all, several Roman sites in the South of France.

  ‘Do we have to talk work?’ Jake smarmed. ‘I want to talk about gorgeous you.’

  ‘Was it near Nice?’ Polly pressed. ‘Somewhere up near the amphitheatre?’

  He groaned. ‘Oh, if you must. It was just over the Italian border. Up in the hills.’

  ‘But where exactly?’ Polly pressed. ‘La Turbie, that sort of area?’

  ‘Further south,’ Jake said. ‘Look,’ he added, impatiently, ‘must we talk shop? I want,’ he stretched out a hand and touched her face, ‘to talk about how fantastic you look tonight.’

  ‘I like talking shop.’ Polly broke off a piece of focaccia.

  He grinned. ‘So bloody earnest. By rights you should have thick glasses, a squint and be pig ugly . . . Sorry, have I said something wrong?’

  ‘Actually,’ said Polly coldly, ‘I did used to have a squint.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Jake nodded as he tore off a piece of ciabatta. ‘You never told me that before.’

  ‘You never asked,’ Polly retorted. About that or any other aspect of her life, she now recalled. Whereas Max had been all curiosity.

  ‘You’ve changed, then,’ Jake added cheerfully.

  You haven’t, Polly thought. He still was, always had been, an indifferent bastard. He had no idea – and less interest – in how difficult life could be for people less beautiful and clever than he was. As Max’s kind, sensitive face swirled into her memory, she swallowed and felt her eyes prick. Oh Max. Max. Where are you?

  Aware of making a mistake, Jake was now eager to give her whatever technical information she wanted. ‘The dig was near a place called Sedona,’ he told her. ‘Funny place. Independent monarchy, with its own king and queen. But so tiny it hardly shows on the maps. It’s just across the Italian border.’

  The starters had now arrived and Polly was forking up a mini mozzarella ball. ‘Like Monaco, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah, sort of. But not so high-profile. It’s got a palace, though. A chateau. Fairy-tale sort of place.’

  ‘And a prince?’ Polly queried, laughing.

  ‘There is a royal family, actually.’ Jake was shovelling in bresaola. He ate as he did everything – voraciously. ‘And, yes, a prince. But from what I heard, his life’s anything but a fairy tale.’

  ‘Really?’ Polly said, idly reaching for the olive oil.

  ‘Yeah. He’s got some w
eird despot of a father who’s demanding he gets married. Someone who works at the castle told me about it.’

  Polly looked at him cryptically. ‘A female someone who works at the castle?’

  Jake rolled his eyes. ‘Oh God, Polly, lay off. Yes, as you’re asking. Anyway,’ he went on rapidly, ‘this prince doesn’t want to get married at all; he got uprooted from whatever university he was at, somewhere over here, apparently, and dragged home. The poor bastard’s spent the whole summer having to look over a succession of hideous Euro princesses and find one to marry.’

  ‘How medieval,’ Polly exclaimed, shaking her head as she forked in another ball.

  ‘Apparently all he wants is to be a vet,’ Jake chuckled, ‘but he’s under house arrest, or castle arrest, and they’re not letting him see anyone . . .’

  Polly’s incredulous grin snapped away. She laid down her fork and took a deep, steadying breath.

  Her heart began to speed up.

  ‘What’s he called, this prince?’ she croaked, her throat suddenly dry.

  ‘Maxim. Come to think of it, I’ve even got a postcard of the poor sod.’ Jake rose in his seat as he rummaged in his back pocket. ‘Been using it for notes.’ He passed over the crumpled piece of card. Polly stared at the back, on which various co-ordinates pinpointing artefacts had been scribbled, along with mobile numbers with women’s names beside them. Slowly she turned it over.

  Max’s handsome, resigned features stared up at her.

  Amazement and relief exploded within Polly, followed by exultation. She had known, just known, whatever Dad might think, that there was an explanation for Max’s absence. Whether Dad would believe this one was another matter. She could hardly believe it herself. Yet, oddly, it fitted; he had said his father ran the family firm, that they lived abroad. She recalled their first meeting in the Lakeshott grounds. Is that where he had been staying? Was Napoleon the Duke’s dog? But why had Max been so secretive about it all? Anyone else would have trumpeted it from the rooftops.

  She leapt to her feet. ‘Sedona, you say?’

  Jake was startled by her intense stare. ‘That’s right. Hey, what’s the—’

  ‘How do you get there?’

  ‘You fly to Nice. Then . . . I’m not sure. I was in a car. Why do you want to know? Do you know him?’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ Polly gasped over her shoulder as she headed across the tiled floor. ‘Tell Neil I might not be back for a while. Sorry, but it’s unavoidable.’

  Chapter 39

  ‘Barney! It’s fantastic!’ Alexa danced joyfully through the sitting room of the Monte Carlo apartment.

  The outside was modern, very modern, possibly with something of the termites’ nest about its colour and design. But the interior was, as Barney said, the last word in tax exile luxury.

  The rooms were spacious and furnished in good-weather-rich-casual style: white sofas with aqua-blue cushions, huge glass coffee tables, big lamps and indecipherable contemporary pictures with suggestions of breasts and bottoms.

  The kitchen had a juicer, an ice dispenser and a cappuccino machine. The fact that there were two bathrooms, as there had been in Florrie’s Kensington apartment, was another source of satisfaction.

  There were long white muslin curtains and mirrors everywhere, particularly in the master bedroom with the huge black-sheeted bed.

  ‘How did you get it so cheap?’ Alexa gasped.

  ‘My secret!’ Barney merely beamed.

  Alexa swiftly dumped her bags and rushed through the sitting room’s floor-to-ceiling sliding doors. The large balcony outside had smart wooden sunloungers, a table shaded with a big white parasol and wonderful views of the sparkling sea. The good life starts here, Alexa thought exultantly, just as . . .

  Judderjudderjudderwhinescreamscreamscreamdrone judderjudderwhinescreamscreamscreamdrone . . .

  The savage beating of the air was terrifying, as of ghastly wings: the Angel of Death; the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And it was rising, getting closer and louder.

  ‘Barney!’ screamed Alexa, half expecting some hideous beast to appear, swoop on her and take her away at any moment.

  Judderjudderjudderwhinescreamscreamscreamdrone judderjudderwhinescreamscreamscreamdrone . . .

  ‘What’s up?’ Barney asked, appearing through the sliding doors.

  Judderjudderjudderwhinescreamscreamscreamdrone judderjudderwhinescreamscreamscreamdrone . . .

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  Barney cocked his head on one side. ‘It’s the . . .’ he began, at the exact moment Alexa saw the blades of a helicopter rise above the next building. It was unbelievably close. She could not only see the people in it, she could almost see the fillings in their teeth.

  ‘. . . heliport,’ Barney finished, as the great black beast rocked itself unsteadily up into the blue sky and veered away. ‘We’re next to the heliport.’

  As another juddering, screaming noise now started up, Alexa glared at her companion. ‘It’s like living under the Heathrow flight path, only ten million times worse.’

  ‘Well, you asked about the price,’ Barney remarked resignedly, as a second helicopter lifted into the air.

  Alexa could not reply. So deafening was the helicopter noise that it was impossible to decide whether you wanted tea or coffee. Let alone plan a trap for a billionaire.

  As soon as possible, they went out. As Barney said, there was no time to lose, only opportunities. And, Alexa thought grimly, if they stayed at home, her hearing as well.

  Outside the apartment block, the air was dry and gritty and it was blisteringly hot. As her shoulders broiled in her flimsy dress and the sun blazed off the narrow pavements into her face, Alexa gazed longingly at the limousines sliding down the winding streets of the tax haven. The sooner she got on the inside of one of those, the better.

  Her head was pounding with the shattering noise of road drills, which seemed to be a feature of every corner. They had to walk in single file over upturned rubble and potholes; a challenge for Alexa’s teetering heels. Above his black Ray-Bans, Barney’s face was a hot pink and his hair was thin with sweat.

  ‘The aesthetics are hardly the point,’ he reminded her above the drill noise. He was examining a display of glass pistols in a shop window. ‘It’s an OK place to be rich in,’ he added, ‘just not a very good one to be poor in.’

  They were negotiating the steep pavement up the side of the Casino now; finally, some of the white stucco fin de siècle wedding-cake architecture the principality was famous for was revealing itself. If she looked behind her now she would see a harbour so crammed with yachts that you could probably walk over the whole lot from one end of the port to the other and never see a chink of water between.

  ‘I must say,’ Barney remarked out of the blue, ‘it would be jolly useful if the papers still published a list of the important people in town as they did in the old days. You knew who you were aiming for then. Gold-digging was a hell of a lot easier.’

  They stumbled along in silence for a few minutes, Alexa stopping occasionally to gaze at the lurid jewellery in the various windows. Most of it was vile, but there wasn’t a single piece she would say no to.

  ‘Here we are,’ Barney said, as they emerged into a large square that blazed with sunlight. ‘Our centre of operations. Here’s where we sit and wait for a fly to enter our web.’

  ‘What, here?’ Alexa looked doubtfully around. There were cars everywhere and crowds barging in various directions through the middle of pavement cafés.

  ‘Of course not!’ Barney pointed over to a palatial cream building festooned with escutcheons, trumpets and cherubs. ‘At the Casino.’

  Alexa stared. ‘You’re going to gamble, you mean? What’s that going to do for us apart from lose us money?’

  Barney looked affronted. ‘Well, admittedly, it’s been a while since I took up the cards in anger, but I daresay the old magic’s still there.’

  ‘We can’t afford to gamble!’ Alexa snarled.

&n
bsp; Barney sighed. ‘On the contrary, my dear Alexa, we can’t afford not to. But it’s merely a front, I assure you. I look as if I am playing cards but I’m actually sizing up the joint. Spotting who is around, getting a feel for the possibilities. You’re doing the same across there.’ He pointed to a grand white building hung with international flags that filled the entire opposite side of the square.

  ‘Anyone who’s anyone visiting Monaco goes to the Hotel des Bains at some point or other, just as they do the Casino,’ Barney explained. ‘Pick a seat in the bar with a good view, and when you see someone promising, move in.’

  Chapter 40

  It was a hot day at PapPixRiviera, but only in the temperature sense. Otherwise it was as dead as the flies in the bottom of the picture agency’s grimy metal-framed windows.

  Sweating gently in the soupy air, which the fan seemed only to stir, not cool, Jason Snort, chief of the bureau, sat with his meaty brown legs up on his desk. His baggy shorts, combat waistcoat and big boots reflected his view of his work as a type of warfare. With one hand he fiddled idly with the shark tooth strung round his neck. It had been a gift from an admiring tabloid newspaper editor. ‘From one shark to another,’ the accompanying note had read. Jason tugged at it wistfully. Those had been the days.

  Would they ever come back? The Cannes film festival was long over, the summer silly season yet to begin. But would it begin? It had been widely reported that, thanks to the credit crunch, many of the celebrities whose yachts, thongs, snogging and general high jinks made for big paparazzi business during the summer would not be coming this year. The hairdressers of Saint-Tropez were worried. Very worried. The pool boys of Villefranche were in despair. The yacht-polishers of Antibes were being laid off left, right and centre, which made a big change from being laid left, right and centre, Jason mused sardonically. While the tennis coaches of Mougins were at their wits’ end – not that that was far.