Marrying Up (8 page)

Twenty minutes later, she lifted up the phone to call the diary page of a leading tabloid newspaper.

‘Er, I’m calling with a story about Florrie – um, sorry, Lady Florence Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe. Yes. The one who was
dancing cheek to cheek with HRH. Er, who am I? I’m an, er, friend. Yes, that’s it. A close friend. And I just happened to
hear her saying something rather amusing and terribly personal. It seems she’s not quite so keen on him as everyone imagines
. . .’

The journalist was fascinated, delighted, grateful and awfully nice. After a few minutes, Beatrice put the phone down feeling
a mixture of guilt and relief. But mostly, it had to be said, the latter.

‘Is my darling Florrie there?’ gasped a hysterical Lady Annabel over the telephone the following day.

‘She’s out,’ Beatrice said flatly.
Hello, Mother. Yes, I’m fine, thank you. Yes, I’m very excited about my wedding. I’m so glad you are too. Yes, absolutely
we need to get together about the guest list. When are you free?

‘Out with . . .?’ Her mother’s voice was plangent with enormous hope. ‘With . . . the Prince?’

Beatrice bit her lip. Her mother’s obvious anguish was unexpectedly affecting. ‘Well, sort of yes and no,’ she muttered.

‘
Yes and no?
’ shrieked Lady Annabel, as if someone had come up behind her and inserted a cattle prod in her rectum. ‘Yes
and
no?’

‘I mean, she’s having lunch with a prince. Only,’ Beatrice pressed on as her mother threatened excitably to interrupt, ‘not
that
one.’

‘Which one, then?’ screamed their mother, who probably, Beatrice felt, didn’t need a telephone to make herself heard at the
moment.

‘Erm, a German one she met in a nightclub. Prince Von Something Zu Something Else. Erm, Mummy,’ Beatrice added swiftly as
Lady Annabel tried to butt in again, ‘you know, um, with the other prince . . . That’s . . . actually . . . over. It was in
the paper this morning,’ Beatrice added in a tone perfectly poised between innocence and surprise.

There was a silence, then the other end burst into cataclysmic, eardrum-busting grief. ‘Yes, I know! I’ve just read it!’

Beatrice hastily reminded herself that it was the best thing for everyone. She had to keep strong and concentrate on that.
That and her mother’s utter lack of interest in her own nuptials.

‘How
could
she have said that?’ heaved out Lady Annabel between racking sobs. ‘How could she have been so . . .
stupid
?’

‘I’ve no idea, Mother,’ said Beatrice, as if nothing could be more astounding than Florrie’s being stupid.

‘And who is this . . . this
friend
. . . anyway?’ spat the Belgrave Square end.

‘Can’t help you there, either.’ Beatrice crossed the fingers of her free hand and looked guiltily upwards.

‘I’ve a good mind to ring the editor,’ Lady Annabel thundered, her mood changing from abject to belligerent in an instant.
‘Challenge them to name this . . .
friend
or face legal action. Does the blasted newspaper realise what’s at stake here? I’ve already ordered my hat! Lots of little
crowns entwined with the Prince of Wales’s feathers . . .’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Beatrice said quickly.

‘Wouldn’t what?’ Lady Annabel demanded. ‘It’s fabulous. Monarchist with a twist and very stylish . . .’

‘I’m not talking about your hat. I mean, don’t ring the paper.

You’ll only make things worse.’

‘I don’t see how they
could
be worse.’ All the air had gone from Lady Annabel’s voice. She sounded flat and crumpled, like a burst paper bag.

‘It won’t make any difference,’ Beatrice advised gently. ‘The Palace say the relationship’s over. I’m afraid you’ll just have
to accept it, Mother.’

Hysterical, heartbroken sobbing greeted this advice. ‘My poor princess! My poor princess!’ lamented Lady Annabel, in the manner
of a Greek tragedian.

‘My life is over. Everything I worked for, everything I believed in, is
over
.’

‘There’s always my wedding . . .’ Beatrice began eagerly, but the line had gone dead.

Almost immediately, the door of the flat opened and the woman at the centre of the drama appeared. Florrie looked absurdly
young, fresh and pretty in a white dress and black ballerina flats, which, Beatrice recognised crossly, were once again her
own. Her bag’s mine too, Beatrice thought indignantly, recognising the seventies plum patchwork suede tote she had bought
in a junk shop in a moment of madness. Florrie, somehow, made it look like new-season Bottega Veneta.

‘I didn’t expect you back so early,’ Beatrice said cautiously.

Florrie smiled, shook her blond hair, tossed the bag to the carpet and sank down on the sofa. ‘I started to feel a bit rotten,’
she announced cheerfully.

‘Was it the food?’ Beatrice had no idea what one ate at lunches with party-going German princes. Perhaps piles of sauerkraut
to keep the strength up.

‘No, it was him,’ Florrie declared. ‘He said my legs were like a foal’s and my eyes were pools and my hands were like a dancer’s
and my neck like the stem of a flower . . .’ She yawned. ‘It was ghastly. I felt that he was trying to chop me up and bury
all the pieces.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Beatrice, reflecting sardonically that it must be nice to be complimented so routinely that you literally
got sick of it.

‘Oh deer, you mean.’ Florrie giggled. ‘Because he compared me to a beautiful doe as well, starting shyly at the approach of
the huntsman or some such crap. It makes me rather long for Igor. He never said
anything
nice to me, the poppet. I’m rather wondering if we should get back together.’ She pushed herself up off the sofa.

It was, Beatrice thought, difficult not to admire the way Florrie shrugged off trouble like a duck did water. To watch her
tripping
about the flat like Tinkerbell, one would never suspect that her fledgling romance with a prince of the blood had died a brutal
and public death in the newspapers that very day. On the other hand, she reflected, it proved she had been right to assume
that Florrie did not care two hoots about her royal relationship.

The telephone rang.

‘Will you get it for me, darling?’ Florrie sang. ‘It might be one of those horrid papers and I don’t want to talk to them.
I’ll only say something silly and get myself into even worse trouble.’ She giggled, gathered up Beatrice’s bag and flounced
out of the room.

As she passed, Beatrice’s nostrils caught a delicious floral scent. This, too, had the ring of familiarity. The bottle of
Joy Ned had given her for her last birthday, possibly?

Annoyed, Beatrice picked up the receiver.

‘Florrie?’ boomed the voice on the other end. ‘What the devil . . .?’

‘It’s Beatrice, Papa,’ Beatrice said hastily.

‘
Give me Florrie!
’ The lord roared painfully into the tender inside of her ear. He was as angry as she had ever heard him, and that was saying
something. Beatrice had heard him angry a lot.

‘Hang on, Papa. Florrie!
Flor-ree!
’ Beatrice laid the receiver on the thick carpet and rushed down the corridor to her sister’s room. ‘
Florrie!
Papa wants you.’

‘Tell him I’m out,’ Florrie pleaded, looking what was for her that most unusual of all things – scared. Of all the people
in the world, their father held the distinction of having some small impact on his daughter; not least because he was the
conduit through which her money flowed.

Beatrice returned reluctantly to the phone. ‘Sorry, Papa. Thought it was her, but it was Maria, the cleaner.’

‘Is it true?’ Sir George demanded.

‘About Maria?’

‘Grrrr! Is it true what I read in the papers? Florrie’s buggered it up with HRH?’

Beatrice confirmed that it was.

‘It’s a bloody disaster,’ Lord Whyske ranted.

Beatrice, for whom it was just the opposite, bit her lip.

‘I’ve had enough!’ His Lordship boomed. ‘It’s time that girl was taught a lesson. I’m cutting off her allowance, tell her.
She’ll have to get a job.’

Max had arrived to pick her up in a Land Rover almost unrecognisable because it was so sparkling clean. Polly, watching for
him out of the kitchen window, sprang up in excitement. Could he possibly have washed it just for her? She watched him jump
out, his white shirt spotless and his jeans old-looking but clean. His dark hair shone in the sun and the sight of his brown
forearms, finely muscled and corded, made her heart thump.

Until, that was, Dad, who had opened the door to Max, cast a suspicious look over him and expressed, in a voice heavy with
warning, the hope that he wouldn’t ‘mess her about like the last one had’.

Polly wanted to sink through the floor. ‘Oh
Dad
!’ she hissed through gritted teeth, squeezing past him in the doorway.

They had driven to the pub in awkward silence, Polly racking her brains for something light and amusing to say, something
to dissolve the tension.

‘Where’s Napoleon?’ was all she managed in the end.

‘He’s not mine,’ Max said, frowning through the windscreen.

‘He belongs to the people I’m staying with.’

‘Who are they again?’ Polly asked; Max had never really explained. His hands tightened on the steering wheel and he did not
explain now.

‘Here we are,’ he said, drawing up in front of the pub. Like its sister pub the Shropshire, the Oakeshott Arms had recently
received a makeover at the delicate hands of the duchess.

‘They do champagne by the glass,’ he told her, waving the wine list. ‘No thanks,’ Polly replied in alarm, remembering Alexa.
She wanted this evening to be as different as possible.

But then she saw how surprised he looked and realised she had been too vehement. Possibly she had sounded ungrateful. Rude,
even. A great start. Even greater than the one Dad had given the evening. Oh
why
had he said that? He was trying to protect her, Polly knew, but surely there were subtler ways? She had no idea what Max
had made of it; he had said nothing. But it was unlikely he was impressed.

And so, while Max approached the bar, Polly hung her head and stared at the pub’s rustic flagged stone floor. He returned,
handed her a glass of rosé and straightaway an embarrassed silence fell, made worse by the fact that the Oakeshott Arms, previously
thumping with landlord-sponsored heavy metal was now a muzak-free zone.

‘Shall we go outside?’ Max suggested eventually.

‘That would be lovely,’ Polly replied politely. Their exchanges,

she felt gloomily, had every bit of the excitement of those between the vicar and local spinster in a bonnets-and-shawls BBC
drama.

They took their drinks outside to where several wooden tables and benches nestled against the pub’s rough, sun-warmed stone
wall.

They smiled at each other, self-consciously, then looked awkwardly away at the same moment. ‘It’s very pretty here,’ Max said
rather stiffly.

‘Yes,’ Polly agreed, feeling more Cranford-like than ever. Judi Dench was going to walk past in a crinoline at any moment.

She would have fitted in; Oakeshott village was a Victorian ducal fantasy dating from the days when the owners of the big
house determined the entire surrounding landscape. Every cottage bordering the green reflected a different architectural style.
One was half-timbered Tudor, with red herringbone
brickwork filling in the spaces between the black oak beams. A miniature Italianate villa stood next door, and beyond that
a tiny medieval castle and a Swiss chateau. The gardens were as picturesque as the houses; the hollyhocks mighty and magnificent,
and with vegetable patches neater even than Mr McGregor’s in
Peter Rabbit
. The apple trees along the old brick back walls were bent double with the weight of the fruit. Around the cottage doors,
roses foamed in pink profusion.

A more charming setting, particularly on a soft summer evening, full of scent, sunshine, the calls of sheep and swooping birds,
was difficult to imagine. And yet Polly was suppressing a rising sense of panic.

Self-doubt had set in. Polly was increasingly sure that Max was desperately regretting inviting her out and only asking questions
to be polite. Nervously, in a monotone, her eyes not quite lifting to his, she answered his questions about the excavation.

Gradually, however, things warmed up. It was impossible for Polly to talk about her subject without enthusiasm, and even to
her self-critical eye and ear Max’s interest began to seem less feigned. He seemed particularly intrigued by the children,
snorting at some of Kyle’s more choice remarks.

‘He’s completely fascinated with the fact that they’re toilets.’ Polly chuckled. ‘None of the children can get over the idea
that we’re working on an ancient loo. But loos
are
fascinating.’

‘Why?’ Max asked, his expression hovering somewhere between incredulous and amused.

‘Because they show that people haven’t changed over the centuries.’

Max laughed. ‘I suppose so. There’s not much variation in what happens after all.’

‘Quite,’ Polly said, about to expand on the point. Then, realising it perhaps wasn’t the ideal subject for a romantic first
date, she blushed and twiddled with her glass stem.

His expression, as he looked at her, was serious. ‘What’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever discovered?’ he asked her.

The question pulled her up short; Polly could not think what to say. She fought the sudden, insane urge to shout, ‘You!
You
are!’

‘I suppose,’ she said slowly, trying to gather her scattered wits, ‘it was something we found in a dig in Dorset. A skeleton
that had been buried with a dog.’

‘Dog?’ Max’s eyes lit up.

‘Yes, we thought it was a grave offering, or even a sacrifice. But then we found both of the skeleton’s arms arranged so that
they were cradling it.’

‘So it was a pet?’ Max leant forward, intent.

‘Yes. It was moving, seeing the demonstration of a relationship like that.’ Polly smiled fondly at the memory. ‘The love a
person had for their pet, thousands of years ago.’