Beggar Bride Read online

  If only little Jacob…

  She stops her thoughts from taking her further.

  Billy has come to join her on the hard Ercol sofa. He puts his strong arms around her. ‘I’m sorry, Ange. I’m sorry. Please give me a kiss and forgive me. I’m just pissed off with it all at the moment… but I’m pleased about the baby. Really I am.’

  ‘You’ll look after me, Billy, won’t you?’

  He takes her hand and strokes it. ‘Don’t I always look after you, Ange? Wasn’t I with you all the time while Jacob was being born? Didn’t I find us a temporary home, and now we’ve got the flat, and as soon as you get rid of Fabian we can lead a different sort of life. I’ll be able to get a job, run a car, we can behave like a proper family at last and do things like go to the pictures.’

  Go to the pictures?

  ‘Have holidays in Benidorm.’

  Benidorm?

  ‘Buy a caravan, perhaps…’

  A caravan? Ange smiles fondly, she loves him so very, very much, she thinks she would die without him. Theirs is an instant understanding. He is her companion, lover and friend, and they don’t have any other friends, only the tossers and dossers they once went round with, and life was too much of a struggle to form any lasting relationships. Ange never made friends in her succession of foster homes, and Billy’s been on the run since he left home.

  Billy grins as he gives her a nudge. ‘So don’t worry, Ange. I love you and I’ll always look after you.’

  12

  ‘WELL I’M NOT GOING for a start.’

  So incensed is Honesty by the news of her father’s impending nuptials that she hurries to visit her mother in St John’s Wood where she lives in straitened circumstances caused by her own darn cussedness.

  ‘Well one thing’s for sure, I won’t be asked,’ says Ffiona. ‘I thought your father had been put off women for life, after his last disaster.’

  ‘Cunning little tart,’ sobs Honesty. ‘And the beastly thing about it, Mummy, the really horrid thing is that Laura Fallowfield and I watched her do it! We could actually stand there and watch her hypnotise Daddy!’

  He always was a weak man where the ladies were concerned, though never brave enough to act upon it. And a pity, thinks Ffiona, unkindly, that poor, virginal Honesty didn’t pick up a hint or two of the woman’s obvious talent.

  ‘Divorced, beheaded, died…’ says Ffiona, laughing, still in her old silk pyjamas at eleven o’clock in the morning and going to draw back the drawing-room curtains.

  ‘Divorced, beheaded, survived,’ enjoins Honesty, ‘and let me tell you, Angela Harper looks like a real survivor to me. She knew what she was doing. She’s a hard little nut.’

  ‘Darling, you sound so terribly bitter.’

  But isn’t Ffiona bitter?

  Ffiona, dark roots weeping into the platinum blonde, moves around the room now, tottering on tatty high-heeled slippers, emptying last night’s ashtrays, removing the bottles, straightening the cushions and finally going to fetch a can of alpine fresh air from the lav. She only bothers because of the disgusted look on her daughter’s haughty face. ‘Whoever Fabian decides to bed, nothing can affect you now. You’ll be off, leading your own life, anyway, soon, with your own money behind you. It’s time you moved out and got a flat, perhaps this would be an appropriate moment.’

  How can her mother live like this? Especially after the life she was once used to. From a neat, pretty, sophisticated woman Ffiona has gradually disintegrated into a run-down, middle-aged slag. She is one of a multitude of divorced women who have turned this street into a landmark, somewhere for married women to point at and dread, as once they dreaded the bogeyman. For this, Alexandra Avenue, is where they congregate in middle-of-the-market Victorian houses in some distress and with parts missing like their owners. The leavings that Ffiona now clears from her drawing-room floor were caused by a get-together last night. No men in sight. A gathering, a flange, a whoop of disgruntled women who operate a support system which requires much cheap wine, Indian take-aways, hour after hour of gossip and some babysitting services for those who have been abandoned at the most unfortunate time.

  Ffiona cannot complain. She has spent her divorce settlement and is still overspending the little she has left, suffering weekly from sharp letters from an unaccommodating bank.

  After her divorce from Fabian, Ffiona found herself seriously rich. She came from a good family, but she’d never known treasure like this.

  Spend, spend, spend, for she was enraged, and rightly.

  She spent a fortune on the pretty little mews house she moved into.

  Every year she bought herself a new car, she went on expensive holidays, safaris for six months at a time, touring Peru, cruises for whole parties of hangers-on, she spent two months on a Colorado ranch, and every time she came home a little weaker, more broken-hearted, more wary of life as she threw herself into passions too hot to handle.

  And, of course, more broke.

  My God! The money she has spent on men, damn them, bribing them, enticing them, encouraging them, she even bought Harvey Telford a race horse one Christmas. A surprise gift. They left for Ireland on Christmas Eve. The crossing was choppy. Ffiona was nauseous and lay, praying for death, in her cabin. When they arrived Harvey was three parts to the wind and had to prop himself on the paddock rails to view his amazing, four-legged gift.

  ‘Oh yes, she’ll regret it,’ says Lady Ffiona Henderson-Ormerod, the double barrel being another present she gave to herself after being cast out into the dark.

  ‘Daddy is getting married again, isn’t that exciting?’ says Lady Elfrida having taken on the task of breaking the news gently to the twins who still have one week of holiday left.

  ‘But Mummy is still warm in her grave,’ protests a tearful Tabitha, lying on her back on a rug in the drawing-room of the Old Granary, the cricket grinding on in its monotonous way in the background.

  ‘Mummy won’t know anything about it,’ says Pandora sharply.

  ‘Helena will look down from heaven and feel happy for poor Fabian,’ says Elfrida, pouring a couple of stiff gins for herself and Evelyn, as the sun is now, thankfully, well over the yardarm. ‘And so must you be, midears. None of this sulking and selfish behaviour, just think, what fun you will have with a new mother. And such a pretty one, too.’

  ‘Mummy never believed in heaven, or hell,’ says Pandora.

  ‘Yes, well, dear Helena had some funny ideas.’ Elfrida tries to put it kindly.

  ‘She believed in reincarnation. Before she died, she was living her fifth life.’

  ‘Well let’s hope she is now back on earth somewhere warm, beginning her sixth,’ says Elfrida. But she does not add, ‘and let’s hope it is slightly more successful than her last one.’

  Lord Ormerod sits in his bathchair, ignoring the conversation, irritated when it reaches a level that interferes with his viewing. In constant pain, occasionally his wizened hand comes down to stroke the ears of the spaniel bitch which lies on the floor at his side, as if that affords some relief. Which it does.

  ‘Angela doesn’t like us,’ says Pandora flatly.

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Dunno. But she doesn’t. She thinks we’re strange.’

  Elfrida pauses, runs her coarse hand across the parts of the rug she has finished, and sighs. She would love to attempt some tapestry, a cushion cover perhaps, but her fingers were always too large and clumsy to deal deftly with a needle. So she sticks to her rugs and gives them to friends at Christmas. ‘Perhaps you weren’t very nice to her, midears. You will have to try harder next time you meet her. Which will be at the wedding, by the look of it. I must say it has come with something of a rush.’

  If Hurleston House is empty when the children come home for their holidays they move into the Old Granary which has plenty of spare rooms for guests. With no one directly responsible (Ba-ba did her best when they were small but she’s too old now to take care of a third generation), they are free to spend their d
ays as they please. They can join the hunt on hunting days. They have their ponies, and their Jack Russells, and a flat-bottomed punt on the lake, they can help at the farm, read in the library, or go into Exeter with any one of the staff who happens to be going. But unlike Fabian and his sister, Candida, who filled the house with their friends, Tabitha and Pandora seem oddly self-sufficient, spending most of their days being mysterious and secretive in the dovecote, not chasing around shrieking and calling in the woods and rivers as their elders before them.

  Children grow up so quickly these days.

  It’s all those dreadful discos and computers.

  ‘What if Angela has a boy? An heir? We’d become redundant.’

  ‘Well,’ says Tabitha to her sister, ‘at least Honesty won’t be the only one to say she’s had a wicked stepmother.’

  ‘She’s a lovely girl,’ says Nanny Barber to her friend and companion, Maud Doubleday, as they wash fresh English salad in their tiny kitchen at the cottage called Halcyon Fields. ‘So natural. So young. So full of energy. Just the person to bring poor Fabian some real happiness at last.’ Nanny Ba-ba is the kind of sweet, bespectacled old lady whose crepe scarlet skirts you shove presents up for a centrepiece on a Christmas table. But she wouldn’t thank anyone for putting their hand up her skirt for any reason at all. She has spent her life discouraging that. Fabian, when tiny, attempted it once, out of curiosity, and was smacked very hard.

  This is a little fairy-tale cottage, thatched and snug, which used to house the gamekeeper at Hurleston, in the far off days when there was one. If Fabian wants to shoot he goes to Scotland now.

  ‘Well I’m worried,’ states Maud, her brown eyes dulling.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You refuse to take the matter seriously, Gwenda, you always have. You close your eyes to the facts of life just like a Victorian virgin, too nasty to contemplate.’

  ‘Whereas you…’

  ‘Don’t go on the counter-attack, Gwen, please. Don’t try and evade the issue. Helena Ormerod was murdered not half a mile from where we stand and there’s never been a satisfactory solution to that awful catastrophe. I would have thought, before we all rush out to buy our confetti, we should spend some moments wondering about the fate of Fabian’s third bride to be brought in style to Hurleston.’

  ‘You do talk some nonsense, Maud,’ says Nanny Ba-ba fondly. ‘Interfering old spinster, knitting away at conspiracies inside your head. Not enough to think about, that’s what’s wrong with you. Time for a trip to the library, I think, get yourself engrossed in some juicy plot…’

  ‘And this lettuce is nothing but bugs. I’m not touching it.’

  ‘Please yourself. But we want to get this finished in time for Coronation Street. I’m not missing that, why don’t you slice the quiche?’

  Poor old Maudie. A troubled soul. Troubled from the time she first came to Hurleston over forty years ago, in the days when Gwen, herself, was merely a little maid looking for work after the war. There wasn’t much work to be had round here, it was to the fields or domestic work. Gwen hadn’t the schooling to take a secretarial course.

  So she took the job at the house, living in, all expenses paid.

  Maudie Doubleday, a tall, swarthy girl (she wore an invisible hairnet then and she still does, to this day), a newcomer to the village, she came to live with her aunt, was clever with her fingers and used to come up to sew at the house soon after Lady Elfrida arrived as a new bride on the proud arm of young Evelyn. There was some talk of scandal. Rumours of a child. But the war was long over and since the war this was nothing abnormal, all those poor little girls going with the soldiers.

  Funny, Maudie never said.

  Never confided.

  And when little Fabian was born, because of her love of babies, Gwen was called Nanny and put in charge of the nursery and it would have been a lonely life but for her blossoming friendship with Maudie.

  To Gwen’s delight, when Maudie’s aunt died she came to live-in at the House as seamstress, and in charge of the laundry. Everyone doubled up in those days. It wasn’t like before the war. There was something shameful about being a servant, although Gwen never saw it that way. After all, everyone’s a servant to someone, aren’t they?

  The first word little Fabian spoke was Ba-ba.

  There’s a morbid streak in Maudie, a fascination with the dark side of life, she likes to watch operations on telly and she’s an avid reader of grisly murders and the memoirs of people like Pierpoint the hangman. She knows all there is to know about Jack the Ripper and has her own theories on that one.

  Maudie was much affected by poor Helena’s death.

  She even insisted on going to view the body at the Chapel of Rest… after they’d made her respectable, of course. According to Maudie, who knows all about tops to bottoms and double collars, all about bringing fine old linen back to life, the undertakers had done an incredible job.

  But sometimes her obstinacy makes her irritating.

  Nanny Ba-ba, little and quick with astonishing bright blue eyes and hair that is whiter than white, a total contrast to the gaunt Maudie’s stringy mouse, arranges the fresh salad on plates. It’s a little bit watery, but at least it is clean. ‘So who did it, Maudie? Come on. You’re always insinuating something diabolical, so who did it? Out with it now.’

  ‘That Ffiona had something to do with it.’ With her brown eyes gone dark and serious Maudie carries her tray to her chair in the cluttered chintz sitting-room with the floral Austrian blinds. ‘And I’ve told you that before, many times.’

  Maudie never got on with Ffiona. Perhaps, somehow, hailing from a local family, and villagers do tend to share their gossip, Ffiona had discovered her secret. And Maudie has already been down on Fabian. She is always very unfair about Fabian, and seems jealous of the natural Nanny and child relationship that exists between Gwen and he.

  ‘But why, Maudie? Why would Ffiona want to dispatch poor Helena? And how could she, great big woman like that and Ffiona such a little slip of a thing? There’d be no contest if those two met and came to blows, as you are suggesting. No, this is all very silly. If poor Helena was bumped off, and I’m not saying she was, mind, it’d probably be one of the local farmers, up to here with all that alternative nonsense and those frightful travellers making such a mess.’ And Nanny Ba-ba, stiffening her leg, bends to turn on Coronation Street.

  ‘Someone should warn her, she ought to be told.’ Maudie will not give up.

  ‘Shush, Maudie, shush, we’re going to miss the start. At least you’ve got something to look forward to now.’

  ‘What?’ Maudie inspects her lettuce with caution.

  ‘The wedding, of course, and a free trip to London,’ says Nanny Ba-ba, contentedly settling down. ‘You might get a chance to air your misgivings, but don’t be surprised if the men in white coats don’t come for you. A register office is not a sanctuary, Maudie, you know. Not like a proper church.’

  13

  TIME IS MOVING ON. So far there has been no talk of any financial settlements and Ange doesn’t like to ask.

  Have limited horizons anything to do with boring sex? Billy has no horizons because he is ignorant about what’s out there. Fabian has so much he can’t see there’s anything worthwhile left. Whatever, even compared to Billy who goes at it hammer and tongs, Fabian is a poor lover.

  Even in her inexperience Ange can’t help suspecting this.

  She can read, can’t she? She takes all the blockbusters out of the library and the Coburns had a video. She’d sometimes hired smutty videos and played them when her foster parents went out on their choral society evenings. There must be more to it than this, she knows there is, else what the hell is the fuss all about?

  ‘Are we safe?’ Fabian said, when finally getting down to it.

  ‘Do we need to be safe?’ she’d asked, having undressed herself.

  He did it through the front gap of his blue-and-white-striped pyjamas.

  The only romantic thing about i
t was the setting overlooking the Thames, and the sumptuousness of it all. Big Ben struck and the whole building clanged with the knell. Ange lingered on the balcony long after she was too cold, sipping champagne and hugging herself for a success beyond her wildest dreams. The moonlight hit the diamonds on her ring and sparked them. The sapphires are the blue of Billy’s eyes when he’s angry. Perhaps he can find a replica, and they can flog it without causing any suspicion. Ange isn’t sure how much it cost, it didn’t have a price tag on it, but by the fuss they made at Garrard’s it must have been pretty expensive. On the night it happened they’d been out for a meal at San Lorenzo’s. Fabian had to return to the office, he’d forgotten some documents. ‘I’ll see you into a taxi first.’

  ‘No, Fabian. Let me come with you,’ said Ange, laying her head on his shoulder. ‘Let Roberts go home to bed. Let’s walk.’ She wore a flimsy, lacy dress, Charleston style in a dusty rose, she’d picked it up from the market and washed it, pressed it, so it looked like new, but it had taken a fortnight’s security money. She doesn’t know how they’ll pay next week’s rent. She relished the way waiters danced to attention, called him by name and gave him the best table. She looked good. She felt on top of the world that night. She adored the exalted manner in which she was suddenly treated, she’d never been so special before, nor shown such deference, and he bought her a rose from a girl she thought she recognised from the Prince Regent, a barmaid type with a tray load of buttonholes like ice-creams round her neck. Ange looked away, lest she be caught red-handed. She chose a song for the band to play, Unchained Melody, which she sang for Billy sometimes when she’d had too much to drink, it is his favourite, and the singer came right up to her and sang for her alone.

  She’d always liked the atmosphere of those beautiful Thirties songs they sang with top hats and canes, The nightingale sang… We’ll gather lilacs… that sort of thing, but had lived too far away from the experience truly to appreciate the magic. She knew now. Ange knew all about it as they walked home together in the moonlight, hand in hand, smiling, rich, through the grand city streets. If only she’d been with Billy, but a different Billy—she felt ashamed as she thought it—a Billy with money and style, a Billy dressed in a bright white shirt with cufflinks, tall and suave.