Beggar Bride Read online

  ‘Two years ago. She was only forty.’

  This fact, her youth at the time, seemed to have the greatest effect upon the mourning adults involved, and there were many, although both Pandora and Tabitha considered forty a staggering age. A good innings. The whole of the Ormerod clan gathered together for the funeral and the eleven-year-old twins were the centre of attention until everyone left, and then they were sent to The Rudge School just as their half-sister was leaving and Daddy contributed five hundred pounds to the chapel organ fund.

  This was because Tabitha failed the entrance exam. And nobody would have known this but for the diligence of Clarissa Somerset Webb who broke into the office to steal a look at the marked papers.

  ‘But why would anyone want her dead?’ asked Courtney, owl-eyed with a morbid fascination.

  ‘Because she was so badly behaved and threatening to bring the whole family’s name into disrepute.’

  ‘I didn’t think anyone cared about that sort of thing any more,’ said a sleepy Lavinia. ‘Lots of my parents’ friends are what you might call disreputable people and yet my father is Master of the Worshipful Company of Grocers.’

  ‘Daddy cares,’ sighed Pandora simply. ‘And in his line of business reputation is all important.’

  ‘Lord. She must have done some ghastly things!’

  ‘Oh yes,’ breathed Tabitha, ‘she did. Heinous things. She was vulgar. And our stepsister, Honesty, hated her. That made it all much worse. We weren’t allowed to look at her, after she went into death’s dark vale. She was highly sexed you know, and so was his first wife, Ffiona. Poor Daddy. And they said that her head was nearly all eaten up by rodents. Ugh.’

  Poor Daddy.

  How upset he would be if he knew what they said, what everyone in the lower fourth suspected about him. But the twins are not betraying their father, they are merely being loyal to their dead mother, the more generous parent and the one they much preferred.

  Helena had firm ideas of her own about bringing up children, which was mainly why Fabian shipped Honesty off, away from her influence, before his well-mannered eldest daughter could be irreparably damaged. It had nothing to do with the fact that Helena did not like her. And that, too, was probably why he sent the twins away so quickly after her death, to catch them in time, before it was too late.

  Mummy would never have agreed to the twins attending The Rudge. Odious, she called it. Its very foundations (built on the ruins of an enclosed order of Carmelite nuns) were anathema to her own outlandish ideas, ideas which prompted her to send the twins to a vastly alternative day school run by a couple of ne’er-do-wells in the Devonshire hamlet of Hurleston. Helena had no influence where Honesty was concerned, indeed, the child made it perfectly clear she disliked and resented her stepmother, and if Fabian’s family had connections with The Rudge School in Cambridge, then although she could make her feelings quite clear she had no right to interfere.

  Fabian could have no real idea, when he married Helena on the rebound after his painful divorce, of her views where children were concerned. He only knew that she was the most exciting, dramatic woman he had ever laid eyes on, and she had a charisma that pulled men towards her (a result of years of contemplation), moths to a neurotically flickering flame. She was a natural woman who washed her hair in rainwater, devoid of airs and graces she went about bare-footed. She was ecologically sound, she cherished small things, she was a vegetarian, and not even vaguely interested in money.

  Huh. So Fabian believed.

  Unlike the favoured Ffiona, none of his family liked her.

  ‘She is dirty, darling,’ his mother, Elfrida, confided. ‘And she smells.’

  ‘That is musk, Mother,’ Fabian retorted, ‘and you shouldn’t set so much store by a person’s fingernails.’

  To Fabian’s disbelief, and then mounting horror, duffel-coated and with her hair in a snood, Helena would take to the road, or flop in front of police vans to lead all manner of dubious protests.

  Helena, with her firm, healthy, nut-brown body and her waterfall of wiry red hair, with her colt-like thin legs, liked to walk in the woods, believing in magic and all things fey, and it was there in the woods that she was found decomposing badly one week after her disappearance. A blow to the head, they said, but couldn’t decide if the blow was a result of an accident, a fall, perhaps, a loose branch, or a deliberate action.

  Nature had made a mess of her, in life as in death. The displaced Ffiona read about it in her reduced straits in St John’s Wood and chuckled.

  Helena’s body had been found by one of the odious travellers she had invited to camp in a glade in the park. Another appalling blaze of publicity.

  She might have been neurotic, she might have forgotten their names sometimes but to Pandora and Tabitha she was the ideal earth mother, and she was fun. To Fabian she became disgusting, to Honesty, used to her own gorgeous, tasteful mother, she was a witch.

  Poor Helena.

  Poor Pan and Tabby, leaving their loving, gentle little school and having to adjust to the rigours of The Rudge.

  ‘Honesty, when will Daddy be home?’

  ‘Not before you’re in bed tonight,’ she tells Pandora. ‘You’ll see him in the morning at breakfast.’

  ‘What are we doing tomorrow?’

  Cold, hard and unfriendly Honesty asks, ‘What d’you mean, what are you doing? How do I know what you are doing?’

  Pandora explains politely, ‘What I meant was, are we going anywhere, or can we go off on our own? Are there any plans?’

  ‘If there are then I don’t know about them. Fabian isn’t going into the City, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  Really, Honesty ought to be more patient. The child is only enquiring. But she finds it so hard to communicate with these thirteen-year-old brats who so resemble their late mother it is hard to believe they don’t try deliberately to imitate her looks and her mannerisms in order to get up Honesty’s nose. Vegetarian, of course, and they chew the sides of their fingers as she did, they roll their heads to one side when listening, they raise their near-non-existent eyebrows and smile in the self-same depreciating manner. No style of course, just like Helena. What makes it worse is that they are so often giggling at some joke she is sure she wouldn’t understand if they told her.

  Drat it. And it is with these two graceless adolescents that Honesty will have to share her inheritance.

  Not that she won’t be a rich woman. She will. Starting with the trust which comes into force in two years’ time, key of the door, twenty-one.

  Supper is over at last, an ordeal for the snooty Honesty, and certainly for her two younger sisters. It is with relief that they hear her announcement, ‘I’m going out tonight so if you want anything you will have to go and find Estelle.’ And the twins hardly need to smile so subversively at each other like that, it is uncanny how those two can communicate without changing expression. It is cosy down in the basement. They would far rather be left with Estelle, watch television with Estelle and her interesting Irish husband, Murphy, who sits about in a string vest with his chest hairs spiralling through. Estelle doesn’t nag and criticise everything they watch, call them philistines, or look on with disgust if they pick the hard skin off their feet. And sometimes, for a bribe, Murphy will roll them one of his foul-smelling cigarettes.

  ‘Shush. Don’t say anything till she’s gone. Then we’ll go on a treasure hunt.’ Three long weekends each term, that’s the freedom considered appropriate for the pupils at The Rudge and Pan and Tabby would be quite happy to do without it if it wasn’t for the treasure hunt. They are superfluous to requirements in this house… and a nuisance. The only cool part of being in London is the shops, if they are allowed out alone, and the cinema, if they can persuade Estelle to take them.

  ‘Seek and find. Find and seek.’

  Giggling quietly, the twins make sure their father’s bedroom door is closed behind them properly. This is a manly room with every piece of furniture built in, even the bed h
as a built in look about it, the sort of bed you see in films, the sort of sturdy bed people die in. When Mummy was alive this smelt fleshy and the carpet was covered by dirty knickers, now it has reverted to a sterile, vacuumed apathy. And then it’s through every pocket, every envelope, every drawer while they’ve got the chance, picking up twenty-pound notes here, tenners there, for Fabian, so cautious and diligent at work, is careless with what he would refer to as his loose change. In the past the twins have picked up more than five hundred pounds in this manner. Cool and calculating little monsters? Well, they would never have known it was there for the taking had they not been searching for clues after their mother’s foul murder. But now this is an essential ritual every time they come home, because one pound a week is the recommended pocket money limit at The Rudge and nobody’s parents take any notice except for that stickler for rules, that multi-millionaire Fabian Ormerod. ‘Tight as a duck’s arse,’ Helena used to call him when he refused to contribute to one of her outrageous causes.

  Murphy O’Connell belches and tries to ignore them, to him they are nothing but bloody pests, but Estelle says, ‘Come on in and make yourselves at home. I dunno, they bring you home for the weekend and what do they do? Sod off and leave you to your own devices,’ and she moves her knitting from the sofa, making space for them. ‘Your mother would have a blue fit.’

  ‘Men don’t know any better,’ says Tabby.

  ‘No,’ says Estelle, fatter than they remembered her last time they visited, something they thought would be quite impossible, ‘and that’s why we’ve got to find him a wife.’

  ‘He’d only get rid of her, like he did Mummy.’

  Estelle’s large body quivers with irritation. ‘Oh my lord, you’re still going on about that then, are you? After two years? What an odd little pair you are.’

  ‘Not so odd if you ask me,’ says Murphy, blowing out smoke in a sinister fashion, one eye still glued to the telly.

  ‘Stop it, Murphy, stop it,’ complains Estelle, loud and reproachful, settling herself down on the spare chair which squeaks a painful protest until she is heavily comfortable. ‘What started as a ghoulish game to cheer these kiddies up has gone on far too long. These are two impressionable girls and they don’t treat it as a bit of fun, like you do. You started this unholy business and now you must bloody well stop it. Tell them,’ she urges. ‘Go on, Murphy. Tell them again it was only a game… a game that’s gone much too far.’

  ‘And you stop telling me what to do,’ says Murphy, and his feet twitch within his socks, that, and the smoke spiralling gently from him are the only signs from his lax body to show that he is not sleeping. ‘It wasn’t only me who thought it… there were plenty of others if I can remember, Maud Doubleday for one. Money changed hands,’ he ends on an ominous note.

  ‘Oh shut up, Murphy. Do. That’s enough. You know nothing about it. You weren’t even there. Now what have you two been up to at school? Any exciting news to tell us?’

  ‘Nothing happens at school,’ says Pandora lamely.

  ‘Nothing happens here either,’ says Murphy in a voice of accusation, an envious and resentful man, especially since reading about his master’s earnings in Friday’s report in the Sun. Downright indecent, that’s what it is. ‘The only people that have things happen are the likes of them upstairs.’

  ‘Be grateful that things don’t happen, like I am,’ says Estelle wisely. ‘You’d soon wish they didn’t if they did.’

  ‘We’d hate Daddy to marry again, wouldn’t we?’ says Pandora. ‘We’re much better off as we are, with nobody taking much notice. And anyway, he wouldn’t risk it, not after his dreadful experiences with Mummy.’

  ‘She’d have to be warned,’ says Murphy.

  ‘For goodness’ sake. Who would have to be warned?’ asks Estelle.

  ‘Anyone who took the old man on,’ says Murphy, full of foreboding. ‘And that snotty-nosed daughter of his. I wouldn’t put anything past that one.’

  They send each other secret looks as they sit in Estelle’s basement, brightly. This is the kind of conversation the twins thoroughly enjoy and once they get Murphy going they know he will say anything. Dangerous things. Angry things. And he calls people terrible names and uses disgusting language… words they can take to school and introduce to their awestruck friends. Estelle and Murphy came with the house, Estelle cooks and Murphy is called a handyman, they were here in Ffiona’s day and Murphy told the twins that she was a nymphomaniac. ‘She had to go in the end. Couldn’t keep her hands out of men’s underpants.’ He makes it sound as if he is jealous. Sometimes he recites rude limericks. Sometimes they wonder if he is mad. He might have a brain tumour or some disease that makes him so aggressive. And could it be that he beats Estelle?

  No, she is much too big and strong, and he is small and wiry.

  ‘You think Honesty had something to do with Mummy’s death?’ asks Tabitha sweetly.

  ‘They never got on, those two. Chalk and cheese,’ says Murphy darkly. ‘That one. She had her nose put out of joint but now she’s back on the pedestal she’s always enjoyed. Yep, Daddy’s darling. She’s not daft.’

  ‘She hates us,’ says Pandora matter-of-factly.

  ‘Well she would, wouldn’t she? She’d hate anyone who came along to claim her father’s attention.’

  ‘Especially a boy.’

  ‘It’s a shame,’ says Estelle, ‘that poor Sir Fabian never had a son to carry on the name and all.’

  ‘It’s never too late,’ says Murphy. ‘A bloke with that sort of dash. He’s a temptation to any woman and will be when he’s old and bent and senile. That’s when they’ll get him, when he’s ga-ga, and they say men of eighty can still get it up. It’ll be some dolly-bird, mark my words. And then watch the shit hit the fan.’

  Estelle sees the gleeful looks that cross the twins’ freckled faces. They’re a strange pale pair, these two. And although she feels fond of them she knows they are out for trouble, they’ll cause trouble if and wherever they can find it. And she’ll never get over the ease with which they appeared to cope with their poor mother’s death, such a loving mother, too. Not a tear… not even at the funeral, not that she noticed. And to joke like they did with Murphy so soon after such a tragic event, it was a disgrace really, when you think about it. No, there’s something very wrong somewhere, you’d think the school would have noticed by now and organised some counselling. They must have inherited their mother’s instability. Oh yes, what with this gruesome pair, and the cold reserve of Honesty, Estelle would feel sorry for any new woman the master might introduce into this house.

  5

  RIGHT. THAT’S IT THEN. Nobody can accuse Ange of being faint-hearted, she has survived for four whole weeks at forty-nine Willington Gardens, looking out of the window with a face tight and tense, shutting out the neighbours’ rackets, rows, music, night-long orgies that keep Jacob awake and leave him scratchy and miserable all day long so she doesn’t have a moment to herself.

  Yes, she’s spent one whole month encouraging Billy. ‘We’ll get used to it,’ and ‘Dear God, it can’t always be like this, and your job makes all the difference now we’ve got money to spend.’

  Billy’s job made no difference at all. Ange made him tell the DSS and they merely stopped his benefit. Life is hell at Willington Gardens, sheer and utter bloody hell. At least the rules at the Prince Regent kept the worst inconsiderations at bay. But now look—their immediate neighbours are peddling dope, there’s people calling through the letterbox, ringing the bell, banging on the door all hours and loitering on the balcony, blocking the way so it’s hard to get past them, broken bottles, puddles of piss and then they have the gall to beg for a tenner… a tenner… shit… tell me about it.

  Billy come home. Please.

  Ange doesn’t like being left here alone all day.

  Below them, at night, the small piece of concrete yard turns into a motorbike pit, don’t the yobs need any sleep round here? Once, when she sent Billy down, she was n
ervous for his safety. The kids round here have the kind of eyes you see in pacing bears at the zoo, trapped in cages, backwards and forwards, sour, brutish and dangerous… they’d kill if they got the chance. They’d kill and tear and wreak mayhem. They’d punish the world for all its sadness. She’d sat on the sofa with a cup of coffee between her hands, staring at the circling white eye in the middle, trembling, waiting for him to come back.

  Oh my God. She should never have sent him.

  He didn’t come back till two hours later, by which time Ange was certain he had been mugged and left somewhere to die. He came in all cocky with grease which looked like blood in the dark, all over his hands, grinning, ‘That’s what I’m going to get the minute we save any money, Jeez, what a wicked machine.’

  ‘You mean you’ve been…?’

  ‘It’s OK, Ange, but they needed me to hold the…’

  ‘While I’ve been up here shitting bricks…?’

  ‘I thought you’d have gone to bed.’

  Ange was rightly outraged. ‘You sod! You bleeding sod! You were meant to shut the wankers up!’

  ‘I couldn’t, Ange. It wasn’t like that. They’d have cut my throat if I’d asked them that.’

  ‘Oh. Right. I see. OK. And you stayed down there helping these animals… they were the ones that caused that fight on the landing!’

  ‘I know. I know.’ Billy’s slime-coated hands turned into helpless paws as he held them up, clenched, either side of his face, lost in his sense of uselessness, a man pursued by nags and doubts. ‘But what could I do, Ange?’ he asked, not without bitterness. ‘Once I got down there what the shit could I do?’

  Ange hung her head and muttered, ‘Nothing. I suppose. That’s just it.’

  ‘We could call the law.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Like last time? They didn’t even bother to turn up and by then Petal and Tina were out of the flat, heading for casualty, Tina with a broken arm while that cock-head stayed and wrecked the place, oh God, Billy, we’d be better off back on the streets.’