Beggar Bride Read online

  And so.

  ‘I did wonder…’ starts Fabian, withdrawing his arm and putting his hands together, fingertips meeting as if in prayer, ‘if you would like to come and spend a weekend with me at my house in Devonshire.’

  Eureka! It’s out! He has asked her!

  Wait till Billy hears about this.

  Ange hesitates, frowning prettily. She hasn’t even been invited to Cadogan Square yet. For ages Hurleston has stood out like a beacon of hope and promise. For it is at Hurleston, which is entailed only to a male heir, Fabian informed her, that he has his roots. It is there that Fabian’s father and mother live, Lord and Lady Evelyn Ormerod, in the Old Granary to which they moved after their son’s ill-omened first match, as there is no lodge. ‘Um. Um. That’s nice of you, Fabian, but I’m afraid it would be a question of fitting it in. A whole weekend…’

  ‘Or just a day, perhaps. We could fly down on the Sunday morning.’

  ‘That might be more sensible,’ says Ange, hiding the parasitical designs that drive her and matter-of-factly bringing out a well-stuffed diary full of mythical appointments.

  ‘How would the tenth suit you?’

  ‘The tenth of April?’ Already Ange is worrying about stout and functional clothes. She will have to do much research in order to prepare.

  ‘Yes, a fortnight’s time.’

  It is hard to see this man as all-powerful, a tyrant sometimes, according to the things that slip out in conversation, according to the cuttings Billy takes from the papers. Perhaps, when she visits his home, Ange will discover much more about the real Fabian, delve underneath this superior and rather aloof facade which could be misconstrued as kindly and patronising. He hasn’t even kissed her yet, or tried for a feel of her breasts, the first thing Billy did when he knew she fancied him.

  Not that she’d let him if he tried.

  Perhaps this is normal in the upper classes.

  How is Ange to know?

  Alley cats howl and prowl around the dustbins.

  Billy is slipping from depression into downright hypochondria.

  Instead of being thrilled to hear of her progress he thinks only of himself, abandoned with Jacob at Willington Gardens with nowhere to go but the nearby park when the sun is shining outside, and Ange will be gallivanting somewhere in Devon.

  He is more of a baby than Jacob himself and drinking more than he should be.

  ‘It’s only for a day, Billy, sod it, I was originally asked for the whole weekend. And really, if this thing works you’re going to have to put up with much worse than this!’

  ‘But I’m ill,’ groans Billy, sobbing and slamming doors, ‘my eyes are hurting and I’ve got a headache and you didn’t even think to leave me enough money for fags.’

  ‘Tina’ll help you with Jacob if everything gets too much,’ comforts Ange, sure he is making this up. Billy does need a great deal of attention. He always has, and she hasn’t minded in the past. But this is different. He is letting her down at her time of need and she feels unusually cross with him, irritated by his long-suffering face.

  Well look. His appetite is certainly not affected. He digs into the egg and chips she cooks him, he doesn’t hold back on the bread and butter or the tomato sauce.

  Help me, Billy, help me!

  She loves him, oh yes she does, her heart still quickens at the sight of him, but she will not, she cannot succumb to his depressive inertia or how the hell would they survive?

  ‘Billy,’ she confides, ‘something tells me it won’t be long now. Fabian likes me. He likes me in that way, I can feel it. I can see it in his eyes.’

  ‘Fuck him…’

  ‘Don’t you see that as soon as I’ve got that sodding ring on my finger all this will be over?’ How many times does Ange have to spell this out? ‘We’ll be made! We’ll be rich. You won’t be stuck inside this hellhole any longer. A couple of months and I’ve only got to make up some crap…’

  ‘That,’ sighs Billy morosely, ‘would mean going to court.’

  ‘I know that, but…’

  ‘They’d find out who you really were. Everything would come out and they’d hardly award you anything when they realised the whole thing was a scam.’

  ‘No, Billy, no.’ Ange sighs her irritation, and shakes her head. ‘I explained all this before! Nobody asks you anything. It’s a civil matter, not a legal one. As long as everyone’s fully convinced that I am who I say I am, who d’you think is going to go sniffing around trying to prove otherwise? If Fabian believes in me, who d’you think is suddenly going to ask themselves—“Oh, I know, I bet that Angela Harper is really a married woman living in Willington Gardens with a child and a husband.”’

  ‘And there’s no need to be sarcastic,’ says Billy.

  Ange cries and so does Billy. At least this weeping together seems to bring them closer. They go to bed that night and make love as if there’s going to be no tomorrow. As if they must take as much of each other as they can right now, and hold it somewhere safe.

  ‘I’ve just got a feeling about it, that’s all,’ says Billy, smoking a fag and stroking her hair. ‘Something is bound to go wrong. I mean, why not? It always does.’

  10

  ‘DARLING, SHE IS EXQUISITE. Where did you find her?’

  The twins are at Hurleston for the Easter holidays, a factor Fabian overlooked when he made the arrangement with Angela. He worried as soon as he heard them suggest they took Angela down to the stables to look at their ponies.

  The twins are not a trustworthy pair. They enjoy making trouble.

  ‘I met her at the opera, Mother. I gave her a spare seat.’

  ‘But who is the girl?’ Above them the faked verdigris windchimes clang loudly. Lady Elfrida and her son are relaxing in the gazebo in the Old Granary garden, an eight-sided revolving building on runners which, every morning, the burly Elfrida pushes to face the sun, and after that, on the hour every hour. In the summer the entrance will be riotous with climbing roses. Over the years rust has accumulated round the runners which has turned the operation into a difficult one. Elfrida is only just sitting back on her reclining wicker chair, stuffed with cushions, recovering from the first great vertiginous effort of the day. Fabian is perched on a stool beside her, above him is an array of startling papier mâché jungle birds. ‘And where does she hail from?’

  Studying the form. Sires and dams. Family and bloodlines and stock are still important factors in Elfrida’s summing up of the people she meets, particularly the people that form relationships with her children and their children. She herself hails from good Prussian stock. Luckily her daughter, the Hon. Candida, made a very successful marriage and leads a happy country life with her Range Rovers and her deerhounds near Bath, such a beautiful city. She has far more to be concerned about, however, over her handsome son Fabian, whose first two marriages went so disastrously wrong, and she’ll always feel herself to blame for poor Ffiona. After all, Elfrida did encourage the match. Only Nanny Barber, retired and living in a cottage in the grounds with her seamstress friend, Maud Doubleday, had uttered words of caution way back at that time.

  Not that there’s any suggestion of Fabian popping the question to this slip of a girl. Half his age. Young enough to be his daughter. But it is interesting that this is the first woman he has brought home since that ghastly, messy business with Helena, now nearly three years ago.

  ‘She has no background, Mother,’ says Fabian, apologetically. ‘Not that I know of. In fact, her life has been rather sad.’

  ‘She doesn’t look sad to me, my dear. She looks on top of the world.’

  ‘She’s a buyer…’

  ‘A buyer of what?’

  ‘A buyer of lingerie.’

  ‘What? D’you mean knickers and vests?’

  ‘I suppose so, Mother, yes. She’s what you might call a globe-trotter.’

  ‘Which reminds me,’ says Elfrida, heaving herself from the depths of the wicker with a crackle. ‘I must tell Susan to boil that pig’s
head for a good twelve hours. Last time the wretched child made a real hash of it and yet she came with references as long as your arm.’ Elfrida turns back at the entrance. ‘Swivel us round a fraction, dear boy. Country cooking, not all this foreign nonsense, that’s what I told the agency. And do come inside and say hello to your father before lunch.’

  ‘Our mother was murdered, of course,’ the twins chatter amiably on the short journey through the courtyard down to the stable block beyond.

  They are dressed identically in blue jeans, green parkas and green wellington boots. Beside them Angela looks gorgeous in tight leather trousers, ankle boots and a sky-blue duffel coat. They watch her tripping carefully between the piles of dung. ‘Sorry?’ To their great satisfaction Angela Harper looks suitably shocked.

  ‘Yes, you’ve only got to ask Maudie, she knows all about it. She lives with Daddy’s Ba-ba in the cottage they call Halcyon Fields.’

  ‘Halcyon Fields? That sounds like a private nursing home.’

  ‘Well yes, it is, in a way, but it was originally named after the kingfisher in the lake.’ Their Jack Russell terriers, Gog and Magog, cavort around at the children’s feet. ‘Ba-ba and Maudie are dreadfully old. There’s a nurse who visits every day to treat Ba-ba’s leg. Ulcers,’ says Tabitha with a grimace. ‘They smell if you don’t watch them. Ba-ba showed us once. Ugh. Like Henry the Eighth. I’d rather have my leg off than go round with those ugly things, like fungus, growing on it. Wouldn’t you, Pan?’

  But Pan’s more interested in the murder. ‘It was either Daddy or Honesty, and the police couldn’t discover which. They both had motives, you see, but they also had alibis.’

  Angela laughs brittlely. ‘It sounds as if you’ve been making up stories!’

  Pan shakes her crazy mop of red hair. ‘Oh no, you only have to ask Maudie, and Murphy O’Connell, he knows.’

  Ange attempts to change the subject. It is so beautiful here. Green and gold and wooded and traced with streams which meander down to the river below, a Jersey herd contentedly grazing, vegetables lined up and peeping through the dark soil in the high-walled vegetable garden. What a place for children to grow up, what a sense of history. How could anyone bear to leave it? This makes London seem like a nightmare.

  ‘It must be wonderful here in the winter. All these slopes, for sledging in the snow.’

  ‘D’you like Daddy, Angela?’

  She has only known them for minutes but already she senses some malevolent trap. ‘I think your father is very nice.’

  Tabby grins. She throws a stick for Gog, who scampers after it in delight. ‘He likes you. We can tell, can’t we, Pan?’

  ‘Good,’ says Ange lightly. And then, ‘Oh, what lovely ponies!’

  In a small paddock behind the smart pine-built stable sheds two dun-coloured horses are grazing, both with pure white manes and gentle eyes.

  ‘Would you like to see us ride them?’

  Ange leans, cowgirl style, over the railings. Trying to relax into her role. ‘Yes, of course I would.’

  ‘We could saddle up Conker for you, if you like.’

  ‘I don’t ride.’

  The twins both stare at her open-mouthed, as if she’s confessed to some terrible perversion. ‘Did you fall off?’

  Ange is quick to answer. ‘Yes. I had a rather bad experience…’

  ‘And you didn’t get back on at once?’

  ‘No,’ says Ange. ‘That was my mistake. But since then I’ve never dared…’

  ‘Does Daddy know?’

  Ange shakes her head, sees the twins smile at each other. ‘I wouldn’t think so. Why would he?’

  ‘Daddy is mad on riding,’ says Pan malignly. ‘And he only likes people who ride horses.’

  Lord Ormerod, crippled by gout for the last five years, sits in his bathchair in the drawing-room of the Old Granary looking out the french windows with watery blue eyes. His leg rests on a beautifully embroidered Tudor sewing box, just the right height. He puts up with his painful condition with remarkable tolerance. He is not watching the garden this morning, he is watching the cricket from Australia by satellite on the television set in the corner.

  His ancient spaniel lies beside him. ‘Is that a pig I can smell cooking?’

  ‘I think Mother did mention…’

  ‘She thinks she can stir my appetite by filling the house with the smell of food. Yesterday we had to put up with boiling beetroot. God knows what tomorrow will bring. I hear you’ve brought a girl with you, Fabian, m’boy?’

  ‘Mother’s already met her, but now she’s been hijacked by the twins.’

  ‘Huh, probably showing the poor thing the gravestones.’ The old man searches, with his weak eyes, for the sun. ‘Elfrida’s been telling them all she knows about sanctified bones.’ The grandfather clock ticks loudly behind him. ‘Is it time?’

  ‘For a gin? Yes, Father. It’s gone twelve.’

  ‘Help yourself then, old bean. And I’ll have one with you.’

  They sit beside a fiercely crackling fire, making the room far too hot, with toasting forks set either side. If this was once a granary then any old cowshed can be transformed into a palace. Only the soft Devonshire stone on the outside, still studded with nails and horseshoes, and twisted old wooden lintels give a clue to the possibility that this building was ever anything other than a most comfortable country house, albeit in miniature, and converted so long ago that nobody can remember, not in the way that disused barns are converted by today’s cowboys. Every now and again broken bits of ancient farm implements are dug up by the gardener and are taken to the furze-pen field to join what Elfrida optimistically calls her rustic museum. The only recent addition is the chair lift that twice a day conveys the crippled Lord Ormerod and his selection of Wisdens from the hall downstairs up to his bedroom.

  Over their drinks Evelyn and his son discuss the firm, and recent City events, the state of the pound, the Bank of England, the Chancellor’s wise men, the single market and cricket.

  All are dining at the House today because of Fabian’s visitor. On such an occasion, at a quarter to one, the hall-boy, Martin, would normally arrive at the Old Granary to wheel Lord Ormerod over to time his arrival with the booming of the gong, but today his son is present so he will do it. Luncheon will be a strictly family affair, and at tea-time Nanny Barber and Maudie Doubleday will join them.

  ‘How is Mother?’ asks Fabian.

  ‘In the bloom of health, thanks to her Horlicks tablets. Still going to her classes and that appalling swimming. The woman practises some of the frightful contortions before she gets into bed. And still covering various priceless heirlooms with this damn canal art. I rescued a Victorian rosewater dish only the other day. Thrilled to have the twins with her for three weeks of course, gives all three of them a chance to conspire together.’

  His father is made small and wizened by pain. Every time Fabian visits Evelyn seems to have shrunk a little bit further. Fabian sighs. Was it a mistake to invite Angela here? Is she strong enough to take it, the eccentricities of his elderly parents, the downright spitefulness of the twins? And why had he invited her, anyway? It is rare he allows his London lifestyle to spill over into his country retreat. Does he subconsciously want this relationship to develop into something more than a friendship?

  Father comes right out and asks him. He too regrets the lack of an heir. ‘Is this girl I’m about to meet to be my third daughter-in-law, or is this just a passing fancy?’

  Fabian shakes his head. ‘Hell, I’ve only known her a couple of months.’

  ‘Since when did time have anything to do with it?’

  ‘I have been enjoying the novelty of a bachelor life just lately.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that. I married your mother when I was a mere stripling of thirty-one.’

  ‘And never regretted it?’

  ‘Not for one second, old horse, not for one second.’

  In the panelled dining-room Fabian’s haughty ancestors, the men in whiske
rs and hunting gear, the women with bra-less, sagging bosoms, stare down from their frames upon the dark, polished table.

  But luncheon is passable, Susan in the kitchen having managed to rustle up a satisfying meal. The twins, with their carrot curls and their faces smeared with grime, keep up an almost constant chatter, most of it gossipy boarding-school conversation, which frees the adults to enjoy their food.

  ‘So, midear,’ Elfrida addresses the watchful young person on her immediate left, ‘you are not familiar with Devon?’

  ‘Not really,’ smiles Angela shyly, ‘my aunt was not a great traveller…’

  ‘Ah yes, your aunt, Fabian did mention… an interesting woman I believe.’

  ‘I think you would consider her rather dull.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, Aunty Val does live rather like a nun.’

  ‘Sensible woman,’ puts in Lord Ormerod from his thronelike chair at the top of the table, working away with his toothpick.

  ‘So what does she think of your interesting work?’

  Angela says, ‘She never expresses much interest. She never did, even when I was a child I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, how terribly sad,’ says Pandora.

  The fireplace in here is so large that a dozen people could stand inside it. Every time it is lit it must burn a whole tree. The twins listen to every word, destructive and mischievous. Fabian would never have invited Angela here if he’d remembered they were on holiday. He moves the conversation on. If there’s one thing his parents can’t stand it is introspection, and sad introspection is just not acceptable in this house.

  ‘Did you get a chance to ride this morning?’

  Angela pauses, her silver spoon half-way to her mouth. ‘I don’t ride, Fabian.’

  ‘She had a beastly accident,’ puts in Tabitha, that viper in the grass. ‘When she was small.’

  ‘It is beginning to seem as if Angela is a most unfortunate person, one way or another.’