Beggar Bride

by Gillian White

  ‘Fine, Ruth, fine.’

  Fabian stretches his legs. He’ll shave when he gets home, and shower, he needs freshening up before he dines at the club with his old friend Jerry Boothroyd—another good reason for being without a wife. Freedom. Freedom to make up your mind at the last minute. Freedom to dine with who you like. Freedom to choose your own time and place, and wear what you damn well please.

  But he is remembering the interfering Ffiona. Helena, that ghastly creature, gave him rather too much freedom for his liking. There is a limit, damn it, otherwise freedom swiftly becomes neglect. She was never in. Never home. Always about some blasted tomfoolery, digging her nose in where it wasn’t wanted, upsetting the neighbours with her anti-blood sports campaigning, with her organic crop demands, her noisy windmills and her humane farming nonsense. Hah, what a damn fool he was. But, by Jove, that’s a mistake he won’t make again in a hurry.

  There is no getting away from the past even when you’re relaxing comfortably with a friend in the buttoned-brown-leather-and-smoky, manly environment of the club. No women allowed in here yet, thank God, none of that nonsense.

  ‘They have asked me,’ says Fabian, glancing at Jeremy to gauge his reaction, ‘to go on Desert Island Discs.’

  ‘That’s very flattering,’ says the portly Jerry. ‘I didn’t know you were such a popular personality.’

  ‘Contentious,’ says Fabian, toying with his duck. ‘Not popular. Infamous rather than famous thanks to the spite of the media. I’m not at all sure that I am a suitable subject. I suppose there are those who would be fascinated to know what music one of the most highly paid men in England would choose. The great mysterious sum of my existence wrapped up in eight records.’ He picks up his wine and stares glassily through it. ‘Success? It makes me feel old, Jerry. Old and spent. I don’t know if I’m ready to sum up anything at this stage of my life.’

  ‘Forty-five isn’t old. You’re still in your prime, old man. You’ll have to plump for something classy,’ says Jerry, a blob of apple sauce standing out vividly on his puce chin. ‘Either that or shock ’em with the hokey-cokey or some more ribald ditty. It’s when they start asking if you’ve any regrets that you really have to keep an eye open for the grim reaper.’ A good number of Jeremy’s peas have found their way to the pristine cloth. He considers them sightlessly. ‘Is there anything? D’you already have regrets?’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ asks Fabian, conscious of his past stretching back and back. He and Jerry were at Winchester together. ‘If you’re honest. And I hope I will never be braggart enough to croon with such insensitivity, I did it my way.’ Fabian gives a rueful smile as he regards his best friend. Jeremy went in for the law and is now a respected and lucrative barrister, head of chambers, married for twenty years to a woman who he obviously still adores, three sons to carry on his name, to take fly-fishing on the Dee, to vie with on the Italian slopes, share his love of yachts.

  ‘But you’re certainly not a new man.’ Jerry raises his glass as if in belated congratulations.

  ‘Far from it. Although Helena would have preferred me to be.’

  ‘But not Ffiona?’

  ‘Oh no. Ffiona was the old-fashioned type. No pampering was ever sufficient for the sweet and fluffy Ffiona. She liked her men to be dominant.’

  ‘Shame about all that business,’ says Jerry, clearing his throat. ‘Not on, quite frankly, not on at all.’

  Fabian might jest, but he deeply regrets the failures of his two marriages—his marriage to Helena had certainly failed before her tragic death. Surely all men, whatever they might say, would prefer a loving home with a wife waiting, caring, ministering to one’s needs. Elfrida and Evelyn, his own parents, struck lucky, so why hasn’t he? Ffiona was the obvious choice, too obvious, maybe? Too stereotyped to be realistic, a product of Cheltenham and Switzerland, a country girl, a dim-witted child with the velvet and peach complexion of an English rose. He had known her all his life and she was adored by Elfrida.

  ‘Darling Fabian, you can’t go wrong. Don’t be a bloody fool, dear boy. Grab her while she’s available.’

  It was only later that he discovered her love of horses had nothing to do with the beasts themselves but was more concerned with the grooms, and any other low life she might find flinging piles of dung at the stables. In the end, even watching her gyrate on a saddle Fabian found unnerving.

  ‘You’re so bloody boring in bed.’ She had stung him once, to the core, in that high-pitched bleating voice of hers, with an accusation he has never forgotten and never quite recovered from. ‘It’s like sleeping with an old bull seal. Flap flap. On, off, grunt, snore. And must you wear those appalling pyjamas?’

  He was shocked. Hell. She should know. She was the one with all the experience. That lamentable, evil-tongued crone, rampant, uncontrollable!

  And then she bore him a daughter. The announcement went in The Times, of course, and all the relevant periodicals. ‘I am calling her Honesty,’ Ffiona declared, touching up her nails in the most expensive clinic in London, ‘so that one result of this marriage of ours can be regarded as a virtue.’

  Shopping and fucking. Hell, surely Ffiona herself must have coined that expression and by some fluke of extraordinary luck Honesty does not seem to have inherited Ffiona’s remarkable sex drive.

  To the contrary.

  Although she does spend money like water but Fabian is more than contented with this as long as her lust can be satisfied in the various boutiques and parlours off the Brompton Road. What a blessing he’d followed Elfrida’s advice and shipped her off to boarding school pretty pronto before she could fall under the influence of Helena. His mother is a wise and wily old bird. No, he sighs while contemplating his brandy. He cannot linger long tonight, chewing the cud with old Jerry. His is a punishing schedule and he flies to Geneva in the morning. No, in spite of her mother, Honesty is, and always has been, the perfect daughter.

  Oh dear, oh dear.

  The message he finds on his bedroom fax is nothing short of alarming. The Rudge must consider this matter pretty damn serious for it to merit the use of such a contemporary method of communication. He had no idea they possessed such a thing. And at this hour! It has gone midnight.

  ‘Supplying illegal material’ in The Rudge’s language, unable to bring themselves to use the tasteless word, must mean drugs, damn it! This is unbelievable! Fabian rips the paper from the machine in order to study it more closely. Bewildered, he sits on the edge of his giant bed and reads while his feet automatically search the deep-piled carpet for his slippers. Pandora and Tabitha have been discovered supplying illegal material to children in Rubens House, which, as he must know, is a most serious offence and in ordinary circumstances would merit immediate expulsion. Hah, thank God, so they must be talking about cannabis or marijuana, nothing more serious than that, substances referred to as pollen and northern lights by their wretched mother who smoked both quite flagrantly and suffered with a permanent cold from sniffing cocaine. But has the school informed the police? Does he need a solicitor?

  The fax doesn’t tell him that. Merely that his children have been dispatched to the san to await his arrival. ‘Which we presume will be some time tomorrow,’ the message goes on. It is even signed by the revered headmistress herself, the poet and thinker, Dame Claudia Purchase.

  Hell. Fabian can’t possibly get there tomorrow. The totally trustworthy Simon will have to go in his place and of course he will have to emphasise the fact that the twins are still suffering from the violent death of their mother—the extenuating circumstance, he is certain, that saved them from being sent home in disgrace immediately. That, and the knowledge that if this most sensitive information got out the school would suffer disastrous consequences. But where could the twins be getting their hands on drugs of any kind, and where is the money coming from? Fabian is most careful to ensure they are not stigmatised by having more spending power than anyone else in their peer group.

  He reminds himself that thir
teen is a difficult age.

  He tells himself that the campaign to legalise such harmless substances is a sensible one and this one blight on their characters does not suggest that the twins are hovering on the edge of some criminal abyss.

  He excuses himself by reasoning that this is the behaviour of mixed up adolescents, and of course his children are confused after all they have been through in the last couple of years.

  But in all his anxious contemplations he is led back to the one fact that he cannot escape.

  He is not enough for them.

  They are uncanny and peculiar and he does not even like them.

  With a father as pressured as himself, damn it, these children, these strange little girls seriously need some kind of mother.

  7

  HAH. LOOK AT THIS. Against all the odds, against astronomical odds, she’s done it.

  With efforts of titanic proportions.

  Envious glances from some of the women and interested looks from most of the men as she enters the foyer at Covent Garden feeling like a queen. Dress presented on her sixteenth birthday by Eileen Coburn—let out—pink suede jacket with ostrich feathers on hood and collar, and shoes from Lilian’s second-hand emporium in Bayswater, never worn, not a scratch on either sole, and a handbag to match which cost her a pound. Hair by David Bates and who hasn’t heard of him—she couldn’t pay, she slipped out of the salon after the cut, pretending to visit the loo.

  Haunt of the perfumed and the privileged. The superior air is exotically perfumed, the chandeliers shine and quiver on jewels and furs, clumps of people, some in orbit—quite a jump from Waterloo, the station where she stopped at the ladies to remove her mac and make last minute adjustments, turning her back on the unswept litter, the sights and sounds of the homeless. It is easy to strike up a conversation when she is looking like this, not waif-like and pathetic, her childhood appeal to the middle classes, but delicate and petite like a piece of perfect porcelain, the kind of popular item you see for sale in the Sunday Mirror magazine… a whole collection of beautiful ladies, or thimbles, or dolls, or bone china plates decorated with the glum faces of the British Royal clan.

  The more respectable papers offer Scrabble and Monopoly Boards for collectors with silver pieces in solid mahogany. Who needs them? Who buys them? And they’re certainly not cheap, either.

  Ange smiles wryly. How very predictable men are—this type of man at any rate. A yuppie past his sell-by date, an oily, asinine fellow with a waistcoat and matching bow tie made out of an old Gladstone bag, not unlike Kenneth Clarke, and fully convinced that everyone likes him.

  ‘I am Aaron Teale.’ The young man with the programme in his hand invades her space with his garlic breath, too close for comfort, unprepared to beat about the bush. He peers through two shining curtains of hair. ‘How come I haven’t seen you here before?’

  ‘Said the prince to Cinderella!’ Angela Harper laughs at her own little joke. It is important that she be seen conversing with someone else, in case Fabian Ormerod or any of his party spots her. She will have to be tolerant and humour this person, and he could come in useful at the interval. Could he be here alone?

  She is glad she took such pains with her hands, and the rings she chose from Selfridges look perfectly real in this glittering setting, no one would question their value on a woman so obviously chic and well-heeled. Now Aaron Teale has the temerity to take one of her hands in his own.

  ‘Meet my sister, Annabelle.’ He turns back to Ange with a kind of slobbering leer. ‘Who did you say you were?’

  ‘I didn’t actually,’ says Ange. ‘But I’m Angela Harper.’

  But Annabelle’s vacant blue eyes are searching the crowd for somebody else. Ange has only a photograph, and a badly crumpled one at that, if only she could know what Fabian Ormerod looked like in person. It’s only when you know someone well that you can recognise them from behind. And who will he be accompanying tonight?

  It hadn’t been hard to guess, as a man labelled patron of the arts in Who’s Who, that he would be interested in Covent Garden. She was jerked into this realisation when she noticed a copy of Opera House sticking out of somebody’s dustbin. She’d stopped in her tracks, she’d stared at the magazine for a good five minutes before the idea registered and she took it, carefully looking about her, for fear someone might think her a tramp.

  Her days of delving in dustbins are over.

  Why shouldn’t she label herself as a ‘Friend’? Surely the list of members would be too long, it wouldn’t be worthwhile keeping a check on every phone call. She’d dialled the number, giving the strong impression she was in regular contact, enquiring about available boxes. ‘I thought Cody/Ormerod had that box on that night,’ she attempted the casual remark, hands gripping the receiver like claws as she spoke.

  ‘No, let me see, Cody/Ormerod have the first Friday of every month…’

  Ange let the girl witter on before she quietly put down the phone. And then it was merely a matter of contacting Fabian himself.

  Not such a simple task when she put it to the test.

  Undaunted, she argued her way through a barrage of officials before finally reaching the great man himself. He was perfectly charming, a kind man, concerned.

  And from that telephone call she gathered that he would be there himself. A real stroke of luck. She wouldn’t have to work her way up through his underlings and their wives to reach him.

  ‘This is barmy,’ said Billy, as he watched her prepare, angry when she told him how much she’d risked to acquire the jacket. She mouthed at herself in the cracked mirror, glad of her talent for mimicry.

  ‘They were risks you should never have taken,’ he shouted, carrying on alarmed. ‘I ought to have known there was something up, all this going off on your own all of a sudden. Why, Ange? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  She looked at him, ruffled and pink from sleep. Dozing in the daytime like an old, worn out man. ‘Because you would have stopped me doing this.’ She compressed her lips to a tight line over her lipstick. ‘I didn’t want the hassle,’ she said.

  ‘If we’d flogged that coat we could have got out of here.’

  ‘Yes. Exactly. And we will, don’t you see?’

  No, he couldn’t see. Billy can’t see further than the end of his sodding nose. ‘Oh bullshit, this is a game, Ange, nothing more than a fantasy. Nothing’ll come of it, can’t you see? OK, you’ve got this far, I’ll give you that, you’ve got a chance to meet this turd. And you’ve got all the gear to tart yourself up in. But now what, Ange? What’s he going to do now? Fall at your feet? Bollocks.’

  ‘Why can’t you have some faith in me, Billy? Just for a change?’

  ‘Oh? It’s that way round is it? Sorry! Sorry!’ He paused as his distress almost choked him. Billy glowered. ‘I’m that thick I almost imagined it was you who had no faith in me! You didn’t even give me a chance to tell you my ideas…’

  Ange sighed. ‘I know your ideas, Billy,’ she said tiredly. ‘You’d buy a van…’

  ‘Not just any old van, Ange. Something we could turn into a home…’

  Ange slapped her new patent-leather handbag down on the bed beside her. ‘Leave it out, Billy, for God’s sake. For the last sodding time I am not taking to the road like one of your hairy travellers, smoking skunk and weaving baskets. Dancing to the pipes… I want a real life,’ she shouted, ‘four solid walls and a garden.’

  Billy, defeated, marched from the room.

  When she had finished tarting herself up, after she’d carefully slid the party dress over her body and zipped it up, slipped on the shoes, finished her make-up, she walked into the sitting-room and stood in the middle of the floor, waiting for his reaction.

  He sat in his chair, smoking, sulking, gradually aware of her presence. He took his eyes up to her face, he swallowed, ‘Oh Christ! Ange! Is that you?’

  She laughed in delight. She swirled round. ‘D’you like it?’

  He stood up, he came towards her and touche
d her lightly as if she was merely a ghostly image and might disappear if he blinked. ‘I do. I do like it. You don’t look real, Ange. You look like someone off the telly, someone out of Baywatch.’

  ‘Like a doll, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose. Like one of those Barbies Petal’s got… but prettier.’

  ‘Well,’ Ange tossed her head, not bothering to remind him that Petal next door had carefully chopped off all her dolls’ long hair. A disturbed child, undoubtedly. She posed deliberately, like a model. ‘Do I stand a chance?’

  Billy blew out a lungful of smoke. ‘Anyone’d want to screw you.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. I’m not talking about screwing, you arsehole. You make it sound as if I’m a tart.’

  ‘No, no I didn’t mean that.’ Billy’s not too good at expressing himself at the best of times. ‘Not at all. Any man would want you… not just in that way… I mean, look at your hair!’

  He is used to seeing Ange at her worst. Never at her best before except when they went to get married but then she was so pregnant her skirt didn’t do up properly, and her legs were swollen so she had to wear flat shoes which were worn through at the soles. Mostly Ange dresses for warmth, cheapness and convenience. Old sweaters and patched jeans are her favourite garments. Oh yes, her hair is always clean, but messy, scraped back and tied with a tatty old chiffon scarf, or hanging loose, untended. But look at her now. Suddenly he felt threatened and frightened and unprotected.

  A woman who can look like this. What can she want with an arsehole like him, a man who cannot manage his life?

  ‘It’s for us, Billy,’ Ange moved towards him, careful not to touch him, not to spoil her careful image, and the flat stank of fried fishfingers, fag smoke and mildew. ‘I’m doing this for the three of us.’

  Billy felt square and full. ‘I don’t like it, Ange,’ he said. ‘If this thing doesn’t work, or worse, if it does, you won’t want to come back to us.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Billy.’