Beggar Bride

by Gillian White

  There was one moment of awful fear as, caught and helpless, her control over her emotions, her sensations, was snatched away. There was a sense of profound and agonising despair, then the plain premonition that in another moment she would disintegrate, sacrificed to a stronger, indomitable will.

  Gradually her terror and suspense turned into a hunger as great as his own. It was shameful. Quite shameful. To her shame her arms strained to hold him closer as he touched her, her head turning restlessly from side to side. Lightly, expertly, his hands undid her clothing and she moaned and groaned, lost in his wild embrace, as her clothes fell in a heap round her feet. Eagerly they faced each other, she painfully, avidly female, he ravishing and victorious.

  He seized her wrist in a strong grip and twisted it, and then she was lying on the floor at his feet. He seemed to loom gigantically above her, his face in darkness against the background of trees but before she could move he had knelt across her, jerked her arms above her head and held them there. Their bodies moved with the same rhythm, all sense of time disappeared under these new and fantastic sensations. He was a ruthless rider, despoiling and unmerciful, he drove her on to the most unendurable excitement. She caught a glimpse of his face, dark and shining, wearing a strange triumphant smile.

  Oh yes, Honesty knows all the signs. She only has to think of Callister and all of a sudden her entire being fills, like this, with an awareness of him so intense and strong and absolute that wherever she is and whatever she happens to be doing seems trivial and superficial compared with his wonderful power. She remembers the crispness between her fingers of the black curly hairs of his chest. She smells his breath and tastes his mouth. She recalls every sensation with such intensity that she is swept by waves of feeling, her entire body surges with erotic longing. Deeply and slowly and luxuriously she sighs. She is going down to Devon tomorrow, only fourteen hours between them and she will be revived, taken, back in his arms again.

  ‘Oh, Callister,’ she whispers in her thoughts, ‘let me go… let me…’

  As she says her farewells the smile she gives to Angela is sincere. Does the woman not feel some cold premonition? No, it would seem not. And Honesty feels almost genuinely sorry for this little woman who, so like poor Helena, is unaware of the forces which now work against her, the cold and powerful forces of darkness conjured up by a black, primordial magician.

  25

  THE FAT IS IN the fire and the cat is out of the bag.

  ‘That’s it. We scarper, pronto.’

  OK, it had to happen, but why now? Why now?

  It is August 12th, Jacob’s second birthday, and now he manages to walk up stairs unaided, throw a ball without falling over and tear the wrapping off his presents. Ange, so concerned that he make good progress, notes his little achievements in a special diary. What a joy it is to give him the kind of splendid presents they give him today, a Fisher-Price garage that he just sat and gawped at with a beautiful smile on his face, a pull-along dachshund that yaps and wags its tail, and dozens of little brightly coloured treats, books, and a cuddly pink elephant.

  Ah yes. And just look at these staggering surroundings! Out of this world. The nursery wing at Hurleston is a little palace, a shrine to the fantasy of childhood; a playroom with built in cupboards, climbing frames, play houses with gingham curtains and a bright red slide. Dots and stars in loud primary colours splatter the cushions and rugs, there’s a frieze of ducks and geese and chickens, the chairs and sofas are covered in the same cheery material. Tina and Petal share the bedroom that was once used by the nursery maid, Billy and Jacob share Nanny’s room while the Hon. Archibald himself sleeps in the night nursery in a frilly white cot from Harrods. There’s a special back staircase they can use to save disturbing the rest of the household when they go out for walks, or rides to the beach or the moor together.

  ‘We get out of here, NOW!’

  Tina and Billy stare at Ange, totally stupefied, aghast at this sudden panic.

  This is the first chance she has had to speak to them alone since she arrived back from London by train yesterday. Dear God, it is all happening just as she has foreseen in her worst dreams and the strain of it is awful. ‘Listen to what I am saying, she knows, Billy, Honesty knows! Else why would she ask me all those questions, and it wasn’t just that, it was the tone of voice she used, sarcastic, secret smirks behind her smiles, knowing eyes. We’ve got to get out before they arrest us because if Honesty knows then who else knows? Fabian himself? Elfrida, Evelyn? My God, perhaps we are all playing the same great deception game together…’

  ‘Hey, cool it, use your nous, Ange,’ says Billy in his paper hat. It annoys her that he looks like a clown in this kind of emergency, but Ange listens, all alert, desperately wanting to be convinced. ‘If that cock Fabian even suspected we would be banged up by now, he’s not going to bother to play bloody games, not for a moment.’

  But that answer’s not good enough. ‘Honesty knows. Don’t look at me that way, you really have to believe me, and if she knows then Ffiona knows, and those two are quite likely to do anything to punish not only Fabian but me as well.’

  Tina, disbelieving, as if she knows best, even has the nerve to try and play it down. She starts to light Jacob’s birthday cake candles and Ange wishes she wouldn’t because she can’t concentrate on anything but this awful conversation and she would have liked to light the candles herself. What the hell has she got to do or say to convince them? ‘God, Ange,’ says Tina. ‘You talk as if your very life is at risk!’

  Hysteria rises, and a sense of fury. ‘Listen you prat, according to Fabian himself it might well be! And this is really funny.’ She holds Jacob up to the cake before Tina can get hold of him and do it for her, ‘Blow, Jacob! Blow hard for Mummy! This is damn bloody funny, coming from you, Billy, who couldn’t wait to get out of this whole sodding mess. How you moaned when I suggested this might take two years! You moaned! Well, we’ll soon be there, Fabian and I have had our first anniversary and since then four more months have gone by…’

  ‘Did it occur to you, Ange, that Honesty might just have been trying to be spiteful?’

  ‘Don’t come these comforting arguments with me! Stop it, sod you both! If we got out now we would have enough money…’

  ‘Split three ways it wouldn’t be,’ Tina butts in. ‘You did promise, and when you divide it by three it doesn’t add up to all that much!’

  Christ! Greedy cow. How can she talk this way? A year ago, Tina would have thought one grand was some kind of miracle, fallen into her lap with such ease! And now she’s got a small fortune and for doing sod all. She could use the money as a deposit for a small house for her and Petal, or go abroad with it, America perhaps, and get a job as a nanny out there. References from the Ormerod family would be worth their weight in thousand-dollar notes. If Tina played her cards right, if she worked on her image she could get married, start a new life, the whole world would be laid at her feet and yet she and Billy are harping on about being too hasty!

  ‘Clever boy, Jacob! Happy birthday! Happy birthday! Daddy’s going to make some clever balloon animals now, you sit in your chair and watch!’

  The pretty, fragile Petal, dressed as a fairy in blue netting, drags Jacob across the room to the nursing chair and sits there waiting, with the birthday boy on her lap. Archie is already leaping up and down in the baby bouncer, an activity he can’t get enough of as his little bow legs jerk and dance and he blows disgusting bubbles.

  Billy sits cross-legged on the floor and begins to blow up some long, thin balloons, the perfect party entertainer. The fool. The joker. She wants to hit him. Take that daft look off his face. ‘And what about him?’ he turns round and asks.

  ‘Archie? Well, what about him?’

  ‘You know what he will be missing—if you decide to give this up and run away.’

  ‘What are you sodding on about, Billy?’

  Billy stretches a red balloon, it squeaks, Ange shudders, she could never bear the sound, li
ke chalk, or nails searing down a blackboard. Shivers go down her spine when he says, ‘I am talking about Archie’s inheritance.’

  Ange cannot deny that this has crossed her mind at times, just the thought of the lifestyle her youngest child will be giving up when Billy and she return to their rightful roots. ‘But, Billy, that would mean we stay here virtually forever!’

  ‘Nope,’ says Billy, pulling funny faces at Jacob and twisting two balloons round one another until they hurt. Ouch they hurt, they grind on her nerves. Ange grits her teeth. ‘We would only have to stay until Archie went to boarding school, seven is the preferred age I think, and there’s no way you or anyone else is going to convince Fabian that his only son should try any other sort of education.’

  Is he mad? ‘Seven?’

  ‘Seven, Ange. Seven. And when Archie reaches seven he won’t need a nanny any more, you can leave Fabian, but at least Archie won’t miss out on everything that’s going here.’

  What? What the hell’s he on about? Desperation wells up inside her. If only he’d leave those bloody balloons alone! He twists with his hands and he twists with his words, and both are painful to Ange’s ears. ‘What? You mean leave Archie here, with Fabian? And us go and live somewhere else?’

  Billy flushes with guilty excitement as he hurries on to explain. ‘That might not be necessary. After all, Honesty’s gone back to live with Ffiona…’

  ‘But Honesty is an adult woman! It’s not the same at all, see.’ Ange is weary, oh so weary. None of these arguments ought to be necessary. Not between her and Billy. ‘Fabian would never allow his son to leave Hurleston and come and live with me, not in a million years! You know that, Billy, you know that very well. It would mean staying here for another six years, living on our nerves, never knowing when the shit was going to hit the fan and then, just like that, we would abandon him! Well, you know where you can stuff that sodding idea!’

  But Tina has sided with Billy. And now, with a feigned carelessness, she sits and shakes her silly head.

  The truth slices like a knife through her brain. ‘You’ve talked about this! You have both talked behind my back and reached this decision without me!’

  They’ve no need to answer. Ange can see how things stand and Tina needn’t bother to deny it. ‘You make it sound as if it’s a conspiracy,’ says Tina, so disruptive, so mischievous, ‘when it’s not. Not at all. It’s just an idea that has come to Billy and me while we’ve been chatting over these last months. We knew you’d be against it and we didn’t know how to bring it up.’

  This is outrageous. ‘And this seemed like the right moment, did it?’

  ‘It did,’ says Billy, manoeuvring two of the wretched balloons to form the shape of a couple of horns. He is smiling. Always smiling, the barmy sod, she could convince him if Tina wasn’t here, if he’d still been on his own, and Ange gazes at him, dry-mouthed, unable even to swallow. ‘There!’ he says to Jacob, and the child claps his hands. ‘A Bambi!’

  She loves them both so totally, Archie, so bouncy, rompy and ridiculous, and little Jacob, eighteen months older—funny how she always considers him as the youngest, still, and the most in need of protection. Just the vaguest fear that they might endure the kind of childhood Ange had drives her to dementia.

  ‘I’m so pleased with your progress just lately,’ said the lumpen Sandra Biddle on Ange’s last visit to her gloomy offices, smelling of charity cardboard boxes and pink, utilitarian polish. The biscuits they sometimes serve are those horrible pink wafers—who would buy them? ‘You do look so much better Angela, you’ve filled out, and you sound so much more contented. I am so glad things seem to be working out at Willington Gardens. No more talk of a van, then, no more ideas about taking to the road with two young children?’

  ‘Billy’s got work now,’ said Ange, ‘seasonal work on the roads down south and the money is making all the difference.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sandra. ‘I called round to see you the other day, I was in the area, so I thought I’d take a chance. You weren’t in, unfortunately, and neither was Tina. How is Tina, by the way? I haven’t seen her for some time now.’

  Ange twinges with irritation. How many times has she told Tina, just lately, to get in touch with Sandra Biddle? It’s this sort of thing that threatens to jeopardise the whole enterprise, the least she and Billy can do is help her by acting a little responsibly.

  ‘And Jacob? And Archie?’

  ‘I’m still going to the clinic with Jacob,’ Ange said, quite truthfully, she does go when she gets the chance, when she goes on one of her mythical visits to Aunty Val. ‘And they’re dead chuffed with his progress. He is just about to have his second birthday.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ Sandra agreed. ‘To be quite honest with you, Angela, at one time I thought that child would never thrive. And you didn’t seem to be able to cope with it at all.’

  ‘It was awful, apart from the money worries, and Billy being out of work, and settling in the flat, I think I was probably suffering from post-natal depression.’ She gave Sandra a positive smile. ‘And thank God that hasn’t happened this time.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be thrilled to hear that I’ve got some very good news for you both. The council have decided to give you one of the new houses on the Broughton estate.’

  Ange frowned, hesitated too long? ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘Yes you do, the ones behind the Co-op and the old Regal Cinema? They’re very nice, three-bedroomed, night storage heaters, infant and junior school right next door, small shopping precinct…’

  ‘How wonderful! I didn’t know…’

  Oh not now, not now.

  ‘I am always busying myself behind the scenes, you know, working away on your behalf.’

  ‘Tina will be disappointed, being left behind.’

  ‘Tina’s only got one child. And she doesn’t have a man working to pay the increased rent,’ Sandra reminded her.

  ‘No, of course. I can’t wait to tell Billy!’ lied Ange.

  ‘You’ll want to move in right away of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ange agreed, bewildered. ‘Oh yes. We certainly will.’

  And so, of course, there was all that to be dealt with. Billy had to hire a ramshackle van to fit the role, they had to manhandle all their tatty belongings down the three flights of stairs while Tina minded the kids in her old flat. They told Fabian they were off to the moor for an all-day picnic and the whole thing was a mad rush, it was late before they got back to Devon, exhausted. And while the neighbours at Willington Gardens couldn’t give a toss about what anyone did, or whether they were in or out or dead or alive or hovering in limbo somewhere between the two, at the Broughtons matters were quite different. People were trying, you could tell by the few efforts some had made with their small gardens. And some doors had been painted in individual colours, an effort at self-expression, there were a few downmarket cars undergoing repairs on the road outside.

  A few nosy women congregated to watch them move in or, more likely, to see what their sparse belongings looked like, to judge them. People were proud of their brand-new houses, they didn’t want any old problem family with a couple of rottweilers moving in here.

  Ange and Billy were in too much of a hurry to pass the time of day and this didn’t please the neighbours. She thought she heard somebody whispering, ‘snooty cow’. As soon as the work was finished they had to go, pick Tina and the kids up, and drive all the way back to Hurleston. Ange absolutely refused to stay the night at Cadogan Square because of Murphy O’Connell’s unnerving attitude. But everyone was well aware they would have to spend some time at the Broughtons or tongues would soon start wagging.

  Would you credit it? If it’s not one thing it’s another.

  But Tina MUST keep in touch with Sandra Biddle. That is essential, whatever they all decide. Ange loathes visiting the social worker, she always has, even as a child, even when she felt Sandra to be her only friend in the world, although the woman means well she is a living symb
ol of Ange’s past, of her old hopeless helplessness.

  They can’t continue the discussion because the twins arrive just in time to catch the end of the party tricks. This so often happens, they’re all together, feeling safe, and then they are infiltrated by the enemy and suddenly everyone has to shut down and pretend to be somebody else. The whole atmosphere changes, and it’s as noticeable as the temperature dropping by ten degrees. It almost makes you shiver. Sometimes it gets hard to remember who you actually are.

  Billy looks across at Ange and winks reassuringly. He is right, she supposes, watching the children playing together, there is no sign from either Tabitha or Pandora that anything is even slightly amiss and they join in the party spirit, Pandora sits with Jacob on her knee showing him pictures in a new Mother Goose, a German version to encourage languages, a gift from Archie’s grandmother.

  And then, right out of the blue, ‘It’s really funny how alike Jacob and Archie are,’ says Tabby. ‘When you look at them, I mean, and they’re not even vaguely related.’

  ‘Oh? Do you think so?’ says Ange, heart thumping while she tries for her most careless attitude. ‘That’s probably because they are both very dark, and they’ve got the same kind of eyes. Haven’t you, pet?’

  ‘Well,’ and Tabby, that wretched child, is not going to let her interesting observation pass so easily. ‘If Archie was a bit bigger you would almost think they were twins, like us. I mean, if you dressed them in the same clothes, don’t you think, Angela?’

  26

  IT’S OK. IT’S OK. Ange need not have worried, not on that score anyway. Tabitha and Pandora have too much excitement going on in their lives at the moment without giving much thought to whether two boring, smelly babies are look-alikes or not. They all look the same anyway and Tabitha forgot the remark as soon as she’d made it.