Beggar Bride

by Gillian White

  ‘You’ll never believe this and I shouldn’t be telling you now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Helena is pregnant. Isn’t that just dandy?’

  Honesty was jolted by the shock. ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘Well, this part I know I ought to keep to myself, but it’s all been so harrowing I really need to share it.’

  ‘Go on!’ Bad enough that the twins had come along to take her place in her father’s affections, luckily Fabian never seemed to take to those children at all, probably because they are smelly and unattractive, brought up so far from the accepted Ormerod nursery code of Godliness and cleanliness. No one could really love them.

  But Helena, pregnant again? Honesty felt like a handicapped creature, she turned cold inside, she hugged herself to get warm. What if Helena’s child was a boy, what if she lost all her prospects overnight and Callister disappeared with them?

  ‘She came to Murphy last night wanting him to find somewhere discreet where she could go to have an abortion!’ Estelle quivered with disapproval, her double jowls kept going after the rest of her body had stopped. ‘She sat on the sofa where you’re sitting now, Murphy here at the table, and made her request. Murphy said he would see what he could do. I just listened and said nothing.’

  An abortion? So there was some hope, after all. ‘Why does Helena want an abortion?’

  ‘I’m not sure I should tell you this. I swore myself to secrecy but perhaps it’s best you should know, she’ll need all the support she can get in the weeks and months to come. Apparently,’ and Estelle leaned further forward, ‘the child is not your father’s!’ Estelle jumped back from this dangerous revelation as if spattered by hot chip fat. ‘Now I’m not one to criticise, I pride myself that I can see the points of view of all parties concerned in an argument, and there are times,’ Estelle nodded mysteriously, she drew in a slow, deep breath, ‘there are situations when I can see that abortion would be the appropriate action to take. But not, certainly not, because it might make things awkward, merely because one might be involved in some petty deception which is what Lady Helena was implying.’

  Petty deception? Hardly petty! Honesty held her breath. Why didn’t Estelle stop rambling and come to the point. ‘So she’s going to get rid of it?’

  Estelle drew herself up. ‘No, she most certainly is not!’

  ‘She’s not?’

  ‘It took me nearly all night, but in the end, I am glad to say, I persuaded her! After all, Sir Fabian need never know. What does it matter who one’s father is?’

  Honesty held herself tighter. ‘You changed her mind?’

  ‘Thank the good Lord, yes I did. Sometimes one’s principles have to be overridden and Helena is such a virtuous, honest person. And she told Murphy that she’d changed her mind this morning before she left, Lord be praised.’

  Honesty’s eyes were big and bright and scared. She shuddered, a sharp, spasmodic shudder that began at her shoulders and travelled all the way down her body. For God’s sake. ‘But why?’

  For Estelle the answer was simple, and she gave it slowly and clearly as if she were addressing a gormless child. ‘Because she saw that what she had decided to do was wrong!’

  Honesty struggled furiously with her self-control. She lost the battle and shouted, startling the fat, complacent cook with her anger-distorted face, ‘But what gave you the right to interfere with Helena’s decision? It wasn’t up to you, Estelle, it was nothing to do with you!’

  ‘Well, I say…’

  ‘How could you, Estelle, how could you? You’ve seen how badly they treated me…’

  ‘Excuse me, Honesty dear, but sending you away to school was merely…’

  ‘Shut up! Shut up, you blasted old fool. What do you know about it and what have you gone and done? D’you realise what you have done? Couldn’t you have let things alone, damn you! Of course Helena should not lie to my father. That sort of deception would be wicked, far more wicked than getting rid of a wretched foetus.’

  Estelle, affronted beyond endurance, got up and moved to the sink. She stood with her back to Honesty, hands in her overall pockets, shaped like a child’s spinning top she turned a complete and enraged circle. ‘I don’t allow Murphy to speak to me in this way, let alone…’

  ‘I am your employer, Estelle, might I remind you, if you don’t mind…’

  ‘But I do mind, Miss Honesty, this is outrageous,’ said Estelle, proud and defiant, ‘and I’m afraid I am going to have to report this shocking rudeness to Sir Fabian.’

  Honesty fell back, shattered and exhausted. She lowered her challenging eyes. ‘You can’t. You can’t tell him that Helena’s child isn’t his. He’d hate you if you told him that. He’d never believe you anyway and he’d tell you you’d been meddling where you have no right to meddle.’ To herself she admitted that Fabian wouldn’t believe her either.

  ‘I wish I’d never mentioned it, for my sins. Just goes to show. Here was I thinking you were a sensible grown-up young lady now, with some understanding of life and its problems, and here you are, nothing but a nasty, selfish little prig caring about nothing but your own greedy business.’

  Warily, Honesty gave Estelle a sideways glance. ‘I’m sorry. OK? I’m sorry. I just lost my temper, that’s all. But just tell me this, is Helena planning to allow this child to inherit Hurleston if it’s a boy, in spite of the fact she knows it is not my father’s? And if he isn’t the father, who is? Did she tell you that while she was busily opening her heart?’

  But it would take more than a few puny apologies to calm the flustered Estelle. ‘I don’t know if I want to carry on this conversation, Miss Honesty.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Estelle, I’ve said I’m sorry. It’s just that poor Mummy is suffering so much without a penny to her name, I hate it at The Rudge, I get so homesick, and the thought of another child being favoured over the rest of us… a child with no right to be…’ Honesty began to cry.

  ‘Well…’

  ‘It’s so unfair,’ sobbed Honesty.

  ‘Well…’

  ‘And I’m so unhappy,’ cried Honesty.

  ‘Well, perhaps…’

  ‘Nobody loves me.’

  Slowly but surely Estelle’s mothering instincts and the need to swap the gossip overcame her hostility. But she started off reluctantly all the same. She didn’t want Honesty to think she’d been completely forgiven. ‘Well, Helena didn’t tell me who the father was, but she thought she would find it impossible to deceive Sir Fabian. I convinced her that a child’s life is far more important than a little deception.’

  Honesty must try to keep calm. ‘And she listened to you, did she? Hah. Such a high moral outlook, so easily overruled!’

  Estelle gave a vacant look. ‘Of course. In the end, she had to agree with me, if she had an abortion she’d be no worse than the terrible people she campaigns against, taking life so flippantly for selfish reasons of her own. And it won’t be you who’s mainly affected if I may remind you, Miss Honesty, it will be that terrible Giles who we hardly know. An American at that!’

  Honesty said, ‘I see. So it was fairly simple to change her mind?’

  Estelle looked attacked again. ‘It took some doing! It took me nearly all night. But she’s gone back to Devon now, a happier person, I hope.’

  Honesty closed her eyes, put her hands over her ears, and crouched in upon herself.

  The following morning, in spite of the fact that Helena and the twins were at Hurleston and Honesty mostly tried to avoid them, she took the train down to Devon, thinking and dreaming of Callister all the way. At Reading she thought she saw him on the platform, and called out, a little love cry, and the couple sitting opposite raised their newspapers higher. Horrors.

  She set forth for the travellers’ camp, uncertain, as ever, as to what her reception was going to be. Those were the days soon after the atmosphere in the place changed, when Callister was taking over as leader where there had been no leader before. Helena, when the hippies
first arrived, had been very involved with their innocent activities. The idea of a leader of any kind would have repelled her.

  Anarchy, said Fabian, was more her theme.

  But lately the initial troubles the travellers had experienced with the local landowners, a campaign close to Helena’s heart, and something well worth fighting for with any tool which might come in handy, had died down temporarily. She wasn’t needed there. She’d grown so busy she hadn’t the time to keep her eye on every operation. She should learn to delegate more, said Fabian in disgust. More often than not she was up in the Hebrides with the twins at her heels, fighting the barbaric inhabitants there who took against her gentle ideas of an alternative community of long-haired weirdos, seaweed and mushroom gatherers, worshippers of sea and moon.

  Free love had always been one of the foundations on which Helena’s little communities grew, as did the myriad children who lived like poultry, scratching and clucking away round the vehicles’ wheels and making sandy hillocks to run their home-made toys along. This was an aspect of her desire which Honesty found hard to endure. Jealousy ate her up from within and there were many to feel jealous about. But Callister always reassured her whenever she became too upset. ‘We need you, Honesty, you are very special to us all.’

  ‘I don’t want to be special to you all,’ cried Honesty in despair, knowing he would think her absurd. She heard her own voice, pitiful and pleading. ‘I want to be special to you!’

  ‘And you are, you are,’ said Callister and only the edge of his straight white teeth were showing when he smiled at her.

  ‘Don’t lie,’ she said. ‘You care about the others as much as you care about me!’

  ‘And why shouldn’t I?’ he enquired in a reasonable tone, starting slowly towards her.

  She watched him. With every step he took she found it more difficult to breathe. She felt that same old terror as he loomed larger and larger, that one day this man would crush and annihilate her completely. She tried to run away then, but he caught her in his arms and held her tenderly against him. When she raised her head he suddenly released her. He laughed and his black eyes glittered with malicious amusement.

  This time she told him that Helena was pregnant while holding her breath for fear of his reaction.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Estelle just told me.’

  ‘And if it’s a boy?’

  He was making her spell it out. He knew the answer. ‘If it’s a boy it will inherit Hurleston and everything in it. Daddy won’t split the contents. My inheritance will shrink to less than half of what I am expecting.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He drew in a slow, deep breath. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Helena. Is she in Devon?’

  There was something in the sound of his voice—something, something—what could it possibly be? Was he angry with her? She, who only wanted to please him in any way she could and so continue the marvellous sense of exhilaration which his presence, like a drug, like sorcery, somehow produced.

  His fingers fastened in her hair and drew her head backwards, pulling with a steady strength as he waited for her answer.

  ‘She’s here. She came here yesterday with the twins.’

  The pain became pleasurable so she didn’t wince or cry out, but stared into his magnificent face with an expression of reverence and gratitude, humble almost to abjectness. She might have dropped to her knees at that moment, and prayed to him, if he hadn’t been holding her up with such a firm grip. She was ashamed and alarmed to think how madly she wanted to worship him.

  ‘Well, little Honesty, you go back to the house…’

  She had to ask him. ‘What are you going to do?’

  He didn’t answer. He merely smiled and let her go.

  ‘Don’t…’ But she stopped short, afraid to offend him. She had wanted to say, ‘don’t hurt Helena.’ Honesty sighed and lowered her lashes instead.

  It was after that that Helena went missing. This wasn’t particularly uncommon, she often went off forgetting to tell anyone what she was doing, what was peculiar was that she left the abominable twins behind. All that week Honesty had to put up with them, and whenever she tried to see Callister his caravan door was closed, he was busy.

  ‘Go away,’ he shouted.

  Huh. Busy with some other woman no doubt. But she went away in wistful bewilderment, lost and powerless, deprived of everything except the need to be with him. Stinging with humiliation, with jealousy biting deep in her heart, Honesty took to her horse, riding madly and dangerously till her heart beat fast with fear but that was a poor alternative to loving with Callister.

  And it was at the end of that week when Clayden came in and announced in a voice as cold as the grave, ‘Ghastly news, I’m afraid. Lady Helena’s body has been discovered in Hurleston Woods.’

  29

  NO STONE IS LEFT unturned.

  Whoever is writing these sinister letters relishes the sneaky task. They have gone deliberately out of their way to turn Angela Harper into a case study of some importance, hiring spies—like the DSS—to track down people she’s almost forgotten, interviewing old school pupils, neighbours, nosy parkers, delving into all the intolerable little secrets Ange thought were lost forever.

  This is just the kind of thing that would happen if you married into royalty.

  ‘And I do remember,’ wrote Aunty Val in the last of her monthly letters, ‘the trouble we had with you at Telford junior school when you refused to admit it was you who slashed the coats in the cloakroom when you’d actually been seen leaving with a pair of scissors. You were so stubborn in those days, weren’t you, Angela, such a hard-faced little liar, you categorically denied it. The school was forced to ban you for a month, they said you disrupted the classes so manipulatively that other children were suffering unacceptably because of your behaviour. And what a time we had with you during that month! You were staying with Uncle George and Aunty Pat at the time, remember, that rather nice couple with a bungalow and a weeping willow tree in the garden? You built a tree house, I remember, and refused to come out…’

  And so it went on, remorselessly, gruellingly, exposing Angela’s most painful memories, the ones you manage to push, like dreams, right to the back of your consciousness, and sometimes, when you were very tired, they try to break out at night and play yo-yos with your head like goblins.

  ‘You were with that nice, respectable family, the Wilsons, for four years, weren’t you dear? And they showed you nothing but kindness. Until there was some nasty business about three in a bed and Mrs Wilson had you seen by a child psychiatrist before she reluctantly decided she could no longer keep you for fear of affecting her pleasant, well-mannered boys. Twelve years old, oh dear, it pains me to think of it even now, twelve years old and yet so worldly wise, so knowing.’

  So far Ange has not shown Billy or Tina any of the letters. At first she decided to keep them secret until she had a chance to watch them closely, every gesture, every word, every look took on some sinister meaning and when Tina remarked, ‘You stay here, Ange, we’ll take the kids out today, you’re looking so tired,’ what did that mean? What new device for her torture were they inventing between them, because only Billy knows some of the shameful events relayed in Aunty Val’s letters, but most of them Ange has never told anyone at all.

  ‘And of course, dear, you must have known that your mother, Tracy, was a prostitute, if she hadn’t been killed in that terrible crash she would have died of some nasty disease…’

  But Ange never knew that.

  She watches Billy and Tina with the children, too, playing with them, bathing them, laughing and tumbling on the floor together, pretending to be horses on hands and knees. Is this innocent play, or is there more to it? Jacob’s progress is still satisfactory, but now that Archie is growing up they are the same size, there’s only three pounds in weight between them, they share the same clothes, and Archie has nearly the same breadth of vocabulary as Jacob. T
heir similarity is quite remarkable, it gets harder and harder to keep this phenomena from other people, although the Ormerod family, so smug, have no eyes for anyone but Archie, they don’t even seem to notice that there are two other children around.

  Fabian, too, is constantly under Ange’s scrutiny. He has changed. Since she asked him for money he is colder towards her, he touches her less frequently, no more pats on the hand, no more arms round her waist as they walk together side by side. Their sex life, never an earth moving experience, has trickled away to almost nothing… once a month, if that. And anyway, he’s hardly ever at Hurleston these days and Elfrida says this was only how it was before, his frequent visits home seemed to be part of a honeymoon period which is now, apparently, over.

  And why not? They’ve been married for nearly three years now. How time flies. And life must go on.

  ‘You’re looking peaky, Angela,’ he’d said, peering at her mockingly. ‘Not too bored, I hope, spending all this time doing nothing?’

  He was sneering at her. But what he said was perfectly true. These days time does lie heavily on her hands.

  She wishes, now, that she’d taken more notice of the twins’ sinister suggestions about their poor mother’s death, and not put them down to some morbid childish fantasy, some defence mechanism which had mutated. They had suggested that both Maudie Doubleday and Murphy O’Connell knew more about that than they said at the time. In her angst Ange is even driven to visit Hurleston churchyard in the rain with a small bowl of winter hyacinths. Ange shivered, as she stood by Helena’s graveside, wondering, wondering about her death. She’d been pregnant, Maudie told her confidentially, only just, not so much that a pathologist would notice and most of her stomach was gone anyway. Is that the reason she had to die? Was Ffiona the killer?

  Or did Fabian decide he just couldn’t stand her any longer?

  Whatever, Ange knows she has been degraded to a condition where she has not only lost her pride, but whatever dignity she ever possessed. And it’s just not fair that she’s the one they are targeting when Billy and Tina are just as culpable as she.