Beggar Bride

by Gillian White

  In exchange for all these benefits all that was required of Maudie was that she be discreet, and as far as Elfrida can ascertain, no one has ever found out, not even Martin the hall-boy during their brief affair. And they must never find out. Naturally Fabian would be finished if he ever learned he was the natural son of the seamstress.

  It hadn’t mattered nearly so much when Elfrida’s second child, Candida, turned out to be another girl.

  Until Maudie brought the matter up Elfrida had nearly forgotten all about it.

  So Maudie, so splendid at catastrophes, resents Fabian bitterly, and makes that quite obvious in the way she’s always insinuating he had something to do with Helena’s death, forever accusing the police of bungling the job. Oh yes, Elfrida has heard the rumours. And it has to be said it was unfortunate that the adopted child should turn up with her problems and threaten to upset the applecart.

  So, life has certainly not been without its ups and downs, but Elfrida never dreamed she would live through such a down as this one. She eyes the phone, so silent, so threatening, before her. Is it four o’clock yet, time for those terrible people to call? She looks at her watch, only twelve thirty, the gong will ring in a minute for luncheon. A little steamed fish with new potatoes and salad from the garden, she’d told Susan, poor Angela was in no fit state to give the servants orders today. The food will be wasted. Elfrida for one, doesn’t feel hungry at all, even though she had no breakfast. She delves in her handbag for a Horlicks tablet and pops one in her mouth, what would she do without them?

  ‘Is the sun over the yardarm yet?’ calls Evelyn a little shakily.

  She didn’t know he was awake. ‘No, midear, it’s only midday.’

  ‘But surely time for a little snorter.’

  ‘Hold on, I’ll ring for Clayden. And I think, midear, under the frightful circumstances, I might as well join you.’

  35

  ‘ARCHIE! ARCHIE! GO AFTER the ball! Get it back, Archie, get it back before the dogs get hold of it!’

  Fabian stands rigid on the edge of the lawn, silent, watching.

  Oh Petal! No! Oh Petal, stop!

  Ange turns, regards her bigamous husband with horror. Never has he seemed so large or forbidding. She’d thought they were alone, she and Archie and Petal, she’d had to come down to the garden from the nursery wing for fresh air, her head was splitting in half.

  Has he heard? Has he noticed? He is walking across the grass now, the smooth, cool acres of grass towards Petal. Realising her great mistake the child stands still, hands clasped behind her back, eyes shyly on the ground.

  ‘You said Archie,’ says Fabian softly to the child. ‘You called for Archie. I heard you.’

  The wretched Petal says nothing but continues to stare at her feet.

  ‘Come here, Archie,’ calls Fabian softly, and his so-called son walks steadily towards the man he has been taught to call Father.

  Fabian kneels on the grass and firmly grasps the boy’s arms, staring into his face. ‘Archie, tell me, where have you been?’

  This is too much, too confusing for Archie. Ange moves forward in horror. ‘I know it seems odd but…’

  ‘Be quiet, Angela.’ His voice rings with all the authority at his command while he continues to consider his son. He turns to his wife slowly, ‘So if this is Archie, who is the identical child who has gone missing? Or is this some sort of twisted game you are playing with me, Angela?’

  Never has she seen this man so serious, his features so frozen, his voice so grave. Ange shakes her head, this mess, this whole rotten mess is driving her mad and now Jacob is in more severe danger than ever, a child without a ransom, a nobody boy held hostage and only the love of his parents to save him. Love—so much for the power of love. She clutches her head in her hands. ‘I can’t begin…’ she cries, aware of his questioning face, the bewilderment in his eyes, his joy at finding his son safe beside him threatened by something other, something that only she can explain.

  All of a sudden, how else can she say it, a voice which sounds like a stranger’s shouts, ‘Archie is not your child! Archie was never your child, and the missing boy belongs to me, he belongs to me and Billy.’

  Fabian stands up straight and tall, only the grass stains on his knees make him human. His demeanour is grim, his eyes bore into her soul. ‘Not my son?’ His hands rest on the child’s dark head. ‘And there is another…?’

  What has she done to him, to this innocent man whose only mistake was to trust, was to believe in her? And look at this little boy, a victim, too, in his shorts and T-shirt, tears of confusion running down his face, his chin trembling and his small fists dirty and clenched. Everything is lost. Jacob is lost. Archie is lost. And all because of her and her burning ambitions and her dreams that there be more to this life for herself and her children. What has she done? Whatever it is it can never be made right again.

  ‘You had better come indoors with me,’ says Fabian coldly.

  ‘Petal, take Archie back to the nursery…’ she starts.

  ‘No,’ Fabian quickly interrupts. He has not let go of his child’s hand. ‘Archie comes with me.’ And Ange follows the man and the child through the great oak doors of Hurleston, across the silent hall and down the stone steps into Fabian’s study.

  He orders his staff, ‘Would you leave us, please.’

  In view of the terrible circumstances the explanations have to be quick. Jacob’s life, as far as Ange is concerned, is now in total jeopardy. With no ransom offered, what sort of revenge might Callister take, while she and Billy and Tina will be hurried away by the police, no special efforts will be made to recover the child of such heartless criminals.

  Perhaps, after all, she ought to have guessed at Fabian’s likely reaction to the devastating information given to him in her shaky voice. Far from exploding with fury and indignation, Fabian listens to his cruel deceiver with a cold detachment, shaking his head now and then at the whole elaborate façade, asking the odd shaming question and oft repeating, ‘I ought to have known… I knew there was something…’ As Ange goes on, concealing nothing, caring only about seeing Jacob alive again.

  She has used him. She has betrayed him. She has milked him of thousands of pounds and worst of all she has led him to believe he is the father of the child that is lost. Face to face with this barefaced wickedness, the supposed mother of his only son, what will his attitude be? Whatever it is Ange can’t blame him… her only real terrors now are Jacob’s fate, the police, and the thought of being parted from Archie and Billy for the rest of her life.

  After she’s finished speaking she clasps her fingers hard together, draws a deep, sobbing breath and raises her eyes to meet his.

  ‘So… I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes, I am, so very sorry.’

  Never in her life have her words been so inadequate.

  ‘As I understand it you were desperate.’

  ‘There are no excuses for what I did.’

  ‘You took the only way out you knew.’

  ‘And it was immoral and cruel,’ sobs Ange. ‘What I did to you was unforgivable, outrageous.’

  Fabian pauses for a while, staring at his would-be son. He walks to his desk and starts mindlessly rearranging the papers there. ‘I would probably have done exactly the same were our positions reversed. I would do anything,’ and in his eyes, when she looks up again, is all the ambition and energy that have made him the success he is, and no, it is nothing to do with his father, or his aristocratic wealth, or his privileged education, whoever and wherever Fabian had been born, somehow he would have achieved success. ‘I would have done anything in my power to free myself from the kind of bonds you found yourself tied with. You and I are very alike, in some ways, Angela,’ he goes on seriously. And his smile is sad, ‘At least you gave me your right name.’

  Is he giving his tacit approval? Is he endorsing his political opinions, his conservative values, even now? The poor should get on their bikes etc?
Ange has no right to expect sympathy or understanding from one she has used so abominably. ‘You showed a great deal of inspired initiative,’ Fabian goes on, ‘and you worked your guts out for every penny you earned from me.’

  ‘But, Fabian…’

  ‘Yes,’ he nods slowly. ‘The only thing I can’t get over is the fact that I am not Archie’s father.’ He watches her silently for a moment, then frowns. ‘That was cruel.’

  ‘I know, I know, and you must despise me…’

  His words are thoughtful and slow, as if it hurts him to speak them, they come from the heart of a sensitive man made hard by life and experience. ‘Cruel but necessary. I understand why you had to do it. To succeed in this world there are times when you have to be very cruel.’

  And Ange realises that a relationship does exist between herself and this man, it might not be the one that is generally accepted but there is a relationship all the same, everything between them has not been based on deception. There have been times, and now is definitely one of them, when she has admired and loved Fabian, he can be compassionate, he can be wise, far wiser than she. She feels a tie stronger than she ever realised existed before, and from his solemn approach to all this, Fabian knows it, too.

  But she still dreads his answer to her question. ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Get you out of this room and get on with the organisation. There’s a large ransom needs paying…’

  ‘For Jacob?’

  ‘Of course for Jacob. A child is a child…’

  And held tight in each other’s arms they weep together.

  But sadly, realistically, from all they can gather, there’s only one way of getting Jacob back alive. It’s a chance, but a slim one…

  It’s like being dumped back in the Middle Ages. ‘Who’s there?’ echoes the sentries’ cry, as Ange, Giles and Honesty leave the house and make their way through the midday heat towards the travellers’ camp, or ‘glade’ as Helena liked to call it.

  Behind them Martin the hall-boy bangs the gong for luncheon, and the fact they are going in the opposite direction gives a sense of uneasy guilt, never has Ange dared to ignore the might of the gong before.

  Time, at Hurleston, over the centuries, has been broken into disciplined pieces.

  Within the grounds the police are like rabbits grazing on a misty morning, if they’re not actively searching with spades and walkie-talkies they stand around watching, the amount of sympathy shown to Ange is most reassuring. Nobody can bear to think about a real-life kidnap, and not many of these local men have had to face anything quite so harrowing before.

  The photograph of little Jacob has touched everyone’s heart.

  In the soft place where her soul is, Ange calls to her son, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK, hang on, Jacob, I’m coming.’

  Billy was furious to be left behind but as Giles explained, ‘The bigger our party the more attention we will attract. And you can’t do anything, Billy, anything but wait.’

  ‘That’s the hardest bloody part,’ moaned Billy through tight lips, ‘not being able to do anything.’ He has suddenly lost his boyish good looks, suffering has seen to that, he now has the stoop and the grim eyes of a prisoner facing electrocution.

  ‘Lady Ormerod wants to go for a walk, we are keeping her company,’ Honesty tells the various officers who confront them, in her superior manner. But she, too, has suffered today, and is suffering still, as with heavy and hopeless sighs she comes to terms with the extent of her need for a man who enjoys cruelty—according to Giles it amuses him greatly—an egotistical, inhuman savage.

  Down in the coolness of the woods the police are beating the undergrowth. Ange shivers and feels Giles react with a similar revulsion beside her. And Honesty is a deathly white.

  Honesty’s distress is so genuine, her need to expunge the things she has done so desperate, that Ange has room to feel pity. But as they draw nearer to the travellers’ camp, Ange, still fighting for her self-control—for Jacob’s sake she mustn’t give in—finds herself breathing fast and hard, weak with some inexplicable terror.

  ‘This is a bad place, I can feel it.’

  ‘Places have auras about them,’ says Giles, ‘and it was easy for Callister to exploit that here.’

  ‘But something terrible once happened here,’ says Ange, goose-pimples rising on her arms and sweat pricking underneath.

  ‘This is where Helena was found,’ Honesty softly admits. ‘Just in this very spot. Underneath that tree there.’

  They are well off the main track now, following Giles. ‘No wonder nobody found her for so long.’

  It ought to be lighter here, so why does it seem darker, lacking both air and sunshine? Ange hesitates at the edge, trembling now. Within the clearing her ideas of a colourful gypsy site, wagons drawn round in a comforting circle, busy people going about their rustic tasks, take a hell of a beating. First there are the mounds of litter spilling out of dustbin bags, the stench of rotting vegetables, the rank odour of a toilet not working and the broken trees, devoid of their hacked off lower branches, seem to be crying, and dying.

  ‘Oh, it’s horrible! How can people bear to stay here?’

  ‘You get used to it,’ says Honesty, simply. ‘It’s got much worse just lately of course, and Callister will tell you there is more to life… but it wasn’t like this to start with.’

  Blinded, helpless and stupid, the followers are waiting for Him to come back to lead them to that celestial nirvana in their heads to which only he has the key. Wistful and waiting, dazed like ghosts, slack-jawed and lacking direction, the members of Callister’s commune sit around listlessly, scratching their snaggled hair and their beards. Some move around aimlessly, trailing their tattered clothes in the dust. Their hostile glances are directed not only at the visitors, but at each other. High summer, and yet there are still dirty puddles around on the ground. A few policemen are still here taking grudging statements, but because of Giles’ esprit de corps there just might be a way through this tight web of protection they weave for their lost prophet and leader.

  If they will listen to Giles.

  If only. If only.

  Someone must know something. Someone might have a clue as to where he and Demelza have gone.

  ‘You wait here while I go and have a word with Demelza’s last partner.’ Giles moves off, enters a van of post-office red which has more of its parts disconnected and waiting around, rusting, beside it, than attached to the vehicle itself. It must be years since the thing was last on the road and Ange feels that parts of herself might loosen, break free, and fall away never to be found again.

  And to think that once upon a time Billy dreamed of living like this.

  ‘Everyone seems to be hypnotised. They’re not properly awake,’ she says. ‘They’re like zombies. Brainwashed.’

  ‘I know,’ says Honesty solemnly. ‘They need him, you see.’

  ‘Like you do?’

  ‘Yes, just like I do.’

  The smell, the rotten smell of decaying food and alcohol is oppressive. ‘Oh God, look, they are all just as obsessed as you are.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, they are. If only he would choose me, that’s what most of them dream of, men and women, doesn’t matter to him. He controls us all, mind and body alike.’

  And this man has my child. All hope starts to fade, she feels herself sink to the dark depths of a pit which is bottomless.

  ‘I wouldn’t hang around here if I were you, Lady Angela, they’re all high as kites, and you might well catch something nasty from all this accumulation of slop and filth. Why don’t you come back to the house with me now, and wait?’

  The detective is only trying to be kind. ‘I’ll go back in a minute. I’m just here with a friend who has to pick something up.’

  ‘I would have thought the last person you’d want to know would have any connections with this place.’ The policeman stares at Giles disapprovingly. ‘I can’t help myself, I can’t help but feel there’s something perverted
and savage about it.’

  But Giles is beckoning from the post-office van and Ange and Honesty hurry forward. Inside, through the rank and musty smell of sweating bodies, through the stench of polluted breath, a smell so thick it seems to fall on their skin and clothing in droplets, clinging and contaminating, inside sits a boy, hugging himself, shivering, no older than sixteen.

  ‘This is Quincey,’ says Giles. ‘And he has told me that wherever Callister goes he takes his phone with him. That’s how he must be contacting the priest so we must find his number and get to him, get to Jacob before anything can go wrong…’

  ‘How the shit do we do that? His van’s gone, isn’t it?’

  ‘His van has gone, but there might be something in the hut. After all, he’s no real need to cover his tracks, we are the only ones who suspect he’s got Jacob… everyone else believes he’s gone on one of his retreats.’

  ‘And we don’t know for definite,’ says Ange hopefully. Which way is she hoping? She doesn’t know herself. Surprised by her own thoughts, she wishes Fabian was with them now.

  ‘I think we do. I’m sure we do,’ says Honesty, her eyes darting from side to side in nervous terror. She is obviously petrified of what her idol might do to her when he finds out she has betrayed him. The young boy must feel something similar, for when he speaks of Callister he uses a tone of reverential fear and his eyes are hard and glittering. Only Giles seems free of contamination by this remorseless weight, more of an outsider looking in with professional detachment.

  Dogs lie panting in the heat, occasionally getting up to drink from a puddle giving off evil vapours.

  Inside the meeting hut, with its fiercely hot corrugated roof, bloated black flies gather on the home-made tables, feasting on scraps. Ange’s throat is dry and tight, but it’s her thoughts, not the heat, that are shrivelling her up. What if they don’t find him in time? What if Fabian pays the money and Callister kills little Jacob out of some kind of inhuman revenge, by using some cruel satanic rite?