Beggar Bride

by Gillian White

  Sandra pauses and breathes in deeply. Her fishy blue eyes glitter with malice. ‘More convenient. Unlike so many women in her exalted position Lady Elfrida would not have to go on wearing herself out giving birth until she produced a son. So I was thrown out with the bath water to take my chances in the world. Robbed of my birthright. I was adopted.’

  Ange can’t answer. There is nothing adequate to say. The woman she came to accuse seems to be the accuser now.

  ‘You don’t know, do you, Angela, what it’s like to be born plain? They call you “homely”, they try to find little points to compensate, they tell you you’re sweet-natured, or musical, or you have such lovely long fingers. That sort of thing.’ She stops to consider her own stubby ones. ‘Oh yes, we pretend that a great many other things matter like the hypocrites we women are but nobody is fooled by any of it.’ Sandra goes on, politely and coolly, jealousy sickly sweet in her voice. ‘No, for you it’s been so easy. You were chosen by one set of foster parents after another, everyone found it easy to love you, but what did you do? You threw it all back in their faces.’

  Ange sits staring at Sandra, helpless and in total confusion. ‘No, no, you’re wrong, it was never like that…’

  ‘You were so sweet, weren’t you, Angela, so pretty and so dainty. But did you show any gratitude for all the help and care you were given by so many well-meaning, kindly people? No, you did not! And when you wanted a man it was so easy for you, wasn’t it? Like falling off a log. You set your cap at him and Billy Harper fell at your feet. Anyone would have done, with your looks.’

  ‘You never liked Billy. You told me he was a loser.’

  Sandra throws back her head and laughs. ‘When I think who you could have had, and you did in the end, didn’t you, you won the main prize!’

  Won it. And lost it. Angela tries to stay calm and collected. ‘What made Tina tell you, Sandra?’

  ‘We were on the point of moving Petal to a place of safety.’

  ‘Because of Ed?’

  ‘Yes, and because of Tina’s inability to break free from him. The child was in danger.’

  ‘So you told her this?’

  ‘We warned her, yes, and that’s when she broke down in hysterics, assuring me that things would be different once she got a job as a nanny in Devon, and gradually everything came out, your part in it, Billy’s role, Archie, whom you passed off as Fabian’s heir. You weren’t only pretty, Angela, were you, but cunning, too, and sly. There are brains inside that head after all.’

  Ange interrupts, perplexed and unhappy. ‘But I’ve never hurt you, Sandra, or been unkind, or intentionally let you down.’ She shakes her head. ‘I can understand how bitter you must feel towards the Ormerod family, but why choose me to attack, sending those dreadful letters from Aunty Val? What had I ever done except look pretty, something I couldn’t help, and would have changed anyway if I could?’

  Sandra regards her hands again, spreading them out before her, at the lack of rings on her speckled, middle-aged fingers. ‘I only had one chance,’ she says bitterly, ‘one chance at love and marriage and that was when I was forty. We both longed for children.’ She gives a short bark of a laugh. ‘We longed for them too badly. We couldn’t wait until after the wedding. When we discovered that I was pregnant we couldn’t bring the wedding forward because Vernon, my fiancé, was waiting for his divorce to come through. It was me who insisted on taking every medical precaution. It was me who demanded every test in the book and so they discovered this wretched, miserable, rotten thing, this muscular dystrophy—d’you know what it does, Angela?’ Sandra’s smile is icy. ‘I don’t suppose you do so allow me to explain. It’s a rare wasting condition, transmitted by mothers, that appears in early childhood. Progressive destruction of muscle leads to a wheelchair existence by the age of thirteen, and patients seldom live to the age of twenty. You can tell they’ve got it because the child is weak on its legs, clumsy, and has difficulty picking himself up when he falls. No cure exists.’

  Angela winces. ‘So you…?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, I had an abortion when I realised the child I carried was affected. We disagreed about this and after a quarrel things were said which meant there was no point in carrying on together. I lost him.’ Two great, oversized tears settle uncomfortably in Sandra’s eyes. ‘I had so much time… so much time to work things out after Vernon and I… It didn’t take me long to discover the sickness at the core of the rotten Ormerod family.’ The watery eyes turn sharp, vindictive. The tears disappear, watering memories. ‘Lady Elfrida’s family is warlike, ancient and aristocratic, feudal to this day, there are Bluchers dating back hundreds of years. The owners of great estates, the upper castes, the Junker, they virtually rule the East Prussian state where Lady Elfrida grew up, and it was not hard for me and my friend to discover the truth in that little country churchyard outside Rastenburg.’ Sandra pauses, perhaps bringing back that unforgettable holiday she shared with her friend, Doreen, searching for a painful truth she could not bear to find. ‘All those small gravestones. All those lives ended so prematurely: Konrad, aged fourteen. Anton, Ernst, Rudolph, I could go on, the list is a long one, she must have known, she must have known…’

  Ange pales. ‘And so you blamed the Ormerods? I can understand that. But why me? Why me? I had a child who was hard to rear. I agonised over Jacob’s future…’

  ‘But it all worked out so well in the end,’ says Sandra, calmer now, and smiling coldly again, ‘for you. As things always do for people who look like you. But no, the letters from Aunty Val were sent to you but the person I really wanted to punish was my replacement, Fabian. You would have fled sooner or later, indeed, I heard you were thinking of leaving. My plan was working astonishingly well until somebody else came along and interfered. You would have fled with your ill-gotten gains to the Broughtons, Tina to her dream home in Brighton, and the police would have picked you up in no time.’

  ‘Because you would have told them where we’d gone? And Tina kept you informed of all this?’

  ‘Precisely. Yes, dear. Tina had no choice in the matter by then. And then I planned to take the children into care, probably offer them for adoption, and Fabian would have come along and demanded to have his child returned.’ Sandra Biddle lifts her brows, there’s still a small smile playing on her face. ‘I would have had to approve the official adoption, write acceptable reports, that would have cost the Ormerod family quite a lot of money. They got one child free forty-eight years ago, let them pay for this one!’

  Ange is shocked. She enquires, horrified, ‘You would have sold him my baby?’

  But Sandra turns on her angrily. The telling of this clearly gives her some sick satisfaction. ‘Why not? Whyever not? What would you have preferred? That little Archie go to a stranger and take his chance as I did? Or that he be brought up with the kind of privileges Fabian could have given him? Think hard, Angela. It didn’t take Maud Doubleday much time to work it out, given the same opportunity all those years ago she jumped at it. Wouldn’t you have sworn that Fabian was Archie’s father rather than just the offspring of two sordid criminals? No hopers? No, dear, I think you would have kept your mouth shut about the true parentage of your youngest child.’

  Ange has to swallow. ‘Possibly. In those circumstances. But why did you never try to take the Ormerods to court once you knew the truth, why did you never attempt to claim your legal rights?’

  ‘I did try, once, I went to a solicitor and told him everything. But he said it would be a long, drawn out business, and costly, and there’d be no guarantee that I would succeed. And anyway, Angela, you probably don’t understand but that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted the man I loved and the child I carried. I wanted a partner for life, somebody to love me, somebody to come home to.’

  ‘You are quite wrong. I do understand.’

  ‘But,’ Sandra Biddle draws herself up, ‘fancy, you’ve been let off scot free. Would you believe it? And rich. How very lucky you all are. Tina will get the
house she wanted and you and Billy… However. Now that you know all this, what do you intend to do with it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ says Angela, getting up, feeling stiff and sore from holding her emotions in such tight check for so long.

  ‘It is your duty to tell Fabian the truth about his birth. High or low, we all deserve to know the truth about our roots.’

  Is that true? Is it? Both are silent for several minutes. Ange looks at the woman before her, so sadly wronged, so bitter, so lonely and finally driven to this. And I could have had so much, she thinks, guiltily. This great truth is something Fabian, so strong, so self-assured, so arrogant, would never be able to bear. It would wound him too deeply. ‘No,’ she tells Sandra firmly, ‘Fabian must never know, and if you are tempted to tell him out of revenge in order to bring him down then I will go to the law with your letters from Aunty Val. You’d lose your job, Sandra, your pension, everybody’s respect. Knowing who you are is not always the right thing. This is a private tragedy which happened a very long time ago, and there’s been too much suffering already because of it. I don’t want Fabian touched by this. Nothing more needs to be said. Ever! I warn you now, leave him alone.’

  They have travelled by way of such a vicious, such a tortuous circle.

  ‘So what did happen to Helena, after all?’

  Billy says, ‘Nobody knows. The police don’t know. Callister obviously believes it was his witch-doll which did the trick… and who knows, maybe it did. Or maybe Honesty did it and has blocked all memory. She certainly must have wanted to when she realised Helena was carrying Callister’s child.’

  It’s all too much. It’s all too tangled and confusing. You can think and think and not come anywhere near the truth. Best to forget, to concentrate on the present. Ange sighs, closes her eyes tight to the past. ‘This is a boring place, Billy, you’re right. And it’s bleak. And it’s dead. Why did we sodding well come here?’

  ‘It was your idea,’ Billy reminds her, as they drive along the long, straight roads of Weston-super-Mare, passing through crescents and squares, passing boring, Thirties semis, with boring rockeries in all the front gardens, and heather, both blue and white. But Ange longs to be boring, to rid herself of the loss, the yearning. The boys are in the back of the Range Rover, sound asleep, two brothers almost identical.

  Ange imagines how it will be in a minute. Out of the house with the blue paintwork will come a woman in a skirt and blouse with a crinkly perm too tight for her head. The man behind her will not be handsome, just ordinary, hard-working, old-fashioned, worried about the things that people do worry about, like getting his guttering sorted out and whether the pension he’s opted out of was better than the one he’s in now and blaming himself for his failure as a father.

  Billy will say, ‘Mum? Dad?’

  The woman will fling out her arms when she sees who has arrived. She might nearly trip down her garden path in her effort to reach her lost son more quickly. Dear God. After all these years! ‘Oh, Billy, why didn’t you tell me? And look—such beautiful, beautiful children, and, oh,’ she will stand back, clasping her hands, ‘and such a lovely wife! I knew you’d come. And you came after all. Welcome home! Oh, welcome home!’

  Billy’s father will stand behind his wife in an old-fashioned gesture of protection, beaming, embarrassed, pleased, but unsure how to show it other than by shaking his head.

  As she takes the prodigal into her arms, on her face will be all the love, and in her glistening eyes will be all the joy in the world.

  ‘We’re home, Ange,’ Billy will sigh.

  ‘I know,’ she will tell him, smiling, suddenly aware of the littleness of the things that can really touch her. ‘Thank God. And at sodding last. Happy ever after.’

  But Ange is fantasising again. Perhaps she needs to live in a dream, fantasies were what her childhood was built on, after all. The reality was unbearable. The bungalow door is closed tight and nobody comes down the path.

  The boys are sleeping so Ange joins Billy at the front door. They ring the bell again, and listen, and wait, Ange still certain in her own mind of the kind of welcome she and Billy are about to receive. There is even a ready smile on her face.

  ‘Yes?’

  This cannot be Billy’s mum, this woman is far too old.

  ‘I’m looking for Mr and Mrs Harper, they used to live here.’

  ‘And who might you be?’

  ‘I am their son, Billy.’

  The old woman looks suspicious. Her lips close together and pleat, her elderly eyebrows arch. ‘They never had any children. They never mentioned any children to me.’

  ‘Where are they? Have they moved?’

  ‘You obviously didn’t hear then,’ said the grey-haired, moth-balled old woman, eager to close the door.

  ‘What?’ asks Billy. ‘What didn’t we hear?’

  ‘Well, they won the lottery last year, one of the big jackpot winners, several million I believe. So naturally they sold up and left. Went to live in Spain. I bought the bungalow from them. Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ and the door closes quietly but firmly round the smell of simmering mince.

  Billy and Ange stare at each other aghast as the truth slowly dawns.

  ‘I can’t approach them now,’ says Billy. ‘They’ll think…’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course they will.’

  ‘They’ll suspect that all I want is…’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ says Ange, knowing the feeling only too well. ‘This is quite unbelievable.’

  Unbelievable. But fitting. ‘There’s nothing I can do then?’ Billy asks, dumbfounded.

  ‘Only one thing. But maybe it wouldn’t work.’

  ‘What?’ asks Billy, interested.

  ‘Well, you’d have to really be their son,’ Ange tells him, smiling. ‘And behave properly for once!’

  ‘I can’t,’ says Billy. ‘I can’t do that. It’s far too late for that.’

  Poor Billy. She will never betray him. Not after all they’ve been through. Her life won’t be too bad, not too bad at all. She will care for him, look after him… ‘I know, Billy,’ says Ange, sadly turning away. ‘I know.’

  ‘Perhaps I could pretend, pretend to love them as they pretended to love me all those years. After all the whole of life is a game, I mean, look we’ve proved that. So I would have been rich eventually anyway. I had no need to go through all this. If only I’d just stayed here and been a good and dutiful son.’

  Billy laughs away the joke and hugs her tightly. Like a clown.

  ‘If only. Yeah. But that’s the name of the game I suppose.’

  Ange gets back into the car with Billy’s laughter ringing in her ears. Let’s pretend, let’s pretend. She whispers his name, loving the sound of it, into the wind. If life really is a game then Ange is the greatest pretender of all, polished, professional at wishing for too many things. She’ll see Fabian on high days and holidays, dutifully fulfilling her role as his wife, and when she’s with Billy she’ll spend her time yearning for someone way out of reach. She has been his bride, his beggar bride, and on oath she swore to be his. And if this is not just a passing passion she is doomed to be his for the rest of her life.

  Her smile does not waver. She ruffles his hair. ‘Get with it, Billy, come on. Let’s go and find some chips.’

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1996 by Gillian White

  cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  978-1-4804-0218-8

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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