BARGAIN WIFE
Mary Burchell
She was living a lie and falling in love.
Three years of barely existing in New York made Tina desperately homesick for England. So she agreed to impersonate her friend Sonia to collect a small legacy in London. Sonia, marrying a wealthy American, didn’t want it.
Now the legacy turned out to be a small fortune that should rightfully belong to Dr. Charles Linton.
Charles had always coolly said he’d marry for money to establish his special clinic and conscience-stricken, Tina knew what she would have to do.
CHAPTER ONE
As Tina entered the hall of the apartment-block, the cool of the air-conditioning fanned her face and she sighed with relief. It had been like that every evening for the last ten days. One thought nothing could be hotter than the walk from the Subway. Then that nothing could be hotter than the mean, sun-baked streets of this crowded bit of Brooklyn.
Three years ago two years ago perhaps even one year ago, Tina would have sought relief in deliberately recalling green fields in an English countryside, or London on a cool, grey, blowy day in autumn. Now she didn’t dwell on memories of that kind. They hurt too much. Even more than the heat.
She climbed the stairs, pushed her key into the lock and opened the door of the little apartment she shared with Sonia. Here at least there was some sort of sanctuary.
‘Hello!’
The girl who glanced up in casual greeting from her seat by the open window was wearing nothing but a cotton wrap in rather oppressively gay shades of yellow and red. Her legs dangled over the arm of the chair, and from her otherwise bare feet hung scarlet satin mules.
She was slim and hard and bright, from the crown of her slightly too blonde head to the tips of her scarlet toenails. But when she smiled as she did now at Tina her mouth widened in a not ungenerous curve, and her dark brown eyes sparkled attractively.
‘Hot, isn’t it?’ murmured Tina absently.
‘Original, aren’t you?’ retorted Sonia.
‘Did the extra rehearsal go all right?’
‘So-so.’
Tina laughed.
Sonia was a pianist who took any job available and had no illusions about the soloists whom it was her duty to accompany or about anything else, come to that. Tina who at present played the violin with the same group, had few illusions, too, by now. The difference was that she had had them once and parted with them painfully. Sonia, starting with none; was incapable of being shocked and practically incapable of being hurt.
She was sorry for Tina when she thought about it. Probably her deepest and most real feeling was her affection for her friend. She knew that when Tina had come to the States three years ago she had cherished ideas of a life very different from the precarious, sordid existence which they picked up together playing where they could. Even Sonia, however who had known Tina only during the last eighteen months had no idea quite how bright those early hopes had been. She knew that Tina had been left an orphan at twenty-one, with little money, a sound musical education, and boundless optimism and faith in the future.
Why she should have supposed that a successful career awaited almost any talented musical student who had the good fortune to go to the United States, Sonia could never imagine. Anyway, whatever the reason, when Tina’s parents had died, she had broken the few remaining links with her life in England, realised her tiny capital, and set out for the United States with highest hopes.
Nowadays, of course, even Tina realised that disaster and disillusionment had been inevitable. She was not a flaming genius she would have been the last to claim that for herself and she possessed not one scrap of influence.
She was simply a talented, hard-working student. And of those mere were already hundreds even thousands.
Even to Sonia she had never fully described the rapid descent from dreams to reality, the inevitable passage from the elegant-offices of polite but uninterested concert agents to the not-so-elegant offices of impolite and all-too-much interested theatrical agents of the shadier kind. Tina, who had once thought in terms of concert platforms, found she was exceedingly lucky if she could drag a living wage from dubious week-to-week engagements.
When she had met Sonia, eighteen months ago, they had both been applying for vacancies with a small backing group in a nightclub with an eagerness dictated more by considerations of the next meal than by any enthusiasm for the job as such. Both of them were lucky, as it happened, and both entered on the first semi-permanent job they had ever had.
After a few weeks they decided to pool their small resources and share an apartment, and probably this oddly assorted companionship was the first thing that had brought any solid satisfaction to Tina since she had left England.
She was fond of Sonia who was unscrupulous but somehow likeable and if their philosophies of life could hardly have been more different, a certain honesty of outlook—cynical in Sonia and idealistic in Tina cemented any cracks in the surface of their day-to-day life.
Without preamble, Sonia announced suddenly:
‘If old Cyrus Manton asks me to go away with him, I shall.’
Characteristically she asked for no advice merely stated a decision.
Tina’s eyes opened wide, in spite of the fact that she was now more or less used to her friend’s uncompromising view of life.
‘Sonia! He’s so—so old!’ she exclaimed, knowing instinctively that it was useless to argue the moral issue.
‘Old enough to be a sugar daddy,’ countered Sonia cynically. ‘Much the sugariest daddy who is ever likely to come my way.’
Tina regarded her friend in anxious perplexity.
‘Sonia, it isn’t worth it.’
‘What isn’t worth what?’ Sonia wanted to know.
‘Oh, the luxury and the freedom from money worries aren’t worth the loss of self-respect and—’
‘It’s different for you, honey.’ Sonia regarded her not unkindly. ‘You’re all simple and sweet and English still.’
‘It’s nothing to do with being English,’ Tina protested. ‘And come to that, you’re English yourself.’
Sonia laughed.
‘Only technically. You can’t count the first two years of your life as meaning anything. I’m more American than the Americans now. But anyway, as you say, it’s not any question of nationality. It’s a question of butter on your bread and a slice of pecan pie too,’ she added with a grin.
Tina smiled, but gravely, because she was still concerned with the essential point of Sonia’s decision.
‘Anyway, he may not ask you,’ she said hopefully at last.
‘Wish me luck,’ Sonia retorted wickedly.
‘You’re having supper with him tonight?’
‘I am. And if any suggestions are coming along, they’ll be made then.’
They were both silent for a moment. Then Tina said in an abstracted way:
‘I shall miss you.’
‘It isn’t settled yet,’ Sonia replied quickly, with a little flash of superstition that was her one weakness. ‘It doesn’t do to count on a thing until it’s sure.’
‘No,’ Tina said. But in her heart she thought with sudden conviction, ‘I am sure. Something is going to take Sonia away from me and I shall be alone again.’
‘Come along. Hurry!’ Sonia’s voice broke in a little impatiently on her reverie. ‘It’s gone half-past. If we don’t want to run all the way to the Subway we must make a move. It won’t do to be late tonight. If Louis has anything to complain of besides the heat, he isn’t going to be too nice to know.’
Acknowledging the truth of that for the leader of their group was not an easy taskmaster Tina changed with a slick expertness which Sonia had taught her, and pronounced herself ready.
As they left the building together, the two girls might well have been taken for sisters. Both of them were almost startlingly fair though Sonia was distinctly fairer than Nature had intended her to be almost identical in height, both with the same slim, trim type of figure which comes from never having quite enough to eat, but never going quite so hungry that the fact advertises itself. Sonia’s eyes were a bright, clear brown; Tina’s, soft and velvety; and while Sonia looked at the world with a cool and uncompromising stare, Tina’s wide eyes still held something of the soft, inquiring expression of a good child, who almost believes that things will go right but fears just a little that they may go ell wrong.
On the journey to town Tina deliberately tried to make her mind blank. She was already tired and dispirited with the heat and rush of the day, and she didn’t want to think about anything at the moment. Particularly she didn’t want to think about this startling decision of Sonia’s.
At the back of her mind, however, there remained a persistent, aching anxiety, partly on account of Sonia herself and partly because of the effect this new move would have on her own life. It would mean a new style of living for it would be impossible to keep on even their tiny flat on her own salary a new loneliness, and a new lack of security. The cool, bright, hard presence of Sonia had given a sense of security if only because of the consciousness that few things, if any, could nonplus her.
‘Don’t be so disgustingly selfish,’ Tina told herself. ‘It’s Sonia’s life that is likely to be ruined not yours.’
But somehow the words carried no conviction, even to herself.
When she reached home alone that night the first dung she noticed was a letter lying on the mat. Not just a letter an ordinary letter but a letter which, most surprisingly and excitingly, bore an English stamp.
Tina snatched it up, then saw that the letter was addressed to Sonia.
She stood quite still in the centre of the room, staring at the envelope. The address was unmistakable ‘Miss Sonia Frayne.’ And it had been addressed to the house where Sonia had lodged before she and Tina joined forces. Someone had readdressed it here.
Unquestionably it was Sonia’s letter and absolutely no business of Tina’s. But it was all she could do to make her mind accept the fact that a letter from England—England! could belong to Sonia and not to herself. Why, it was more than twenty years since Sonia had been brought to the States. She had been a baby—there was no connection left between her and the country of her birth. In all the while Tina had known her she had never received a letter with an English stamp and postmark.
With some idea of keeping her thoughts away from it, she carefully avoided looking at the letter again. And, even when she was in bed, she took a book and read steadily partly with the idea of remaining awake until Sonia returned, and partly because she knew suddenly that if she lay still in the darkness the presence of that letter would evoke memories and regrets that were very nearly unbearable.
It was three o’clock before she heard the light sound of Sonia’s feet running up the last flight of stairs.
She must have had an exhilarating time if she felt like running upstairs at this hour, thought Tina subconsciously, and she sat up as the door opened.
‘Oh you’re awake still.’ There was a dash of bright but perfectly natural colour in Sonia’s cheeks, and her elaborately casual manner did nothing to hide the fact that she was tremendously excited about something.
‘Yes, of course. Did you did you have a good time?’
‘Splendid, thanks.’
‘Did things go as you wanted?’
‘If you mean “as I expected” no.’
‘Then—’
‘Tina, take a deep breath and hold on tight to something. Cyrus Manton one of the richest men on Wall Street has asked me to marry him.’
Tina took the deep breath, not before the statement but after it and she took it in one great gasp.
‘To marry you? him, I mean. It’s impossible!’
‘No, it’s not impossible. I’ve been telling myself that all the way home. But it’s not impossible, it’s a fact. It’s half-done already.’ And unable, with all her casualness, to hide a certain sense of triumph, she held out her left hand, on which there winked and sparkled quite the biggest diamond Tina had ever seen.
“Then you accepted?’ Tina said rather stupidly.
‘Accepted? Accepted! Darling girl, who do you suppose is going to refuse diamond-studded security for the rest of her life?’
‘A lifetime seems an awful while to spend with Cyrus Manton,’ Tina couldn’t help saying rather sombrely.
‘I shan’t have to spend a lifetime with him.’ Sonia was impatiently callous. ‘He’s sixty-five now, if he’s a day. Even if he lives to eighty and his overworked sort seldom do I shall still be under forty when I become one of the richest widows in America.’
Tina winced a little, in spite of the fact that she was so used to Sonia’s way of regarding things.
‘There’s a letter for you, Sonia from England,’ she changed the subject.
‘From England?’ Sonia didn’t even glance at it. ‘Aunt Maggie, I suppose. She remembers me every five years or so.’
‘It’s typewritten.’
‘Is it?’ Sonia was interested momentarily, and getting up from the end of Tina’s bed, where she had been sitting, she picked up the letter and slit open the envelope, pausing as she did so to admire her ring afresh.
‘I bet he didn’t get that under ten thousand dollars,’ she remarked with satisfaction as she drew out the letter.
She read for a moment in silence, and then drew in her breath in a soft, amused whistle.
‘How odd!’ She sat down on Tina’s bed again, laughing a little. ‘A few months ago I’d have thought this a gift from heaven. Now it doesn’t even matter, not worth worrying about. Listen, Tina. It’s a letter from some lawyers. My Aunt Maggie’s pegged out, poor old thing though, as I’ve never seen her since I was eighteen months old, I can’t be expected to be heartbroken. Anyway, she’s left me her all. About a thousand pounds, these people seem to think.’
Tina was far more impressed by this than by any offer of marriage from Cyrus Manton.
‘Funny, isn’t it? I suppose that would about pay for half a dozen dresses for Mrs. Cyrus Manton. It isn’t worth collecting now, Tina.’ Sonia laughed. ‘No, no, no! Mrs. Cyrus Manton has something better to do than go all that way just for that.’
‘Go there, Sonia? Go to England. With a thousand pounds waiting there for you! Oh, what heaven! What absolute heaven! You can’t want to marry that fat old Manton man now!’
Sonia stared at her incredulously.
‘What on earth are you talking about? What’s a thousand pounds in England or anywhere else for that matter compared with being the wife of a millionaire?’
‘Oh, but—’ Tina was twisting her hands together with the intensity of her feelings—‘but England. To go back home—’ Suddenly she began to cry.
Ah good deal moved in spite of herself, Sonia came and put her arm round Tina.
‘Well, don’t cry about it. It isn’t worth crying about at least, I suppose it is to you. That’s the difference—things mean a whole lot more to you. Well then, you have the thousand or whatever it is. You go home to England and pretend to be me. I’ll get my old man to give you the ticket home as one of my wedding presents. Yes—’ she was pleased with the idea of testing her future husband’s generosity so speedily ‘that’s a grand idea. You can have my old passport to establish your identity or whatever is needed. I shan’t want it any more. You take it.’
Tina interrupted, laughing a little through her tears.
‘Oh, Sonia, you’re a darling. But you mustn’t play about with passports like that. It’s—it’s a punishable offence, I’m sure.’
‘Who’s to punish who I’ll have a joint passport with my husband now, because we’re going on a flying trip to Buenos Aires on our honeymoon. It’s all settled. You’re quite enough like the
photograph in my old passport. You go home to England, Tina, and take that with you. Collect the old thousand and then fade out into any part of your blessed island that you fancy. You aren’t made for this sort of life I know it as well as you. If poor old Aunt Maggie only knew, she’d be a lot better pleased that the money went to a nice, good little thing like you than to a gold-digger who paints her toenails. So it’s the right thing from any point of view.’
‘But—’ Tina hugged Sonia suddenly ‘there must be a better way of arranging it, Sonia. I’m not going to turn all proud and self-respecting and refuse because I simply can’t. The thought of going home and going home to some sort of fresh start makes me nearly crazy with joy and relief. But I can’t do this impersonation act, dear. It’s quite impossible. Can’t you can’t you arrange some legal transfer or deed of gift or something? Surely one can do these things.’
But Sonia’s interest began to wane at once.
‘But, my dear little idiot, there isn’t time. Oh, I didn’t tell you I’m being married tomorrow. At least, it’s tomorrow now,’ she glanced absently at her watch. ‘We’re leaving on the afternoon plane for the south, and afterwards we go on to Buenos Aires. Cyrus (isn’t it a frightful name when you say it by itself?) has business there. I’ve no idea when we’ll be back. There’s no time for anything but to shop and get married. I can’t go running round to lawyers, getting deeds settled.’ Characteristically, she was not willing to back up a generous impulse by taking any personal trouble. ‘You can have the money and welcome, my dear, but much the simplest way is to take the passport too. You’ll find it in that drawer over there.’
‘Sonia, please—’ Tina was trembling with eagerness, and she gripped Sonia’s arm with nervous fingers ‘won’t you do it the other way? It doesn’t matter about doing it before you leave New York. You can do it from Florida or wherever you’re going in the south. You can send it to me—the deed or letter, I mean. I wouldn’t need it for a week or two anyway, because I’ve got to work out my notice and arrange everything else. Do say “yes”, Sonia. I could go mad with happiness at the thought of your generosity, and if you would just arrange things this way, everything would be all right.’
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