Chain Reaction

by Gillian White

  ‘Not yet paid for,’ she reminds him gleefully.

  Jacy picks up his paper-knife and fiddles with it casually. He is sprawled back in his swivel chair with a dreamer’s smile playing round his mouth, a silent whistle on his lips. He stands on the threshold of some new world, a world where he was once indomitable, all-powerful. He turns his slow, hypnotic eyes upon his partner-to-be, cold eyes, all traces of amiability gone. ‘Belle, go and get us some ice!’ When she fails to respond to his demand he strikes the desk with his elegant, still-manicured hand, as if the wood is human flesh. ‘We need some ice for the Scotch, Belle. Please will you go and get it.’

  Their eyes meet. Her heart is thumping. And she thought she’d ridden out all the bad times.

  She loves him. She loves him. The revolutionary spark of energy suddenly dies within her and gives way to that old lethargic apathy. The nervous smile and the shrug are stricken as she prepares to get up and go, to minister to the needs of the powerful as some women seem destined to do. Shaken, oh yes, but still expecting and deserving abuse, loud and reproachful. Jacy loves her, yes he does, or he wouldn’t bother to treat her like this. It has been getting more hopeful for so many months and now suddenly it isn’t. Hope fades when she looks at his eyes, she feels lost and lonely, her heels click on the hardwood floor and slowly she closes the door behind her.

  Belle’s tragedy is as simple as this… after all these years, if she loses him now she is left with nothing.

  TWENTY

  No fixed abode

  HER ENCOUNTER WITH SIR Hugh Mountjoy at the Brighton tea rooms upset Peaches terribly. It was unkind of Dougal to lure her into that sort of trap, with such a conceited, overbearing person. If these were the sorts of insensitive types that Jamie had to deal with, then who could blame him for proceeding with caution?

  But who can poor Peaches talk to? Where can she go to find the comfort she craves? Jamie either can’t see her, or is being prevented from doing so. Mags and Charlie are too prejudiced against him and Mummy and Daddy would be frightfully upset to discover their precious little girl was with child.

  What began as such an exciting adventure has turned into something too awful. Peaches thinks of the opening scenes of Oliver Twist—the unmarried mother staggering towards the workhouse through the lashing storm, her limp and wasted body too feeble to survive the trauma of birth, her child a little orphan cast upon the winds of destiny. And it’s even more macabre today, she considers, staring into her mirror to see if pain has altered her, to try and discover if there is something physical there, a hump, a scar, a withered ear, to differentiate herself from others as one who has suffered, indeed, is suffering still. Unmarried mothers are the scourge of society, in their squalid high-rise flats with their rampant, violent offspring setting fire to shabby estates and stoning the police. Not that she would suffer this fate; probably Mummy and Daddy would forgive her and support her, but she’d rather do penance than live off their pity. If Arabella cannot live with the father of her child then she honestly does not care what ghastly fate befalls her, she tells herself dramatically.

  However, the indignity of banishment to some godless northern outpost, no matter how acceptable the house and grounds, abandoned and forgotten by her Prince—that has to be the worst scenario of all. They might as well just lock her up in the Tower.

  It’s bad enough going to the clinic alone, National Health of course, in that big, impersonal London hospital. James would take pity on her if he only knew. She has to get through to him somehow, she absolutely has to.

  Charlie and Mags, to whom she was reluctantly forced to confess her condition, constantly demand to know what’s going on. ‘You’re in a hell of a strong position, you know, Peaches, carrying a royal child, hell, and discarded by the father, left on the scrap-heap like a used condom.’

  ‘That is not how it is, not at all,’ fumed Arabella. ‘You just don’t understand. They are stopping me from seeing James, that’s what the problem is, and as far as I know they have told him all sorts of lies. They might even have told him I’ve had an abortion, or that I never want to see him again.’

  ‘If you played this right you could be set up for the rest of your life,’ smiled Charlie in her silk pyjamas, sitting before the mirror and brushing her pewter-blonde hair a hundred times just as Nanny ordered. Every now and again she tops up the glass on her dressing table with a light Beaujolais. Peaches was sipping Ribena. She daren’t touch alcohol because of the baby (her hotel lunch with Dougal was an exception, she needed extra courage that day), or buy sandwiches for lunch from Marks, or eat cottage cheese, or steak, or soft-boiled eggs. Oh, these are frightened times, and no wonder, when one woman in five miscarries before the three-months threshold. ‘Or you could ball the whole thing up and end up a bitter, resentful woman with a problem child. From where I stand, you’re balling it up, Peaches.’ Charlie laid down her brush and came to put her arm round her friend’s shoulders. Fresh from the bath, she smelled of silky, sensuous soaps and minted toothpaste. All around her messy bedroom, clothes lay in piles on the floor like the little white mole-hills on the moon. ‘Come on, sweetie, threaten the swine. Tell them you’re going to go to the papers. Christ, the sky’s the limit. Tell her, Mags, someone’s got to get through.’

  ‘I don’t want to be known as a fallen woman.’

  ‘You are nothing like a fallen woman, dear heart,’ said Mags, still in her curlers and her old Magic Roundabout dressing gown. ‘You are a blooming, beautiful, healthy mother-to-be.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting, Mags,’ said Charlie. ‘There’s nothing beautiful about it. It’s a hideous condition that ends in the sort of pain that’s normally associated with terminal cancer. But that’s not the point. The point is, darling, that you have been well and truly dumped on. You should have had an abortion. You should have listened to us.’

  ‘She’s not the first.’

  ‘No, but she’s the first one prepared to “out” the bugger.’

  ‘I am not prepared to out anyone! I truly love James. And he loves me.’

  Charlie and Mags exchanged rolling glances. At school Arabella’s errant stupidity had a certain charm about it; she was never unkind, never too busy to stop what she was doing and listen to somebody’s adolescent miseries, never too greedy to share her tuck, her money, her bike, her clothes, her shampoo—and she would have shared her homework except that nobody would want to copy such rubbish and end up with a D. She would never have made a prefect, house captain or head girl, she was just too silly and forgiving, ever aware of the plight of those less blessed than herself.

  ‘She wouldn’t cope with the publicity,’ said Mags, holding out her party dress, balancing against the bed in an attempt to step inside it. She wobbled the words, ‘It would kill her.’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t stay and face it, do you? You go abroad. They pay for you to go abroad, you lie low till the furore is over, and anyway, the whole point is that once Peaches has blackmailed them there’d be no need for the press to be told—they’d give her whatever she asked for. Oh Peaches, do think about it seriously! It would be killing. Imagine—a fugitive in hiding! We could come with you…’

  ‘But all I want is James.’

  ‘You are pathetic and childish and not worth anyone’s serious concern,’ snapped Mags, still struggling to insert herself into the wispy dress of silver slippery tulle. Strewn over the bed were puffs of cotton wool like dandelion seeds smeared with nail-varnish and lipstick. ‘Anyway, you’ll have to do something soon. It’s showing already, soon it will be monstrous. Mummy and Daddy will have to be told. You can’t hide it from them for ever.’

  Peaches shrugged. She had learned to be patient with their attitudes. How could she explain to these, her best and favourite friends, that she had already been offered a house in the wilds of Lancashire, staff to run it, and an income for life… how much, she doesn’t yet know. How could she tell them that the pressure was building each day as Dougal Rathbone became more insi
stent that she make up her mind for once and for all. If she confessed all this, their indignation on her behalf would know no bounds. Peaches was afraid they might decide to take some action of their own, in her interests, and upset poor Jamie needlessly. Arabella is still convinced that all she needs to sort out this mess is to see him.

  If only she didn’t live so far away.

  If only he’d given her a number.

  Funny how it was always Jamie who contacted her in the past.

  She is secretly relentless in her pursuit. She has tried to get in touch with him on numerous occasions. The first hurdle she encountered was trying to get the number of The Family’s Scottish retreat from Directory Enquiries. In a strange, conspiratorial manner she was treated like some sort of nutter; she felt she was going on record somewhere as a possible future terrorist. Saying she was a friend of The Family, using as innocent an air as she could assume, only made matters worse. She has written a dozen notes, careful in tone, but has received no reply whatsoever.

  Still, she mustn’t give up. At this very moment in time, Jamie is probably fighting to convince those in high places that Arabella Brightly-Smythe is the right woman for him.

  This thought envelops her with overwhelming tenderness.

  She is going to stay in tonight, again. She has not told her friends, but tomorrow she has agreed to go with Dougal to visit a doctor in an expensive private London clinic, ‘because whatever happens in the future, it is essential that this baby be properly looked after, and, as you say, while the National Health Service is perfectly adequate for some people, it is hardly appropriate for the mother of a Prince.’

  Arabella sits on the sofa with her knees up and her arms round a cushion. Perhaps she ought to have told Mags and Charlie, then they might realise the extent of Jamie’s true concern. She sighs with a little flutter of pleasure. Thinking of that loyal and lonely figure she overflows with gratitude and love. She senses Jamie’s caring hand in this latest development. Of course he would be concerned about her and the child, it has probably taken him ages to persuade his attendants of the necessity of excellent pre-natal care. Of course he would be concerned that his own creation should be no less than perfect. When she asked Dougal about the visit, he told her it would probably be the same old tests she’d already had, ‘But you’re not afraid of a few little pricks in the arm, are you, Peaches?’

  She’ll probably ring Mummy and Daddy later. Her hand itches to try James again but she knows there’s no point.

  Doors slam, followed by calls, chattering, laughter and curses as Charlie and Mags eventually manage to leave the flat, knowing that to persuade Arabella to go with them is useless.

  ‘You’ll be all right, though, darling, won’t you?’ Charlie reminds her of her mother. ‘I do hate to leave you all on your own like this, and nothing on the telly.’ Her quick eyes search her friend’s face for a clue to likely unhappiness.

  ‘I’ll be just fine.’

  ‘Change your mind! Come with us.’

  ‘Honestly, Mags, I am perfectly happy to stay in.’

  ‘And dream of the elusive Jamie.’

  Peaches merely smiles. She loves their cheerfulness and their positiveness. They are so full of joy and life, and she’s always wished she could be more like them, not so shy, not so serious, taking everything in life to heart. When they were young and at school Arabella used to think how sad it would be when they all grew up and lost this closeness by pairing off with men. What a shame it was, she thought then, that friends couldn’t just stay together and live in communes and have fun. She used to worry a lot about this. She couldn’t understand, in those days, what it was about men that attracted them. Boys were disgusting. Boys were rude and unkind. She hated it, she cringed, she felt personally wounded as, one by one, her school friends fell by the wayside. Tusker, of course, was the first skittle to fall but Tusker was unlike the others—deeper, darker somehow, forever searching, aggressively ambitious, competitive to a fault; she always argued the call at tennis and got banned in the end, for rudeness and lack of fair play. Belinda, she calls herself Belle these days, oh yes, she was first, with all her beauty in spite of the brace on her teeth. She was expelled in the end. How marvellous it had been to see her again, at The Grange of all places. It’s such a small world. She hopes Tusker will look her up next time she’s in London.

  But Peaches was sure no one would ever choose her, although everyone said she was pretty, and the fear was like not being picked for a team in games, or picked last because you were the only one left. Peaches never excelled at athletic pursuits, she did not excel at anything. She was more of a dreamer, a poet, a lover of nature and quietness, a loather of competitive sport. But she knows now, she understands now how it happens, how men come to mean so much. Thomas the Tank was her first boyfriend apart from innocent childhood loves. She was amazed to be made so much of when she first came to London. Mags says the whole experience went to her head, but with Tom it didn’t go to her head, it went to a more delicate part. She gets tired of being treated as a wide-eyed witless creature—OK, so she’s not so bright, but she’s always managed to get by. She loves her friends and yet their concern does tend to get overpowering at times, and their raucous jestings, their chattering night and day, yes, she looks forward to a night in the flat on her own and yes, she might well do nothing but put on some music and dream of Jamie, dreaming about what his baby will look like. She might even cry a little.

  There’s nothing on, but she turns on the TV all the same, just has it quietly there in the corner. It takes the place of a comforting fire, crackling away there in the background. She cannot concentrate on her book, so decides to play some music in a minute even though she knows that this will upset her. She is too emotionally raw for music or poetry at the moment.

  After the news at nine she will ring Mummy and Daddy in Epping; she knows better than to disturb them between nine and half past. Daddy watches or listens to every news from eight o’clock in the morning onwards. All her memories are of being woken up by the bleeps on Radio Four, the shipping forecast with the volume at full blast and the wonderful aroma of bacon, coffee and toast from downstairs.

  ‘A small crowd assembled outside the gates of Buckingham Palace this evening after the news of the engagement of Prince James was announced. The Prince’s fiancée is twenty-one-year-old Lady Frances Loughborough, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Loughborough. Both sets of parents are said to be delighted.’

  The conversational tones of the newscaster penetrate the dreams of Arabella as she lies on the sofa with her arms round her cushion—or her baby?—in a state of semi-wakefulness. Is this a dream? Her tired eyes focus on the screen in the corner, first to see the familiar sights of the people outside the Palace gates, more wandering around, lost, it would seem, than grouping together to form an actual motivated crowd, but now the picture moves to the hills of Scotland and there, calm and smiling in an open-neck shirt and a kilt with a sporran is James Henry Albert himself with his arm round the waist of a woman in white.

  She appears to be carrying a basket of berries. Frances Loughborough? Lady Frances Loughborough? Arabella sits stiller than stone.

  ‘How do you feel on this happy day, Lady Frances?’

  ‘Thrilled! Absolutely thrilled to bits. Naturally. Don’t we, James?’ A fuzz of loudspeakers thrust towards him. ‘Of course we do.’

  ‘How long d’you think before the marriage?’ shout the excited press.

  ‘A Christmas wedding, we hope,’ says jaunty Lady Frances with her horsy teeth pushing out her smiling upper lip, ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’

  ‘Very romantic!’ chortle the men and women of the press.

  She licks her very dry lips. Watching, riveted to the TV, Peaches turns white. Her ringers twist and pull at her hair. She is the only inhabitant left in a dry, burnt-out world. All she can hear is a panting sound and it’s her, a figure crouched round herself, pressed in agony against the back of the sofa as if shielding her
body from more twists of the merciless knife.

  ‘So how long have you known each other?’

  ‘What is it, darling? One year? Two?’

  ‘It must be two by now,’ smiles the Prince. ‘Didn’t we meet at one of your mother’s charity balls?’

  Peaches doesn’t know how much longer she can keep from being sick. Why is he doing this to me? she wonders weakly. I am prettier than her. She looks silly in that flimsy white dress, much too feminine for such a stocky figure, and look at the size of those breasts! There’s a terrible hardness about her features and a preoccupation with herself. Arabella crosses the room to turn down the TV. The air in this confined space threatens terror and madness. She feels ready to choke, to beat her fists against the door. Her eyes circle the room wildly but they are so full of tears they see nothing. Damn! Damn! Where is Dougal’s phone number? Somewhere there on the table. I love him, she screams to herself silently. I love him and he is breaking my heart! Please, please God let this not be true. Make it some mistake… She looks up at the screen again and sees James and Frances laughing.

  She tries to dial, stabbing at the phone so it falls off the table and she has to start all over again. Dougal will have the answer, she tells her trembling hands. Dougal is a kind, gentle man, he would not see her treated this way. Hasn’t he promised to take care of her future, even bothering to accompany her to the hospital tomorrow? ‘Bitch!’ she cries feebly, uttering that profanity for the first time in her life. ‘The bitch!’ she screams, beating her head with her fists, but it still doesn’t help.

  Wait, a voice warns her. Wait. Do nothing you might regret. Sit down quietly and think. Dulled, defeated and blunted like an edgeless knife, she puts down the phone and sits back on the sofa sobbing, her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped tightly. She must try and collect herself before she speaks to Dougal. Upset like this, she won’t be able to make herself heard. It’s funny, isn’t it? This morning she had woken up feeling nothing but hope and joy that this might be the day when Jamie came to claim her. Tonight she will toss and turn unable to sleep for this blinding desolation where no one can reach her, where the comfort of friends won’t even help her. And there’d been no premonition, no sign, not the slightest warning that today would be the very worst day of her life.