Rich Deceiver

by Gillian White

  The voice speaks to Ellie. ‘Take your money away. Withdraw it.’

  And Ellie snaps back, ‘What good would that do? Canonwaits don’t need it, they are doing perfectly well on their own without my help.’

  ‘Well tell him, then,’ says the voice. ‘Pull the rug out from under the bastard. He’d never have got the job in the first place if you hadn’t paid for it. Take him down a peg… that’ll do the trick.’

  Ellie muses with difficulty. Her head swims round and round. In the end she moans, ‘He would hate me if I did that.’

  ‘But you’d have him back.’

  ‘And we’d be just as we were in the first place.’

  ‘Was that really so terrible?’ asks the voice, nagging on at her like an old watch.

  And Ellie has to answer honestly that it does not seem quite so terrible now looking back on their life in Nelson Street from this awful, painful perspective. They had never had to endure anything slightly like this. There were times, many times, when she’d felt she was on her own, and that Malc was just beating time beside her, but that loneliness had been nothing at all compared with this.

  She sobs to herself, drunkenly. ‘Oh God oh God oh God.’ She sweats in the bed because of that damn central heating, but she hasn’t the strength to get up and go and turn it off. The idea of opening the window does not occur to her fuddled wits.

  She contorts her face and twists her mouth to get it round the name, ‘Gabby!’ What an ugly sound—Gabby Gabby Gabby Garbage Gutters and Gizzards.

  Oh, what is Malc doing now? Ellie reaches clumsily for the clock; she delves in the mess on her bedside table to reach it and she shudders when she sees the time—half-past three in the morning. What is he doing? Lying beside her contented in sleep, or making love? Is Gabriella de Courtney twisting one elegantly manicured finger through the thick bushy hairs on Malc’s chest? Or a more intimate place? Or are they talking together, discussing her… and if so, in what way does he discuss her? And that thought is so totally distressing, so painfully enormous is the sense of betrayal that Ellie cannot endure it. So she hugs it to her, stabbing herself with her own knife, making a vast space so that the humiliation has all the room it needs to come in and settle comfortably.

  She reaches for a fag again and, finding none there, weeps with the pain of deprivation.

  And it is not so much a sleep that Ellie finally sinks into when the hands of the clock go round to five, it is more of a red-hot blast of oblivion, a ride on the choppiest sea in the world, seared by a scorching sun. With biscuit crumbs in her bed and the neck of a bottle gripped tight in her hand, she tosses on waves tinted puce with nightmare. She is granted just two hours of this before she wakes up, weak and exhausted, and the remorseless battering of merciless reality takes over from sleep.

  Ellie Freeman, millionaire twice over, hauls herself out of her messy bed and gazes apathetically at the ruin of herself in the mirror—and she’d thought Maria Williams had an eye-infection! Extraordinarily, she has survived, but in order to continue she cannot be idle, sober or alone for one minute. She showers, she drags on some clothes and, after backing out the car, sets off through the freezing rain with shaking hands, a trembling lip and grim determination, in the direction of Robert Beasely’s house. She would not pass a breath-test if she was stopped.

  23

  ‘I AM SORRY, I didn’t quite catch…’

  ‘Ellie! It’s Ellie.’

  It’s not yet seven o’clock and here she is on Robert Beasely’s Victorian doorstep, trying to explain to Bella who she is and why she’s here and why she has to be let into the house immediately. Bella Beasely, who has risen to answer the frantic ringing, wears a pale blue, three-quarter-length towelling dressing gown with a large collar and a hood. Ellie wants one. In the middle of all this horror, Ellie knows that she wants one, and she’s tempted to ask where Bella bought hers.

  ‘But it’s only seven o’clock in the morning!’ She can’t work out who Ellie is. She is still half-asleep. ‘Nobody’s up yet!’

  Robert’s children James and Victoria are up, they are coming downstairs in fluffy jumpsuits, hanging over the banisters while they peer through to see what is going on.

  Bella Beasely has thin wrists and an intelligent-looking, sensible black-strapped watch.

  Ellie says, ‘Perhaps I ought to have telephoned before I came over.’

  Bella runs her hands through her brown curly hair and agrees. ‘That might have helped—this is a bit of a surprise. And you say you are a customer… a customer of the bank?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m more than just an ordinary customer. Robert has been helping me with my investments and now I have run into some terrible trouble and I need his advice very badly indeed.’

  ‘So badly that you couldn’t wait for the bank to open, it would seem.’

  ‘I don’t see Robert at the bank,’ says Ellie sharply. And then she watches as some half-dawning recognition crosses Bella’s face; the eyebrows rise, just slightly, the teeth catch the bottom lip and the eyes, vaguely irritated up until now, move to take her in all over, making sense of a story she has once been told.

  Bella knows about Ellie. Robert has told her.

  Ellie should not feel betrayed by this because it is natural that Robert would tell his wife such an extraordinary story.

  But how did he tell it?

  Ellie peers through the door and sees James and Victoria sitting listening on the bottom stair. Bella follows her glance, shrugs her thin shoulders indifferently and says, ‘Well, you’d better come in so I can close the door. I can’t leave you waiting out here. Call Daddy, James, will you please, and tell him that it is important. There’s someone called Ellie here to see him.’

  James rushes up the stairs in an exaggerated scramble. Victoria, with her long brown hair and her pear-shaped face, sits on and stares. The door closes and the light through the glass casts various-coloured reflections on an otherwise colourless carpet.

  It is the house she thought it was when she drove by last Christmas Day with Malc in the new Cherokee.

  Bella is clearly embarrassed, and harassed. ‘You’d better wait in here,’ she says, opening the door to the first room on the right. ‘And would you like some tea while you are waiting? He shouldn’t be long.’

  Ellie nods and passes through, smiling at Victoria who creeps away warily on bare feet. Ellie supposes she probably does look a bit frightening this morning, to a child. The room is airy and square, a sitting room with lots of tall bookcases in it and a fireplace with a fancy tile grate. She doesn’t sit down on either of those huge, squashy sofas, covered in parrots and jungle leaves, but she tries to pull herself together with the help of the mirror, a mirror like the one she was going to have… in her Georgian house, one day.

  The Beaselys are getting Christmas cards already. Oh God—Christmas! Ellie stares hard at herself. She looks as if she’s been through some terrible, long, debilitating illness. Even her clothes don’t appear to fit properly and she has buttoned her shirt up wrongly. Her hand shakes as she tries to right it and she attempts to settle her cardigan more squarely on her shoulders—slipped like that it looks as if she’s slanted all over, as if she is having a stroke. Her face she can do nothing about. It looks ravaged. She feels ravaged, yes she feels raped and ravaged and attacked and abused.

  This isn’t how she had dreamed it would be when she first came to Robert’s house. She had hoped she would be invited. And then she wonders painfully if Gabriella and Malcolm have been here already.

  ‘Are you sure you are feeling all right? Can I get you something else, like a Paracetamol, or a glass of water?’

  ‘I am not feeling all right,’ says Ellie, accepting the tea with a shaking hand. ‘But neither Paracetamol or water will help me.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ says Bella, hovering by the mantelpiece. ‘Whatever is wrong, I am sorry.’

  ‘I had to come here. I couldn’t think of anywhere else,’ says Ellie.

  Bella Beasely
says nothing at all, but raises her eyebrows and frowns slightly.

  ‘I have had no sleep,’ says Ellie. ‘No sleep at all. My husband announced that he was leaving me yesterday. His name is Malcolm Freeman, perhaps you know him?’

  ‘If I do I can’t remember,’ says Bella, seating herself in a position prepared for flight on the edge of the chair nearest the door. Ellie remains standing, although her legs feel stiff. She doesn’t know if she can bend herself sufficiently in order to sit down.

  ‘Well, he spent last night away from home. With his new woman… Gabriella bloody de Courtney.’

  She sees Bella start a little. Her countenance darkens before she lightens it with that weak smile again: she has either heard of the slut or she knows her. Bella says, ‘I really don’t know what to say. It must be terrible for you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ellie attempts to sit down and succeeds. Seeing how much the cup is shaking, Bella rushes forward and places a table in front of her. ‘Thank you,’ says Ellie. ‘You are being very kind.’

  ‘Not at all,’ says Bella, agitating for Robert to come down and help her out here. ‘Perhaps he’ll come back,’ she says, rather hopelessly, into the awkward silence.

  ‘He’ll come back. It’s just a matter of when, and it’s just a matter of how to cope with the hell of it while he is gone. He doesn’t love her, you know.’

  ‘Probably not,’ says Bella Beasely, who runs creative writing groups for sex offenders. It seems to Ellie that she is probably more at ease with sex offenders than she is with someone like her. At least you know what sex offenders have done, while with an abandoned woman you can only guess what terrible wrongs she might have committed to have driven her husband away.

  Hearing a sound that Ellie can’t hear, Bella gets up in haste and flashes a quick smile across the room before she rushes out. Then Ellie hears them whispering together before Robert’s worried face appears through the door and with it the anxious word, ‘Ellie?’

  She wants to run into his arms and be hugged.

  She wants to tell him everything, all the cruel, wicked things that Malc said, the fact that she got herself drunk last night, the feelings that are raging inside her, the fears, the powerlessness of her situation. He is strong while she is weak, he has the answers while she has not.

  But Robert does not look as if he is willing to let Ellie Freeman run into his arms. They are crossed, for a start, and so are his legs when he sits down, gravely serious.

  ‘Bella tells me that you and Malcolm have had a disagreement.’

  ‘He’s left me,’ Ellie sobs, and struggles around in her handbag for a tissue.

  ‘How did you know where I lived?’

  Ellie shakes her head, bewildered. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Robert. I have always known where you lived. I think I looked up your address right at the beginning. He walked out of the door on me last night.’ She can hardly speak for the crying, but Robert doesn’t come over, he leans further forward instead as if he can reach her that way. ‘And I don’t know what to do.’ Ellie is shaking like a jelly now, almost completely out of control.

  ‘This is obviously a very traumatic time for you.’

  Ellie stares across the room with her eyes and her face awash with tears. Her mouth drops open. She can’t speak so she nods.

  ‘I think you might have done better to remain at home until you felt more able to cope with the situation.’

  Ellie bites a terribly trembling lip.

  ‘It was quite a surprise to be woken up like this, I must admit.’

  In the silences that follow Robert’s short, sharp sentences, the sound of Ellie’s breathing takes over.

  ‘Rushing out of the house like this, acting so impulsively, is not going to make you feel any better.’ And when Ellie doesn’t answer Robert says, ‘Is it?’ And then again, ‘Is it?’

  ‘N… n… no.’

  ‘I would like to be able to help you in some way, Ellie.’

  Out of a mouth that is full of wet cardboard Ellie manages to gasp, ‘I need someone to help me and I couldn’t think of anyone else.’ And her voice rises into a desperate sob.

  ‘Neither Bella nor I are at home during the day. Our schedules are pretty heavy.’

  ‘What?’

  Robert hurries on, ‘I’ve got to say it, Ellie. I am surprised you came here.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you!’

  ‘But you could have telephoned the bank,’ and then, slightly more gently, ‘couldn’t you? You could have waited.’

  ‘Well yes, I suppose I could have.’

  ‘But you decided you couldn’t wait.’

  ‘I have had no sleep,’ moans Ellie, rocking herself backwards and forwards.

  Robert Beasely sighs and lets his shoulders sag. It is funny to see him here in his house with his personal effects around him… photographs, pictures, ornaments, table lamps, books… ‘You had better tell me what happened, seeing as you’re here.’

  Ellie replaces her cup on its saucer with caution. She shakes her head vaguely. ‘There isn’t very much to tell, really. He just said he wanted to move out for a little while, that he wanted to be with her.’

  ‘Gabriella?’

  Ellie pounces. ‘You know her, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, we know her.’

  ‘Do you know her well?’

  ‘She used to be a friend of Bella’s, actually.’ Robert’s discomfiture is pronounced—his throat does three quick swallows. ‘And this is all pretty difficult. I wish that my wife…’

  ‘A close friend?’

  ‘No, not a close friend. More of an acquaintance, I suppose.’

  ‘I saw the photographs of the Grosvenor dinner, I saw how you were all together. I didn’t really realise until then that you must know Malcolm quite well.’

  ‘There are times when we bump into each other. At functions, naturally.’

  ‘Do you like him?’

  At once the question sounds childlike and Robert answers, ‘Well enough.’

  Ellie bites her lip. ‘Do you like her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Gabriella.’

  ‘Ellie, really, I am just not prepared to say whether I like her or not. And this conversation is getting us nowhere at all. It is all getting just a little bit silly and I am still very confused over the reasons why you decided to come here.’

  ‘I thought…’ Ellie starts.

  ‘Yes?’ Robert leans further forward.

  ‘I thought…’ The sounds of morning are going on in the rest of the house, footsteps crossing bedroom floors, the creaking of central heating, the shrill squeal of a child, the running of taps. Ellie remembers how silent the bungalow was when she left it… and the awesome silence of last night after Malc went.

  ‘What did you think, Ellie?’

  She can’t hold his eyes. ‘I thought you might be able to help me.’

  ‘Well, I certainly would if I could, Ellie, but I can’t see how.’

  ‘I needed to be with somebody.’

  Robert withdraws. ‘Well, I can understand that…’

  ‘I needed to be with someone I trusted.’

  ‘Am I supposed to be flattered by that?’

  ‘Bella… she seems like a very nice person.’

  ‘What’s all this about, Ellie?’

  ‘I have always wanted to come here, you know.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why.’

  ‘Can’t you, Robert?’

  ‘Sometimes, Ellie, I find it quite hard to understand you.’

  ‘Perhaps you have never known anyone quite like me before.’

  And then he smiles, makes a joke of it, relieved to be able to do so. ‘I certainly agree with you there!’

  Ellie does not smile with him, but she’s stopped crying so that’s a small start. She says, ‘I should not have come here this morning, should I?’

  And Robert shakes his head and says, ‘No, not really.’

  ‘It wasn’t on, was it? It was the wrong thing to do. You are not
here for this sort of thing, are you?’

  ‘I am interested in you, Ellie. Yours is an interesting situation, and we have been able to do so much with the…’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I said fuck off.’

  ‘Ellie, now this attitude is really ridiculous. You are overwrought and exhausted, you don’t know what you are saying or what you are doing.’

  ‘I know exactly what I am doing.’

  ‘Well if you do know, then it was quite inexcusable for you to come barging into my house, waking my wife and my children at dawn, causing all sorts of problems…’

  ‘I see that now. I see that I shouldn’t have done that.’

  But Robert Beasely is uneasy. Maybe he thinks she is suicidal and needs professional help because he asks her, ‘What do you intend to do now? Can I suggest that we make an appointment for later on this morning? I think I am booked until half-past eleven but after that, if you care to ring up, Janet can probably fit you in and we can discuss the wider issues of this…’ He wants Ellie out of the house.

  ‘Don’t talk any more.’

  ‘What?’

  Ellie gets up. ‘Please don’t talk any more. I don’t want to hear you talking.’

  ‘So you won’t ring up? You are determined to carry on behaving badly.’

  ‘No, I’m going now. I won’t hold you up any longer.’

  Robert Beasely messes up his hair in frustration. ‘Listen, Ellie. I know I have upset you by my reaction but really, you have to understand that your personal problems are not in my brief…’

  And then Ellie roars with laughter. She feels quite fond of him again in a removed kind of way. He has made her smile… he has given her a taste of those other feelings which she feared she would never know again. She will be able to laugh one day… Laughter still lives… nobody’s killed it. And if there’s laughter there’ll be joy, too, and contentment, wonder, and that ordinary, soft kind of sadness which can be dealt with gently.

  Ellie makes for the door. ‘Please apologise to Bella for me,’ she says sincerely. ‘What on earth must she think of me, letting myself go to pieces like that?’