Beggar Bride

by Gillian White

  Tina defends him, unnecessarily in Ange’s point of view, and to her great annoyance.

  ‘I don’t think you realise, Ange, how hard this is for Billy. I mean, imagine if he was spending most nights in bed with another woman. You’d go barmy. And I think what he has allowed you to do is brill.’

  ‘What he’s allowed me to do? Tina, is that really what you just said? You’ve got a fucking nerve. You make it sound as if I was desperate to get into bed with this old tosser, as if I’m having a real rave while Billy sits here on his own and suffers.’

  ‘Well he does, most nights,’ says Tina frankly. ‘So can you blame him for off-loading some of it onto me? It’s very hard to make friends with anyone, Ange, if you’re not being honest and his lies, trying to protect you, were going way over the top.’

  Billy was always rather poor at inventions. ‘Why does nobody think about me? I can’t even smoke,’ cries Ange, ‘for God’s sake.’

  What’s this bloody self-righteousness crap of a sudden? Tina’s hair is black, dyed black, so it’s matt with hardly any sheen and her black eyebrows are pencilled in like seagulls against a very white sky. With her exaggerated hour-glass figure, bandy-legged and tottering along on spindly heels, Tina looks like the tart she used to be when Ed kept her on the game and pocketed most of the proceeds. She never wears any colour but black, she puts Petal in black, too, very odd, it gives the child a weird foreign look as if she’s an alien in time and place. She likes to think she is gothic. Tina started her lingerie parties to try and make some money for herself but Ed barged in and ruined all that as he always did. She took him back. Whatever he did she took him back.

  ‘The poor bugger’s even got to make out his own baby is somebody else’s!’

  Ah, dear, dear, poor Billy. Poor Billy, who goes on a spree every week if she’ll let him, saying he needs this and that, and he shouldn’t be taking Jacob with him to the football, either. He is sitting back, listening to Tina’s defence, loving every minute of it, women fighting over him.

  ‘So who have you told then, Tina?’ Ange eyes her steadily, blowing smoke directly and spitefully into her neighbour’s eyes.

  ‘Sod off,’ says Tina, turning dismissively away.

  Ange places her hands on her hips. ‘Listen, I mean this. I want to know who you’ve told.’

  ‘You’re not going to believe me whatever I tell you.’

  ‘Try me,’ says Ange.

  ‘Well who the hell would I tell, for christsakes,’ asks Tina, ‘who do I see, where do I go? And what business is it of mine?’

  Ange shrugs. ‘You’re right, I don’t believe you. And that is because I am so shit scared…’

  ‘Ange, I swear on Petal’s life that I haven’t told anyone about this, and I wouldn’t. I just hope for both your sakes that it’s all going to work.’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell anyone…’

  ‘And you can shut your mouth, Billy,’ says Ange. ‘For a start.’

  ‘The thought of anyone getting out of this shit hole just makes me feel so good,’ says Tina. ‘And taking those stuck up scumbags for a ride while you’re at it. I think it’s just amazing.’

  ‘Well…’ says Ange, relenting.

  ‘There’s not a minute that goes by when I’m not thinking of some way for me and Petal to get out of here.’

  ‘I know,’ says Ange, with sympathy, beginning to feel slightly guilty. ‘It’s very hard, I know, and you all on your own.’

  ‘Maybe one day my prince will come,’ says Tina, tottering over to the mirror over the mantelpiece, laying her fag on the tiles and squeezing a blackhead under her nose. No, they can’t have anything going between them, if they had, Tina wouldn’t be doing that in front of Billy, would she? ‘And as soon as Petal’s at school I’m going to get a proper job. A career, like, in bloody Canary Wharf.’

  Ange smiles, but gently. How many times has she heard this? She shouldn’t have been so hard on Tina, it’s just that they’re wobbling around on this tightrope and below is a bottomless chasm of fear. One mistake and they’ll be finished. Properly finished. Banged up inside, both of them, and Jacob taken away.

  Is this some hellish nightmare?

  ‘Get out, come on, get out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Billy Harper?’

  ‘Yeah?’ A vicious kick. Billy’s still got his eyes closed.

  Is that her screaming?

  ‘Get out and stand over there by the wall, and you!’

  Crash. Slam. Someone grabs at her arm. Ange’s heart is bursting with terror. These men, what are they doing here, all the doors wide open to the landing outside. ‘Where’s Jacob?’

  ‘Get that bleeding dog out of my house.’

  ‘Out, out, out.’

  ‘Schnell, schnell, schnell,’ like the Gestapo.

  ‘Move! Move! Get over there!’

  Brutal.

  ‘You’re hurting me! Let go!’

  ‘Get over there!’

  ‘It’s drugs,’ says Billy, ‘it’s the pigs, it’s a raid.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Shut up and stand still!’

  ‘OK, OK…’

  They are turning her little flat upside down, she can hear the saucepans falling out of the kitchen cupboard. Jacob is screaming from his cot in the second bedroom, more like a closet. Pitiful. ‘Mamamama…’

  ‘Let me get him…’

  ‘Get over there, you bitch.’

  ‘My baby’s crying, fucking hell…’

  ‘SHUT YOUR BLEEDING MOUTH before I shut it for you…’

  ‘But Jacob! Jaaaaacob!’

  The man’s hand comes hard across her mouth and Ange falls back in horror. Both Billy and she are stark naked, gasping, shivering with cold and terror, gulping back sobs and from the slams and crashes from both sides their neighbours are suffering the same plight.

  ‘Throw her a cover,’ says one of the men, huge, determined, relentless, ‘she’s up the duff…’

  All the covers are torn off the bed and the wardrobe is emptied. Such violence. All Ange’s little bottles of make-up are tipped out on the rug. Somebody holds up the pair of gold, flat shoes, her favourites, the ones she got from the Japanese. ‘Bit naff aren’t they, for someone like you?’

  ‘I want my child.’

  They’ll be on it in a minute, her Gladstone bag, so obviously expensive, with the clothes she packed for her trip to Amsterdam, that and her posh leather handbag are in the big drawer under the bed, with all the papers, chequebook, cards, documents belonging to Lady Angela Ormerod… all the proof they need.

  This is it.

  They’ve had it.

  Dear God, oh God, please God…

  ‘What’s this then?’ A voice from the other room. ‘Get that fucker in here…’

  Billy goes, picking up a blanket from the bed as he does so and tucking it round his waist. What the hell have they found? Billy hasn’t been mucking around with dope again, has he? Dear God!

  ‘What’s this then?’ Ange strains to listen.

  ‘What d’you think it is?’

  ‘It’s a bloody brand-new CD player, that’s what it is, you scrote.’

  ‘So?’

  Oh Billy, don’t try to be big, not now.

  ‘So where did you nick this from? Off the back of a lorry?’

  ‘I bought it.’ Ange imagines him standing straight, he’ll be putting all his cocky charm into his blue-eyed smile.

  ‘Got the receipt then, mate?’

  ‘Somewhere. If you’ll just let me look.’

  There’s a silence, and a scuffling, and the heavy breathing of dogs held back. There’s a crinkling of paper, Billy must have emptied out the jar on the sideboard. Someone is reading. Jacob’s cries are softer now, more like the jerky sobs of a hurt child…

  ‘Well, well. Now that’s amazing.’ The voice she can hear is full of sarcasm. ‘Fancy that, Mr Harper! Fancy you buying a CD player like this all above board.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? Th
at’s the only thing we’ve got worth anything. You can see that. If we were dealing don’t you think we’d have a car down there in the yard and something a bit better to sit on?’

  ‘OK, so where did the money come from?’

  ‘Me!’ shouts Ange, unable to contain herself any longer. ‘Me, it was my money.’

  ‘Bring her in,’ shouts someone, a new voice Ange hasn’t heard before.

  The living-room is in turmoil. Pandemonium everywhere. Even the chairs are turned upside down and the kitchen cutlery has been scattered thoughtlessly over the floor. But, hallelujah, the Gladstone bag in the drawer in the bedroom is still there, untouched.

  ‘So where did you get it?’

  Ange sneers. ‘Well, when you look like me it’s not hard.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says the copper, eyeing her crudely, ‘silly to ask.’

  ‘Well then,’ says Ange, swinging her hips and trying to smile, bringing one bare foot round in a childish circle, ‘why did you?’

  ‘Perhaps I’m just frigging daft,’ says the copper.

  ‘Perhaps you are,’ says Ange.

  It’s like a stampede. Shouts from next-door leave the flat quite empty. ‘Get dressed, but don’t go away and don’t try to clear anything up,’ yells the last man out.

  Ange looks at Billy who shrugs and sighs. ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Shut up.’ Ange hurries through to get Jacob. She whispers behind her, ‘They might be listening.’

  He’s been crying so hard he is wringing wet and his little heart’s going like a runner’s. His eyes are wide with fear. ‘It’s OK, sweetheart, it’s OK, Mummy’s here, and Daddy, and all the nasty men have gone.’

  He clings to her like a baby chimp in fear of its life.

  Christ, how she hates them! They have to do their job, but have they got to do it like this? Anyone in Willington Gardens could tell them where the drugs come from, who the dealers are, where they collect, where they hang out. And there’s two more years here for Billy and Jacob, and Tina and Petal must have been terrified out of their wits, all because of those bastards next-door. Are they going to come back and carry on searching or will they be satisfied with the pleasing result? Whatever, there’s nowhere else to hide the Gladstone bag, nowhere big enough, nowhere safe enough…

  It seems like hours later before Jacob is settled down once again and Billy and Ange, Tina and Petal, huddle together for comfort in front of the small gas fire.

  They are trying all ways they know to cheer each other up.

  At least the Gladstone bag was not found, or the handbag with the documents in it, but more by luck than judgement.

  Jacob will be three years old by the time they are ready to leave this place.

  Tina puts up her hand. Even her nightdress is black, and the eiderdown she is wrapped in is a kind of mottled purple. Are those old bruises down the side of her arm? ‘I am now formally applying for the job of nanny to Master Archibald Ormerod…’ she giggles.

  ‘The Hon. Archibald Ormerod,’ Ange reminds her with a haughty look.

  ‘If only,’ says Billy, still very subdued.

  ‘If only,’ says Ange, smiling back. ‘What a laugh.’

  ‘I’d make some cocoa,’ says Tina, ‘if we had any.’

  ‘I’d prefer a beer,’ says Billy.

  ‘No,’ says Ange, thinking, thinking, new and frightening ideas going round and round her head like flocks of sparrows, whirring and circling. She stares hard at Tina, trying to imagine what she’d look like in a uniform of white and grey with a smart felt hat.

  22

  EIGHT POUNDS SIX OUNCES!

  Fabian sits beside the bed and his finger is getting sore from making so many phone calls.

  ‘Now, Aunty Val?’

  ‘It’s OK, Fabian, Tina has phoned Aunty Val already.’ Angela, decked in the bed-jacketed-frills of suffering, rests her tired head on the pillow in the terribly expensive clinic where Honesty was born twenty years earlier. Helena wanted her birthing tub transported to a clearing in Hurleston Woods where she said she had prepared a grotto. As it was March, and a chilly one, Fabian put his foot down, so she gave birth to the twins in the beloved tub in the nursery wing of Hurleston House, helped by a friend and mentor who made it her business to go round aiding birthing women in this curiously watery way. Nanny Barber, cribs warmed and at the ready, had sniffed and refused to touch the tub with a barge pole.

  Luckily, and understandably, Angela gave birth early, at a time convenient both to Sir Clement Brownjohn and Fabian, otherwise Archie might have had the indignity of being induced, nudged into the world, as if the whole of his life won’t be nudged along at the convenience of others. Although naturally this privileged child won’t be nudged quite so much as some are nudged, bearing in mind his glittering prospects.

  Anyway, he escaped that fate.

  Fabian stares at the child with tears in his eyes.

  At last! At dear last! An heir to his kingdom! So dark! So beautiful! The spitting image of Angela but the giant size of the Ormerods (since Elfrida’s genes entered the family. Before that they were quite puny). The child’s little hands grip his finger! And Sir Clement Brownjohn says he has never seen such a healthy specimen! Fabian’s heart is so full he can hardly speak.

  Luckily it was Angela who stumbled upon this incredible nanny who was on her way between jobs when Fabian stepped in and made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.

  Nanny Tree, or Tina, which she prefers, was about to leave after three years with friends of Angela’s, the Mountebanks, Fabian’s never heard of them. She showed Fabian Miranda Mountebank’s letter which was delivered, as all Angela’s letters are, to Aunty Val’s empty Hampstead house, because Angela, in her unfathomable way, imagines that calling for the post there on a regular basis deters burglars.

  Luckily for all, Aunty Val appears to be doing splendidly in her new environment, and is one of the most popular residents there according to Mrs Mackie.

  Burglars? But who was Fabian to argue? These little idiosyncrasies only make him fonder of this wife, who can still lie back and look young and beautiful after her recent ordeal. She is brave enough to deny the birth was an ordeal at all. ‘Having the epidural made all the difference,’ she said, stoutly, as if she had some inside knowledge of what giving birth without the drug could possibly be like. Dear thing.

  This opportune letter was glowing with praise for Nanny Tree who was on the point of leaving for Singapore, of all places, for another post.

  ‘We should grab her while we can, she sounds too good to be true,’ said Angela, who, surprisingly, seems to have few friends. She’s never had the time for them, she says, and Fabian knows her childhood was a strange one with Aunty Val maintaining some kind of dubious control, and she never invites anyone home. ‘Once you start doing that it develops into an annoying ritual, unfair on everyone when we’re all so busy, and away so much of the time. I want to be with you, Fabian, when I’m not working. I can’t spread myself like some people can. I’m just not the type.’

  Fabian was relieved to hear this, after the trauma of the bearded, biblical men and the ghoulish, hairy-armpitted women who filled the house in Helena’s day.

  They managed two wonderful days together at Christmas, but then Fabian had to fly to Dallas and Angela went to stay for a few days in Surrey with Aunty Val. So far things are working out well between them.

  ‘Ring Miranda and tell her to send the nanny round here,’ said Fabian, keen not to upset the apple-cart. ‘We’ll pay the taxi. Let’s have a look at her straight away.’

  Fabian is not quite certain that he would have chosen Tina Tree—her accent is painful to the ear—but Angela seemed confident that anyone so highly recommended by Miranda Mountebank would have to be no less than a gem. And the girl looked clean enough, rather plain, hair scraped back, no attempt at make-up, stout, dowdy lace-up shoes and a grey nurse’s uniform with a starched apron over the top and little navy blue cape.

  After all, they’re not
looking for a wet nurse, damn it.

  He asked for references and Nanny Tree produced several. All of them exemplary.

  ‘I’ll see to these,’ said Angela.

  ‘Ruth Hubbard’ll do it,’ said Fabian. ‘No need for you…’

  ‘But I want to, Fabian. Really I do. Whoever we choose is going to be so important.’

  ‘As you wish, Angela. But do make absolutely sure and check right down the line. Back to her training. Give this Princess Christian place a buzz.’

  She’d smiled up at him so disarmingly. ‘You are funny! You really don’t need to tell me, Fabian. I am quite used to dealing with personnel.’

  He has to keep apologising, he so often forgets he is dealing with an independent and intelligent woman, she is not Ffiona and neither is she that gorgon of a woman, Helena. She is quite capable of dealing with household appointments on her own.

  Angela cleared her throat. ‘The only problem is, Tina Tree is married to a man with two children of his own, and the one who belongs to both of them is only sixteen months old.’

  Fabian blanched. ‘I say…’

  ‘But I don’t see this as much of a problem,’ Angela continued hurriedly. ‘When we are in London she can work from home, and when we go to Devon the nursery wing is certainly large enough for a little family. It will be good for the baby, whichever sex it turns out to be, to have some built-in brothers and sisters to play with.’

  ‘I really don’t know about that.’

  ‘Well, think it over, anyway. But I would be perfectly happy with those arrangements.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we look about a bit? I mean, what’s the fellow like, for God’s sake? And I would like Nanny Barber to meet her and give an opinion.’ Fabian was thinking of Murphy O’Connell. He does not want to get lumbered with yet another scoundrel living under his own roof.

  ‘I haven’t met him yet,’ Angela said lightly, ‘but I’ll ask Tina to bring him along, and the children, when I take her to see Hurleston next Tuesday. By the way, Fabian, would it be all right to take the Rolls?’

  And that gave Fabian the perfect opening to explain about the car he has organised to carry her about when she is in England. With a child at her side, she will need transport of her own. She doesn’t like to travel by road, and Fabian understands that after that frightful childhood crash, but she must try to overcome her fears and a comfortable motorcar like the new Range Rover he has ordered will surely go some way to alleviate the distressing situation. All he needs now is a driver.