Beggar Bride

by Gillian White

  God. Billy was hiding, waiting for her behind a tree. When Ange, sticky and bad tempered, arrived in the clearing he bounded out and gripped her in his arms, she couldn’t get away, he refused to let her go. She shouted, ‘Sod off, you bastard…’

  They both saw the man at the same time. Billy gasped. Let go. Stood looking gobsmacked. Ange tried to laugh, as if they’d been playing some silly game, nothing odd about it, just the lady of the manor frolicking playfully with the gardener, oh, Jesus Christ, no one in their right mind would accept that.

  The stranger stood still as the trees around them, stringy, tall, dark and hairy, like a wild man really or Jesus himself, he could be a tramp who lived in the woods, but much too young for the genuine part. He stared, saying nothing, not even venturing a smile or a greeting as you would if you suddenly met like this. It was Billy who spoke, ‘Hi, mate.’

  The man in the brown blanket said nothing. He kept on staring.

  Ange heard herself say something silly, there was even a brittle laugh somewhere in the middle of it, ‘We’re trying to clear the path to the river, it’s such a beautiful day.’

  Then the man gave what could have been a smile but not quite. It was a mix between a sneer and a snarl. Ange, her guilt making her angry, said, ‘Have you any right to be here? This is private property you know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  ‘I better fuck off then.’ And his voice was barely above a whisper.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ange, startled, shivering without knowing why, ‘yes, you had.’

  He turned and went, silently, disappearing like a mist disappears over water, or a ghost through a wall.

  ‘Shit!’ said Billy.

  But Ange refused to answer. She would kill him if she could. She just turned round and stalked off in the direction of home.

  It was Maudie Doubleday who enlightened her after Ange plucked up the courage to ask. She’d been hoping the stranger was a passer-by, a student, perhaps, walking through, or a hippy type, or an artist even. But please, nobody local who might spread his suspicions around.

  ‘The man you saw, milady, was undoubtedly that devil Callister, you know, the traveller who found Lady Helena in that dreadfully disintegrating condition. You don’t want to go too far in that direction, well, by the sounds of it you almost stumbled on their camp.’

  Ange had no idea that the camp, set up in Helena’s day, was still there.

  ‘Certainly it is,’ Maudie confirmed from inside her shed, mixing a cream of herbs and mud and the evening primrose whose properties, she swore, worked miracles on a person’s face.

  Angela stood at the door and waited, not invited to cross the threshold.

  Maudie came out. She picked up one of the little earthenware jars she used for her wares. She rinsed it out under the garden tap. ‘Most of them departed, of course, after the tragedy. Lord Ormerod made it quite clear that they weren’t welcome at Hurleston after that. Well, they were under suspicion of course, same as everyone else. But others arrived, as they tend to do, like bad eggs they congregate together. These people, they come and they go. But that Callister’s always been there, calls himself some sort of guru, and it’s not as though he’s got an excuse for going round acting like a savage, he is quite a well-educated young man, or so I’ve been told.’

  Maudie seemed to enjoy Angela’s obvious curiosity. She went back inside and filled the little pot with a grey, gritty substance.

  Angela had to ask, ‘I know this might sound silly, but I heard you believed that Helena was murdered, even though the police…’

  ‘I do. Yes, I’m afraid I do.’

  Maudie was so tall and stringy Angela had to look up in order to catch her eyes. They glinted full of secrets she wanted to tell. ‘Is there any particular reason?’ asked Ange.

  ‘I saw blood money being passed over.’

  ‘Blood money?’

  ‘Yes.’ Maudie closed her lips round the starkness of her answer. ‘By Honesty. And some say I’m a troublemaker for saying that, the police didn’t ask me and I’m no gossip. But the day after that poor lady’s body was found I saw Honesty passing money over to that brute Callister. And, what is more…’

  Angela waited, not wanting to divert Maudie from a subject so close to her heart, but one, you could see, she struggled with. ‘Lady Helena believed herself to be pregnant before she died.’

  Angela was amazed. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t, milady, only three of us do, she came to me when first she suspected, asking me to do a pendulum test, but I won’t do those any more, not since I predicted a girl for the farm manager’s wife and she ended up with a boy. Accused me of changing the sex by my meddling. And Lady Helena told me she was going to ask that Murphy O’Connell if he could find somewhere discreet where she could go to have an abortion.’

  Angela was fascinated. ‘And did he?’

  ‘He was making the necessary enquiries, apparently, when she disappeared, and he and I suspected she might have discovered somewhere suitable herself, and that’s where she’d gone. Sadly, that was not the case. We were wrong.’

  ‘You said three people knew this.’

  ‘Oh, well naturally I confided in Gwenda, Nanny Barber, but she’s got this foolish idea in her head that my imagination plays me tricks. She doesn’t like facing unpleasant facts, never has done.’

  This was unnerving stuff. Why would Helena want an abortion? ‘So you think it was Honesty who did it, because Helena was pregnant?’

  ‘I’m not saying any more. Only that there’s only one person in this world Honesty would go out of her way to protect…’

  ‘And that’s Fabian?’

  ‘Or herself.’ Maudie handed over the jar and padlocked the door behind her. ‘Spread it on thickly at night, and round your neck as well, and be sure you wash it all off in the morning else you’ll look like you’re peeling. And if that doesn’t make your skin feel softer and more beautiful than ever then I’ll eat my hat.’

  24

  WELL, THEY SAY THAT a person’s favourite season is the one to which they are most spiritually attuned, and at her age, with her prospects, Honesty’s favourite ought to be spring, or even a hot, juicy summer, but oh, dear, inside her she feels like the bleakest, most iron-hard frosty winter.

  In her father’s letter, received almost immediately after Archibald’s birth, he issued an ultimatum—toe the line, or else.

  Ffiona said, ‘That man has all the sensitivity of a charging rhino.’

  ‘Maybe I ought to…’

  ‘It might be wisest,’ said Ffiona quickly, who greatly appreciates Honesty’s contributions to the household budget although her daughter takes after Fabian in this, she is mean, careful, always whining on about how her income has to stretch as if she is a garage mechanic with four kids to support and a mortgage.

  ‘Stretch? Why does it have to stretch? You only ever spend your money on luxuries.’

  ‘Believe me, Mother, it has to stretch. I have more commitments than you know. And if I gave in every time you asked for another so-called “loan” I’d be skint by now.’

  She is fed up with living on the breadline in Ffiona’s cold, dark house, the little lawn at the back faces north and never gets the sun. And Ffiona’s friends don’t like her, consider her spoilt, and she’s really no patience with their awful, demanding children who have been brought up to speak their minds rather than be polite. They remind her of the terrible twins. Everything revolves around them, their appalling art covers the walls of Ffiona’s friends’ houses, their heavy metal crashes resoundingly all down the street. From the tender age of eight they assume the rights of spoilt adults.

  These women make up a vulnerable minority group, along with gays, blacks, fat people, Muslims, artists, Jews, children, the elderly, poets, the unemployed, part-time workers, smokers, manual workers and calves. The conversation round her is so damn intense. You can’t make a light-hearted comment without being
taken up on it, there is much in-depth probing and so much boiling of kidney beans, so much rinsing with henna that the bathroom surfaces are permanently stained.

  ‘So do you never feel, Honesty, the need to make a contribution to the world which has given you so much?’

  ‘But I do contribute, Apricot.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘My family and I pay enormous taxes.’

  ‘But your life, Honesty, where are you going and where is the deeper meaning?’

  The deeper meaning to Honesty’s life exists somewhere in the peaty woods at Hurleston, in the eye of the storm which drives her to a greater and greater frenzy as time goes by. But she’s not about to tell Apricot that.

  As a result of Callister’s insistence, and because of Fabian’s letter, Honesty feels impelled to go and visit the dratted child and its mother. The thought of being cut out of Fabian’s will is worse than a thousand tortured deaths. If she loses her money Honesty loses Callister, and her dark gypsy lover has always made that quite clear.

  ‘I need money for my work, Honesty,’ and he gave his mocking, contemptuous laugh. He looked at her then, so forlorn and perplexed, with detached amusement. ‘For the cause. If there’s no future for me here I must move to where conditions are more favourable. I shall have to move on.

  That’s why I lead this nomadic life.’

  ‘But the plan, Callister, what about the plan?’

  Callister has always promised that everything will be all right.

  They formed their plan a few days before Helena’s death, but now this new heir to Hurleston threatens everything. Honesty feels comfortless and desolate, burdened by her own desire.

  Angela, drat her, is so sickly sweet she makes Honesty’s toes curl and the child, Archie, is just like any other child, snotty, smelly and blotchy, although even Honesty can see he looks exactly like his mother. He will be a heart-breaker some day.

  Glad to be back at Cadogan Square, and not just because of Callister’s orders to go and dig the dirt—he was furious when Archie was born and wouldn’t speak to her for days—she went to visit Estelle and Murphy in the basement before going upstairs. If there was any gossip, anything untoward going on then Murphy would know about it and Honesty can report back to Callister as promised. Perhaps Fabian and Angela are beginning to argue, little things starting to irritate, their selfish lifestyles beginning to clash? There is always that hope. As it happened the gossip proved to be juicier than that.

  ‘There’s something not right with that woman,’ said Murphy darkly. ‘I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s definitely something not right.’

  ‘Take no notice of him,’ said Estelle, bustling about in the kitchen as usual and taking little notice of her husband sitting at the table, in her way, with his newspaper.

  ‘Not only her ladyship, but that nanny and her man, they don’t smell right to me.’

  ‘Nothing smells to you,’ said Estelle severely, ‘because of your heavy smoking and unless you cut down it never will.’

  ‘This all sounds very sinister, Murphy,’ said Honesty, wishing Estelle would keep quiet. She half doubted Murphy’s information, he never failed to insinuate something about somebody, he spent his life suspecting intrigues and plots and reading cheap and gory murders, as bad as Maudie Doubleday. He took the Sunday Sport and believed every item in it, he claims to have seen Elvis Presley himself, in the food hall at Harrods dressed as a sheikh.

  ‘She has no post delivered here.’

  ‘She does,’ said Estelle, ‘of course she does.’

  ‘Only lately,’ said Murphy. ‘Only in the past few months, and nothing like you’d expect for a person in business. No personal letters either.’

  ‘I thought her mail was going to her aunt’s house in Hampstead.’ Honesty remembered some vague arrangement like that.

  Murphy ignored her. ‘And no phone calls, none. She used to get them on that mobile phone of hers, but whatever’s happened to that I don’t know.’

  ‘She’s cut down on her work since the baby, and you know that, Murphy,’ said Estelle. ‘I do wish you’d stop seeing trouble when there’s none there. I mean, what on earth are you insinuating? That the woman is an impostor? Good heavens. And anyway Nanny Barber likes her.’

  ‘And how she convinced Sir Fabian to employ that little whore I’ll never know. And her with a family in tow.’

  ‘Tina Tree is an extremely nice young woman,’ said Estelle, refilling a crab shell with inordinate skill. ‘And wonderful with those children. The patience of Job.’

  ‘I’ve heard that woman’s language, you haven’t,’ Murphy told her. ‘And who else d’you know who has all new clothes?’

  ‘Well I do, mostly,’ admitted Honesty. ‘When I get fed up with something I take it straight round to the nearly new.’

  ‘Mark my words,’ said Murphy, ‘there’s something fishy going on.’

  ‘There is, Murphy, there certainly is. I am filling a crab shell for a start. But I give you this—it was rather odd that nobody of hers came to her wedding. Not even the favourite aunt.’

  ‘I’m so pleased you decided to come and have a talk, Honesty,’ says Angela. ‘And perhaps, soon, you will feel able to move back here.’

  Perfect, just like a doll. Too perfect? The cow doesn’t mean a word she says. It’s strange, it’s mystifying, but something about Angela reminds Honesty of Joanna Lumley. God, just look at her, so insincere sitting there in a chair which was once Ffiona’s. She’d be horrified to hear what Callister is saying about her, suggesting the lady of the manor is having it off with the gardener. ‘There’s no real point. I’ll be twenty-one next year, and everyone says it’s time I had a flat of my own. Perhaps I’ll ask Daddy for one for my twenty-first birthday.’

  ‘Are you happy staying at Ffiona’s?’

  Poking and prying as well. You wait, your time will come, you little minx, thinks Honesty with pleasure. Although the fear is that now Fabian has the son he has always longed for, perhaps he will settle with this wife for good.

  ‘My mother and I are very close.’ Honesty is not prepared to give anything away. Tabitha and Pandora seem to have been taken in by this scheming woman, but Honesty is made of sterner stuff. ‘Just like you and your aunt. You must miss her terribly. How often do you get to see her?’

  ‘I make sure I go down to Surrey at least twice a month.’

  ‘But it’s not the same, is it? When I grow old I am never going into a home. A living death, cast out from the mainstream of life, I would rather die. What did you say the place was called?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ says Angela quickly, ‘and I’d rather not. Your father is kindly paying the bills and I have to make quite sure my aunt never finds that out. The fewer people who know where she is, the safer our secret will be.’

  ‘I expect it’s much easier now you have the Range Rover, and a driver to take you.’

  Angela looks uncomfortable. Perhaps Honesty’s questions are too intrusive, too personal. ‘It does make it simpler, actually, yes.’

  ‘How old is your aunt?’ Honesty goes on, making polite conversation. Why is Angela being so defensive?

  ‘I’m not sure, to be honest. She never went in much for ages, or birthdays for that matter. There were many times when she even forgot mine.’

  ‘How dreadful.’ Honesty’s answer is quite sincere. The thought of her father missing, or forgetting a birthday, even though it is mainly Ruth Hubbard who reminds him and chooses the gift, is horrifying to put it mildly. ‘And you can’t be many years older than me. Strange to get married so young. Not a good prognosis, according to the statistics. I’d rather see some of life first, before I finally settled down.’

  ‘I think I saw all I wanted to see…’

  ‘Yes, you travelled a good deal, didn’t you?’

  Does Angela look uneasy? Is she an impostor as Murphy suggests? Does a troubled look cross her face? Or is it just that Honesty is thinking of Murphy’s dark insinuations? ‘I
did. But not in the right kind of way. My life was spent rushing from one capital to another, from hotel to hotel. You don’t get much idea of a country doing that.’

  ‘I suppose not, no.’ Should Honesty go further and try and trap the bitch, here and now, find out if she is an impostor? Ask which hotel chain she prefers, which shops in which cities, the time it takes to reach Milan or Geneva by air, whether she’s ever heard of Dolce and Gabbana? No, she isn’t confident enough of her ground for that and Callister might not want her to appear so obvious, not at this early stage. Callister likes to work slowly and thoroughly.

  As he did when she first met him.

  ‘Why are you so afraid?’ he’d asked her.

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ said the seventeen-year-old girl on her birthday, her attention focused solely upon him.

  ‘Sex is wicked and sinful, is it not?’ he asked her scornfully.

  ‘I never said anything like that.’

  ‘You don’t need to.’

  She had come to the clearing to see what her father referred to as the scum of the earth. The scum of the earth whom Helena had invited onto private Hurleston land. Fabian was going to get rid of them, he’d already applied for a court order. She found the camp deserted save for this man, this Callister, a stranger, who slowly moved towards her, slowly, almost thoughtfully. A sensation of incredible warmth and delight flowed through her body so that even her throat turned hot and her wrists seemed to burn. She twisted her bracelet uncomfortably. What was happening? Honesty, surely the last virgin in her class, was totally mystified by her reactions. Their breathing came and went simultaneously, there as they stood together in the clearing. Suddenly he laughed and shouted, shocking her, ‘Oh, lust is a wonderful, wonderful thing!’ She was shocked. She waited as his face moved towards her, wearing that faint, now familiar, smile. His mouth touched hers, lightly and softly, but in the next second he had forced her lips apart and threatened to devour her with compulsive greed. Suddenly terrified, gripped by a remorseless energy, her hands reached up to push him, her foot stepped backward to move away. But his arms were round her and she was locked hard against his body.